How to lose half an eyebrow

Have you ever gone out for a beer only to return home eyebrowless? Well, that happened to me. Sorta. "Eyebrowless" is an exaggeration, but it makes for a better story. Truth is, I left the bar with a partial. (Might as well have taken the whole thing!)

So here's the story:

One night we visited a local bar near our hotel in Japan for a nightcap after a long day of walking. The bar was dimly lit and filled with a haze of cigarette smoke. The two bartenders - probably in their twenties - one guy and one girl gladly served us drinks and offered us "mixed nuts" and rice. We enjoyed our time there and stayed until closing. On our last night in Tokyo, we decided to end our trip at that bar since it was a slice of real local flavor. We walked in and the young man bartender greeted us with a friendly smile. The gal was in a booth with one of her girlfriends, giving her friend a makeover. They were giggling and oohing and aahing and I couldn't help but watch. The bartender girl saw me look and I said "beautiful!". A few minutes later, she came over to me and asked "do you want try?" I said "sure!" so happy that she wanted to be my friend.

I excitedly sat down at the booth awaiting my make-over. This girl was very pretty and so was her friend with a freshly made-up face. She looked great so I figured I had nothing to lose. The girl started with an eye brow pencil and soon after I heard a buzzing noise. I figured she was just buzzing off some stray brows which was doing me a favor so I didn't move a muscle. More penciling, more buzzing, and then she was done. I looked at myself in the mirror and although there was a bit too much penciling, it looked fine and I wanted to be gracious so I said I loved it! Onto the next eye. More penciling, more buzzing..then she stopped and asked, "shave?" Frightened by the word "SHAVE" in reference to my eyebrow, I said "no no, thats ok, it looks great how you did it already" So she finished up with the pencil and giddily chatted with her girlfriend about the job. She said "my friend says you look beautiful now". So I take a peek in the mirror and to my horror, half of my left eyebrow is missing and is replaced by a man-made eyebrow! And even worse, only ONE eyebrow is partially shaved, the other is perfectly intact! Beautiful?! How about insane?! I looked insane. There was pencil where no pencil should go and one brow was just a stub! Oh dear.

But I didn't say a peep. I just smiled and told her I loved it and thanked her for the job well done! Who would have ever thought I'd get my eyebrow shaved off by a bartender in a little bar in the heart of Tokyo. It made for a pretty good laugh.

Japanese brows

American brows

This picture doesn't do it justice. In fact it actually makes my brows look KINDA good. But, in person and up close you could really see all the pencil and lack of hair. EDIT: I've added a picture of my normal (pencil-less) brows for comparison since my photo sucks. Thanks for the idea Rach!

My brow is recovering wonderfully and has started to grow back in - you can hardly notice that the little brow tail was ever gone.

Sugary Sweetness

plump, purple, plums a plenty!

Sugary Sweetness

plump, purple, plums a plenty!

No Surprise

A cool song that will trick you into bobbing your head.

Fashion Frenzy

One of the things that I loved most about Japan was the FASHION! Everyone looked so good. I've never really thought asian people were attractive, but the women were absolutely gorgeous and the men were stunning. We were staying in a business district and saw lots of men in suits. Their suits were always pressed, perfectly tailored, and they all had the coolest shoes. The women wore pencil skirts with bouncy blouses and awesome high heels that made me swoon. They dressed in layers with sweet lacey camisoles and sheer black tights. The women had beautiful silky black hair and creamy skin and the men had chisseled jaws, light eyes, and wavy hair. Weird, huh?!  Every day was a fashion show in the middle of Roppongi and I was bright-eyed and inspired. Unfortunately I didn't get very many photos of the cute outfits, but here is a photo of a major crossing where you can see lots of suits and if you click on the photo and zoom in, you can see some purple heels!!!

We found a small boutique on one of the main streets that I fell in love with. It wasn't anything special, but the workers were nice and they had lots of interesting things to look at and touch. After the first day of watching all of the beautiful people around Roppongi, I noticed the women also wore these little half-sock things. I've never seen them in the U.S. (but that's not saying much - I live in SLOOOOWtown), but they were the cutest things ever and I just had to have some!! The boutique carried a huge variety of these little socks and they were 3 for 1020 yen (about 10 bucks), so I stocked up! You're probably wondering what the hell I'm talking about, so here's a picture of some.

They go perfectly under flats or even heels. A little bit of the design sticks out and gives a plain shoe some flair! I love these and I bought like 10 pair in all different colors and designs.

