This morning I was awakened to a knock on my door. Noel was up and ready to take train to Narita. It was 06:30. At first when I woke up I wasn't sure if it was really a knock, so I almost went back to sleep. Now that Noel's got a job with JET, he's going back to the U.S. for a while until that position starts. He doesn't yet know where he'll be assigned...maybe it'll be out in the country, heh heh. Apparently people who've lived in Japan for less than three years are eligible for JET. That's good to know—if I get sick of the HDD industry, I can always teach English.

I discovered that I can get up, shower, get dressed, spruced up, and out the door in 17 minutes, excluding shaving but including teeth-brushing. A six- or seven-minute walk to the station and I'm on the train. Doing such calculations means that I can sleep until the absolute last minute.

Last night I bypassed a dinner invite at work, mostly because of the person who invited me. I knew there was going to be a lot of drinking, and because of a few heavy drinking incidents in the past week, I decided I'd better lay off for a while. Since it was Noel's last day in Japan, I figured I'd buy him food, but I couldn't get ahold of him until after 20:00 (granted I only started calling at 18:00). By that point he'd already eaten, but we went for food anyway. There's a Gohan ("Nippon no Shokutaku") by the station, which is where we ended up. Neither of us drank, which was uncharacteristic. We ordered way too much, though; fortunately, most of it was salads and kimchee. After that we wandered around Fujisawa to walk it off. It was funny, but in the year I've spent here and the business trips over the previous two years, I never really explored the town much. In his time off, Noel did, and found this funky toy store as well as some other interesting shops. I suppose I need to get out more.

For some reason, for the past few days I've been getting this craving for dried mangos. I used to hate mangos when I was a kid, so I don't understand it. The local Kaldi sells imported food, like the dried mangos from Cebu. Once Sachie and I got a 100g pack to try, and surprisingly enough, they were good. Anyway, the mango craving hits after imbibing substances not good for my bod, so I wonder if it doesn't have some peculiar properties. Or not.

Now that it's getting warm again, I really need to start exercising, if for no other reason than to get rid of my "hibernation" mass. When the weather is cold, it's ok because one can hide any winter weight under a jacket!