Hi again

[cjsmith]

My hotel room in Shibuya-ku (Tokyo) also has free Internet access, if you know enough to go down to the front desk and snag a cable.

I have now slept on a futon in a room covered with tatami mats and enclosed by rice paper doors. I have eaten things I do not ever want to know the name of. I have probably walked ten cumulative miles inside train stations. I have learned where to go to purchase nonfunctional demo models of cellphones, the gazillion-knob toilet seats, a Walkman the size of a lipstick case, or a dishwasher the size of my purse. I have learned not to answer the phone "Moshi-moshi" unless I am completely prepared to continue the conversation in Japanese. (oops.)

No matter how yummy the picture in the advertisement looks, I am *not* ordering out for octopus and mayonnaise pizza. No. Even if it weren't thirty-six dollars.

Square dancing tomorrow.

(ps: it's 7:50pm.)

Comments

[lkeele.livejournal.com]

A dishwasher HOW BIG? How do you fit the dishes in? And I just don't want to know about the knobs. Or the octopus pizza... ewwwww...

Glad you're experiencing some new things! Good luck with the square dancing!

[cjsmith.livejournal.com]

Well, the size of a BIG purse. It held about four bowls and a pair of chopsticks.

Octopus is very popular here. I haven't gone a day without seeing a place to buy octopus balls -- doughy spheres with chunks of octopus baked in. I wish I could get them with nothing baked in, because the dough looks good!

[cyan-blue.livejournal.com]

Have a wonderful time!

[cjsmith.livejournal.com]

Thanks -- it's been great so far, despite the Cough Of Doom. 3am your time, eh? I hope you can get some rest!

[lkeele.livejournal.com]

Cooool... I want one!

I love octopus sushi, actually. But pizza??? Ewwwww....

[rampling.livejournal.com]

Great to hear you've got internet access again, and sound like you're having fun. Wow, $36 for a pizza! Horrors! Though I know I couldn't personally handle such a seriously amazing pizza as octopus and mayonnaise pizza -- that'd completely intimidate me.

Hope things keep going well!

[anisoptera.livejournal.com]

I'm sorry, I have totally forgotten why you are in Japan and how long you will be there. Do you mind enlightening me? I love reading first hand travel accounts.

If it was the saffron & garlic mayo that is often served with calamari (deep fried octopus) I might try the pizza. Not raw octopus though.

[hitchhiker.livejournal.com]

I'd eat octopus pizza, especially if it were the thin crust, cheeseless variety. But the idea of mayonnaise on a pizza totally squicked me.

[datagoddess.livejournal.com]

octopus balls

I didn't realize that octopii had balls.....

[just-cyd.livejournal.com]

wow! what an amazing experience you're having!

how are you feeling? still coughing and yucky? are you getting enough rest to let your body heal and your brain recover from the daily onslaught of new information?

[/mother hen]

glad you're able to report in ~ i love hearing about your travels.

[brian1789.livejournal.com]

Shibuya, eh? Home of vast shopping and hordes of painfully-trend-conscious tennagers, as I recall... I wouldn't mind importing one of the bidet/toilets, except they cost $1K over here.

[ericainohio.livejournal.com]

You are so incredibly cool. :-) Tell us more! I am fascinated - I get to travel vicariously.

Take care of that cough!

Octopus balls. *giggle* She said balls.

[branwynelf.livejournal.com]

I laughed a lot. I read this to Steve, he laughed too. :)

Glad you're having fun and experiencing so much that's new! Can't wait to here more ...

[kitiara.livejournal.com]

octopus and mayonnaise pizza

And Darling John thinks my banana-and-mayo *sandwiches* are bad. Yech.

[abz6598.livejournal.com]

I hear Japanese men have a thing for American blondes. Any experiences or encounters yet to bear this out? Gropings in elevators, etc, etc?

[oddhack.livejournal.com]

When I was a military brat in Tokyo in the late 60s, many Japanese people seemed to find my (at the time) very light blond hair fascinating. No gropings though :-) But I did at one point find myself dressed up in a sumo breechclout and in the ring with a real sumo wrestler - at about age 6. I have no recollection of what this was all about - lots of little kids involved - but I do remember it because it was among the most terrifying experiences of my childhood :-)

[lkeele.livejournal.com]

Yeah, that's just not right.

(That said, I have had a beautiful spinach pizza with white sauce instead of tomato sauce...)

[lkeele.livejournal.com]

Ewwwwwwww....

[cjsmith.livejournal.com]

If the streetside vendors here are any indication, more octopi have given up their chances at progeny than actually exist.

[cjsmith.livejournal.com]

Yeah, the mayo seems to be a selling point here. They draw a cute little picture of a flask and write MAYONAAZU in katakana on it, just in case you missed part of the description.

