Monday, March 25, 2013

Back to Anime and Foodie Sunday

Monday March 25, 1:28 p.m.

Been a while but with all of the translation, Mr. Moriya's return and yesterday being another outing with The Anime King, there wasn't much time for blogging. As for my Skype student, he had a good business trip to Australia for the better part of a week; his fluency certainly showed it. And he didn't have to contend with hay fever over there....something that is plaguing Japan right now as it usually does this time of year.

It was a 3-week absence for The Anime King since he had his own business trip to conduct in Chicago. He was rather disappointed in the food selection although he did say the famed Deep-Dish Pizza was the one highlight. Still, he was grateful to be back in Toronto.

Our Sunday started off with a visit to Eggsmart. I actually went for a new item on the menu which was this plate of Hash Browns using Montreal corned beef and very roughly chopped onion and potatoes. I guess I could say it was a very raw version of the breakfast staple. Nothing like the stuff at Sunset Grill. It was quite good, though, and very filling. And I'm always appreciative for bottomless cups of coffee.

Had our first period of anime involving a couple of movies and some eps from the Precure franchise and then the usual bawdy episode of "Ixion". We took a brief break by heading to the nearest Second Cup. I went for the Poppy Seed Lemon Cake with a thick slap of icing on top. It was actually surprisingly light despite the appearance. The King and I spoke a bit about any future trips over to Japan. I can't see myself heading over there any earlier than Spring 2014; gotta save up the money. The Anime Bishop called up suddenly and said he would be joining us for dinner.

Came back to hear some soundtrack stuff before we watched the 2000 anime of "Blood: The Last Vampire". It had that gritty animation style which reminded me of "Akira", but the voice acting was pretty subpar...frankly, almost as if this had been a high school project. So it was somewhat surprising to hear that Saya was voiced by actress Yuki Kudo from movies like "Memoirs of a Geisha". It was too bad since I think it could've come off quite well.

The Bishop arrived just in the last few minutes of "Blood". And then we were off to a place called Hot Spicy Spicy. We hadn't been there in perhaps 18 months. My first time to the place was just shortly after my exodus home. It's a larger version of the down-to-earth Chinese eateries over downtown, and the portions are quite generous. I had the Mushu Pork on Rice; nothing surpremely spectacular but it fit the bill quite nicely. The conversation between the King and the Bishop went a bit deep into electronics, not my strong suit at all so I was able to focus on dinner. However, we were able to connect a bit more when it came to headphones.

The Bishop ordered a side dish of dumplings. They were quite big so I had one of them. As soon as I took a bite, the package just shot a phaser of meat juice about a metre away. Gotta say that it's been a while I've something like that. But the Japanese gyoza aren't quite as large as these dumplings were. The three of us are still thinking about getting that big get-together of the Court for dinner sometime in the next number of weeks, but with a number of the group now fully-grounded family men, it could be difficult.