Day 15: Takoyaki and anime

Saturday I got out of bed kind of late and everyone was already gone.  They'd left a note saying what breakfast was supposed to be, so I fixed it and ate.  A little before noon I headed over to the school for the takoyaki party.  Takoyaki means fried octopus, but in our case only about 1/3 of them actually had octopus in them.  We also had some with sausage bits, cheese, and some sort of red spicy-looking stuff.

At the takoyaki party.

Inside was just talking and eating, outside was cooking (and talking and eating).

People making takoyaki.  You pour in the batter, put all the stuff you want inside on top, and wait a while until the batter starts to harden around the edges, then flip it over so the inner uncooked batter flows out onto the filling and forms a nice ball.  At least that's the theory.

Eating with extra long toothpicks.

They heard the shutter on my last picture and decided to pose, so I took another.

View from the outside.

The takoyaki tray itself.

Overall, the food wasn't really very good, in my opinion.  I tried some with octopus and some with sausage.  They were okay, but not as good as the ones I ate at the restaurant.  Oh, and it wasn't just the meat in them.  They also had chives (or something like them), some sort of rice flake things (like rice crispies, but bigger), and I think one or two other things...  I ate a total of five, but they were kind of small.  The batter was just too much for me to keep eating, though.  Too doughy.  So I ended up leaving still a little hungry.

Instead of going straight home, I went to the anime store.  Different from last time, which was just a used book/DVD/game store with some anime stuff in it.  This one was a bit farther, but I biked to it alright.  Getting back was a pain, though, since it was basically all up hill.

I looked around for probably an hour or so there.  They had all sorts of figures and games, a used clothing section (I didn't spend much time there - I figure hardly anything would fit me), a bunch of anime trading cards, lots of manga and light novels, DVDs and Blu-Rays, and so on.  I ended up buying a set of used Ano Hi Mita Hana no Namae wo Bokutachi ha Mada Shiranai figures for really cheap, and a small Hecate figure from Shakugan no Shana and Tohsaka Rin from Fate/Stay Night.  They had a bunch more I would have wanted, but were either too big or too expensive.  Or more often both.  If I keep buying figures and getting things to take home from school, I might end up having to ship some of it back home... oh well.  Still cheaper than trying to import it from someone else.

After shopping there, I mostly relaxed at home, and then went out to a ramen place for dinner with my family.  It was quite good.  They were surprised at how much spice I put in it, though.  That makes the first real (non-instant) ramen I've had, and the only ramen I've had so far in Japan.