Kaoru’s Birthday.

Woke up to a beautiful, sunny day.  I cut back on work, but still had a bit to do.  We went for our usual morning walk.

After lunch, I walked Kaoru to the train station for her to go to work.  I then had to buy Shinkansen tickets for our surprise trip away for Kaoru’s birthday.  But for some reason, my AMEX was declined!  I tried my VISA – that was declined too!  I then tried my Datascore Visa (totally different account) – also declined!  OK, this is going to make things interesting, as last time I tried to withdraw cash, it rejected the transaction when I tried to get out too much.  Back at the Citybank ATM, I found that the limit was only on a single transaction, so by splitting it in to 2, I was able to withdraw enough cash and pay for our trip.

I had lost about 90 minutes with all the dicking around (walking home to check that I had money in the account, before going to the bank to get money out), so I felt behind all afternoon with work.  Kaoru rang from the train station, as she got in early, so I went in to meet her and take her out to dinner.

We went to our “usual” restaurant in Fujisawa.  They recognise us when we walk in now, which is great.  Kaoru reckons it’s because of me (we haven’t seen other Westerners in there).  They were very busy (we were lucky to get a table) but enjoyed another wonderful feast, and even skipped 100 yen donuts, we were so full!  On our way out, we were given a 1000 yen (~$12) coupon for our next visit, so that was nice of them.