day 13.5: kouri

Our trip started and ended with zeno. We had dinner with him tonight, ramen at a hole in the wall that jon and I passed on our many excursions to Tokyo midtown. We followed that with a drink at a shochu bar. We were looking for a sake bar and I made the joke as we approached it that they probably only serve shochu, as a reference to our night out in nara where we ended up with shochu and hot sake. Of course it turned out that they did only serve shochu, pages and pages and pages of shochu. Apparently it’s all the rage. So we had a drink. The ice cubes were spectacular. For the entire trip I’ve been impressed at the ice cubes here, they are always perfectly shaped, solid cubes. However, at this place, the ice cubes were perfect spheres about the size of a racquetball. They were amazing. I wanted to sneak mine out in my pocket, but fortunately I hadn’t had quite enough to drink to actually go through with my plan. We then bought some drinks for the road and headed back to our hotel to put toby to sleep (he can’t seem to get to sleep without nightcap these days). Zeno joined us. He did a little dance for toby, the video of which I will save for a rainy day (hmmm, I guess today is kinda rainy. . .). we had some pleasant banter, and of course, not to let pleasantries be the last word, we discussed at some length his impending crowded train ride home where there was a high probability that someone might violate his leg. And then we wished him luck and he was gone.