Japan's so much about friends...food!!!!

Ohhh, OLD friends, friends from way back were in town!!!!

In this photo- on the left, Sayoko is the friend from way back who's restaurant is where Ischin and Naomi work at...and where Yoshie, next to her, came to give a live performance Sunday the 16th. Yoshie came to our english school back in like 1987. The rest is "history". Yoshie also lived in San Fran for a while. In the middle is Kaoriko....who moved to Nishio after the Kobe earthquake with her husband and child, who's birth I was at. Kaoriko and her first husband who are sundancers used to run sweat lodges where we had a tipi set up...there's me...and Julie from Australia, who was in California about three weeks ago visiting us in Santa Cruz and, and...on and on...what everyone is doing!!!!

At Parlor shine the next day, Yoshie went back to see Parlor Shine and Naomi and Sheon. Parlor Shine was the coffee shop she went to when she was in High School, and where I taught english classes for 11 years. Oh, it was so cute, Naomi and Sheon were both blow drying their hair, Yoshie worked for a Beauty Salon, when we first met.

One day last week I cooked for Taka's father....(and others)

From our little old dingy looking kitchen, good food comes out~

I don't have many dishes to share, but this is one...

lasagna in the works...japanese little mushrooms and slim eggplant, pork lasagna (with cottage cheese- no ricotto cheese outside of big cities in Japan)...

I made oatmeal cookies and poppy seed cake. In Japan, poppy seeds are ridiculously expensive and are only in small packages of about 2 Tablespoons for perhaps $3.50.

Oh, and this little oven...THIS is what I get to bake in in Japan. We used to make about ten or twelve pizza crusts, then everyone (four kids and usually 5 or 6 adults) would "decorate" their own pizzas, baking them two at a time.

I can only make six muffins at a time...and cookies can take awhile. That's why sometimes I just put a pan-full of cookie dough onto the pan and make like "squares"

OKONOMIYAKI!!!! MAKI~ style!

Ischin-kun's making great okonomiyai!!!

And now, these days, with mochi, THIN mochi on top. It looks a little messy~but totally yummy.