Hanging with Maiko and her family

For dinner we hooked up with Maiko and her mom again and this time they also brought along her dad Shigemi. We drove to a buffet restaurant in Komaki named Viking. I remember driving past it with someone else telling me Viking was cheap and lacking quality, but I’m happy to say that only the cheap part was true. Actually, it was perfect for us, because they have so many different kinds of Japanese foods, and now the Dutchies could try anything they hadn’t tried seen before without the risk of ending up with a meal that was too disgusting to finish. The seven us gathered up so much food that it didn’t even fit on the huge family table. Gui and I really loved the barbecue seafood, like crab and scallops, my mom discovered she loves yakimochi, and Gy indulged himself in fried food, meat and a whole lot of miso soup. And I surprised Maiko into a scream by drinking a half cup of miso soup, which she didn’t believe I was starting to acquire a taste for.

After dinner we drove back to Inuyama (Maiko and her mom had some troubles getting their car out of the Viking parking lot) to see Inuyama Castle by night and visit Maiko’s house, which is at the foot of the mountain Inuyama Castle sits on. There the Dutchies also got to meet her dog Jump and her brother Yoshi. We did a small tour of their huge house (I mean Maiko’s room alone is almost bigger than my whole apartment), stayed for drinks and the Dutchies received presents, and before we left Yoshi successfully took a picture of the whole group with his camera’s timer function.

I used to love hanging out with Maiko and her family because they’re all so wonderfully crazy, I just feel right at home with them. And like I suspected my family and Maiko’s family had no problem getting along either, when everybody is pleasantly disturbed it can only lead to an enjoyable time together.

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