busy week

Back! With a vengeance. I have lots to tell you so I'll get right into it.

I think I left you guys with my trip to Kinchijijou last week so we'll move right on to tuesday. The embassy isn't all embassy stuff, they also promote cultural programmes. With the current Holland-Japan year(s) (08/09) there are especially many events in Japan and the Netherlands to promote this celebration. One way is to promote cultural exchange, in this case in the form of... concerts, woo! As embassy employees we get the chance to participate in these cultural exchanges for free or with reduction. Being the ppr student that I am with my limited intership allowance, I go for the free events ;). Just kidding, the two things I wanted to go to this week happened to be free, lucky for me!

So, on Tuesday! On Tuesday I went to a venue called 'Billboard Live' in Tokyo Midtown. For those who know the place, you will go ' oooooehhhhh, woowwww'. For those who don't, that's the kind of reaction you should have! It's classy, to say the least. We went to see Giovanca featuring Benny Sings perform. WHO!? Giovanca is a Dutch funk/soul singer, she was awesome! And Benny Sings happens to be her mentor who is now on tour with her through Japan. Here's a sample:

Giovanca
Benny Sings

Anyway, Giovanca was awesome, Benny Sings is a dork XD Sorry for all you fans out there! We weren't allowed to take pictures so I'll describe: Giovanca wore an awesome dress and these amazing shoes and did a wardrobe change while Benny did his ' thing' wearing grey suit pants with sneakers, a white blouse and a dark grey jumper over his shoulders (so not wearing it). The outfit was wrong on so many levels, and then his beebop attitude to ' Little Donna' just made me crack up XD. It was all seriously entertaining mind you, and I had the awesomest cocktail there, called ' Ever Green'.



It tastes like After Eights! The best part was though was sitting in this exclusive place with high class people with... pizza and french fries on the menu! (it's a restaurant/bar idea). Very good french fries mind you. :D Oh, by the way, Ying Ying and I got totally lost trying to find the venue in the first place, it wasn't on ANY sign we could see, we happened to know someone who knew where it was who could point us in the right direction, but even in the building itself we wouldn't have found it without help... crazy!

What's crazier is Wednesday. After a long, busy day at work I went to relax with... some jazzzzz<3



Anyway, back to what really matters, the jazz! The jazz was a-ma-zing. Seriously. I had a smile on my face the entire evening (with a little help from my ‘ Happy Amsterdam’ cocktail – tequila, kahlua and fruit juice). They were so enthusiastic and good and awesome and… just wow! I would definitely recommend going to see them ‘ perform’ sometime (and please forgive the conductor who seems a little awkward despite his masterly talent). The coolest part was the pianist for sure, he has the quickets fingers ever! And, as it turns out, he’s the jazz mentor of one of my fellow students in Leiden, so Masa told me, how cool is that!

Thursday! Was also cool :P There was a goodbye party at the embassy for one of our colleagues which meant a feast at one of the residences with lots of yummy food and scrumptious desserts!! I can’t begin to describe them but it involved a lot of chocolatey goodness. :D Oh and there was coffee. I had about a months’ supply of coffee that evening! Wait, party, there was booze, you drank coffee? Well yes, started with one cup with the dessert and another and another and then sitting outside on the roof terrace with the Tokyo Tower view with more coffee while almost peeing in my pants laughing at my colleague’s jokes XD Here’s an example: He was telling us they had recently spotted a snake on embassy ground. So we’re like what, snakes? In the middle of TOKYO city?? So he says: “ yeah, Tokyo city snakes. They go ‘ sumimasen’ when they pass you”. Haha maybe it’s a you had to be there moment but it sure still makes me giggle XD

Got home late and got up early to snooze myself through Friday (most of my colleagues were out making a very boring work day in mah lil office) so I went out with some Mexicans to liven things up! My friend Claudia was back in town and after a terrible dinner in Shibuya (Sakura – don’t go there) we headed to Ginza to meet the other Mexicans. Now we sure couldn’t find them and they all had my phone number so I got endless phone calls starting like this: Hello Jennifer this is Carlos how are you can I speak to Claudia? Yes, like that, with no breaths or pauses :P And add a Spanish accent of course. Anyway, after they sent out 2 search and rescue teams we were found and kidnapped over to a little Chinese bar where there were indeed a bunch of very drunk Mexicans. I don’t speak Spanish so it was all gibberish to me but it boiled down to them all proposing a toast to J-lo (me). They mexicanised me by giving me a mexican last name and what better than Lopez. Haha. After lots of jokes about ‘ sampling Mexican products’ (there were some barista’s and coffee tasters among them) they headed over to continue their binge in Roppongi and I went home. Thought not before I found the H&M!! :D




Saturday came around and I went to meet my uncle (who lives in Australia) for some breakfast at the Imperial Palace hotel. I recommend the French Toast, it’s to DIE for :D yum yum yum!! After a quick shop for phone straps in Ginza Hands (my uncle bought me a Ponyo strap, yay!)



I put him in a cab towards the airport and I went to explore Nakameguro before heading home. Found some interesting things around ;)




Spent the rest of the day watching Bear Grylls the wilderness survivor skin a camel in the desert, use it as a pillow and then bite the head off of a live frog with my German and Irish housemates before heading upstairs for a catch-up session of Jdrama. ^_^

That’s all for now folks, I believe it’s more than enough anyway ;) Tomorrow I’m going into town with Ayumi but taking it easy in general, am totally exhausted from all this fun stuff!

On a *real* final note, to answer Mariko’s question about pepernoten: I brought 2 bags along to share with the embassy but I didn’t bring them straight away as it’s nowhere near sinterklaas yet. I guess it’s close enough and everyone had similar ideas, because there seem to be lots going round the embassy ;) So I kept mine for myself (and I actually got another bag from Vlad last week) and am enjoying them thoroughly :D