(no subject)
november 21/22 part 1
writing again in retrospect while on the plane. will try to remember everything -- tokyo was awesome but soooo much to take in, hopefully i won't forget too much. so the 21 i got up relatively early after a super long night's rest (i think for once i actually felt like i had a little more energy after getting up in the morning than when i went to bed at night... this touring thing is really starting to kill me). at breakfast wound up talking to this random guy from el paso, texas who is in tokyo for the next month. he's spent significant time there before and so i grilled him on what's best to go see. ran into lea on my way back to my room, we decided to discover the city together. initially we were intending to go to the imperial palace and check out the gardens (apparently you can't actually get into the palace at all except on two specific days -- dec 23 (i think?) and jan 1). however we decided to change plans and instead went to the tsukiji (sp?) fish market as a) it was on my list of absolutely must-dos in tokyo, and b) apparently i couldn't go the next morning super early because since mid-2005 it's been closed to the public before 9am or somesuch. too bad.
so we found the subway station and had an adventure acquiring tickets -- the vending machines are completely in japanese. after staring at the thing blankly for a few seconds, a very kind businessman came up to us and helped us to figure out which fare to pay; however, before he could finish working out where we were going and how to get there quickest, a lady whose job it is apparently to help people sort out the subway came along and helped us out. this country is nuts -- it's like being in a luxury hotel everywhere you go. every little detail for comfort is taken care of. and everyone is so insanely polite, it's kind of twisted (did i mention i got thanked for taking the elevator? yes. how ridiculous is that).
anyway we navigated the subway without difficulty and came out at the fish market! what a smell. ewwww... we wandered around for a while looking for the biggest fish we could find, but didn't have all that much success with the reaaaaally huge ones -- we missed seeing the one we found in one piece, it was getting wrapped up when we walked by. it was massive though. imagine a fish that without the head and tail is probably close to being as long as i am tall. the head by itself (which was sitting on the counter beside the rest of it) was enormous -- easily as big as a fairly large halloween pumpkin. insane! we also found a crab that was 9000 yen (about $90....). this was mainly because its legs alone were probably about 2 feet long. it took up an entire container by itself. also discovered that when squid are still alive their bodies have a strange pulsating texture -- there are little black spots all over them, but they appear and fade individually, i'm guessing with heartbeat, so they wind up having a strange wavey look. tried to get a video on my camera but then discovered that for some reason the video function isn't working. boo-urns. saw many other weird and questionably edible things, too, good times.
when we left the fish market we had all intentions of going and checking out this shinto temple that was nearby before heading back to the hotel to meet kate for lunch, but alas got sidetracked by vendors of various things. lea bought a japanese cast iron teapot and a vegetable knife, i got some stuff too. like i have any space left in my luggage for it. oh well.
headed back to the hotel, amazingly didn't get lost. met up with kate and ran out to grab sushi yum. it's funny how when we didn't want sushi it seemed like all we could find was sushi restaurants, but when we went looking for it specifically, there were none to be seen. anyway eventually wound up at a sushi bar with the floaty boats. i imagine it was probably not super amazing sushi for tokyo but it was by far the most amazing stuff i have ever tasted in my entire life. fune doesn't even register on the scale any more. no joke. oh emm gee. i just about died, it was so amazing. the tuna was a paler pink colour and just completely melted in your mouth; i tried mackerel, which was okay, but kind of fishy; salmon was very vibrantly coloured and deeeelicious; i didn't have any unagi (fresh water eel) but i did have anago (?), which is salt water eel, very similar. the tuna was i think the best though. there are just no words until you try it. and it's cheap too -- most dishes were between 130-250 yen for two pieces of nigiri sushi. i had probably 12 pieces of sushi for about $15 CAD. if there's something that can be said for japan, it's that the food is AMAZING and actually very reasonably priced.
