Somehow I managed to celebrate my birthday all three days of last weekend, which was fun but a little exhausting on the whole. It started with a great dinner on Friday night at an Indian restaurant that opened up in Okubo called ‘Swaad’. The curries and naan were great, although the cheese naan bread wasn’t quite as good as our usual favorite restaurant in Shin-Osaka. Still, excellent flavors, good price, and great service. I’d recommend it to anybody in the area. If anybody in the area reads English and reads this blog. Which is probably unlikely.
Anyway…
Saturday we attended the yearly concert for Kuniko’s school, and this year had some interesting variety – a lot more vocals than I remember, some great pianists, and a jazzy saxophone/piano combination that was pretty good. After the show we headed to Befu for a dinner at Orvieto. It had been two years since we’ve been, but the owner was the same guy, and the menu was much the same. As always the food was great, (especially the homemade porcini pasta) and the owner is a very friendly guy who does well at entertaining his guests. We were hoping to buy a bottle of Ridge Zinfandel for this special occasion, but unfortunately he wouldn’t sell it to us – maybe he is saving it for some other occasion. He did recommend an OK Italian red, though.
Sunday night Kuniko’s parents, sister and brother-in-law came over for dinner. It was Italian food night – Kuniko made lasagne, appetizers, a salad, and I cooked up some pork loin using some dry rub that my folks had sent for my birthday from their friend Jerry Holt in Texas. The rub was excellent – a perfect match of spice and salt. We drank wine and talked and talked, and I had a great time. Kuniko served homemade tiramisu for dessert, and Atsushi and Tomoko gave me Super Mario Brothers as a birthday present. Kuniko’s parents left around 9 pm, and we partied much longer, playing with the Wii and rocking out to music.
The next day Kuniko wasn’t feeling great – but despite that we went out to visit the family farm to watch them harvest the rice. The rice harvest is going in several stages, mainly because of the weather and some new equipment that they bought that should save some steps in the process. Unfortunately when we arrived the new equipment wasn’t working very well, and combined with the muddy conditions it seemed like there wasn’t much harvesting going on. Kuniko finally said enough was enough and so we cut out of there and headed back home. We spent the day resting at home, and I started reading a new Lee Child book that my folks had sent.
So in the end we relaxed on my birthday, and it was a quiet, peaceful affair. This week is a little shorter thanks to the holiday, so I’m already looking forward to the next weekend, with maybe a chance to visit with Inoguchi sensei for lunch.
