Friday night I met up with some of my ex-students to go to a beer garden in Kobe after work. We had tried previously to go, but they are pretty popular, and we weren’t able to make reservations. This time we were able to pull it off, and we sat underneath Hotel Okura while drinking some beers and eating some snacks. It was fun to hang out with these guys and celebrate the upcoming end of summer. One of the guys is getting married in November, so I told him all about the American tradition of the “bachelor party” – something that hasn’t come to Japan yet. He seemed pretty interested, but where am I going to find a strip club around here?
Saturday Kuniko and I spent the day doing fun stuff in Kobe. She had to work in the morning, but we met on the always half empty Rokko Island to see “Tree of Life” at a deserted movie theater. I’m not sure how they stay open – there were just a handful of customers. The movie itself was slightly baffling but interesting enough. Not sure if I could recommend it, though.
After the movie we went back to busy Sannomiya to do some shopping for some friends, and also to hit a few stores for ourselves. We had fun in a few stores in Motomachi – a spice store in Chinatown and Kaldi import foods. We made a stop at one of our favorite cheese stores – they recently moved across town to a better(?) location. We were able to snack on a few pieces of cheese and drink a couple of glasses of wine right there in the store, but the atmosphere wasn’t quite what I expected. What they really need is a window, I think.
Finally we went over to Kobe and had yakiniku at 満月 (Mangetsu). The place was busy but we were able to get a table and kicked off our meal with a plate of ユッケ (yukhoe). Afterwards we filled up on meat – loads of meat. We don’t usually have very much meat during the week, so I think we ate several weeks worth in one meal. We grilled it ourselves at our table and were very satisfied with the result.
Sunday we spent mostly at home, just going out to do a little bit of shopping for dinner. We watched a concert I downloaded of Cocco, and I grilled up vegetables for our dinner using a siracha marinade that really livened up the veggies.
It was a good weekend, but a hot one. Hopefully in the next few weeks the temperature will start dropping…
