One of the best things about the weekend is that it finally gives me something to blog about. Keeping the secrets of my company and students makes the weekly blog posts pretty boring, I admit. Luckily the weekend comes along, and finally I can write some good stuff.
And good stuff it was. We started with a meetup in Kobe on Friday night. I got off work and went to a wine shop to pick up a couple bottles of wine to bring to Mr. Tojo’s party the next day. Soon afterwards I met Kuniko at the entrance to Tokyu Hands, and went to 味香苑 for dinner. This place was introduced to me through one of my students, and it was pretty authentic. Without a reservation it is hard to get in there, but we had planned ahead and we got a counter seat. Turns out that there are two restaurants owned by the same guy, and they are across the street from each other. We initially went to the wrong place, but the owner took us across the street to the correct place, and chatted with us while he did it. He was a really friendly guy, and you could tell he knew the importance of hospitality.
We ordered from the menu, selecting a range of foods including tofu noodles, spiced lamb skewers, a cinnamon-spiced fried rice, and stir fried vegetables. As one of my students pointed out to me, their menu is quite large, and even includes dog. Although the name of each dish is translated to Japanese on the menu, there was at least one entry that was only in Chinese. Although the kanji for dog in Japan is 犬, in Chinese it is ç‹—, and there it was. I didn’t have the courage to order it. At least, not this time.
The best dish we had was a stir fry with harusame noodles and pickles, and when it arrived the aroma from the dish was intense. The spice smelled like every Asian street market we’ve ever visited – Bangkok, Hanoi, Hue and China all had the same exotic smell. I wish I could identify, but it is exotic and something we almost never smell here in Japan.
There was a Chinese lady entertaining a Japanese guy in the corner, and all the staff were Chinese, and it really had an authentic feel. The servers spoke Japanese however, and although they often times seemed curt or grouchy, it only added to the authenticity of the place. We got the same treatment when eating in China.
On Saturday Kuniko had to work most of the day, and I stayed home to do some housecleaning and laundry. At around 5 pm we lugged a box full of wine and beer over to Mr. Tojo’s house for the party.
He was having a big group of coworkers and friends over to introduce his brand new house. When we arrived there was already a few people there, and the party started in earnest after a few minutes. Two of my ex-students were there, and also a student of another teacher that had worked at the company for a while (they were impressed with how long his nose hairs were). Introductions were made, there was a lot of drinking, and twice we ran back to our house to bring over some wine glasses and other support items for the party. Mrs. Tojo cooked some great foods for dinner – roasted rosemary chicken, roast beef, and lots of sashimi. Yum.
After several hours of non-stop drinking and talking one of the guys who was drinking the heaviest fell off his chair, sending the chair against the pristine wall behind him and leaving some fairly dark scratches on the wall. Everybody remained calm and smiling, but I’m sure both Mr. and Mrs. Tojo would have liked to kick the guy. I remember the first scratch in our wall after we moved in – I couldn’t take my eyes off of it. Hopefully this wasn’t the first scratch in their house.
We finally drank our fill and headed out rather late, and then stumbled back to our house and went right to bed. The next thing I knew it was almost noon on Sunday, and I was very glad that we didn’t have anything planned. Mostly we read, rested and recuperated yesterday, and ate only somen noodles for dinner.
Now it’s Monday and we’re back to work. It should be a pretty non-eventful week, with a meetup with Antoine at the end of it. Hopefully there will be something to blog about…
