Despite the delay, I thought I should still put these pics up. Some coworkers and I went to a tasty-delicious restaurant in Nagoya in the beginning of October. I have no idea what the name of the restaurant is (my Japanese reading skills still aren’t exactly up to par) but it’s a ‘yaki niku’ style restaurant (pronounce, yah-key nee-koo). And what that actually means is that there’s a big smorgasbord of raw food on ice in front of you, you pick out what you want and they grill it up for you there and then. Our chef was a lovely guy named Tomi. There were two big u-shaped ‘bars’ plus a bunch of booths off to the sides. We actually sat at one of the bars. Ayako, Kerry, Rob, and I spent a couple of hours there drinking beer, eating chicken, mushrooms, scallops, onions, asparagus, and I can’t even remember what else.

I’m not entirely positive how the idea came around, but we had all made comments about how Tomi was such a nice & friendly guy. Kerry had been a few weeks before and I think Tomi made a comment about how Kerry was so nice too. One thing led to another and before you knew it someone had handed me a marker and I gave Kerry & Tomi matching heart ‘tattoos’. We also added little engagement rings a bit later…Â� Â� Ayako and a waiter also got matching flowers on the backs of their hands. Needless to say, Japanese beer is good stuff.