Mark's Farewell Pizza Party

So Mark (Scottish) left yesterday. It is really a strange feeling having all the older interns leave and being left with somewhat seniority status, but I guess it just comes with the job. To see Mark off we held a surprise party for him in the Youth Heim common room.

Like I mentioned in my previous post, Levi and I recently got a Costco Japan membership. One good thing about Costco is that the little eatery inside Costco sells American pizzas (the same ones that they have in Costco America). I'll make an entire post about Costco later, but right now I'll just talk about the party/pizza. So for the party we thought it would be a nice idea to get beer and pizza at Costco. Pizza from Pizza Hut costs about 3000 yen for an American equivalent medium and is just really gourmet (see my Pizza Hut Japan post). At Costco, the XL American pizza is 1500 yen, and beer ranges anywhere from 2000 yen (for a 24 pack) to 5000 yen (for a 24 pack of the premium imports). So obviously we wanted to get our pizza there.

The thing is Costco isn't exactly close. It is about 40 minutes away and two train transfers. Originally the plan was to bring three people to help carry four pizzas, two cases of beer, and one case of cokes, but at the last second Levi bailed on us and Nicola was feeling sick. So in the end only Steve and I were able to go. Getting to Costco was fine. It was coming back that was a pain in the ass. After picking up the beers and pizza at Costco, and wrapping the pizzas in a trash bag so that we wouldn't get as many weird looks on the train, we took a cab from Costco to the station by Costco (the drinks were heavy as hell).

This is something I don't want to do again. Don't get me wrong, I lift weights quite routinely, but carrying three crates of heavy drinks through crowded stations wasn't exactly fun. At one point I dropped the cokes and said some obsenities in English. Finally though, after much effort we arrived at Youth Heim. It seems that most people liked the pizza. I guess this type is really rare in Japan so it was nice to introduce a few people to the greasy, unhealthy, delicious American pizza.



As for Mark he seemed to have a good time. He worked late so it actually worked out in our favor for going such a long way to Costco. Everyone seemed to have a good time and enjoy themselves.


Randy was kind enough to take these pictures (my arms weren't working after carrying the drinks). The entire album can be seen here (credits to Randy):

http://picasaweb.google.com/mrhazard/PizzaParty#