Fun bits

[cjsmith]

It's weird when I go on a fairly brief trip and after I get home I start *missing* stuff.

I want to wander into someplace and hear someone who is paying just about zero attention to me or to anyone else call out nasally, "Irashaimasseeeeeeeeeee."

I want to watch five passengers AND all their luggage for three days fit jovially into a cab and zoom off.

I want mochi. At least that's what my coworker tells me they are called. The bean paste things.

I want to square dance to someone who says "reft arremande".

I want to get kissed on the head by a dragon.

I want to ride a subway with two full-color flat-screen displays over each door, one running ads and one spelling out the station name three different ways and diagramming how many minutes to the following stations and showing a picture of exactly which cars, in this next station, will pull up next to stairways.

I want prewarmed moist hand towels presented to me before each meal.

I want to watch a couple of friends greet each other, having a brief but animated conversation while bobbing up and down between about thirty and forty-five degrees off the vertical -- never once standing all the way up -- looking happy as clams.

I want to coax a semi-wild cat into letting me scritch him.

Ah, travel. Sometimes I recognize just a few more of the good bits after I've returned home.

Comments

[rampling.livejournal.com]

Sounds like great fun stuff from your trip. Cool!

I have a Mitsuwa Marketplace near my place, and I definitely enjoy going there too. Not a huge mochi fan, myself, but they have the best green tea ice cream! And *fresh* ramen!

Did you get to go to any ramen places in Japan? That'd be my dream.

[cjsmith.livejournal.com]

Oh man, the one thing I tried and couldn't handle was green tea ice cream. I like green tea. I even like the formal tea ceremony tea (though I didn't get to participate in a full ceremony, I did get some of that type of tea). But the ice cream? Yi.

Maybe I tried too strong a flavor. (Haagen-Dazs, I think.) The little soft-serve cones might have been a better first attempt.

I went to a few noodle places, and I guess I got some stuff like ramen. Sometimes I chose the thicker "soba" noodles. This kind of food was not common for me, though, because it's REALLY @#$!ING HARD to get it without seafood.