In the grind

For the past week my teeth grinding at night has been getting worse to the point where my left side of my jaw is so sore that I have to limit what kinds of foods I can eat. The main factor I think is the stress I'm taking at work. Every night I try to relax myself, but no matter how much I try to find ways not to grind my teeth while I'm sleeping I wake up with a sore jaw the next morning.

On another subject, seems that even though the news and other TV programs pointed to this weekend as the time for full bloom on the cherry blossom trees, its actually been really cold and I've seen very few trees with any bloom at all. Needless to say, any type of hanami for me will probably be done next weekend.

Short trip

A relative decided to visit Tokyo for a short vacation with her boyfriend. I honestly, haven't met her and her boyfriend since I was in Paris back in 2001. Yeah, its been a very long time. Anyways, they were supposed to be in Tokyo for a week, but because they were using stand-by tickets from her sister who works for an airline, they only ended up staying here for 4 days. Unfortunately, I didn't know their situation and I ended up meeting them for the first time on their third night here. Since it was a work day, I couldn't plan as well as I would have liked. I had some ideas but they all went south beyond my control. We ended up just walking around Kabukicho and ate twice that evening. We first ate chirashi at a specialty restaurant but that didn't fill us out so we went for a shabu shabu restaurant and foolishly picked their 5 course dinner. Everyone totally over ate. I was seriously struggling to finish off the last 2 courses. They were cheering me on to eat, but I failed them. Overall though, it was a good night. Our conversations started out pretty slow in the beginning because their main language was French and my French has gone extinct but at the end of the night we were all laughing and having a good time.

In other news, I'm getting seriously pounded at work. We did an upgrade to our platform the other day, and since then poop has hit the fan. I have worked double digit hours the past couple weeks and couldn't enjoy anything this past weekend. Its really been insane! Hanami season starts this weekend, so I really hope I'll spend my Saturday staring at beautiful Cherry Blossoms and not my work laptop!

Physical

I just had my "mandatory" yearly health check up. Even though I've been here for almost 2 years, this is my first physical since living in Tokyo. Me being a chicken with needles and such (I know it is sad), I managed to skip out last year thanks to the HR guy's lackadaisical effort in this matter. This year, that HR guy is gone and his successor is determined to make sure everyone is checked out. The health check itself wasn't so bad, but there were like 40 other people getting checked out. Every "check" had its own station and based on our number, we were routed accordingly. Also all patients were required to wear the same blu-ish pajamas. Seeing myself in the designated sitting room with everyone waiting for our number to be called out, I felt like one of those cows you see in a Texan range lined up among his herd anxiously awaiting to get branded Angus certified. The whole check up process was surprisingly very efficient and I managed to finish all my stations in no time.

In other news, Sunday's weather was great and I went out to Jindaiji. Its got an "old town" type of feel like Kamakura in Kanagawa or Asakusa in downtown Tokyo. I actually don't live that far away from Jindaiji, but I never found the time nor motivation to actually go out and visit there. I really enjoyed my visit and found it really refreshing. Here are some random pics of my visit:

Midweek update

One of my coworkers had a birthday dinner after work. A bunch of us went to celebrate it at a posh Italian restaurant in Omotesando. The funniest thing that happened last night actually occurred on the way to the restaurant. While on the Oedo line, one of my coworkers recognized and ex-employee who just happened to get on our car. I didn't know, or at least recognized this person, so I didn't pay much attention them while they were talking. After a little bit, my coworker elbows me and says "Look.. look.. its how he protects himself from hay fever". I turned around to look at his face and found myself having an "OMFG" type of look on my face. What he had on was like goggles you wear during chemistry class on top of his regular thick glasses. My co-worker and him were totally serious about all this which made me bite my tongue so I wouldn't burst out laughing. I then nonchalantly turned my head back, and saw a few passengers laughing at what just occurred which broke my poker face into releasing a few chuckles. I ending up playing it off by starting an irrelevant conversation with another coworker.

Anyways, as for the actual dinner, it was not bad but not was not worth the overall price. It was a course style type of dinner. Some courses were really good, but there were a few dishes that left a weird taste in my mouth. One such dish was breaded fish with a grapefruit and corn puree sauce. The overall night was nice, I drank some good wine and my coworker enjoyed her birthday.

Hard rocking it

Wow.. as I mentioned before, I'd never been to the Hard Rock Cafe in Japan before last week, but now I've been to two different ones in the span of 5 days. The other HRC I conquered was the one located in Ueno. It was a bit cleaner than the Roppongi one, but I thought the food wasn't as good. My friend, his coworkers and I went there for dinner but apparently they had eaten there for lunch earlier that day! That's pretty crazy, especially since Tokyo ranks as one of the top cities in with the best restaurants. Oh well, I guess its all good, whatever floats their boat. Anyways, I had a blast hanging out with them, I just wish though I hadn't eaten and drank so much during our outings. Finally, today is the start of the monthly all hands meeting at the Tokyo office which includes beer and other alcoholic beverages. I have to drink one or two glasses out of respect but I will need to control myself today as I know I'll pay for it at the gym tomorrow.