Friday night I went out after work with Mr. Minamimoto, Nao Yoshida and Shu Yoshida for dinner and drinks in Sannomiya. It was the first time going out with these guys since the infamous dating party, and it was fun to hang out with them again. Really nice people, and everyone has a good sense of humor. Our first restaurant was a yakitori place called é¶è²´æ— (torikizoku – chicken royal family!) They served up some pretty atrocious chicken on sticks, and so we made it a priority to get out of there ASAP.
We ended up at Hola Achaho afterwards, and had some more dinner and a whole lot of wine by the glass. They were having a California wine by the glass promotion, and so we took advantage. They had Gnarly Head Zinfandel and Cline Viognier among others. Yum.
Saturday Kuniko had to work so I walked out and sat on the beach. It was a beautiful day, and walking around in the surf felt really good. The water was clear enough to see the shells just under the surface, and there were even surfers trying to catch the meager waves available. After an hour on the beach and in the sun I finished up my walk by heading to Akashi for a little bit of shopping. That night I fired up the BBQ and we had chicken, grilled onions and corn with black pepper and Cholula sauce.
Sunday was a day off for both of us, so we hiked this time to Nafco up on the top of the hill. It’s about an hour’s hike one way, and after buying some coriander seeds we came back and I went to work planting the seeds in planters in our front yard. We can’t get enough cilantro around here, and I’m hoping that in a couple of weeks we’ll be able to see some green coming out of the ground.
Last night Kuniko made ratatouille once again. We were trying to get rid of some carrots, and ended up with an all veggie dish that was really tasty. We finished the night off with some Hawaiian cookies that we received as souvenirs from Fukumi-san, who just got back from a few days in Honolulu.
All in all a great, relaxing weekend. This is Kuniko’s last week before she leaves for Canada for a school trip – it’ll be packing time soon.
Banzai
May 16, 2011Hi Bryan,
Testing your comment section again. Sorry to have missed you this weekend. I hope we get to wish Kuniko and safe trip to Canada…and wish we were going to be able to see her there. Small world here….we had a Cline Viognier tonight with our dinner. George D. brought it to share! And it was quite tasty. Charlie Tsegeletos is a good winemaker…very versatile. Hope to catch up with you this week.
Love, mom