After school ended, I rushed home to finish preparing for my bus ride to Tokyo. My flight to Indonesia leaves early enough tomorrow that I wanted to head down tonight. D, one of my friends from my consulate, was kind enough to offer her place for me to crash at. Sadly, that meant missing the bonenkai - holiday party - tonight. Ichigo-sensei and another teacher picked me up and dropped me off at the bus stop so I didn’t have to walk far with my giant backpack. The bus made me nervous though because it came almost 20 minutes late!

I arrived in Ikebukuro a little late, after 7:30 pm. I was supposed to meet a friend from OU who lives in Tokyo for dinner, but she got sick and had to cancel. So I had to do my backup plan, stopping by Tokyu Hands to buy some more New Year’s cards for my US friends and visiting Hibiya Park for a German Christmas Market! They even had an imported Weihnachtspyramide from Dresden. As usual, I took the wrong exit up from the subway and had to check out the maps to actually head towards the park. The market was definitely quite different from Germany’s, but there were plenty of food stalls and hot wine, as well as a hall with live music. Just less arts and crafts than I was expecting. I got weisswurst (pronounced the same in Japanese) and fries for my dinner. My backpack was pretty heavy so I headed off to D’s place. It would still take me an hour via train.

Wow, wow, wow. This was the most crowded train I’ve ever been on. I swear I was just floating in a sea of people moving with them. My pack really threw me off balance. I had it on the floor between my legs, but had to keep shuffling around with the flood of people entering and exiting. I’m so not a big city person. D kindly came and met me at the station! We walked to her apartment together, about 5 minutes away. Her apartment was cute and a decent size for Tokyo though expensive. We both headed to bed as it was almost 11 pm and I slept on her sofa bed.