We went to a neighborhood in Tokyo called Ginza which is one of the major shopping districts. It was one of our favorite spots because they closed down the main street to traffic on Sundays and we could walk in the middle. The buildings in Ginza were colorful and interesting but the point of this post is the fashion, so here's a snapshot of one of the largest stores we saw in all of Tokyo...Forever 21! It must be popular in Japan because this was the second one we saw, and they were both multi-level. All of the twenty-something women were carrying Forever 21 bags and although we didn't go inside the store, it looked even more nuts than the one in San Francisco.

The other major stores in Ginza were all very fancy - Louies Vuitton, Coach, Burberry, Tiffany, Swarovski crystals, Prada, etc..but the ONLY store with an actual LINE outside was Abercrombie and Fitch. They even had young Japanese guys standing outside dressed in A&F garb, greeting the customers. It was an interesting site to say the least.

Lovers in Japan

Tonight

Maybe we're gonna run

Dreaming

Of the Osaka sun

Ohhh,

Ohh, oh

Dreaming

Of when the morning comes

-Coldplay

Japanese Toilets

Yes, I am dedicating this entire post to TOILETS because the Japanese are obsessed with them. When we were out and about and wanted to know where the bathroom was, all we'd have to say is "TOILET" and they got it. In fact, most of the restrooms were labeled "TOILET". The word "bathroom" was completely foreign to them, but at least there was no confusion as to what we needed. Yes, ma'am, I am going to go deposit something in your toilet. Thank you very much.

Our hotel room was our first experience with toilets. Ours had an assortment of features with a ton of buttons to control these features. The only one I tried was the heated seat. Mmm I loooved sitting down on a nice warm seat every time! Apparently if we wanted to, we could have washed our bums with a splash of water, and then dried it off with a blast of air. I kind of wish I would have tried this, but for some reason I felt weird about it. All toilets had two flushing options - I'm assuming one for liquid and one for solid. But, the labels were always in Japanese and I could never decipher the poo and pee symbols!

Our hotel toilet was relatively less intimidating than some toilets in fancy restaurants and stores, which had WAY more buttons and controls, none of which were in English like ours was. The one thing that every bathroom in Japan had in common was that they all had a panic button in each stall. Usually it was red or it was marked with some sort of emergency symbol or a police man icon. I found it very interesting that EVERY bathroom stall had this and could only imagine the implications of someone pressing this button. During our time in Japan we actually had an incident with a panic button...

We were out to dinner with our colleague and Steve excused himself to the toilet. A few minutes later, our colleague's wife and I went to the ladies toilet. These were the fanciest toilets of all, so I was rather enjoying my seat and looking at all the technology in there. Hey! I can warm up the water that splashes my area! COOL! But, weird! And ew! As I was finishing up, I heard a loud beeping sound, like an alarm you might hear at a retail store at the front door. I went out to wash my hands and all of a sudden a police man came charging in the bathroom and right up to me! He was yelling something in Japanese right at me, in my face, probably a foot away! I had NO idea what was going on. Our friend's wife talked to the police officer and they went back and forth a few times, then we left. I couldn't ask her what happened because she doesn't speak any english! I was sooo confused and a little frightened! I went back into the restaurant and told Steve that a weird alarm went off and a police man yelled at me! He said, "I know something about that - I'll tell you later".

Come to find out, Steve also thought these bathrooms were pretty awesome except for the fact that the toilet had TOO many buttons! He couldn't figure out how to flush, so he started randomly pressing things. Apparently he pressed the panic button and caused the alarm to go off!! He said he was freaked out, so he ran out of the bathroom and got a little disoriented and somehow made his way into the ladies room!!! He freaked out again and ran out and finally found his way back to the restaurant. So that's why the police officer came in the ladies room - someone probably saw "some American guy" running into the ladies room. I have no idea what was said between the officer and our friend's wife, but I bet she knew it was probably Steve since we were the ONLY Americans anywhere around the area. haha!

Another note about the bathrooms (who knew there'd be so much to say?!)...all of the women's stalls had the CUTEST, tiniest little trash bins. They could probably fit like ONE pad, or a couple tampon wrappers, but that's it. But seriously, they were the teeniest little trash can I've ever seen and (I never thought I'd say this about a feminine napkin disposal container), but they were so cute I just wanted to eat them up!

