Friday night after work Antoine and I got together in Sannomiya for dinner and drinks. We tried a new burger shop in the back alleys of Sannomiya called ジャンク (Junk) which probably should have been a warning sign. But we were craving authentic burgers, and it turned out they were not so junky. I had a double cheeseburger, and Antoine had an avocado burger. Mine was pretty good, but the meat was quite small, and the whole thing fell apart messily after the first bite. The bun tasted great, but wasn’t strong enough to hold the meat, toppings and sauce. The meat itself had great flavor, but since it was made from super tender Japanese beef it fell apart pretty quickly too. Not bad, but it was no Starchild.

We also hit a couple of other places, including D Wine and had some Havens Merlot, and a really tasty Spanish wine – 2007 Condado de Haza Crianza. Finally we stopped in at the New York for a last drink (and some pizza) before catching the train back. It was good to see Antoine and talk about what he’s got on his plate. His family life is going well, and he’s got some things developing in his professional life, so it’ll be good to see how it works out.

Saturday Kuniko was stuck at work all day, and I was holding down the home fort. It was freakishly hot so I mostly stayed inside protected by the air conditioning system. At around 6 pm Kuniko came home from work, and then a few minutes later we left to meet a new friend that I met a while back at Red Spanky. His name is Mr. Ota, and he lives here in Okubo. He met us in front of McDonald’s, and after introducing Kuniko we walked over to a local place he wanted to introduce called 穴婆 (Anaba). I had walked past the place before, but it seemed a little on the spooky side. Turns out that once you go inside it is quite nice. The couple running the tiny restaurant are really friendly and we squeezed in between two regulars at the counter seating and ordered some cold beer.

Mr. Ota is a cool guy. He works as an electrician doing freelance work in the area, and his girlfriend (who I also met at Red Spanky) lives nearby. Unfortunately she was out of town for the weekend, but I’m sure we’ll get a chance to see her in the future. We talked with Mr. Ota and the owners of the place, and had some good conversation while being fed various foods – homemade gyoza, chicken wings, 豚冷しゃぶ (cold pork strips on salad with sesame dressing), chicken hearts, and grilled mushrooms. For some reason I was thirsty for beer – I had five or six mugs of it, when I usually only have one or two. It was a good evening.

Sunday Kuniko had to take an English test in Kobe, so again I had the place to myself. I did a little shopping and chopped vegetables for dinner. I marinated the veggies in olive oil, maple syrup and wasabi. It turned out to be a little too subtle for our tastes, but it was OK. With the grilled veggies we also had 冷奴 (hiyayakko) cold tofu smothered in green onions and topped with 本つゆ (hontsuyu – fish based salty broth). Yum.

It was a nice weekend – we drank a lot but we also managed some healthy eating as well. Next weekend we’re going over to hang out with the Fukumi’s, so more parties on the horizon. I’ve also got a plan to go out to the tachinomi tonight with Bill, one of the inspectors at work. Looking forward to it…

Last night after work I got home to a hot house and did my best to open all the windows and get a cross breeze going through to cool it down. While the house was cooling I started marinating two chicken breasts in olive oil, lemon juice, thyme, garlic, salt and pepper. I turned on the grill, and then went outside to harvest a handful of basil. After a bit I threw the chicken on the grill and shortly after that Kuniko came home.

She was wondering why I wasn’t using the air conditioning.

So we turned it on for the first time this season, and all the sweat just magically stopped. So nice. Dinner turned out great – I put the chicken on some “premium” bread from the lady down the street, with a little mozzarella and some tomatoes, then shredded the basil and put it on as well. A perfect sandwich.

We also used the A/C to cool down our bedroom for sleeping, and that meant that when I woke up I was sweating – a trend that will continue for the next three months. On the positive side, I’m sure to start losing some weight because of this.

Tonight I’m meeting Antoine after work for dinner and drinks. Not sure where we might go, but the nice thing about Sannomiya is that there are plenty of options. I haven’t hung out with Antoine for months and months, so it’ll be good to catch up with him and see how his new family is doing.

The humidity is really kicking in around here. At work I have no choice but to use the air conditioning, since I work in a small classroom in the middle of the building without any exterior windows to open. But at home, we’ve been getting by so far without using the air conditioning – relying on open windows and cross-breezes to keep things cool. Unfortunately I think that in the next couple of days we’re going to have to use the artificial cooling. It is seriously hot and humid recently.

