40 Days of Summer (in Japan) - Part Sanjuuni

The Hikidas arranged to meet at noon today, partially because they kept us up so late and partially because (I'm sure) they needed to recover from their hangovers. As I groggily made my way to the bathroom at 11.50am I was greeted by Hikida-san himself, who I was very surprised to see but also very happy. After greeting him, Xim took over with the pleasantries; he left soon after to do whatever Buddhist monks do on Sunday afternoons (probably tending to the cemetery).

Yumiko-oneesan, Aki-oniisan and Risa-san were around to take us to lunch (Ren-oniisan had disappeared the night before, splitting off before we reached the temple, which made us wonder if he was already married and had a home of his own to get to). Yumiko-oneesan drove us to this mall near the train station, bringing us to a well-known okonomiyaki place. Hiroshima okonomiyaki is slightly different from traditional ones, their specialty being that they fry it with soba noodles, which offset the amount of cabbage one has to consume, and also makes it taste wonderfully delicious.

Okonomiyaki stalls all vying for attention.

You can practically hear it sizzling on the teppan.

There was a huge queue (this is becoming a recurring theme) and so we spent about half an hour salivating as dish after dish of hot steaming okonomiyaki was served. While we waited, I picked a the shop's specialty, okonomiyaki with prawns and squid, eagerly anticipating the savoury flavour with every ticking second.

It was a long and brutal queue.

When we were finally shown our seat, I was slightly disappointed that we weren't sitting at the teppan seats, because I wanted to watch the masters cook up a storm of friend noodles and cabbage. I was, however, quickly satiated by the arrival of my lunch:

NWARH

And no specialty dish is complete without the Japan-hour close-up:

"Orrrhhhh... oishi!"

Here's the big puzzle that has been intriguing Xim and me: Who is Risa-san? It sounds like the opening to some pulp-fiction mystery novel, but that was the thing that was really niggling at my hindbrain. Yes, she was Yumiko-oneesan's student, but she seemed way too close to the whole family to be just a friend. Perhaps she was Aki-oniisan's girlfriend? But certain behavioural evidence suggested otherwise as well (she seemed a lot closer to Yumiko-oneesan). Perhaps she simply took to Yumiko as a kind of older sister as well; she certainly seemed to treat her with respect, in a kind of senpai-kohai relationship. Maybe it's a romantic relationship? Well, whoever knows, it certainly wasn't me nor Xim. We left without the answers to this nagging question.

We had to catch an afternoon train back to Tokyo, if we wanted to make it in time for class tomorrow. It was a sad and tearful goodbye, but of course with the obligatory final photo-shoot:

Monks-in-training.

This is the cover of our next album, He Ain't Heavy, He's my Buddha.

This is my family. There are many like it, but this one is mine.

That's their gigantic temple. And it even houses a pretty big Buddha inside.

Xim went to buy some omiyage for his host family: a squishy confection shaped like a maple leaf known as momiji manju, which is a specialty of Hiroshima's Miyajima Island. While waiting, I bravely ventured into a McDonald's and tried one of the special World Cup offerings, a honey-flavoured McFlurry:

It was terribly small, for some reason.

There's nothing much to report except our trip back to Tokyo. Fairly standard stuff now, since Xim had all his tickets this time.

Putting things in perspective.

We had dinner inside Shinagawa Station, and were happy to find out that most of the restaurants were still open; we both ordered the same delicious udon with the famous kurobuta pork. It was homemade noodles, so the consistency was very different, but it was delicious all the same.

A wonderful end to a wonderful weekend.