[cjsmith.livejournal.com]

Well, that'd be the large. The cheapest pizza is a small tomato/cheese/basil for $12.50. By the way, this is Domino's. I had no idea anyone in any position in any Domino's anywhere would know what to do with chunks of seafood. The intimidation factor for me is the fact that seafood makes me hork. :-)

Things are going great! I'm in serious danger of buying a digital camera.

[cjsmith.livejournal.com]

Square dance calling, of course! ;-) Did a little bit of that yesterday (er, Monday) and will start in earnest Friday afternoon. We've seen lots of castles and temples, deer that chase down tourists for bits of cracker, Hiroshima, and some mindwarping snippets of Tokyo. We return to the States this coming Monday afternoon (arriving Monday morning).

Octopus would probably be rejected by my body, so I wouldn't try that either. But I have had a Japanese pizza made in an okinomi-yagi restaurant. It was a great theatrical experience watching the pizza get cooked on my table, and it tasted wonderful too!

[cjsmith.livejournal.com]

I'm still coughing in huge red-faced eye-watering fits. I have noticed the weirdest thing lately: I have bruises all over me for no reason at all. Well, no reason I can remember, anyway! I'm actually starting to wonder if my coughing is bursting blood vessels somewhere. It doesn't make much sense -- why would my left leg have the most of it? -- but no other explanation makes any sense either...

But really I feel much better than I did a week ago. I have some of my normal energy level back, and twice in the past four days I've slept through the night. This is a WIN. I'm enjoying the trip a lot more now. :-)

[cjsmith.livejournal.com]

There's vast shopping all through Tokyo, yeah. I think I'm not even going to set foot in the Ginza area. Akihabara was dangerous enough!

Wow, $1K? Yikes. Just for the seat and conversion, or for a whole porcelain unit? I just wandered through my photos from two days ago and just the seats are in the $300-400 range. But maybe *all* the plumbing is expected to exist already.

[cjsmith.livejournal.com]

Today's adventure was walking from Ueno Park (where everything was closed, oops) to Asakusa, a bustling shopping arcade. Halfway there we found, completely by accident, Restaurant Supply Street. We saw the little plastic models of food shown in every single restaurant window, we saw chopsticks by the gross, chairs, display cabinets, octopus ball fryers, tea whisks... everything. I bought a pizza, plastic of course, cut into a jigsaw puzzle. :-)

Balls. Balls. Ballsballsballs heehee!

[cjsmith.livejournal.com]

I bought a plastic pizza today. We found the street where all restaurant supplies can be had... including the plastic models of food shown in all the restaurants' windows! :-)

[cjsmith.livejournal.com]

Heh. I have a GREAT picture of some stuff people were eating at a party last night. It still had the suckers on it.

[cjsmith.livejournal.com]

I think I'm too old for them. And way too tall.

[cjsmith.livejournal.com]

I probably would have had a heart attack right there!

A square dance caller friend of ours, a blond-haired man probably about six feet tall, was approached on one of his trips to Japan by a gaggle of schoolkids who told him to "act smo". After a little confusion he realized they wanted him to pretend to be a sumo wrestler. I'm not sure I get it...

[anisoptera.livejournal.com]

*palmforehead*

I did not realize that the square dance calling prep and the learning Japanese were connected. Silly me. Why wouldn't people like square dance in Japan? (;

[ericainohio.livejournal.com]

Not to be confused with gross chopsticks, of course.

The little plastic models of food would attract me no matter what country I was in. Heh.

You haven't lived until you own a plastic pizza cut into a jigsaw. LOL!

[brian1789.livejournal.com]

I love the Japanese native version of pizza, really more of a pancake... although again, avoiding mayo was a problem for me ;).

[brian1789.livejournal.com]

Akihabara? Heh. Explains the temptation to buy stuff... I got my tiny Casio Exlim there, 6 months before they turned up at Fry's. Although the weak dollar can't be helpful.

[brian1789.livejournal.com]

And $1K was for a whole unit... the seats here are typically $600-700.

[cjsmith.livejournal.com]

Yes, the weak dollar is definitely a painful part of this trip.

[cjsmith.livejournal.com]

I loved that too. I hope I can have another. Mine didn't have mayo; I just had to avoid the shrimp.

[cjsmith.livejournal.com]

The folks who get into it here *really* get into it. They wear the costumes a lot more readily than I will :-)

[anisoptera.livejournal.com]

My grandparents were into square dancing and I remember my grandmother's dresses.

[rampling.livejournal.com]

Domino's? Wow, scary. I once had some pizza here with a few miniature shrimp added to an amazing variety of stuff on the thins -- and it was quite yummy. Personally I like much seafood (especially scallops -- YUM!), but can't handle things like clams and oysters -- and octopus!

Hey, a digicam direct from Japan would be way cool!

[cjsmith.livejournal.com]

It sure would, especially if the case had all the labels in Japanese. That'd be a great souvenir! :-)