See you later Therese and Martin

Sadly our friends Therese and Martin left Hiroshima today to go back to England. Orlando and I went to dinner with them yesterday in the same restaurant we first met a little over a year ago!!! We could not believe how quick time has passed and all the adventures we had together. They where here only 18 months!!!! Still they became one our most valued and cherished friends. The kind you can count on to help you out in any circumstance, which in a strange far away land consists of many little things like: "Where is the best place to buy normal food?", "Which restaurants have English menus" or the crucial "Is there Bacardi around here?". Therese would promptly be at my door on her spiky bike to take me to all the right places in the city. On 3/24/07 I had everyone over at our apartment for a "See you later party". For those of you who are wondering (everyone), yes I did cook. I made lasagna for 12 people!!!! Including our special guest my friend Erin's mom who hanged out with "the kids" all night.

We gave a Therese a few going away gifts as you can see below:

What you are seeing above is not an optical illusion. That Big Bird actually has 4 legs, thanks to some creative craftsmanship from Erin. You may think what is going on? So the story of the 4 legged chicken begins. usually when we have a party at someone's apartment (no 2 story houses here unless you live about 1 hour away) we would play some time of quirky game after everyone was "happy". One of my favorite games to play is Cranium. One one of the challenges of the game is to draw something with your eyes closed and the rest of your team has to guess what it is. One time after many many glasses of wine, Therese's team was counting on her to draw a beautiful illustration of a chicken. Simple enough right? Well no one guessed what it was and Therese was very disappointed. Once she let everyone see her drawing paper the chicken had 4 legs instead of 2!!!!! Off course no one guessed it right!!! In reality Therese's futuristic rendition of a chicken was not that far of. Read the following article to see that it is possible to have a four legged bird:
http://news.mongabay.com/2007/0218-quadpedal_chick.html
Therese laughed so hard when she saw the "transformed" stuffed animal that she ended up crying!!!!!
Here is the whole "gaijin (Japanese slang word for foreigner) kids gang". Off course we are all on the floor, this is Japan after all!!! Who would have thought that a fluffy rug would be so useful?

I mean this in the most sincere way that they will be missed alot in our microscopic foreigner community in Hiroshima and that they can visit us any time, wherever we might be. If you would like to know more about them just click on the links section to check out their blog, it has really good travel information on Japan and interesting anecdotes on what it is like to live here.