Rain, rain, rain… The whole day it was raining. We took the car to Ebisu to buy a new bag for me. And then we went straight back home to start packing.

At 5:30 pm we met Uwe (a German friend from the University of Tokyo) at the Ebisu station. It had finally stopped raining so we walked there. Umbrellas ready, just in case.

Uwe, Chie, and I had a hot wine, beer, and Perrier at a pub and talked about what had happened since we last met. He just came back from a week long holiday in Germany. But his Japanese wife could not join him there since she had to work.

Just past 7 pm Uwe had to leave us to meet his wife at Shinagawa station on her way back home from her work. Chie, and I also had to go. To Kiichi, our favorite sushi restaurant in Ebisu. As usual it was delicious.

Kiichi-san, the owner, told us that from a 200 kg tuna you can get about 120 kg that you can eat. And it cost about 4 million JPY (about 270000 SEK), so that each piece that you get served might cost about 800-1200 JPY depending on quality and part of the tuna.

This particular time of the year they fish tuna in Ooma (大間) in the Aomori prefecture (青森県) and it is famous for its high quality tuna. And this weekend was the last to get tuna from Ooma. We had chu-toro (中トロ) and o-toro (大トロ) this evening, and buri (ぶり), yariika (やりいか), saba, (さば), iwashi (いわし), kawahagi (かわはぎ), aji (あじ) among other. YUMMY!!!

At just past 12 pm we met with Mario at the University of Tokyo Hongo campus. We had a lunch meeting with him to catch up with what had happened since we last met. Mario is an Italian that arrived at Professor Kimura’s lab a short time before I had to finish my post doc at the same lab.
Mario was just back to Tokyo from a trip to Italy during the holidays. He had spent the time there with his family increasing his weight by 5 kilos in 7 days.

After lunch we went back to Hongo campus to have a coffee/hot chocolate at Starbucks. And to continue talking. After 3 hours Chie and I had to leave for some serious shopping in Ginza.

On our way out of the campus we met with Professor Kimura. He is usually a man that do not express much feelings, but today he looked quite surprised. However, he regained his usual controlled expression shortly after that. And we exchanged some greetings and he got my business card for future contact.

Then it was serious shopping in Ginza. Omiyage for my family in Sweden. And some for my business colleagues as well.

Time was flying and we had to hurry to get in time to our dinner appointment at Walnuts. We were a few minutes late but still the first to arrive. Just after us came Tomo-san, then Michio-san, and then Akiko-san.

We started eating while waiting for Mina-sensei but it turned out that she had to much work to do and she never arrived. But we still had a fun time without her. Hopefully I will see her the next time I come to Tokyo.

For dessert I got a big plate with a chocolate cake with whipped cream, Tiramisu, cinnamon ice cream, and coconut sorbet. Around the plate they had used chocolate to write “Johan Welcome Back & See You Soon”.

After a short visit at Chie’s office in the morning – I was waiting in the car – we went to IKEA Funabashi store again. Just a few more things we had to do there. We also had a lunch at the IKEA store restaurant. Herb salmon and a salad.

We left IKEA at around 4:30 pm and drove back to Naka-meguro. Before assembling the boxes that we bought at IKEA we went out for dinner. However, it was tricky to find an open restaurant since most still had closed for the New Years holidays. Fish market and vegetable market is also closed so the really nice restaurants are closed because they cannot get fresh ingredients.

We found a kushi-yaki restaurant in Naka-meguro, Kushi-suke. It was OK, but not as our favorite kushi-yaki restaurant Yasaka, or Yodakinpo.

Went with Chie to Ginza to do some window shopping. It is fun to just walk around in one of the most expensive areas in the world and watch people. And there are quite a lot of them, but not as many as in Shibuya.

At around 1 pm we had to move on to Tokyo Dome to meet Mina for the Rice Bowl. It’s an American Football game between the best XLeage team and the best university team in Japan. Usually the XLeage team wins big time. But this year it was a difficult win for the XLeage team. The university even had the lead in half time and through the third quarter. In the end the XLeage team was too strong and won by 30-29.

Afterwards Chie and I went to Shinjuku for some more window shopping before returning home. On our way home we stopped in Shibuya to buy some ingredients for dinner, which tonight was pasta with anchovy, olive, and cream sauce. Yummy.