There were also no toilet seat covers. Instead, they had sanitizer dispensers and napkins to wipe the seat clean after each use. Did people actually do that? I had no idea. I just put down a couple strips of TP on the toilet every time...that way I felt sanitary AND I could feel that warm seat!

 Another type of toilet that was not so cute, was the public toilet. The parks, gardens, and subway stations all had these traditional Japanese toilets (if you want to call it that.)

This is the first one we came across, and it just so happened that I had to pee very badly and had no choice but to use it! I wasn't sure which way to squat - facing the flusher? With my back against it? Or, since there is a handrail there, am I supposed to be sideways over the length of the hole? Where do I put my feet?! But I figured it out the best I could and managed not to spray myself. Sometimes they had a bathroom with the option of "western toilets" or these. I found it kind of funny that many of the Japanese women chose these floor toilets over the western ones.

These types of bathrooms usually had sinks, but never any soap or paper towels. The hand sanitizer, dissolving paper soap and tissues came in VERY handy on this trip :) Some of the nicer bathrooms had soap, but rarely ever did they have paper towels or even air driers. We'd see tons of beautiful handkerchiefs in every store we went into and after awhile we figured out that EVERYONE in Japan carries these with them to dry their hands off in the bathrooms!

Comida

Speaking of language, while in Japan my mouth kept spitting out spanish words and phrases. Como esta? Me llamo es Jaime. Toca la guitarra! Wrong country lady!

So back to the point of this post: the BEST part about Japan was the FOOD. We ate and ate and ate and ate and ate some more. But, guess what? We never ate sushi! Apparently Japan has a lot more food than just sushi :) But before I get started on all our amazing meals, let me tell you a little bit about our in-flight service on Korean Airlines.

I got a few snarly looks when I told people we were taking Korean air. I have no idea why because it was THE BEST plane ride I've ever been on. I thought it would be an icky combination of miserable and scary. It was the opposite. I was in high heaven. Literally. We were served two meals: the first was a traditional Korean meal called "Bi Bim Bop" which included white rice, beef, mushrooms, green onions, noodles, kimchi, and soup. It sounds normal, but it was one of the yummiest dishes ever. The second meal was chicken, broccoli, carrots, a dinner roll, and strawberry cheesecake. Steve had shrimp pasta. YUM! In between these two meals we were served juice and a banana or a hot roll with beef in the middle (sounds gross, but it was my most favorite snack of all time!) Before the service, they passed around hot towels, and after the service they came by with coffee, tea. AND all of this was FREE. AND we got free beer and wine the entire time. AND Steve knows how to speak a little Korean, so we made friends with the flight attendants. Two more things: when we got on the plane, we each had a blanket, pillow, headset, slippers, toothbrush, toothpaste, and bottle of water waiting at our seat :) And lastly, free movies!!!!!!!! In between sleeping and reading, I watched Whip It, Dear John, Valentines Day, and Its Complicated. Whoo!Okay, so that was my little experience with Korean food.

Onto Japan!

Our first meal in Japan consisted of candy and weird snacks. We adventured down to the nearest convenience store and stocked up on chocolate, dried fish, mixed nuts, and other sweet treats. All of which had funny packaging or just sounded really strange. Crunky was my absolute favorite. Mostly because it said "Good me!" on the package and its called Crunky. Steve's favorite was probably the teeny tiny Apple Pie squares. It's a piece of candy about 1 inch square, that tastes exactly like a morsel of Apple Pie.

Our hotel served breakfast every morning. I was thinking it would be fruit and bagels, but it was an entire MEAL! Rice, mini hot dogs, salad, two types of soup, boiled eggs (or raw if you prefer), cereal, yogurt, donuts, bread, bagels, these weird bean things, coffee, tea, and orange juice.

For our first authentic Japanese dinner, a colleague from our Tokyo branch took us out for tempura (my favorite!). We even got to sit in a special dining area where we take off our shoes and sit on a pillow. The chef dipped various things into batter and fried it right in front of us. Along with tempura we tried some sashimi (scallops and bream), but I didn't much care for those. My favorites were the shrimp, asparagus, and eggplant tempura. We must have been eating for like two hours straight. We had countless pieces of tempura, a salad, soup, and all of that was followed by a bowl of rice with MORE tempura on top of it. I was having a hard time using the chopsticks so our colleague asked the waitress to bring out special sticks that were rubber-banded together :) How embarrassing! For dessert we all had fresh fruit. I had a mango and Steve had half a watermelon - the best watermelon I've ever tasted! :)

Speaking of fresh fruit, fruit in Japan is very very expensive!!! We saw a cantaloupe for $50.00!! Here are some cherries for 8000 yen, which is about $80.00!!! No wonder they never served fruit at our hotel breakfast. We definitely take fresh fruit and vegetables for granted here on the Central Coast. We can go to farmers market and get a basket of cherries for $3.00!

