shiz

Everyone got gift cards for Kinokuniya (Japanese books/gift shop) in their stockings (courtesy of me), so we made a pilgrimage to the San Jose area yesterday. We also went to Mitsuwa (Japanese grocery) and Cost Plus for various snacks (and roasted chestnuts!), to Daiso (Japanese dollar store), and topped the evening off with a visit to Cherry Sushi. We spent way too much money, but had a great time.

At Kinokuniya I found out there's a book based on the PlayStation game ICO (a favorite of mine), so of course I had to get it. I found it at half the price on Kindle, so I got that instead, but I asked if they had the Japanese edition in stock, and they did, so I have that too.

We had lunch at one of the two Japanese noodle shops inside the grocery. Don't know of the one we ate at, but the other one is (san'touka ramen, "mountain-top fire" ramen), except that their signs have it written exactly backwards (but with the letters facing forwards, so it's not like the sign's turned around wrong): (so I thought their name was katousan, "firetop mountain", though it'd be a strange way to write that, too). I thought it was because the sign maker didn't know WTF they were doing, but I later found out via Google and Japanese Wikipedia, that there's a restaurant by the same name in Japan, and they write their signs the same way. So I guess it's an attempt to be weird. I guess they succeeded.