on saturday, four of yoshi's coworkers came over (all women). since yoshi had received a head of chinese cabbage from a farmer on friday, he wanted to have a nabe party with them. ok, great. of course, i had to wash and prepare the cabbage. it was grown without pesticides, so there were all kinds of creepy crawlies on it! i soaked it over night, then cut it in half. left one half in water while i washed the other half. actually, it was good, a very nice looking chinese cabbage, and it was free! yoshi had also received some carrots earlier in the week, plus i had bought some, so we had plenty of carrots and chinese cabboage for our nabe.

all the ladies who came over were young, and quite nice, and i actually enjoyed spending time with them. usually i don't like japanese women very well. i'm not exactly sure why. but these nice young ladies didn't rub me the wrong way, and we enjoyed the afternoon. when they arrived, hiroyuki was asleep, but the kept cooing 'kawaii!!' and touching his hands. eventually he woke up, and didn't enjoy being woke up, but that actually prevented me from eating more nabe than i needed!

i swear, we ate for about three hours! of course, there's lots of talking and laughing going on (and at our end of the table, breastfeeding!) so the time just seemed to fly. a couple of the girls wanted to go to costco. for someone who doesn't like costco, yoshi sure seems to talk a lot about it to other people! so, we went to costco and looked around. then we bought a pizza for dinner and ate it right there at costco! yummy.

hiro, who usually sleeps in his car seat/stroller, woke up as we finished the pizza. since yoshi had just taken him from his crib where he was napping and strapped him in his chair, and then we wandered around costco for about an hour, i knew he needed a diaper change. and then he'd probably be hungry, so i told yoshi i wanted to go to the mall and change him. we walked over to the torias mall, and while i changed and fed hiro, yoshi and his coworkers wandered around the mall. when i met up with them, they were looking at christmas candles in the shape of santa. then we went to tully's and had coffee.

they came to our house at around noon, and we said goodbye to each other at around 8:30 pm. we really had an enjoyable day.