Birthday presents!

Squid ink based nabe

Curry nabe and tofu milk nabe

 Yesterday there was a birthday dinner for me, a magician colleague, and one of our regulars in the magic bar. A celebration of everyone born in October and November.

We had "nabe". Nabe is the word for "pot" in Japanese, and as a word for food it means that you have a pot with some soup base that you pour meat/vegetables/mushrooms/whatever into and then eat out of in a large group. There were three different types of nabe for us: curry nabe, tofu milk nabe, and ikazumi (squid ink) nabe. After you finish eating the meat and vegetables, you add noodles or rice and get either curry ramen or a kind of risotto as a finish.

Stuff to put into the nabe

The food after being boiled in the nabe.

Yogurt drinks, common in Japanese curry restaurants.

Adding rice to make a kind of risotto with the leftovers.

Since it was a birthday party, there was also a cake.

Birthday cake!

Close up of cake

 

Names of the birthday people. Me on the lower right.

People connected to our magic bar. At least 5 magicians in one picture. Some of the others also do magic.

My samurai sword shaped umbrella!

Finally, we also got presents! I got an umbrella that looks like a katana (samurai sword). This will be great with my yukata (Japanese summer pajamas). Even the bag it came in was great.

103 decks of cards of my favorite design!

I also got 103 decks of cards of the type I have been trying to find all over town (I have only managed to get around 70 myself). Apparently my friends have gone to every Daiso shop in Sapporo, some in other neighboring cities, and bought every deck of this type that was available. They, like me, also tried to place an order for more cards, but were (like me) told that that is impossible. I also got a list of all the Daiso they had been to. A very long list, haha. A great present (they have another 28 decks for me too, but the girl who was supposed to bring them had to work and could not come to the party), though somewhat heavy to lug home...