28-08-2012 Baking hot in Tokyo
It's 7am and this is the moment of the day when I feel the most alive and well. For some reason no matter what time I get to bed I seem to wake up at 6 here feeling refreshed in the relative cool of the morning. Then we wander down to the trendy coffee store eventually and have morning tears, including something like Japanese breakfast bagels, and somehow when we walk back in the slowly rushing heat I start to feel awful tired and sleepy again.
The first thing I did upon arrival in Japan was go to the ladies - and the view if the complicated switchboard with all the buttons brought back reminders of my first time in Japan with school and trying to work out the buttons with Rhianna. Lots of nostalgia. I managed to eventually work out how to get out the correct exit from the metro and found Richard there waiting (he'd been waiting for hours as my phone didn't work on arrival, such a sweetie). Had my first introduction to the cool trendy coffee place and then fell into one of those deep slumber naps that you claw yourself out of with difficulty.
Met up with Mum and Nat and we all went to see the Lion King Musical together, which was extremely awesome. The costumes, the sets, the music.... It was also somehow subtly Japanese in costumes and acting :) so apart from bring told off for leaning forward it was an awesome evening. But longer than expected, so poor Richard had been once again waiting patiently for me to come home for dinner. We ended up going out just the two of us to a fancy little place he'd spotted. I could read the headings if the menu but not the dishes so we had a bit of fun trying to discuss with the waiter. Luckily he found a translation from somewhere and we discovered we were in a seafood restaurant. This was confirmed when he passed a note saying 'I can eat anything raw' which Richard sad yes to and I said no - so my scallop amuse bouche was cooked :p Richard had mussels and pipi teppenyaki and I had the frankfurter one. It certainly was weird to get a German sausage on a teppenyaki plate, with a rib bone inserted at one end. But the evening was fun :) I tried to leave a tip but Richard quickly pointed out it wasn't the done thing.
Having exhausted the options I was willing to try at that place, but still bring a little hungry, we went to the local tapas bar. Again thus was a trendy local place with a mix of genres and tastes. Before getting in we had a stand-up drink (I had white wine cocktail which turned out to be white whine, soda and pineapple hunks). It was fun to watch tge tong and trendy with their Chandon charonnay bortles. Our waiter eventually negotiated a table for us is we had fun trying random things - fried chicken that looked like giant popcorn, Sechuan style cold tofu and fried coriander bread ;)
Next morning Richard had an early start so we had to break his morning routine as the coffee shop wasn't yet open. We found a youth hostel doing terrible coffee and white bread toast :p I discussed on the spicy breakfast soup. He went for his field trip and I had my predictable morning collapse, waking up to meet Mum and Nat. We had some time to kill before our next musical - the Phantom of the Opera - so we went shopping. We Mum and Nat went shopping and I wandered behind them feeling weak and tired he sitting down when possible - not much of a travel companion at the moment :( Mum found Nat the most awesome attachment for her bag to hold the subway card in an easily accessible manner. No luck n the umbrella or pillow front however. I was pretty hungry so we stopped for 'Tokyo Underground Ramen' which serves the noodles separate to the soup. Very tasty and pepped me up ready for the subway ride across town.
The theatre wasn't so easy to find - Nat had to ask many a person to find it. But we got in, sourced some liquid for a parched Kathy, and entered with 5 minutes to spare - only we'd got the time wrong! Occupational hazard of having lots of musicals booked? The others all start at half past... Luckily we arrived just in time for her to sing in the place f the star si we didn't miss much phantom action. The seats, as before, we're super-awesome :) Good for seeing plummeting chandeliers, phantoms of the roof bd other such larks.
After the show we had afternoon tea, including special phantom cake, in a Belgium beer place. Sad Richard wasn't there. We went back to or hotel rooms and I had the intention of writing in bootlog but instead slept again. Richard got stuck in an endless traffic jam s we ended up eating without him. I was demanding gyoza so Mum and Nat took me to a Chinese place they'd discovered. We had delicious dumplings and two dishes : yummy eggplant n veggies and stir fried liver with beans....
The bar across the road from the coffee place has display windows, one of which has a towering burger stack that looks absolutely dreadful. The other gas what looked to be loaves of bread with ice cream on too. Intrigued I felt we had to have dessert there. So while Richard caught up on dinner, we were eating 'Honey toast! - no it was not pudding or flan in e shape of a loaf of breads it really was toasted bread! Quite nice although I wouldn't order it again, kudos to Nat for talking me into getting the strawberry shortcake one and for helping me eat the ridiculous quantity of carbs.
Yesterday I had planned to take us to an Onsen in the mountains in Gunma, the prefecture where I was an exchange student all those years ago. I thought we might want to get out of the city and I have found memories of the culture of onsens :) but I hadn't counted on the August heat - going to a place full of steaming hot water understandably didn't appeal. Nor did our back up plan of a zoo. In the end we walked around a shopping district, which still feels more human sized and less crowded than say Sydney without talking if places like Hong Kong. Mum found some English boos and we retreated to a 'Boston cafe' for iced drinks. Mine had rather too much actual ice ;) luckily it had Internet, so I could google the cinemas if Tokyo to find one playing an English movie with subs that we were willing to watch - Brave.
Having found the cinema we looked for a lunch place, even venturing out to the wrong side of the tracks ;) we ended up in a real Japanese dive of a place with set menus - I got gyoza, rice, miso soup (with chicken, egg and potato) and liver with bean sprouts *sigh* need to learn the kanji for that to stop ordering it! But on the whole good food followed by good move with rather more in it about bears than I expected. In the spirit of eating weird and wonderful foods we ordered crepe ice cream sticks. They were novel but not particularly delicious - give me a choc top any day. We went for a wander in the park afterwards which was lovely but I was dead on my feet again. We went back to th hotel afterwards and I decided it might be best for everyone to get an early night's sleep si au grabbed a 7/11 bento to stop from waking up hungry. I'd probably live off that kind of thing if I lived here - curry rice, so delicious.
The early night's sleep was only broken by Richard coming home from his conference dinner, which apparently didn't have so much dinner as sweet wine and beer and geishas ;) his talk went well and I'm glad he has that stress off his mind. Now I'm waiting to wake him!
