A Day with Chetty

     True friends are hard to come by… but sometimes, through a wonderful concoction of incidence and circumstance, life throws us unexpected curveballs that take us by surprise.

     Chetty and I were introduced by our common friend, Paul.  We’ve known each other for almost a year but we never got a chance to meet personally because of the distance between Sukagawa, where I lived, and Tokyo.  Ironically, it was during my last day at Japan that we got to meet, bond, and form a fun but surely deep friendship.

     I met with Chet a day prior to my departure for some last-minute sightseeing and a farewell dinner.  I took the Shinkansen from Shin-Shirakawa to Ueno, and then later met up with Chetty and two of her friends at Ikebukuro.  We had lunch at Beckers, after which we went back for a while to Chet’s apartment to leave my suitcases behind.  The guys helped me in reserving a train ticket for the Narita Express direct to the Airport for 6:00 a.m. and then we all went to Asakusa to visit the Seisoji Temple.  We had a great time and we took a lot of photos at the zen park near the temple grounds. 

     The guys had to leave for badminton practice at 4:00 p.m., so Chetty and I decided to stay for a while longer to look at all the souvenir and curio shops.  At half past five, we took the subway to Karakouen to go to the Tokyo Dome City, where we watched the dancing fountain and rode the Dolphin Splash.  We had a scrumptious dinner of shrimps, fish fillet, fries, and coleslaw at Bubba Gump.  We even had an oh-noes-what-a-blooper moment when we requested to have the remainder of our dinner wrapped, only to find out that Bubba Gump doesn’t allow their guests to take out their food.  Chetty and I found a way around this inconvenience though, with the help of thick paper towels - the details of which I will restrain myself from posting to avoid self-implication *laughs*.  We both paid for the seafood binge with allergy attacks later that evening, but it was so worth it.  Besides, we both had Virlix and Claritin to see us through.

     After dinner, we decided to stroll around Ikebukuro, near the Sunshine City.  We tried our luck at the arcade games, but we both ended up spending a lot of yen, without winning any stuffed animals.  Tough luck.  But well, there’s always next time.  I really hope to come back to Japan [that's assuming James allows me to >.<].  After that arcade frustration, we decided we’d better go home since we asked Paul to go online so we could chat for a bit.

     We got home to Chetty’s apartment at around 11:00 p.m.  We had a chat with Paul, Darren, Marky, and Erj.  Chetty also got to meet my angel, James [I think they had a secret of sorts o.o].  Both of us hardly got any sleep as we were both excited with the prospect of me coming home.  We talked and shared stories and recapped the day’s funny moments until it was time to prepare to leave at the 5:13 a.m. train going to Ikebukuro.  Chetty went with me up to the Narita Express platform.  It was a wistful moment for both of us.  It’s rare to find people that would be so in-sync with your wavelength.  I do hope Chetty and I could bond more in the coming months.

     Thanks a lot Chetty!~ *hugs*