Last night Kuniko had an after-work party, so I cooked up some leftovers and relaxed around the house, listening to Mitch Hedberg and watching some TV. The weekend is rapidly approaching, and I don’t really have much planned, so a little midweek comedy party hit the spot. We got to bed rather late – sometime after midnight – so getting up this morning at 5 am was a little rough. Like a couple of zombies shambling out of the bedroom, actually.

This morning the top search on my blog was “brian fredericks diet plan”. Whoever you are, don’t do it! It’s all parties, alcohol and noodles over here. No effect whatsoever on my weight…

Last night Kuniko requested pho for dinner, so we cooked up some rice noodles, a beef broth, and a few mint leaves and cilantro from the garden. It was delicious, but a little hot for this kind of weather. It seems to be getting hotter by the day, and plenty of humidity from the intermittent rain. Ugh.

Tonight Kuniko will be attending a party after work, so I’ll be on my own for dinner. I think I’ll kill some leftovers we’ve got sitting around, so nothing crazy planned. Maybe open a bottle of wine?

Although it was raining most of the day yesterday it had little effect on me as I work entirely indoors. But it is clear from my students that they are getting sick of the rain. The rainy season seems to be going on and on, and as soon as it ends we’ll face the summer heat. Talk about a rock and a hard place.

Today Kuniko is going into Osaka after work to pick up our passports, hopefully with a visa attached. That means that I’ll get home before her, and she requested some pho for dinner. Luckily we’ve got a great crop of cilantro growing outside. Now I’m wishing I had some seriously spicy peppers to chop up and put in as well. I guess I’ll put that on my list.

OK, off to work early today. My class load is increasing starting this week, so even more lessons to plan out before and after work…

One of the best things about the weekend is that it finally gives me something to blog about. Keeping the secrets of my company and students makes the weekly blog posts pretty boring, I admit. Luckily the weekend comes along, and finally I can write some good stuff.

And good stuff it was. We started with a meetup in Kobe on Friday night. I got off work and went to a wine shop to pick up a couple bottles of wine to bring to Mr. Tojo’s party the next day. Soon afterwards I met Kuniko at the entrance to Tokyu Hands, and went to 味香苑 for dinner. This place was introduced to me through one of my students, and it was pretty authentic. Without a reservation it is hard to get in there, but we had planned ahead and we got a counter seat. Turns out that there are two restaurants owned by the same guy, and they are across the street from each other. We initially went to the wrong place, but the owner took us across the street to the correct place, and chatted with us while he did it. He was a really friendly guy, and you could tell he knew the importance of hospitality.

We ordered from the menu, selecting a range of foods including tofu noodles, spiced lamb skewers, a cinnamon-spiced fried rice, and stir fried vegetables. As one of my students pointed out to me, their menu is quite large, and even includes dog. Although the name of each dish is translated to Japanese on the menu, there was at least one entry that was only in Chinese. Although the kanji for dog in Japan is 犬, in Chinese it is ç‹—, and there it was. I didn’t have the courage to order it. At least, not this time.

The best dish we had was a stir fry with harusame noodles and pickles, and when it arrived the aroma from the dish was intense. The spice smelled like every Asian street market we’ve ever visited – Bangkok, Hanoi, Hue and China all had the same exotic smell. I wish I could identify, but it is exotic and something we almost never smell here in Japan.

There was a Chinese lady entertaining a Japanese guy in the corner, and all the staff were Chinese, and it really had an authentic feel. The servers spoke Japanese however, and although they often times seemed curt or grouchy, it only added to the authenticity of the place. We got the same treatment when eating in China.

On Saturday Kuniko had to work most of the day, and I stayed home to do some housecleaning and laundry. At around 5 pm we lugged a box full of wine and beer over to Mr. Tojo’s house for the party.

He was having a big group of coworkers and friends over to introduce his brand new house. When we arrived there was already a few people there, and the party started in earnest after a few minutes. Two of my ex-students were there, and also a student of another teacher that had worked at the company for a while (they were impressed with how long his nose hairs were). Introductions were made, there was a lot of drinking, and twice we ran back to our house to bring over some wine glasses and other support items for the party. Mrs. Tojo cooked some great foods for dinner – roasted rosemary chicken, roast beef, and lots of sashimi. Yum.

After several hours of non-stop drinking and talking one of the guys who was drinking the heaviest fell off his chair, sending the chair against the pristine wall behind him and leaving some fairly dark scratches on the wall. Everybody remained calm and smiling, but I’m sure both Mr. and Mrs. Tojo would have liked to kick the guy. I remember the first scratch in our wall after we moved in – I couldn’t take my eyes off of it. Hopefully this wasn’t the first scratch in their house.

