Our larders are full.  It’s not Costco is so far away now, but the holidays means hosting and drinking, so we loaded up.  Actually, I loaded up, and Kuniko watched with kind of a bemused look on her face.  The shopping trip was a success.  We came home and put up our Christmas tree, did some quick decorating around the house, and then hit the hay.

I’m looking forward to a nice low-key weekend.  Maybe do some reading, catch up on my TV shows, and chill out around the house.  Between all the veggies and Costco food around here, there is no reason to go out at all.

Tonight after work we’re going back to visit our old friend, Costco.  It seems like it has been forever since we’ve been there, but actually it has been around two months.  That’s a long time for us.  We’re stocking up for the holiday season, so it’ll be expensive – there are a couple parties this month that we’ll be hosting.

Since we’ll need the car after work, we are driving to work this morning.  That is good news – a storm blew in after we went to bed last night and it has been windy enough to keep waking us up. I’m glad we don’t have to walk out there in this weather.

Last night the doorbell suddenly rang, and it was Keiko and Niro, Kuniko’s parents, delivering some holiday vegetables.  The unexpected visit sent us scrambling to organize the living room, as we are still in post-Christmas package shipping mode.  The dropped off enough veggies to keep us and the rest of the neighborhood in greens for the rest of the month.

We spent some time talking with them and catching up with what’s new.  Kuniko’s sister bought a house and will move in at the end of this month, so Kuniko’s folks had been out to Okayama to take a look at it.  Keiko’s wallet was stolen from her purse inside a grocery store while she was putting things in a grocery bag (“they got my point cards!” she complained).  And their cat is getting noisier and noisier in his old age.

After they left we got to work processing the produce.  Their were lots of Japanese greens, chigensai, mizuna, and so forth, so I started to clean and chop some for a salad tomorrow.  We had three heads of hakusai, so we kept one, and delivered the other two to neighbors.  We also gave away some daikons and koimo to neighbors, but we’ve still got tons of food to eat.  Tonight we’ll eat some oden that Kuniko’s mom brought over, and work on the salad.  Unfortunately Kuniko gets home around ten tonight, so it’ll be a big, heavy dinner late at night.  Lots of healthy, fresh food on the horizon, though!

Once again we’ll be off this morning early.  Kuniko is feeling a little better today, but since she can get out of work early she’ll be taking our Christmas packages and shipping them out this afternoon.  I still can’t believe that I would have to take a day off to mail packages in this country.  Having Kuniko ship them saves me a holiday from work.

It should be a pretty slow week this week.  Kuniko has a party on Friday, and we were considering a Costco run on Thursday, but other than that it’ll be a normal, cold week in December.

Towards the end of last week Kuniko was starting to feel sick.  I’m sorry to report that even after a day off on Sunday she’s in much the same condition.  She had to stay home on Saturday from a dinner with the Fukumis at Chiro, one of her favorite restaurants.  This morning she still seems like she’s in bad shape.  I doubt that she’ll call in sick, though.

So although Kuniko couldn’t go to the dinner with the Fukumis, I did.  We went through with it because the reservation was made specially (through our connections) and I would have felt bad cancelling on them.  But as three people we did have a good time eating and drinking, talking and telling stories, and enjoying the food there.   This time we had a seafood pizza, some mind-blowing pasta absolutely infused with rosemary, and a couple of nice bottles of wine.  The kitchen sent out a platter of Italian cold cuts on the house, and we even made friends with a new waiter who came from Italy.  His English skills were very good, and he confided in me that he thought the pizza at this place was better than most places in his native country.  Although in his hometown of Napoli this is this great place…

We finished up the majority of our Christmas shopping this weekend, too.  I’m looking at a pile of boxes ready to go out in the next week or so, and that is a good feeling.  With the New Year’s cards already finished as well, that is a lot of pressure off in the month of December.

We finally got our act together and printed out our New Year cards.  This year a relative of Kuniko’s passed away, and so our cards are sent out early, and basically they say, “Don’t send us any New Year cards because we lost somebody this year”.  We had to send them out earlier than normal to give other people time to change their plans.  Usually we are very last minute on New Year cards – I remember putting them in the mailbox at Kansai airport on our way out of the country during previous holidays.  So it is a strange feeling to get them all wrapped up so early.

This morning I’m on my own – Kuniko has a business trip today and so she can sleep in an hour or two.  She’s been fighting a cold since yesterday, so hopefully the extra sleep will help!

Tonight we’re going to decorate the Xmas tree and do a mini-Christmas party, depending on Kuniko’s health.  It is starting to feel like the holidays may be coming.

For various reasons, the last three days we’ve driven to work.  Kuniko and I jump in the car at around 5:30, and I get to work about 6:20 in the morning.  There is no traffic early in the morning – and it is very comfortable to ride in the warm car and listen to music and talk about our upcoming day.  It is pretty rare for us, since using the train is convenient as well.  Anyway, today is the last day of the four day streak.  We’ll be back on foot for the weekend, but it has been nice spending more time with Kuniko in the morning.

Yesterday after work we had to do a little shopping around our neighborhood, and that meant a great chance to go over to Swaad for dinner.  Our favorite local Indian restaurant has been skipped over lately, at first because of the heat of the summer, and then because we’ve been so busy.  We’ve been focusing on figuring out a good French restaurant and we somehow never thought of visiting our hole-in-the-wall Indian restaurant in our backyard.

