In which I receive a mysterious phone call and bid farewell to a friend

One of the craziest things about Japan is that you don’t really have to know someone’s address to send them something… as long as you know their place of work, apparently.

I got a phone call in the office today. It was completely in rather good English, which totally baffled me for several seconds. The nice fellow on the other end informed me that I was going to receive flowers on Saturday and wanted to know where and when I would like to receive them. The rare streak of decent English from a Japanese person apparently dislodged my spatial recognition, so I thought for a moment that I was back in the US, and got quite suspicious of the request. Surely, they were going to spam me or something?

So I asked dully “Uh, what? What is this again?” (Suave, international person of mystery, I am not.)

Then I remembered that this was Japan, so I gave the fellow my address, telephone number, and a preferred time for the reception of flowers.

Now I just want to know who the heck is sending me birthday flowers (my birthday is Saturday, by the way). My first guess was my parents, but they already have my address… so I am guessing that these are from someone who knows my birthday and where I work, but doesn’t know my address. How mysterious and exciting!

…

In other news, one of my good friends here left for his motherland today. A few of the usuals and I took him out to eat Japanese-style grill-it-yourself meat… where we almost set our faces on fire. I then took quite a scenic route to the airport (I apparently have no sense of direction in the dark… and I also apparently cannot locate the button to turn on the hi-beams in the dark), where we were joined by yet more regulars to officially send off our lovely friend. It was quite a tender moment. The airport workers probably thought we were nuts.

And in between those two events, I had to sit through a 3-hour meeting about the future of English teaching in Japan and Hokkaido. I understood just enough to be totally confused.