Day 1: Scott Stubbornly/Accidentally Starves Oi, I'm tired. But ... I really should write this down now. When I arrived at my hotel last night, I was too tired and grubby-feeling from the flight to bother going out and getting any kind of real or imaginary food. So I had a Clif Bar instead. First time I'd had one. Chocolate brownie. Not a Pop Tart, but pretty good. Breakfast is included with the hotel accomodations. I wandered down at about 9:50, 10 minutes before they close. It wasn't until after I got there that I wondered if they were Swedish: all customers are supposed to be outta there by closing time. Too late to worry. I was the only person there. Breakfast was: a cup of coffee, a hard-boiled egg, two slices of Texas toast, and a spot of strawberry jam. I cannot remember the last time that I had Texas toast. (Not counting underneath BBQ.) It makes me wonder what they serve their Japanese guests. My odds of learning enough Japanese to be able to ask is pretty low. I don't have a phrasebook. Oops. I'd thought there would be some kind of language reference & travel cheat sheet in the "Japan Solo" book that Rob Atendido was kind to lend. Nada. ... Oops, wrong language. Ka Yan Lee was kind enough to meet me down in the lobby at 11am. The Hitachi data center (the SSC, if I ever use that acronym) is only three subway stops away from here: Monzen-Nakacho to Minami-sunamachi. Across the street from the SSC is a "Lawson" convenience store. Ka Yan offered, but I didn't go in. I figured it was good enough to know, for now, where it was. Silly me. Ka Yan packed his lunch. And I think he assumed that I would go over to the Lawson when I got hungry. But it wasn't (and still isn't) clear if I can leave the building and re-enter without him accompanying me. At 2pm or so, I ate the other Clif Bar that I'd smuggled into the country from the Sola Squeeze at MSP. Somehow, I didn't pass out. I'm not quite certain why. Breakfast wasn't what I'd call filling, and neither was lunch. Oh well. Around 6:30, Ka Yan asks if I'm interested in grabbing a snack. Oh yes. Oh yes. We leave the building without formally checking out. (Still need to find out if I can do that alone.) The Lawson refrigerator cases are a trove of quite difficult to read labels. Most have Kanji, not many have photos or drawings of any sort. Ka Yan translates. I grab a couple of things that he'd grabbed: triangle rice & seaweed things. The same ones he'd grabbed for himself. But his descriptions sounded the tastiest. Really. Canned coffee has apparently stormed the country in the last five or so years. About 1/3 of a fridge case is full of coffee. Another solid 1/3 is iced tea, mostly green. The last is fruit juice & water. There's more fruit juice & other things in cartons in another case, but it seems wise to use bottles with refastenable caps on them. Spilling on the cramped work tables would probably not win any brownie points. The packaging on the nori (seaweed) triangle things is pretty damn cool. Many Japanese, according to Ka Yan (who isn't), don't like it when the nori gets soggy because of the water in the rice filling. So opening these things is a 3 step process: unpeel a band around the middle (with a stringy thing like a pack of Wrigley's gum), then pull off the two sides. When pulling off each side, you can see that there are plastic flaps attached that run inside the bundle: between the nori outside and the rice filling. Poof! Crispy nori. I have to admit, the texture of the really crunchy, dry nori was pretty good. The part of the filling were: salty cooked salmon and salty+peppery fish eggs. Ka Yan said the latter was "really spicy". I'd put it at a Pace picante "medium". But combined with the fish eggs and some salt, it was really good. Or I was starving and would've eaten linoleum. The green tea was pretty good. Completely unsweetened. I'll try a few other brands to see what's what. Bad to work at the SSC. I didn't get home until 10:45. I managed to avoid wussing out and buying snacky stuff in a convenience store. Instead, I managed to order something at Yoshinoya. I get the feeling it's probably a chain. But it's just across the street from the hotel. There wasn't anyone else in there, and I'd decided that I was pretty hungry. The photo of the bowl of stuff with curry sauce on top didn't hurt. The lady taking my order didn't know any English. I ordered with my finger. She asked which size. Shazam! Nearly the only Japanese that I remember came to the rescue. Summer camp, after 5th grade (I think), I went to summer camp down near Mankato. One of the counsellors was Japanese and had taught us all how to count to 20. He didn't teach us what zero is, but the "2" and "9" in the 290 yen-sized bowl was sufficient. Another point at some little salad bowl with what looked like slivers of crab on top looked good. It was. Both of them, actually. The salad was basically shredded green cabbage with some small cucumber slices, topped with slivers of crab and just a little bit of sauce stuff. Americans would've put vinegar & cream in there to make it cole slaw, but I don't think the sour would go well with the crab. The curry was very tasty. I don't know what kind of meat bits were in it, but the curry sauce was much like the S&B curry sauce that I buy back home every now & then. On top of the rice was a thin layer of pickled cabbage. Nicely crunchy, only slightly sour, and nice texture-wise and taste-wise contrast to the smooth curry. Now that I won't faint, and now that I've finished Day 1, it's time for bed. Hope all is well in your corner of the world.