So last friday night, my Japanese teacher (I take language lessons one day a week through a volunteer service) invited me to have dinner with her husband and another one of her students. The food was nothing short of awesome.

As main dishes, they had sushi (just about every different kind you could want) and tempura. Tempura is lotus root/eggplant/carrots/misc vegetables/shrimp/most other things you can think of fried in a light batter. It's pretty amazing.

There was also some kind of fried sausage/cheese something, a shoot/sprout heavy salad, and great company. The other student she had was from Greece, doing a math post doc. They also had white crane sake (which is, by the way, a very excellent brand).

The two were so hospitable to us,, making sure we had plenty to eat and drink, offering us little sweets as we left. It was strange though, some of the dinner conversation. Nobuko-san was talking to me as he poured me my drink, with his limited english. "I was in high school in 1945,, B-29's came, yes." He continued, as he finished filling my sake glass. "My house, burned to the ground,, but, well, that's war."
Now don't misunderstand the event, or the evening- these people were beyond kind, and it was just an old man telling me his story (there was alot more, that had nothing to do with the war, but it didn't stick in my mind). Yes of course, it was a ridiculously long time ago, and happened before me or my parents were born. But that didn't make it any less strange to me, being served sake by a man who survived the Osaka bombing raids.

My teacher (Nishiuchi san) lies often. I'll be in a lesson and manage to tell her what time the clock says, and she acts like I've cured cancer. When I fail in telling her how much money she's put down on the table, she's eternally patient and says "yes, Japanese is very hard, I'm sorry- you're doing well though". Now normally I prefer more honesty in interpersonal interactions, but in this particular setting, her complete blindness to my vast ignorance of Japanese is greatly appreciated.