Fireworks show in my town

We had a firework show in Futako-tamagawa which is my town. I went to the river side with my wife and kid and enjoyed it.
When I watch its firework, I feel the summer is ending.

Raw meat of chicken

As you know, Japanese likes to eat raw fish. Do you know that you can eat raw chicken in Japan? You can eat fresh meat of chicken, beef and even horse. I like to eat fresh chicken breast fillet with wasabi and soy-sauce. Its taste is weak because of low fat and you can eat like raw fish.

When you have a chance to come to Japan, please try to eat raw meat as well as raw fish.

Takoyaki

We ate TAKOYAKI at dinner. TAKO means octopus and YAKI means baked. It is very popular snack in Japan. Takoyaki is a dumpling with a diced octopus.
We generally eat takoyaki as a snack or a light meal, but people in Osaka eat takoyaki as an usual meal. I had felt it was strange to eat takoyaki at dinner, but now I became enjoy it. Beer is good for takoyaki!

Its recipe is simple, batter, dices octopus, pickled ginger, green onion and takoyaki sauce. However, it is a little difficult to make a ball first. To make takoyaki, we need a special pan for takoyaki. It is said that all families in Osaka have at least one takoyaki-pan. Because my wife originally came from Osaka, she brought a takoyaki-pan as one of her hope chests when we got married.

I think our home made takoyaki is much better than that was sold in the market.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Takoyaki

Solar eclipse

Although we expected to ovseve a partial eclipse of the sun in Tokyo today, we unfortunately could not see it due to bad weather. We can observe the next solar eclipse in 2035 in Japan. I have to wait so long.

Tokino-sumika

I had the three-day weekend because Monday is national holiday "Oceans Day" in Japan.

I stayed at Gotenba-Kogen Hotel with my wife and baby. That hotel is in "Tokino-sumika" which is leisure park located in Gotenba. It takes two or three hours to go there from Tokyo by car. There are shops, restaurants, hotels, hot springs and tennis court. We can also enjoy variety of local beer named "Gotenba beer".



At night, we enjoyed to walk the illuminated road. It was very beautiful! Please see the attached picture.

I would like to stay there again and drink beer more!

Haruki Murakami's novel "1Q84"

I am reading Haruki Murakami's latest novel "1Q84". Murakami is one of the popular authors in Japan and thought to be the closest Japanese author to the Nobel prize for literature.
His latest novel "1Q84" was sold out soon after it was released. Because I ordered it in advance to Amazon, I could get it.
It is a very long story,two-volume, 1,055-page hardcover book, but it's hard to put down the book once you've started it. Although its story is very mysterious and unpredictable like mixture of reality and fantasy, it is easy to read due to easy-to-follow story telling. In addition, characters are very attractive. There are two main characters. One is a male who is obscure author and another is female who is a hired hit-woman.
I am looking forward to reading the rest of the story.

Non-alcohol beer

When my mother in law came to my house, I picked up her at the Sin-Yokohama Station by car. Because she arrived there at about 7 pm, we had a dinner at a restaurant in the station. We ate assorted row fishes, and I wanted to drink some beer very much! I can not image that eating row fish without alcohol. Best drinks with row fish is beer, Japanese sake or white wine! But unfortunately, I could not drink, because I had to drive to return my home.
Therefore, I tried a non-alcohol beer which was just released by Kirin. I thought that its taste was not bad and enough to keep off my hunger for beer.
I heard that this Kirin's non-alcohol beer is having a good salse.