I’ve got a little bit of catching up to do! It is hard to believe that it is already June – time is flying by. We had a brief but fun-filled weekend, and now Kuniko is off to work on Monday morning and I’m sitting in front of my lesson plans getting ready for my class tonight. However, the blog must be updated!<\/p>\n
Friday night Kuniko had a get-together with some of her friends in Umeda, and since I had the evening off I thought it would be nice to go out and visit some of the places that I haven’t visited in a while. First stop was Donkey, in Akashi. It has been a very long time since I’ve dropped in, and the place was pretty quiet. The master and his wife seemed healthy and happy, and I sat in on a conversation with a couple of old-timers and a younger guy. <\/p>\n
I can study all day with textbooks and listening exercises, but just an hour of conversation with four or five native speakers of Japanese is a much more effective study method. Conversations make you recall vocabulary just like reading an article or book, but timing is much more critical. After an hour of talking with these guys (and two Guinness) I realized that I have to put much more effort into speaking Japanese. <\/p>\n
Next stop was Ichiban yakitori back in Okubo. The atmosphere of this place is more working class than my usual Okubo yakitori, Komedorishokudo. The food isn’t quite as good at Ichiban, but the clientele are usually a little more likely to strike up a conversation, the master always makes time to chat with me, and there is a genuine feeling that everybody is pleasantly surprised to see me when I show up. I let the master choose my meal, and after two beers and a pretty good mix of yakitori I moved on to the next place.<\/p>\n
Red Spanky is right down the road from Ichiban, and it was almost empty when I got there – just one other customer. I chatted a while with the bartender and had two cocktails – a daiquiri and a frangelico lime. After having the daiquiri I noticed something off about the lime juice, and so I ordered the frangelico lime just to be sure… and it was off, too. I think maybe the bartender used sweetened lime juice instead of plain, and the drinks were not that good. My first time being disappointed at Red Spanky, but no worries – still a fun place to hang out. <\/p>\n
So as I visited each of these places I had a couple of drinks, and after the weird drinks at Red Spanky I was really starting to feel the alcohol. I made a stop at MaxValue for some groceries and then walked home, arriving back there around 10:30 or so. I was tired and went straight to bed – Kuniko wasn’t home yet. <\/p>\n
The next thing I remember was my cellphone ringing – I groggily picked up and it was Kuniko saying that she had forgotten her housekey, and she’d been trying to get a hold of me for an hour. She didn’t know that I was inside the house, and she was a worried about me. She had given up ringing our doorbell and had gone to the station in order to take the train home to her parents. Oops. Luckily I had picked up before she caught the train, and I unlocked the door and she was able to get in the house. Anyway, my bad for passing out drunk and her bad for forgetting the key. Another night at the Fredricks household.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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