Already 3AM just finished some work and had no time to blog at all about what I did today….I went to a camera fair in the morning with Wendy, Granville Island in the afternoon, and went to the Chop steakhouse at night with Wendy and Lum….that’s pretty much it better than not writing anything at all, lol. Will post pics tomorrow.

I was craving for Japanese/Korean BBQ yesterday and I was looking it up on dinehere.ca (my standard place to look up restaurant reviews) see if there’s good BBQ restaurant in Richmond. Maruchu had a fairly good review base so I decided to give it a try. Reserved a table for two (Wendy and I), got there at 7pm, and it was fairly empty even though most tables had a reserved sign placed on the tabletop. The servers were I’d say overly attentive… they kept checking on us so much, even though we were just seated for a minute or so. It’s good and bad I guess, a bit disturbing since I wanted to take my time to check out the menu, but then it also meant that service would not be inadequate - I guess it was natural for the Japanese store owners to be extremely attentive to their customers. Oh yes the entire place was owned/operated by Japanese, and what surprised me was that, everyone that was eating there were Japanese…even the guys that came in later than us, were all Jap. Kind of neat but also weird.

The food was SUPER tasty. We ordered pork, beef, chicken, and a mixed veggie, all raw of course. What made them so tasty I guess was the quality of the ingredient and also the very distinctive spices that they used to marinate the meat. The meat were very crispy after grilling, it was a very unique experience as the ones I had in the past were never this crispy Also what I noticed was that the meat were cut very nicely, with vibrant color and texture…even the chicken strips were cut in a way that you get the skin and the meat in every piece. Presentation point +10. Everything was just so yummy~~~

Again the servers were super attentive at all time during our stay, which was great. We’ll definitely return and try their lamb and other more exotic stuff like the cow stomach, cow tongue…etc. It was a very well spent $40 for two-person.

Went to Japadog finally, a Japanese style hot dog stand in Downtown Vancouver. I first heard it from Andrew since he worked close to there and he often had it for lunch. I didn’t really have a chance to actually check out the stand as parking was quite hectic there and it was quite far from where I live. Anyway Wendy and I drove by it again last week and I finally decided that I must check it out ASAP. It wasn’t too busy when we were there, even though there was a “line up here” sign on the ground there wasn’t really any line-up (there were maybe 3 or 4 people either eating or waiting to order). It sure smelt good though, with a strong scent of Japanese okonomiyaki sauce and mayonnaise~ We quickly ordered two dogs: The Misomayo and Okonomi. The ladies at the booth served quite quickly and we got our food in less than 2 minutes. They were tasty!! The sausage was HUGE, the bun was grilled nicely and it was crispy. The sauce and toppings were great - the radish sprouts tasted refreshing on the Misomayo dog, while the okonomiyaki sauce and cabbage on the Okonomi dog tasted just like okonomiyaki, not a surprising taste but still very tasty. We’ll definitely go again to try their “chilli” dogs

We went to the Yavis Club Cafe at night, which was a dessert/cheesecake cafe in Richmond. We were stoked to go as we were curious how this place would compare to Berry Good. It was packed, we had to wait outside for about 10 minutes. The menu was pretty huge, with a variety of cheesecakes. The special ones were the “glacier” cheesecakes…. Wendy ordered a Mango Cheesecake and I got a Sesame Glacier Cheesecake. The mango one was pretty tasty, without the super strong cheesy taste which I dislike. The sesame one was very nice and it was a brand new thing for my tastebuds - kind of like icecream but tasted like cheesecake at the same time, with a nice sesame accent - very nice. The drinks were tasty too, I got a greentea milkshake (tasty!!!) and Wendy got a iced coffee. This is definitely another “must go again soon” type of place.

I hate people mowing their lawns. It creates so much noise, for such a long period of time, plus it makes it so smelly everywhere (yes I’m the type that don’t appreciate the smell of freshly cut grass) They started mowing the lawns around my complex at about 10am, kept doing it on and off nonstop, it’s 3:54pm now and they were still doing the “final touches” which is to blow the leaves away…etc. My yard was just bricks, no grass at all, but the guy came in and blew. I didn’t even know why he bothered, he was basically blowing at the newspapers/flyers that were sitting in front of my door, and made a mess since all the pages were blown to scatter. Very annoying.

Anyway, I hate newspapers as much as lawn mowers. I don’t read them at all but they kept printing them and delivering them to my door. It’s such a waste of paper, energy, people’s time, MY time as I have to recycle them. I finally decided to put up a sign at my gate, lol. Hopefully it will work, or I’d be really pissed…

I received Easter eggs from Wendy~

Went to Hanami (cherry blossom viewing) at the Nitobe Memorial Garden (one of Canada’s finest Japanese garden) yesterday with Wendy. It was pretty cloudy/cold and there was a bit of a shower. Regardless we went there since there was a cherry blossom viewing event where lanterns were decorated throughout the park. It was really disappointing though since the cherry blossom wasn’t really blooming at all… :( We took some pictures anyway since it costed $10 to get in. We’re going to return next week sometime when they actually bloom~

After that we went to Okada Sushi for dinner. We had a Chirashi Don (assorted sashimi rice bowl), Grilled Shiitake Mushroom, and the Garlic Butter Steamed Clam. They were all very delicious, but a bit overpriced. I liked the way that it was very authentic Japanese food and all the servers were Japanese.

It’s “Good Friday” stats holiday today, so no work today. I finally decided to return my Tannoy Reveal 6D studio monitors. I was sure they were great speakers, but I guess as the guy at Tom Lee said today, these speakers were designed for reference not for live, which was what I was using them for (live piano sound). The speakers sounded okay in my room but there were a couple keys on the piano that when I played would produce a rather annoying resonance, or low-pitch “noise” that was pretty annoying to hear. Andrew mentioned that it was probably due to the square shape of my room, which was the worst kind of room for speakers to be placed in - somehow the squareness of the room would emphasize the bouncing of the sound waves and worsen the unnecessary resonance. Well, whether it’s the resonance or the quality of the speakers itself, I returned them for my own sanity.

Had a lot of kimchi veggie and carrots today. Had a LOT, and then I got this diarrhea I realized that whenever I eat too much spicy or stuff that has a very strong spice/taste it would follow by an upset stomach… what’s wrong with my stomach? Why can’t I eat more kimchi….I love kimchi… I guess I should test out the max amount of kimchi I can eat, like eat 1 piece today, 2 pieces tomorrow, 3 pieces day after…etc and see when I’m going to upset my stomach…