Day 8: Monday, Aug 30, 2004: A windy night in the big city

Tsurumi-san helped translate the dry cleaner's claim check.  The
Tuesday stuff will not be ready tomorrow at 8am, when I need it.  It
will be ready at 5pm.  Same for the stuff on Wednesday: 5pm.  So, I
can't leave Japan early without leaving behind clothes that I bought
the day before I left for Japan.  Uff da.  A Gemini engineer gave a
bit of consolation: this is Japan, so you could return to the cleaners
6 months from now and pick the stuff up.  Well ... good to know, neh?

I left the camera in the hotel room today, connected to the charger.
Sorry, only one photo from today, and that was from a camera phone:
one of the plates from dinner this evening.  If you use your
imagination, you can see a big platter with shaved ice.  On top of the
ice is tuna and snapper (I think) and a scallop shell with scallops on
top and another big shell with a couple of cooked shrimp.  The shrimp
have their heads still on (complete with eyes!), so they look pretty
fierce.  Until someone grabs one with chopsticks.

The yellow flowers on the platter are chryanthemums.  Yes, they're
edible.  (I'm in Japan: just about anything on the plate is fair
game.)  They taste about halfway between horseradish and mint.  Half
the guys at the table said that they wouldn't eat them.  At least in a
couple of things, I'm out-eating Japanese.  I take this as a good
sign.

I've encountered a food here that I don't like: liver.  As far as
anyone knows, it's cow liver.  (Cooked.)  I would try the natto again
(fermented soybean & fish & sprouts & stuff), but I'll pass on the
liver.

There was a fried sea fish that came pretty close to the whole
combination of white, flakey flesh, not-too-oily, and flavor of
walleye.  I'll have to ask again about its name.  It was dipped on the
flesh side in a very light crumb and pan/wok fried to be very crispy
on the outside (including the skin side).

This restaurant was a short walk from the Shibuya station.  "Station"
isn't quite the right word.  It's actually a few stations, loosely
connected by hallways and skyways.  (I haven't been to Otemachi yet,
the monstrous subway station downtown.)  The restaurant was a more
formal Japanese: low tables with pillows.  No shoes.

Apparently it's traditional to have a dish with rice or noodles as the
last dish of the meal.  Our table had eel on rice in a bowl.  You then
pour green tea into the bowl, perhaps just a couple of ounces.  I
never would have thought of that combination.  But it's a very good
thing.

I also recommend salty eel: fried crispy, and served with salt
crystals on the side.  ... Today was eel day, because I'd had eel for
lunch with Tsurumi-san.  He found a place next to the Monzen-nakacho
station that said they had only 30 plates of eel for the lunch
special.  Yum!  We each had four long strips of eel on rice, with a
slightly sweet brown sauce.  (It's pretty easy to find eel sushi
in Minnesota prepared with this sauce ...  even if it isn't *quite* as
good.)

So, by now you're probably thinking that I have a food obsession.
Guilty as charged.  I plead the "if you don't eat, you die" defense.

When we walked out the the restaurant, we were hit by a solid 25-30
mile/hour wind.  Typhoon Chaba is just a couple hundred miles away.
It hasn't caused much rain today (unlike yesterday, Sunday, when I got
soaked during my lunchtime walk).  But it is quite windy.  I can hear
the wind howling around the hotel tower.  Chaba is forecasted to stay
pretty far away from Tokyo.

Well, the rain just started about a minute ago.  Not the light, almost
mist kind of rain.  These are pretty serious raindrops.  I don't know
how long the rain will last, but I hope it doesn't interfere much with
sleep.  I have to wake up early for meetings with the Gemini KK office
in seven hours.