Tuesday Aug. 14th

I had a great lunch with Madoka! She took me to an authentic Japanese restaurant that happened to be literally underneath where I live! Mine only cost about 7 American dollars and it came with a soup, a main dish with miso soup, and a dessert! I thought that was a pretty good deal. Here's the main dish and the dessert:

Madoka said that the dessert wasn't made from chocolate but it did taste a lot like tiramisu to me, it was so good! As for the main dish, she told me to pour the egg on top of the tuna and also to pour a sauce over it that was very sweet. She told me the egg came from a bird that we don't have in America. She told me the name of it, but I don't remember! The meal was so amazing, I can't even describe it. The tuna was raw, and on top was more tuna that was made into a kind of paste. She said that when eating in Japan, you alternate in a triangle pattern between soup, main dish, and tea or whatever other side dish you might have. I'm so used to finishing one thing and moving onto the next, it was hard for me! I know I don't hold my chopsticks right and she asked if I needed a spoon but I told her it was ok, that's just how I use them ^.^;   Anyway, the soup at the beginning was made from egg, and I think it was only from the white of the egg because its texture was like jelly and it tasted very creamy. It was delicious just like everything else. She was full before I was, but she was waiting on me to eat her dessert, so I just stopped. I only had rice left, anyways and I knew it would expand in my stomach later.
After we finished eating, we went to Starbucks and she helped me learn Japanese! I had a book with Kanji in it that's actually for kids and she went through it and explained it to me and how some of the symbols came about. I liked the one for "parent" where it combined kanji meaning "to see," "tree" and another one I can't remember, I think it was "person." She said that it meant the parents climb up the tree and look for their lost children. I thought that was really cool, and a lot of the other ones were cool, too. She explained a lot of things that really helped me out, too, and we went to the 100 yen store so I could get a few things. She explained to me what some of the groceries were for and how to make them, so I look forward to trying it out sometime!
When I got home, I failed at making sushi so I ended up eating it with a spoon since it all fell apart . . . oh well. It was a really fun day and I'm glad that I'm starting to make friends!