there was a dood who sat down next to me at the sushi bar who helped us out (since noone in the entire place spoke english)... he did his best to explain some details of the sushi experience, eg. putting the soy sauce on the fish side of the nigiri instead of the rice side so that it doesn't fall apart; instructing us in how to ask the chefs for dishes in japanese (but he neglected to mention all the politeness things etc so kate wound up basically standing up and yelling 'salmon!' at the chef... quite hilarious); how to make our tea from the powder provided (yes, we had powdered tea); etc. pretty cool. anyway it was all super quick, we probably managed to have our entire meal and get out of there in about 15 or 20 mins. and so much better than mcdonalds.
had rehearsal post sushi, which was unenlightening. hall was quite resonant, which was fortunate as the concert was being taped for tv broadcast later. got awesomely japanese sandwiches served to us as a pre-concert refreshment -- 5 little crustless things that were about 4 inches long and 1.5 inches wide, and conveniently fit exactly perfectly in the boxes they were served in. very aesthetically pleasing, like everything else in the country it seems.
concert was actually better i think than any of the others of this programme so far. i think it helped that the house was nearly full to capacity, and the audience was also extremely appreciative (imagine 7 callbacks after the 2nd encore... yeah. a little over the top maybe). conductor knocked his glasses off his face in the middle of the second half, which was amusing... had a hard time not laughing, but noone else seemed to notice when it happened! mandolin solo went reasonably well, was not unhappy with it.
after concert, had plans to go out for karaoke but it seemed like everyone in the group we had was ditching it so instead i was going to just watch a movie with kat and jenny... but then when i went down to the shop to get some green tea ice cream (haagen dazs only sells green tea ice cream in japan and it is soooooo good... drool) i ran into kate and lea who had just gotten back from the sponsor reception of the evening, and they were really wanting to go karaoke-ing and they talked me into it too, and i talked kat into it. the original group was a good size -- 10 ish people -- but then on the way there we ran into a HUGE group of people from the orchestra, and then yet ANOTHER group, anyway in the end we had something stupid like 27 people going for karaoke. we all just wound up singing at once, which was tons of fun. did some good numbers (the sign by ace of base, toxic by britney spears, gasolina by i dunno who, bohemian rhapsody... yeeeaaah). anyway, someone made the decision that we were going to split the alcohol bill evenly between everyone, despite the fact that 3 people were drinking sake which was MUCH more expensive than the beer, and that some of us were drinking only a little where others (conveniently those who decided to split the bill evenly, hmm surprise) were chugging it down. in the end i wound up paying about 3000 yen (~$30) for an hour of karaoke and probably what amounted to maybe a bottle or a bottle and a half of beer. left a bit of a bad flavour on the evening to say the least, and definitely compounded the dislike i have for some particular people in the orchestra. oh well, c'est la vie.
went back to the hotel with every intention of going to bed but couldn't sleep, which as some of you may know, for me, is extremely unusual. wound up sitting in the bathroom reading for an hour so as not to wake assia with the light. i think it may have had something to do with the minibar drink i had earlier in the evening (i took it out of the holder in the fridge to look at the can and then discovered i couldn't put it back... bastards) called 'pepsi nex' which tastes like 7up but may possibly have been uber caffeinated (although i wasn't feeling the usual caffeine jitters, but i also had alcohol, so hard to say).
so after approx. 2.5 hours of sleep, up again on the 21 to jump on the bus and head to the airport to fly to seoul. nothing unusual about that part yet -- flight is a little longer as we are taking a bit of a scenic route, apparently if we were to fly as the crow does, we would wind up going through an area that has winds about 200 mph. yeah. i'm perfectly happy with a slightly longer flight, thanks... pretty much everything is normal/boring. had a final dose of sushi at the airport, which was not nearly as good as the stuff from the sushi bar yesterday but the salmon was still very good.
more later. plans today may include sleeping and korean bbq. noone seems to have any idea of what there is to see in seoul... according to the orchestra director's description, it's 'like tokyo, but newer'. we'll see i guess!! am very sad to be leaving japan. i definitely absolutely have to come back on a more extended trip sometime; i'd like to see more than just tokyo, but tokyo in itself needs at least a week... i'd like to see some of the rural areas, too, as well as kyoto, osaka, etc. someday hopefully! my stomach will miss japan most of all. am hoping for no msg in korea.
