Saturday night I met Kuniko in Sannomiya to celebrate her birthday with a little bit of shopping and dinner. Weeks ago we had agreed that we would go shopping for her birthday present together, but unfortunately we didn’t have enough time to pick up what she wanted before our dinner reservation. We had some other errands to run before dinner as well – so we had to abandon the gift shopping in favor of making our reservation. This proved to bite me in the ass later.
Dinner was quite good. We went to Evolve, an upscale Chinese restaurant near the Kitano district of Sannomiya. It had a nice atmosphere, and menus that had no prices on them (which is always a little scary). I came prepared, however, and in the end the prices were less than we expected. As for dinner it started out great with their signature dish – å››å·é¢¨ã‚ˆã ã‚Œé¶ (Nishikawa style drooling (?) chicken) but got a little less interesting after that. We ordered plenty of food, and although each dish was delicious the overall meal failed to impress me.
After dinner we were stuffed and came home present-less, which as you might expect, left Kuniko a little bummed out. Previously I have always had a surprise present ready to go, and when no surprise materialized this time she was naturally disappointed. A classic example of setting the bar a little too high – even for myself. We hatched a plan on Sunday to do some shopping next weekend to make up for it.
During the day on Sunday I went and got a much-needed haircut, and that night we went to visit Kuniko’s parents, and they looked healthy and very happy. Kuniko’s dad had to go to work in the evening, but we stayed around and spent time with Keiko watching figure skating on TV. She kept the coffee and snacks coming, so by the time we left we were full of good food.
This week should be interesting – a dinner with the Denya gang tomorrow night, and sushi night this Friday at our favorite sushi bar, Nadaya. Looking forward to it!
