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United States, North Carolina, Carrboro, English, Paul, Male, 56-60, All Music, All Food.

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Tuesday, January 07, 2003

I Am Which tarot card are you? Hey, Rayne! Thanks for the link: http://www.celticdesires.com/tarot/whattarot.htm 4:03:15 PM    comment []

A Miracle One beer turns into three and I discover "shop" central at the Capri Lounge The bartender was very friendly, as a matter of routine he told me where to go to get laid before I finished my second Suntory, but when he found out I was more interested in food he told me about monjyayaki. Th place to go is Mukishima, not that you care about going there, even if you confuse it with the place to go to get laid (but if you are, that is Roppongi, about two kilometers to the south as the, uh, crow flies. No, you are probably not in Tokyo. When I said I was eventually headed for Seoul, "Kawasaki-san" (he's the bartender, in case your train of thought is headed to Roppongi after that last convoluted paragraph) immediately and enthusiastically steered the conversation to to yakiniku. Quick language skills: "yaki" = fried or grilled + "niku" = beef. Then we riffed on yakinori and sukiyaki a bit until I brought it on home with okononomiyaki. Yes, yes, he says, walking a bass line on on the tonic chord before shaking it with some gin, pointing at - well, let's call him Larry - a gaunt fellow waiting empty tables at the Capri (everyone got drunk last night) - his father "runs an okononomiyaki shop." I tried to tell him about Taira-san, our patron okononomiyaki saint here in Tokyo, 13 subway stops on a third-dimensional subway line from some station I can't pronounce. He invited Larry over and we, all three of us, made excited scraping from the bottom with both hands gestures characteristic of a master. Kawasaki-san sais it was good with beer. No, it has never caught on in North Carolina, I say, can't understand it, the beer sure has. Then we get riffing on the B section, more Japanese food, this time tofu. I try to bring up tempeh, but it's not Japanese so Kawasaki-san goes into a honkin' sax solo on tofu. Fried tofu good, I play, hitting the counterpoint, yes, yes, with beer, he bleats, takin' us into the bridge. The piano player from the Gardin Lounge walks in, trading places with the Capri Lounge pianist. I've seen this ritual every time I've stayed here. Every 45 minutes, a Buckingham Palace minuet; one classical pianist playing jazz, one jazz pianist embellishing standards; the mature teacher, the gifted student. Look at me, I'm as helpless as night and day, I did it my way. End of piano solo. Larry's gone back to the rhythm section, occasional paradiddle glances and floor tom nods. I crunch some popcorn that came from a plastic jar and guzzle. A couple shows up at the bar and Kawasaki-san mixes some cranberry juice with Suntory for the guy who made it to Roppongi and back, young classical pianist plays McCartney-Lennon here, there, and everywhere. Kawasaki whips out a quick trio of margaritas and back to the primary theme in the dominant key, gettin' us ready for the big ending: "My father runs the biggest tofu shop in Japan." Larry and I bring back all the motifs, soba noodles and tampopo tympani, making downward chopping monjyayaki in sharp contrast to the lateral scooping okononomiyaki rhythms we used for the gin-and-tonic key. Yes, yes, says Kawasaki-san, you see it in subway stations, see your concierge, he'll get you there, then he hits the Big Note: "All okononomiyaki shops do monjyayaki too!" Then he points to the waiter tending the empty tables in the restaurant and says that's guy's father runs the biggest beef shop in Shinjuku. One beer had turned into three. Certainly nothing on a par with you-know-who at the wding in Canaan, water to wine, or even fish to more fish or loaves to more loaves, but despite a language barrier that had us scribbling notes on a coaster, he had led me to the Promised Land, which is what you expect from a good bartender. As I left, I saluted him with two fingers. 9:28:32 AM    comment []

Checking out the link I posted earlier for the Akihabara, I noticed that none of the English links go anywhere. That's too bad, they are really funny-looking in Japanese. We went to Shinjuku anyway, only ten minutes away. Akihabara is an hour. Everyone is tired. Neatest thing we saw was a refrigerator with a door that opens from either side. Rush and Billy tried pulling on both handles at the same time, but there could only be one winner (and that hinges on the other guy). Okay, everything electronice costs 50% more than in The States (Which Rush calls "here", as in "Oh we don't have these here" while pointing at a combo firewire/USB 2.0 card) so this is just window shopping. Great arcade games though, including a large drum, resembling a conga, that you play as a score rolls by indicating center hit, rimshot, and roll. The score consistes of color coded smiley faces. We stopped at a tonkatsu place which serves panko breaded shrimp and pork, realalizing after seating that Billy could eat neither. Rush and I shared the shredded caggabe and miso with him and he was quite content, havinng picked up a sushi platter for 180 yen after we had returned from the Meiji Shrine. That was about a third of what the same platter would have cost "here", in sharp contrast with all other food which is about three times as much. Another 10 minute ride and we're back at the hotel. I'm going out for a beer now, which will cost me the equivalent of 9 bucks. The bar is on the 40th floor and you can see the Tokyo version of the Eifell tower which they call - get this - the Tokyo Tower. http://www.glasssteelandstone.com/JP/TokyoTower.html 7:11:02 AM    comment []

