The Return of the Aoki Clan

Two weeks ago, I met up with Aaron Jones, his wife Hiromi, and super cute and cool kid, Beau. You may remember them from their last year's visit (the crazy underwater ninjas that ate raw octopus on the beach). Bummer that my camera was out of order this time around, but I had a good time hanging out and seeing them again.


(I managed to snap one with my cell phone... Check out this Handsome Stud. What's up ladies?)

So this year we had a more mellow time, we met up in Kyoto, and had lunch with a couple of friends of Hiromi's, who were really cool! We had a picnic lunch at a temple, and strolled around the grounds. Hiromi's friend is a travel writer, and he was really knowledgable about the area. Afterwards, we went to a sushi restaurant in downtown Kyoto, which was one of the best meals I've had in Japan. Definitely top 10 of all time.



We had this awesome blowfish dinner: everything had blowfish in it - the appetizer was Blowfish skin, lightly fried, the sashimi course (oh man it was awesome - octopus, sea urchin, blowfish, squid, tuna... all super fresh and great), deep fried blowfish (kinda like fish and chips... for rich people) for the pre-main, and an awesome blowfish "nabe" for the main. Nabe (pronounced "Nah-Beh") is a wintertime dish, it's basically a hotpot in the middle of the table, and you add meat, vegetables, tofu, and noodles to it. Afterwards they take the broth and make a rice-soup for the final course. Oh man you better believe I passed out after that meal.

Anyway, all I could think about during dinner was the Simpson's episode where Homer eats the wrong part of the blowfish and thinks that he's going to die. Ha man I love the Simpsons, and man I love blowfish, and man I love it when the Aoki clan comes to town. Thanks Jones-san!