As you might or might not know, I’m an ACSian. Basically, I went to ACS (and MGS), two of the best schools in Singapore (in my opinion). And as you can see, we tend to be very proud of our school. Before I start going down this tangent, I’ll go back on topic, which is that this year marks a momentous occasion: two ACSians have come to visit me in Japan!

The first was James, who came in April. We went to a bunch of places, including Fukuoka Castle and Huis Ten Bosch, to see SM Town Theatre and ride the One Piece boat. This week, Nicholas came! Since it was only for three days, and because I have school, we didn’t get to go to many places.

But, I managed to bring him to the owl cafe, and yes, they recognise me by now.

Do the owls like each other?

I don’t think I’ll ever get tired of the owls (:

The answer is no.

One interesting thing I learnt. Apart from Chip (from “chocolate chip”, due to the pattern on her feathers), the shop staff can’t tell the gender of the other owls. I may have mentioned it, but apparently, you need a DNA test to tell if an owl is male of female.

After we went to the owl shop, we hung around Tenjin for a while. And in this case, “hung around” means “we went to bookshops and stayed at the English section.”

Another new thing I learnt: some English books are much cheaper in Japan, even if they’re new. I think Nicholas got a History’s Greatest Speeches for about 700 yen, and a Haruki Murakami book for just over 1000 yen. According to him, that’s really, really rare in Singapore. At least since Borders closed down.

Even I, who wasn’t planning to buy anything, succumbed. We were at BookOff, and I found this:

Doesn’t it look cool? It was only 108 yen! (Apparently it didn’t sell, so they reduced the price).  There was another one that I was thinking of buying, about Historical Crime Fiction, but then we realised it was about modern writers writing in different time periods, rather than taking crime writers from different periods in time, which would have been much more interesting, since you can study the change in style and type of crime fiction.

When we had wasted enough time, we went to the Izakaya that one of my friend works at. Well, it’s mostly my fault for making a late booking – I thought we needed a lot more time.

It was my first time there, and it’s a good thing my friend works there, because I had no idea what’s going on. I just know that we got this for free:

Tofu and I think, motsu? Not too sure.

 We basically just went “we’ll have the set”, and I think something about portions were mentioned, and I was like “ok, you can decide”. It’s a good thing my friend didn’t decide to rip us off :p The only thing I “chose” was this fried potato covered in mentaiko sauce.

And it was awesome.

Dinner was basically talking and catching up. I finally got to hear Nicholas’s love story! It was really sweet!

The next day, I wanted to bring him to Sushiro, but there was an hour’s wait. So er, we had a pre-dinner snack. But at least I finally got macarons?

I don’t know if anyone else will come visit me this year, but I’m really glad that two of my friends have come. And Nicholas went to Dazaifu, which I haven’t been to since ROCs, so I’m currently asking him if he’ll guest blog about it.

Fingers crossed!