Friday night Yoshi and I met up in Sannomiya to hit a yakitori and have some local beer. We started at the yakitori, a kind of dark, small, back alley kind of place that was surprisingly nice. There were only eight seats in the place, though. We started with a big combination plate of raw chicken parts – from slices of raw breast meat to liver, heart, and gizzard. It was my first time to eat so much raw chicken in one sitting, but after a little salt and sesame oil they were pretty good.
Yoshi and I sat on one side of the counter, and directly on the other side the two staff cooked and served dishes. Yakitori restaurants can be smoky, but they had a clear plexiglass shield between us and the grill, and a huge exhaust system directly overhead to suck out all the smoke before it filled the small room. This plexiglass shield ended up saving us from more than smoke, however. Some other customers had ordered some champagne, and the staff made an error opening the bottle. The bottle started spraying, and the staff tried to get the cork back in the bottle. It ended up intensifying the spray and completely hosing every customer in the place except for us. The plexiglass was covered in champagne that would have otherwise ended up on us.
Saturday Kuniko brought some of her coworkers over for dinner after her school’s culture festival. We grilled burgers and sausages, mounted the giant patties on giant buns, and struggled to finish them off. Seriously, huge burgers. Every key seemed to like them, so mission accomplished.
Sunday we spent recharging our batteries at home. I
mainly was reading, while Kuniko slept most of the day.
This week I have my last three days of classes for this term, and also the orientation meetings for my new students. New classes start next week!
