Japan - Days 78-80

The past few days have been pretty fun :-)
Friday was the start of the weekend plans I'd been waiting for all week, though it didn't go quite as I'd intended. In the lab, I finished off an experiment, and then asked one of the people in my lab if we'd be doing the mouse dissections. She stared blankly for a few seconds, then realisation dawned on her face - she'd totally forgotten! She checked with my supervisor, then got me to go collect the mice. Then started the dissection process - killing the mice, cutting them open, removing their wombs, complete with embryos which looked like strings of beads at this stage, and then separating the embryos out from the uterine material for DNA extraction and slide preparation. The process took forever - in the end, I finished at about 8.40pm and had to go in on Saturday - my birthday - to complete the cell lysis experiment. My supervisor killed the first mouse, but I had to make several tries at killing the second one, which resulted in it biting through its tongue at one point, leaving blood on the tissue, and I was shaking while trying to kill the third one, so I had to get someone else to do it as I kept failing. Then separating out all the uterine material and putting the embryo into the paraformaldehyde intact was quite a challenge, but again, with practice it got easier. At about 5pm, the people in my lab held a little party for me; I had tried inviting them to my proper birthday parties, but they're all really busy right now, in preparation for a conference next week. We sat for about an hour in the common room, eating some expensive-looking but very tasty cakes :3 They even got me to blow candles out on top of one of them XD Then it was back to the lab to complete the procedure as far as I could that evening
Once I realised how late I was gonna be done, I messaged all the people whose numbers I had who were meant to be going to my party, telling them to meet at Coco at 9pm - I only just made it in time. Even so, I was the first one there by about 5-10 minutes, after which Molly arrived at around 9pm. It took people about an hour to all get there, but eventually we headed off to Hot Stuff. Admittedly, I took a longer route than I perhaps could have, but we made it there in the end. We lost some people on the way, but they found us again eventually. At midnight, my friends started singing Happy Birthday to me, and then everyone in the bar started applauding XD
However, this is where things started going downhill - people were talking amongst themselves, but didn't seem to take much of an interest in me. Then some of the girls, Molly in particular, started talking about going down to the bar below - Gold Rush - afterwards, because they had hot Japanese bartenders, a topic of conversation that does wonders for my self-esteem. [Edit: There was a guy in Gold Rush who we'd seen on a few posters in Hot Stuff, a Westerner with grey hair who's running for some post in local government I think. From the way he was talking, he's a total dick. I dunno if he was using this as a joke or as a quote, but one of the things he said was 'If a tree falls on a woman, and there's no-one around to hear it, why is that tree in the kitchen?', which kinda pissed me off. Also, he failed at darts - He was hitting the bottom left of the board the whole time. For reference, the highest-scoring segment is in the top right. I would say he was going for a double to get out, except he was hitting the single and STILL aiming in the same place. So yeah, dickhead AND a fail lol.] We went down there eventually, and I stayed for about an hour I think, before heading back when Anton and Asoon did; the others stayed for another 2 or so hours. When I got in, it was still just about dark, so I went to bed after setting my alarm for 9am
Saturday, my birthday :-D I started by opening the 6 cards I'd received at that point, from my parents, my brother, my grandparents, and my aunt and cousins. I then had to go to the lab for an hour or two to finish up the cell lysis experiment. As it had to spin for an hour, I went down to look in Book Off and another used book store I discovered last weekend, before returning to the lab to finish it all off. I tried messaging people to see if they wanted to go into Tsukuba Centre to hang out or go shopping, but going to the bar the night before meant that the ones who had gone were asleep, and the others were either busy or, in Jen's case, trying to adjust their sleeping patterns in preparation for 7 hours of karaoke XD So I started by cycling along to Dayztown, where I played in the arcade - a game of Silent Hill for starters (where I ended up losing most of my health trying to protect and NPC while I was being eaten alive by roaches), while I