party at Tamami's

Here are some pics from last night's party. After some strong coffee and my 'carpal tunnel' project, I stayed up until 4am - *yawn* *yawn* The adorable dog is Yoshio, my flatmate for about two weeks last year when I stayed at Tamami's while I was apartment hunting. What a sweetie she was for putting up with me for almost two weeks - I mean both Yoshio and Tamami. ^_^

See the 'candy?' (top L) Well one is a marshmallow with soft chocolate inside; the other is snack cheese camouflaged as white chocolate! They call it candy cheese...ah ha - another very tricky food item in Japan...not unsimilar to the red bean camouflaged as chocolate. Next item: easy pasta salad (top middle) - shrimp, green pepper, orange pepper, cucumber, salt/pepper, italian dressing. Curry fry (bottom middle): pumpkin, carrots, onions, green pepper, ground pork, curry powder, eggplant, bulldog 'sauce', ketchup...served up on a dish of rice. Lastly (top R) the fried chicken covered with grated Japanese radish with vinegared soy sauce dressing...garnished with sprouts.

You see the dessert photo: they may LOOK like Mont Blanc (not to be confused with the luxury pen) and they ARE Mont Blanc but probably not the kind you and I will eat Mont Blanc. It's from a dog cafe - that's right, it's for dogs. I suppose one 'could' technically eat it and turn out okay...hey, if you're up for the challenge. Like I say, ya gotta try everything at least once - or in the case of natto (future entry on that) - three times! btw: Yoshio really loved eating the Mont Blanc for dogs! For those of you not in the know about Mont Blanc, it's a sweet (sometimes sickeningly so but I luv it!) chestnut dessert composed of yellow cake covered with heaps of whipped cream which is again covered in noodley-strands of chestnut puree and then topped off with a chestnut.

The party was really enjoyable. I had to stumble around with my Japanese but in terms of listening, I was happy to catch on 80% of the conversation...hey anything over 50% these days makes me happy! This American guy from LA I was chatting with gave me a big compliment - "are you a translator here?" Ha ha, I almost spit out my coffee. I suppose his Japanese level is so low that he cannot distinguish between well-spoken Japanese and er, my Japanese. Either way, I felt it was a fantastic unintentional compliment...and yes, maybe one day I WILL become a real translator. ^_^