Ha, ha, boy did we miss out.

The food was just as good as we remembered, and the portions seemed a little larger than we had ever had before.  The staff remembered us and seemed worried that we hadn’t been around.  I got the feeling that the chef was ready to call missing persons if we didn’t show up soon.

So all was well last night as we dined on Masala Kofta, Mutton curry, tikka chicken, and a giant piece of nan.  We’ll be back soon.

The shopping also went well, and we’re close to getting things organized for shipping for Christmas.  We’ve also got New Years Cards to write, so as usual, the beginning of December will  be touch and go.

I found something strange in my stats log – apparently if you search for “meaning of Olympian sex” on Google, my site gives the top result.  Wut?

Thursday night after work we went to Anonym for a celebratory anniversary dinner. The chef once again hit a homerun, with a course that was all-new to us. It was the first time for us to eat there this time of year, and so we were treated to some really unusual foods. I think the highlight was celery flan with raw peppercorns and roasted apple pieces.

It has been a “stay-inside” weekend so far. Friday I spent most of the day inside (because of the rainy weather) and could only really get out to do some shopping. We ended up having Thai food for dinner, and I rediscovered the wonder (and danger) of shaking up sidecar cocktails. Yum/Whoah!

Saturday was more of the same. Since Kuniko was working every day of this three day weekend, I’ve been behind the stove making stuff. Saturday was grilled chicken and pork tacos with homemade beans. We had so many beans that I gave some to select neighbors.

Finally, on Sunday I spent most of the day walking around the town for exercise. I went as far out as the beach in Nakayagi, and then came back through the shopping center. It was nice to stroll around town and burn some calories.

Now it is back to a regular schedule – five working days in a row. Hard to go back to work after a holiday weekend, but it could be worse.

Since Thursday is Friday this week we’ll be going out to celebrate our anniversary at one of our favorite restaurants, Anonym, tonight after work.  I’m looking forward to the meal – the cook is always creative and the wine sommelier knows her stuff.  I’m also looking forward to turning off the alarm and sleeping through tomorrow morning.  Unfortunately, Kuniko will be working all three days of the holiday – tough break, kid.

These cold mornings make it somehow harder to get up and running.  My schedule means that I must catch the 5:49 am train, so that means that my “free” time is limited in the morning.  It seems like however early I get up I still have to rush around in the mornings.

Yesterday was our wedding anniversary, and by chance it fell on a Tuesday, which meant that Kuniko had a half day off.  She went shopping for materials in Kobe, then came home and made a very nice dinner.  We had prosciutto and basil wrapped meatballs smothered in a tomato sauce with freshly grated Parmesan cheese and black pepper, a salad of herbs, chicken, avocado and celery, and stuffed mushrooms as an appetizer.  This combined with a bottle of 2005 Nicolas Feuillatte Brut Chardonnay.  Delicious.

So Tuesday worked out very well for me, and now we are drawing closer to the weekend since Friday is a national holiday.  Hurray!

No time to blog this morning!  Have a cat picture instead…

Last Friday night I met up with Inoguchi sensei for some Indian food in Kobe.  The restaurant that we went to was down the street from the old Graciani restaurant, which has the distinction of being the first restaurant I ever visited in Kobe, and the first place I ate dinner with my future wife.  The Indian restaurant was just half a block away, next to a Swiss restaurant.  We had an all-you-can-eat course, along with all-you-can-drink beer, and the price was right.  It was only about 3000 yen for each of us, and we left with our stomachs full.  The Indian waiter wasn’t sure whether to use English or Japanese with us, and in the end he settled on English.  The food itself was OK – what it lacked in flavor was made up in volume.

It had been a year since I had talked with Mr. Inoguchi, and he has been doing well.  He’s off to Hong Kong for some food tourism next month, and he had been hoping that we would be free to come along.  Unfortunately we’ve got other plans, but maybe sometime in the future we could go along for the ride.  He’s got some favorite restaurants in HK he wants to introduce to us.

Saturday night I met Kuniko in Kobe after she finished work to do some Christmas shopping.  The shopping was fairly successful, and we celebrated by trying a new restaurant that specializes in pizzas.  I guess it might have been an Italian restaurant, but the atmosphere was a little on the casual side.  The food was pretty good, though.

Finally, on Sunday I stayed home and did housework and shopping while Kuniko was at a conference.  We ended up spending a little time together in the evening, eating currywurst and drinking German beer.  So it was a bit of a high calorie weekend, but we’ll get back to healthy food this week.  We’ve got an anniversary coming up, so that is something to look forward to as well.

Tonight I’ll meet up with Inoguchi sensei for the first time in a long time.  We’ve been meeting on and off for the past eight years or so.  He’s always an interesting guy to talk to, and he’s the most well-read person I know.  We’re going to meet after work and go to an Indian restaurant that he recommends in Kobe.  It has been a while since Kuniko and I have been to our beloved Swaad in town, so Indian sounds like just the right thing.

Once again this weekend we’ll head out for some shopping.  I’ll meet Kuniko after work on Saturday to shop and to have dinner in town, and then I’ll be “home alone” all day Sunday while she is on a business trip.  Sounds like another slow, quiet weekend.