| [ |
mood |
| |
surprised |
] |
| [ |
music |
| |
Randall snoring |
] |
Today I have seen more fish than I probably will in the rest of my lifetime.
The day started out normally (waking, grooming, and so on), except then Patrick warned me not to eat more than one slice of bread at breakfast because we'd be having sushi soon. Well, the three of us hopped onto the very crowded train to Tsukiji, the world's most insane fish market by far. The outer part was full of salari-men slurping down breakfast before rushing off to the office, with the odd souvenir store tossed in. The inside is absolute madness with stall after stall after stall of more fish than you can shake a stick at. Everywhere there are trucks that will run you over if you don't get out of the way. The smell of all the exotic fish sticks with you as you try not to trip over the boxes of fish and feet of the people that are there for a legitimate reason. And there was fatty tuna. Oh the fatty tuna... A piece of tuna flew out in our general direction which Randall probably would have consumed had he grabbed it.
After barely making it out of there with our lives, we went to have sushi at a restaurant that Patrick is especially fond of. We waited outside in the rain for probably ten minutes or so until three seats in this incredibly narrow and tiny place could let us in. The sushi was amazing and so fresh that the fish literally melted in my mouth. Sea urchin, yellowtail, tuna, and some kind of shrimp that was still twitching. Unfortunately because the place was so ridiculously busy and hectic, it was impossible to fully enjoy the sushi, though it was still amazing from what I tasted. Afterwards felt like I was going to explode because that was so much freaking rice.
Later we wandered around Ginza some, past all kinds of really snooty stores. Visited a very nice paper store and I impressed the two ladies doing the sign-in thingy for a hanko exhibition by writing my name in katakana. Then we went into a department store that has 10,000+ yen mangoes and grapes as well as many other expensive things. Then another department store with a really nice prefab houses and eye glasses for 10,500 yen, or about 100 bucks, and thats including prescription. I'm really tempted to go back and get another pair just for that price. Then, fried things on sticks for lunch followed by more shopping. We went to a really fun shop called Kiddyland that has all kinds of crazy toys, accessories, and knick-knacks and really cute cashiers. We explored the side streets a bit after, looking for what proved to be a very disappointing dog accessory store and got strange looks because we were the only gaijin in a more residential area. I have to admit I was very relieved when we got back to the main road where we didn't stand out quite so badly.
Tonight one of Yukari's sisters is in town so we went out for okonomiyaki. Alas, no pictures, but there was an enormous pepper mill and ridiculously good food cooked for us at the table, kinda like at Beni Hana but less acrobatic and bleh. There was girltalk about how Randall and I met, and much complaining because Yukari was running a little late. Then we came home, I wrote a really long entry in my journal, and went to bed for another long day.
|