Steve's new bbq

Steve surprised us with a call to "have a barbie". He had bought a portable set for 1,300yen and wanted to take it for a spin.










So at 9pm, we headed out to the supermarket and loaded up on drinks and meats. Chef Hughes (Steve) had also marinated a nice piece of steak for most of the day and made some onigiri (rice balls). It was a delectable feast!
We managed to rope an unsuspecting skateboarder into joining us too. His name's Kazuki and he was really cool. He stayed with us all night, kicked the soccer ball and also drank some plum wine (too sweet for my liking).

However, after the second round of meats, we ran out of fuel. So Rich was sent on a mission to find more charcoal (and alcohol), whilst the rest of us had to try and keep the flames alive. We tried burning several disposable chopsticks too. Kazuki looked quite horrified and amused when we did this! We only realized later why...
Anyway, Rich came back with the alcohol minus the much-needed charcoal. So in went the rest of the chopsticks, about another 30 or so. The result was both effective and well, funky. The nicely marinated steak was cooked beautifully, albeit for a strange pine taste. We will never burn chopsticks again! We'd thought that burning chopsticks was a sacrilegious act against the holy grail or something. But well, it was just plain stupidity to burn them.










Later that night, we had a visit from the local cops, in plain-clothes. I was sitting on the tarp whilst the guys were having a kick, and was approached by 3 of them. I got a little nervous as one of them came up and started speaking to me in Japanese. He was quite pleasant and smiled. I was told to produce my gaijin card. He then started asking questions about what I was doing in Japan and where I lived. Of course, I couldn't really answer him, except to say "ECC" and "Abeno"! By this stage, the boys had returned and a couple more cops had also rocked up. Steve started to speak a little Japanese and was also asked to show his gaijin card. In the end, we realized they were just doing a routine patrol of the area. Still, we were worried that we had made too much noise and had been reported by some neighbour.
Well, the cops didn't even bat an eyelid at the empties we had all over our picnic tarp! Go figure! I reckon if we still had the bbq going, they would have joined in!