dining out

eiichi has been really good about taking me to out of the way spots with washoku [japanese cuisine] specialities. on our last outing, we joined 2 of his friends at a boisterous izakaya near the university. to my surprise, it was not only cheap but had the best bar-style cuisine i’ve eaten yet, including taco wraps with what appeared/tasted like real hamburger meat and perfectly sauced, delicate tuna tataki and avocado salad. we had 2 hours of all you can drink + food for less than 2500 yen each. unfortunately it’s far enough from my place that we’d have to taxi and i have no idea what the name of the place is so we couldn’t instruct the cabbie how to get there. afterwards we headed to karaoke. these are eiichi’s friends…watching him slam dance and sing.

she was exceptionally cool and sympathetic to my foreign-ness, as she’s from korea but has been living in japan for about 7 years now. her language ability is fabulous enough to attend university with classes only taught in japanese. any time the conversation turned serious and employed difficult vocabulary [like the discussion about her soon to expire visa which means they are probably soon to be married] she would pause and urge eiichi to translate a bit for me so i could stay up to speed. she was also patient talking with me, admittedly surprised that i knew as much japanese as i do; she expected it would be more laborious to communicate.
a few weeks before that, eiichi and i hit a traditional tempura restaurant. we were the only ones dining which provided us with the unique opportunity to sit at the counter and monopolize the master’s time asking questions and chatting.

we opted to let him choose the evening’s meal for us. he first whipped up some fresh batter and then began plucking vegetables and seafood from the beautifully displayed fresh fare on the counter.

he was gracious about responding to my questions with an explanation and a perfectly deep-fried chance to taste the food in question.

another great thing about hanging with eiichi is that he isn’t embarrassed by my avid picture taking, as he spent several years in boston so he knows what it’s like to be intrigued by foreign culture.