was waiting for DDR to free up, which I played 2 games of. It felt good playing it again, I don't think 've played it at all since I came to uni. After this, I went up to Iias, where I got some lunch at McDonalds and used their wi-fi, before having one blast at a crane game with Kibago (a new Pokémon) plushies, which I failed at :-( Then I stopped in WonderGoo looking for Pokémon manga. I couldn't find any that I didn't have already, but I DID find the second volume of the Tales Of Symphonia novelisation for only 50 yen, so I bought that. I then cycled around aimlessly for a while, looking along side roads for other used book stores, but didn't find any more. I did, however, get a bit mindfucked at one point - it turns out that the Family Mart I went to in the first couple of weeks, and the one I went to on the way to Honda-san's apartment, are one and the same - I just came in different doors each time. How I didn't recognise the inside of the shop is a mystery XD Anyway, as I was heading back to Oikoshi, I saw Derek sitting outside Coco eating lunch, so I decided to go sit with him, going into the combini to buy a small bottle of energy drink - I think it was 100ml with 2000mg of taurine or something, though I didn't feel any effect. I had 4 throughout the course of the day, but still, didn't feel very buzzed by them
After talking with Derek for a bit, we went back to our rooms. I told everyone that we were going to meet outside Coco at 6.30 to go for okonomiyaki at Kuraudo, for which 6 people turned up. It was reeeally tasty! I had the gyoza one, and the others had a few different flavours, of which I ended up trying a little and finishing most peoples' leftovers - needless to say, I once again got my money's worth. I messaged everyone else midway through to say we would meet at Coco at 9pm to head to Cybex, but we ended up leaving at about 10.30pm after waiting for a few people (as it transpired, a few people came late to Cybex anyway, after we got there, so all in all about 15 people were there throughout the evening). Some people got 4 hour packages, and the rest of us got 7 hours. Then the fun commenced :-D
Amid the singing, there was of course plenty of alcohol, though I didn't have TOO much for fear of being sick. However, Andrew brought a bottle of Polish vodka with him called Spiritus. It was 96%! I had a sip, and it felt like my tongue had dried out and was on fire; I almost spat it out! However, it didn't do to me what it did to the people who had more than just a sip - Mike had a big shot and spent most of the evening in the toilet; Molly had a lot mixed with melon soda, spent about an hour completely wasted and then 3 more in the toilet; Cenk, well, he gets sick easy so I don't know if it was the Spiritus or just general alcohol that did this to him, but he spent a while in the toilet too (he does that a lot when drinking XD). The rest of us had a very good time though :-) And of course, had plenty of ice cream and soda. We ended up finishing at about 6.30am, and it was light outside. As Jen didn't have a bike, and the buses were going to come about 30 minutes after we arrived at the bus stop, I escorted Jen home while she walked (she has no bike, and now refuses to ride on the back of anyone's as much on principle as being afraid of falling off). Then I cycled home and went to bed at about 7am, with an alarm set for 10am
Sunday morning, I woke up to my alarm still feeling pretty tired. I messaged a few people asking if they wanted to go into Tsukuba Centre, but they declined or didn't answer. So, I went to Iias once again and used the McDonalds wi-fi, then checked WonderGoo for books, before going to Seibu and getting more noodles and some lunch. When I got back, I checked Facebook and discovered that the jacket someone had left in our karaoke room the previous night/that morning belonged to Anton, so I met him at the 100 yen and gave it back to him after starting my own laundry. On the way back to the dorm, I stopped at a recycle shop that Mike had told me about the day before. It was packed with all manner of things, but I absolutely love shops like that :-D Didn't find the Pokémon manga I wanted, but saw some nice stuff that I'd definitely consider buying sometime, like a little Chii figurine from Chobits, and a tonne of old video games. After getting back to my room, I finished laundry and did some homework. I tried messaging people about getting some dinner at the Chinese in the evening, but again, thanks to karaoke they were either busy, sleeping or hung-over; I was just tired with a sore throat ^^'
And that's about it from me for this weekend. Karaoke was definitely the highlight, so my birthday was a good one ^^
Nighty night, I must sleep now, or I'll fall asleep in lab/class XD