Breakfast this morning was a bagel with Bitter Orange Marmalade and a cup of coffee, at 6:30a (local time - that's 4:30p ET, yesterday). The young lady in charge of the business lounge pointed out the window and, sure enough, there was Mt. Fuji being hit by the sun's rising rays. It was too hazy for a good picture, but the skyscapers in Shinjuku were close enough for a couple of shots. I waited around until 7:30a when Rush and Billy arrived hoping the haze would clear, but it never happened. Rush had to go to Disney World for a souvenier for his sister, so Billy and I went hiking to the Meiji Shrine and into Shibuya.and Ometesnado. Billy, it turns out, knows his plants, animals, and birds dead on - when he couldn't name a local species he could at least name a close relative. This was interspersed with the streets of chic Shibuya-ku crowded with schoolgirls in uniform buying matching lipstick, a martial arts demonstration at Meiji, chants from a Buddhist temple, a booth with lucky poems for 100 Yen, cawing crows, and seemingly 1,000 other contradictory stimuli. 6 hours of constant walking, looking, listening, and I'm tired out and should sleep well tonight. Wish I could put embedded links in here to show the route. Anyway, tonight ew're supposed to go to the Akihabara, which you can read about here: http://www.akiba.or.jp/index_e.html Back to work tomorrow. 2:08:52 AM    comment []

Small eternity begins, broken things. Here's a chance to see if radio's email feature works when it has to. This may end up totally screwy since I'm not sure how Lotus Notes will format the outgoing text. The word wrap might get farkled, but bear with me. I'm the New Otani and it's 4am Tuesday here. My traveling companion, I'll call him "Rush" because he'd like that, repeatedly gave stern warnings about the devious ways jet lag sneaks up on you and gets you. Rule one is not to get up when you wake up at 2am. Well, I had 5 hours sleep Saturday night, 1 hour on the plane, and about 5 hours more here at the hotel. I'm fine with that., it's pretty close to my regular schedule. Food. It is a foodie hell to have nothing to write about but airline food. There is plenty food and it wasn't bad. A petit fillet was the headliner, but the nicest surprise was a peach dumpling with caramelized sugar topping, served as dessert with a crableg salad an hour or so before landing. The bus ride from Narita International to the New Otani can range from an hour and a half to three hours, but has been as high as five. The traffic lights smiled down on us last night and it was a short ride. We went to Trader Vic's. Rush was uncharacteristically adventuresome ordering the onion soup. "Billy", the engineering representative (he'd arrived on another flight, but rode the same bus) went with the smoked salmon with capers. I had boneless sparerib spring rolls and we shared appetizers of fried wonton and jalapeno cheese balls. The sauces for the appetizers were served in the wings of a ceramic butterfly, hot mustard on the left and barbecue sauce on the right. There was an additional bowl, a third wing you might call it, for wonton sauce. Rush's onion soup was light on both croutons and cheese, but the broth was rich and brown. Rush takes constantly and presents himself as the World's Foremost Authority, subject irrelevant. So when I commented on the missing croutons in his soup, he made a point of telling me they weren't croutons but cheese. Jimmy asked what capers were. I tried to explain but was interrupted with a monologue on how "bad" they are, likewise about the types of mustard. You might be interested in knowing that there are only two kinds of mustard, "good mustard" and "Bad Mustard", no moral equivalence about yellow, brown, and black seeds. Wasabi is also "bad". Neither Rush nor Billy drink, but let me tell you, I did. It will On the bus ride, I discovered that the LCD was "bad" on my new digital camera. There's absolutely nothing I can do about it here, but I did get a service contract with Best Buy on this thing. That is the second service contract I have purchased in my life. The first was for a Sears Humidifier which tanked within a year and was replaced (Sears also paid the parking ticket I got loading the new one). The EasyShare software allows pictures to be deleted from the MMC card after they're transferred to the host computer, so there will be pictures, but none of the advanced features available from the LCD menu are visually available. The screen comes on, but it is dark grey on the left and light grey on the right. It doesn't matter at all on the blog for now since I don't believe pictures are supported by email 1:33:52 AM    comment []