Recent meals....

A nice bowl of ramen with sliced pork....This was dinner last night (along with some gyoza)















Tuna handroll....the sushi was dinner tonight.


























Tuna, salmon and shrimp. We got toro as well, which was devine, but which I also neglected to take pictures of. I was hungry...

You've got these CLAWS!

You're money, baby.

Happy Thanksgiving (and thank you, Fujimamas!)

On sort of a last second whim we decided to try to find a place in Tokyo that serves Thanksgiving dinner. We succeeded when we ran across Fujimamas in Omotesando.















Their website said they were serving Thanksgiving dinner both Thursday and Friday, but they were already booked solid.

Fortunately they offered it for lunch as well, so Matt, Kang and myself made our way down.

As we expected, the place was mostly full of gaijin, the vast majority of whom were Amerika-jin. And I'd guess that 99% of them ordered the turkey lunch special.

The pictures are a bit dark, but you'll get the idea.















Turkey (dark meat on top, light meat on the side)
Mashed potatoes (under the turkey)
Green Beans
Cranberry sauce (just peaking out on the left of the turkey)
Stuffing on the right.

Given the fact that Tokyo has shrunk down considerably what my idea of a full portion is, I was quite stuffed after eating this and a piece of cheesecake for dessert.


















Almost done!

It was very nice to get a little taste of home here in Tokyo. Apparently they do the same thing for Christmas so we might be heading back!

What's on your playlist right now?

Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band: Thunder Road
The Foo Fighters: Everlong, Stacked Actors, Monkey Wrench, I'll Stick Around
System of A Down: BYOB, Psycho, Mesmerize, Would They Die For You? Toxicity
Weezer: Jamie (acoustic) Dope Nose, The Good Life, Pink Triangle

When studying or writing:

Coltrane's Blue Train and Miles Davis' Kind of Blue.

I don't know what it is about jazz, but it gets my mind in the proper place to study.

Yesterday's Grub

This is a rundown of what I ate yesterday. I went to the grocery store and got the weekly food supplies as well a few pre-made items.

I started off with a sandwich plate (the tomato is what caught my eye.)















Then had some potato salad. Not the healthiest thing in the world but this meal was a small reminder of home.


























Dinner was more traditionally Japanese. I had some salmon sashimi (this plate costs less then $3) and some wakame soup along with a potato cutlet. Bought the cutlet at the store just because it looked good, I really wasn't sure what was inside.
































I also bought a bag of potato chips for a snack, very rare for me here. These were cheese flavored. Notice that there are actual drops of melted cheese on the chip!
















This is pretty much everything I ate yesterday. I'm mad because I went to a great ramen place for lunch today and did not have my camera on me. That's not going to happen again.

The unexamined life...

I recently ran across a Time article on the web that profiles 60 years of Asian heroes. It was one of those random things you surf across on the web that ends up ensnaring you. I read every single profile. It was truly moving and awe-inspiring.

I think that everyone hopes that something we do during our lifetimes will be worthy of remembering. If we are truly blessed and a bit lucky, maybe something we do or create will in some way make this planet a better place that it was before we arrived.

As I read about people like Corazon Aquino, Aung San and his daughter, Gandhi, Nehru, Kurosawa, Mother Theresa, even Freddy Mercury (who was born Farook Bulsara in India) I realized that many of these people had made huge contributions to their fields when they were younger than I am now. Some, like Aung San, had died already for the beliefs and country.

I got to thinking what exactly am I going to do to make this planet better for the people who come after me?

It also lead me to think, "is there some cause that I care so passionately about that I'd give my life for it?" I really don't have an answer to that. I've never really thought about it.

I'm not trying to be morose or suggest that I think my life has been empty of meaning to date. Of the six billion people who live on this planet, I think maybe a few handfuls are destined to have the kind of impact that these people had. But I like to think that perhaps I'm a late bloomer. Even if my impact is something as small as setting up a scholarship for my grandchildren or even kids from my hometown, that would be OK with me. I also realize that I am quickly approaching the point (and perhaps statistically I have already passed it) were I have less time left on this planet than time I've lived on it. That's a sobering thought.

Socrates said "the unexamined life is not worth living." As I approach the end of my time in Japan and of my MBA and begin a dramatic change of direction in my life, I think it's about time I got down to examining my life and figuring out what the hell I want to do with it.

The longest of journeys begins with a single step.

Okonomiyaki

Friday was the last night that Jeremy's parents were in town and they offered to take everyone out to dinner and karaoke. Matt and Candise headed off to Kyoto, so they weren't available but Dan and I went. Jeremy also invited one of his classmates, Haruna. She was very cool and an invaluable translator for us at the restaurant. I'm sure we would have muddled through, but having her there was great. Plus she was a lot of fun.

