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Today was a good day.

First, Patrick and I managed to finally get around to picking up our resident return visas from the immigration office, which was good because it’s a task that’s been hanging over our heads for ages.

Next, I found some egg moulds at the 100 yen shop, so now I can shape my boiled eggs into star and heart shapes.  Excellent!

Finally, and best of all, I went to get a haircut, and decided on a straightening perm while I was there.

Woo!  Permanently straight hair now!  AND a fringe.

This was a very, very good day.

We had lunch with James today, he managed to be organised enough to get us available and hungry in the same place at the same time, which was good, because I am generally not good at arranging to see friends before I leave places.I hope he enjoyed the lunch more than it looks like he did.

Luckily everyone at work organised an impromptu dinner on my last day, or I probably wouldn’t have ever got around to seeing any of them. Good people I’m glad to have met.

I like moving around because we make so many new friends, but then I don’t like moving around because it means we have to leave all the same people again… at least blogs and msn make it easy to stay in touch now.

It was after lunch that I realised just how little time we have left in Tokyo, and how many people we should be having lunch with instead of hanging about wasting time.

Another interesting thing that happened today was that a friend I haven’t spoken to for years appeared on my msn and mentioned something about Save The Children in Hefei.

A few times I have considered volunteering in China, but haven’t ever come across anything in Hefei before. Now that a week before we get there, someone mentions it to me out of the blue, without even knowing I am on my way back, I think it must be meant to be.

There was a really interesting job advertised, but I think I will try and volunteer for a while first and see how I go part time. If I can spend more time studying Chinese when I get to Hefei, I will be far more use to everyone later on anyway.

I have put in my application, and convinced Patrick he needs to call them tomorrow for me and ask about what sort of opportunities they have, so now have my fingers crossed.

I just found the funniest advertisement I have seen for a long time over at Dablue Blog.

I enjoyed it so much, I had to post it here.

We set our alarm early this morning, and finally dragged ourselves off to Tarlum for breakfast.

It was well worth getting up for, as the breakfast was the nicest we have had in ages. Patrick had scrambled eggs with bacon and I had a cheese omelette, each was served with with salad, rye bread, hazelnut danish and a hot drink.

Patrick’s latte looked nice, but I think he was secretly a bit jealous of my frothy honey soy milk.

The nice surprise was that everything was about half the price listed on the website.

Patrick and I posted off two boxes of winter clothes to China this morning to make some room in our luggage.After we had done so, I immediately decided we had enough room for some craft books and materials to take back to China with us.

I have heard that the beautiful Japanese Craft books I have seen online are much much cheaper to buy here, so I don’t want to miss the chance to pick up a few bargains!

I also bought another box from the post office, just in case I buy too many.

As I was browsing around trying to find some craft books, I found these amazing egglings.

They are the sweetest little things I have seen for a long time. You have to break the egg yourself, so I am sure I would accidentally smash the thing to pieces before it had a chance to grow, but it would be great for more coordinated people then me!