Milk festival

Free Milk!

Rice harvest

Kaki (Persimmons)

Rice harvester

Katsuo no tataki -- again

Today was my wife's birthday and she happened to have the day off, so we went out to lunch together. She chose a seafood restaurant a few kilometers from our house. I ordered katsuo no tataki, which turned out to be a mistake. The fish was very high quality, but it was done in a real Tokushima style, quite different from the Kochi style I had been hoping for. The fish was extremely lighty cooked, as it shoud be, but not at all charred on the outside and it was smothered in sliced mild onion with just a few, very thin shreds of very mild garlic. My wife's Manpuku Sushi Lunch (manpuku means full stomach) seemed to be much better, though it might not fill up my stomach.

When we went to pay, I looked at the woman behind the cash register. She looked quite familiar, though I couldn't place her. I looked at her name tag, but didn't regocnize it as a name I'd ever seen before. I looked at her. She looked at me. Then she said, "Don-san" and told us she had been my student at Beginners' Club. It was Hitomi Somthing-or-other -- I can't remember her maiden name. She's the fourth former student I've run into, including the woman who cut my hair a few weeks ago.

Bird notes

Cold and flu season is approaching and I've decided to be pro-active. I'm going to make some chicken soup and freeze it so it will be ready instantly. One problem is that I can't buy whole chickens here. They grow them, slaughter them, cut them up and sell all the pieces, but you can't buy a whole dead chicken in Tokushima. You have to order one a week in advance. You can't buy turkeys here at all, though you can mail order them from Kobe. Usually, for Thanksgiving, I've simply made chicken pieces, but maybe I'll mail order a small turkey this year since we have an oven. On second thought, I guess that will have to be a whole chicken -- this oven is too small for any turkey I'd care to eat.

A very simple breakfast (for Lee)