*thank you leah for leaving me my first comment! if you want to leave a comment people, you can do it as "anonymous" without having a profile or being a member or whatever. just sign your name at the bottom so i know who you are.
haven't had wi-fi nor the time to write a new note so here are some recaps of the past 3 days.
3 days ago started off meeting Nicole in Shibuya at the Hachiko statue, a dog famous for his steadfast loyalty. he walked with his owner every day to the shibuya train station and then met him every evening when his owner would come back from work for like 7years. one day, the owner died while at work and the dog waited for him at the train station. and went back the next day. and the next day. and thenext day. and the next day. for 10 years. until he died from old age or too many yakitori sticks. which reminds me, yakitori. more on that later.
so we walked through shibuya and found some shopping districts. everything was $$$$ with the exception of uniqlo (kind of like an H&M crossed with old navy) and super tiny. their XL was the size of a medium back home. kind of depressing. if i move here i will have to become anorexic when it's time to buy new clothes.
went to dinner that night with g-mom, cousin chiako-chan, husband shoso, and daughter maki. we went to the japanese "pub". it's nothing like a pub that we would think of, like an irish pub but it serves beer and their "pub grub" in a casual setting. if only andrew zimmern or anthony bourdain had been my companion. they missed out.
started out innocently enough with cabbage slaw/salad. next was some potato wedges topped with parmesan cheese. easy enough. followed by some yakitori. yakitori is basically skewered meat with a kind of teriyaki sauce on it. and a single raw egg cracked in a bowl to dip the meat in. if you REALLY know me, you know i'm weird about eggs (exception scrambled) i forewent the egg and picked up a regular plain chicken meat yakitori. simple enough.....until this americanized, homogenized palate that likes the leanest chicken and beef it can have came across some huge chunky gristle that couldn't be chomped through. i could actually hear the physical pain my teeth were subjected to trying to tear it. what are you supposed to do when it won't disintegrate under the crushing power of your molars? swallow it like a raw oyster? and there were no napkins for me to discreetly hide it (half of the restaurants we've been to don't have napkins.....someof them give you a damp washcloth instead).......thank the lord there are a few pieces of cabbage left from my slaw maybe that will help choke it down. my intuition is right, cabbage was a useful vehicle for my poultry gristle. okay, try the other yakitori.....a ground chicken infused with herbs, spices in a sausage-like manner. tastes good enough.......what IS that? little tiny crunchy snappy pieces, slightly reminiscent of unpopped popcorn kernels. not any kind of nut either. a peanut is like mayonaise compared to how hard these little things interspersed in here are. that's my last yaki-tori ever. i cant win with plain or fancy yaki.
steamed bamboo shoots dipped lightly in salt? after that last dish it looks safe. this was actually very good and so was the thinly sliced lotus root that was fried, similar to eating potato chips. then came fried rice, then came sashimi. red snapper, salmon, and some kind of sting ray (i think??? g-mom had a little difficulty translating that one for me, but she demonstrated a horizontal kind of fish floating through the water, that much i gathered). definitely chewy.
like a good visitor, i am trying at least one bite of everything. according to my japanese etiquette books it is rude to not at least try a dish.
at this point i am getting full and thinking about my now shattered confidence in trying ethnic food. and praying that the meal is over. then came the next dish. it looked like a bowl of fried onion petals, similar to arbys, or maybe calamari especially when chiako squeezes lemon on it. they start chomping down on it.....
grandmother, what is that?
fried chicken bones.
fried chicken bones?
they're soft.
deep breath, pick up one, eat it. OMG. realization: that's what that crunchy thing was when i ate that yakitori earlier. i have to look away while shoso and g-mom contemplate which body part it originates from while it's in my mouth, making its slow descent to its own hell. (they think it's the knee cap btw). nothing soft about these bones. at that point i kinda wished i was drinking something stronger than my water.
like a good japanese girl, i eat another one.
the next dish was pizza and i couldn't remember the last time i was so excited to see one.
Monday, April 20, 2009
Thursday, April 16, 2009
troublemaker!
