Tokyo: Oriental City (but the city dont know what the city is getting)
Fragging awesome weekend
After work on friday three of the older (40+) PhDs in my lab, me, and one of the 30something year old grad students all went out to a local Izakaya (cheap booze and food place) for some relaxin'. Of course this resulted in a new round of "lets try to gross out the foreigner," (a game with which Im becoming well-acquatined), so one of the first things they ordered was a fish. Basically what we get is a fishhead with the skeleton and tail still attached mounted on a stick on our plate so its tail is in the air and the body is coiled around the stick with the head at the bottom. all around the skeleton, the meat of the fish is arrayed in little pieces. Not to be phased, I had several. Later they told me I absolutely had to try the Natto (fermented soybeans; basically tiny, gritty brown beans with very little flavor coated in a very thick layer of a substance that resembles thick, viscous phlegm along every possible dimension you could name). I ate it without complaint and told them I thought it was just fine (something of a lie, but the round still goes to me). After we'd had a few drinks, as usual, they start asking me if I like Japanese girls and if I have a gf back home. This time, however, they all start discussing the different girls around the lab and the building that they know in an effort to figure out a prospect for me. Unfortunately I'm by far the youngest person in the area, so it didnt really go anywhere. One of the profs did mention he had a nephew about my age Id love. I had to explain to him that "nephew" referred exclusively to boys and that he actually had a niece. Later, as we were about to leave, the head of the university baseball team and the team's manager walked in. Two of the older profs knew him from classes or something, so the three of us sat down with the two to of them and kept talking. The baseball team guys told me I had to join their group in April and took down my email. Dont really like baseball, but I really want to meet people. They also got in on the gf debate, and actually started showing me cell phone pics of girls in their club that they thought Id like. Japanese people seriously act like 13 year olds whenever the subject of sex/dating comes up. The baseball guys also had fun trying to write my name in Kanji. The problem is that my japan-ized name sounds a lot like the japanese word for "meat," so this spawned a lot of jokes at my expense. Was pretty drunk after I left, so I went home and crashed. I woke up in the morning (late) to a message from the NZ girl from the previous night asking if I wanted to go to the fish market at 6 am. Way to give me fair warning. She's seriously not making being friends easy on me.
The next day I had to go to the lab for about an hour to finish an experiment, then I went to Shinjuku and Harajuku to do some window shopping. They call Shinjuku the "Terrace City" because there are terraces above the street in a lot of areas connecting the buildings. I have to admit that was pretty cool. Sadly I forgot my camera that day, so no pics. Wouldve only taken one or two anyway though. The shops were mostly big deparment stores and high-end clothing stores. I cant buy electronics because its all region 3 (or whatever east asia is), and I couldnt afford any of the clothes they were selling by a long shot (I want a Cartier watch...), but Im really damn cheap, so I didnt expect to come home with anything anyway. I did walk down toward Shibuya though to look for the Square-Enix store though, thinking Id get some cool FF junk there. Holy crap was that disappointing. None of the stuffed animals were cute (whyyy did they put clothes on the chocobo dolls??? DAMN THEM), the t-shirts and hats ranged from 50-100 dollars, and...well, even though I wanted to buy something really bad there was just nothing at all I could justify spending half the money they were asking. What a bust. Afterwards I went to Harajuku (known for bizarrely-dressed bohemian types and crazy clothing stores). There were some crazily-dressed people, its true, but I thought the stores sucked. At 9pm I was supposed to meet the Kendo club at building near my work for practice, but even though I waited an hour and fifteen, nobody showed up (even though there were shinais and bags sitting in the hall), so I left.
