Blackout Period Comes to An End

We celebrated Brian's birthday this weekend in Tokyo at the New Sanno hotel. Finally, a long 3 months and 10 days have passed since my birthday, and now we are the same age again. We spent the days leisurely at a nice nearby park and at the indoor hotel pool.

We spent the evening with our good friends, Doug and Darlene, at a fun upscale Mexican restaurant called Fonda dela Madrugada in the Harajuku neighborhood of Tokyo. We enjoyed great food and guacamole (almost as good as Brian's), and a $65 pitcher of delicious margaritas.

Brian's evening was made extra special with a birthday serenade by the live mariachi band and a kodak moment with one of the band members' sombreros.




Although it looks like he is about to burst into his own rendition of "La Cucaracha," alas, he didn't. Somewhat surprising, considering the aforementioned margaritas. Not sure if that would've made the evening more or less fun anyway. It was pretty fun as it happened.

Party Like It's 2009!

Although we found it hard to believe it's 10 years past Prince's futuristic song (Party like it's) 1999, Brian and I weren't sure we could keep up with our crazier friends on New Year's Eve in 2009. And by "keep up," I mean "stay up."

We are, after all, getting old--I more so than he, as he likes to remind me in this, the "blackout period" between my birthday in November and his in February. (For 3 months and 10 days, I am one year older than he, so as such I have mandated that no important events are supposed to occur in this period. However, Miranda, arriving 4 days late, was born one day into this blackout period, making me one year older than I'd planned to be when I had her! But she's forgiven. And I digress...)

We rang in the New Year at the countdown party at the New Sanno Hotel in Tokyo with our friends the Watts and the Nelsons. But I guess Tokyo wasn't a big enough draw, so we were transported to spend an "Evening in Venice," this year's theme...hence the masks, which came in handy when we wanted to dance anonymously.

Kathleen had rearranged all the masks at each place setting in our favor before we arrived--and more importantly--before the four remaining strangers sat at our table. Three out of four of those unlucky people had to sport this chicken mask. (I love how Brian pretends to be shocked that I would don this thing in public. Or in his presence. But in my defense, this was towards the end of the party.)

So was this. Kathleen was fighting me for our pretend karaoke mic, which was, in fact, a noisemaker.

But that was not the end of the night! We left the party around 1am and made our way to the Absolut IceBar in Tokyo, where a mere ~$30 allows you to buy one beverage, wear borrowed coats and mittens and put your bum on ice for 45 minutes, after which you are kicked out--not that you'd want to stay much longer anyway. (I'd say "only in Japan," but they're not.)

Alas, the bar was closed, as Brian had suspected! Turns out, the IceBar Tokyo website explains this in English very clearly, if only we'd checked. In Japan, New Year's is more of a family holiday, one of the most important ones of the year. So, most restaurants and businesses are closed.

That didn't stop us. We kept on going till 3:30am actually! We connected with some other people we knew and a while later, here we are, pretty tired. We partied like it was 2009--which is to say we felt every one of the 1999 plus 10 years. But we had fun and we're still smiling! Happy New Year!