Saturday, 29 April 2006

Today we went out for lunch on our way into central Takasaki. We just picked a place at random and it was incredible. It was a traditional Japanese restaurant with little lockers by the front door for your shoes. The tables were in individual little rooms with sliding doors and rice paper window shades. It was all tatami mat floors and little chairs with no legs.

We managed to order a sashimi meal and a fish meal (to order say "sakana ok, sashimi ok") with chilled sake. The sake was the best I've tasted - kind of like champagne without the bubbles.

This is the lunch we ordered more by chance than by design.

Anyway, after eating all this we dragged our sorry, partially drunk arses down to the art gallery where we looked at a collection of 200 year old French political cartoons called Le Charivari. Because we can't read Japanese, we ended up half-translating the French captions. And my French is the result of one year at school when I was 13.

We then went and looked at Takasaki City Gallery that had a bunch of calligraphy and stuff (I'm such an art buff aren't I?). On the way there I patted a Golden Retriever that slobbered all over me thus disproving my theory that all dogs in Japan hate me.

We also went to the patisserie on the way home and bought some cakes. A very successful day all in all.