Nihon e ikimashou! Day 6
Jan. 26th, 2008 04:18 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
spiderpigWe returned to Sakura Hostel at around 10 or 11pm in the night and after checking in, decided to meet downstairs after half an hour to debate on what to do before the Tsukiji Market tour.
It's absolutely freezing outside. The wind is cutting through layers of clothing and all we can think of is "WARM TAXI". We flag one down and instruct the driver to drive us to Tsukiji. As we watch the meter escalate rapidly (zomg money flying away), we joke about how the driver might drive us to the wrong place and we'll get hopelessly and miserably lost.
Sooner than later, we reach the Lawsons that we're supposed to meet our guides at, we clamber out, pay the driver the fare and walk up to our guides. We got both guides (Nakamura-san and Yoshino-san) instead of one so hurrah? We introduce ourselves and off we go!
They walk insanely fast. I nearly couldn't keep up.
Our first stop was at a small shrine next to the main market buildings. Yoshino-san teaches how the fishermen do the ritual prayers and then scoot us to the sides to take a look at some smaller shrines and statues. There's a white cat slinking about one of the altars, and Nakamura-san quips about how the cat is always there and never seems to go away. There's a stone altar for fugu, tuna, mackerel, squid and even anglerfish - most of the popular seafood that the Japanese devour. Next, they whisk us off to the main auction buildings.
As we walk quickly through the middlemen shops, I tell Yoshino-san (haha, he reminds me of a kindly Ojii-san) that Tsukiji market hasn't really changed from the 10 years ago when I visited it. "Oh you've been here before?" he asks. I say yes and then we launch into a conversation with broken Japanese about Tsukiji 10 years ago. He compliments on my (bad!!!!!!!!!) Japanese. Y'see kids, watching anime and Japan Hour is good for you because you get that indiscernable accent that wows native speakers. Actually I jest. But it kind of makes me delusional that once I get my vocabulary and grammar structures correct, I'll be able to melt into Japanese society effortlessly and seamlessly.
Since I love Japanese, and I love seafood and also, no thanks to the berth of knowledge Japan Hour gives me, I was able to rattle off most of the Japanese names of the seafood that the guides showed us. While Yan Wen and I were more content talking about what sort of seafood was uber popular in Singapore, up ahead Leon and Nakamura-san apparently found it more appetising to talk about the economic state of Singapore. =A=;;
The frozen tuna auction house!
Dude, these things are huge. I knew that they were big, but to see them in person was slightly more than mindblowing. They are THAT big. Somehow while I'm perfectly fine with 6 feet shark swimming in the ocean, 6 feet fish scare the heck out of me.
SWORDFISH. (Or marlin? I can't remember.) It's bigger than I am!
My dad used to work in a fishing company, so I've seen and eaten my fair share of weird seafood. So it was kind of cool knowing some things about the fishing industry. I am your veritable jack of all trades, master of none.
A whole graveyard of fishes.
Fresh maguro!!!
Y'see those numbers painted onto the tuna? They all represent the grade of tuna - the quality of the meat and such. 1 is the best and as the number gets bigger the quality gets poorer.
Mmm get your crustaceans here fresh!
Turban shells! I'm sure all you people who've watched Japan Hour remember countless episodes where the hosts would grill turban shells live and then put a dollop of butter and mmmmm...
Anglerfish liver! Mmmm. Looks totally gross. But it's a popular delicacy.
The fish itself looks totally gross though. >_<
The live fish auction taking place!
'tis the season for ika! Which reminds me about how wecorrupted taught our guides about the word sotong and about the finer points of squid culinary delights like, sambal sotong. Mmm.
The live abalone made me go slightly nuts in front of the guides.
We snuck into an uni packaging place. :x Nakamura-san was all like, "We can't go in because we don't have any business going in, but since you're tourists you all got lost and accidentally walked in..." HAHAHAHA.
Uni auction!
So after the dryer sections of the market, we're sped off past crazy go-kart vehicles and our shoes and socks getting damper as the morning progresses, we get to the main live fish area.
