Once again we were forced to stay home and (basically) stay inside this summer, and our dreams of overseas travel will have to wait again. We tried to use the time to relax, catch up on things we’ve been meaning to do, and of course eat and drink well.
One highlight of the holiday week was the chance to host parties for the neighbors (separately this time, due to scheduling). We had wanted to get together with everyone at our house for a while, so we served montadillos and other tapas for the Fukumis and soft tacos for the Yamajis. It was our first time to meet Yuki’s girlfriend Eri, and I think she survived the initiation to our eating/drinking/talking fairly well. I hope we get to see her more often in the future.
Kuniko and I took one day to drive around going to weird places – Big Mama for gelato, Hiraki shoes shopping mall for morbid curiosity, and a nearby table grape vineyard for 2 kilograms of free grapes. We experienced extremely heavy rainfall during the second half of the holiday week which made it much cooler but also more difficult to do laundry and walk around for exercise. We spent a lot of time in the car the past week.
As for food we ate well – homemade dumplings for dinner and the freezer, two Indian curries (one tomato based and one spinach based), grilled chicken, lots of veggies and a beautiful mango from Miyazaki, and finally a big shakshouka for breakfast (and dinner) to wrap things up.
Hopefully we’ll be able to escape Japan next summer and get out on the road – but for now we’re concentrating on wrapping up the next term at the end of September and gearing up for a domestic trip in October to celebrate the birthday of the oldest white guy in town.