Nami-chan and G-mom drop me off in Gion, one of the 5 geisha districts so i can go on a walking tour. the tour started late and afterwards nicole, a girl from chicago that was on the same tour, and i decided to meet up with her friend to go have dinner. i call g-mom and tell her that if i'm not going to be back at the hotel by 10 i will call her again.
well. i'm enjoying having a full-fledged conversation in english so much with 2 people in my age group that i lose track of time. i don't call her until 11:15 pm. you shoulda heard her on the phone, it was unintelligible. i heard bits of "you tole me" "i worry about you" "nami worried sick" "you get here right now, don't talk to nobody" "did you drink with stranger?!?!"
at first, i felt as guilty as a 15 year old breaking curfew (what i think they would feel like......i was a perfect 15 year old) then i remembered, "aren't i 27 years old, pushin 30? i think i'm quite adult enough." yes i screwed up by not calling her at 10 pm but it was not necessary to worry that i had been kidnapped.
skip to today. grandmother gets tired easy from all the walking that we do which is perfectly understandable. i feel bad dragging her around with me to try to see as much as i can. i told her that when we get to tokyo she is just going to have to let me go by myself and see what i want to see b/c she can't physically and i don't want to be back at the hotel every night at 6 pm. what a waste of a trip that would be. "no you can't. nobody speak english." did not stop me in italy. "it's not safe " japan is pretty much the safest country on earth. i survived 2 pickpocketing attempts in italy. "(sotto voice) they are koreans and chinese now.....they pickpocketing." you don't think that sounds racist grandmother? btw, it is still safer than the worst part of OKC "yah, but you could speak english at home"
lord have mercy.
other than that, we did the heian shrine, kiyomizudo temple, and another one that was a hike up to the top of the mountain. you know you're in for it when there are no stairs anymore and just a rope for a handrail. i can't believe how many tourists i saw at the temples wearing high heels. only here.
leaving kyoto tomorrow, headed back to tokyo to stay in the Ueno area for 4 nights and then it's 4 more nights in suburbia.
well. i'm enjoying having a full-fledged conversation in english so much with 2 people in my age group that i lose track of time. i don't call her until 11:15 pm. you shoulda heard her on the phone, it was unintelligible. i heard bits of "you tole me" "i worry about you" "nami worried sick" "you get here right now, don't talk to nobody" "did you drink with stranger?!?!"
at first, i felt as guilty as a 15 year old breaking curfew (what i think they would feel like......i was a perfect 15 year old) then i remembered, "aren't i 27 years old, pushin 30? i think i'm quite adult enough." yes i screwed up by not calling her at 10 pm but it was not necessary to worry that i had been kidnapped.
skip to today. grandmother gets tired easy from all the walking that we do which is perfectly understandable. i feel bad dragging her around with me to try to see as much as i can. i told her that when we get to tokyo she is just going to have to let me go by myself and see what i want to see b/c she can't physically and i don't want to be back at the hotel every night at 6 pm. what a waste of a trip that would be. "no you can't. nobody speak english." did not stop me in italy. "it's not safe " japan is pretty much the safest country on earth. i survived 2 pickpocketing attempts in italy. "(sotto voice) they are koreans and chinese now.....they pickpocketing." you don't think that sounds racist grandmother? btw, it is still safer than the worst part of OKC "yah, but you could speak english at home"
lord have mercy.
other than that, we did the heian shrine, kiyomizudo temple, and another one that was a hike up to the top of the mountain. you know you're in for it when there are no stairs anymore and just a rope for a handrail. i can't believe how many tourists i saw at the temples wearing high heels. only here.
leaving kyoto tomorrow, headed back to tokyo to stay in the Ueno area for 4 nights and then it's 4 more nights in suburbia.
Tuesday, April 14, 2009
a 27 year old being babysat...
by her g-mom. g-mom can't believe that i walked around kyoto bymyself today. what else to day b/c she won't leave the hotel room b/c it's sprinkling? i wasted 2 hours this morning waiting for it to dry up to see if she wanted to go with to Nishiki fish market but it didn't and left on my own.
went to nishiki, amazing. covered streets lined with thousands of stalls selling lots of fresh seafood, produce, and other foodstuffs. lots of cool sights to look at, fresh octupus, squid, snapper, and who knows what else. also lots of shops, bought some really pretty fabric to make pillows, curtains with. it looks a little on the edge of too "urban outfitterish" but better. then went to daimaru, a 9 story department store. the makeup department was 5 times bigger than penn square. Shoes.....i got lost in the shoe department. then went to the basement where all the food items were to get g-mom's and my dinner.....got lost there. i'm not a person that gets lost. that's how big it is.
