On the Dinner Table

Saber showing off the chopsticks from Sushi Oyama

Two of my closest friends from college get together once in a while to have dinner and catch up. This time we decided to have it at a sushi restaurant on Friday night. The food is the typical sushi fare that you see in other Japanese sushi restaurants, but the location is quite unique.

It is situated inside a huge mansion! The restaurant is called Sushi Oyama and located in Burnaby, B.C. It's just a few blocks away from the Metrotown mall. This is the side view of the mansion. It was the first thing I saw when I parked right behind it. Apparently the parking is free before 6 PM for two hours, but you have to pay after 6 PM... Go figure.

This is the front view of the building. It's quite a nice mansion from the outside, but there have been a lot of tenants at this location which were restaurants as well. Pardon the blurry pictures... I'm not used to taking pictures at night. I planned on taking them during the day, but was busy before dinner time. I was actually the first one to be there, so I took a look around the building and just outside on the veranda. Would be very nice in the summer, but we would've been frozen sitting outside during this time. It reached 0 degree celsius that night, maybe even lower.

More bluriness... but aside from the "OPEN" neon sign, you would think this is a real house that you're stepping into.

The first thing you'll notice when you enter is the chefs yelling, "Irasshaimase!" That cued me that it's either authentic Japanese sushi chefs or they've been trained that way... I think it's the former though. The second thing that you notice, if you weren't in a rush (like my friend who saw us getting seats and quickly followed) is this window with a waterfall inside. Can't really show it on a picture though...

As we sat down I asked my friends, "you don't mind if I brought my date along, right?" They pondered, "date?" as I took Saber out... Ok, so it didn't really happen that way, but let's play along shall we? Both my friends do know that I like anime, figures and do have a blog, but I don't think they expected me to bring a figure along with me to dinner XD

So anyways I seated Saber at the chair...
Hekekek, say Saber, do you need a booster seat? XD

Saber: "Shut up and put me on the table already, you jerk!"
I complied...

This is the part where I warn you that there are food pictures ahead. So I suggest you go out to an sushi restaurant before you proceed, else you'll get hungry :P

So after seeing my little figure and the shirt I was wearing, which was Saber Lily by the way, we finally decided what to order. I'm more used to the all-you-can-eat sushi, so it took me quite a while to decide.

Saber: "Mmmm... Tentacle monster-yaki"

First thing I noticed on the appetizer section... Takoyaki! So I had to get it. It's quite delicious compared to the ones I use to have. It melts in my mouth! I offered to my friends as well with satisfying results. One of the bonito flakes was actually swaying back and forth as if it's waving and saying, "eat me." It's just missing the skewer, lol. So like Saber, we ate it with our chopsticks.

Next up is the sashimi and sushi combo. I'm becoming a fan of sashimi than just the usual sushi rolls or negiri sushi nowadays. The sashimi were cut a bit thick than what I'm used to but they were still good. The yellow one is fried scallop, I believe. A bit of a mess because I try to just put the whole thing in my mouth... I also swiped a yam tempura from my friend's plate since he's got too much, and was offering :P

We had quite a lot of conversations as we ate. A lot of work-related topic, but also computer-related topics. My friend's having a problem with Mac OS 10.5 slowing down everything, but perhaps it was installation problems when he picked "Archive & Install". The other would be the Silverkeeper software from Lacie (an external hard drive maker) that stopped functioning after the 10.5 was installed. Silverkeeper basically backs up older emails and now it can't be accessed anymore. Perhaps the Mail program was not recognizing the older version. So if anyone who knows more about Mac than I do know the answer to this puzzle, please give me a shout, whether on the comments or email. Thanks!

This was the third item I ordered, the deep fried rolls made of fried tuna and salmon in a roll. I ordered it but I couldn't remember the name of it... Why? Well the order didn't really come. I was still hungry, so I really wanted this one to come. I was glad to have it, but Saber can't help but give off a glare... It was only so-so though. I was bit disappointed with this roll.

One of the other topics we talked about was the anime convention that the two of us went to, which was Anime Evolution, back in June. My friend also took pictures of the event and learned quite a bit about the anime fandom in Vancouver in that short period of time.

The topic of Vocaloids, the singing software sensations, also came up. For the uninitiated, it's basically a software that creates a singing voice for a piece of music. I have heard it's quite difficult to program a Vocaloid to sing it the way you want to. I haven't tried myself, but I would know that I can't program MEIKO very well... Ok, I know my friends will be reading, so I'll give an example of a Vocaloid song here, one of my favourites as well.

I was trying to find one of Miku's songs where her voice isn't too electronic and only thought of this one. Anyone have any other suggestions?

A related topic was the Auto-Tune software that a rapper, T-Pain, uses to improve one's vocals. I haven't heard of this program before but I have heard of the results. It makes a voice more electronic, but it's also like a cheat if you're a vocalist, from what I gathered from this conversation. In a way it is similar to Vocaloid, except it's using your own voice instead of a computer-generated voice. Here's a famous example of Auto-Tune:

And hopefully my friend is thinking hard about the blog that he is planning to do. He was one of the writers in our college program, so I think it'd be nice if he can come up with an idea for a blog and do what he does best. :) ...Unlike me, whose writing style is just steamrolling through everything to get it done, lol.

Oh it seems my date brought along her own date....

Shirou: "Saber, why are you here? I made dinner at home."
Saber: "Well if you made sushi more often then I would stay at home!"
(Yes, I know Saber is out of character here... She's not usually a fussy eater ^^;)

So with the awkwardness of the couple fighting at the dinner table, the three of us went on our way... Heheh anyways... Most of the time Saber pretty much stayed by my plate or in my hands when the table was empty. I pretty much planned out the pictures I wanted so I can take them quickly for the storyline ^^; My friend, who is the same age as myself, played around with her a little because he does have quite an eye for figures as well.

In the end the whole night was quite good. The restaurant's bill wasn't too bad either. I may have to consider having a family dinner here one night and also to try out the other rolls.

Good food, good friends and good night! We'll see each other again within not too long of a gap, hopefully. And maybe one of us, besides me, would have a blog too by the time we meet up again ;)

EDIT:

Take a closer look at the screenshots and see the parts highlighted in red... Yes, I planned it, lol. NOT a coincidence :P