A taste of Japan

Tonight my very sweet and loving husband (please don't gag), took me to a fabulous restaurant named Sake Sushi. It is my new favorite. In honor of aging another year, he treated me to a fantastic sushi dinner. Honestly, hands down it is the best sushi restaurant in the area. It's about 15 miles from our home, up in Richardson. Sake Sushi is owned by Takashi Soda, native of Shizuoka; near Fuji. He brings traditional Japanese style cooking and flavors to his restaurant, yet offers a very welcome and gaijin friendly environment. We had the honor of getting to converse with Soda-san and practice our Japanese. He kindly talked about his hometown, his restaurant, and the food. In addition to having the best fish in town, we had gyoza that reminded Rich of Japan (a bit slimy, yet fried......fellow gaijin, you know what I'm talking about), we also had an amazing sake steamed clam dish, and sake out of the wooden box (didn't get that in Japan). The meal was wrapped up with a surprising dessert of tempura ice cream. I can't stop gushing about the place. It's a must if you like sushi and ever spend any amount of time in the metroplex. Definitely a place I will take visiting friends (Yasuhide, that means you).

This past weekend also brought my parents and their aging arthritic dog to town (the dog use to be mine ages ago, but was easily lost to my dog spoiling mother). They popped in for a few days to get some food, shopping, and to check out our place. We had a really nice visit, minus the Friday night migraine that I had. It was good to see them and spend some time together. I guess we are making up for lost time; I've seen them 3 times since August! Didn't take any photos, however my mom did and sent me a few. The first photo is such a serious looking one. Rich and I look like we are deep in thought or maybe we are just perplexed. The second one is of Chuck (wearing a cool Uni-Qlo shirt) sitting in front of some old metal decorative tiles at an amazing local Italian dive called Jimmy's. The last photo is of a meal that we had; oysters, shrimp cocktail, and a po' boy sandwich from Au Shucks. Oishikatta!

Last but not least; THANKS to everyone that emailed me! There were so many of you, I haven't had a chance to respond to you all. I was absolutely shocked and a bit sad to get so many emails. I miss you all so much!