It was one of those strange days with very little responsibility. I went into work and sat around for most of the day studying. I finished up the English version of the school brochure, and turned that into the vice-principal for the final rubber stamp approval. I had lunch in the cafeteria, a place were they hadn’t seen me in months. They rewarded me with an extra meaty gyuudonburi. Thanks, ladies!
Kuniko wanted to head into Umeda to look in the Hankyu department store. We heard from Tomomi-chan that they had an exhibition going of Kuniko’s favorite characters right now. So, I asked to go home early today at work and they said – no problem. I met Kuniko on the platform in Sanomiya, and then we took the train on into Osaka.
When we got to the Hankyu department store the front was decorated with her characters in different Christmas poses. We looked at them all, and then found out that the exhibition area was on the seventh floor. We went up to the top and only then looked at the brochure and realized that the exhibition had ended a couple of weeks ago. Nooooooooooooooooo!
Luckily we got a few things for Kuniko’s coworkers, and they bagged up our gifts with special bags featuring the characters that Kuniko loves. So in a way, we got souvenirs.
From there we looked around a little bit, Yodobashi camera, the giant bookstore under the Hankyu line, and when we were starting to get hungry we went off to find Outback steakhouse. We had been to Outback in Osaka several years ago with Antoine, and so it had been a long time. They have really good prices with full sized portions, and it’s amazing to go there now and remember how in America I used to eat everything and still want more.
Tonight Kuniko ordered up a plate of pasta and I had a medium sized cut of prime rib. I haven’t had prime rib since I’ve been to Japan, so it must have been at least three years since I’ve had a bite of it. It was delicious – so juicy and a really good sized cut.
The restaurant was pretty quiet. There was another foreign guy chatting with the waitress in English. The waitress was eager to talk to someone in English and the customer seemed like a guy on business in Japan and probably a little lonely for someone to talk to. We could easily overhear the conversation and we couldn’t help wondering about everyone’s motives.
We got out of there with full stomachs and walked back towards Umeda. We made an ill-advised stop for coffee at a place called either “Happy Muffin Café” or “Happy Muffins Café”, not sure which it was – and the staff weren’t too sure either. Everything was marked differently, a real branding nightmare. I thought maybe the coffee would settle all the food in our stomachs, but it ended up weighing us down even more.
Kuniko and I decided that we had enough energy to hit Kobe and check out the Luminaries. This was the third time that I’ve seen them, the second time with Kuniko. Even though it was getting late on Tuesday there were still crowds of people. The line up approach to the correct street said that it would be about an hour. We decided to be clever and we walked to the end of the procession and saw them backwards. It saved a lot of time.
From there we made our way back home, and tucked ourselves into bed. Kuniko has the day off tomorrow, but I have to go to work. I’m going to have one class and also an evening class with Miyake sensei’s students. That should be something to look forward to.
