My American friend Matt invited me to his home this year for Christmas where his wife made a complete Christmas turkey dinner. I got to talk to all of his in-laws, play with the cat, and eat turkey again. The last time I ate turkey was when I was in Okinawa. They also had a beautiful, and real, Christmas tree.

The winter of the first year I came to Japan (2004), I took a trip to Hong Kong and made a Japanese friend while I was there. A few months later I visited my friend in Hokkaido during the snow festival. The following year in the summer I visited Hokkaido again and he again showed me around.

Now, about 4 years later I finally got a chance to meet up and talk with him again. We met in Odaiba and ate lunch at the little Hong Kong restaurant floor in remembrance of where we meet.

A few floors down at the Odaiba Muscle Park there was a special guest - Makoto Nagano, Sasuke all-star.

We caught up as we walked around Odaiba.

Another lucky opportunity as there was photo shoot near the water.

JK was here on business so over dinner I also got to meet some of his students. Lastly, we visited the Toyota showroom where there was a free concert. This is the closest I have ever been to an orchestra.

All you can eat Monjyayaki with some friends. Monjyayaki is a very unique Japanese food that kind of looks like something that has been regurgitated onto a hot plate, although it is very good. We spent two and a half hours drinking and eating many different kinds of monjyayaki, as well as okonomiyaki and yakisoba. They even had various strange dessert monjyayaki.

Making monjyayaki

The dessert

I was invited my Mr. Hara again to go eat some traditional and delicious Japanese food. This time he took me out to eat Chanko Nabe, the food of the sumo wrestlers. However, there was one catch… He asked to teach a group English class for his English club. Although I havent taught English to adults for about 3 years, I accepted and hopefully gave a satisfactory lesson to the mostly elderly people in the club. It was a bit fun again to be in control of a class. Afterward, I visited Mr. Hara’s farm and went to his house to meet his wife and have some Japanese sweets. From there we went out to eat Chanko Nabe. It is interesting how the ingredients are different depending on the different sumo wrestler groups. As alwas, the food was very delicious.