We finally drank our fill and headed out rather late, and then stumbled back to our house and went right to bed. The next thing I knew it was almost noon on Sunday, and I was very glad that we didn’t have anything planned. Mostly we read, rested and recuperated yesterday, and ate only somen noodles for dinner.

Now it’s Monday and we’re back to work. It should be a pretty non-eventful week, with a meetup with Antoine at the end of it. Hopefully there will be something to blog about…

After a full week the weekend is looking pretty good right now. I’ll meet up with Kuniko after work to get some Chinese food at 味香苑 in Sannomiya. I’ve been there once before and the food is pretty authentic. Last night I was making reservations and it was a comedy of errors in Japanese as the American guy tried to speak clear Japanese to the Chinese guy on the line. Hopefully we were able to communicate enough to secure a proper reservation.

We’ve also got to pick up a couple bottles of white wine to bring to the party we are attending tomorrow night at Mr. Tojo’s house. He’s got a house full and so we’ll try to bring 5-6 bottles of wine and a couple six packs of beer. We volunteered to bring some alcohol, hopefully somebody else will bring some food…

It looks like the rain has let up for the week, and we might be able to enjoy a dry, albeit cloudy, weekend. Fingers crossed.

The week seems to be flying by. I’ve been busy at work, and that always helps, but also I’m running on a lot of stored up energy from last weekend’s three days off. I’m looking forward to visiting Mr. Tojo and his wife on Saturday night, but the rest of the weekend should be pretty relaxing.

Last night I spent the evening watching most of the Tigers game. One of my students was attending, so I wanted to catch up with the Tigers and see how they are doing. Right now they are near the bottom of the division, but they seem to be climbing lately. It turned out to be a great game, with them winning by one run. One surprising thing was that they cut away from the broadcast at 9:45 in the bottom of the ninth and the Tigers ahead by only one run. There was even a runner on second, but they decided to cut away to another show. I was pretty surprised – the game hung in the balance, and it was the most dramatic part, but they stopped the broadcast. Strange.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/john-barrett/chicagoburgerbiblecom-kob_b_875658.html

Last night I was grazing on leftovers while Kuniko had to work late, and what leftovers they were: spaghetti in a tart cream sauce with ham, pickled red and yellow peppers, and garlic herb cheese wrapped in prosciutto. We tend to eat big on the weekends, and occasionally that spills over into the work week. Luckily from today we’re back to normal food – and since Kuniko is coming home early today she’ll be behind the wheel of tonight’s menu.

Anybody watching Game of Thrones? I’m up to speed on the books but last night’s episode was still brutal. Can’t wait to see what they do with the next episode. Let’s hope their computer graphics department is up for the challenge.

OK, OK, I’m back. Three days of weekend seems to be just the right amount – I’d love to get into this schedule regularly. It was a full couple of days, though.

First the trip on Friday into Osaka to apply for visas went reasonably well. They only accept visa applications between 10 am and noon, so beforehand Kuniko had downloaded application forms so that we could fill them out in advance. Each of us had two forms to fill out, and I had to include a ton of paperwork related to my visa in Japan. Unfortunately, when I arrived at the front of the line at the visa office, they told me that we had filled out the forms for the Tokyo office, and that I’d have to start over with their forms. Oh, shit.

The office was busy, with not a pen or table space in sight. I hadn’t brought a pen, so I went next door to a small supermarket to buy one. The pens there were sold out – only red available. Trying not to panic I went across the street to another store, but it was a members-only store. Sorry, you can’t come in.

No convenience store in sight, and just about 90 minutes left before the visa office closed. Suddenly, I had a flash of inspiration, and went into a coffee shop. I sat down, ordered an ice coffee, and asked to borrow a pen. A comfortable writing space, a pen, and some coffee, all for 350 yen. Nice.

After rewriting our applications, and some research on the internet with my phone, I was able to get all the paperwork done. Going back to the office with one hour left, I held the door for an Indian guy who was very friendly. Turned out he was from Bangalore, and he gave me some tips on traveling while we’re there. By the time I turned in my papers and paid the bill (Americans always get screwed on visa prices it seems. Kuniko’s price was 2000 yen, and mine 12,000 yen) it was nearly noon. Kuniko will go back and pick up our passports with the visas in a week or so.

