My Birthday and Takoyaki Party

So anyway...it was my birthday recently (as well as Jill Kruse's-Sept. 30, Kelly Cram's-Oct. 13, Paul Lynch's-Oct. 11, Noriko Tamashiro's-Oct. 9...and many more people I am sure). It was a nice day. I ate beef and sat about lazily; it was idealic almost. Nothing too loud and nothing too eventful. I am however looking forward to the coming influx of packages sent to me by family and friends...I know you all just can't resist sending me presents. Or at least that's what I'm thinking...
So yeah...birthdays. I can now say that I'm 24. Not that big of an achievement, but I'll be proud about it...someone has to.
I know she is...
or at least she was nice enough to fake it and buy me some cake. So that's that...enough about the birthday.

On to the takoyaki. Takoyaki is a lot like donut holes. But they aren't fried...and they aren't sweet. Okay, so they look like donut hole, but they are instead really little balls of dough stuffed with octopus, onions, cabbage, pickled ginger and various other crap. They are then cooked and coated with either "sauce" or with ponzu (a citrus/soy sauce). They are delicious.
In all honesty I just wanted to put some pictures up here. So enjoy the shots of Takoyaki related things...no actual picture of the finished products...sorry, just wasn't thinking about you at the time.
So here's some appetizing tako...

or octopus.

Next is a nice shot of a very appetizing cook...

I feel kinda strange putting up all these shots of Noriko, but she's around a bit and happens to fall into a few pictures. Enyway...you see that little single burner? Well that's called a kastakon, or something like that. It's a lot like a camping stove. But those things are used for a lot of cooking in the winter because most Japanese homes do not have central heating and therefore have to suffer by eating a lot of freshly cooked meals around the ole kastakon...there's also a special kinda table called a kotsu (or is that shoe? I don't know) anyway this table has a main heater/stove range thingie in the middle and then a blanket is sandwiched between two layers in the table. You then sit under the blanket with the heater in the middle and then you eat a nice long meal that's being freshly cooked as you roast your tootsies. Isn'it nice?

And the last shot for this little post is of a few fellahs who were just hangin' out breakin' legs.
Or at least you would think so with that kind of look on their faces. Really though they look like a couple of Yaks, or yakuza's. But they don't have the colorful suits and sunglasses on like that real thing. The one on the right is an old student of mine and is now a graduate student here at Eichi. The other fella is a friend of Yusuke. Good times had by us and them.

Hope you enjoy! I will be sure to post more later.
Unlike Brian Riggins.