In Hiroshima

Posted on 2008/03/23 01:04:52 (March 2008).

[Wednesday 19th March]
Didn't have any specific plans for today, so after a lazy morning and some yaki-soba for lunch we headed into the centre of Hiroshima in the afternoon for a spot of shopping. Admittedly this is possibly my least favourite aspect of our trips to Hiroshima - Chie's usual aimless and meandering shopping habits seem to be particularly exacerbated when in her hometown. It felt like we'd spent forever wandering endless department stores and shopping arcades until finally the afternoon turned into early evening and our thoughts turned to dinner etc.

So in the evening we stayed in the centre of Hiroshima, and met up with Kurihara-kun. He'd been staying in England around this time last year (or possibly a bit earlier), and as the son of a friend of Chie's Mum he'd been put in touch with us to show him around London a bit. So tonight in a sense he was returning the favour.

The first venue of the evening was a place called The Shack - a very American style bar/grill which Chie and I had been to a few times before, mainly because it was one of only a few places in Hiroshima that had an explicitly vegetarian item on the menu - they did a sort of tofu burger which was actually rather nice.

Next up we left it to Kurihara-kun to decide, which, on the evening before a national holiday, was seemingly no mean feat - we must have tried getting on for ten places before we finally found one that had a table. It was a sort of izakaya I suppose, with a strong emphasis on shellfish, and DIY on-your-table grilling things. I'm not sure all of the assorted crustacea that Chie and Kurihara-kun ordered were actually quite dead yet at the point of being served, which was a bit upsetting to my delicate vegetarian sensibilities, but I guess that sort of thing is quite normal in Japan.

Owing to a misunderstanding in our order, we were given about three times as much sake as we were expecting, but bravely we all pitched in and worked our way through it.

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