Tonight our original intentions were to see a live baseball game, especially if the Yomura Giants were playing at home (they have one player who is on 499 home runs), however all three Tojyo teams were playing away. Instead we decided to hit a popular sushi bar recommended in one of the guides. Unfortunately, probably due to my mental winding down (due to the holiday coming to the end) I was jsut not hungry (also the large lunch wouldn’t have helped).

From the sushi restaurant we went for a walk and ended up at one of the Kirin chain of bars, where we stayed for a couple of hours having a few relaxing draft beers. Next stop was a coffee house across the road for a final coffee and cake (or ko-he to ca-ke in Japanese). It was not a cheap place, but my cake was effectively a whole load of layers of thin pankakes and double cream. Very rich, very fattening, and very very nice.

Strangely enough we ended up back at the baseball alley for a few more rounds on the batting machines.

Unagi (eal) is an expensive and popular dish in Japan. It is also expensive, with some restaurants jsut specialising in it. The parents of Dave’s Japanese teacher, Kaori, happen to own one restaurant in a residential area, Eitaibashi. On the way there Dave started to work out what to say, assuming they wouldn’t be expecting us, not would be able to speak English.

We eventually found the restaurant, walked in and found Kaori had warned them we’d probably be coming at some point. Also her Mother spoke better English than our Japanese. The meal was all eal course, and nice, though I’m no longer used to large lunches (as a whole) and ran out of steam. Also I think I had jsut a tad too much eal, even though it was nice.

We stayed for some conversation, then photos, and then went to leave. We tried to pay, but Kaori’s parent’s refused, even though we offered a few times. This was very generous of them as eel is not cheap, the menu outside had set emals starting at ~1400 yen and rising to over 3k, and we were certain they had cooked for us the top one.