French Panda

I got a craving for French food and e-mailed a friend of mine who lived a few years in France (and a few years in some French speaking part of Canada) and asked if she had time to go eat some French food. She did, and she suggested a place called "French Panda", which has pretty cheap (for Japan) French food.

A panda sat next to me drinking red wine the whole evening.

The place had stuffed panda toys placed in many places. It took me a while to figure out why they had decided to call the restaurant French Panda, but it turns out they serve French food and Chinese food (and fish & chips), so the panda is there to indicate the Chinese food.

Fairly French food

My friend is incredibly indecisive, so asking things like: "How about this pasta, do you think we should order that?" tends to cause anguish over what to eat. This time was no exception and in the end I asked if we should just order the "chef's recommended 8 dish course" so we would not have to decide anything ourselves. This was accepted and we got a quite nice dinner (though there was too much food, especially since my 39 kg friend does not eat that much...).

Not very French food

My friend is funny. She also has a tendency to say things that can sound quite rude. Though thinking about it, I have not really noticed her doing that to other people, only to me. This time, after I had paid and we had finished eating a full French course dinner, her comment was: "I like Japanese food much more than European food", while normal people might say something like "Thank you" or "This food was nice", haha. I said that some people might think that was a fairly cold thing to say in these circumstances, but she said that it was a perfectly natural thing to say, since she does prefer Japanese food...

French style guts

There were other comments that might also be considered rude. I mentioned that an acquaintance of mine had said: "I will marry you on paper so you will no longer have any visa problems" (which I have not asked for and would not really want, haha), but had also added: "But I would never live together with you" (thus making the whole visa thing pointless, since the immigration office will most likely come to check if you are actually married). Upon hearing "I would never ever want to live with you", my friend interrupted me with "I absolutely understand that, and I feel the same"... Which she also did not consider a mean thing to say. She is usually like that. But she is a lot of fun, and these cold hearted comments are often funny (though she does not intend them to be jokes, she means what she says).

A dessert that was actually incredibly good

 She also has a tendency to touch or play with anything that is placed near her. This time she grabbed a lot of wine bottles that were put up as a fence between customers at the counter and the staff working behind the counter, looking them over and the placing them back in more or less the original positions. She also played with decorative pandas placed near to us. Another time, she walked over to a pedestal with a wooden decorative box and brought it over to our table, convinced it contained a chess set so I could teach he how to play chess. It turned out to be an empty decorative thing having nothing to do with chess that was placed there to look nice, though, as our waitress kindly explained when she returned it to its pedestal...