Another interesting thing about food in Japan is the plastic food models! In addition to flyers and posters and menus outside restaurants, they have plastic models of their dishes outside on display. Some restaurants didn't have English menus so this made it easy to decide what to eat. The models look SO real. Some dishes looked freakish and weird dishes, and others looked soo yummy.

On our first outing through Roppongi, we saw a food model with a whole crab on top of noodles. Steve knew right then that he HAD to have it. So that night, we found the place again and tried this delicious pasta! I had the eggplant, tomato pasta. It was similar to our spaghetti, but with an asian flare!

I think my favorite meal we had was our first lunch outing in Harajuku. Steve got beef over rice with soup and salad. I got egg and veggies over rice. It was simple, but SO yummy. One of the quaintest thing about eating out at a restaurant in Japan is all the cute little dishes they use. Everything comes on its own dish on a tray. The tiny bowls and chopstick holders are so cute. I told Steve we could have a Japanese themed dinner and have lots of little side dishes and use our new Japanese china!

Speaking of pretty dishes, during our time in Shinjuku, we tried grilled eel. The eel came in a lovely little box. They had all sizes - small through extra large. This is the regular size box and the eel was grilled to perfected and oh so tasty. It tasted like a very mild white fish. It was served on rice with a side of salad and soup as usual. Tea is served at every meal. I ordered a Japanese omelet which is grilled eel inside an egg. I ordered a "Kora" with my meal - which is cola. I think they labeled it as "kora" because that's how they pronounce it!

Japan is full of awesome beverages. They had vending machines on every corner filled with japanese tea, iced coffee drinks, sodas, different juices and flavored water. The only western thing we really saw was coke zero and I saw Dr. Pepper once. We tried so many different vending drinks - I think my favorite were the iced coffees, "for relaxing time". Most of the bevs and interesting and humorous sayings written on them which made them even more enticing. Steve fell in love with Japanese beer and drank Asahi and Sopporo daily. We even had an alcohol vending machine in our hotel. They had everything like beer, whiskey and water, and lots of fruity alcoholic drinks like my personal favorite, peach flavored Slat. Great name, huh? On our last night out in Roppongi, we ran around the town with "Cola Shock" in hand. Vodka and coke in a can. One of the BEST mixed drinks ever.

One of the last treats we had we got from one of the subway stations. The Japanese stations are sooo nice. They all have little malls in them with lots of good stores, restaurants and treat shops. We picked up some donuts for the ride home. Steve got a green tea donut which looked like guacamole!

Some of you may be wondering if there were lots of McDonalds around and the answer is YES. There was a McDonalds on every corner. Our work friend told us that they pronounce McDonalds like "MacDonaldo" :) How cute is that. Makes it sound super fancy. All of the McDonalds were huge and had several floors for seating. The seats were plush, modern, and they were always packed with men in business suits on their laptops. We tried a burger and fries one night when I wasn't feeling too well, and it tasted EXACTLY the same. I assumed it might be a little different, but nope! Some other popular western places were Starbucks (we saw them on EVERY block), Subway, and Wolfgang Puck. I also saw one Outback Steakhouse, Lawrys, and Ruth Chis Steakhouse. Japanese people LOVE steak because I think it is hard to get good steak there.

Our colleague took us out a second time for Shabu Shabu. This was a real treat!! Shabu Shabu is thinly sliced Kobe beef, served raw on a plate. A bubbling pot sits in the middle of the table, and you take a slice of beef with your chopsticks, and swish it around in the boiling water for about ten seconds. Then Wa la! The beef is cooked and you dip it in a little dish with yummy sauce. It was soo delicious. We also dipped fresh veggies and raman noodles into the water and had a huge feast. It was probably one of the coolest meals I've ever had. Afterwards we tried EVERY dessert on the menu! There were these weird strips of transparent jelly that you dip in this molasses sauce. YUCK. Another one was this bean dessert, which was like soft pinto beans with sugar on top. YUCK AGAIN! Then finally we tried a yummy dessert that was a sweet jelly with a plum in the middle. My favorite was the green tea ice cream. I've never seen such bright green ice cream before. This meal must have cost a ton because I read somewhere the Kobe beef is very expensive and combined with this fancy restaurant and all the food we ordered, the bill must have been a few hundred bucks! Yikes! It was so cool that we were treated like royalty at these lovely dinners with our new Japanese friend and his beautiful wife!

