Every Day an Adventure

Oren and Carl and I went to Mashiko for the omakase (chef's choice dinner) tonight. It ruled. I have finally gotten back at Carl for Kevin's kaiseki birthday dinner in April.

Seriously, though, if you're going to spend $55 and 2.5 hours at a Japanese restaurant, you might as well do something like this. Like last time, I took notes on the courses we got. We specifically said "No oysters or mussels, please", so these were the courses:

1. Rockfish sashimi with tobiko and sunamono in ponzu sauce
2. Tako, um, "suviche"? I don't know what that is, it was basically essentially octopus salsa. I'm not kidding.
3. Hawaiian albacore tuna tataki with green onions and shiso
4. Nigiri Sushi -- Bluefin tuna, Aji, and Geoduck.
5. Mushroom sautee
6. Chiai - some sort of tuna-like steak, grilled in spicy sesame sauce
7. Tempura shiso with fish on top and a three layer thing with tako, ankimo, and cucumber
8. "Dessert roll" with eel, avocado, kabocha, egg, etc.
9. We ordered "dessert", well, I ordered plum wine sherbet and Carl ordered a nigori sake called Hitori Musume because the name amused him.

The octopus salsa was actually tasty, but weird. The albacore tuna tataki was FANTASTIC. And oddly, the Aji nigiri sushi, which is sort of like mackerel, and I hate mackerel, was actually really good - a function of both the fish, the sauce on top, and a shiso leaf between the rice and fish, maybe. The mushroom sautee stuff was just that -- mushrooms stir-fried. It wasn't bad, but sort of a waste of a dish, and I'd rather have had something else that wasn't boring. Chiai was fabulous, like chunks of spicy tuna steak. The dessert roll reminded me of the snowflake roll I got last week, and the plum wine sherbet was just great again.

I'm not sure what I would have rated as my absolute favorite thing. Probly the tuna steak and the albacore tataki.

Anyway, it is the last day of the year. I honestly don't know what I'll end up doing tonight -- sorry to those throwing parties, but my first priority is to spend it with Carl since he's my best friend and all, so I'm going to defer to his expert opinion.

I did write another song, but it isn't to new music. I will go post that now too and further clog your friends page.

In an effort to keep getting up early, I came up with a perfect excuse to get up at 9am today... to go to the Mariners game at 1pm! Yeah. See, baseball is good for me.

Seriously, though, the game was scary. It was sold out thanks to father's day -- I got the Safeco shuttle down from Northgate and got to the park around 12:30pm -- and there were huge lines at the ticket windows, and the lady's like "I only have single tickets and only in Field and Box". And when I got up there and said I wanted a single ticket, she basically said "35 bucks, and you'll be in the far parts of Field". Now I personally know that those are SUCKY seats because you can't see the screens and you're at a bad angle. So I asked about the 50 dollar seats. She had one that was 26 rows straight behind home plate. No shit, I took that one in an instant. I guess I'm starting a job tomorrow, I can afford it.

It was a HOT and SUNNY day out today, and the shade didn't actually cover me until somewhere in the 5th inning, although I did bring a hat so I don't think I'm sunburnt at all. The game was really a very good game, lots of fun to watch, high-scoring. The Mariners really hit up Tom Glavine for a ton of runs early on (it was 6-1 as of the third inning). It's kind of weird, since I mean, it's Tom Glavine, the guy could reasonably reach 300 career victories and is almost a shoe-in for the hall of fame. Meche pitched admirably for the Mariners, but when he hit the 100-pitch mark, he practically just fell over, loading the bases and then hitting Woodward to knock in a run. Well, we put in Matt Thornton to take care of the loaded bases, and all of the people scored. It's ridiculous that it inflates Meche's ERA like that and Thornton gets off with barely anything. 6-5. Fortunately the Mariners countered by exploding for 4 runs in the 6th, mostly due to Mike DeJean walking a bunch of them -- even walking in a run. The final score was 11-5. nickjong called me during the final out to express his extreme sadness that the Mariners had swept the Mets.

It really wasn't all bad. Mike Piazza went 3-for-5 after going hitless all through the weekend. Ichiro was also 3-for-5, scoring two runs. The "new kids on the block", Morse and Rivera, combined for 5-for-8 and three runs scored. It's looking more and more like our middle infield next year will be Jose Lopez and Mike Morse, at this rate, given the hitting tear they're both on.

I sat around too many rude Mets fans though, who insisted on yelling and screaming a lot, especially things like "HEY BELTRAN, YOU SUCK, WE'RE NOT PAYING YOU 119 MILLION DOLLARS TO SUCK LIKE THIS, LOSER."

I noticed that Kazuo Matsui and Kazuhisa Ishii pretty much stood together leaning on the Mets dugout rails for most of the game. I guess Ishii pitched the other day and Matsui doesn't get played, so they can just chat in Japanese together.

Oh well. Mets sweep aside, I came home after the game and went out to Big 5 Sporting Goods because I'm running out of space in my scorecard book. I also picked up stuff for swimming, like a cap and goggles. Go me. After that I walked around Greenlake. I called my dad for Father's Day and talked to him for like two miles... er, like 35 minutes. The lake was nice. There weren't ducklings out today, I think it's too late for them, but there were goslings. They were with the big geese, and were fairly big themselves, but they were all fuzzy, which is how you know they're goslings.

On the way back from Greenlake I decided to drive past Megan and Josh's house and see how far they'd come with the fence. The really funny part is, I was about a block away from their house and my phone rings. It's Megan, asking if I'd want to go to dinner at Mashiko. So I'm like "Dude, I'm a block away from your house. No joke. I wanted to see the fence." So I get out and admire the fence (they have done a TON, almost completed the entire side that they needed to get done first) and we make plans for dinner... except since they're yucky from the fence building and I'm yucky from sitting out in the sun and then walking several miles, we decide to reconvene in a bit. A little later they pick up me and then Eli and we all go to Mashiko. (I finally gave Eli the socks I knitted him. I started those socks in like... Christmas 2002, and finally finished them a few weeks ago)

Mashiko is seriously good. We got the omakase, and M&J said they were picking up the tab for me to celebrate me starting my job tomorrow. So, I have no idea exactly what level of omakase we got or how much it costs, but I decided to be group secretary and write it all down, so here is what we got (in order, we got one dish at a time):

1. Rockfish sashimi with ponzu sauce, shiso oil, red shanghai peppercorns, and cucumbers in the middle
2. Oysters with spicy sauce and daikon sprouts
3. Skipjack and tuna tartare, with capers and sprouts and onions I think, and a raw egg yolk
4. Nigiri sushi: albacore, opa, scallops with prosciutto, and troll caught wild alaskan king salmon, or something like that.
5. Grilled swordfish with badass plum sauce potatoes. (I was specifically told to note that they were badass)
6. Some sort of awesome roll - it had unagi, avocado, sweet potato, walnuts, and was in a soy wrapper of some sort.
7. More rolls - dynamite rolls, amaebi rolls, atomic tuna rolls, and some spicy crab roll
8. Baked fish - halibut, we think, and some sort of pink fish that wasn't salmon
9. Dessert -- Plum wine sorbet, mochi ice cream, green tea tiramisu, and creme caramel (sorta like flan)

It was craaaaaazy and everything was very good. I even was brave and ate an oyster (my first ever -- they kinda gross me out). I will have to find an excuse to go back there sometime.

Okay, well, now it's 12:30am and I should go to sleep since I want to get up at 7 or so. I hope I can get to sleep despite nerves... we'll see.