A happy, happy birthday

Spending my birthday away from home and most notably from my sister who celebrates hers on the same day was a bit of a sad thought to me. And being sick the whole week before the date didn`t make me any more cheerful.
Well, on Saturday I finally found out where our post box was, nobody in the house had seemed to ever empty it. And it contained letters and packages that I happily put in my room, waiting to be opened on Sunday.
Saturday evening I went to dinner with a French friend and two Japanese. We spent a fun evening at a restaurant in Shin Okubo, that is Tokyo`s Korea town, having Yakiniku, which is a barbecue type of meat and went to karaoke after.
Since everybody is living a bit further away than me, we all slept at my place. The thing is just that I signed the contract with the agency that says that no guest is allowed to sleep at the place. Before going home we went to the nearby konbini and guess whom I met - two of my housemates. I was stuttering something like "...weeeell, I wanted to tell you that those guys are sleeping in our house tonight. I know it`s forbidden, but..." They were really cool and said "The contract just says that nobody can sleep at your place, bubt you`re allowed to have guests. You could always pretend that nobody was sleeping, but staying up all night". Japanese smart asses, I like that! :-) So we had a merry little party in the living room and the girls provided some extra sheets and stuff before everybody went to sleep.
I got some beautiful earrings for my birthday, thanks to my mum and sister! It was lovely to read cards from back home and later I got phone calls too. Hope it didn`t ruin you financially... My sister and I of course talked for a long time, it was both our birthday after all. Her Doraemon figure present that I had sent had arrived on time luckily.
In the afternoon we went to Ueno. I wanted to go to the zoo and see the giant panda that they have. We were unlucky, a sign said the panda was not there due to construction work and neither were the monkeys. We skipped the zoo, took a walk in Ueno park and played darts and billiard instead and went for sushi later. I was quite tired in the evening, still feeling the effect of the antibiotics, but happy, that was a fun birthday!