The daughter came to stay for a few days so we celebrated that auspicious event by trying out a recently opened local yakiniku - 焼き肉 (grilled meat) - restaurant.
The flyer shows their lunchtime offer. We went in the evening, but it gives you a good idea of the kind of grub on offer. Their main feature is marinaded cuts of Japanese black beef that you barbecue at the table and eat off bowls of excellent quality rice.
However, the standout dish for us was their thin-cut beef tongue.
They offered a two-hour "nomihodai" - 飲み放題 - ("all-you-can-drink") - for ¥2,500, so I went for it, and to "get my money's worth" I went through six glasses of Kirin Ichiban-Shibori. Unlike many an establishment that offers all-you-can-drink deals and serves beer with heads so large that you only get half to two-thirds of a glass of beer, this place served full glasses of beer, so six beers really did represent good value for the price. (Obviously, with half-filled beer glasses, one simply doubles the number of beers one has in the two hour session.)
At the restaurant the Mrs asked us what day it was. When the Mrs asks a question like that you have to go through a check list and eliminate the red-letter days that it is not... Well, it's September so it's not her birthday... nor her saint's day (not that she has one, as far as I know), so it must be... ah yes indeed, our wedding anniversary! Usually, we are both reminded of it by the early arrival of an anniversary card from the aged aunt back in England, but this year it seems that she didn't send one - or did I put it to one side and happen to mislay it? I don't think so. Instead, I suspect that we are out of favour having declined to spend a few thousand quid for the dubious pleasure of attending an 80th birthday party in England later this year.
So here is a commemorative photo of our anniversary dinner with the daughter. We had a fine time, but it was only when I looked at the photo later on that I noticed that we had been dining in the company of an elf... To get to our table we were led to the back of the restaurant, up a flight of stairs, around a corner and into a cavern-like space so I wonder if we were not taken through a portal into Middle Earth.
Cheers!