Home Construction (Day 33 - August 28) - Chicago Trip

Confession to make ... Today was the second time we didn't visit our Uchi*! We're horrible parents - I mean, future homeowners.

BUT, we did find out that:

Milestone#5 "Plumbing pipes, heating/air conditioning ducts, and electrical wiring" COMPLETED!

Wanna know the reason we didn't get a chance to drive out there? Well, remember our "surprise" from one year ago?!

OK maybe you don't. Let me just start over: we spontaneously decided to drive to Chicago, just to celebrate our 1 year of marriage - which, as you all remember, was kind of a surprise for most people anyway.

So we wanted to start a tradition of celebrating our marriage by traveling to places with delicious Japanese food. This trip to Chicago was a gift from the Russian to me ... and it was mostly a surprise, except that, for some reason, I had to arrange some of the things like, where to stay, what to do, etc. Hmm... but let's just ignore that part for now.

So we left early from work on Friday -- how early? 2 PM, and this time we left on-time! : ) We really left at 2 PM!!! OK not really *exactly* 2 PM, but actually 2:05 PM, and all because of the Russian.

Let's hear his excuses:

1) His code was in the middle of compiling (? yeah, right)
2) He had to compile it & check it in before leaving early for the weekend (ok, and?)
3) ... that's it! He's out of excuses. He blames the compiler. Typical programmer geek excuse.

Now, I had already celebrated my part of our anniversary festivities for him last week - this was also our new tradition - 2 weeks of celebration: one from each of us to the other one. We got him a very cool blazer, but again that was last week.

This week was the Chicago trip though! Delicious Japanese food, that was the idea -- but when we got there, it was pretty late at night, and the delicious Japanese food court (Mitsuwa, it's awesome, Google it) was CLOSED. It turns out the Russian had made reservations at a best-rated sushi place near downtown Chicago instead. It's a tiny place, but has fancy & unusual sushi and dishes -- like for example, we had a sweet potato soup, and their green tea + custard paste dessert was really weird but interesting.

Anyway, the sushi itself was "just OK," nothing fantastic. The next morning though, we were rewarded for our long journey, because we arrived at THIS paradise: (try to control your drool guys -- seriously, get a napkin ready for this part)




It's like sushi + bento box + grilled fish + teriyaki + sashimi PARADISE. You can get a giant box of all sorts of sushi that would cost you like $4-6 per each 2 pieces at a fancy restaurant, and here you get the huge box of 12 pieces for like $7.50. It's ridiculous. AND the sushi is better than the ones in the restaurant anyway, somehow. There's no reason to go and pay for the expensive service! Really.

Then these bento boxes have grilled fish, eel, teriyaki chicken, pork, all surrounded by crazy Japanese appetizers, eggs, rice, sauces, veggies, pickled things like the ones you'd get at a Korean place sometimes, etc. etc.

Then there's a giant food court with several *restaurants* offering prepared Japanese foods, all different varieties.

Then there's the giant grocery store attached, with everything Japanese in it. A huge grocery store, basically regular grocery-store size.

THEN there's the awesome Japanese bakery (Hippo), with freshly baked delicious-smelling bread all the time, and a-la-carte (take your pick) of any varieties of pastries, attached to the grocery store.

AND FINALLY the giant Japanese bookstore, with all the crazy Japanese magazines, comics, travel books, language books, and CDs/tapes. It's ridiculous! It's like you've arrived in Japan, except (pinch yourself & wake up) you're in Chicago.

By the way, we've been to this food court before -- it's not like we've never seen this before. It's just the YOU've never seen it before, and we just like it more and more & appreciate it more and more each time we go (because it's so rare).

So, to make you jealous, here are pictures of our breakfasts/brunches/lunches from this weekend:



OK, after all the food, we wandered around downtown Chicago, took photos at Millennium Park (the giant reflective "bean"), shopped the shops on the Magnificent Mile (Michigan Ave.) and went up on the 103rd floor of the Sears Tower -- oops... the "Willis Tower" <-- they renamed it, can you believe that?! Anyway, their latest attraction are these sky-boxes that *stick out* from the side of the building, and allow people to be completely in the air, over the city, surrounded by clear glass -- freaky:
The above picture (look closely!) is NOT two photos spliced together. It's the view from this glass box, and the line down the middle is the corner, where the two pieces of glass meet. The view is scaaary, as in this shot, downwards:


You're standing on 1400 feet of AIR. And a little bit of glass. Yikes.

The Willis tower

Big Bean in Chicago

Then we shopped the shops:

On the way home, our feet were so tired from walking. When we got to the parking garage, the ticket reader wouldn't let us out! And there was no cashier, so for a moment we thought we were trapped in the garage late at night. Thankfully, the night duty guard appeared out of nowhere and helped us get a replacement ticket which was able to be scanned by the machine. Phew!

The tolls, too -- we spent one night trying to avoid the tolls using the GPS, which took us around the back roads, which had tons of sushi places etc. On the way back from downtown Chicago, we stopped at two places: "Sushi Station" which treated us like we were unwelcome, for stopping by 15 minutes before they closed, but they let us pick off sushi trays from their little train that went around the restaurant... and, "Penang" -- the Malaysian place, of course. Their fried rice and martabak (er, sorry, murtabak? something like that), both were NOT good. We actually kind of regret going to both places. Oh well. We were hungry. Downtown Chicago, amazingly enough, near the shopping areas, has NO places to eat -- just Subway and McDonalds everywhere. It was amazing. Oh, and Dunkin Donuts. They like doughnuts in Chicago, I guess.

All around, the trip was a blast - we got to walk around the downtown, ate Japanese all weekend and this week we've been eating all the bento boxes we brought home! Awesome cooler full of food for the trip home:


My special thanks to my Russian for his cool & cute gift to me! : )

Chicago night time

*By the way: we named the home. But I'm not sure we know yet whether it's a girl or boy. I guess we'll have to wait for the ultrasound...