eating

Managed to get up at a reasonable hour and motivate to Asakusa for some shopping. We ended up walking all over Asakusa checking out hakama and swords parts and antiques and junk. Dave finally found the obi he needed. We got to the tabi shop but they're closed on Wednesdays so I'll have to come back some other day to get Tony's tabi.

The cool restaurant we wanted to have lunch was also closed so we ended up going down the street to a nice mom & pop tonkatsu place for some more deep fried pork. We wandered a bit more, drank some amazake to warm up, and finally headed home to relax before practice.
We got to practice about 6:30 and Niina-gosoke immediately started running Dave and Tony through all twenty kata. I was furiously taking notes and interpreting for Gosoke and he plowed them non-stop through everything.
After practice we went over to the Niku-no-Hanamasa all-you-can-eat/drink place for two hours of feeding. We piled the tables with meat to grill and got pitchers of beer and had a good time. Otsuka-san was a riot, Tanaka-sensei turned red as the beer flowed, Hoshina-san was cute as always, and Niina-gosoke and Tony got along really well. We figured out the general schedule for next year and Niina-gosoke is really happy to have Tony running the US for us.