An Afternoon Walk

Sometimes I have to remind myself that just outside my front door, in my own neighborhood, there are loads of things to see. Looking forward to warmer weather and many more everyday adventures.

Taiwanese Food

So today after we went to the bizarre city office in an attempt to find Vikram, we went out to lunch at a Taiwanese restaurant.

First of all, I don't even know what Taiwanese food is. Seriously. I hear the words and I think of Vietnamese food...so yeah.

Anyways, we go to this place that Bret had been mentioning, that we'd actually attempted to go to before but it was closed.

It was not good. The whole menu was pictures of semi appetizing chinese food looking stuff. Taiwan is above the Phillipenes, to the right of China. So...maybe the food is like Chinese food. I am not great at geography, as I have stated in the past, so I looked all that up just now.

So...when you have bad food are you supposed to pretend it's good? I mean...I feel like I should just cut my losses, pay the 6 dollars, and get out of there, but Bret gets all...disgruntled at my complaining. Which I understand, but I still don't want to eat microwaved freezer food. Lunch is an important meal of the day! Usually the only big meal I have.

He had this omellete with some sort of sauce and crab on top and I had...some sort of pre-cut vegetables with chicken in a sauce that tasted like cornstarch and water. Seriously, it was bad. Bret described his crab as tasting like it was dried and re-hydrated, while I think it had just gone bad. It tasted terrible.

But...we have different opinions I guess, and he doesn't like to waste food and all that...

After that we went home, he got ready for work, and I've been sitting around with nothing to do. I decided to write this because I think it was funny. Bret's probably going to read it and be all like, why did you write that...etc etc.

I just don't like eating garbage.

After all of that, I looked up Taiwanese food on google images and it does, in fact, look like Chinese food in a lot of cases. I tried to find things that didn't look like Chinese dishes. Here are some pictures.

To be fair, in the countryside it's rare to find foreign food that's done well. At least in my humble experience. We have an amazing Korean place that does killer bulgogi, but it is pretty expensive so we never go.

All Alone

All of our guests have departed, and now it's just me and Bret again. This may not seem significant, but it's literally the first time it's been like this in well over two months. It was difficult the first few days after the house was empty. We had grown accustomed to Luke's presence in particular in the upstairs bedroom. It's strange that it's quiet and there's no one to look in on when we come home.

To fill the void I even volunteered to let some random couple on the train stay out our house. You can imagine their surprise to a random person they were asking for accommodations in the area shrugging and saying, "You can stay with me?" They were on vacation from Tokyo, but originally from Scotland and Denmark. I know nothing about either of those countries, but with Denmark in particular I kept making dim witted comments in an attempt at awkward, post I-invited-you-to-my-house conversation. US PUBLIC EDUCASHUN, Y U NO TEACH ME ABOUT OTHER COUNTRIES????

They were good fun though, I hope their trip out here was made a tad more interesting by the loony they met along the way. I've said it before and Ill say it many times again, being in Japan is not making me any more normal. I am getting stranger by the year. I only hope we can make our way back to the US before the awkwardness sets in forever.

In other tentative news. Bret and I are looking at plane tickets back for the Christmas holiday and I am really excited! Dates are December 21-January 4th, so try to make plans to meet up with me so you can observe the socially stunted weirdness that is spending time with me in person for yourself! I want to see everyone!!!!