Awesome Thanksgiving Weekend
So I went up to Toyama to see Elliott, eat an awesome Thanksgiving dinner, and have an all around awesome time.
The weekend started Friday afternoon around 4:00pm when I woke up on the padded floor of my cubicle in an internet cafe with a massive hangover from the nomihoudai the night before. Then I went up to Takaoka via Kanazawa to grab a x-burger (x for xtreme?) at the Brazillian place with Elliott and John. Then we went and ate some food at Akiyoshi.
On Saturday Alex rolled in and we ate Krispy Kremes he brought from Tokyo for breakfast. Then went to see a thatched roofed village up in the mountains, then stopped by this restaurant to eat bear.
That's rigtht - bear! I've eaten a lot of strange things here in Japan (octopus tentacles, crab brains, raw horse, cow tongue, and intestines just to name a few) - but I've never had bear. So we rolled up to this little shack of a restaurant, walk in, and a drunken Japanese family greets us and starts to try to speak English. They said they knew Alex could speak English cause of his eyes, said Toyama was #1 in education thanks to Elliott, one dude kept telling us how he used to live in Ohio, and they gave us free sake (aged 5 years) and river fish. It was one of those awesome experiences where Japanese peeps love talking to foreigners, giving them free food, etc.
Then out came our bear soba. Let me say it was awesome! Bear was a bit chewy, and way fatty (hey, what do you expect - it's bear!) but all around awesome. Next time I go there (and there WILL be a next time) I wanna get the bear bowl (basically bear on rice).
Alex talked with the cook about where the bears come from and he told us how he kills them all himself with a rifle from over 1km away. There's two mountains, and he stands on one mountain and his friend on the other. They spot eachother, if he sees a bear on his friend's mountain he'll shoot it and visa versa. Cause if he tried to chase a bear on his mountain the bear might run away and that'd be bad. He said he likes to shoot the bears himself so he can use more bear meat, pointing to the table still covered with plates and leftovers that the Japanese family left behind. He said they had bear nabe, bear soba, bear this, and bear that. Did I mention I need to go back to that place? They also have duck there!
Next we went back to Elliott's, he cooked up an awesome thanksgiving dinner, we ate, drank, and were merry. Then we went onto the internets to watch videos of animals fighting eachother in the wild. Perhaps the best videos were lion vs rhino, alligator vs gizelle vs hippo, hippos lickin alligators for no reason and the alligators not fighting back, and seeing what I believe was a cheeta drag its prey up into a tree for feasting so no one else could steal its meal. Polar bear vs a heard of warlus was also mighty entertaining.
Next day we woke up and had some awesome unagi (eel) at a restaurant in Elliott's town. Then we went to Takaoka and visited Hokuriku's biggest mall Aeon. Then we went back the area in front of the station, looked for fun and found none, then went back to Akiyoshi. God bless Akiyoshi. I swear a yakitori chain like that would be insanely popular in the states, especially in college towns.
Then Elliott left and Alex and I found an arcade with 50yen VF5 and SF3:3S. God bless half price arcades. Then I came home and went to sleep and that was that. Horray for awesomeness!
The weekend started Friday afternoon around 4:00pm when I woke up on the padded floor of my cubicle in an internet cafe with a massive hangover from the nomihoudai the night before. Then I went up to Takaoka via Kanazawa to grab a x-burger (x for xtreme?) at the Brazillian place with Elliott and John. Then we went and ate some food at Akiyoshi.
On Saturday Alex rolled in and we ate Krispy Kremes he brought from Tokyo for breakfast. Then went to see a thatched roofed village up in the mountains, then stopped by this restaurant to eat bear.
That's rigtht - bear! I've eaten a lot of strange things here in Japan (octopus tentacles, crab brains, raw horse, cow tongue, and intestines just to name a few) - but I've never had bear. So we rolled up to this little shack of a restaurant, walk in, and a drunken Japanese family greets us and starts to try to speak English. They said they knew Alex could speak English cause of his eyes, said Toyama was #1 in education thanks to Elliott, one dude kept telling us how he used to live in Ohio, and they gave us free sake (aged 5 years) and river fish. It was one of those awesome experiences where Japanese peeps love talking to foreigners, giving them free food, etc.
Then out came our bear soba. Let me say it was awesome! Bear was a bit chewy, and way fatty (hey, what do you expect - it's bear!) but all around awesome. Next time I go there (and there WILL be a next time) I wanna get the bear bowl (basically bear on rice).
Alex talked with the cook about where the bears come from and he told us how he kills them all himself with a rifle from over 1km away. There's two mountains, and he stands on one mountain and his friend on the other. They spot eachother, if he sees a bear on his friend's mountain he'll shoot it and visa versa. Cause if he tried to chase a bear on his mountain the bear might run away and that'd be bad. He said he likes to shoot the bears himself so he can use more bear meat, pointing to the table still covered with plates and leftovers that the Japanese family left behind. He said they had bear nabe, bear soba, bear this, and bear that. Did I mention I need to go back to that place? They also have duck there!
Next we went back to Elliott's, he cooked up an awesome thanksgiving dinner, we ate, drank, and were merry. Then we went onto the internets to watch videos of animals fighting eachother in the wild. Perhaps the best videos were lion vs rhino, alligator vs gizelle vs hippo, hippos lickin alligators for no reason and the alligators not fighting back, and seeing what I believe was a cheeta drag its prey up into a tree for feasting so no one else could steal its meal. Polar bear vs a heard of warlus was also mighty entertaining.
Next day we woke up and had some awesome unagi (eel) at a restaurant in Elliott's town. Then we went to Takaoka and visited Hokuriku's biggest mall Aeon. Then we went back the area in front of the station, looked for fun and found none, then went back to Akiyoshi. God bless Akiyoshi. I swear a yakitori chain like that would be insanely popular in the states, especially in college towns.
Then Elliott left and Alex and I found an arcade with 50yen VF5 and SF3:3S. God bless half price arcades. Then I came home and went to sleep and that was that. Horray for awesomeness!