time in transit: so far 4h
time flying: by the end of this one, approx. 2.5h
writing again in retrospect while on the plane. will try to remember everything -- tokyo was awesome but soooo much to take in, hopefully i won't forget too much. so the 21 i got up relatively early after a super long night's rest (i think for once i actually felt like i had a little more energy after getting up in the morning than when i went to bed at night... this touring thing is really starting to kill me). at breakfast wound up talking to this random guy from el paso, texas who is in tokyo for the next month. he's spent significant time there before and so i grilled him on what's best to go see. ran into lea on my way back to my room, we decided to discover the city together. initially we were intending to go to the imperial palace and check out the gardens (apparently you can't actually get into the palace at all except on two specific days -- dec 23 (i think?) and jan 1). however we decided to change plans and instead went to the tsukiji (sp?) fish market as a) it was on my list of absolutely must-dos in tokyo, and b) apparently i couldn't go the next morning super early because since mid-2005 it's been closed to the public before 9am or somesuch. too bad.
so we found the subway station and had an adventure acquiring tickets -- the vending machines are completely in japanese. after staring at the thing blankly for a few seconds, a very kind businessman came up to us and helped us to figure out which fare to pay; however, before he could finish working out where we were going and how to get there quickest, a lady whose job it is apparently to help people sort out the subway came along and helped us out. this country is nuts -- it's like being in a luxury hotel everywhere you go. every little detail for comfort is taken care of. and everyone is so insanely polite, it's kind of twisted (did i mention i got thanked for taking the elevator? yes. how ridiculous is that).
anyway we navigated the subway without difficulty and came out at the fish market! what a smell. ewwww... we wandered around for a while looking for the biggest fish we could find, but didn't have all that much success with the reaaaaally huge ones -- we missed seeing the one we found in one piece, it was getting wrapped up when we walked by. it was massive though. imagine a fish that without the head and tail is probably close to being as long as i am tall. the head by itself (which was sitting on the counter beside the rest of it) was enormous -- easily as big as a fairly large halloween pumpkin. insane! we also found a crab that was 9000 yen (about $90....). this was mainly because its legs alone were probably about 2 feet long. it took up an entire container by itself. also discovered that when squid are still alive their bodies have a strange pulsating texture -- there are little black spots all over them, but they appear and fade individually, i'm guessing with heartbeat, so they wind up having a strange wavey look. tried to get a video on my camera but then discovered that for some reason the video function isn't working. boo-urns. saw many other weird and questionably edible things, too, good times.
when we left the fish market we had all intentions of going and checking out this shinto temple that was nearby before heading back to the hotel to meet kate for lunch, but alas got sidetracked by vendors of various things. lea bought a japanese cast iron teapot and a vegetable knife, i got some stuff too. like i have any space left in my luggage for it. oh well.
headed back to the hotel, amazingly didn't get lost. met up with kate and ran out to grab sushi yum. it's funny how when we didn't want sushi it seemed like all we could find was sushi restaurants, but when we went looking for it specifically, there were none to be seen. anyway eventually wound up at a sushi bar with the floaty boats. i imagine it was probably not super amazing sushi for tokyo but it was by far the most amazing stuff i have ever tasted in my entire life. fune doesn't even register on the scale any more. no joke. oh emm gee. i just about died, it was so amazing. the tuna was a paler pink colour and just completely melted in your mouth; i tried mackerel, which was okay, but kind of fishy; salmon was very vibrantly coloured and deeeelicious; i didn't have any unagi (fresh water eel) but i did have anago (?), which is salt water eel, very similar. the tuna was i think the best though. there are just no words until you try it. and it's cheap too -- most dishes were between 130-250 yen for two pieces of nigiri sushi. i had probably 12 pieces of sushi for about $15 CAD. if there's something that can be said for japan, it's that the food is AMAZING and actually very reasonably priced.