Here's a pic of Haruna and Dan...


























Jeremy had heard about an okonomiyaki place in Harajuku. The people who own the apartment he lives in apparently run the restaurant as well so we wound our way through some of the narrow back streets of Harajuku until we found it.


























Yes, that's what we came for!

Okonomiyaki is, for lack of a better term, a Japanese pancake though it isn't really pancake-like at all. It comes in a bowl with a mix of meat and vegetables which you scoop out onto the tabletop grill and let it cook for a while, then pour in the liquid portion. The liquid is either some type of batter or a more liquid sauce loaded with corn starch so it starts to thicken as you eat it.

Here is how it comes to the table:















And after you mix it up a bit, you dump it onto the grill like so...(sorry if part of this is sideways...)



And then you put the bacon on top. Is there anything that isn't made better by putting bacon it?















After it cooks for a while, you flip it:




Then you crack an egg on the grill and let it cook sunny side up. After a bit, you flip the okonomiyaki onto the egg, let them cook together and the flip one last time.















At this point you take a relatively healthy dish and slather it with barbeque sauce, mayonnaise, bonito flakes and some ground seaweed, so the finished product looks like this:















And as you can see, you quickly begin to cut it up and eat it at this point.

We liked the first two okonomiyaki so much we ordered two more.

Here is some video of the Mexican style mon-ja cooking next to our first okonomiyaki




After dinner we had crepes (sorry, no pictures) and went to karaoke:















And then parted ways after profusely thanking Jeremy's parents for dinner. Free stuff rocks, especially in Tokyo!

As I made my way home to Takadanobaba (referred to as Baba from this point forward) I was waylaid by some dormmates and forced to go drinking at an English pub:








































And Rory seemed to be having some luck:















But this look is really saying, "this girl is cute and I might have a chance, but why won't she take her hat off? Is she bald? This disturbs me."

So instead of being in bed by midnight I was out until 3am. These things happen sometimes.

Sweet stuff and phone dangles

After seeing the feast that Reese prepared for her hopefully-worshipful husband, I got a huge jonesing for sugar.

In Japan, then don't dump sugar into EVERYTHING like we do in the U.S. By now I'm not only used to but quite like it. I think it is a major reason I have lost weight. I'm not starving myself by any means, but I am also probably eating one pound less sugar a day than I did in the States. I need to make sure that stays true in the spring when I head back.

That said, after seeing that picture I needed sweets. Specifically chocolate and whipped cream. These two little snacks from Family Mart did the trick.
















And this looks like a donut but was kind of crispy















Finally someone asked if I had a cellphone dangle. I do indeed, kinda.


























So sue me. One of the first books I ever read was Winnie the Pooh.

Looks like the Red Sox might be going Japanese as well...

News came out today that the Red Sox won the bidding for Japanese ace Daisuke Matsuzaka. I plan to make sure I have some signs (in Japanese) ready for next year's trips to Fenway

Today's lunch....

I saw another Tokyo resident, Nori (I don't think that's her real name unless she is named after seaweed, but I could very well have no idea what I'm talking about) regular posts photos of what she had for lunch.

I think this is a great idea. So great I'm going to steal it. A lot of people are asking my about the cuisine here so I figure this a great way to show them.

First up: Family Mart Sushi.

We have these rolls. The front are stuffed with battered pork, the back with battered shrimp. Both cooked. The give you cocktail sauce with this one, but I usually don't use it.















Next was something a little more traditional. The red is crab, the green is cucumber. I've already hosed them with shoyu, which is why they are a little brown.
















Together they cost about $5. I usually only get one, but I did not have breakfast today and was a little hungrier than usual.

Fall finally arrives

Today was the first time it really felt like fall. I walked over to the grocery store in my fleece pullover and was just a wee bit cold, where normally I'm a wee bit warm. It was very windy today, and the wind was cold so that had something to do with it.

This might prove to be a busy week for school. I am preparing a presentation for my Japan in the 20th Century class and also agreed to help one of the first years I've become friends with with her Profitability Analysis mid-term.

We don't really have an equivalent class, but she explained some of the problems to me and they sound like basic finance/accounting type questions so I told her I'd give it a try. It will help keep me busy and remind me of how much more work I will be doing at Brandeis when I return.

More Harajuku....

One of our classmates, Jacob, came to Tokyo from Beijing for a few days so we decided again to give him a tour of the highlights.

