Insects can be tasty (aka A Night Out in Ginza)

The Brandeis Crew went out last Friday night to meet with Hiroki, an IBS alum (and founder of our Emerging Markets Investment Club) and some other students who did their exchange semester at Brandeis for dinner and drinks.

Candise, Matt and I headed over together. Since Candise needed to do a little shopping first (it is Ginza, after all) I snapped the picture above and this one below. If you look at the middle of it and zoom in a bit you might be able to make out the "Mikimoto" sign.















We ended up at a very cool little restaurant in Ginza that is planted firmly under the subway tracks, so there was a regular rumbling to be felt throughout the whole meal.

It was the first time I tried yakitori, which is grilled chicken. And by this I don't mean just meat. You get meat, skin, liver, and gizzards. All of which I kind of tasty in their own way. The small whole shrimps that we ordered as an appetizer (very good dipped in mayonnaise) were a foreshadowing of things to come....

Here is a quick look at some of the crew...Hiroki is hidden on the end.















We then moved on to a street festival near Hiroki's office.















I might have mentioned in a previous post that Kully and I almost ate a cricket, but we chickened out. After fortifying ourselves with a few frosty beverages, I noticed during the stroll that a booth was selling fried crickets.















I was about to issue a challenge when Dan, Jeremy and Matt all popped one into their mouths. So much for that, so I followed suit.

They were obviously cooked in some kind of sugar because they were sweet. They actually tasted pretty good.

Jeremy's wife Bonnie was skeptical, as this picture shows, but she was (and is) a trooper and gave it a try.















After spending Y500 for our first beer, we found a stall selling them for Y200. They were a lesser brand, but hey, relatively cheap beer in Tokyo is not to be scoffed at. I bought two.

After this we ended up going over to Hiroki's office, which is easily five times the size of any of our apartments/dorms and left us wondering why he didn't just live there (it had a kitchen and shower.)

Anyways, Hiroki had bought some beer and broke open a bottle of Remy Martin.















Cross cultural joke exchanges followed (some required explanation, some did not) and then things got.....weird.

















Jeremy/Elvis and Hiroki















Dan The Man, wearing this because we convinced him it would bring the Cardinals luck.















Come sit down, we'll have coffee, we'll talk.















Candise with wings...

I want to speak for the whole Brandeis crew and thank Hiroki for his hospitality. We had a great time and will definitely meet up again before we all leave Japan, hopefully more than once!