something that makes getting around extremely difficult is that the streets don't have names in kyoto and especially in tokyo. they're just sections within sections. kyoto has a slightly more gridlike system going on but nothing is in english.
i've been taking advantage of nostalgia to ask grandmother about growing up and getting married. she has never revealed too much about what it was like as a little girl growing up in tokyo, how she met my grandfather, moving to the US, etc. of course, i never really asked too much. i was told that she didn't like to talk too much about my grandfather who was killed during war (either Korean or Vietnam.....this shows how much I really don't know about him). she was 20 when she met him, he was a 21 year old GI that was invited by her father often to have dinner in their home. eventually it turned into more than just dinner and was followed by marriage. nothing could have prepared her for the next phase.....the sticks of Mississippi.
Herman was from Mississippi (i'm thinking the jackson or meridian area, if you are at all familiar) and they moved there. culture shock of alien proportions. to a japanese person whose bare feet never touch anything except the bath tub (not even the bathroom floor) and the bedsheets, she was mortified watching all the kids run around barefoot outside. "NO shoes! they po-or!"
poor thing. g-mom said if she had known enough english or met someone that knew enough japanese or knew where the airport was, she would have hightailed like a bat outta hell.
went to nishiki, amazing. covered streets lined with thousands of stalls selling lots of fresh seafood, produce, and other foodstuffs. lots of cool sights to look at, fresh octupus, squid, snapper, and who knows what else. also lots of shops, bought some really pretty fabric to make pillows, curtains with. it looks a little on the edge of too "urban outfitterish" but better. then went to daimaru, a 9 story department store. the makeup department was 5 times bigger than penn square. Shoes.....i got lost in the shoe department. then went to the basement where all the food items were to get g-mom's and my dinner.....got lost there. i'm not a person that gets lost. that's how big it is.
something that makes getting around extremely difficult is that the streets don't have names in kyoto and especially in tokyo. they're just sections within sections. kyoto has a slightly more gridlike system going on but nothing is in english.
i've been taking advantage of nostalgia to ask grandmother about growing up and getting married. she has never revealed too much about what it was like as a little girl growing up in tokyo, how she met my grandfather, moving to the US, etc. of course, i never really asked too much. i was told that she didn't like to talk too much about my grandfather who was killed during war (either Korean or Vietnam.....this shows how much I really don't know about him). she was 20 when she met him, he was a 21 year old GI that was invited by her father often to have dinner in their home. eventually it turned into more than just dinner and was followed by marriage. nothing could have prepared her for the next phase.....the sticks of Mississippi.
Herman was from Mississippi (i'm thinking the jackson or meridian area, if you are at all familiar) and they moved there. culture shock of alien proportions. to a japanese person whose bare feet never touch anything except the bath tub (not even the bathroom floor) and the bedsheets, she was mortified watching all the kids run around barefoot outside. "NO shoes! they po-or!"
poor thing. g-mom said if she had known enough english or met someone that knew enough japanese or knew where the airport was, she would have hightailed like a bat outta hell.
Saturday, April 11, 2009
first whole day in japan
i am tired so i'm going to be lazy and do thoughts
-grandmother keeps speaking in english to everyone, i have to keep reminding her to speak in japanese instead.
-grandmother is not going to be much of a navigator, much less a translator.
-McHotdog does not look good.
-lots of cute guys my age, none older. what happens?
-was planning to go to shinagawa flea market....talked to concierge who did not know where it was (only the biggest flea market in tokyo at a race track); left grandmother at the hotel to navigate on my own, got to my connecting in Oimachi but couldn't figure out how to get to shinagawa b/c it was a different rail company (FYI, the rail system is several different companies, unlike New York City's single Mass Transit Authority)
-went shopping instead at 2 department stores and bought headphones, hello kitty hand towels, and a LAN cord.
-going to tokyo country tomorrow to see great aunt
-grandmother keeps speaking in english to everyone, i have to keep reminding her to speak in japanese instead.
-grandmother is not going to be much of a navigator, much less a translator.
-McHotdog does not look good.
-lots of cute guys my age, none older. what happens?
-was planning to go to shinagawa flea market....talked to concierge who did not know where it was (only the biggest flea market in tokyo at a race track); left grandmother at the hotel to navigate on my own, got to my connecting in Oimachi but couldn't figure out how to get to shinagawa b/c it was a different rail company (FYI, the rail system is several different companies, unlike New York City's single Mass Transit Authority)
-went shopping instead at 2 department stores and bought headphones, hello kitty hand towels, and a LAN cord.
