3:00

Is closing time for many restaurants here, the time between lunch and dinner, which is why if you want something to eat then you’re better off hitting some chain sort of deal. Hell, we thought Mochi-mochi was that chain. Hell, it was open last time at 3:00, I remember that. Then other people started rolling in. Didn't seem like that much of a problem for them. This time we were met by a waitress at the front: closed now, come back at 5:00. We couldn’t wait till 5:00. Man, I can’t tell you how disappointed I was. And hungry. Our beautiful plan... Fuck fuck fuck and so forth. Then I remembered there was a Jolly Pa or Jolly Pasta in Fukuyama. 

It might not be Mochi Mochi or fresh pasta, but I've always liked Jolly Pasta. Definitely on the top of the list for family restaurant pasta, which doesn't sound like high praise, but like I said, I like their pasta. Okay? Okay. Anyway, I used to go there quite often when I lived in Saijo, back when I was working in an English conversation school there with my wife who was something like the manager/secretary. So yes, that's where I met her. Anyway, I'm not going into that story yet, just about pasta now and how Jolly Pa would’ve been the perfect place for me to go back in the day, but no free refills. Now, free refills a plenty, but I haven’t been in nine years. Agony, low rent irony, agony, because there are no locations in Mihara (I like to write, get free refills, you automatically know that right?), and when we went out, my wife and I back in the day, it was always to some all-you-can-eat place. Now all-you-can-eat probably wouldn’t be worth the price. So hey, why not Jolly Pa now? It was pasta, I wanted to eat pasta, and now was the chance. And I had this image of pulling out strands of pasta, still creamy from the sauce and possibly sticky with strands of cheese. That’s what I wanted. 

It worked until my first bite of the chicken in it. Then my stomach clamped down and told me I was full. So oh yeah, that’s what I had when we got there, chicken mushroom pasta in cream sauce and mozzarella cheese, pretty much what I imagined. And it was good, filling, and though it was no problem continuing past that premature stomach clamp down, man it was tough going toward the end. I think that image, that cream sauce image, that was maybe what I wanted for the first two bites, but give me garlic any day like last week in Saizeria, that’s what I really want. Oh well, if I hadn’t had it yesterday, I’d be chasing it till I got some later. Might as well get it out of the way now. My stomach was okay at the end too, yea, got a few chances to walk, but mainly I enjoyed the day riding around with my wife. I guess the real story is all the places we revisited that we hadn’t been to in over a year and how good I felt with her. But that's hard to write about. Gots to go into intangibles and stuff because there's nothing concrete, few examples I can give besides bits and pieces of conversation here and there when often I felt good just sitting next to her in the car. How do you explain that? But you know what is easy to write about? Pasta.