![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Yummmmm
Today I think requires going backwards to talk about.
In the evening, I decided that since it was warm today, what I really wanted was some cold udon.
And where I really, really wanted to go to was Tonden, which is a chain of somewhat generic Japanese-food family restaurants. They're based in Hokkaido (in Eniwa, about halfway between Chitose and Sapporo) because everything good is based in Hokkaido. But they have a lot of Kanto restaurants, and there was one fairly close to where I used to live in Saitama, so I'd go there every now and then when I wanted to relax and eat some good cheap yummy plain old Japanese food.
It's funny because I keep saying how much I suck at Japanese, but then I have to remind myself that I'm able to read websites and maps well enough to figure out how to get places, and I can read menus and ask for things properly and all that.
The upshot is, I went to the Tonden nearest to me (as far as I know), in Shimura. The bad part is, it's at the bottom of that goddamn hill that leads to the Arakawa river. The good part is, it's Tonden. I got the "Miracle" set dinner, which is basically a few pieces of tempura, a few pieces of sushi and a negitoro roll, a big plate of cold udon with dipping sauce, and a cup of miso soup. I suppose this would not be entirely strange to get at a Japanese restaurant in the US, except in the US such a huge plate of food would never cost 1200 yen. And it was really good and made me really happy. I actually spent the time there checking the Fighters-Lions score on my cellphone and writing -- as in, handwriting with a pen and paper -- some blog entry summaries. The Fighters game went tied 1-1 into extra innings.
So I got dessert.
I got a "フルッツソフトシュー", which is essentially one of those Japanese cream puffs, only it's cut open to make a bowl, and doesn't have whipped cream inside it, but instead has about a 1cm layer of mango pudding in it and is then covered with soft-serve vanilla ice cream, sort of like a sundae, and then there's strawberry syrup over it, and bits of kiwifruit and orange as garnishes all around it. I can't even begin to tell you how goddamn good this thing was. It's hard to feel guilty about ordering a dessert when it makes you so inordinately happy.
Then, unfortunately, I had to ride my bicycle back up that goddamn hill. That part sucked, especially after eating so much food. That hill might actually prevent me from going back there any time soon.
As for the rest of the day...
I had a delivery rescheduled to this afternoon between 12-2pm (another sign of "maybe I don't entirely suck at Japanese anymore" is that I remember a year ago basically begging Pau and Krispy to call a delivery place on my behalf to reschedule something, and this time I got the "undelivered" notice and just called the place and rescheduled it on my own), so a little before noon I ran over to Motohasunuma to grab lunch, ended up getting two sushi rolls from the little stand on the corner, and I also stopped by the ATM and went to pay bills before I forget. (I had a phone bill that was due April 30th, so last night after Simon and Pau went home I actually ran my bike over to the conbini to pay that one and got there like 7 minutes before midnight, but didn't have enough cash on me to pay my other bills at the time.) Hooray, it's May.
The rest of the day I spent on laundry (it was sunny so I could hang stuff outside) and playing some PP, and watching some baseball, and trying to clean up here a bit more. So I didn't really get much baseball blogging or programming done, alas. Tomorrow I'm thinking to head down to Kamagaya, anyway.
In the evening, I decided that since it was warm today, what I really wanted was some cold udon.
And where I really, really wanted to go to was Tonden, which is a chain of somewhat generic Japanese-food family restaurants. They're based in Hokkaido (in Eniwa, about halfway between Chitose and Sapporo) because everything good is based in Hokkaido. But they have a lot of Kanto restaurants, and there was one fairly close to where I used to live in Saitama, so I'd go there every now and then when I wanted to relax and eat some good cheap yummy plain old Japanese food.
It's funny because I keep saying how much I suck at Japanese, but then I have to remind myself that I'm able to read websites and maps well enough to figure out how to get places, and I can read menus and ask for things properly and all that.
The upshot is, I went to the Tonden nearest to me (as far as I know), in Shimura. The bad part is, it's at the bottom of that goddamn hill that leads to the Arakawa river. The good part is, it's Tonden. I got the "Miracle" set dinner, which is basically a few pieces of tempura, a few pieces of sushi and a negitoro roll, a big plate of cold udon with dipping sauce, and a cup of miso soup. I suppose this would not be entirely strange to get at a Japanese restaurant in the US, except in the US such a huge plate of food would never cost 1200 yen. And it was really good and made me really happy. I actually spent the time there checking the Fighters-Lions score on my cellphone and writing -- as in, handwriting with a pen and paper -- some blog entry summaries. The Fighters game went tied 1-1 into extra innings.
So I got dessert.
I got a "フルッツソフトシュー", which is essentially one of those Japanese cream puffs, only it's cut open to make a bowl, and doesn't have whipped cream inside it, but instead has about a 1cm layer of mango pudding in it and is then covered with soft-serve vanilla ice cream, sort of like a sundae, and then there's strawberry syrup over it, and bits of kiwifruit and orange as garnishes all around it. I can't even begin to tell you how goddamn good this thing was. It's hard to feel guilty about ordering a dessert when it makes you so inordinately happy.
Then, unfortunately, I had to ride my bicycle back up that goddamn hill. That part sucked, especially after eating so much food. That hill might actually prevent me from going back there any time soon.
As for the rest of the day...
I had a delivery rescheduled to this afternoon between 12-2pm (another sign of "maybe I don't entirely suck at Japanese anymore" is that I remember a year ago basically begging Pau and Krispy to call a delivery place on my behalf to reschedule something, and this time I got the "undelivered" notice and just called the place and rescheduled it on my own), so a little before noon I ran over to Motohasunuma to grab lunch, ended up getting two sushi rolls from the little stand on the corner, and I also stopped by the ATM and went to pay bills before I forget. (I had a phone bill that was due April 30th, so last night after Simon and Pau went home I actually ran my bike over to the conbini to pay that one and got there like 7 minutes before midnight, but didn't have enough cash on me to pay my other bills at the time.) Hooray, it's May.
The rest of the day I spent on laundry (it was sunny so I could hang stuff outside) and playing some PP, and watching some baseball, and trying to clean up here a bit more. So I didn't really get much baseball blogging or programming done, alas. Tomorrow I'm thinking to head down to Kamagaya, anyway.