Kuniko and I pulled off a really relaxing weekend. Saturday Kuniko had to go in to teach in the morning, but she got back at a reasonable time and so we went out to rent some movies and catch dinner.
For dinner we went somewhere that I’ve been wanting to try – Big Boy. It is apparently the same restaurant as the Bob’s Big Boy restaurants back in America, so we went there hoping for some real American family-style restaurant food. Unfortunately, other than the atmosphere and drink bar, it was completely different. The main dish they served was hamburg. It’s really popular here in Japan, but I don’t like it because it’s so greasy. Take a burger patty, and fry it on a hot skillet, and then serve it up on the same skillet, so all the grease is still floating around on the bottom – yuck.
The had a variety of things that could cook on the skillet, and so we got a combination, and enjoyed the free drink bar. The chicken was actually really good, though, and they served it with a yuzu pepper paste on the side that was delicious. If it wasn’t for the chicken, it would have been a big strike out.
After the rental place we decided to go on to Carrefour and Ito Yokado, to take care of all our import food needs. We scored lots of good stuff, and came home kind of late. That didn’t stop us from watching one of the movies we rented – Adaptation. That turned out to be a pretty crazy movie, but oddly entertaining.
Sunday we lounged about most of the day. Kuniko got her hair done and right after that we met up with the Denya gang minus the master, who was stuck at work. We all met at Gochisomura, the family-friendly-large-size-izakaya-style restaurant right next door to our place.
It was fun to see everyone, and we drank and ate way too much while talking and sharing stories. There was an incident where we found some floating bits of black plastic in some of the beers, so we returned them all and got a free round on the house. The food was pretty good though.
After drinking there, we brought the whole gang, twelve people, over to our place, and crowded into the house to check it out. Before everyone said that they could only stay for 10 minutes, but by the time the tequila, sake, iced coffees, and cold beers were through they had stayed for more than an hour. We had fun sitting around the living room and playing with the kids, too. They had a lot of energy and were really enjoying the exploration of a new house.
We walked everybody back to the station, and then did some drunken (on my part) shopping before heading home to crash. It was a lot of hospitality for a Sunday night – and tomorrow we’re back to work so I’m sure it’ll be tough getting up.
