Anniversary Week

January 12, 2016

Anniversary Week

Seth and I celebrated our 10-year anniversary in November. We had originally hoped to plan a weekend getaway together, to celebrate. Then we moved to Japan. Seth likes to joke and say that he took me to Japan for our anniversary.

Since we have little children and no nearby relatives, we decided we would celebrate by treating ourselves to lots of local flavor (literally). Seth took some time off work and we enjoyed several lunch dates while the kids were at school. Caleb got to tag along because he is so cute.

Cheese Roll is a restaurant in Misawa named after these these tasty little fried cheese rolls:

They may not look like much, but they are surprisingly delicious and addictive.

The real highlight of the restaurant, in my opinion, is their yakisoba. Many people consider it to be the best yakisoba in town. I haven't had the opportunity to compare, but I don't see how you could improve on this.

Caleb agrees with me.

Seth had eaten yakisoba here before (cheater) so he decided to try the ramen. I think he ended up jealous of my food. It was so good.

I had heard good things about The Cake House, and had been wanting to try it. We were not disappointed.

We ordered one chicken curry pita and one tandoori pita and split them. Yum!

We also got hot chocolate in these fun double walled glasses. The drink stayed super hot but the glass was just barely warm on the outside.

We didn't realize that our meal included dessert, so we ordered separate desserts. I guess that's why the lady looked at me strange when we said we wanted our extra desserts at the restaurant rather than to go. Thank you language barrier! Seth is eating his shoe cream in this picture (the Japanese borrowed a French word for this pastry and it sounds like shoe cream).

This is the dessert that came with our meal. So delicious! So fancy!

Caleb was happy with his croissant.

We joined some friends at the Yakiniku House for a birthday lunch. This was the same couple who joined us for Seth's Birthday at Mikami.

I love this cow on the wall showing all the different cuts of meat - in Japanese!

To cap off our celebrations, we knew that we wanted to visit one of the onsens in the area. An onsen is a Japanese bathhouse. As you may know, these baths are typically public baths, with a men's bath and a women's bath. We weren't terribly interested in hanging out naked with a bunch of strangers. There are a few onsens in the area with private baths though. After doing some research we settled on the Tohoku Onsen. It was not expensive, it was close to Misawa, and it is known for its black water. The spring they pipe the water from flows through lava rocks, or something like that. It is supposedly filled with minerals and is good for your skin. Our skin definitely felt very soft when we were finished, and we experienced almost no pruning.

This is what the private bath area is like. All of this was behind a locked door, so we had total privacy.

We had our own bathroom.

Sitting area

With TV. We only rented the room for 1 hour. Apparently some people like to rent the room as a group and then take turns using the bath.

A sink for doing your hair after the bath.

The washing area. In Japan you always wash before getting in the bath.

The Bath. It is very deep and long. I could not touch the other end if I was sitting against one end.

Our favorite thing about this bath is that it is always overflowing. And when you first get in, there is a big whoosh as the water spills out.

The water is very hot and we found ourselves opening the window and standing in front of it. It was nice to have the contrast of hot and cool. The view was pretty too.

It was a great experience and a great addition to our anniversary celebrations.

Before picking up Caleb (who was being watched by a friend) we stopped at our favorite indian food restaurant in Misawa. We first discovered Ankur at their booth during the summer festivals. It didn't take much for us to become addicted. This was our first time actually eating in the restaurant.