foodie friday

This morning I put together my bottle to make vanilla. Awhile back, I read this post on Melissa's blog. It took me awhile to gather the vanilla pods, which I bought via Jaden's & Melissa's recommendation, and the vodka. I hope it works...I'll keep you posted.

With vanilla in gear, I went to Umeda to meet Tamakikat.

She had also heard about Kuidaore closing down and was interested in checking it out before it did.










But before we did anything, we stopped in for some lunch. I wanted to take her to this yoshoku-ya(western food restaurant), Nishimoto, but I got kind of lost. Then with some luck, we stumbled upon it. My friend, Aya had taken me here awhile back and I liked the food and atmosphere. Since Tamakikat wasn't too hungry, we both decided on the daily bento.

This came with your choice of main dish, an omlette, spaghetti, tsukemono, salad, soup and rice--all for 800 yen (about US $8). She chose the hamburger, I chose the teriyaki chicken.

After chatting and full stomachs, we decided to check out Kuidaore.

This little guy is "the symbol" of Osaka. Kuidaore means "eat until you drop"--the motto of Osaka.

The restaurant that owns this guy (his name is Kuidaore Taro) has decided to close after many, many years in business. People have offered money to buy him, he's THAT popular. There were so many people standing around him taking photos with him, you would have thought he was a real Hollywood star or something.

After getting our photos of him we walked to Doguyasuji to check out the plastic food samples. (Those plastic food samples are expensive!)

From Namba, we walked all the way back to Umeda--a good hour's walk, but the time passed nicely, the weather was quite overcast, as we chatted the whole way.

We stopped in at Comme Ca Ism's cafe and had some pie and coffee (sorry the photo was a blur). It was a great day (Thanks Tamakikat!)

I came home and was stuffed, but since I don't like to skip meals. I put together a tuna salad. I whizzed some carrots in the food processor, added some tuna salad, then topped it with some of my mom's bread & butter pickles.

If you notice on the bottle, there is a sign that says "don't eat this". If I didn't put this there, Satoshi would have eaten the whole bottle, in ONE sitting. Once, my grandma made some pickled veggies for him, gave him a bottle, like the one in the picture and the next day, he gave the bottle back to me, empty!

Hope your weekend is going well.

UPDATE:Comme Ca Cafe is now closed as of 11/2011