Another Dinner in Ashland

It's a tough job to do, but Andrew, his parents and I have made it our mission to eat our way through Ashland and the surrounding towns to pick the restaurant for our rehearsal dinner. Somehow, I think we're up to the task!

After visiting Stone's Public House for our first restaurant, this time around we went with one of Charlotte's choices and visited Fusion Cuisine. As its name states, it's a restaurant that features Japanese, Chinese and Thai cuisine. Truthfully, Charlotte had noticed a neat-looking restaurant the last time she was in Ashland, and she thought that this restaurant was the same. She realized when she arrived that it was not the right restaurant, but we still had fun trying out a new place.

Take a look at the fusion platter aka pupu platter that we ordered as an appetizer - it was seriously enough food to fill us up right away and we barely had room for dinner. While it tasted good, I didn't think the restaurant stood out in any way as an Asian restaurant:


I do have to mention that their spicy tuna maki (Andrew and I ate it too quicky to take a picture) was really good - it had a nice crunchy texture compared to other spicy tuna rolls I've had.

Now onto the gigantic size entrees - Charlotte's Chicken Lo Mein:

Andrew and his Dad opted for classic Pad Thai:

You think after spending almost two weeks in Japan, I would be tired of Japanese food - wrong! I was already craving chicken katsu and Fusion Cuisine's version was crispy without being greasy and even more importantly, they used the right type of tonkatsu sauce:

Even more remarkable than the food was the decor - while it had some touches of Asian influence, most of it was rather loud - like this room divider made out of heavy plastic balls:

Our red velvet booth - which was surprisingly cushy - with the bright lighting:


As we met up for dinner on Saturday, my picture of Fusion Cuisine's sign shows the snow that started falling rapidly that night:

And as an incredibly sweet touch at the end of a great dinner, Andrew's parents surprised me with a pink rose. It was a nice touch of spring during a cold and snowy night:

Thanks Tom and Charlotte!

Too Good To Be True

Our search for a house continues, although I haven't really blogged about it much, because really, all the houses seem to blur after a while. I'm having a hard time keeping track of which houses we've actually visited and which ones we've just read the MLS listing for.

We saw a listing for a house pop up on Friday that for a house in an extremely desirable neighborhood for a ridiculously low price. The listing mentioned that it was newly renovated and the pictures seemed good. As Andrew read of the listing to me, we both mentioned at least three times that it "seemed to good to be true" and "there had to be something wrong with it." But we went ahead and requested a showing with our agent.

Later that day, Andrew takes a look at the house on Google Maps and sees in street view that the neighborhood seems somewhat commercial and it looks like there's a sand and gravel company next door. Still not enough to deter us from looking but we go in even more wary on Saturday.

First off, housing appointments are usually one-on-one with the selling agent. But when we arrived, it was a madhouse that was like an open house, with tons of young couples our age strolling through the house.

More importantly, the house was a piece of crap. Parts of it were OK, but clearly, the only renovation involved some new sections of carpet and quick paint job. I mean, this is what one of the bathrooms looked like:



One of those old fashioned toilets with a pull, in faux wood style with plenty of mold.

I'm not sure how much scrubbing would ever get this clean.


It also had a non-functioning shower head, cement floor and the world's oldest drain. I felt dirtier for having stepped in that space. I'll have to go back to see if the selling agent had the gall to list this as a full bath.

Regardless, I am still hopeful that we will find the right house soon. Preferably before the tax credit extension runs out at the end of April.

Butternut Squash Soup With Apples

A lazy Sunday spent at home with snow on the ground outside seemed to call for a cozy type dinner.

As I'm always excited to use my crockpot and I had a package of butternut squash languishing in my fridge, I decided to try Beantown Baker's soup recipe.

I've clearly gotten lazy with my food blogging, but you can find the recipe on her site, and I did follow her instructions on adding a can of pumpkin and keeping the skin on the apple. However, I didn't have any coriander on hand so I ended up tossing in a 1/4 teaspoon of pumpkin pie spice.

This is what it looked like uncooked:


And ready to eat after being hand mashed with a strainer and a spoon (a brief bout with the hand mixer convinced me it was too messy to do any good). The perfect dinner for a cold night:

Last Day on Zama

It's hard to believe that just over a week ago, Andrew and I were still in Japan.

Sigh.

So back to our last day. We snuck in one last breakfast at the golf club. Rather than bore you with more pictures of the food, I just had Andrew take a picture of me enjoying the golf club's "famous" lemonade:


Through a lucky coincidence in timing, we were able to catch the opening day of the quarterly Oriental Bazaar before catching our 1 p.m. bus to the airport. The bazaar brings vendors from all over Asia to sell souvenirs, traditional Japanese dishware and furniture:


When I lived on Zama, it was held in the old gym on base but it has since moved to the Cultural Center and now the parking lot of the Community Club to give enough room to all the vendors. You better believe that we picked up a few Christmas gifts here and ended up heading back to my parents place (the high rise you see in the background) to fit it all into our suitcases:

Also on a lucky break, the club had set up a booth selling food, including one of my favorites - Yakisoba (noodle dish with vegetables) - so we grabbed some to eat on the bus as our lunch:


Close up shot of yakisoba - it was as good as I remembered and I know I will have some of my readers craving it after seeing these pictures!

It was just the thing to put us in a good mood for the 3 hour bus ride to Narita airport and the 13 hour flight back to the US.

Japan's Newbury Street: Harajuku

As Harajuku is Japan's youth fashion capital, Andrew and I were hoping to get some good people watching time in. It was a bit of a trip down memory lane for me, as I don't think I had been here in over ten years since high school:

Alas, we didn't see a lot of strange fashions on the street, primarily since it was a weekday afternoon. In fact, we probably saw as many foreign tourists as we did Japanese people.

