Turning Japanese

(I have like twenty other entries I'm behind on and I'll get to them this weekend. I hope. I blame my blogging hiatus on the fact that Adam upgraded my computer to Windows 7 last weekend and I'm still recovering.

We now return you to the original blog entry...)

Adam’s been on a major sushi kick lately. With me not being a fan of fish, be they raw or cooked, he’s been on his own for the most part. Last night as his dinner out for the month he choose Katsu Ya, a Japanese restaurant in downtown Appleton. I agreed to it because I looked at their menu beforehand and saw they had these Yakiniku dinners where you grilled your own meat at your table. Sounded fun (and wasn’t raw fish) so I figured I could deal with it.

He made reservations and after the cats were fed we headed up. (On a side note, traffic at 5pm on the highway is nuts. I’m so glad I rarely have occasion to try and navigate it.) We found a parking spot right in front of the restaurant. We headed inside, confused the hostess as to where we wanted to sit, figured it all out, and made our way back to the sushi area. The décor of the place is neat. The tables all have these huge red fans as their back. Adam said they were mighty comfortable as he had one of the ribs of the fan on his back giving him a massage of sorts.

I was immediately aware of the fact that there was no flatware on the table. Napkins, yes. Cute little faux-wood bowls, yes. Chopsticks, yes. That’s all folks. I had completely forgotten that I’d probably have to eat without the help of a fork. Now, chopsticks and me, we don’t have a good relationship. I’ve tried to nail down the technique before, but apparently since I hold pens “wrong” when I write I’ll forever be behind on the learning curve for chopsticks.

Adam ordered an appetizer made of cucumber, salmon, crab, cream cheese, and fish eggs. I laughed when he asked if I wanted to try it. He said it was delicious and I’m sure it was. I just prefer…different things than he does. He looked through their extensive sushi menu, decided on his order, and we got it all to our server. My “grill your own” came with soup – I choose their house soup rather than Miso (hello fish base!) The waitress said it was beef-based, but it had a strange overtone of something else I couldn’t quite identify. It wasn’t bad though. Had plenty of green onions floating in it.

The middle of the table was removed, exposing the gas grill mechanism. The grate was inserted, flames ignited, grill oiled, and I was off. I got the chicken (I know, shocking), which was marinated in some soy/sesame concoction. The grill cooked kind of unevenly so I had to move things around to get everything cooked through. It was good. It came with rice and some sort of dipping sauce as well. Not sure what was in the sauce, but it had some kick.

Now, back to the chopstick dilemma. At first I tried to hold them correctly and pinch the food or whatever. It just wasn’t working and resulted in Adam laughing at me a lot. But I pressed on, being mostly successful in not getting food all down the front of my shirt. The rice was another challenge. Luckily it’s sticky rice so it’s not like I had to eat it one grain at a time. I used my soup spoon for a bite or two which I realize was totally classless. In the end, I made it through the meal with just a slight case of carpal tunnel from clasping those two wooden sticks so hard in my fingers. Adam tells me I should use some skewers and home and practice. I say the next time we go to a Japanese restaurant I’ll hide a fork in my purse.

When we were done eating and emerged from the darkness of the bar into the damp darkness of the street we discovered we still had 55 minutes left on the parking meter. Since Katsu Ya is two doors down from Déjà Vu, and it wasn’t yet 8 so the Monkey Bar wasn’t open, we figured it wouldn’t be too naughty to go sit and have a martini before heading back home. Gotta live a little, right? We were one of four couples in the bar and, as fate would have it, one of the other couples included one of my co-workers. We chatted for a little bit as they were on their way out. We had also chosen seats that resulted in me having to look at a painting of (tastefully) naked people every time I looked at Adam. Very distracting.

Adam was quite taken by their bar snack mix so he looked it up online and found that it was sold at Aldi. So guess where we stopped on the way home. It’s been years since I’ve been to Aldi. We found the snack mix pretty quickly and then browsed through the rest of the store. Adam found quite the deal on the La Brea bread we like. He proceeded to buy 6 packages, which I think might have been overkill, but they’re frozen and will last awhile. We finally made it back home, unloaded, and watched some DVR shows. We’re falling behind again this week – we’ve been busy doing other stuff.

So, in summary: I suck at eating with chopsticks, the sushi place wasn’t that bad (and didn’t smell), there’s nothing wrong with boozing it up on a weeknight, and I should maybe think about shopping for some stuff at Aldi.