SENBEI and Students and SENTO!!!

We went for lunch (yes, more great food) but perhaps even better than the food was the public bath. Here you can see me and my three older kids, all fresh from the baths~ honestly, there's nothing like Japanese baths...that I know of anyway!

Taka got to taking a massage in this massage chair after his bath.

Below, we went to a buy some rice crackers from a cute shop making them.

IIKA!!! I mean いいいか？！　ha ha, it's fun to mess with the Japanese language sometimes, and my speaking ability makes me ignorant enough to mess around with words like this! Squid = IKA...but saying "it's OK?" is: I-I-KA? pronounced ""eeee-ka"?

Okay, anyway, this shop is a squid cracker shop~ that's what's started all of this rambling!

sorry, I couldn't get a good photo of the stovetop they make the crackers on~ visible through this window:

Some cute kids following orders in their school caps ~ reminding me what country I'm in!!!

Days in Nishio

In our tiny kitchen, Ischin cooked himself some yummy looking eggs and bacon! He was cooking for me a number of times too. He's especially good at spaghetti!

I did manage to cook a little while we were in Japan. This dinner around our little "dining room table" with everyone had been burritos~ our girls and their boyfriends, missing Ischin's girlfriend who had to work late~ we managed to save her a couple of burritos she got to eat later tho!

TENNIS!!! We made time for TENNIS!!! The autumn leaves in the background are hard to see~ it was so pretty! We played some doubles with funky rackets. Then Ischin and Taka played singles. Taka was seriously challenged by Ischin! Taka barely won!!!

Oh and you can't have Japan without KARAOKE!!!

We can take in all the food we want, oh, we even ordered pizza delivery. Shoot, I should have taken a photo of the game center outside these rooms, downstairs. Noisy as can be. But in this room all we hear is one another singing!

Above Naomi with her pro singing boyfriend Isamu! and below Sheon chan with her cutie boyfriend Fumiya

And three friends joined us~ Jennifer (next to me) has been in Japan two years now, Anita...goodness, she's been in Japan 12? years. And their singing friend on the end...Aya

Jennifer and I didn't sing a PEEP! Cause, we just don't!

Time with, and food compliments of, the Yoshizaki's

Sayoko and Shinji have the best party house in Japan, I swear! Best get togethers and BEST FOOD!!! AND they've taken it to "another level" further down in today's piece you can see their new restaurant "Cafe Ocean" in Hazu, right on Mikawa Bay, near "Wakiki Beach" Japan!!!

This evening here are the chefs in the kitchen!

....roasting ginko nuts, to go along with a spread your mouth would water over.

(sorry, didn't get a pic of tonight's menu!)

Naomi and her beaux Isamu were there too for a little bit, then they were off to dance away the night at a trance concert!!

While there that night, Sayoko showed us the plans for building a dome house-restaurnat...

and it is to be HERE!!! Behind Cafe Ocean. And here they are again, the lovely, and ones and only: Shinji and Sayoko

Taka's father went with Ischin, Taka and me to the restaurant which opened last Spring.

Here's the view from Cafe Ocean's patio

where we had lunch...the weather was incredible this day. It was so warm, actually it got hot!

(below is Taka's papa, Taka and Ischin)

And the food...It's like, yeah, FOOD..."Here we go again"Cafe Ocean is the "Organic Farmer's Kitchen" which is how they describe themselves. People know me for eating only a little rice, but this day, "I ate the whole thing"!

"What is everything" you might ask. Well, I can't say really, but on that sauted thin eggplant, which was on some potatoes and daikon, there was scrumptuous homemade miso. The brown round fried potato was awesome! OH and another interesting sauce/paste was on a piece of waffle made on MY old little waffle iron! Naomi's creation? Well, yes, my girl Naomi is in charge of desserts!

In the tomatoey, mushroomey soup was this pretty little carrot!This dessert below, you can barely make out the mochi, but it's on top of some cream

which is on top of sweetened adzuki beans. Then a little cup of ice cream with a crunchy yummy topping, I don't know what it was! I just eat and know~ IT WAS SUPERB!!!

Taka eating Udon in Japan, Japanese style

To narrate this: Eating Udon, with the katsuo-boshi waving in the breeze "Go for it!" I say to Taka as I'm giggling (and videotaping) I say: "... the proper way to eat in Japan: slurp it up... and then they don't chew it~ me laughing~ that's the whole truth and nothing but the truth." ha ha ha I laugh. Taka tries not to act  interrupted. "Watch him, one more time, now he's going to chew a little this time for me" I'm laughing... and I add " but it feels strange to chew it though, huh?" he knods his head once and he continues to eat, I continue to giggle.

A day in Japan 11/19/10

It was a really nice day in Japan! Taka had to renew his driver's license in TOYOKAWA, about an hour from our home.

The Japanese DMV have a funny way of putting it...for being such serious people. "Change foreign license into Japanese one"

After that business was finished we went to "celebrate" over lunch. We found an UDON restaurant my son says is pretty well known.

The restaurant, the Japanese decor is just so great! They enlarged old "back packing" equipment and such to hang up on the walls.

I love all the detail! And design... Even the chopstick paper looks so pretty!Taka opened the newspaper and there's SUMO. It's been so long since I could watch sumo on TV. Taka was noticing and pointing out that so many of the wrestlers are Mongolian now!! Mongolians are taking over the Japanese sport. Uh oh~ I wonder how that's going to work!

Then food comes, oh the food!

This was NIKU SOBA or something like that. Thinly sliced beef with SOBA noodles and... the wonderfully, thinly sliced green onions was the best!!! Oh, and the NORI cut into such small slivers too...the sauce was spicy and perfect...
Taka and I shared our two dishes...
The second dish was UDON that had tempura fried shrimp, lotus root and a sweet potato...along with fried pork with miso sauce over rice. Could you ask for anything more?! I think this all cost about $20.00, tho my beer added about 5 bucks to the bill~

After we were full and content with lunch we went a short distance to a Shrine called INARI-JINJA which Taka always went to for New Year's prayers every January 2nd with his parents.

It was incredible also how the building wound around...

I had to ask this family to take a photo of them. My Japanese wasn't clear enough, he thought I was asking him to photograph me and Taka, I was like "No, YOUR family!" he didn't realize how special they look. The next generation, a unique brand of Japanese, not all of them of course!

On our walk back to our car we found a little shop selling green tea soft ice cream. We had a sample bite of some cake they had on display out front and they went to pour tea for us to wash it down with...(see the little cups) the tea was superb! (and free! how KIND of them!!! SO Japanese and yummy!) And then we asked for one soft cream, and just as I was taking this photo the woman held up her fingers to show us the cost of the soft cream "Two hundred Yen" but it looked like a peace sign the Japanese often signal when posing! I laughed with her about it!

The longer I spend in Japan the more it...brings out the love I feel for it which has rooted itself in me...