Katys Birthday - forgot to post

Katys birthday was a while ago now but we made sure she had a good day.
In the morning when we woke up we made Crepes. We got different fruit and some peanut butter to go inside and of course we got some whipped topping to make them even yummier (Myla liked the cream too :) - I am surprised Katy's crepes had any cream left as Myla liked to lick it all off).
Then after breakfast we went to Fushimi Inari Shrine. Here Katy got to take part in a Shinto ceremony and was blessed by a Shinto priest after he said a prayer for her. After her blessing she was given a small box of things to take home -rice, seaweed, and one other thing and she asked if she needed to eat it all to have a good year :)

 


Then in the afternoon we had a basketball game so she took the girls there.

The game was in the afternoon so when we finished we had some time to go out for dinner. We wanted to do something that we hadnt done before and went to Shabu Shabu. If you get a chance to try this I definitely recommend this. Shabu Shabu is where you have a big pot of sauce - ir at our restaurant, 2 sauces. One of them was a chicken based sauce and the other was a fish based sauce.

When you sit down at the table you turn your pot of sauce on so it heats up and starts to boil. When the sauce is hot you take the very thin slices of beef (or pork if you choose) and drop them in the sauce where it cooks. You also get dishes of vegetables that you can put in the sauce. This a very healthy meal and one that was very good. I think there are some shabu-shabu that are not all you can eat, but the one that we went to was. So, all we had to do was open up the menu (there was pictures) and we could point to what we want. We had an hour to eat (many of the all-you-can-eat places here have a time limit of 60 or 90 minutes) and we pretty much had the restaurant to ourselves as we went after our game. This was out first time and we really liked it; it costed about $30 a person but it was well worth it. I would recommend it if you make a trip to Japan and would like a nice a meal and want to try something Japanese! Myla really enjoyed it as she was able to help put the all the veggies and the glass noodles in the sauce, and had fun eating all the different types of food that we were able to get.

Birthday

Last week was my birthday and I want to say thanks to everyone for all the birthday wishes and for the gifts you boosters were generous enough to give.
Even though we had practice it was a great birthday. The girls woke up and made me 30 little blueberry pancakes (my 30th birthday), which they helped me eat (Myla's help consisted of breaking a pancake in half, eating the blueberries and then putting it back on the plate for us to enjoy). They also gave me 30 balloons and a sign that had 30 reasons why they love me.
What a great morning.
Then in the evening we went out to eat. We found a very nice hotel that had a revolving restaurant on the top floor and decided to eat there - the Rhiga Royal "Top of Kyoto" restaurant.
 
After practice I met the girls at the hotel and we made it just at the time the sun was going down. The views over the whole city were amazing and it was really cool to see it both while it was still light out and then once the sun was set.

The restaurant was a little different than what we are used to in that it was a really fancy restaurant. I was lucky enough to get a pair of jeans for my birthday that I was able to wear as the only other pants I have here are sweat pants (my suit was at the cleaners and we really don't bring that much stuff with us as we only get one suitcase a piece so I don't have any others), and this was not a restaurant that you would wear sweats to. Right when we sat down the wait staff came over and moved our stuff to some lounge chairs at the end of our table and covered them with a table cloth. It was nice to have our stuff right there but basically out of the way. However as soon as they did this we got a little nervous that this might not have been the best place to take our two loud and sometimes not-able-to-sit-in-one-place-for-more-than-5-minutes girls, that maybe it was a little too fancy. But, since we had gone early we had the restaurant to ourselves for the first hour and the girls did great!
 
For dinner, our meal consisted of a few different courses, some might say the portions were small, others might say 'foo-foo-ish', but either way they were pretty good. We had salad, pumpkin soup, cold shrimp 'soup', bread/rolls, sea bass, and for our main dish I had tenderloin and Katy had duck (again the portion was......well.......petite). Then for dessert we had a champagne slurry with fresh fruit and 2 small pieces of cake.
The dinner was a little expensive even though we didn't chose the $17 glasses of champagne but it is something I will always remember and exactly what I wanted to do. If you ever get a chance to see Kyoto from a top a building, or somewhere in the city with amazing views I would say do it as it was quite impressive. You can see all the trains going by (both city trains and bullet trains), how big the city is and many of the old temples and shrines.

Then when we got home Myla got after our two 'cakes'. Katy made me a pumpkin bread 'cake' and then I got one from the team - from one of our sponsors (arrigato Malebranche) - a chocolate layered cake

All in all this was a wonderful birthday and now that I am 30 I feel much smarter - I just couldn't help waking up in the morning with a sense of being much more enlightened and full of wisdom ;). So if you need some guidance or advice I am gladly here to help (although most of what I might say would probably be a big load of b.s. - but I am ready and willing).
Hope all is well where you are and thanks for reading.