I need Okonomiyaki buddies in Saitama. Any takers?
There is something else I have discovered I need, but this one is going to be hard to find:
I need friends who like okonomiyaki and other yaki-griddle food, who live somewhere near Nishi-Kawaguchi station. (Hey...![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
seishinbyou, you out there?)
Basically, last night (Wednesday) I tried my experiment of walking home from Nishi-Kawaguchi instead of Warabi. And OH MAN! There's so much more stuff that way! I first walk along one wide road away from the station, and then I basically walk up highway 35. And both are busy enough roads to be covered in stores and stuff, some of which are even open at midnight! So, I looked in a bunch of places (there's one called Royal Host which I think looked like an IHOP really, but I don't know if people usually go there alone -- maybe sometime when I have lessons to work on, I will try going there?) and eventually saw a place called Dotonbori which had okonomiyaki, and I was thinking "OKONOMIYAKI? NO WAY!", so I went in there. This is ALSO a place you really shouldn't go alone; it's pretty much just griddle tables, and from what I could see of the other people there, yeah, you pretty much go there with your friends to drink and to share griddle food. Alas. Either way, I got this 3-meat okonomiyaki mix and it was AWESOME, and I did work on my lesson plan a little bit. I felt stupid because I didn't know exactly what to do to cook it, and the waiter handed me the instructions... in Japanese of course. Anyway, it was good, and I want to go back, but I don't want to go back alone :(
Not much else to say about yesterday. I tried a tempura bento place in La La Garden for lunch, and it was fantastic, so I'll probably go back there sometime. I also went to Daiwa looking for ball toys, but alas, they didn't really have toys. They DID, however, have a big electronics section with nice TVs and so I watched some of Koshien for about 5 minutes with a bunch of other people standing around; it was the Teikyo match. Now I know where to go watch when I have a free afternoon, heh.
Duane came back from Shizuoka and brought us green tea manju as omiyage. They were okay I guess, not really my sort of food, but it was nice of him. Eri was having a bad day because one of her family members (who lives in Philly, no less) died yesterday. It's a weird culture thing that my first thought is "Oh, you need a hug" and then I come into cancel mode of "Wait, you don't hug people in Japan". But, so I let her hang out in my classroom most of the day, she didn't want to see her room with family pictures and all. We also went to starbucks halfway through the day and got coffees and pastries, and oh my GOD, when you get stuff to go there, they give you a whole paper shopping bag with a cup holder and everything. Craziness.
I was mentioning to Eri that I feel like I need to eat at weird times now -- 12pm, 6pm, and 11pm. I never ate this much in America, mostly just 12pm and 7pm, so I dunno. Maybe it's that I'm eating smaller meals 3 times a day rather than bigger meals twice?
Anyway, classes went pretty well overall. My child's class with the one 11-year-old, I had planned about 7 things, and I finished in 45 minutes instead of 50. But then I remembered that I hadn't done homework grading. So that was 50. Then my evening classes -- oh MAN, I had lesson plans for all of them and we didn't do ANY of it, heh. My Passages class, one lady said "Oh, the school I graduated from won at Koshien so far!" so I ended up spending half the class teaching the words "alumni association" "class reunion" and stuff like that instead! Then my 8pm private lesson ended up just wanting to talk, so we did, rather than doing the Sprint book stuff.
And then at 9 -- oh man, those guys are so much fun! It was just two guys this week, and one of them had written "I love baseball, rock music, and beer!" in his blurb on the welcome to Japan poster for me, so we pretty much spent an hour and a half talking about exactly that -- baseball and rock music (and a little beer). The other guy, who is also really nice and funny, was perfectly happy to do that too, so we literally just talked about baseball a lot. I had my baseball calendar so we looked at them and talked about different places, people, fans, stadiums, words in Japanese vs. English, great players like Sadaharu Oh, etc, etc, etc. Seriously. I even told them about fantasy baseball and the one guy was like "I want to play! Can you teach me how?" and I said I'd invite him into my league next year :)
Seriously, that's a great class to end the day on -- they're a Headways class, so the highest level we have, and are just great at English in general, so just a lot of fun. Maybe I should ask if they like okonomiyaki.
