10,000 days 10,000 nights

After the worst week of rain we woke to a strangely beautiful Saturday.

Motivated to make the most of it, we sent a last minute message to anyone we could think of asking them to join us in Yoyogi park. 

Amazingly, almost everyone we messaged turned up. Florent brought his game of Settlers and I bought a hula hoop. We got two large tubs of our favourite new dessert, Banana Pudding, from Magnolias bakery in Harajuku. Due to the customary sayonara-sale lifestyle of gaijins in Japan, I had inherited a handy, colourful new picnic blanket which I laid down  alongside the famous pond in the middle of the park and watched as our friends slowly filled it.

On Monday, I celebrated my 10,000th day birthday. I mentioned this in jest to my work colleagues as I left the office. The next morning, Takeda-san brought in a mini-birthday cake for me. It was incredibly sweet and thoughtful. Suddenly we were trying to figure out everyone's birthdays in terms of seconds, days, weeks, lunar cycles, leap years and any other measurement we could think of.