Happy Birthday to me again!

Having been away from Naha for my actual birthday, I organised a little celebration when I got back.

So on Tuesday November 2nd, I worked the early shift. Straight after work I took the next monorail to the airport, and met Mel and her brother David arriving from Tokyo. Three flights, from two airlines, arrived from Tokyo within fifteen minutes of each other, and I didn't know which airline they were on, so I didn't know which arrivals gate they'd be coming out. But I found them... so it was all good.
We took their bags back to Mel's apartment, and then went into town and had tacorice for dinner. Tacorice is, I believe, an Okinawan invention, and a great one it is. Imagine a plate of plain white rice. Put taco meat and sauce on top. Add grated cheese. Add chopped tomato and shredded lettuce. Add salsa to taste. Stir around. Eat. Mmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm.
By the time we finished eating it was almost 9.30, the time I'd arranged for everyone to meet outside our most-frequently-frequented izakaya. At this particular izakaya, as long as everyone orders one dish of food (pretty cheap), then the beer is 100yen each for the first 45 minutes. The usual price of beer is 500 yen, so that's a good saving. We had twelve people rock up for the "Happy Birthday Glenn / Welcome To Okinawa David" party, and three came later on during our time there.
The best part of the izakaya experience is when you go to the cash register. You hand them your menu, and they punch it all into the register... at 500 yen per beer. Just before you have a heart attack on what it's going to cost, they then multiply the number of beers everyone had by 400, and subtract it from the total. It usually cuts the tab in half. Then we divide the price by the number of people, everyone pays, and its out the door and down the street to karaoke!
Karaoke was good fun as always. I sang a couple of my usuals (The Beatles' "You've Got To Hide Your Love Away", Linkin Park's "In The End", the Eagles' "Take It Easy") and a few ones I hadn't sung before.
The night finished off around 2am. I had almost no voice left.

The next day (my day off) Melissa, her brother and I rented a car and drove up the coast to the Aquarium. Everytime I go there I see different things. This time we saw these fish... I think they're called blenny or something. They're similar to mudskippers, but they hang onto low-tide rocks, and slither up and down as if they've got suction cups on their flippers. Creepy little things, but interesting nonetheless.
And we got to see the whale sharks feeding! We thought we'd missed it, going by the times on the brochure, but as we passed the whale shark tank, the whale sharks drifted to a 45 degree angle, their mouths up near the surface, and krill were thrown in from above. The whale shark has many teeth, but they're only about half a millimetre long (I saw a jaw on display in their shark lab display), so the fish just opens its mouth and gulps, swallowing a lot of water and shrimp in one go.
From the aquarium we were going to go to the pineapple park near Nago, but it would've closed by the time we got there, so we took the expressway back to Naha instead. I navigated again, and we had dinner at an Asian restaurant up in the branches of a huge fibreglass / concrete banyan tree. For some strange reason they were playing what sounded like South African high-life music on their PA system...? The food was fantastic.
Then we went back to my apartment, hooked up my computer to the TV, and watched "Lost In Translation". Mel (who'd seen it once before) and David (who hadn't seen it before) appreciated it after their recent stay in Tokyo. By the time it finished I was just about asleep on my feet, so that was the end of that weekend.
Today I worked at Main Place and Appletown (the new Nova Kids school 5min walk from Main Placee), as a shift swap with Melissa. So only one day off this week, but I get a three-day weekend next week!