Manic May

We got back off holiday and I started an intensive Japanese course. Going to lessons every afternoon. I was in a group of eight and joined a week in. The others were able to write and read hiragana.  I scribbled manically trying to decipher the text rather than being able to read instantly from it. Turns out the student next to me had studied Japanese in college for a year! 

What got me through it!

Teacher on left  a bit shy! So I presented certificate to student

One evening we met up with Wei a friend from Shanghai vision days. He was in Tokyo on a conference. Dominic said we were going for a curry and I was delighted. However we queued up with the 20 people from the conference to go into the ninja restaurant!  We had to go in in sets of five and be led through the corridors and shown the various trapdoors! I was tired and was not amused by this delay in me getting food. We sat down and had pate with crackers in the shape of some ninja weapon. We then had gazpacho... And so the strange mix went on.  Wei asked Dominic if he could stand up and tell people what his first impressions were of working in Japan.  Then everyone stood up and did their summary of the conference.  They were all incredibly motivated by their experience here. We left them to go on drinking and we returned home.

C & M came to visit. I was so excited I woke up at 5:30 when their plane landed.  I decided to get up and do some lesson prep but it was soon 7am and they were ringing the doorbell. Well actually they had rung the doorbell of other neighbours twice.  oops!

We went to Akihabara otherwise known as Electric Town. We headed for Yodabashi Camera.  I stayed on one floor which was full of model making kits of all kinds of stuff as well as Gacha Gacha machines.  They show what the series of plastic things are: cats on sushi, parrots, hamsters in various poses. You put your money in and the thing comes out in a plastic ball. 

Yes it really is a whole bottle of whisky in a vending machine!

We came home via commune 246.  Basically a series of outdoor stalls selling different drinks and food. 

On Monday DK went to work and the rest of us went to the fish market together which was an experience. It sells $24 million of fish a day!  The plan afterwards was to go and eat sushi. However we'd seen fish in various states. In pools of blood, writhing on the floor with someone ready with a knife and a long bit of wire. Euch!  So no one said anything but we were no longer hungry for raw fish.  Instead we ate the samples from the many different food stalls nearby. 

The next day they headed off to Kyoto returning for the weekend. On Saturday we dashed over to Kamakura.  Where we saw the impressive Buddha and then caught an old fashioned train to go over to and around an island.  We had been there before but this time I did have the jellyfish ice cream.  All I will say is that the black sesame was better.  C queued up to get a prawn and a squid.  But they are mixed with some pancake type mix and came completely flattened as a big crispy wafer. 



On Sunday C had found a Time Out walk to do in a trendy area so this is what we did. It has a few French things in town including A Cordon Bleu cookery school. And we arrived to find a French festival going on! So Dominic and I had some French savoury pastries in other words - Pies!

We headed back home to a salad place we recently discovered that C loves.  C and M's second visit! 

Sadly M left which meant the next morning C and I did some work separately and then went out for a drink and a chat together. We went to some trendy organic kind of place. It had the green tea latte that C loves.  It also did decaffeinated coffee which is very unusual. I asked for a latte. That wasn't possible but I could have a drip coffee decaffeinated. I asked for some milk with it and was told that wouldn't be possible. However eventually it was!  We had a great time sitting out and chatting... How come you have the most meaningful conversations just before friends depart?
C then left to get a taxi to the train station to go to her business meeting in another part of Japan.

The rest of May disappeared quickly in a series of English and Japanese lessons.

It was our 15th wedding anniversary this year and I tried to book a posh lunch at Joel Robuchon's several months ago but the place was already busy. Well that's what it showed on the website but the problem was it didn't take bookings so far in advance. By the time I realised this it was actually full. Joel has another place in town which is less posh so I booked that instead. I joked with Dominic that we should go away for the weekend and he said we would see. I'm not sure why as we were both exhausted. The plan for the weekend was lots of nothing followed by lunch and then more nothing and reading papers.

DK had been trying different churches but decided to return to the original so we asked C and R if after church they would like to go to the trendy area for lunch which they did on the condition that we go to some random place they had been to before; a Yemen coffee shop that serves dates (and of course coffee).