And It's Not Even Typhoon Season Yet

The tour company we had organized our Mt. Fuji hike through cancelled the trip due to a typhoon red-alert and other serious weather warnings. I know another girl here that went to Fuji with friends last week said the trails were closed and her group couldn't hike, so we were expecting it. They never actually called me, but I found out about the cancellation through Tam and had a coworker call the company to confirm.

It's not only Fuji. It looks like typhoons are already doing damage all over the country, though:
http://edition.cnn.com/2007/WORLD/asiapcf/07/13/japan.typhoon.reut/index.html

There are some big beach parties this weekend at Suma Beach (very popular place close to where I live), but I am assuming they will be cancelled as well. It's probably going to be a low-key weekend, which is good in a lot of ways, but also unfortunate considering it's a long weekend and it'd be nice to take advantage of the time.

Tonight (Friday the 13th!), I went to a birthday party for my friend Jane. She (appropriately, for the date) chose to hold the event at Lock Up. Ok, now I've been to Lock Up quite a lot this year, but I still enjoy going back. This time, we had a set-meal plan (pre-determined menu and portions) with an all-you-can-drink special (typical combo for parties in Japan), which was actually at an extremely reasonable price. We were seated in two tatami-floored 'cells' overlooking each other, but separated by metal jail bars. A big group of foreign exchange students from Kansai Gaidai University were seated in another ajoined cell for a while (they had obviously chosen the all-you-can-drink option, too, and were pretty far into it...), but it was a really lively, fun atmosphere. A group of people went out afterwards, but I took the last train home with Jane, Ben and Clam. It was a fun night.