New Year’s Evening

A great day in Tokorozawa again. The sun was shining so Coco and I had a long walk again. And as usual it was not easy to get a photo of Coco. He totally hates taking photos, and it makes you feel like a paparazzi. Though sometimes you catch him off guard, like when he is relaxing at home after a walk 🙂



After the walk we drove to the Tokorozawa fish market. It is nothing compared to the fish market in Tsukiji (biggest in the world) but it is still quite busy during the New Year.



For dinner we had hand rolled sushi and crab. As usual. But hey, if it tastes good it tastes good every year 🙂



Unfortunately I was so tired that I could not stay up and wait for the new year. I just got to bed at 10:30 pm and slept instead

Going to Tokorozawa for New Year

Today we went to Tokorozawa for the New Year. Once we got there I as usual took Coco for a long walk. He seemed to enjoy it, the photo session with me being the exception. Oh, this is a nice feature of my new iPod Touch… Using the front camera to take a photo of yourself so that you can see what you are doing (though the quality is not the best).



As per our tradition we had shabu-shabu for dinner. Same procedure as last year 🙂 It may seem boring to have the same food before New Year every year but, in my opinion, you can never have too much shabu-shabu. It is delicious 😛

KotoKoto

Christmas Eve started around 7 am this morning. With me going to the office to work, while Chie stayed home to rest. Though she did not rest so much as she was cleaning the kitchen from top to floor. Actually, from medium height to floor. The top is a little bit out of reach for her so I’ll do that tomorrow.

I left the office at lunch time when I had finished all the work for the day. The rest depended on other people and they were all on vacation.

At 6 pm Chie and I went to KotoKoto for dinner. We had a delicious Christmas Eve dinner, though there were (fortunately) nothing traditional Swedish about it. Instead it was fresh and light and probably not so bad for our health as a traditional Swedish Christmas dinner.



First dish was “myogo to kyuri no umeae” or myoga and cucumber in umeboshi dressing. The second dish was “kureson to eringi no sarada” watercress and eringi salad.



We also had “gobo karage” or fried greater burdock, and “satoimo to maitake no guratan” or sweet potato and maitake gratin.



We continued with “renkon to hitashimame no aemono” or lotus and soy beans with dressing, and “aonori to tofu no misoshiru” seaweed and tofu miso soup. As delicious as the previous dishes.



Together with the miso soup we also got “umeboshi no onigiri” or umeboshi rice ball. Rice in some kind is usually how a Japanese dinner is ended. However, I had a pear tart for dessert. YUMMY!!!



It was a great Christmas dinner. And it could not be spoiled with Coke so I had Perrier and Chie had some white wine.



Cheating…

Yes, Chie and I usually cheat during Christmas time. The reason is that 23rd is a National holiday here in Japan (the emperor’s birthday) but 24th is a working day. So we cheat, and open all the Christmas gifts on the evening of the 23rd 🙂



This year I got gingerbread cookies from Sweden. I also got a brand new iPod Touch from Chie. I think it may come in handy as it has back and front camera, so I can take photos and do FaceTime (video chat).