I’m staying at the same hotel in Okayama as I did in May, and got breakfast here as well. Not only is it tasty but there’s pretty nice view while you eat. And the coffee is as good as it was in May. Usually hotel coffee is like most Chinese restaurants in the US: weak and coffee colored.

We met our friend Yumi and our first stop was the Bon Bon bakery, where we went a couple of years ago. I think we could’ve been OK with just the hot dog at the bottom of the picture. The bread there is delicious but i’ts also very hard. Toothsome might be the proper term but it’s tough, tasty bread.

Then we spent a lot of time driving around looking for the Okayama Family Mart socks. I found Family Mart special logo socks, a darker color combo I haven’t seen before, and Coca-Cola socks so I bought those but I’ve struck out completely trying to find any of the limited 47 prefecture socks.

But we did go get gelato.

For dinner we met Yumi’s brother, sister-in-law, and nephew for dinner at Tommy’s Shokudo. Here’s how it started, with the Otoshi (also known as the Japanese table charge).

I only took pictures of about a third of our plates. Big amongst the items I didn’t photograph is the pizza there, which was excellent. But here’s our starter Caesar salad with lots of bacon.

The potatoes, missing zucchini (there was some), and huge pieces of pork belly with lemon.

The steamed veggies in a Dutch oven. I saw them crisp it up in the oven before they threw in some water to steam it.

The karaage chicken with tartar sauce.

Ooh, and another good one. Crisped up potatoes with cheese.

There were a lot more plates. Smoked dried beef (not really that dried). Smoked takuan with cheese and something else tasty. Roast beef slices with fried garlic. Mentaiko and cheese pizza. Fried octopus. I’m missing several others but it was great.

I guess in the wintertime they have the stove really going and you can cook S’mores. If you didn’t already notice there’s a camping theme and the chairs were all Snow Peak directors chairs, the plates were Snow Peak Sierra cups, and the lighting was lanterns.

Anyway, that’s about all I have to mention today.