Welcome to Hirochan's World

Ronnie and I had dinner with my friend Ayako and her husband, Moro-chan, at Kappo Yoshiba in Ryogoku, Tokyo. The restaurant provides chankonabe, a Japanese stew commonly eaten in vast quantities by sumo wrestlers as part of their weight gain diet.  Yoshiba was remodeled from the former sumo training stable and there is a dohyo, the ring in which sumo wrestling bouts are held, in the center of the restaurant. After dinner, the customers are allowed to enter the dohyo once they changed their shoes to zori, a flat and thonged Japanese sandals. The chankonabe was delicious. We were told that the chanko we shared with four people was actually less amount than a single sumo wrestler normally eats. No wonder they are so big!

The day before Ronnie was to meet my parents for the very first time, he got a hair cut at Cut Salon Ban  in Shibuya, Tokyo. He usually gets an $8 hair cut at our neighborhood Vietnamese salon, however, this time, he got the 4,200 yen full set which included a shave and a shoulder massage. Ronnie liked the hair cut he got from Tsutomu, the barber. Ronnie was especially impressed with Tsutomu's single-blade-straight-razor-technique and his shaving cream vending machine. He fell asleep in the middle of the shave, though.  Thank you Tsutomu, you did a great job! We want to come back next time when we go to Japan. 

Ronnie and I visited Japan early June of 2008. We stayed at Hotel Dormy Inn Tokyo Hatchobori for a week. The room was rather small, but pretty clean with a washlet toilet. However, the best part of the facility was its natural hot spring. Even though the hotel was located in downtown Tokyo, I was able to stretch out my arms and legs in the open-air onsen during our stay. Awesome! I totally enjoyed bathing twice a day with the utmost comfort ;)  We dropped by Lawson, a convenience store, every night before we went back to our room to get breakfast for the next morning. Ronnie loved Meiji Bulgaria yogurt very much. He might feel as if he were Koto-oh-shu, a Bulgarian sumo wrestler.