Chennai Journal: July 3---Marty's Birthday!

Sunday, July 03, 2005

July 3---Marty's Birthday!
I had a lot of trouble getting the picture links to stay working last week, I think due to using the photo links on Yahoo. I decided to change everything over to Blogger’s new photo upload utility, so I hope this works. Assuming it does, you can see our latest possession, a fish tank with 9 goldfish—eight gold ones and one black one, which the aquarium people told Marty is good luck. For about a day, Junior was fascinated, but now she has lost interest. J.D. hasn’t even gone near the tank.

Some of you have asked about the food here. (Cousin Steve, this post is for you…..) I’ll save a rundown on south Indian cuisine for another day. Last night we went to one of Chennai’s two Japanese restaurants. This one is called Akasaka, and it has an extensive menu with usually only about half the items available (you have to guess which half), a small sushi bar, and the requisite fish tank. We had sushi appetizers, and for the main course Marty had a sushi plate and I had zaru soba (cold buckwheat noodles). The service was slow and uneven (Marty was long finished with his sushi before the soba arrived) but the food was decent. The fish was cut thicker than it should be, but was very fresh and tasted great.

Akasaka is usually populated with a mixture of Japanese and Koreans (Hyundai’s operations are located here) which is a sign that it passes some unwritten standard of quality. Last night, for a little extra excitement, there was also a police raid. As we were waiting for the check, a worried looking Asian woman came over to us and started whispering. Neither of us could understand a word she was saying, so I asked her if she spoke Japanese. Relieved, she raised her voice to a normal tone and explained to me that the police had come and they were looking for liquor. On the way out we saw a policeman was sitting in a chair by the door, but he seemed to be a lone ranger, so I do hope that Akasaka survives the raid.

Next weekend we are planning to go on one of our two “weekend trips” that the company provides us annually to get out of Chennai. (We also get 10 days of rest and recuperation leave). We can go to Singapore, Kuala Lumpur, or Bangkok. Marty and I decided we would try Singapore first (found cheap tickets on a great site called itasoftware.com ).

This kind of travel is just too hard for Dad, so we have lined up a home health care service to come in and stay with him. We thought we ought to try it first, so asked them to send someone from Saturday night to Sunday night this weekend. A very nice young man named Ganesh showed up about 7:30 p.m. and by the time we got home from Akasaka he already had things well in hand. He is sleeping on part of a futon (he refused to use the foam padded part) in Dad’s room. The service runs in 12 hour shifts and costs 400 rupees ($9) per shift.
- posted by nred @ 10:35 AM

Comments:

Shop at your favorite stores 24 hours a day. Why go to the mall when you can shop online and avoid the traffic

# posted by

Anonymous : 3:39 PM

HI there
In Chennai for another week. Keen to try ASakara and any other Japanese / Korean restuarants. Do you have an address for Asakara or the other Japanese restaurant?
Thanks
Gary

# posted by

Anonymous : 4:08 AM

Some interesting links