Good food and puns at Minh Mat

My brother and his wife wanted to take me out to dinner at a Vietnamese restaurant they had found. The restaurant is called "Minh mat", and Minh is presumably the name of the owner. It also happens to spell "My food" in Swedish. The menu was full of "Minh's recommendation"/"My recommendation" type of word play.

We ordered a few starters and three main dishes and shared all of it. That turned out to be a huge amount of food, but it was all good. I ordered frog legs because it was the strangest (most exotic) thing on the menu. They were not bad, but the other main dishes were even better.

I was also given a big bag of licorice products. Licorice candy, chocolate, tea, and much more. In Japan, everyone hates licorice, so it is not sold here. In Sweden everyone loves licorice, so whenever I am in Sweden I eat too much licorice.

Laughed at by the Indian guy serving spicy food

I never have any clear plans for where to go for food in Osaka. Yesterday I was wandering around randomly and came upon an Indian restaurant with a Swedish flag in the window. I went inside and ordered curry with cheese filled nan bread. The Indian guy working there asked what spiciness level I wanted ("no spice", "normal", "spicy", "extremely spicy"). I asked for the spiciest level possible.

Swedish flag (and some other flags)

He looked at me taking in my obviously not Indian looks and said: "Really? Are you sure?" I said I would try and hope that I would survive. He looked at me and shook his head and laughed a bit.

I was hoping that the scale was "extremely spicy by Japanese standards" (which is still not that spicy) and not "extremely spicy by Indian standards" (which would probably be pretty bad for me, haha).

It turned out to be spicier than any Indian food I have had previously in Japan (though I have had other food in Japan that was spicier, and spicier Indian food in other countries). It hurt a bit, but not that much. It was very good. The Indian guy came by a few times to ask me if I was doing OK. Which I was.

Wall decorations

Super spicy food

After the bon-odori (O-Bon dancing) I stopped by a bar where one of my friends works. He asked me to show some magic to two women also there. I showed them some things and they seemed entertained, though one of them was seriously drunk and it was a bit unclear if she understood what was magical about  some of the things going on. One of them had a cigarette case that looked like she might be a magician, but she said she was not.

I then stopped by one of our magic bars. There, three women had ordered "Spicy chicken, Russian Roulette". This means you get five pieces of delicious spicy chicken, and one that is extremely spicy. I have gotten used to eating things covered in Death Sauce (kind of like a very spicy tabasco), but our Russian Roulette chicken is much worse than that.

The woman who drew the bad piece of chicken turned out to be not very good at dealing with spicy food, so she could not finish the whole piece. I said: "I have been told that it is rude to leave food in Japan, though". Which lead to me having to finish the super spicy chicken for her... It has been a while since I last ended up eating our Russian Roulette chicken. It seems I have become fairly used to it, but it still hurt quite a lot for 10 minutes or so.

Over 18 curry

I was invited to a birthday party for one of my friends and thought I should bring a present. I do not know that much about her, but she did mention that she likes very spicy food once. I found something called "Over 18 curry" (18禁カレー). It said on the back that it is too spicy for anyone under 18, old people, pregnant people, people with heart conditions, and almost everyone else too.