Day 125 in Japan - Anna's Last Night in Town

Almost last classes at Kita - went brilliantly. Less pressure me to pull everything together (by removing the need to produce lesson plans for next week) means that I feel more relaxed in the classrooms, which means the classes felt really nice today.

After school, the ESS club made our Christmas decorations for the LL room, but I had to skip out early (still 5:30 - an hour and a half past my finishing time), because I was meating (ha!) Anna and Sam in Kobe for some KOBE BEEF!

Sam got a free mask and the flu.

Got to Sanno and heard about their brilliant day exploring Kobe by bus and foot. They really enjoyed Chinatown by the sounds of it, and I was totally jealous. We headed along to our (now) regular Kobe Beef place - Steakland. We even got the same chef guy that we have gotten several times before. It was a delicious dinner, and I think that Anna enjoyed the steak about as much as Dad did (although she didn't make comments anywhere near as crude afterwards).

We then trained it back to Okubo  (leaving Sam for an emergency toilet stop at Akashi along the way), because for Anna's last hurrah we wanted to take her to karaoke. But with the spare half hour we had, we also managed to fit in a trip to Baskin Robins icecreamery, and got ourselves some delicious (and in Sam's case, brightly-coloured) sundaes. Then we embarked on our 2 hour epic karaoke journey. It was more epic than usual due to Sam and I have really sore throats before even starting to sing, and it got interesting am hour in when we lost it totally. We tried a few more Japanese songs this time - "Ue o muite arukō" (better known in English as Sukiyaki, although it's much nicer in Japanese, and title literally translates to "I Will Walk Looking Upwards"), the theme song from Evangelion ("Cruel Angel's Thesis", or " Zankoku na Tenshi no Tēze"), and the main theme from Princess Mononoke. Anna really enjoyed herself, and there were more than a few rock poses and embarrassing photo poses struck.

Two hours of karaoke was all that my throat could handle, so we called it a relatively early night for a karaoke night, and were home and in bed by 1 am.

Food Highlight of the Day: The mushrooms at the Kobe Beef place were particularly spectacular. They cook up butter and oil with dried garlic chips, then cook seasoned enoki mushrooms in the garlicky oil. So delicious!