Huh. I guess I’ve forgotten to do the crossword for several days. So much for my NYT streak.

My sister provided me with several pictures of, well, me looking goofy so let’s start with one where I was trying to get a tiny Japanese payphone that wasn’t yellow. I tried three times and failed.

It was our last morning in Osaka and we went to the Tully’s in the MBS building. I had a salad sandwich because my cousins said I was fat (and I am) but it didn’t help. My sister didn’t like hers so I ate two of them. I guess each was just half of a tiny sandwich so it wasn’t that bad.

Lots of broccoli. Hmmm. Also, Tully’s isn’t as good as I remember.

And then it was off to take the bullet train to Shin-Yamaguchi.

I insisted that there were more ekiben outside of the shinkansen station, in the regular train station, but my sister disagreed. I found out that this time I was correct. But here are the ekiben, first mine.

And then my sister’s.

From Shin-Yamaguchi we took a very old train (diesel, not running on overhead lines) to a station that had no attendants.

We’re staying at Onn Yuda Onsen, which is very nice. There’s not all that much going on here, but we did find some uiro (famous in Yamaguchi Prefecture and Nagoya). Here’s the sample they gave us.

Mariko wanted some coffee so we found a little bakery. Some sort of pistachio cream cake.

And for dinner we went to a very fancy curry restaurant with private rooms. The starter is drinkable salad (or a smoothie to us Americans).

I got the meat plate and Mariko got the little bear I think. We got to pick two curries to go with it and that’s why both sides are different colors. Mine had sukiyaki with egg, tonkatsu, and a little salad.

Here’s the other picture of me looking goofy.

It also came with a panna cotta dessert. I couldn’t read the kanji and thought it was strawberry (it tasted like strawberry) but when I figured it out it said “white peach”. Not sure what’s so white about it.

And that’s about it. We went to the very nice onsen attached to the hotel and it was odd for both of us. A Korean-looking young woman was swimming in the bath (usually forbidden) when my sister went. A dude with a full sleeve tattoo did a belly flop into the water bath (both usually forbidden) when I went. Yoots. What are you gonna do.