hey all,
I had a great weekend. I didn't have to work on Saturday, so I picked up some root beer,chipotle Tabasco sauce, and tea from Kaldi, bought a new shower puff ball, and also two new study books for Japanese. My favorite website, smart.fm, is becoming a paysite soon so I won't be able to use it. I also made a fresh batch of peanut butter, but I do this almost weekly, so it isn't that big a deal.
I studied a little bit of Japanese, played some video games (and decided to sell 3 more games, leaving me with only two), until I went to Tokyo to meet up with Travis. A long island ice tea later, and we were watching Gantz at a nearby theater. Although it probably won't make it to US theaters, should you get the opportunity to see it, don't bother. The manga is much better, and if you haven't read the manga, you won't understand what is going on anyway. If you have read the manga, then you will just be disappointed at the shallow characterization, poor handling of the alien fights, and the disjointed pace at which the movie proceeds.
Sunday, Michi and I came to Yokohama and walked around the Chinatown district. No, there weren't any shootings, strange water shortages, or incestuous relationships (if none of that makes sense, go see Chinatown with Jack Nicholson), but there were some colorful temples, lots of Chinese grocery stores, and some really good Chinese restaurants. We had picked where we were going to eat from the internet before getting there, but we kind of stumbled onto the restaurant while taking in the sights. For 2000 Yen each, we got a bowl of mapo dofu, some sweet and sour pork, fried pork cutlet with chopped greens and jellyfish, a bowl of corn egg-drop soup, and a coconut flavored pudding/jelly of some sort. Everything was delicious, but I think I now have an unhealthy obsession with mapo dofu, because I'm now determined to see if I can make it myself and have it taste like that restaurant's. I've found 3 ingredients that are only listed in some versions of the recipe that I think will be the keys. In particular, there is a pepper-like spice called sansho in Japanese which gives you the weirdest feeling in your mouth, kind of like licking a battery except more pleasant.
The only other things worthy of note are that we now have new shower rooms at my guesthouse, which is nice because the old ones were really bad, and that I should be getting the results from the JLPT (Japanese Language Proficiency Test) in the next two weeks or so.
Cheers,