there was a dood who sat down next to me at the sushi bar who helped us out (since noone in the entire place spoke english)... he did his best to explain some details of the sushi experience, eg. putting the soy sauce on the fish side of the nigiri instead of the rice side so that it doesn't fall apart; instructing us in how to ask the chefs for dishes in japanese (but he neglected to mention all the politeness things etc so kate wound up basically standing up and yelling 'salmon!' at the chef... quite hilarious); how to make our tea from the powder provided (yes, we had powdered tea); etc. pretty cool. anyway it was all super quick, we probably managed to have our entire meal and get out of there in about 15 or 20 mins. and so much better than mcdonalds.
had rehearsal post sushi, which was unenlightening. hall was quite resonant, which was fortunate as the concert was being taped for tv broadcast later. got awesomely japanese sandwiches served to us as a pre-concert refreshment -- 5 little crustless things that were about 4 inches long and 1.5 inches wide, and conveniently fit exactly perfectly in the boxes they were served in. very aesthetically pleasing, like everything else in the country it seems.
concert was actually better i think than any of the others of this programme so far. i think it helped that the house was nearly full to capacity, and the audience was also extremely appreciative (imagine 7 callbacks after the 2nd encore... yeah. a little over the top maybe). conductor knocked his glasses off his face in the middle of the second half, which was amusing... had a hard time not laughing, but noone else seemed to notice when it happened! mandolin solo went reasonably well, was not unhappy with it.
after concert, had plans to go out for karaoke but it seemed like everyone in the group we had was ditching it so instead i was going to just watch a movie with kat and jenny... but then when i went down to the shop to get some green tea ice cream (haagen dazs only sells green tea ice cream in japan and it is soooooo good... drool) i ran into kate and lea who had just gotten back from the sponsor reception of the evening, and they were really wanting to go karaoke-ing and they talked me into it too, and i talked kat into it. the original group was a good size -- 10 ish people -- but then on the way there we ran into a HUGE group of people from the orchestra, and then yet ANOTHER group, anyway in the end we had something stupid like 27 people going for karaoke. we all just wound up singing at once, which was tons of fun. did some good numbers (the sign by ace of base, toxic by britney spears, gasolina by i dunno who, bohemian rhapsody... yeeeaaah). anyway, someone made the decision that we were going to split the alcohol bill evenly between everyone, despite the fact that 3 people were drinking sake which was MUCH more expensive than the beer, and that some of us were drinking only a little where others (conveniently those who decided to split the bill evenly, hmm surprise) were chugging it down. in the end i wound up paying about 3000 yen (~$30) for an hour of karaoke and probably what amounted to maybe a bottle or a bottle and a half of beer. left a bit of a bad flavour on the evening to say the least, and definitely compounded the dislike i have for some particular people in the orchestra. oh well, c'est la vie.
went back to the hotel with every intention of going to bed but couldn't sleep, which as some of you may know, for me, is extremely unusual. wound up sitting in the bathroom reading for an hour so as not to wake assia with the light. i think it may have had something to do with the minibar drink i had earlier in the evening (i took it out of the holder in the fridge to look at the can and then discovered i couldn't put it back... bastards) called 'pepsi nex' which tastes like 7up but may possibly have been uber caffeinated (although i wasn't feeling the usual caffeine jitters, but i also had alcohol, so hard to say).
so after approx. 2.5 hours of sleep, up again on the 21 to jump on the bus and head to the airport to fly to seoul. nothing unusual about that part yet -- flight is a little longer as we are taking a bit of a scenic route, apparently if we were to fly as the crow does, we would wind up going through an area that has winds about 200 mph. yeah. i'm perfectly happy with a slightly longer flight, thanks... pretty much everything is normal/boring. had a final dose of sushi at the airport, which was not nearly as good as the stuff from the sushi bar yesterday but the salmon was still very good.
more later. plans today may include sleeping and korean bbq. noone seems to have any idea of what there is to see in seoul... according to the orchestra director's description, it's 'like tokyo, but newer'. we'll see i guess!! am very sad to be leaving japan. i definitely absolutely have to come back on a more extended trip sometime; i'd like to see more than just tokyo, but tokyo in itself needs at least a week... i'd like to see some of the rural areas, too, as well as kyoto, osaka, etc. someday hopefully! my stomach will miss japan most of all. am hoping for no msg in korea.
time in transit: so far 4h
time flying: by the end of this one, approx. 2.5h