- party time: part 1 -

13 february - farewell party for a lady who works in the international student hub. she's retiring (or taking temporary leave?) in march, and we foreign students (10 of us: me, pea, koi, rushanti, yeo, jack, noppy, asri, angga, anish) who have been quite close to her, decided to hold a party at Jiyuugaoka.

firstly we went to an italian restaurant La Pausa for its 2-hour tabehoudai (or more like, a cheap full-course meal - it's 1,500 yen). the course consists of caesar salad, carpaccio, french fries, pasta, pizza, and lastly dessert-of-the-day.

the salad - fresh green romaine lettuces and red radicchio topped with croutons and mayonnaise -, and french fries - simply hot and appropriately salty - came in 2 huge plates. on the other hand, the carpaccio was not the usual beef or tuna, but thinly sliced octopus - raw, obviously, and slightly sour because of the olive oil + lemon juice dressing.

caesar salad leftover - not inviting anymore.

the amount of french fries (with asri right in front of it) - when half-eaten.

as for pasta and pizza, they were okawari-jiyuu - i.e. as long as we finish the plate, we could ask for a refill of any pasta/pizza of our choice until time-up. although spaghetti alla pescatora was the most popular pasta among us, i chose to stay with my all-time favourite carbonara. with a half-boiled egg, yummy... the lady from the hub ordered a plate of squid ink spaghetti, and she had black teeth...... for pizza we had lots and lots of them - margherita, italian salami, genovese, quadruple cheese, anchovy & garlic....

finally, dessert of the day - much to my disappointment because it was no ice-cream or cake - yukimi daifuku with strawberry topping. nevertheless it was good.


and then we headed for karaoke at the nearby Karaoke no Tetsujin. i remember going to this place last year during my class party and we gave up because it was too freaking expensive. yes, it still is. 1,000 yen for an hour and a half. but of course, with free flow of drinks.

the karaoke session turned out to be a sing-along session - for almost every song we sang (or shouted) altogether. for as far as i can remember we did Natsumatsuri (Whiteberry), Hitomi wo Tojite (Hirai Ken), Konayuki (Remioromen), Taiyou no Shita de (Remioromen), Sakuranbo (Otsuka Ai), Age Age Every Knight (DJ OZMA), Taiyou no Uta (Kaoru Amane), Soba ni Iru yo (Aoyama Thelma feat. SoulJa), First Love (Utada Hikaru), Flavor of Life (Utada Hikaru), Sorahune (TOKIO), Koko ni Shika Sakanai Hana (Kobukuro), Sakura (Kobukuro)......... and as a dedication to the hub lady we sang Nagoriyuki (Iruka) and Romantic ga Tomaranai (C-C-B). for solo sessions, jack did Sen no Kaze ni Natte (Akikawa Masafumi) whereas pea did Happiness (Arashi, of course).

i wish i knew how to upload and blog amr files because i recorded some of the songs we sang (some were hilarious), but currently i haven't figured out the best method.. tried youtube and photobucket but they couldn't recognize the format, and imeem is too public for these personal things. any ideas?

before we bid our last farewell, each of us received an A4-A3 compatible folder set from the hub lady. quote her: the presents either meant, "you have done a good job in your studies", or, "please work harder next time". LOL. i'm probably the latter, but she said it was up to our judgments. and then, we also received valentine chocolates and a mobile strap. i got a purple cat/rabbit-like figurine with the words 妄想族 (which means "delusion tribe" literally) written on it's tummy. hmmm...