My wife and I took the day off on Friday, and went out on a date. It’s kind of strange how much fun it is to go out on a date with someone you are married to and live with all the time. We went out to old town Pasadena for dinner and shopping in the afternoon on a beautiful January day in Southern California.

I had been hungering for sushi, so our goal was to find a sushi place that would leave Bethany with a positive first impression. If you know my wife, you probably know at least these two things about her: she loves babies and she does not love fish. So I considered it a tremendous complement that she trusts me enough to let me introduce her to sushi.

This being Bethany’s first real sushi experience, I was a little nervous about the quality of whatever restaurant we would end up at. Pasadena has a plethora of suitable sushi joints, and so after shopping around all afternoon and peeking in just about every one, we narrowed it down to two. The first had the look of an extremely fine dining experience. The prices of one too. And you have to know what the heck you’re ordering to avoid being served raw octopus intestines or pickled squid eggs or something delightful like that. We’ll probably try that one next time.

Our restaurant of choice was A’Float Sushi, an unassuming little sushi bar with lots of tables that nobody sits at and a huge oval sushi bar in the middle where everyone crowds. In a moat around the sushi bar sails an armada of tiny sushi ships, each transporting a cargo of brilliantly colored Japanese delicacies. The chefs in the center of the bar cook up (or not cook, usually) all types of Japanese delicacies right in front of you, and then set