Browse Tag

sushi

Welcome to the Rotation

May 17, 2010
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Saturday evening we were invited over to dinner at Mr. and Mrs. Fukumi’s place across the street from our house. Since we moved into the neighborhood some of the neighbors have been throwing “home parties”, which consists of inviting other families over for a dinner hosted at your house. This is a custom that is exceedingly rare in Japan, as most people would have the party at a restaurant somewhere.

This has led to some great parties. We have hosted a couple at our house, the Yamaji’s down the road have hosted a couple, and this time it was the Fukumi’s that had a chance to throw one. Unfortunately the Yamaji’s couldn’t make it due to his work schedule, so we partied with just the four of us plus Sayaka’s sister. It was the first time to meet her, and she was friendly and talkative.

The Fukumi’s went all out on dinner – salad, cheese, appetizers, roasted beef ribs and seafood paella. It was so good – we ate and drank and talked about the neighborhood. There were some interesting stories but nothing sordid. I guess that is just the right amount for us. One of the highlights was some bread that they had bought from a friend who is starting a business. This bread was multi-grain and had a lot of flavor, and it went well with the cheese and olive oil. I’m going to try to find out where their source is and get some for us sometime.

We were having such a good time that when Kuniko whispered that we should probably head home I was surprised that the time had flown by so quickly. Luckily it is an easy walk back to our house – one of the best things about having a party in your own neighborhood.

Sunday we spent the morning lounging around. Kuniko did some packing for her trip to Canada (departing on Friday) and I reread some parts of my favorite books and listened to music. We drove out to Futami for dinner at Sushiro, a 100 yen conveyor belt sushi place that had some pretty good dishes. After 16 plates of sushi we headed over to Ito Yokado for some shopping and then home for a bath and bed.

As I mentioned at the end of the week Kuniko is taking off for Canada, so I’m starting to think about what I’ll do with a week or so to myself. No plans yet, but I’m sure something will come up.

Payoff, Long Weekend

Mar 23, 2010
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Friday night after work Kuniko and I met on the platform of Hanshin railways in Sannomiya, and then proceeded to the sushi restaurant – just about a five minute ride on the local train.

The place was part of what appeared to be a strip mall, except Edo period Japan’s version. Interesting layout, full of traditional Japanese restaurants, and the sushi place was no exception. The interior was nicely lit, the counter and all the tables were made of wood, and I could tell it was going to be expensive.

For ordering we just left it up to the sushi chef, and that made for some unpredictability and a fun night. When we arrived we also ordered some cold beer, and then followed that up with two small bottles of sake to share.

We had lots of variety – mainly nigiri sushi. Tai, chu-toro, lobster, crab, egg, squid, yellow tail, mackerel, sea urchin, plum and shiso rolls, pretty much the works. They were all good – but the toro was really good, and I think the crab was the best. It was served with cooked crab meat on top of rice, with a little spoon of kani miso on top. Yum.

The dinner turned out to be about half the cost of what we had predicted, but still a little expensive. It will be hard to go back to 100 yen sushi after this, though.

Saturday Kuniko was stuck at work, and it was a day for me to catch up and relax at home. Sunday was a brief trip to Kobe to run some errands, and Monday Kuniko was back at work while I cleaned house and did shopping around here.

Now today I’m gearing up to go back to work, and I’m feeling pretty refreshed. Tomorrow is another afternoon-only teaching session, so it should be a really easy week.

Wrap Up, Sushi Anticipation

Mar 19, 2010
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I’m wrapping up a course at work, and that means saying goodbye to a lot of students. Some students may continue the course, but others have to move on and that means I’ll be seeing a lot less of them. Luckily I have some free time at the end of each day and I’m encouraging them to drop by for some free conversation at their convenience. Hopefully they will take advantage of the time to continue building their skills.

Sushi night tonight! The place is near Shinzaike (æ–°åœ¨å®¶) just east of Sannomiya in Kobe. That means I’ll need to bail out of work and hustle to get to the station. Maybe a cab is in order tonight. I’m looking forward to this place – I hope it lives up to the expectations.

Still working on plans for the weekend – nothing solid yet. We may end up making plans over sake and sushi tonight. That’s where great ideas are usually born around here…

Weekend Menu: Lazy Sushi, Crab and Hayashi Rice

Feb 28, 2010
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Turned out to be a fairly good weekend around here. Friday night we got lazy and ended up buying supermarket sushi and croquettes, and spent the evening drinking cocktails and wine. We were both pretty bushed from a full work week.

Saturday Kuniko had to go off to work, and then a party for her students and the “Rotarians” – the bigwigs that help sponsor all the exchange students that Kuniko is in charge of at her school. That meant that I was free for the day, and I spent most of it doing laundry, catching up on my reality TV shows, and cleaning house.

In the evening I had planned to go hit a yakitori and work on my Japanese conversation skills while eating yummy grilled meat, but unfortunately both of the yakitori restaurants that I visit in town were packed with not even one seat available. As a backup I went over to Junpu for dinner. This is the place that served deer meat a couple of weeks ago, and this time around they had crab on the menu. I ordered snow crab, and because they like me I got the entire crab – I guess they weren’t expecting any more crab purchasing customers that night or they were trying to get rid of it. It was a big score for me – an entire crab for about $8 US. Thanks, Junpu!

While I was there Rob came by, killing time before a dating party that he was attending. Rob works at the kid’s English school down the road, and he is also from California. He’s a nice guy and we had a good chat while he killed time waiting for a friend to take him to the party. Not sure about the outcome of that – I’ll have to inquire next time.

After dinner I headed home full of crab and beer, and listened to music way too loudly until I got a message from Kuniko saying that she would be catching a train soon. I met her at the station and we walked home together after one in the morning, and then got home and had another round of cocktails – good times.

Luckily Sunday was much more low key. We did our Japanese taxes during the day, got some shopping done, and then went over to have dinner at Kuniko’s parents house. We had lots of food (as usual) there, sandwiches, hayashi rice, and salads along with plenty of sake from a 1.5 liter bottle that Kuniko’s dad was pouring from. We watched endless updates about the tsunami warning, and saw some of the flooding that happened in Japan, but apparently it wasn’t so bad, and everything turned out to be OK. The footage from Chile was much more scary, and we were counting our blessings that everything was fine here.

On our way home we stopped for a few groceries for the week, and then headed home. Now I’m just writing up this journal entry and getting ready for bed. Work should be fun this week – there are a lot of students preparing to go overseas, so I’ll need to help them get ready for their business trips.