PETA would have a field day!
WHALE MEAT. ZOMG. I never thought I'd see it other than in cans!
Best grade maguro!
Look at the amount of fat! Mmmm. What awesome otoro this would make.
After hanging around the live tuna auctions, our guides decided to take us to see the middlemen shops and how they process the tuna.
This guy apparently is an instituition by himself. He's that good. Watching him sliceand dice the huge tuna was like watching an art piece.
I love this photo because of the expression on his face. It's pure concentration.
Another family-fun shop. The daughter is like totally cool and she runs around with all these hulking bald men. XD()
Do not get on the wrong side of these guys.
Finally at around 6 or 7am, I can't remember because the sun started to rise at around 5am, the group disbands and the guides recommend us a place to eat breakfast.
We ate here!
MY GOD. IT WAS. FUCKING. ORGASMIC. I blew 3,600 yen on breakfast but who gives a fucking damn? The best sushi ever. I stuffed my face full of the 10 'course' breakfast and ate my fill of uni, fish brains, otoro and the usual tuna slices and ahhhhhhhhh. I was stuffed. It was good. Really good. Normally I stay away from fish because of my inherent fear of choking on fish bones - that's why sushi does so much for me. BONELESS FISH IS LOVE. Though fish brains were slightly er, disturbing to eat. It was weird to try and stuff the whole thing in my mouth because I have a terribly small mouth. So while the guys were happily chucking piece after piece, my mouth was totally full of rice and fish and I was trying to chew. The wasabi was kickass!! Real grated wasabi root, not that processed kind. I made a mistake of stuffing a whole piece of sushi into my mouth and then biting hard and wwwwwwwwtffffff a whole burst of unbearable tangy spiciness made me tear immediately. Chilli padi ain't got nothing on real wasabi.
Stuffed and full, we ambled out of the restaurant very satiated and our wallets much emptier. It was only around 7am but the sun was shining as though it was in the middle in the afternoon. Spring time weather kind of throws me off a little. Early sunrises and sunsets, the day ends at 6pm and begins at 5am. Talk about crazy weather. (Actually, I think this sort of phenomenon shouldn't be classified under 'weather', but my vocabulary has shrunk to the size of a peanut so--)
We decided against exploring the rest of Tsukiji because the lack of sleep from the previous night nearly killed us when the go-kart-things went zipping past us. We took the subway back to Asakusa and upon reaching the hostel, I collapsed into bed. I had around 3 hours to sleep before I had to wake up at 11am to check out of the twin room and into my dorm bed.
Since it was already around 3pm by the time we were all ready and downstairs, we decided to hit Akihabara first before meeting my US friend Hans for dinner. I had a mess of a time earlier that morning (while passing the time to go to Tsukiji) trying to arrange a time and venue to meet up because I quote, I'm "painfully indecisive". XD More examples of my indecisiveness later. So anyway, we take the subway (Tsukuba Express roxxorz my soxxorz) down/up to Akiba and it's around 4pm now. It's a Saturday so the streets are crammed full of people trying to push their way through. We take a new exit out of the station and end up at a rather large clearing of sorts. And we're greeted with this.
DUDES, ITS LIKE AN OKAMA PARTY. I started spazzing out in my head going "OKAMA PAPA" over and over again. And the hilarious thing was that they were singing a song about Okama. It was thigh-slappingly funny but too bad only I understood the lyrics.
We walked past a French Bakery (Vie De France) where we spied, in its halogen lighted glory, trays of curry pan and other pastries. We walk around and find some more performing groups which include a few cosplayers dancing the Hare Hare Yukai and for one brief moment in my life I wish I actualy bothered to remember the steps to the dance.
It's steadily growing darker and by the time we circle around Yodobashi and reach it's other entrance, we quickly finish our food and then head inside.