-going to tokyo country tomorrow to see great aunt
Thursday, April 9, 2009
at the airport (twin cities)
still sick.....took some mucinex and sudafed, and some phenagren to keep from getting sick on the plane and help me sleep.
last night, grandmother made a big deal about making sure i didn't keep my money in all one place. i said okay. she later brought up the subject again and asked specifically how much i was bringing with me for specifically today. we agreed on at least three Y1,000 (about $30 all together) and a Y10,000 ($100) for the train into the city and dinner or subway pass or whatever before we unpack at the hotel. i decided the best course of action, since she was so concerned would be to split the rest of my money up...(about $1700 american) and put in into 2 different spots in my suitcase.
wrong course of action.....and i didn't lock the suitcase which is a moot point b/c the lock on it is not TSA approved, meaning that the security can cut it...rendering it useless. g-mom is concerned that someone is going to steal my money. hopefully they won't take it but i did stash half of it in the most looked stop, my toiletries.
also, all mymedicine i brought with me is not in original packaging. at all. except for that delsym i bought at midnight last night.
g-mom brought two surgical masks for us to wear to prevent germs. i still haven't worn mine yet. she's already modeled hers.
okay, 2 minutes left. time to check facebook. boarding at 2:30 pm for a 12 hour flight to narita
last night, grandmother made a big deal about making sure i didn't keep my money in all one place. i said okay. she later brought up the subject again and asked specifically how much i was bringing with me for specifically today. we agreed on at least three Y1,000 (about $30 all together) and a Y10,000 ($100) for the train into the city and dinner or subway pass or whatever before we unpack at the hotel. i decided the best course of action, since she was so concerned would be to split the rest of my money up...(about $1700 american) and put in into 2 different spots in my suitcase.
wrong course of action.....and i didn't lock the suitcase which is a moot point b/c the lock on it is not TSA approved, meaning that the security can cut it...rendering it useless. g-mom is concerned that someone is going to steal my money. hopefully they won't take it but i did stash half of it in the most looked stop, my toiletries.
also, all mymedicine i brought with me is not in original packaging. at all. except for that delsym i bought at midnight last night.
g-mom brought two surgical masks for us to wear to prevent germs. i still haven't worn mine yet. she's already modeled hers.
okay, 2 minutes left. time to check facebook. boarding at 2:30 pm for a 12 hour flight to narita
Wednesday, April 8, 2009
i'm sick and g-mom is mad
i've got something going on.....flu, cold, flu, allergies. i don't know.
grandmother is mad b/c i'm not packed, but i have all my laundry and toiletries packed so i think i'm 80% there.
went to CVS this morning. tylenol cold helped for 2 hours then quit...wal-phed worked for 3 hours then quit.....still got a runny nose through it all. g-mom says i am going to have to wear a surgical mask on the plane tomorrow....passengers will be upset if i don't.
got my presents wrapped! they're from bad granny's bazaar and DNA galleries, both in the plaza district and both equally awesome. handmade spiny bowls by ruth anne borum, earrings from haute mess, religious glittery bottle cap magnets from spiritual sparkles, and bracelets made from leftover materials from scott sabolich prosthetic limbs. according to both my etiquette books and g-mom, gift-giving is important in Japanese culture.
okay.....time to pack. will write more tomorrow during 5 hour layover in the Twin Cities.
grandmother is mad b/c i'm not packed, but i have all my laundry and toiletries packed so i think i'm 80% there.
went to CVS this morning. tylenol cold helped for 2 hours then quit...wal-phed worked for 3 hours then quit.....still got a runny nose through it all. g-mom says i am going to have to wear a surgical mask on the plane tomorrow....passengers will be upset if i don't.
got my presents wrapped! they're from bad granny's bazaar and DNA galleries, both in the plaza district and both equally awesome. handmade spiny bowls by ruth anne borum, earrings from haute mess, religious glittery bottle cap magnets from spiritual sparkles, and bracelets made from leftover materials from scott sabolich prosthetic limbs. according to both my etiquette books and g-mom, gift-giving is important in Japanese culture.
okay.....time to pack. will write more tomorrow during 5 hour layover in the Twin Cities.
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