Category Archives: life

Happy Birthday A!

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Hubby made me extremely happy on my birthday with how he prepared for it – gave me a bouquet of flowers & Godiva chocolates, went to shopping with me and had dinner at a posh French-Japanese fusion restaurant (the kind that takes off your coat off you and puts it back on after your dinner). And now that it’s his turn, I wanted to make it extra special as well.

First off, a meal on a very good resto would be nice. I had in mind Quintessence – a Michelin 3-star-rated French resto in Tokyo. But their phone is like forever busy! After more than an hour of trying, I tried to call their other number – the one designated for confirmation of bookings. And, well, naturally, I was told they don’t accept bookings made through that number. It has to be the other number. But she did cater to my request though – to inquire if they still have a table available for lunch on May 21st. After some checking, the reply: their Saturday lunch is fully booked till July! OMG. I tried 3-star Joel Robuchon (only La Table and Atelier, both 2 stars, serves lunch) and as expected, they’re also fully booked already. I checked out the Tokyo Michelin list; not all in the list is open for lunch. It has to be lunch for two reasons: one, these Michelin rated restos are so expensive, I can only swallow the price for lunch and second, lunch is most convenient for the sched of activities I had in mind for Atsushi’s birthday.

Anyways, after a number of calls, I was able to book for Modern Japanese Esaki. See our review for Esaki on my goodfood blog.

Birthday boy in Esaki.

The Aoyama district has a lot of interesting architecture, both traditional and modern. But we just have to stop at this non-negotiable:

hubby in his favorite place - the bookstore

Anyways, second stop for the day – Rikugien via Komagome Station.

It’s a rich park, if I may judge by how the whole park is walled.

We’re on the brink of the start of summer hence the place was all lush green. Would love to return here on different seasons.

The boon of these goens are the teahouses that sometimes offer pseudo tea ceremonies or even just plainly sell traditional green tea and  sweets. This was one of my main reason for bringing Atsushi here actually – for us to share this tea break.

The other was just for us to simply share a peaceful walk along the greeneries. And have a healthy talk and discussion, besides. I love those walks. 🙂

And of course, we just have to have a traditional picture.

Next stop was back in Yokohama – watch Pirates of the Carribean on the uber posh Colette Mare.Colette Mare has to be posh and really comfortable so that their tickets of 2000yen each is justified. Pirates was cool! Just the right movie for a birthday celebration. Hubby wanted to watch Black Swan as well but knowing how distrubed I was when I watched it, it just wasn’t a birthday sort of movie hence we decided to watch it the following day instead.

By the way, Hubby and I are aiming to have our house smell as good as Colette Mare does. Goodluck!

My birthday present. It’s just a few hundred yen I know. But I figure I ought to start replacing Hubby’s plants that I killed by not watering them more often. Apparently, the water vapor in the air can’t keep them alive. I was so positive the water vapor theory would work. 😀

And to cap the day off, we toasted Hubby’s birthday with the champagne that Maha gave us as her wedding/housewarming gift to us. I love Moet and Chandon! Glad it was with a chill box that we can re-use for later! We don’t have champagne/wine glasses at home yet so we used the mugs that the Hamakawa-sans gave away for their wedding. Tee-hee!

We also finished off the other red wine bottle that Maha brought during our housewarming. End result, I was blabbering coñotic English the rest of the night. 😛

Happy Birthday A!

April 30

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I can`t believe it`s only been 8 days after our wedding. It`s been a flurry of activities since then and that there were many other exciting things to attend to that hubby and I can only get snippets of time to reflect on how our day went. Good thing though that we were able to meet some of our friends and also with Erika & EJ hence we somehow learned  (and had good laughs besides) a lot of other stories that evolved during the wedding.  Seeing pictures posted by friends makes me all hoity-toity. It warms me up and makes me giggle whenever I hear (or read from emails and texts) comments and praises on how beautiful and successful our wedding has been. This despite the terrible migraine I had just right after the ceremony and from then onwards. It was so terrible I threw up twice, before and after the reception. When Kat told me she was surprised with this since it wasn`t obvious at all I had the migraine when we had our grand entrance during the reception, I relaxed. At least, my migraine really didn`t ruin our day.

Will try to keep our wedsite updated about the wedding stories in the soonest possible time. For now though, we have to commence cleaning up/organizing our house for the upcoming housewarming and Atsushi`s advance birthday party that we`re throwing next weekend for some of our friends/ex-colleagues.

emotionally touched

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Was browsing Youtube for the links of our song picks for our SDE and cinematic highlights when I decided to browse the video for the Flash Mob wedding I chanced upon months ago.

