It’s amazing how moods swing, and with them the complete color of the world. Yesterday started out as a great day. I got up at 6:30 for an 8am lesson. I had 4 lessons evenly placed with just enough time in-between to get snacks, read a little, take a walk in the park, and enjoy the beautiful spring-like weather in Tokyo these days.

I finished lessons at about 5pm, rushed home to prepare a bit for a house party my friend was having. I made one of my mom’s dishes that I got the recipe for recently – tomate farcie.
It’s a really simple recipe that anyone can do – just brown some ground beef, mix in some brown gravy and whatever else you want. This time I added some chopped grilled onions and random spices. Then you hollow out a tomato and fill it with the meat, and put it in the oven until it looks done (my cooking is never much of a science).

The party was nice – they had gone to a brewery to handmake beer about a month ago, so last night was a get-together to try out the fruits of their labor.
In the end, it was a kinda sweet beer with a head like a cappuccino – a little unique, but not bad.

The party was fun, and I should have known to leave well-enough alone, but it was a friend’s birthday, and she had invited us to join her, so we went out to Shibuya to meet their group at about midnight. In Tokyo, going out at midnight means you won’t be back until morning.
I didn’t have work the next day, and it’s been a while since I had a taste of Tokyo nightlife, so one friend and I headed out to meet them.

Not sure how we ended up there, but the next thing I knew we were in the McDonald’s basement and one guy was passing around tequila shots. Tempting – but I passed.
When we finally moved on, we ended up in a kinda sleazy hip-hop club. I was with nice folks, so it had potential – thought I’d give it a shot. I spent about 30 minutes trying to go with the flow, and then about 4 hours thinking “what is fun about these places?” as my soul slowly rotted away.

After about an hour of trying to leave but not being able to because our coats were all in one bag, and I couldn’t find the guy with the right number, I caught the first train home at around 5, but wasn’t sleepy when I got home…just generally annoyed. Tokyo life didn’t seem so nice anymore all of a sudden.
Woke up in the same mood – that kinda “why am I waking up?” mood.
But I had stuff to do – had to transfer money for bus tickets for tomorrow’s magical mystery bus tour (more on that next time). Having stuff to do can be such a life-saver sometimes.

Got up, took care of that, and then watched an episode of One Piece.
It was an appropriate episode – about a guy surrounded by friends, but nothing seems to go how it should. At the end, he looks at the beautiful sky and is just super-happy to be alive despite any problems (did I mention he’s a living skeleton? You just gotta watch it…).

Then I loaded the new version of iLife onto my computer and took iPhoto for a test run. This new faces function is AWESOME! It automatically goes through all your photos, recognizes people’s faces, and organizes all your pictures into folders based on who’s in them. So now when I miss my Mom, I can just click Mommy, and see every pic in my computer that she’s in.
It even has Facebook compatibility, so every picture I take from now on will be automatically tagged!

Sifting through all my old pictures of my wonderful family and friends did wonders for my mood. Maybe my brother knew? ‘Cause he messaged me just as I was gonna hop in the shower. By the time I had to run off to work, the sun was a smiling companion again and the sound of passing trains was once again enough to make me happy.
A day that was bound to be gloomy turned into a great Sunday – and as usual, I LOVE my Tokyo life. ^_^