Pumpkin Party!

Last night Mike and I went to K and E's place for their annual Halloween Pumpkin Party. BYO drinks and pumpkin!

It was a bit of a mission getting there, but we arrived to find a delicious hot meal waiting for us (homemade chilli). It was a big mistake relying on Sarah for the directions ... there is apparently a big difference between '150 ft from the walking path' and '5 or 6 minutes walk from the walking path.' Who would've thought. But we made it in the end.

After dinner and the apparently obligatory screening of the Peanuts Halloween Episode we got down to business and began to carve our pumpkins. This was a completely new experience for Mike and I but luckily we had supervision from A and J who have done this many times before!

We were rather proud of our wee jack-o-latern but then we saw the others' efforts, some of which were pretty spectacular.

To see photos from the party click here.

Tokyo is a Village

Fun Fact for the week: It is estimated that around 20 million people use Tokyo's trains and subways daily, passing through 1000 stations. (wikipedia)

On Friday I took the Marunouchi Line to Otemachi, near the Imperial Palace. The train leaves every 4 minutes (at least) throughout the day and passes through Tokyo Station, the main hub for the Shinkansen and JR trains out of Tokyo. It's a busy line.

As I was standing on the train, in my own little dream world and listening to BEP, I noticed a family at the other end of the car: Japanese guy, blonde chick and their daughter. The blonde caught my eye as she was the only other foreigner in the car. And then she turned around ...

... this random blonde woman on the train, amidst millions of other taking the train in Tokyo on Friday was non other than Ange - an old soccer team mate from Christchurch Tech who now lives in Nelson with her husband Tosh and their daughter! They were in Tokyo for two days as part of their annual trip back to Japan.

It really is a small world, huh.