Japan reunion ^ 2

[dorchadas]

melishus_b and her boyfriend came to visit us this weekend! And I've written about it in detail below.


Friday
I took a half-day at work on Friday because their plane landed at 1:50 p.m., but they decide to stop for lunch in the Loop, rather than coming straight from the airport to visit us. That was fine, though, since it gave me a bit more time to tidy up. They arrived a little after schoolpsychnerd got home from work, and after dropping off their luggage, we all went to the grocery store because melishus_b specifically requested schoolpsychnerd's home cooking. After consulting cookbooks, we made doi maach, though using salmon instead of cod because it was fresh (or as fresh as in the Midwest, anyway). It was delicious!

After that, we stayed in and watched the Hoshi no Kābī anime because everyone was tired, and then went to bed pretty early.

Saturday
We woke up late and lazed around until after noon, except for schoolpsychnerd who went for an early-morning run. melishus_b's boyfriend was perfectly happy to rest for a while and leave after we ate lunch, though, because he usually gets up around 5 a.m. on weekends to go to work. I ate my usual Japanese breakfast, the others ate a mix of eggs and turkey bacon and hash browns, and then after noon we got on the L and went down to Michigan Avenue to walk around for a while before our concert in the evening.

After a small amount of shopping, mostly for chocolate, we walked down Michigan Avenue until Millennium Park, and spent the rest of the afternoon wandering around the park. Mostly hunting Pokémon, to be honest. There was a raid taking place at the bean, and we all hopped in with the crowd that was chasing after a raikō. There were seventeen of us, and while my entire initial slate of Pokémon were killed, I managed to throw in another six just before we won, and then I captured the raikō!
My first legendary!

Then it was time for dinner, and we walked the block from the Art Institute gardens to The Gage, which is our usual restaurant when we're going to the symphony. We've had problems with it in the past that were mostly related to not giving enough time, so this time I had made reservations for six instead of six thirty. We arrived at 5:45, were seated right away, and ordered our food. It was delicious:

Roasted duck breast, sweet corn purée, knob onion, fingerling potato, gooseberry, duck confit.

And for dessert:

Hazelnut praline and concord cheesecake with dessert grappa.

Six o'clock was the perfect time to arrive. As was typical in the past, the appetizer, drinks, and main course arrived promptly, and it took quite some time for the waiter to ask us whether we wanted dessert, and then more time for us to get the bill. That's not a bad thing--it means that they were giving us enough time out eat slowly and enjoy our meal in peace--but when we've arrived at 6:30 in the past it's meant that we had to hurry over to the symphony. We didn't have to do that this time, and we were able to enjoy our meal in peace and make it to Symphony Center with plenty of time to spare.

And what's more, the floor manager comped us our desserts! He came by and said that he had heard we were celebrating, which I suppose is true since we hadn't seen melishus_b in three years. After he asked us how the food was, he said the desserts were on the house.

Then, we walked three blocks and sat down for Distant Worlds.

Ieyui nobomeno renmiri yojuyogo....

We've gone to a lot of Distant Worlds concerts, and I think this was my favorite one yet. There was a lot of music from FFXIV and FFXV, neither of which I've played, but the music contains a lot of choral work that I really appreciated. Songs like Apocalypsis Noctis or Torn from the Heavens are exactly the kind of songs that I love and make me want to play the games that they come from. FFXV comes out for PC next year, so I'll get the chance to play it then. FFXIV...well, I think my MMO days are done. But maybe I should buy the soundtrack.

Nobuo Uematsu was there. I yelled out 植松さん最高！ ("Mr. Uematsu, you're the greatest!") at one point with no expectation he'd hear me. He didn't, of course.

After the concert, we went back home and then almost straight to bed.

Sunday
schoolpsychnerd woke me up when she came back from her exercising, and then we all got up and got on the L to go to Uncommon Ground for a reunion of the 2016 Japan trip group. tastee_wheat was in town for a conference and asked if she could fly home on Monday instead of Friday, so we gathered for brunch. And melishus_b and her boyfriend came along since, after all, schoolpsychnerd and I first met them in Japan. I had a delicious steak and eggs, we chatted for a while, and then we separated because tastee_wheat had an event out in Tinley Park she had to get to.

After a slow early afternoon where I drank tea and melishus_b napped, we walked over to Andersonville and looked around the shops for a while, stopping into Andies for dinner, and then went back home in the early evening and broke out the board games.

melishus_b had brought a wild west-themed version of Carcassonne, so that's what we played first. I don't remember much about how to play Carcassonne other than putting together the map and scoring points by placing meeples down, and this didn't seem that different. Mountains full of gold, railroads instead of roads, and a tent that let players sneak into other player's claims to mine the gold out from under them. Through underhanded gold stealing and a couple lucky meeple placements that I finished in the last two turns, I won by something like 15 points! They had also brought Exploding Kittens, but I suggested that we play Betrayal at the House on the Hill instead.

Betrayal is extremely random, but the haunted house theme is strong and it's just fun to play. This time it worked out like a horror movie intro. We triggered the Haunt early, with melishus_b's boyfriend's character being dragged away and devoured immediately by massive tentacles (which he then took control of). melishus_b and schoolpsychnerd were exploring the basement after having fallen down a hidden slide and I was alone on the ground floor, so the tentacles came for me. Just before I was dragged in and eaten, I threw down a mysterious charm I had found while exploring, which stunned the tentacles and allowed me to jump into the slide myself. The tentacles had no way to get to us...until schoolpsychnerd found the stairway up to the ground floor. She valiantly fought off the tentacles with her bare hands, defeating them multiple times until one snuck up on her, grabbed her, and dragged her to her doom. melishus_b tried to save her and was also overpowered and eaten, while I fled deeper into the house. While crossing the bridge over a chasm, I found the head of the beast, and in a deeper room the spear that could kill it. Just as I raised the spear in triumph...a tentacle grabbed me from behind, and dragged me to my death.

We lost, but in a fantastic way. I could easily imagine it as the opening ten minutes of a horror movie before the "Ten years later" title card and the film crew comes to film a documentary in the house.

The deep-dish that melishus_b had ordered arrived near the end of the game, and after it was over we cleaned off the table, they ate it--I don't really like pizza, deep-dish or not--and then we all went to bed.

Monday
schoolpsychnerd had to go to work at the normal time, but I took the first half of the day off, so I had a relaxing morning. melishus_b and her boyfriend ate some of their leftover pizza, packed, and headed out to take the L back to the airport. And at the time of this posting, they're waiting because their flight has been delayed...

But other than that, it was a lovely weekend!

Next weekend we should see them again, since we'll be in Seattle for a wedding! Just like old times, at least for a brief moment.