Live it up! Japan
February 3, 2008
The food poisoning I got in Seattle (cousins David and Tanya had to drive me home from the hospital Monday night) made an eleven-hour flight into the future nauseating. I took the subway 1.5 hours to school to pick up my house key, since John had been doing laundry in my apartment, and thought my wrists were dislocated after dragging the tiny carry-on luggage over Tokyo's diversely-textured roads and sidewalks for three hours. The highlight of the return trip was a heavenly bowl of vending machine udon for JPY 260, between school and the apartment. Amazing.
After 12 hours of sleep, I headed to school with Christine and attended my favorite class, international contract drafting taught by Andre Agassi. Not sure why I am going to classes still, but I'm sure that urge will go away as I continue to pack my things. Christine was set on going salsa dancing after class (around 9PM). The two of us turned into twelve, setting out towards Roppongi for dinner, salsa, and celebrating my return and commemorating my plan to depart.
With the guidance of ten peers, this yakitori experience was a major success. Aside from the "risotto" that was actually rice and egg drop soup, even Christine had a positive dining experience. I even had some horse sashimi! It is unbelievably tender and tasty. Sorry, horse lovers - Mr. Ed is delectable, even raw. Other than that exciting morsel, my dinner of tofu and eggplant on a stick seemed pretty boring compared to the raw egg shooters and pig forehead on the table.
I got quick salsa lessons from Christine on the dance floor, then she was whisked away by some light-footed men. An older man who reminded me of Dad asked me to dance - he was very polite, appropriate, and a good lead for three songs (until Christine needed to be rescued from her suddenly-frisky partners).
We caught up with the rest of the group at Club Feria next door, danced through the two free drinks to terrible techno, and went to a bar called Gas Panic. This place was full of craziness. There was bad techno music, European guys loving it, interesting Japanese girls, and even a famous sumo wrestler. Dancing on the bar was a popular pass time, and water cost JPY 500. Somehow we danced until 5AM.
By then, the next destination was obvious - Tsukiji Fish Market (pronounced skeejee). Since the best time to go to Tsukiji is around 4:30AM and the trains only begin to run at 5AM, the fish market is a great place to go when you've managed to stay out late enough for the first trains. Since we had talked about it for weeks, our sweaty, smoky, sleepy crew hobbled to the market.
We saw the day's first fish auctions, the first shipments of humongous fish, captured, cleaned, labeled for sale, and frozen for transport. Somewhat like the opening of Wall Street . . . somewhat. The place was truly bustling. Men on carts honked and cursed as we stopped to ogle the gargantuan fish corpses, and take photos of the beautiful, fresh seafood. I saw shellfish and fish I had never seen before, neatly lain in crates for bulk sale to restauranteurs. Mainly, though, the warehouse floors covered in fish corpses was the most notable thing in this amazing production that supplies the fish for Tokyo.
The sun rose while we watched the auction, and we had fresh scallop, tuna, and other sashimi for breakfast at a small sushi place owned by a very overwhelming host. He was a morning person, and we were . . . sleepy. I also ordered my favorite, unagi don - eel with rice. The best I've ever had. Evan, Christine, and I split a cab from Tsukiji to Gotanda, and I finally got to bed that night at 8 AM.
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