The Weekend of Too Much Food

This weekend, I had far too much food.  As you all saw yesterday, I had chanpon already, and that was enormously filling.  Today I had lunch plans with some friends to finally get some Indian food, and I came away from the whole thing nearly immobile.



Here's the inside of the Indian restaurant at which we met around 1.  Sophie, Sona, Evelyn, Lucas, Dominik, Wesley, and I were all there.  The restaurant smelled and looked just like it would in America, again leading me to conclude that anything you can find over there can be found just as easily over here.

This is a soup that everyone was given.  It was a bit hot, but nothing too remarkable.

I took a picture of Dominik's face form very, very close up.  We all like to make weird faces here.

Here's the food I got!  The bottom two bowls are curry, though I actually forgot what kinds.  In the middle is Indian barbecue chicken, and to the upper left of that is a yogurt-y dessert with fruit in it.  I'm not hard to please when it comes to Indian food -- as long as it's not awful I will love it -- but today's was honestly very good.  It did, however, suffer a bit from Japan's phobia of strong flavors by way of misrepresenting the level of heat.  I ordered a four, but at the Indian restaurant we go to in Georgia, it would probably be a two.  I had a bit of Dominik's five, and that was still not even on my scale.  The pickles, however, (to the left of the barbecue), were very hot for some reason, and when Sona ate one without knowing that she had a hard time getting back to normal.  I ate everything on this plate, by the way.

THIS IS A BASKET FULL OF NAAN BREAD.  When two of these things were placed on our table, my jaw dropped and I proclaimed it the most beautiful sight I'd seen in a long time.  Naan is a type of Indian flat bread that is, without question, one of the greatest things to ever come from an oven.  Two enormous baskets of it were fine, but they went fast and we had to have another round.  Naan is the best.

I left the flash on in this picture by accident, but I kept it because Evelyn looks like she is having WAY too much fun. Also because I actually caught Sophie on film clearly again.  It's like if the Cottingley Photographs were real. 

We went to the grocery store for some dessert, so I got some Hi-chew and this thing.  It's a cup of melon-flavored ice cream, but I bought it because it came in a melon-shaped container.  I had to.  It wasn't bad, either, so I regret nothing.

After that we all decided to go for a walk.  That's really the best thing you can do after Indian food.  On the walk, we saw this dog through someone's fence.  Look at how scruffy his face fur is.  He looks like a grumpy old man.  You are ridiculous, Old Man Dog.

Our walk took us to one of many playgrounds set up seemingly everywhere in Saitama.  None of them are very big, and I have no idea who maintains them, but there are a whole lot.  We spent probably around two hours sitting here and talking, swinging, and using the see-saw.  Wesley and I do this in Georgia, too, but it's usually late at night.
Also, at on point this Japanese man came up to us, said "Excuse me.  Thank you.  I don't speak English.  Thank you." and ran off.  The theory is that he wanted to try out his English and got too nervous to say anything, but no one really knows what he wanted.

When I got home, my host mom had a large dinner waiting.  I held off on it as long as I could, but there was just no way I was going to bed tonight without having eaten most of it.  I'm too polite.  So now, here I am, typing this on the floor because I can't move anywhere else.  Sleep will be welcome tonight.