Wasn’t prepared with the intense emotions that washed over me. Well, probably my getting emotional has got a lot to do with friends (even part of the entourage) cancelling in the last minute due to unavoidable circumstances and also with friends who are very kind enough to fill in even at late notice; but the moment I saw the groom tenderly kiss the bride BEFORE they walked their makeshift aisle in this flash mob wedding, there was just no stopping the tears.

This flash mob wedding was so amazing in that they would never have pulled it off without the help of their friends and family. This is so true with every weddings.

But then the most remarkable in this wedding is that even when it was really just a VERY short wedding, the love between the groom and bride was most evident, and I think that part touched me the most. See how the groom tried to warm up his bride’s arm – everybody were wearing their coats whilst the bride has to wear a tube (her dress is lovely by the way).

And of course it comes in threes. What I loved as well in this flash mob wedding are the rabbi’s words that rings with wisdom.

Who can then blame me for being emotional? 🙂

And oh! All weddings should come with good music. Albeit short, the flash wedding has got good singers. Love it.

corporate greetings and some progress

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Hubby advised me last week that we will be receiving a card from his company (our mother cum affiliate company in my previous workplace – gosh i miss work) yesterday. Indeed, I woke up just in time to answer the postman’s doorbell ring. Had to wait for Hubby till I can open it though because it’s supposedly a congratulatory card for our wedding.

My name was nowhere in it though. 😛

Isn’t it just a bit weird? This is supposedly a wedding card, and they even supposedly send this to the actual wedding date but since our wedding is in the Philippines, Hubby advised to have it sent home. But where’s my name??

Anyways, it’s the thought that counts. And the CEO of the company himself is the signatory (although it probably was processed and done by HR). We’re thankful as it is that their company has this kind of thoughtfulness. My previous company doesn’t practice this stuff, although we do receive some “amount” as congratulatory token.

Although I really am not bothered that my name isn’t in the card, I playfully hounded Hubby about it. To make me feel “better” we ate the Godiva chocolates that he gave me for my birthday. But actually, it’s our dessert for the night. It’s been aeons since we saw a yogurt in the supermarkets. Lack or nada yogurt supply is one of the mundane effect of the March 11 Tohoku earthquake.

Isn’t Hubby just sweet? 😀

Godiva chocolates is really good. Even if you eat the whole bunch in one sitting, your throat won’t hurt at all, even for me who’s prone with tonsilitis. It’s one of those once you pop, you can’t stop – and this coming from somebody who really is not too keen on eating chocolates.

As oh, there’s been considerable progress lately, thankfully:

  • misalette draft already approved by officiating priest, with all readings the one we preferred. yey! Answered prayer. 🙂 thanks as well to Ivy of Lipa Chancery and to Erika (Detalye) for talking it out with Fr. Dong
  • already purchased our gifts for the principal sponsors. We were so happy that we can customize the labels – for free!! Japanese customer service is just simply awesome. I’m excited with our labels as well. 🙂
  • our unity coins were also already delivered. Thanks to Kat for receiving them. And since i’m w@w tag holder, i got a discount.

Hope there’ll be more considerable progress soon.

colette mare

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I realized that I am starting to panic because of many apparent pending items for our wedding preps. And since we still haven’t done our grocery shopping, I can’t course all excess energies through cooking. I found myself eating sinful food though – french fries, salty snacks, carbonated drinks – food that I have carefully avoided, so that I can fit my wedding gown. Blame it on stress.

In any case, today was one productive day. Finally found the perfect gift for the principal sponsors in Colette Mare, yey! I just hope they’ll like it though and not be too concerned on the radiation bluff. Come on….

Also, was able to order our Unity Coins/Arrhae via W@W. yey!

And and, we stayed almost an hour in Watanabe Furniture Shop, our friendly neighborhood furniture shop, to order two more bookshelves (even Watanabe-san himself was very surprised that we’re ordering two more since he knows we already have three bookshelves in our library. and to think he still haven’t seen our other two bookshelves in the dining area hehehe) and our bed. yey!

So having had all those accomplishments, we gifted ourselves with movie tickets to Tangled 3D in Colette Mare (definitely the most expensive movie tix i’ve had at 2000yen). Man that mall has a really good cinema place! Really really nice. I think everyone who watched Tangled were on a date. It was in Japanese by the way, even the songs. Yet that didn’t stop me from crying. hehehe.

Anyways, another long day tomorrow! More to do. And I hope I can take rein on this almost-panicky-feeling.