I need friends who like okonomiyaki and other yaki-griddle food, who live somewhere near Nishi-Kawaguchi station. (Hey...
seishinbyou, you out there?)Basically, last night (Wednesday) I tried my experiment of walking home from Nishi-Kawaguchi instead of Warabi. And OH MAN! There's so much more stuff that way! I first walk along one wide road away from the station, and then I basically walk up highway 35. And both are busy enough roads to be covered in stores and stuff, some of which are even open at midnight! So, I looked in a bunch of places (there's one called Royal Host which I think looked like an IHOP really, but I don't know if people usually go there alone -- maybe sometime when I have lessons to work on, I will try going there?) and eventually saw a place called Dotonbori which had okonomiyaki, and I was thinking "OKONOMIYAKI? NO WAY!", so I went in there. This is ALSO a place you really shouldn't go alone; it's pretty much just griddle tables, and from what I could see of the other people there, yeah, you pretty much go there with your friends to drink and to share griddle food. Alas. Either way, I got this 3-meat okonomiyaki mix and it was AWESOME, and I did work on my lesson plan a little bit. I felt stupid because I didn't know exactly what to do to cook it, and the waiter handed me the instructions... in Japanese of course. Anyway, it was good, and I want to go back, but I don't want to go back alone :(
Not much else to say about yesterday. I tried a tempura bento place in La La Garden for lunch, and it was fantastic, so I'll probably go back there sometime. I also went to Daiwa looking for ball toys, but alas, they didn't really have toys. They DID, however, have a big electronics section with nice TVs and so I watched some of Koshien for about 5 minutes with a bunch of other people standing around; it was the Teikyo match. Now I know where to go watch when I have a free afternoon, heh.
Duane came back from Shizuoka and brought us green tea manju as omiyage. They were okay I guess, not really my sort of food, but it was nice of him. Eri was having a bad day because one of her family members (who lives in Philly, no less) died yesterday. It's a weird culture thing that my first thought is "Oh, you need a hug" and then I come into cancel mode of "Wait, you don't hug people in Japan". But, so I let her hang out in my classroom most of the day, she didn't want to see her room with family pictures and all. We also went to starbucks halfway through the day and got coffees and pastries, and oh my GOD, when you get stuff to go there, they give you a whole paper shopping bag with a cup holder and everything. Craziness.
I was mentioning to Eri that I feel like I need to eat at weird times now -- 12pm, 6pm, and 11pm. I never ate this much in America, mostly just 12pm and 7pm, so I dunno. Maybe it's that I'm eating smaller meals 3 times a day rather than bigger meals twice?
Anyway, classes went pretty well overall. My child's class with the one 11-year-old, I had planned about 7 things, and I finished in 45 minutes instead of 50. But then I remembered that I hadn't done homework grading. So that was 50. Then my evening classes -- oh MAN, I had lesson plans for all of them and we didn't do ANY of it, heh. My Passages class, one lady said "Oh, the school I graduated from won at Koshien so far!" so I ended up spending half the class teaching the words "alumni association" "class reunion" and stuff like that instead! Then my 8pm private lesson ended up just wanting to talk, so we did, rather than doing the Sprint book stuff.
And then at 9 -- oh man, those guys are so much fun! It was just two guys this week, and one of them had written "I love baseball, rock music, and beer!" in his blurb on the welcome to Japan poster for me, so we pretty much spent an hour and a half talking about exactly that -- baseball and rock music (and a little beer). The other guy, who is also really nice and funny, was perfectly happy to do that too, so we literally just talked about baseball a lot. I had my baseball calendar so we looked at them and talked about different places, people, fans, stadiums, words in Japanese vs. English, great players like Sadaharu Oh, etc, etc, etc. Seriously. I even told them about fantasy baseball and the one guy was like "I want to play! Can you teach me how?" and I said I'd invite him into my league next year :)
Seriously, that's a great class to end the day on -- they're a Headways class, so the highest level we have, and are just great at English in general, so just a lot of fun. Maybe I should ask if they like okonomiyaki.
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