I think this is my first post in almost three months since the one in early January. I really haven’t been active for a long time. If anyone was waiting for my blog to come back – probably no one, but still – I’m truly sorry. The biggest reason the new blog took so long to open is that work was insanely busy – for a while I never left the office before 11 p.m. – but work being busy is nothing new, so that’s no excuse. In the middle of all that, I was grinding away at scripts to bring every bit of my Empas blog data over and open the new blog in style, and what I’d expected to take about a month ended up running about three months late. Work has settled down for now, and the blog move is pretty much perfect apart from the skin, so I don’t think I’ll ever again have to stop a perfectly good blog because the service company shuts down -_-;; or anything like that. Now that everything’s in place, I should keep posting at a steady pace, whether for 10 years or 20..
So.. the backlog from those three months is no joke, so I’ll probably be in frantic posting mode for a while. There might be 10 updates on a single weekend -_-;; I’d like to finish before Golden Week, but I’m not sure I’ll manage. For the record, posts will go up in chronological order as always.
Just as Korea has Seollal and Chuseok, Japan has a long holiday over the New Year. The day after I’d found a bit of time to pop up to Tokyo, I had lunch with a friend at a neighborhood izakaya.
A tree in the garden in front of my house, taken before heading out
Pretty, even in winter. In quiet Japanese residential neighborhoods, lots of houses grow ornamental trees and flowers in their gardens. Most of them are well kept, too..
The 1,000-yen lunch set
You get a lot for the price. There are quite a few shabby dishes too -_-;; so going often gets old, though..
The hot pot that comes with it
It doesn’t taste bad.
Sashimi
Since it’s lunch, the freshness isn’t top-notch. To keep costs down, places often serve the leftover fish from dinner at lunch.
Oroshi chirimen
Not bad, that’s about it..
Oshinko
Pickles..
Simmered hairtail
It feels like you get one of each kind.. They’d been made a while ago, so it isn’t at its best, but for a thousand yen I’ve got no complaints.
The dashi for the ochazuke
This is the house specialty. Honestly, I often drop by because I want this more than any of the other dishes.
Chawanmushi
Every dish is at least decent. That’s why I used to come here often, but if there’s a problem, it’s that I’m getting a bit tired of it now…
Today’s main, tai ochazuke
You pour the dashi over the sea bream and rice and eat it that way. It’s tasty, but by this point you’re pretty full. So unless you come on a really hungry day, you end up regretting it..
This is the sashimi set meal my friend ordered, 500 yen more.
Looks a bit pricier, doesn’t it?
This is the sashimi you get.
Unlike the sashimi that comes with the basic set, this was really fresh.
Getting up late on a holiday and having a big seafood spread for brunch made me really happy.. But then a death-march project was waiting for me all the way until April.. So once again, what I learned was the eternal truth: eat well while you can.