We had a very nice time at Sigassiga on Friday night. It was the last meal there for us, but it turns out that Fujiwara-san will still keep his other restaurant open in Sannomiya, so next time we’ll have to go check that place out. The food on Friday was served “omakase” style – we just told the chef that we’d like him to select our menu, and he brought everything out in courses. The highlight was the pasta course – beef tail and asparagus – yum.
After Sigassiga we headed over to another favorite – the Spanish izakaya hidden down a side street near Tokyu Hands. They are starting to recognize me there, which resulted in getting a table on a very busy night. There it was another bottle of wine (a Primitivo) and several tapas dishes to keep us going. The atmosphere at this place is really nice, and it is fun to watch people there having a good time.
Yesterday Kuniko and I went to her family’s rice field to help get the rice crop started. It was the first stage of the process – we used a small machine to fill hundreds of trays with soil, fertilizer, rice seeds and water. Then we drove the trays out to one of the fields, donned our big rubber boots and sloshed around laying everything out in the mud. This was my third or fourth time doing it, and so between me and Atsushi (my brother-in-law-in-law) we laid out the trays at breakneck speed. It was good to see Kuniko’s dad relent a little and let us do some work for a change. He is really big on attention to detail, and so handing over some of the workload to us was a big deal for him.
After a couple hours of work on the rice, we raided their nearby field for strawberries, onions and snap peas, and then headed to their home to have dinner as a group. Atsushi and Tomoko stuck around for dinner as well, so it was nice to have the family together for mother’s day.
We’re both beat from a long day in the sun yesterday, and as one of my students pointed out – we don’t have another holiday at my workplace for more than seven weeks. Time to buckle down and get some work done.
