Now that was a nice weekend!
Friday night we stayed home and I roasted some vegetables for a change of pace. Usually on weeknights we have nabe (Japanese style soup) that is almost always vegetarian. Mainly it has Chinese cabbage, tofu, mushrooms, leeks, and then some kind of basic soup – flavored with kimchee, soymilk or sesame. Since it was a cold Friday night I bought a bunch of root vegetables and roasted the vegetables in our dutch oven. I had received a bottle of Beaujolais Nouveau from the VP during our lesson that day, so we opened it up and it made for a nice dinner.
Saturday Kuniko was working, but I went out hiking with Yoshi for the first time in a long time. I thought that since I’ve been riding the exercise bike so often that the hike would be a piece of cake, but writing this now on Monday morning my legs are still sore. The weather was perfect, and we hiked up Suma mountain, and then along the ridge to the eastern part of Suma, and then back down to the beach and on to the station. I told Yoshi the story about how we ended up in Hong Kong instead of Singapore, and he really got a kick out of it. Yoshi’s work has been pretty stressful lately, and I think the mountain air and the change of pace were good for him, too.
I met Kuniko for dinner at a place called “Obiobi”, in Sannomiya. I immediately liked the atmosphere – dark and mysterious. There were just a few tables and counter seating facing a big charcoal grill that was heating chunks of meat. The idea was you picked some smaller dishes to support the main dish – a chunk of meat that they grill for you. We selected lamb chops for our meat, and then we had some cheese gratin, grilled scallops and vegetables, some foie gras, and a mixed appetizer of antipasti. Everything was pretty good, but the lamb chop still had quite a bit of fat on it. If I was grilling I would have cooked it a little differently – but I guess you have to let them do it their way… it is kind of the point of going out. We had an Italian red with dinner, and it went well with the dishes that we selected. We had fun there, but I’m not sure we’ll be going back. On the way home we did some slightly drunken shopping at two of our favorite stores, and came home with a couple of bags of food each.
Sunday we woke up early, did two loads of laundry, and then went out on the town for some shopping. We did a little Christmas shopping, but most of what we brought home was supplies for our upcoming holiday parties. We enjoyed lunch at our favorite Thai restaurant, Baan Thai in Sannomiya. We were surprised to get a reservation there, and as usual during our lunch the staff turned away many, many people that didn’t have a reservation. The food was excellent as always. The staff asked us if we were aware that we had ordered quite a lot of food for two people, and confirmed with us that we really wanted that much. This seems to happen to us a lot, actually. We said yes of course, and had a very big, delicious lunch. We had skipped breakfast and we ended up skipping dinner too, so it served as our food for the entire day. Scrumptious!
This week will be a little busy for both of us. I have a party on Wednesday, Kuniko on Thursday, Friday will be prepping for our holiday party on Saturday, and I’m sure Sunday will be a recovery day. I guess that is what the holidays are all about!
