Friday night after work we met up in Akashi with great anticipation, and then walked over to Ciro for dinner. It has been quite a while since we’ve been, and we were looking forward to dinner all week.
The staff recognized us right away and gave us the best table in the restaurant – with a nice view of the Akashi bridge and a pleasant breeze blowing through the windows. It was a lot like eating outdoors.
As usual the antipasti was excellent, and I was able to pick out a nice wine from the list to enjoy. Unfortunately the pizza was a little disappointing. It was a mozzarella, basil and porcini mushroom pizza, but there were just two or three leaves of basil on it, and the porcini were inexplicably distributed so that 40% of the pizza had no toppings. We did some rearrangement of the toppings, but it was odd that we had to. On the menu it used to say “buffalo mozzarella” for the pizzas, but this time I noticed it only said “mozzarella”, so maybe they are cutting costs? We weren’t thrilled with the pasta selection either – only tomato sauce pastas were on the menu, no pesto and no cream sauces.
We did order some shrimp and lobster, and they did a great job cooking those up for us.
And to top it all off, our “connection” wasn’t working there, and we found out from another staff that he moved to Osaka. Too bad – he was a really nice guy.
So this was a bummer for us – Ciro used to be our “go-to” restaurant if we wanted a guaranteed special meal. We’ll try them again after a while but if it is a repeat performance of this weekend, we’ll be on the hunt for somewhere new.
Saturday we went into Osaka to attend a beer festival at the invitation of Yoshi and Mamiko. The meeting time was at 1:30 pm, so we went out to Osaka a little bit early and played tourist around Namba. Kuniko and I almost never go to Osaka, and I couldn’t remember the last time we had been there together. We walked through the tourist dotombori on the river and enjoyed some street food and beer while taking in the sights. It was an odd feeling – it seemed like we were visiting a different country, and I really got the feeling like I was seeing Japan again for the first time. Kuniko and I agreed later that we’ll try to get into Osaka more often, and that might end up being a resolution to our problem with Ciro.
We met up with Yoshi and Mamiko and walked through the beer festival. The focus of the festival was the craft beers of Japan (especially Kansai) and so there were lots of good beers to try. Some were great, some not so good, and some bordering on outlandish (soba beer?) but it was fun to try everything. For 2000 yen we got tickets for six beers, so the price was very reasonable. We brought lots of snacks, and they had some good food on sale, and I even bumped into one of my former students from KHI. Good times.
We did a little wine shopping on the way home, and then just ate a salad for dinner. We were tired from being out in the sun all day drinking beers, so Saturday night and Sunday were pretty much just relaxation time.
We’re all geared up and ready for a busy week at work. I’ve got some intensive classes Monday through Wednesday, and a special lesson to plan for next week. It is a busy time for both of us, so I’m sure we’ll be looking to the weekend soon.