Sunday was off the chain though. I had to meet my rich tutor/tuttee at a faraway rail station along with his mother, two sisters, and (to my surprise) his older sisters 1 year old daughter. The first place we went (using their van) was a strawberry farm that you could go into and eat strawberries fresh off the plant for a small price. They even gave you a small cup of sweet cream to dip the strawberries in. Holy crap, I dont even like strawberries that much and I was in heaven. Never have I had such sweet and tender fruit. They had to yank me off the vines. Next we drove aways to a large, old temple near Narita airport (the temple was called Narita). We toured some gardens nearby and ate lunch at a super nice traditional japanese restaurant that consisted of eel filets on rice, about a dozen grilled eel livers on a stick, fried chicken, cabbage, weak green tea (green tea here is always weak), cold japanese pickles and cucumber, and some little omlette-like things. The eel wasnt that bad. Sometimes bad eel has a uniquely nasty taste to it, but this was reasonably pleasant. The livers were disgusting (and I like cow's liver!), but I ate them with a smile. The chicken came with japanese mayo and wasabi so I was in heaven there. Very expensive Im sure. The boy is a little odd. He makes fun of his sisters for not doing anything (theyre 22 and 27. One has a part-time job, one has no job). At one point the boy mentions that the 1 yr old girl (the 27 yr old is her mom)'s dad is "gone" and that theyre looking for a new one, after which he says to me "maybe you can be new father." Sadly Japanese people dont understand the awkward turtle.
After this we went up to the temple and looked around. The mother (Mrs. Shibata) insisted I play the shooting game at a little booth in the little market directly outside the gate and I ended up winning a cigarette lighter with a crane/moon design on it that was pretty cool. Apparently the design is lucky? The temple itself was pretty cool, though not a major departure from others. The little town outside the temple was pretty cool. We taste-tested several sakes, which was kindve fun. After wandering around awhile, we stopped at a little sweet shop and had rice/bean pastries (which I love) and tea. I spent like 5 mins trying to explain to them that the phrase "bought it" can mean either "purchased" or "dead" in English. That was fun to try and do in Japanese (the two sisters didnt speak English to any real extent). At one point when Mrs. Shibata and I were separated from the group, she hands me a little envelope and tells me its my March payment for helping teach her son english (we only talk in english maybe a quarter of the time, and its always me talking in english and him responding in japanese). I tried to protest but she just kept telling me that teachers were very honored in Japan. The envelope contained 10K Yen (100 USD). Afterwards we took a super-long car ride to another temple (during which we had some fun conversations about America, Japan, dating (again...), and other things. I do think maybe possibly the mother way trying to get me to get to know the oldest daughter in a sliiightly creepy way. She kept bringing up minor things she thought we had in common and trying to start conversations between us. After this we went back to the restaurant we had the super-expensive dinner at two weeks ago and Mrs. Shibata treated us all to an hour long soak in their indoor onsen (a real onsen this time). After this we had dinner in said restaurant again, this time in the regular section (though at the table marked "reserved." We also all looked like mugs in our street clothes compared to everyone else in the restaurant dressed in business clothing. Dinner was stew cooked on hot plates in front of us made up of cabbage, mushrooms, lettuce, seaweed, and...horse meat again (though this time it was cooked). I also had another amazing beer. Halfway through the dinner they brought out two more plates filled with raw horse meat, but this time my stomach was prepared to take it. The son, Daiki, had to leave about 10 mins into the meal, and the raw food they brought out on huge plates to put in the stews being cooked in front of us only ended up getting half finished. They put in all in a small wooden box and gave it to me. I now have enough raw horse meat and vegetables in my fridge to turn into a weeks worth of stirfries. Whee.
After dinner they returned me to my apartment. Despite even more protestations from me, they insisted that they had to give me some "souvenirs" they bought me. "Just a few small things." Are you ready? A 4 inch thick stack of Tokyo sightseeing mags and pamphlets, a huge bottle of japanese mayo, a souvenir sake cup from the temple with a bottle of the sake I had said I liked at the tasting, a sweet potato pastry from the sweets shop, a rice and bean pastry from the sweets shop, a bag of gourmet nuts, and 5 high-quality postcards. This was in addition to my ticket at the strawberry farm, 5-course lunch, pastries and tea after lunch, a souvenir cigarette ligher, an hour in one of the most expensive hotels in tokyo's onsen, a $100 dinner with beer (I checked the menu this time), and all the gas it mustve cost them to drive me for a combined total of about 2+ hours today (and gas in Tokyo is ridic), and 100 dollars cash money. When they ask me to marry the 27 yr old and adopt her 1 yr old kid its gonna be mad hard to say no.