So, lets see, when I got back from my trip I spent about an hour
telling my Japanese teacher in Japanese what we did and I told her
about going to Chen Kennichi's restaurant.  She is a big fan of
Michiba and Sakai, so she told me that Sakai had a restaurant in
Osaka, so I wanted to go.  Fortunately I was planning on heading to
Osaka for the Grand Sumo Tournament.  The way this works is that you
have to buy tickets that day in the morning and then you can watch all
the new Sumo dudes matches until about three when they do the opening
ceremonies for the real stuff and then the good sumo dudes compete.
So, I figured this would be a good time to go to the Sakai restaurant.
 So thats what we did.  This was almost dissapointing though because
it was just like getting some good food in the US.  It was like going
to Ray's Boathouse or to somewhere that's good and serves fish.  They
only had two choices for lunch fish or chicken.  Of course I got fish.
 It was perfectly cooked though and I don't just mean the fish, the
onions were cooked perfect, everything and it had some ingredients
I've never had before, like red peppercorns.  It was definately very
tasty though.  And the dessert was awesome.  This was green tea
pudding type stuff with fresh strawberrys and blueberries.  After
eating it me and my roommate are making green tea milkshakes with
blueberry it went together so well and both of us love green tea ice
cream.  And it came with ice cream, which was made out of sweet red
beans.  This, even though it doesn't sound so great is good, the red
beans they use in Japan are way strange, not like red beans in the us
and it came with some sort of cracker with black sesame seeds.  It was
good.  Perhaps the best part of the trip to Sakai's restaurant (which
is called La Rochelle) is that I laughed until I cried for the first
time in a long time.  What happened was they have a breadman (and this
will explain how Japanese service is good, but sometimes just
annoying), who comes by and he explained the three kinds of bread to
us and me and my roommate were expecting him to set down the
breadbasket and walk away, but he wanted us to choose what we wanted,
so I said roll and he put a roll on my plate, my roommate said
baguette and he got a baguette, then he said raisin and got the raisin
and walnut bread, then I said baguette and he said sorry and took off,
so I thought I wouldn't get any bread because he was out of baguettes.
 But apparently he just keeps coming by and any time you want bread
you just flag him down and tell him what you want.  What made this
even more funny to us is that he was using two spoons to pick up the
bread instead of tongs and while this was happening they came by with
water in a wine bottle.  Then of course both of us laughing and joking
about it after he left, we couldn't stop.
So after this we went to the tournament.  This at first was one of the
most disconcerting events, because it was hard to tell what we were
supposed to do.  When we got there it was before the main ceremony, so
there was huge crowds of people waiting for the Sumo wrestlers to show
up.  They walk through the main gate like everyone else.  So we didn't
know if we could go inside.  As we had bought the tickets earlier in
the morning we already saw a bunch of Sumo wrestlers going to and fro,
so waiting with a huge crowd with cameras in the ready position didn't
seem like fun, so we walked in.  This is perhaps the only time I felt
like a celebrity as there is a long walk to the stadium from the gate
and this was lined on both sides with people and since there were no
sumo wrestlers yet they were all just looking at us as we walked
through.  Once inside the same thing was happening, except people were
waiting for the long line of sumo wrestlers to enter during the
opening ceremonies, and there was a cop there holding them back, so we
weren't sure whether to go or not and everytime I was about to walk
through, a sumo wrestler came out or some staff walked by, but
eventually we just walked through, it was ok.  Strangely enough almost
anything is okay.  We had a backpack, two bottles of Shochou in the
open and there was no security, bringing in alcohol and food is okay.
Well, I guess the matches.  Sumo is awesome to watch live.  First of
all, you can feel the floor shake and hear the boom even when your
sitting in crappy cheap seats like we were, all the way at the top.
And the dudes are huge.  Plus they have traditional style hair and
wear Yukatas (like a summer kimono).  So its like a merge of old Japan
meeting new Japan.  The stadium in Osaka was pretty modern, but they
mainly have these box seats where people sit on the floor and eat
lunch, drink and watch Sumo.  The Sumo wrestlers are actually quite
fast and many of them use brute force mainly, but a lot of them use a
lot of different techniques.  The first technique is intelligence.  So
many of them would dodge out of the way at the beginning of the match
and just try to push the other guy down.  They also use some martial
arts moves, like Aikido or Judo, especially Judo, because that
involves mainly throws and putting someone on the ground.  And of
course some of them even countered some of these moves.  There are
actually quite a few white sumo wrestlers too, so there is one guy
from Russia and one guy from Romania.  It was funny to here the crowd
root for the russian guy.  They pretty much yelled, "Gambate", which
is like good luck or try hard or do your best, depending on the
situation.  Anyway it was really cool, I wanted to go back.  The next
tournament will be in Tokyo, so I might have to make a trip.  Anyway,
I think I'm pretty much caught up for now, so till next time.  This
week I'm hoping to see the Cherry blossoms, they're supposed to be in
bloom and I have an extra day off, so I"m going to try to go to this
buddhist town Koyasan, where you can stay in a temple and eat Buddhist
dinner and breakfast, we'll see if it works.

Dan