Los Angeles, Thursday night , Friday morning….

When driving back to the hotel every night from northern LA we would pass a sign for the Gyu-Kaku restaurant about 5 miles away from our hotel. Apparently is a good Japanese BBQ that Kami had used a few times while in Japan. I was game  for some different food tonight so we headed out there around 8pm. i was  bit hesitant that i was the customer yet i had to cook my own food on  a BBQ fire that was inbuilt into the table in front of me but hey it was  anew experience so i went with it.

The principle was this: You sat at a table and in the centre was a deep metal dish approx 18” in diameter inset into the wood table. Under the criss cross grate that was over the metal circle were red hot coals. The waiter brought you uncooked meat and vegetables and you cooked it yourself on the hot fire and then ate it!

The rice ready cooked     Pieces of beef on the BBQ                        

The idea was great but as with most things that you cook you had to get the timing right otherwise you had a plate of meet on the grill and you ended up waiting 5 minutes before you could eat it. it took a few tried to get it right but i got there in the end and Kami allowed me to cook my own food on it,lol There was Chicken, NY Strip beef, Fillet steak, and lots of other types of beef all marinated in different sauces. The good thing was it was all you could eat (well within 90 minutes of sitting at your table and only two repeat orders of each dish and only being allowed to re order a dish once you'd completely finished the first one!)

We tried most of the beef dishes but only had one chicken one, i was paranoid about not cooking it thoroughly and getting food poisoning for the last 2 weeks of the tour! I burned my hand on the damn thing a couple of times, dropped my chopsticks on the floor, and nearly dropped my napkin in the fire but apart form that i was pretty good at it!

Dessert was in the form of ice cream or something called Smores! i was imagining ordering the ice cream and them bringing me some milk and a pit of liquid Nitrogen to make my own in! now that would have been fun! they didn't though they brought me some green tea ice cream and Kami had the sesame seed flavour, whilst the green tea wasn't too bad the sesame was disgusting! Ice cream tasting of sesame seeds is just plain wrong!! its should be cookie dough or chocolate or strawberry!!  I was however looking forward to making and trying my first Smore.

       

We had 3 lots of them in total! don't think i could have eaten another thing! Was cool toasting the Marshmallows over the fire and then making the smores up but the best part was obviously eating them!

After  dinner we headed back to the hotel, Kami had some more work to do on here paper and i got an early night!

Flight out this morning was at 2pm so there wasn't any rush in getting up and packed. We spoke to Maria and Matt yesterday and would pick them up at their hotel at 11:30am then drive over to Long Beach airport where all four of us were booked on the same JetBlue flight up to Oakland for the show there. It was 10:30 when kami and i left the hotel and arrived at Marias and Matts place at 11. Loaded the car and headed out to the airport. I love Long Beach airport, there's like 4 gates and they are all in porta cabin type buildings. There's no lines at security its easy to get to, easy to park and so less hassle free than LAX! Due to the above we arrived a little early for our flight and had a two hour wait till departure. We had all checked in online and as we were only flying up for the night and then coming back the next morning we left all our cases in the car and only had carry on luggage with us.

Long Beach airport                            Getting to the gate                            Making the best of the spare time

   

Due to a couple of technical problems with the plane we were delayed 40 minutes, this led to a Long Island Iced Tea, a Petron tequila and a couple of beers for Maria and Matt! An hour and a half later we had arrived in Oakland!

     

We took the Days in Shuttle bus to the hotel which is about 3.4 mile away from the venue! Its now 6pm the night of the Oakland show, Maria, Kami, Matt and Eric are in the room next door drinking, smoking and carrying out general debauchery and I'm sat relaxing in the room. heading out for food in a minute before walking over to the show.

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