Bowling and Book Browsing

This last week kind of flew by me. Nothing much exciting to report, just the rhythm of the days (work sleep work sleep) let the time slip by quickly. The weekend was fun, though. Saturday night Ulala and i had dinner with her family. We ate at a place near Hommachi called Kyo Chabana. You can see the pics below. Not the most appetizing food to look at but it tasted great! No, really! I recommend it highly. Not too pricey, either.

The after we had dinner we went bowling. Yup, bowling. Why did we go bowling? No, it wasn't a 10 year-old's birthday. I don't really know why we went. I guess someone thought it would be fun. Actually, grumpiness aside, it was fun. I discovered that after all these years i still have roughly the score i did back when i was a ten-year old attending bowling birthdays. Terrible. Ah well. We had a nice time and i'll just ignore the scoring system. Much like i do in golf. ; )


On Sunday, after brunch, we headed over to Drunk Bears in Umeda for, of all things, a Mount Allison reunion of sorts. I guess i can't really call it a reunion since i didn't know anyone there. Participants of the exchange program that my canadian university has with Kwansei Gakuin here in Japan. Thank you to Adam Christie for setting that up and to the people that helped him. My wife and i had a nice time and i even ran into two Japanese women who used to live in the same residence as i did.

Then i bought a new suit. A formal, black suit. And while i do look awesome in it, i fear that it is for sad occasions that are on the horizon. Shopping for the suit was an educational experince. The staff that helped us was more helpful than most and she explained all kinds of neat things about cuts, styles, and traditions and superstitions here in Japan. For example, no double hems on funeral suits because of the old superstition that "double" means "twice," and at a funeral you don't want to incur a second tragedy.

After suit shopping we had some time, so we walked around Umeda and stopped in at the bookstore. The plan was to stop briefly and look for French graded readers, which they didn't have. Somehow i ended up leaving with an armful of things to add to my to-read pile. Sheesh. We did meet an inetersting guy, named Greg, who started up a conversation about books and was looking for recommendations and we chatted for a bit about our favorite books. Good times. I recommended Terry Prachett and Neil Gaiman'S "Good Omens" and he recommended an Orson Scott Card book that i hadn't read yet.

Also recommended for all of you out there is to listen to look up and listen to Paul and Storm. Great comedy/novelty duo from the U.S. Very talented and funny. I've been listening recently to their podcast, which is also very funny.


The pictures:

edible looking salad with egg:


inedible looking good that was actually delicious:


the W marks it as having double cheese. Nice.


Automatic bowling shoe dispenser. Yup. It's real. And awesome.


My father-in-law showing us how it's done


Sunday I made french toast and served it with fruit (eating french toast every weekend needs to be balanced with something healthy, i figure).


Sunday afternoon meet-up with Mount Allison people


Some amazing and beautiful little sweets given to us by our sister-in-law.



Symian is: hoping this week will be slower.
Currently Reading: ESL/EFL Teaching - Reading and Writing Skills
Currently Listening: Paul and Storm podcast
Kanji of the Day: 動／ドウ／うご・く／うご・かす