Yodobashi-Akiba. Multi-storied electronic goodness. Seriously, they had row after row of gashapon machines and I grabbed a Bowser Jr water-game and a Shinji Evangelion voice thingy from them. We wandered around the toys/figua level for quite sometime, Ian was looking for his Matsumoto figure. We hung around the pasocon level a while and gapped at the 100s of mice models available and laptop cases and everything. "We're coming back here" we decided.
By now it's already around 5:30pm and we're suppose to meet Hans at 6pm at Ueno. So we leave Yodobashi with me having bought Beck and Last Exile trading figures
In any case, Hans arrives soon enough and there's a lot of weird introductions going on. 'slike "Oh hello I've known you since ages ago and this is the first time we meet so HI" kind of introductions. Awkward, but funny.
Hans brings us to a depato which has a place that has the most awesome cake buffet I've been to (not that I've been to any... >_>).
YES! ANYWAY! DINNER WAS AWESOMEEEEEEE. We had to queue for a while outside of the restaurant for while because everyone else wanted a piece of the cake buffet action. Ian went off into the Tower Records next door to see if he could get a DVD for one of his friends back in Singapore. And again smalltalk. Seriously I am very bad at socialising and talking to people. !!!!
In retrospect, I think we totally abused Hans' knowledge of good eating places those two days. XD()() It was like a "MOAR FOOD" kind of thing. Anyway, we stuffed ourselves with pasta, and more and more cake in teh restaurant for less than 2000yen. That's a steal right there. I actually had 3 servings? :D() No wonder I came back effing fatter after the trip. It was extremely funny because Ian broke out into a long estatic "OMGGGGGGGGG" when he started eating his cakes? Completely Japan Hour moment. So we eat and talk (and I'm kinda disgusting when I eat and talk XD). We all drink that funky green drink, with the exception of Ian who's obsessed with his lemon CC drink.
At this moment, I direct you to the C C Lemon site. This was the drink my cousin was addicted to. He drank 2 bottles in one morning and then proceeded to buy a 1.5litre bottle for our last dinner in Japan together. It's nuts. He kept on saying "70 lemons!!!" over and over again. I think CCLemon stole his soul.
Seriously though, that restaurant had the best cake I'd eaten in a long time. There was like mini montblanc cakes which sent me into near screaming orgasm because mont blanc cake!! Mont blanc in the form of a cake! I was drooling over the chesnut (chestnut?) cream. I think I had liberal slices of that, along with the strawberry shortcake, fruitcake (mangoooooo!), blueberry cake, chocolate cakes and I don't know what else I scarfed down.
After dinner we walk around and gape at the huge pachinko palour with Evangelion machines and we all continue to talk about really random things. We have totally no idea where to go, so Hans suggests taking a walk in Ueno Park because it looks totally different from what it does in the day.
Seriously, Ueno Park looks eerily beautiful in the night.
It's like something out of a horror film, the way the dim lights make the sakura glow a deathly red. You half expect some Sadako-esque youkai to come crawling out of the boughs of sakura. Seriously, I'm not on crack or something. It was really surreal to walk around at night. Everyone was on those blue-tarps and piss-drunk and yelling and shouting - it was kickass cool. There were all sorts of drunk and crazy people rolling around and under the lighting, it was like some kind of weirdass interpretive dance.
And then the wind started to blow and the sakura petals started to swirl around us. :D Hans got like a petal smack right into his eye! Then I had one smack into my glasses. And Leon got a couple in his eye too. XD Yan Wen had lots caught in his hair. A little weird because he walked around for a while with pink dots in his hair.
We walk around for a while and then it gets late and the lights start turning off so we decide to go get a drink somewhere. Here's where it gets a little vague. I remember fishing out my pink Sakura Hostel map and trying to determine where's a good place to drink because Hans lives in Ueno and we're at Asakusa. We end up wandering around the streets a bit before coming to this quaint English-y pub which to our dismay was totally full. DUDE. Hans brings us to another place which is also filled the the brim with people. Kinda put off by the unluck we were having I was like shoved in the face with the decision of what to do next.
Kids, I am horribly indecisive and I cannot be trusted to make decisions at crucial moments. Its not me to do so. Nuh uh.