Luckily for him, he's small enough that Japanese clothing fits him so he was able to do some shopping. While we were trolling around through Harajuku we came across the greatest T-shirt store in the history of mankind. Here are some of the shirts we saw...

These are my favorites. The looks on their faces are priceless. The pig is about to eat tonkatsu, which is a traditional fried pork cutlet.


























Take that Ronald! The katakana translates to something like "pamakaro" or "pakaro" I can't really tell what the second character is supposed to be.


























Dan seems to think there is more than one meaning to this shirt.


























Big Bird apparently cooks up real nice...


























This shirt says "nihongo wakarimasen" which means "I don't understand Japanese."
















And this is Jeremy's Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat. The picture isn't really blurry, it's just that the jacket foiled any attempts to properly focus the shot.

Homemade Curry

Instead of making a pre-made curry today, I just got what is essentially a bouillion block of curry and stirred it into hot water to make the sauce, then added potatoes, onions, carrots and chicken and let it cook down for about a half hour. That was more than enough time for everything to cook (though the carrots and potatoes might have benefited from a few more minutes, but they were still done.)

Since I was short on rice, I had curry with rice and Matt had udon curry. Take a look:

Stares...

Matt and I were walking back to the dorm from the train station on Sunday evening at roughly the time the Waseda-Sai was ending.

As we walked up the street a string of Japanese girls walked by us who were obviously either in a band or some sort of cheerleading group as they all wore similar jackets and pants.

After they passed Matt mentioned that every single one of them had stared at me for a second or two. At this point in my stay, I did not even notice as it tends to happen a lot. I don't think it has much to do with simply being Amerika-jin, but more with the fact that I'm almost a full foot taller than most of them.

I just found it funny that he noticed and that I didn't. It is funny what you get used to. Sticking out here, for me, is just part of every day life.

Shibuya, Harajuku 11/04/2006

Saturday was a busy but very fun day. One of our friends from Brandeis, Sham, and his wife Faiza were coming to Tokyo for a day and we put together a short tour to give them a few memories.

Since both have seen Lost In Translation, we decided that a perfect meeting place would be the Hachiko Statue in Shibuya. It is a very busy, popular meeting place in Tokyo because it is very specific and easy to find, even for people who have never visited the city before.

Here is a quick look at Hachiko:















We had planned to meet at around 2:00pm, but Sham and Faiza did not make it until around 3. In many places this would be a bad thing, but in Shibuya it offers you time to people watch, which is endlessly fascinating due to the huge numbers of people who come and go through the station.

The first thing we noticed was these three young ladies offering free hugs. Never ones to say no to a free hug, we all availed ourselves of their offer.

















Note that Jeremy is better sized to receive a hug from these ladies than Dan (or me, though I don't have pictures of myself getting hugged yet.)















This young lady also enjoyed her hug.















The masses crossing the street....















Since we figured we might be waiting a while, we sent Dan and Jeremy on a Starbucks run. It was the first time I'd had a Starbuck's Coffee since I left the U.S, and it was good.

Unfortunately, Jeremy's developed a problem
















Since we had eaten crickets not too long ago, I argued he should just ignore it and enjoy the extra protein it provided. He decided to scoop it out. Wuss.

After a while we noticed a young girl standing next to our friends offering the free hugs. She had on headphones and seemed to resolutely ignore the outside world. Then she started dancing, and continued to dance for the entire hour we waited. She was still dancing when we left.

And mind you, she was not dancing well.





On occasion we would make a loop around the Hachiko area, as there was an exit to the station that we could not see. After one such loop Dan grabs me and says "you have GOT to see this."

I can't really tell you what this is, because I don't know. I can only show you the video and let you decide for yourself.






When Sham and Faiza finally arrived, we hung our for a while then decided to head up to Harajuku for some more people watching and to expose them to one of Tokyo's more fashionable areas. We were also able to find a restaurant where we knew for fact what we ordered did not have pork in it. Since Sham and Faiza are Muslim, this was important!

Here is a shot of the Snoopy Town. Who doesn't like Snoopy?















And here is a look at Harajuku's main drag, Takeshita Dori.

















Yes, this store on Takeshita Dori is called Nudy Boy. I'm pretty sure it sells women's clothing, but I could be wrong.















Those of us living in town also had tickets to see the MLB All Stars play the Japan League All Stars at the Tokyo Dome that evening. Since Sham and Faiza did not, we set them loosing in Akihabara so Sham could shop for gadgets. As he said, they had spent a lot of time in Bangkok looking at curtains, bedsheets, silk, etc. It was his turn to shop!

More on the game later.