After the stress of the paperwork and time limit I decided to go out for some Taiwanese food. My students had recommended a branch of the chain restaurant DinTaiFung (鼎泰豊) specializing in shorompo – little pouches of pork or seafood and soup, steamed and served as dim sum 点心 style. My students usually go to this restaurant in Taiwan where it is super-cheap. Instead I paid a whole lot more for a whole lot less, but I will agree that the quality was excellent. Very delicious.

After that I was free to wander around downtown Osaka, which is always interesting, and allowed me a chance to exercise a little. Eventually I made my way back to Kobe and met Kuniko for dinner at 満月 (mangetsu) – a nice yakiniku place between Kobe and Motomachi stations. This was also a recommended restaurant by one of my former students, and it was also an excellent meal. We started out with some beef sushi – raw strips of wagyu beef on rice – and then moved into the cooked meats. We were completely satisfied with the meal and the price – a good place to eat.

Saturday and Sunday we both had off, but because of heavy rain we didn’t get out much. We rented some movies, spent a lot of time in the kitchen, and drank lots of wine. Very nice.

This week should be a standard work week for me, but Kuniko has a late night tonight. The rain has slacked off at least, so we should be able to go about our business this week without getting too wet.

Today is the last day of my week, thanks to a little forethought about six months ago. I had figured that I’d need to get a visa at some point for the trip to India, so tomorrow is the day. We’ve got our paperwork finished, and I’ve got the addresses mapped out on the phone. The window for visa applications is only two hours in the morning, so I’ll need to get hit it just right to get in and out of there at a reasonable time.

One of my students told me about a pretty good Taiwanese restaurant in the area, so I’m going to try to drop in for lunch. It’s supposed to be pretty popular, though – it might be tough to get in. The good news is that there are a lot of options in Osaka.

So I’m off to teach the last classes of the week.. I’ll try to blog later this weekend.

Kuniko cooked a couple of great dishes last night – mabochicken, which had all the spices of mabodofu, but instead of the tofu had chicken and eggplant instead. Also we had very spicy fried tofu with a side dish of spinach and ham salad. I’m always looking forward to Tuesdays – Kuniko has a lot more time to cook and she gets pretty creative.

The rainy season is continuing here. I brought an umbrella to work yesterday and I’ll do it again today. Hopefully we’ll get some sunshine for my long three day weekend coming up…

Just a quick entry today – not much excitement this week!

It’s good to be back at work. Yesterday I talked with my boss about the next round of classes starting in the fall, and we talked about the best way to handle classes for the new employees that just entered the company. I think we’ve got a basic idea, and he’ll put together a preliminary schedule. I think the basic idea is that I’ll continue to work the same schedule, so I’m happy about that. It’s a really nice schedule for me.

I beat Kuniko home by at least two hours, so I had plenty of time to grill some avocados and fill them with homemade salsa for dinner. They turned out pretty good – who knew grilling avocados would be so good? Probably a lot of people, actually. Today Kuniko has a half day off, so I’m looking forward to seeing what she comes up with for dinner.

Not much else going on – just getting things ready for my Friday trip to Osaka to pick up our visas for the India trip. It should be a proper adventure in the big city…

We’re getting back to work around here after the weekend. It was a pretty quiet weekend actually. Kuniko and I went out to Indian food at Swaad on Friday, and then Yoshi and I hit the trail on Saturday morning.

We took a slightly different course than usual and ended up somewhere on Mt. Rokko I had never been before. The area was called Futatabi park (再度公園) and was accessible by car as well as on foot. We found a small lake in the middle of the forest, and surrounding it were small spots where people could stop and rest. There were some picnic tables on the far side of the lake, so we sat down there and caught our breath from the long hike. Yoshi pulled a surprise and pulled a bottle of Napa Cellars Cabernet Sauvignon from his bag, so we had some snacks and split a bottle of wine right there on the lake. Very nice.

The next stop was to check out the Foreigner Cemetery nearby. Unfortunately it was locked up, but there was an overlook where you could see graves and gravesites nestled into the forest overlooking a big valley between the mountains. Seemed like a pretty good location to be buried, if dead people care about that kind of thing.

From there we hiked down the mountain and eventually descended Mt. Rokko right in front of Kuniko’s school, and by chance caught up with her going home. Good timing! Saturday night we had a wine and cheese party and got into some of the good stuff – a 2006 Marietta Vineyards Angeli Cuvee. Highly recommended if you can find a bottle.

Sunday we went out to see Black Swan (quick review: creepy but good) and also watched a movie at home “Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind” that Kuniko had never seen before. All told, a full and enjoyable weekend!