Kitsutsuki and Mokumoku

The den/kitchen area bulb went out this morning. Boo. One incandescent bulb left.

We started getting ready for the conversation test on next Tuesday, so we were assigned our partners. I’m with V-san, who saved me that 10,000 yen a few weeks ago. She’s really good. Much better than I am at this. Then again, she and her husband have lived here for a while.

I’ve been going to きつつき Kitsutsuki a lot for lunch, and it’s done wonders for my overall feeling of health. I feel more 元気 げんき genki— lively, and less だるい darui— sluggish.

I started eating there a week or so ago, and the food is great. I had been eating sandwiches from Domy (the grocery store down the street), but Kitsutsuki is more like food your Japanese mom would make. Three ladies work behind the counter, and they do everything from make the food to serve it, to handling the check. They make some wicked good food.

Generally, the best bet is to just order the A set, which is 550 yen, and comes with all the water you can drink.

You get a bowl of rice, a bowl of incredible miso soup, some steamed vegetables, and a main dish of some kind or another. Sometimes it’s stir fry and vegetables, sometimes it’s fried cutlets and shredded cabbage, sometimes it’s a fish thing, but it’s always, always good.

Kitsutsuki is on the Yamasa campus, right next to ZigZag, but not just students eat there. I see a lot of local folks eating there, too.

What I’ve learned from watching the locals eat is that if you dump the main dish over the rice, it tastes really good.

Nagoya for the Umpteenth Time

We finished out the week in JBPP with more practice turning people down.

After class, I took a trip to Nagoya to do some shopping. It might be one of my last chances to do it, since I have a lot of tests coming up (and the JLPT on Sunday. OMG.)

So I swung by some bookstores, looked at some CDs and used games, picked up some doughnuts, and went to Mokumoku again for dinner.

While I was waiting for a table at Mokumoku, who should I run into but the guy I met in Kyoto last weekend! Wow, it really IS a small world. We had dinner together, and I showed him how the restaurant works. We had a really interesting conversation about various economics-related stuff.

Dinner was great, and a lot of fun, too.

After that, I grabbed the 10:30 train home and got back in around 11:15 or so.

Long day, but good.