Sun Oct 2, Meeting friends at Yoyogi Park

We woke up a little early so we could catch an early enough train to get to Yoyogi park before any of the rest of Chika's friends. We got there early enough to walk around across the street from the park where they usually have a flea market every Sunday, but today was a special Hokkaido fair with lots of food stands. We didn't buy anything, but it was interesting to just walk around and see what was there.



Chika called a place that would deliver a 24 pack of beer to the park for us (somewhere between 11 and 1) and it got there just after noon (when the first people just started showing up). After a few people showed up it was getting a little noisy around the benches where we said to meet, so we went just across the pond and set up a couple of tarps, sat, ate, drank and had a really good time. Maki was a friend of Chika's from preschool, then there was Sato (Abe), Migita, Mizuseda and Otsuka from Chika's middle / high school years, then Fuji and Eri that Chika knew from college, and from her days working at Bell Systems in Japan there was Yamana-san, Yanagawa-san, Hirano, Keiko, Yusuke, Seiji, Hayato, Mune, and Chikako. Yukari-sensei and her husband Ted also showed up and took some pictures with us.






Once it started getting a little dark, everyone was getting a little cold, and various people were getting ready to go, we cleaned up the tarps and walked back toward the station. We said our good-byes to some people, and went with a few to a restaurant in Harajuku to grab a little to eat and talk a little more. We stayed until the restaurant closed and kicked us out, and then we were down to just me, Chika and Eri-chan and we went across the street and spent an hour at a karaoke place.



Then we headed back to Saitama, where Chika's mom picked us up from the station, and we went back home and talked some more. I think we finally got to sleep around 1am with sore throats from talking all day.