I suppose that birthdays and holidays can be rather sad times for people living, or anywhere far from home for that matter. For me, I was able to survive with a little help from my friends. First of all, becoming twenty-two wasn't so important, so I even if I didn't have any plans, I would be all right. I did manage to have some fun, though, so I will tell about it.
Actually, more than what I did, the presents I got were great. My mom baked up some good ole homemade cookies for me and sent them via snail mail. Honestly that is about the best present anyone could get. If you look at my Christmas list, you'll see that I am hoping for more of the same for more of the same from Santa.
My brother sent a couple CDs (which are terribly expensive in Japan) along with a couple of the Onion. The Onion is a college newspaper published on a few campuses in America. It is full of fake news and humor that perhaps only college students would enjoy (the headline this week was "George Bush announces he is going to pull out of the den" in contrast to some of the military strategies that he used to implement). Humor varies widely around the world. Many things are almost universally funny, but lots of humor is only understood among a small group of friends. The reason is culture or background. Friends have shared experiences that they use to make jokes. There are a number of jokes about current events and whatnot that just don't cross national borders sometimes. Anyway, suffice it to say that I really enjoyed this little gift.
I spent most of my birthday writing two final reports for my classes that are ending next week. I didn't quite finish, but this didn't stop me from going to yet another drinking party with the hiking club kids. The occasional this time was a meeting with the backpacking clubs of Keio and Sophia University. It was a fun opportunity to meet some other outdoor types from other schools. I met one guy who had been to Nepal last year. He gave me some pointers for my upcoming trip.
After that little get-together, I headed back toward Waseda for an all-night skating party with some friends from the international division. The skating turned out to be a little boring. After I got there I realized that nobody really wants to ice skate for six hours. Your feet start hurting after about six minutes and we were all freezing by two. We went out for some ramen to warm ourselves up. To my surprise, the ramen shop was packed with drunken salary men. I have no idea why they had the urge to eat ramen at 2am; perhaps there was another all night skating party around the corner. Anyway, we survived the night and returned early in the morning. I never stay up all night for anything in America, but it just seems to be the thing to do in Tokyo.
Finals are coming up on Monday. I will be sure not to stay up all night studying for any of them. My classes have been relatively stimulating this semester. I learned more from some than the others. I think most of the students would agree that we learn more outside of class than we do in class. For this reason, I plan to take fewer classes in the winter and spring terms. I can't wait for winter vacation.