Finally we decided that we'd meet for lunch tomorrow at Takeshita-dori. I apologised for being indecisive and we part our separate ways. D: In retrospect, I think I'm a horrible loser-dork.
つづく
It's absolutely freezing outside. The wind is cutting through layers of clothing and all we can think of is "WARM TAXI". We flag one down and instruct the driver to drive us to Tsukiji. As we watch the meter escalate rapidly (zomg money flying away), we joke about how the driver might drive us to the wrong place and we'll get hopelessly and miserably lost.
Sooner than later, we reach the Lawsons that we're supposed to meet our guides at, we clamber out, pay the driver the fare and walk up to our guides. We got both guides (Nakamura-san and Yoshino-san) instead of one so hurrah? We introduce ourselves and off we go!
They walk insanely fast. I nearly couldn't keep up.
Our first stop was at a small shrine next to the main market buildings. Yoshino-san teaches how the fishermen do the ritual prayers and then scoot us to the sides to take a look at some smaller shrines and statues. There's a white cat slinking about one of the altars, and Nakamura-san quips about how the cat is always there and never seems to go away. There's a stone altar for fugu, tuna, mackerel, squid and even anglerfish - most of the popular seafood that the Japanese devour. Next, they whisk us off to the main auction buildings.
As we walk quickly through the middlemen shops, I tell Yoshino-san (haha, he reminds me of a kindly Ojii-san) that Tsukiji market hasn't really changed from the 10 years ago when I visited it. "Oh you've been here before?" he asks. I say yes and then we launch into a conversation with broken Japanese about Tsukiji 10 years ago. He compliments on my (bad!!!!!!!!!) Japanese. Y'see kids, watching anime and Japan Hour is good for you because you get that indiscernable accent that wows native speakers. Actually I jest. But it kind of makes me delusional that once I get my vocabulary and grammar structures correct, I'll be able to melt into Japanese society effortlessly and seamlessly.
Since I love Japanese, and I love seafood and also, no thanks to the berth of knowledge Japan Hour gives me, I was able to rattle off most of the Japanese names of the seafood that the guides showed us. While Yan Wen and I were more content talking about what sort of seafood was uber popular in Singapore, up ahead Leon and Nakamura-san apparently found it more appetising to talk about the economic state of Singapore. =A=;;
The frozen tuna auction house!
Dude, these things are huge. I knew that they were big, but to see them in person was slightly more than mindblowing. They are THAT big. Somehow while I'm perfectly fine with 6 feet shark swimming in the ocean, 6 feet fish scare the heck out of me.
SWORDFISH. (Or marlin? I can't remember.) It's bigger than I am!
My dad used to work in a fishing company, so I've seen and eaten my fair share of weird seafood. So it was kind of cool knowing some things about the fishing industry. I am your veritable jack of all trades, master of none.
A whole graveyard of fishes.
Fresh maguro!!!
Y'see those numbers painted onto the tuna? They all represent the grade of tuna - the quality of the meat and such. 1 is the best and as the number gets bigger the quality gets poorer.
Mmm get your crustaceans here fresh!Turban shells! I'm sure all you people who've watched Japan Hour remember countless episodes where the hosts would grill turban shells live and then put a dollop of butter and mmmmm...
Anglerfish liver! Mmmm. Looks totally gross. But it's a popular delicacy.
The fish itself looks totally gross though. >_<
The live fish auction taking place!
'tis the season for ika! Which reminds me about how we
The live abalone made me go slightly nuts in front of the guides.
We snuck into an uni packaging place. :x Nakamura-san was all like, "We can't go in because we don't have any business going in, but since you're tourists you all got lost and accidentally walked in..." HAHAHAHA.
Uni auction!
So after the dryer sections of the market, we're sped off past crazy go-kart vehicles and our shoes and socks getting damper as the morning progresses, we get to the main live fish area.
PETA would have a field day!
WHALE MEAT. ZOMG. I never thought I'd see it other than in cans!
Best grade maguro!
