International cooking with Ayako

It was a stay-at-home weekend, mainly catching up with stuff that had to be done. In Ayako's case, this involved catching up on recipes that she had been meaning to make, but hadn't gotten around to. And so I was treated to many delicious international dishes this weekend. We started off on Friday night with the Russian dish of beef stroganoff:
For brunch on Saturday morning, we had French crepes. First starting off with galette, which is buckwheat crepes with ham, cheese and eggs cooked inside:
We followed this up with plain buckwheat crepes that we got to top off with some maple syrup:
For dinner, she baked Mexican (American-style) tortilla chips that we ate with salsa sauce and some humus:
On Saturday, she was busy mixing up some Christmas pudding:
It sat until Sunday and was steamed for three hours. It has now been put away until Christmas:
And for dinner on Sunday night, we ate Middle Eastern food, consisting of chicken kebabs, pita bread, and humus:
It was all very yummy but my immediate requests to have again were for the crepes and the kebabs. I'm looking forward to them.

Japanese Thanksgiving dinner

It was a holiday here on Monday, Labour Thanksgiving day. Since the day is pretty close to Thanksgiving day in the U.S., we had our annual Thanksgiving day dinner, this year at Eric and Tomoe's apartment. Here are some photos of everyone who came:
And some of the food we ate:

Viewing the leaves in Shirakurakyo

On Sunday, our friends Eric and Tomoe came over for a visit. Actually, Eric and I will be taking the same level test in Japanese in two weeks, so we had a study session before lunch. Hopefully we'll be okay for the test. After lunch, we went for a drive up north to see if we could see any of leaves changing colour yet. Ayako and I visited the area two years ago, and it wasn't very busy at that time. This year though, the narrow road leading to the area was quite busy:
Anyways, we could see some trees changing colour:
There were also nice walkways to get to some nice streams and waterfalls as well:
Here's a picture of me trying to set-up the timer and having trouble:
And here's a shot once I had figured it out:
On the way back home, we decided to try and avoid the crowded road, and so we found a long winding road through the forest going back. Still though, there was some nice lookouts along the road:

Visiting the nephews

On Saturday, Ayako and I went to visit her sister, Sumiko, and her two kids, Neo and Rio. We went for lunch and had Ozoni (Japanese soup with mochi rice cakes in it). The mochi was very sticky as usual:
rio wasn't so hungry at that time, so he was off reading books (or more accurately, looking at the pictures in comic books):
After lunch, I played with the boys by pulling them around on a blanket. I could pull them pretty fast on the tatami. They thought it was great fun and we continued till I was exhausted. Rio was up for having snacks afterwards:
Here they are with some cream-filled Santa bread:

Lunch party & Birthday party

On Saturday, we had some friends over for lunch. Ayako worked hard in the kitchen making lots of tempura:
You can see some of the dishes we had here:
Sarah came with Hiro, whom we met for the first time:
And Kathleen and Heather came as well. Here we are trying some yummy tofu-pumpkin pie that Ayako made:
At night, we went out to a birthday party for Sam, who turned 30. He had a good turnout:
Here he is before blowing out the candles:
And here he is with one of his wonderful gifts:
Some of the other guests that were there were Martin, Chris (whom I met for the first time and has his own blog on living in Hamamatsu here) and Pete:
Here's Ayako and me with the birthday boy:
Heather and Ayako with Sean:
and us with Christine and Keiji:

Anniversary dinner

Ayako and I don't often go out for dinner since Ayako prefers cooking good homemade meals, which I have no problem with at all. But we decided to go out for our 3rd anniversary (since we started dating). We went to same restaurant that we went to on our first anniversary, Ume-no-hana:
As you can see, it's a tofu restaurant. We had a different course than last time, and with so many small courses, I was quite full by the end of the meal. Here's Ayako patiently waiting for the photo to be taken before getting to try all the yummy dishes:

Ayako's birthday

Ayako had yet another birthday yesterday (Nov. 10). She had to work on the day, but she said it wasn't too busy. She got some nice gifts and I had dinner ready for her when she arrived home:

John & Takeshi's visit

A friend of my parents, John, came for a visit to Japan threes weeks ago. He was staying up in Tochigi prefecture with a friend, Takeshi, who he is pen pals with. On Friday, they came for a visit to Hamamatsu. We first started with a tour of Yamaha music. We saw how a grand piano is put together, which was the same tour my family went on back in May. Here's a picture after the tour of John playing a reed organ in the display room:
We went for lunch, and John got to try eating eel, which he quite enjoyed. He said it tasted better than the eel he was used to back in Britain. Afterwards, we went to the Museum of Musical Instruments. He is a picture of John and Takeshi in the 'hands-on' room playing some bells.
In the evening, the came back to our house, where Ayako had prepared a wonderful meal for them.
The next day, we took John and Takeshi to pick clementine oranges at our neighbors' farm:
Ayako's mother also joined us. Here you can see us with our neighbor, Uchida-san. He is very lively for 84 years old.
Afterwards, we returned home for lunch and then took them to the station to see them off. John is probably on a plane right now, heading back to Canada. I hope he enjoyed his stay in Japan.

Daidogei Street Performers Festival

On Sunday, Ayako and I visited Shizuoka city to watch the international street performers festival, which is called Daidogei. I also came to watch this festival in 2005 and so you can see my blog entry from that here. There are lots of performances throughout the downtown area, but most are in a large park in the downtown area.

It is a very popular event, so huge crowds surround the performers. Because of this, many people bring their own step-ladders so that they can see the performances better:
There was also an area where you could try playing with some juggling equipment. I started getting good at the plate on the stick trick:
I taught Ayako how to juggle, and later on she was juggling with three balls:
And here's me juggling:
Later on, Steph and Nick joined us to watch some performances:
Here was a group from Ghana:
They were very flexible:
Very, very flexible:
I was able to get a videos of some of the performances as well: