Catching up with family - and feasting

Mostly for the past couple of days we have, you will be astounded to hear, been eating and catching up with family.

On Saturday, after a lazy start to the day, we headed out towards Austin's old apartment, to hit the mall.  I had one or two bits and pieces to buy. Austin wanted a few things.  Kaori had a voucher at the massage and health parlour that she had been given for Christmas.  It became clear, as we headed along, that very many other people had also thought that hitting the mall on Saturday was a good plan.  So we pulled off at a gyoza restaurant that Austin and Kaori found a little while ago for a spot of lunch and to allow the hordes of people, who were clearing heading to the mall for lunch, to get out of the way.

Our lunch was a mighty feast.  The Builder and I ordered the gyoza set menu (gyoza, fried chicken, fried fish, ramen soup, rice, salad, green tea mousse for dessert) which is intended for one - and shared it between us with left overs to spare. I most certainly couldn't have eaten all of that on my own!  And it was extremely delicious.  And by the time we had eaten our feast and Austin and Kaori had eaten theirs, it was the case that a lot of the traffic had gone.  So we made our way, replete and perhaps slightly more rotund than we had been an hour earlier, to the mall, where Kaori had her massage and we all did our various errands, acquired provisions for dinner and went home to play cards, eat lemon chicken (cooked by me - Kaori had never had lemon chicken before), drink wine and watch television that Austin had been storing for our entertainment.

On Sunday Kaori's parents came by the flat mid-morning and we had a nice catch up (they speak little English; we speak little Japanese but between us and Austin translating we managed to have quite a decent conversation). Then we headed out to a pizza parlour for a truly traditional Japanese Sunday lunch of pizza and pasta.  Actually, to say that we were there quite early, and to say that pizza and pasta probably aren't authentically traditional Japanese fare, there were quite a lot of people already there when we got there.  And the pizza parlour had a small, properly wood fired oven and made pizzas one at a time - and the pizzas we had were amongst the nicest we have ever had. It was a very convivial luncheon. Then Kaori's parents went back to Nagoya (poor Kaori's mum was working the night shift at the hospital where she is a nursing assistant) and we went home via the supermarket for an evening in which we played cards, ate dinner (savoury mince and mash, made by me but not a new thing for Kaori - Austin also makes it), drank wine and watched stored up telly - oh and talked to Stella and Tony on Skype for our regular 6:30 pm Melbourne time Sunday chat.

The sun continues to shine. The temperature during the day is cool but mild. But it does plummet to well below freezing once sun has set. It was quite frosty when The Builder and I woke up this morning.

Click on the gyoza feast to reach the album