Celebrating my 21st birthday in Japan – Day 88

On Thursday 5th December, I officially became an adult!! I am now 21 years old! Yay or Nay?

It was definitely a birthday to remember which I shall share with you all here.

The day started with my only class of the day at 8.50am that I was actually a tinsy bit late for because I went to bed late the night before. I received my first birthday gift just after midnight from Omar, which has got to be one of the best presents ever. As you all know, I love food, and I try to be as healthy as possible. He got me cereal and dried mango pieces! The cereal had NO added sugar or salt!! I wanted to cry so badly, I was that happy! Yay!

Food presents are the best ever!

I went to bed not long after receiving my gift and the next morning I decided to make more of an effort with my appearance. I paid more attention to my hair and make up, so naturally I was late. This class was my Japanese Economics class and we had a vocab test which I hadn’t really prepared for as I was away the previous week in Korea – I did get the notes from a friend, but there are some things that you miss out on when you’re not there in class.

After that, I came home and ate a big lunch (remember this) which was followed by a short nap. I had my part time job in the afternoon from 2-5pm at the tearoom so I decided to spend my time wisely by catching up on lost sleep from the night before. Work was good, but only one customer came throughout the 3hrs I was there.

Part of my big lunch – pumpkin and cheese

Omar said that he was going to treat me to dinner at my favourite restaurant as part of his gift to me. It’s a Japanese restaurant that does the most delicious rice bowls. We both got the same one – it was brimming with fresh sashimi and it was just AMAZING! The price is pretty reasonable too, and you can help yourself to as much rice and miso soup as you like. I love going there!

Look at all that sashimi!

 Since it was my birthday there had to be cake, so Omar and I decided to hunt down a bakery and get some birthday cake. We had one and a half cakes each from this bakery near the station, and then we cycled back home.

I wasn’t aware at this moment that my flat mates had bought me a birthday cake – if I had known I wouldn’t have bought some earlier! When I came through the door, everyone in my dorm started singing Happy Birthday!! THANKS GIRLS!! The cake was delicious, really creamy and fruity! We divided it into 6 and scoffed it down. A friend from downstairs also bought me a slice of cake- Thanks Michael!

Afterwards, I decided to pop round to the boys dorm on the other side of this floor. I’ll be honest, it was about 9pm at this point and I had eaten so much food, but I thought “Hey, it’s my birthday! You only live once!” so I shared the slice of cake that I got from Michael with Omar and the others next door.

All of a sudden, I started feeling unwell.

My stomach was in SO much pain – I concluded that I had been too greedy this year and this was pay back.

I hung out in Omar’s room for a bit as I couldn’t really move very far and I felt so sick. At around 10pm the guys in this dorm came into Omar’s room singing Happy Birthday with ANOTHER birthday cake!! It was such a bitter-sweet moment as I was touched that they had got me a cake but I felt like I was going to vomit right there and then. Marika also swung by later with a gift and some cake. At this point I was writhing in so much pain and had to let it out, BLEURGH!

Birthday cake – Round 5

So I managed to head back to my room, freshen up, and that’s when the nightmare started. I was vomiting throughout the WHOLE evening until about 8am. I messaged Fumiyo telling her that I couldn’t make it to work later that day,  but she actually came round at around 10am with some life-saving things, like sports drinks, porridge, fever patches etc. The lady at the Plaza offered to take me to the hospital later at around 2pm but I ended up not going as by that point the vomiting sensations had quietened down. They think it might’ve been Norovirus but they weren’t sure. I’ve concluded that my sickness was a result of something dodgy I ate a few days ago, and the fact that I ate so much on my birthday just set things off. Well, that’s what I want to believe anyway!

While I was resting, at around 1pm I got a phone call. I thought it was the lady from the Plaza telling me she was coming round but in actual fact it was a delivery man! He had a parcel for me and told me to bring some money to pay for the tax incurred on it. I managed to make it downstairs, and saw that it was from M&S. I was really confused as I was pretty sure I hadn’t ordered anything but maybe someone hacked into my account. Nevertheless, I opened it to find two jumpers.

It finally clicked – this was a gift from my parents!!

THANK YOU SO MUCH MUM AND DAD!! As I mentioned in an email to them, I was crying as I was making my way up to my room after opening the parcel as I wanted to vomit, but was so happy that they had sent something!! I haven’t tried them on yet but I know my parents have good taste!

So that concludes my birthday celebrations this year. It really did go off with a bang! Sadly, everyone had plans to go clubbing last night which I wasn’t able to go (Ladies night at this club called Ageha so it was free entry!) and there’s another party this evening, but we’ll see how I feel later 🙂

What a great birthday!! Thank you so much for the Birthday Wishes everyone!

07 Dec This entry was published on December 7, 2013 at 12:46 am. It’s filed under Japan and tagged 21, 21st, Birthday, Cake, Celebrating, Celebration, Japan, Jumpers, M&S, Rice, Rice Bowl, Sashimi, Tendon. Bookmark the permalink. Follow any comments here with the RSS feed for this post.