Tuesday, August 7, 2012

Simcoe Day Weekend Part 1

Tuesday August 7, 4:35 p.m.

Nominally it was the weekend tribute to Ontario's 1st Lieutenant-Governor, but personally, I would peg it as the Anime King weekend.

Sunday was the usual meeting day for The King and I. Neglected to take a picture of the restaurant we went to, but it was a Scarberian place that specialized in inexpensive dumplings (I hesitate to use the word 'cheap' due to the wrong connotations which may be evoked). $5 for a steamer of 15 scrumptious jiaoxu which even contained some soup along the lines of sho ron po. Made them taste even better.






The second dish at this place was a Hot and Sour Soup with the added benefit of udon noodles inside. Huzzah...an idea whose time has come. I've always loved this stuff, especially during the Winter. I've even made a batch of Hot and Sour over the years. The vinegar is the key. Again, this big bowl for 2 is just $5. Brings back memories of $5 Thursdays at Pizza Hut.







Of course, after lunch was the usual stopover at that Second Cup on Steeles. I've been following The King's lead and getting a Paradiso Coffee with a Lemon Tart. Good combo.
I see Second Cup as the happy medium between Starbucks and Tim Hortons. The various Starbucks branches in Tokyo were friendly and warm but I always saw a bit of corporatization in their interior design. Timmies is of course a fine place to go to for the donuts and the Chili Combo, but it's a bit too fast food to savor that coffee for a long time unless it's late at night. Second Cup just has the right sort of atmosphere to enjoy friends while downing that joe.

The anime for that day consisted of a couple of the special movies for "Smile Precure"that pop once or twice a year. The anime series has gone on for nearly a decade and involves different teams of warrior teens every year or every other year. Each of the movies starred every team that has ever existed on Sunday morning television, and by the last movie under this format, there were 21 girls with their own powers along with several cute familiars. Hard to get everyone to talk in merely 90 minutes.

There was also a new anime that The King kindly showed me called "Joshiraku" which has five young female rakugo comics just riffin' on all sorts of nonsensical discussion. No holds barred, no political correctness there.

We took another eating break and so The King and I drove into Markham where we went to a Wild Wings branch. It was a deserted place so space and service were no problem. Ended up having a basket each of spicy and honey-garlic wings with fries and gravy on the side. Yup, we do our protein and carbs hard. If there's one thing I've appreciated since returning from my Japan odyssey, it's been regular access to chicken wings.

But Sunday was merely the beginning.