I can't say enough how much we enjoyed the food in Japan. We were living in Cloud 9 with full bellies every day. We needed another week just to be able to try more food!! I hope this gives you all a glimpse of our satiable experience there.

Comida

Speaking of language, while in Japan my mouth kept spitting out spanish words and phrases. Como esta? Me llamo es Jaime. Toca la guitarra! Wrong country lady!

So back to the point of this post: the BEST part about Japan was the FOOD. We ate and ate and ate and ate and ate some more. But, guess what? We never ate sushi! Apparently Japan has a lot more food than just sushi :) But before I get started on all our amazing meals, let me tell you a little bit about our in-flight service on Korean Airlines.

I got a few snarly looks when I told people we were taking Korean air. I have no idea why because it was THE BEST plane ride I've ever been on. I thought it would be an icky combination of miserable and scary. It was the opposite. I was in high heaven. Literally. We were served two meals: the first was a traditional Korean meal called "Bi Bim Bop" which included white rice, beef, mushrooms, green onions, noodles, kimchi, and soup. It sounds normal, but it was one of the yummiest dishes ever. The second meal was chicken, broccoli, carrots, a dinner roll, and strawberry cheesecake. Steve had shrimp pasta. YUM! In between these two meals we were served juice and a banana or a hot roll with beef in the middle (sounds gross, but it was my most favorite snack of all time!) Before the service, they passed around hot towels, and after the service they came by with coffee, tea. AND all of this was FREE. AND we got free beer and wine the entire time. AND Steve knows how to speak a little Korean, so we made friends with the flight attendants. Two more things: when we got on the plane, we each had a blanket, pillow, headset, slippers, toothbrush, toothpaste, and bottle of water waiting at our seat :) And lastly, free movies!!!!!!!! In between sleeping and reading, I watched Whip It, Dear John, Valentines Day, and Its Complicated. Whoo!Okay, so that was my little experience with Korean food.

Onto Japan!

Our first meal in Japan consisted of candy and weird snacks. We adventured down to the nearest convenience store and stocked up on chocolate, dried fish, mixed nuts, and other sweet treats. All of which had funny packaging or just sounded really strange. Crunky was my absolute favorite. Mostly because it said "Good me!" on the package and its called Crunky. Steve's favorite was probably the teeny tiny Apple Pie squares. It's a piece of candy about 1 inch square, that tastes exactly like a morsel of Apple Pie.

Our hotel served breakfast every morning. I was thinking it would be fruit and bagels, but it was an entire MEAL! Rice, mini hot dogs, salad, two types of soup, boiled eggs (or raw if you prefer), cereal, yogurt, donuts, bread, bagels, these weird bean things, coffee, tea, and orange juice.

For our first authentic Japanese dinner, a colleague from our Tokyo branch took us out for tempura (my favorite!). We even got to sit in a special dining area where we take off our shoes and sit on a pillow. The chef dipped various things into batter and fried it right in front of us. Along with tempura we tried some sashimi (scallops and bream), but I didn't much care for those. My favorites were the shrimp, asparagus, and eggplant tempura. We must have been eating for like two hours straight. We had countless pieces of tempura, a salad, soup, and all of that was followed by a bowl of rice with MORE tempura on top of it. I was having a hard time using the chopsticks so our colleague asked the waitress to bring out special sticks that were rubber-banded together :) How embarrassing! For dessert we all had fresh fruit. I had a mango and Steve had half a watermelon - the best watermelon I've ever tasted! :)

Speaking of fresh fruit, fruit in Japan is very very expensive!!! We saw a cantaloupe for $50.00!! Here are some cherries for 8000 yen, which is about $80.00!!! No wonder they never served fruit at our hotel breakfast. We definitely take fresh fruit and vegetables for granted here on the Central Coast. We can go to farmers market and get a basket of cherries for $3.00!

Another interesting thing about food in Japan is the plastic food models! In addition to flyers and posters and menus outside restaurants, they have plastic models of their dishes outside on display. Some restaurants didn't have English menus so this made it easy to decide what to eat. The models look SO real. Some dishes looked freakish and weird dishes, and others looked soo yummy.