Look at the amount of fat! Mmmm. What awesome otoro this would make.
After hanging around the live tuna auctions, our guides decided to take us to see the middlemen shops and how they process the tuna.
This guy apparently is an instituition by himself. He's that good. Watching him slice
I love this photo because of the expression on his face. It's pure concentration.
Another family-fun shop. The daughter is like totally cool and she runs around with all these hulking bald men. XD()
Do not get on the wrong side of these guys.
Finally at around 6 or 7am, I can't remember because the sun started to rise at around 5am, the group disbands and the guides recommend us a place to eat breakfast.
We ate here!
MY GOD. IT WAS. FUCKING. ORGASMIC. I blew 3,600 yen on breakfast but who gives a fucking damn? The best sushi ever. I stuffed my face full of the 10 'course' breakfast and ate my fill of uni, fish brains, otoro and the usual tuna slices and ahhhhhhhhh. I was stuffed. It was good. Really good. Normally I stay away from fish because of my inherent fear of choking on fish bones - that's why sushi does so much for me. BONELESS FISH IS LOVE. Though fish brains were slightly er, disturbing to eat. It was weird to try and stuff the whole thing in my mouth because I have a terribly small mouth. So while the guys were happily chucking piece after piece, my mouth was totally full of rice and fish and I was trying to chew. The wasabi was kickass!! Real grated wasabi root, not that processed kind. I made a mistake of stuffing a whole piece of sushi into my mouth and then biting hard and wwwwwwwwtffffff a whole burst of unbearable tangy spiciness made me tear immediately. Chilli padi ain't got nothing on real wasabi.
Stuffed and full, we ambled out of the restaurant very satiated and our wallets much emptier. It was only around 7am but the sun was shining as though it was in the middle in the afternoon. Spring time weather kind of throws me off a little. Early sunrises and sunsets, the day ends at 6pm and begins at 5am. Talk about crazy weather. (Actually, I think this sort of phenomenon shouldn't be classified under 'weather', but my vocabulary has shrunk to the size of a peanut so--)
We decided against exploring the rest of Tsukiji because the lack of sleep from the previous night nearly killed us when the go-kart-things went zipping past us. We took the subway back to Asakusa and upon reaching the hostel, I collapsed into bed. I had around 3 hours to sleep before I had to wake up at 11am to check out of the twin room and into my dorm bed.
Since it was already around 3pm by the time we were all ready and downstairs, we decided to hit Akihabara first before meeting my US friend Hans for dinner. I had a mess of a time earlier that morning (while passing the time to go to Tsukiji) trying to arrange a time and venue to meet up because I quote, I'm "painfully indecisive". XD More examples of my indecisiveness later. So anyway, we take the subway (Tsukuba Express roxxorz my soxxorz) down/up to Akiba and it's around 4pm now. It's a Saturday so the streets are crammed full of people trying to push their way through. We take a new exit out of the station and end up at a rather large clearing of sorts. And we're greeted with this.
DUDES, ITS LIKE AN OKAMA PARTY. I started spazzing out in my head going "OKAMA PAPA" over and over again. And the hilarious thing was that they were singing a song about Okama. It was thigh-slappingly funny but too bad only I understood the lyrics.
We walked past a French Bakery (Vie De France) where we spied, in its halogen lighted glory, trays of curry pan and other pastries. We walk around and find some more performing groups which include a few cosplayers dancing the Hare Hare Yukai and for one brief moment in my life I wish I actualy bothered to remember the steps to the dance.
It's steadily growing darker and by the time we circle around Yodobashi and reach it's other entrance, we quickly finish our food and then head inside.
Yodobashi-Akiba. Multi-storied electronic goodness. Seriously, they had row after row of gashapon machines and I grabbed a Bowser Jr water-game and a Shinji Evangelion voice thingy from them. We wandered around the toys/figua level for quite sometime, Ian was looking for his Matsumoto figure. We hung around the pasocon level a while and gapped at the 100s of mice models available and laptop cases and everything. "We're coming back here" we decided.
