This weekend it was Valentine’s Day, and Kuniko and I celebrated it in style. The amount of planning and effort that Kuniko put into the holiday was nothing short of Herculean. And that’s a word that I don’t throw around very often.
In Japan the onus is on the women to give presents to the men on Valentine’s Day, with the men returning the favor on White Day exactly one month later. Kuniko started planning quite a long time ago, I think. First, she got some chocolates for me – a box of Star Wars themed chocolates, with the heads of four white chocolate stormtroopers lined up with a dark chocolate Darth Vader in the middle. She also got me a box set of Star Wars Blurays to go with the theme. She secretly stocked our downstairs wine cellar with some of our usual favorites, and some really nice new wines from New Zealand and California. For dinner, she bought some lamb chops through the internet and had them delivered the day before, and then she marinated them for a couple hours and grilled them inside on our stove. She completed the dish with some chocolate sauce on top – wow! It was in the top 5 of my favorite dishes, ever. I feel like maybe I’ve been eating lamb the wrong way my whole life. We finished the night with a couple of romantic movies and some red wine – perfect!
Sunday we got up early and took a two hour walk to Akashi along the beach to burn some calories. In Akashi we stopped at the fish market street in the center of town and bought 24 oysters in the shell for dinner later that night. We sat down for an early lunch in a nearby restaurant and had Akashi-yaki, a dish that I hadn’t eaten in years despite actually living in the town of Akashi. Then we brought the oysters home and relaxed the rest of the day.
We grilled up the oysters outside and served them with sparkling wine and a green salad, and they turned out really nicely. I thought oysters would be more expensive, but they are apparently in season now, so it was a reasonable dinner that tasted luxurious.
Now it is back to reality, and I’m looking at another busy week at work. The next two months should be busier than normal with lots of overtime. Some days I will have 10 classes a day, which is pretty much my limit. Things should slow down once we get into April. At least, I hope so.
