Tarto in Japan

I've had quite a few parties lately so let me share some of those moments with you. I'll start with a week-end trip last month with several friends. We went to Gero, a town famous for its onsen. I have now tried quite a bunch of onsen in Japan and am therefore much pickier than a year and a half ago, when I just arrived in Japan (everything was wonderful back then)...At that time, I would have certainly ranked as "awesome" the ryokan we stayed at, but I just found it "rather nice". Furthermore, Gero is surrounded by mountains but the town itself is not pretty at all...sure, one can argue that the point is to relax in the hot springs but still, I remain convinced that the environnement plays a major role in the onsen experience, and for such a famous town I was expecting the best.

It was still an awesome week-end and here are some pictures:

Foot baths are great:

That huge dining room was reserved for us (such a huge room for only seven people!):

Yummy:

For mushroom lovers:

Group picture:

Who was crazy enough to bring "Twister"?

I don't have any picture from the baths, which were ok but nothing exceptional. The next day, we visited Gassho-mura, a reconstruction of an old Japanese village:

Next, my house warming party or to be more precise, the first half of my house warming party. My apartment is not huge and I didn't feel like cooking for more than 20 people, so I decided to split in two parties.

For the food, I could have done much simpler but I really wanted to have my friends try real French food. I'm not saying I'm a great cook but the vast majority of French restaurants in Japan are just awful (just like most Japanese restaurants in France by the way), so it wasn't hard to do much better:

So I woke up early to cook the following: "boeuf bourguignon", "gratin dauphinois", "hachis parmentier", "poulet basquaise" and "ratatouille". If you want to know what those are, you can just use your friend google.

As well as several salads, "saucisson", "pâté" and "rillettes" sent from France, served with French bread bought at my favorite bakery: "DONQ" (although the name is incredibly weird. It doesn't mean anything, plus there's not a single French word that ends in "q"!...the closest word is "donc" which just means "thus"...). Anyway the party was a great success but for the next one, I'll definitely divide the quantities by two...

Here are some pictures:

Here's what you look like after a couple glasses of umeshu (plum wine):

Next, some pictures of what I like to call a "werewolves party", that is a party where we play that fantastic game called "Les loups-garous de Thiercelieux" (which has an English edition called "The werewolves of Miller Hollow"), one of the very few games I managed to bring here (board games take a lot of space in a suitcase!...). As I can imagine most of you don't know that game, you'll find more information on www.loups-garous.com. Fast, extremely easy, it's a fantastic bluff game that immediately generates a great atmosphere. Its only drawback is to require at least nine players. After it was released in France, it soon became very popular among board game lovers, and it didn't take me long to make it a huge hit here too among my friends. Now it comes up at almost every party, and here's a gaming session at a friend's place...

At night, everybody sleeps:

Everybody...except the dead and the werewolves who silently and sadistically choose their next victim:

Who definitely looks too suspicious?

Girls are rarely suspected in this game:

An unusually quiet endgame, with everybody looking away like "a dead body??? I've no idea what you're talking about...":

How to relax after a game:

And to finish, the eigo de nomikai, english-speaking parties between Japanese people (that is, "Japanese women") who want to practice their English and foreigners who want to make new Japanese friends (that is, "meet Japanese women"):