But we did get to see the some stores selling some outlandish outfits:

So, we comforted ourselves with delicious crepes - oddly enough, another Japanese tradition for me even though they're obviously a French-based dessert!

Andrew and I got the same crepe - strawberries, vanilla ice cream and whipped cream - but his had chocolate syrup and mine had strawberry - yum!

As you can see from the outside display, there were dozens of sweet and savory choices and everyone in line seemed to have a hard time deciding:

Afterwards, we strolled around the different streets in Harajuku, as it's similar to Newbury Street here in Boston with different designer stores. I have to add that on the weekends, it's more like Harvard Square with the different types of people that hang out in the area! Here's a view from one of the pedestrian bridges showing the fall foliage and the traffic on the left side of the road:


Finally, as we headed back to the train station to catch a train back to Zama via the Shinjuku station, Andrew posed on another pedestrian foot bridge with Harajuku train station in the background:

Tokyo's Imperial Palace

On our last full day in Japan, Andrew and I decided to brave the JR Yamanote line that loops in a full circle around Tokyo to visit the Imperial Palace, home to Japan's imperial family.

It's a quick walk from the Tokyo train station, one minute, you're surround by skyscrapers and the next, you're walking into this huge open space of land. Here, Andrew shows you how wide the outer moat is:


Passing by the outer moat, we approached the outer edge of the imperial palace. Most of the palace and its inner gardens are off limits to the public except for two days - December 23 (the Emperor's Birthday) and January 2 (for a New Year's greeting). There is a small portion of the gardens open to the public year-round, but to our dismay, we found that you had to reserve a tour online at least two days in advance (doh!)


Despite being stuck to the perimeter of the palace, it offered a nice park setting surrounded by the Tokyo skyline - it reminded me of Central Park:


Here Andrew poses by the inner moat surrounding the palace:

My turn at the fence and if you look behind me, you can see "Nijubashi" bridge:

It was a pretty tranquil setting, with swans peacefully swimming in the moats:

This is the stone bridge "Meganebashi" (Eyeglass bridge) that also leads to the inner gardens - the guards looked rather fierce and reminded me of the British royal guards that aren't allowed to crack a smile:

From one section of the grounds, you can see both bridges and the private residences of the family:

Andrew and I had a great time walking around, even if we couldn't see the inner part of the palace. While on our way into the imperial palace, we walked all along the gravel portions and on our way out, we took the paved path - we think they do this to keep out cars and bicyclists.

One final picture with Tokyo Tower in the skyline, and it was time for us to find a place to eat in Harajuku, our next stop on the JR train line.

Walk Around Zama

This is the first of three catch-up blogs capturing our last days in Japan.

Ignore the fact that it's December and I'm typing this from my bedroom in Massachusetts, and I'll take you back to Thanksgiving afternoon (just a week ago!)

To walk off the calories from our big meal, my dad took Andrew and I on a loop around Camp Zama.

First stop next to my parent's high rise was Dewey Park - the entrance wasn't looking very picturesque due to some construction work:


This section was more like the Dewey Park I remembered - as you can tell from my dad's outfit, it was unseasonably warm and lovely that day, similar to the weather we enjoyed in Boston today!

Andrew and my dad pose by a Japanese memorial marking the spot of a stable fire when the Japanese imperial army used the land as their training academy, similar to West Point:

Another look at the fountains and the fully stocked pond - Amy and I used to love the one pound trout we hauled out of the pond during the annual fishing derby:

Beyond Dewey, we walked up a rather steep hill past the Eagle's Nest (Zama's executive row equivalent), past the helipad and enjoyed the sight from one of the highest points on base:

To our right was the golf course:

When we arrived back home an hour later, we saw that my mom's friend Kaneko had stopped by with a Japanese-style gift basket to welcome Andrew to Japan:

Beer, bread and chips - an odd combo but definitely a crowd pleaser!

Creamy Pumpkin Pasta

Our dinner tonight, complete with wilted spinach and goat cheese on top:



The recipe and better pictures can be found on Beantown Baker - I'm bummed that I didn't have a full box of bowtie pasta on hand to use.

Amy Esquire, Official Lawyer

I know I've been slacking off on the blogging. We were trying to cram a lot into our last few days in Japan and right now, we're both suffering the effects of jet lag. But I had to muster some energy to discuss one of the biggest events of my sister's life that I was privilege to be a part of yesterday - her swearing into the Mass Bar!

The ceremony took place in the historic Faneuil Hall next to Quincy Marketplace - the gigantic painting behind the stage shows Daniel Webster arguing in court (don't mind my dirty camera lens):


Miss Amy herself, dressed to the nines, before the start of the ceremony:



After swearing three oaths (to the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, to the United States and an Attorney's oath), Amy signed the official log that has been signed by all MA lawyers since the 1600's - including Daniel Webster, John Adams, John Hancock and drumroll please, Andrew two years ago! Talk about distinguished company.



After figuring out that her "fake Mont Blanc pen" was a push pen, rather than a twist pen, Amy celebrates signing the book!


One of my favorite moments of the ceremony - they allow a family member to present the bar certificate to the new attorney. I was proud to represent my parents and the rest of the family on stage to congratulate Amy:


A quick shot taken as we were leaving the official stage:


Finally, Amy's fancy lawyer heels proving that she is truly dressing as an attorney now! Props to her for managing to walk in them across the slick, uneven cobblestones of Boston and not tripping once:


Congratulations Amy! We're proud of you.