Complete and Creative

My Surprise 20th Birthday Party in Japan (2/2)

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On the way back, now laden with plastic bags of sports drinks and other grocery items, we bumped into one of our TAs, who actually worked at the izakaya that the guys and I were planning to go to, so I asked her if she would like to hang with us for a while. In typical Japanese fashion, she verbally wondered if it would be okay to intrude on my birthday. Panda was very insistent that she wouldn’t be intruding. Very insistent.

I didn’t start suspecting anything until I saw my curtains were closed. I hadn’t closed my curtains. It was always easy to see my room walking toward the building because it was on the second floor. The first floor was all guys, and the second floor was all girls except me. At the on-site orientation at the beginning of the study abroad program, the coordinator had said, “So there are seven boys and three girls. There are six rooms on each floor. I guess six of the boys will be on the first floor, and there will be one boy living with the girls on the second floor. Ladies, which boy will it be?” The girls all laughed and said, “Terry!” Yeah, the ladies just love me.

I love these people.

No, it was just a coincidence. I had happened to check in around the same time as Panda at our hotel in Tokyo, two days before we got on a bus and left for the countryside, so the girls and I had the chance to hang out in Shinjuku before meeting the other guys.

Bakuhatsu (”explosion,” you have to meet her to find out), the girl who lived in the room next to mine had “risked her life” climbing from her balcony to mine just to find out that my door was already unlocked. As we got closer to the building, I noticed that some of the room lights were still on. They later told me that everyone had turned off their lights, but someone exclaimed that it would look too obvious if all the lights were off, so some of them turned their lights back on.

Up the stairs to the second floor, we went to hang out in Panda’s room for a while, where there were excessive pairs of shoes, but she seemed to be in a real hurry to rush me into my room.

Many Japanese apartments are situated into one outer room with the bathroom (it’s literally a “bath-room,” where you take baths or showers), the toilet room, the sink room, a washing machine, and a kitchenette; then an inner room, which is usually your working space, your living space, and your sleeping space. The two rooms are separated by a sliding wooden door, which is there for privacy reasons and to keep you warm in the winter. It was still summer. I never closed that sliding door.

The door was closed.

I swung it open dramatically and didn’t look as surprised as I should’ve, but I know they all saw the joy glowing on my face. On the wooden floor were more than a dozen plates of traditional Japanese food (please don’t make me name them, suffice it to say that they were delicious) surrounded by all the friends I had on this side of the world.

There were two birthday cards, one in English by the American international students, one in Japanese by the domestic Japanese tutors. Ironically, I read the Japanese one just fine, but like most Americans, these fine guys and girls had such poor handwriting that they needed to read their entries for me, which only added to the hilarity.

In the birthday cards were my own nicknames. My favorite were Itsumo and Baransu, which mean “always” and “balance” (it’s just a transliteration of the English word) respectively.

You know what’s one of the best parts of celebrating your birthday in Japan? Well, allow Jami to say it: (This was the next day) “Man, give the man a beer. It’s still his birthday in America!”