Ok, Sharron and I managed to get out to the home store and pick up our lantern on Saturday. They ordered us a new one, but it was a little damaged on one side. We got them to give us 20% off and we bought it anyway. :-)
Here is a picture of me, Maddy, the lantern and the flower beds. Hopefully, the scale will be obvious now. The lantern cost about $45.
On Saturday, Me, Sharron, Hiromi (one of Sharron’s English students), Ryan, Chris and his wife Chisato, went to a restaurant call The Black Tea Room. It was about 20-30 minutes from our house and was another Japanese bar-b-que type place. The location is simply beautiful. It’s right next to a river and you can walk around the grounds. We didn’t have a lot of time, but from what I saw I could spend a good long while just wandering around. We ordered two sets of food. One was a beef and chicken combo and the other was a spiced beef with raw river fish combo. Everything was excellent and having two native Japanese speakers along definitely helped out. What we got to start was a small setting of hors d’oeuvres that consisted of a few unrecognizeable things, some tofu, a shrimp (complete with head), some bamboo and a flavored brandy. I liked the shrimp and brandy. Dinner was much better. The meat came raw and you grilled it on the built in table grills. Very tasty, especially the spiced beef. The raw fish was also excellent (think sushi without the rice). We also got a complete fish that had been skewered. I was a little apprehensive, but decided to try it anyway. It was very light, slightly salty and delicious. Everybody thought I was crazy I think, but I liked it. We also got rice and miso soup. Japanese staples I think. For dessert, a bean curd cookie type thing and fruit. Skip the cookie. Trust me.
This week, Sharron and I finally finished weather proofing Maddy’s dog house. This was one of our lingering projects. We’ll eventually get them all done, but it’s slow going sometimes. The other thing we’ve been putting off is finishing the patio. We have a good reason for that though, we still need to buy more stones to complete it. :-)
I thought this was an interesting article on lifespans on Yahoo.
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