Ahikabara and Poker Night 2

This post is dedicated to Bonnie, Jeremy's wife. Bless her heart, she agreed to go to Akihabara with a bunch of otaku and got stuck following us around Yodobashi Camera.

For those of you unfamiliar with it, Yodobashi Camera is a monstrously huge electronics store. If it plugs into a wall, I'm pretty confident that Yodobashi sells it. They have iPods and other portable electronics (cell phones, etc) on the first floor, computers on the second. There are eight floors containing appliances, lamps, videogame systems, etc. You name it, they probably have it.

We originally headed over so that I could replace the wireless router I bought there as it appeared to be broken. However, I'd forgotten a key component of it (the wireless card that came with it) so we could not return it that day. Since we were there, we decided to explore a bit and the dorks (Dan, Matt, Jeremy and I) quickly dragged Bonnie up to the sixth floor where we hoped there would be working Playstation3 units available for our use. Our dreams were answered.

This video is grainy (the original is not, but the YouTube version is) but will give you PS3 junkies a little taste of what is to come. The graphics we saw were absolutely unbelievable.



Here is Matt and Jeremy spinning up some jams...


























You really better have some chops if you're going to play this guitar...


























After Matt and Jeremy spent about an hour looking at strange watches (and finally settling on two) we had mercy on poor Bonnie and headed back to Waseda to relax. We kind of decided on the way that we'd get a poker game going. When we got to the dorm a few of the guys there were interested in playing as well so all told six people ponied up Y500 each, winner took all.

Here is one action shot of me, Eric (from Hawaii,) Jarrod (Minnesota) and Jeremy (standing in green shirt.) Not sure of the other guy's name as he did not say much, but I do know he's British.















When it was all said and done I took home the Y3000 prize (all of which went to reloading my subway card.) Dan wondered openly why I have won both of our poker nights, to which I responded "Because I'm better than any of you!" Just laying some groundwork for future games :)

Waseda/Keio Baseball game 10/29/2006

Waseda and Keio are kind of like the Yale and Harvard of Japan, and they have a similar rivalry.

A bunch of people in our dorm (mostly, but not all American) headed out to the game Sunday afternoon. One insisted we stop for a "genki-burger" from a small shop near our dorm. "Genki" is Japanese for strong or energetic and we had never heard of this place. It turns out this was a good thing, because if I had heard of it I never would have lost the thirty pounds that I have so far.

For Y500 you get a very large burger.















The small shop sells about 30 different kinds. The Genki-burger is loaded with cheese, mustard, ketchup and pickles and the patty is probably half a pound. It was worth every yen and is easily the best burger I've had since I left the U.S. and probably qualifies as one of the better ones I've ever had. And somehow I've managed not to go back for another one. Patience makes the heart grow fonder.

Thus fortified, we made our way down to the other end of Shinjuku for the game.

The annual baseball games are a very big deal here and Jingu Stadium in Tokyo was divided into two sections. Keio was from home plate up the left field line and Waseda was up the right field line.

We sat in the right field bleachers right in front of a set of risers. They were there so that the cheerleaders could lead the crowd in the various songs and chants that support Waseda. We didn't know any of the songs, but we did our best.















For some reason the cheerleaders wore a range of different uniforms. I still haven't figured our why this is the case.

The game was somewhat boring except towards the end. With Waseda (the home team) down one run in the bottom of the ninth their clean-up hitter hit a home run to tie the game, which sent our side of the stadium into a frenzy. Three innings later in the bottom of the twelfth inning a different player hit a two run, walk off home run to win the game. This set off more loud cheering and celebrating which ended almost as soon as the hitter reach home plate.

Both teams then lined up parallel to each other and deeply bowed. Both groups of fans then sang their team songs and saluted the other school.

In Japan, winning the game is very important and cause for celebration. However, it is perhaps more important that everyone played hard and well and fought to the end. This too, is cause for celebration.

Honestly, it is probably a much more healthy way of looking at athletic competition than the seeming "win at all costs" mentality that drives a lot of people in the States. You don't hear about coaches paying kids to bean the bad players on their own teams or coaches assaulting youth league officials, or parents assaulting coaches because their kids aren't getting enough playing time.

Of course one of the post game chants was disturbingly similar to a Nazi pep rally. As you sang the song you thrust our your right arm and chanted "Waseda!"



























Some other shots from the game....

This guy is out!















This guy in the middle is doing windmills, karate chops, anything he can to inspire his team to victory. A shorter way to describe it would be "crazy."















The high-rent Waseda section....















The sun sets on a fun day of baseball and Japanese culture.