By now it's already around 5:30pm and we're suppose to meet Hans at 6pm at Ueno. So we leave Yodobashi with me having bought Beck and Last Exile trading figures
In any case, Hans arrives soon enough and there's a lot of weird introductions going on. 'slike "Oh hello I've known you since ages ago and this is the first time we meet so HI" kind of introductions. Awkward, but funny.
Hans brings us to a depato which has a place that has the most awesome cake buffet I've been to (not that I've been to any... >_>).
YES! ANYWAY! DINNER WAS AWESOMEEEEEEE. We had to queue for a while outside of the restaurant for while because everyone else wanted a piece of the cake buffet action. Ian went off into the Tower Records next door to see if he could get a DVD for one of his friends back in Singapore. And again smalltalk. Seriously I am very bad at socialising and talking to people. !!!!
In retrospect, I think we totally abused Hans' knowledge of good eating places those two days. XD()() It was like a "MOAR FOOD" kind of thing. Anyway, we stuffed ourselves with pasta, and more and more cake in teh restaurant for less than 2000yen. That's a steal right there. I actually had 3 servings? :D() No wonder I came back effing fatter after the trip. It was extremely funny because Ian broke out into a long estatic "OMGGGGGGGGG" when he started eating his cakes? Completely Japan Hour moment. So we eat and talk (and I'm kinda disgusting when I eat and talk XD). We all drink that funky green drink, with the exception of Ian who's obsessed with his lemon CC drink.
At this moment, I direct you to the C C Lemon site. This was the drink my cousin was addicted to. He drank 2 bottles in one morning and then proceeded to buy a 1.5litre bottle for our last dinner in Japan together. It's nuts. He kept on saying "70 lemons!!!" over and over again. I think CCLemon stole his soul.
Seriously though, that restaurant had the best cake I'd eaten in a long time. There was like mini montblanc cakes which sent me into near screaming orgasm because mont blanc cake!! Mont blanc in the form of a cake! I was drooling over the chesnut (chestnut?) cream. I think I had liberal slices of that, along with the strawberry shortcake, fruitcake (mangoooooo!), blueberry cake, chocolate cakes and I don't know what else I scarfed down.
After dinner we walk around and gape at the huge pachinko palour with Evangelion machines and we all continue to talk about really random things. We have totally no idea where to go, so Hans suggests taking a walk in Ueno Park because it looks totally different from what it does in the day.
Seriously, Ueno Park looks eerily beautiful in the night.
It's like something out of a horror film, the way the dim lights make the sakura glow a deathly red. You half expect some Sadako-esque youkai to come crawling out of the boughs of sakura. Seriously, I'm not on crack or something. It was really surreal to walk around at night. Everyone was on those blue-tarps and piss-drunk and yelling and shouting - it was kickass cool. There were all sorts of drunk and crazy people rolling around and under the lighting, it was like some kind of weirdass interpretive dance.
And then the wind started to blow and the sakura petals started to swirl around us. :D Hans got like a petal smack right into his eye! Then I had one smack into my glasses. And Leon got a couple in his eye too. XD Yan Wen had lots caught in his hair. A little weird because he walked around for a while with pink dots in his hair.
We walk around for a while and then it gets late and the lights start turning off so we decide to go get a drink somewhere. Here's where it gets a little vague. I remember fishing out my pink Sakura Hostel map and trying to determine where's a good place to drink because Hans lives in Ueno and we're at Asakusa. We end up wandering around the streets a bit before coming to this quaint English-y pub which to our dismay was totally full. DUDE. Hans brings us to another place which is also filled the the brim with people. Kinda put off by the unluck we were having I was like shoved in the face with the decision of what to do next.
Kids, I am horribly indecisive and I cannot be trusted to make decisions at crucial moments. Its not me to do so. Nuh uh.
Finally we decided that we'd meet for lunch tomorrow at Takeshita-dori. I apologised for being indecisive and we part our separate ways. D: In retrospect, I think I'm a horrible loser-dork.
つづく
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no subject
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