Meanwhile, Back at the Ranch

The stay-at-home folks were getting a little teensy bit jealous of all of Luke's Japanese fun, so we decided to create a little bit of Japan in Texas for ourselves.

First stop, the Japanese market!

We had a lot of fun poking around and trying to guess what all the stuff in those bags was. We were particularly intrigued by these little dried fish snacks. The shop lady assured us that they were "like chips, or beer nuts... very good!"

We were game and tried them. 

Ummmmm.... no.  We are not fans. 

Jasper dog though? He loves them. 

We did very much like the candy that we bought there though!

At home, we tried our hands at making tempura. We made shitake mushrooms, asparagus, haricot vert, and shrimp! All SO good! The boys had a total blast doing this. I forsee a lot of it in our future. 

We also made a tempura fried, teriyake chicken roll. Super yum! Check out this You Tube Channel for some great sushi making videos. 

To top it off, we made tempura bananas that we ate over red bean and green tea ice cream. SO YUMMY!

After our Japanese dinner, we drew manga and watched the Studio Ghibli movie, Totoro. 

We almost felt like we got to visit Japan too. 

Almost.