On our first outing through Roppongi, we saw a food model with a whole crab on top of noodles. Steve knew right then that he HAD to have it. So that night, we found the place again and tried this delicious pasta! I had the eggplant, tomato pasta. It was similar to our spaghetti, but with an asian flare!

I think my favorite meal we had was our first lunch outing in Harajuku. Steve got beef over rice with soup and salad. I got egg and veggies over rice. It was simple, but SO yummy. One of the quaintest thing about eating out at a restaurant in Japan is all the cute little dishes they use. Everything comes on its own dish on a tray. The tiny bowls and chopstick holders are so cute. I told Steve we could have a Japanese themed dinner and have lots of little side dishes and use our new Japanese china!

Speaking of pretty dishes, during our time in Shinjuku, we tried grilled eel. The eel came in a lovely little box. They had all sizes - small through extra large. This is the regular size box and the eel was grilled to perfected and oh so tasty. It tasted like a very mild white fish. It was served on rice with a side of salad and soup as usual. Tea is served at every meal. I ordered a Japanese omelet which is grilled eel inside an egg. I ordered a "Kora" with my meal - which is cola. I think they labeled it as "kora" because that's how they pronounce it!

Japan is full of awesome beverages. They had vending machines on every corner filled with japanese tea, iced coffee drinks, sodas, different juices and flavored water. The only western thing we really saw was coke zero and I saw Dr. Pepper once. We tried so many different vending drinks - I think my favorite were the iced coffees, "for relaxing time". Most of the bevs and interesting and humorous sayings written on them which made them even more enticing. Steve fell in love with Japanese beer and drank Asahi and Sopporo daily. We even had an alcohol vending machine in our hotel. They had everything like beer, whiskey and water, and lots of fruity alcoholic drinks like my personal favorite, peach flavored Slat. Great name, huh? On our last night out in Roppongi, we ran around the town with "Cola Shock" in hand. Vodka and coke in a can. One of the BEST mixed drinks ever.

One of the last treats we had we got from one of the subway stations. The Japanese stations are sooo nice. They all have little malls in them with lots of good stores, restaurants and treat shops. We picked up some donuts for the ride home. Steve got a green tea donut which looked like guacamole!

Some of you may be wondering if there were lots of McDonalds around and the answer is YES. There was a McDonalds on every corner. Our work friend told us that they pronounce McDonalds like "MacDonaldo" :) How cute is that. Makes it sound super fancy. All of the McDonalds were huge and had several floors for seating. The seats were plush, modern, and they were always packed with men in business suits on their laptops. We tried a burger and fries one night when I wasn't feeling too well, and it tasted EXACTLY the same. I assumed it might be a little different, but nope! Some other popular western places were Starbucks (we saw them on EVERY block), Subway, and Wolfgang Puck. I also saw one Outback Steakhouse, Lawrys, and Ruth Chis Steakhouse. Japanese people LOVE steak because I think it is hard to get good steak there.

Our colleague took us out a second time for Shabu Shabu. This was a real treat!! Shabu Shabu is thinly sliced Kobe beef, served raw on a plate. A bubbling pot sits in the middle of the table, and you take a slice of beef with your chopsticks, and swish it around in the boiling water for about ten seconds. Then Wa la! The beef is cooked and you dip it in a little dish with yummy sauce. It was soo delicious. We also dipped fresh veggies and raman noodles into the water and had a huge feast. It was probably one of the coolest meals I've ever had. Afterwards we tried EVERY dessert on the menu! There were these weird strips of transparent jelly that you dip in this molasses sauce. YUCK. Another one was this bean dessert, which was like soft pinto beans with sugar on top. YUCK AGAIN! Then finally we tried a yummy dessert that was a sweet jelly with a plum in the middle. My favorite was the green tea ice cream. I've never seen such bright green ice cream before. This meal must have cost a ton because I read somewhere the Kobe beef is very expensive and combined with this fancy restaurant and all the food we ordered, the bill must have been a few hundred bucks! Yikes! It was so cool that we were treated like royalty at these lovely dinners with our new Japanese friend and his beautiful wife!

I can't say enough how much we enjoyed the food in Japan. We were living in Cloud 9 with full bellies every day. We needed another week just to be able to try more food!! I hope this gives you all a glimpse of our satiable experience there.