Friends, Ping Pong and Food!

Last Tuesday, went to eat a Yakiniku Buffet (焼肉食べ放題）with 4 other Singaporeans on one of their recommendations. It was 1280yen (~18sgd; seems expensive but really quite 'cheap' by Tokyo standards) for 90 mins, including drink bar! No wonder reservations are usually required wow. Honestly, everything was pretty good - but a few dishes like the thinly sliced pork, and the squid were quite outstanding. Yum! Hopefully will be visiting the place again at least once more before going back to Singapore.

Good food (and great company of course) was followed by a leisurely stroll in the cool breezy night (~17deg) around Shinjuku and we went up to the Metropolitan Government Building to check out the city view. Not bad.

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2 days ago, on Saturday, went out with Isabel and 2 Japanese friends with the idea of playing... badminton! Shock shock! Especially since I don't have my badminton rackets here. But anyhow, this plan was born from the time when we played a little bit of badminton in the small garden in one of the Japanese friend's house, and he ended up wanting to play seriously/challenging me. Of course I said bring it on heh. But yeah, turns out, unfortunately, that the courts were seriously full that day. The system in that sports centre is kind of weird - you simply buy a voucher from the machine and go up to use the courts if any are empty. So disorganised no?! I like the system back home much better.

But anyway, not much loss, we ended up finding a place to play table tennis instead! And after some leisurely play between all 4 of us, the 'badminton challenger' became the table tennis challenger and well, since I've actually had 2-3 months of training before (looooooooong time ago), I guess there's really no point in delivering the results of this match-up. Then two people had other matters on, so we called another 2 to join us for dinner - Hiroshima-okonomiyaki! I'm sure I've mentioned this dish before - it's full of cabbage and soba noodles rather than the Osaka version that is heavy on flour batter. Really so yummy!! Turns out one of the girls that joined us later - a really cute and lovable Thai! - likes the place so much she's actually been there 4 times just this week! 0.0 Talk about staunch supporter huh.

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And recently, the weather's been okay - or honestly, quite fine. Ranges from 12deg (at night) to about 22 deg in the day time. Perfect spring weather I would say. Except that... I think I miss the cold. Being so used to feeling chilly and cold during trainings, I'm now really NOT used to perspiring at all! In fact it really feels quite uncomfortable. I'm sure I'll be re-adjusting soon though, especially since it seems like the start of summer is not too far off.

Oh humidity and sunlight, for good or for worse, welcome back to my life.