vietnamese food

Had some great food last night in Nishi-Azabu at a tiny little place called Kitchen. 2 cuties making and serving Vietnamese food. Much less spicy than I thought, which is good because me no handle spice good.
Was with Hiroko and Terrie's Angels*, always good for a laugh. Finished the evening with some Hobson's icecream and Hiroko and I walked home through Azabu.
* Terrie's Angels: Hiroko, Rei, and Haruka all work at Linc Media, run by the Charlie-like Terrie Lloyd. The three go to a karate place twice a week to kick and punch away their stress.

ouch

Cut my left ring finger when cleaning my sword. Yup, the sucker's sharp.

spoonerism from jeremy

Smart feller!

spoonerism

Reds will hole!

amy

Todd's 2 week old gremlin Amy is lookin' more human by the minute.

azabu juban summer festival

It was a fun-filled, action-packed weekend. Got a mail from Ann and Jacob (friends of Steve and Cheech) saying they'd be in Tokyo and could we meet up? Perfect timing with the summer festival, so after some phone tag at the hotel because Ann gave me her name but the hotel room was in her boyfriend's name, we finally met up. Took the unsuspecting tourists back to our place, dressed them up in yukata and jimbei and off we went to Lucky for some eatin'. We sat next to a table of HUGE sumo wrestlers, and A&J took some photos with them. Then we went down to the festival, which is basically a billion people packed into several city blocks with vendors of all kinds. Ann tried her hand at the traditional goldfish scooping and managed to grab one, but I think the guy took pity on her and gave her an extra fish. Then we plowed our way through the people, grabbing some cotton candy, trying other games (nice keychain Jacob!) and hitting the International Bazaar, which was more of the same with a higher concentration of foreigners and weird food. Someone Ollie managed to find us, and we coordinated with Kevin and Z. to meet up later. Ollie went off to find his other friends, so we went back home to change as by now Ann's feet were killing her and she couldn't breathe with the yukata obi tied up so tight. We rested for a minute and headed back out to Lucky to hook up with Kev and Z and Ollie and some of his friends, got a room upstairs and put and put away some beverage and more snacks. A good time was had by all -- A&J hook us up with some photos!
Next day I got up early for iaido and Gosoke schooled us for 3 hours. Came home and Hiroko needed some shaved ice, so we went back up to the festival (last day) waited in line for a bit at THE shavaed ice place, pigged out, then on the way home bought up all kinds of bits and bobs for dinner. That evening we dined on a feast of Jamaican jerk chicken, samosa, pad-thai, chijimi, iwashi, and cotton candy!
P.S. Anne's goldfish died.