Watch Out, Colonel Sanders

About 5-10 minutes from our apartment is a restaurant called Hamakatsu.  It is another favorite of my friend, Kathy, that she has introduced me to, which I then introduced to Matt & the kids.  Hamakatsu is part of a chain of restaurants and it specializes in tonkatsu, or pork cutlet.  They also serve fish and chicken cutlets and it is the chicken katsu that we hold in high regard.  Matt says it's the best fried chicken he's had here in Japan.  I really like it because it is boneless, skinless white meat chicken.  While I took that for granted in the U.S., that is not the norm for chicken dishes/sandwiches/nuggets in Asia.

The interior of Hamakatsu is nothing special--it's like any affordable, casual family restaurant you would find in America with booths and tables.  It's the experience that separates the Japanese restaurants from the American.  It seems that even with the simplest meals there are many moving parts.  All meals at Hamakatsu come refillable rice (white or with barley), miso soup (red or white), cabbage (shredded or chopped) and pickles (nothing that would resemble pickles in America).  There is a pitcher of hot tea on the table and you get a toddler-sized glass of mizu (water).  After you order your katsu and select your preferences for the side dishes, a server comes out and fills your table with a bunch of stuff:  wet wipes for washing your hands, chop sticks, a bowl of sesame seeds, salt & pepper, a tiny glass decanter filled with some type of oil/sauce to use with the pickles, a bowl and a thick, wooden dowel to use as a mortar & pestle and two types of salad dressing.

After ordering, before the meal arrives.

The sesame seeds, bowl and dowel are used to make katsu sauce.  I think I may have mentioned before that Japanese are all about condiments and sauces with their food.  You scoop some sesame seeds into the bowl (I like one spoonful; Kathy likes four) and then you grind them with the dowel or pestle.  Once the seeds are to your desired consistency, then you can pour your desired amount of prepared sauce(s) into the bowl.  On the table, along with the pitcher of tea and napkins the size of a toilet paper square, there are two smaller pitchers each filled with a sauce--one sweet and one savory.  (I like to use one part sweet to three parts savory.)  You mix it all together with your chopsticks.  By the time you finish this, they are usually coming out with your meal (unless it's really busy and even then it doesn't take too long).

Grinding sesame seeds to make the katsu sauce.

Chicken katsu with shredded cabbage salad, rice with barley,
pickles and white miso soup (not pictured).

When Hamakatsu is busy sometimes servers will walk around every now and then with a bowl full of cabbage offering refills, but mostly you just ring the bell that's on your table and a server will immediately come over and you can request your refill of anything except more katsu.

Most of the time we go there or any Japanese restaurant Aaron, the food racist, usually refuses to eat anything other than what we have brought for him from home.

Aaron likes sandwiches.

He is convinced that Japanese food, even things like french fries and chicken nuggets, are different and he won't like them.  He doesn't even want to try them.  However, when we went for dinner earlier this week, Matt somehow convinced him to try the chicken and he liked it.  He even ate a little rice...and then he ate the peanut butter sandwich I had packed for him.  It was like Sam-I-Am but with chopsticks.

Aaron eating chicken katsu with chopsticks.

Leah ate two bowls of rice!

It would be nice to think that with two and a half months left Aaron would now be open to trying other Japanese foods/restaurants but I'm not holding my breath.  Matt's just happy that Aaron now has a favorite Japanese restaurant and it is the same as his.

The Last Homecoming?

Daddy's home!

Yesterday (April 10), Matt came home from what was probably his last deployment ever.  The thing that made this homecoming day special (in addition to the thought of it being the last one) is the BHR hosted a "Dependents Day Cruise."  This is where sailors could have family and guests (8 years & older) come onto the ship and sail the last little bit home together.

Since Leah was old enough but Aaron was not, I let Leah decide if she wanted to go by herself and have a daddy-daughter day or whether she wanted me to get someone to watch Aaron while we both went together.  She chose the first option, going by herself.

I made arrangements with the CO's wife, Heather, to escort Leah to the ship.  Everyone going on the cruise had to meet at Port Ops so they could ride in a LCU for about an hour from the base to the BHR.  Once they reached the ship then Matt would meet Leah and take her off Heather's hands.  That was the plan and it went fairly smoothly.  However, the muster time (when Leah had to check in and be at the dock) became earlier and earlier and the time when they were scheduled to leave wasn't the time they really left.  Factor in that it was cold and rainy and it did not make for a good beginning of the day.  I had to wake the kids up at 5:00 am so we could check-in Leah at 6:00 am and meet Heather.  The LCU trip was supposed to begin at 7:00 am but it wasn't until almost 7:30 am before they started lining people up, giving them life preservers and going over safety instructions.  Leah was wet and frozen and just miserable.  I almost thought she might give up but she soldiered through.  She just kept asking me when could she get to daddy's ship.  Aaron and I left her when they were lining up for their safety instructions, and Matt called me when she arrived to the ship.  He received good reports from both the CO's and the XO's wives that Leah was a trooper and did well.  While Leah was riding the LCU, I took Aaron to breakfast at the McDonald's on base.  I suspect he was having a better time at that moment.

Leah:  cold, wet, tired and miserable.

Aaron loves McDonald's hotcakes and hash browns.

A much happier Leah on the ship with her dad.

Since the weather was lousy, there was no "steel beach picnic" on the ship as originally planned.  (A steel beach picnic is a cookout on the deck.  Sometimes this happens underway as a special treat for the sailors.) Instead, there was lunch in the mess decks as usual.  Apparently, Leah ate a hamburger and (multiple) chocolate chip cookies while the Lego Movie played.  In addition, there were static displays where they could look at different equipment and Matt took Leah on a tour of the ship.  She seemed to enjoy it.  Best of all, the Dramamine worked and she did not get seasick!

Leah posing with a helicopter on the deck of the ship.

Leah tries on some gear.  "Don't worry Mom,
the gun wasn't loaded," she told me later.

At 2:30 pm, Aaron and I returned to base right as the ship was coming in to port.  We could see Matt and Leah on the top deck.  They look so tiny because Matt's ship is huge.

Leah is in the pink jacket and Matt is waving.

Even though the ship came in on time, as scheduled, at 2:30 pm, it was another hour and a half before the lines were tied up, the gang plank was set up and Matt and Leah got off the ship.  This ship always takes a long time, it seems, from the time it pulls into port to the time the sailors can leave the ship.  That is one thing I will definitely not miss about the deployments here in Japan.  And hopefully, I won't ever have to miss Matt for months at a time again either!