14th oct
met up with palmer from IFS commercial. we both worked at ikea's dishwashing when i was doing baito. he's like a father to me cos he took care of me when i was doing dishwashing and gave a lot of advice to me. we ate at yakeru yanka, an okonomiyaki restaurant.

first there's hotpan moyashi as appetizer

then the house salad is also cooked on the grill

this is a tonpeiyaki (some omelet with okonomiyaki-like sauce)

and cheese fondue!


it's halloween and they have this very cute pumpkin which moves around the menu without falling off


palmer wanted to go roppongi to club but i decided that i want to catch the last train home so we took a taxi to shinjuku and back again (for like 2150yen) for nothing. in the end we went to sing for an hour at ikebukuro's karaoke

palmer can sing pretty well! and he's really into it

we then stopped for a rest near this place which houses an ancient tree that is over 3000year-old and is protected by the government




and ate kinako powdered mugroot (or something can't remember what it's called) dango which tasted like... elastic chewy leaves

saw a huge pumpkin outside the dango shop

then we stopped by an outside foot spa


the water was hot. and in the middle of the spa was a fountain with drinkable water that was supposed to be good for your health



ate a pork corroke there

inside the house near the foot spa was some mini-kabuki theatre. there was also lots of onsen eggs souvenirs. o_o`

about 3pm, we headed towards a supermarket. saw a tokyo-dome like thing on the way.

the kids were restless and kanoko refused to let her mom go with me and lauren to the supermarket. we felt like we were kidnapping hiroko. kanoko cried like mad so in the end we had to hasten our shopping trip. poor makoto also looked like he was in a disarray.
we quickly went home after we were done with our grocery shopping and prepared to cook.
lauren prepared a cocopops-coconut brownie dessert like thingy.

and we also helped out with the okonomiyaki preparation

hiroko looking pro as she fries the okonomiyaki

and it's done!

hiroko's friend came over as well and she brought 3 sons and some food along.


maguro

yummy! and by the time we were finishing off, lauren's dessert was done solidifying in the freezer

yum yum~~