Sunday we tried to sleep in a little bit, and then we were off to Osaka to see a concert. However, our first priority, as usual, was food. We wanted to go visit the Indian restaurant that we liked so much in Shin-Osaka. When Kuniko was living there I was always visiting – making the trip from my place in Futami all the way to Osaka to visit. We would often go to this Indian place. The curry is great, they make a garlic-cheese naan bread, and the people that work there are really friendly.
Our lunch was really good – it was all you can eat for 1200 yen (around $11). The naan bread was bigger than my head, and really good. I got seconds on the tandoori chicken but contented myself with finishing up Kuniko’s curry and naan bread.
We thought about walking around the neighborhood, but we didn’t have a lot of memories of the neighborhood. When Kuniko was living here we would mainly have dinners and stay in at her apartment. Kuniko said that there were lots of perverts walking around, so she has some scary memories of those guys. All in all it sounds like she’s glad to be free of that place.
The concert was at the Blue Note in Osaka, which is a blues club that was really well designed. There is cabaret style seating, and we had two tickets reserved for us by one of the members of the performing group. The group, Takarabune, had sold out the show, and this is a pretty nice venue, so I was really surprised.
Kuniko predicted that the show would be a little more jazzy than their regular show, and it turned out she was right. This was the lead singer’s last show before she moves away to Tokyo and gets married. One of the other members was taking over, and so they kind of passed the torch at the show.
After the show the members lined up to say thanks to everyone as they left, which was a really nice touch. I got to meet Kuniko’s friend who seemed really nice, and she was happy that we enjoyed the show.
We did a little shopping afterwards since we were in Osaka, and although we didn’t buy anything major we did walk past a flower stand that was selling conventional pumpkins for Halloween. They had a human head sized orange pumpkin for 1500 yen. I might come back and get it next weekend for our ESS Halloween activity.
We arrived back home and did some shopping for our dinner. Kuniko bought ingredients for nikujaga (meat and potatoes) and while we wandered around we walked by a stand selling kimchee. The guy gave us a sample, and it was spicy and delicious – much better than the regular stuff that you can buy in stores. We decided to go ahead and buy it, but we found out the hard way that they only sell them in bunches. That made the price for our little bag of kimchee almost 1500 yen. That’s $14 worth of kimchee. They priced it per 100 grams, but the minimum they sell is 500 grams. Sneaky.
Granted, the kimchee is delicious, but the way they sell it is misleading. I doubt that if we bought kimchee made in North Korea by Kim Jon Il himself it would be so expensive. But it is so delicious, and it was a great match with our dinner.
Monday it is back to work, but we’ve got a relatively easy week because of exams.
