Scavenger Hunt

9/19/05
On Monday morning we all met at the campus and were split into groups and turned loose on the city. It was a bit intimidating at first, but I suppose it was a great way to see a bunch of stuff, get to know a few classmates, and get used to using the subway system. We had a really good time, thanks to the people in our group all being rather cool and laid back. Some groups did not gel so well, and I doubt had as much fun.

I got some really cool pictures of the city that day, and it was actually one of the last days I took my camera out with me. It was SO HOT, we were all sweating to death, especially with all 5 of us crammed into a purikura (photo booth) for the obligatory group picture. I think we did a lot more walking than we needed to, but we saw a lot more like that than we would have if we'd spent the entire day on the subway.

By the end of the day, we had hit a huge list of sites: Yasukuni Shrine, the Budokan, Tokyo Dome, Akihabara (Electric Town), the seedy open-air market at Ueno, Tokyo Central Station, the Imperial Palace gardens, Tokyo Tower, Shibuya, Spain-zaka (don't ask me what the hell that was...) and Harajuku. We didn't make it to everything on the list, but we did get to have lunch and beers at an itzakaya in an alley under the train tracks near Ueno. I have to say, that was the most fun of the day. After meeting back up with the big group back at campus at the end of the day, a few of us ended up going back to that same neighborhood to have a couple more beers. I guess the owner of the place liked us, because he sat in the far corner of what little bit of pavement in front of the counter was staked out for seating and kept sending little sampler plates of delicious stuff over to our table. None of us were quite sure of the etiquette required in that kind of situation, but the guy seemed full of smiles, so I guess we didn't screw up that bad!

I left a bit before 6 to make it home in time for dinner. I was quickly catching on that Okaasan is an excellent cook, and I didn't want to miss whatever she had in store for me. I had been nervous that I might find some stuff unpalatable, but I've been thrilled with almost everything she's put in front of me, and even eaten things I never would have dreamed of trying. For instance: little soy-pickled dried baby fishes, about 2 cm long - they taste like fish jerky. Or, even tinier little white wisps of fishes, too small to have features except black dots for eyes. These were served with breakfast. Mmmm. Tonight, I ate squid sashimi. I've also eaten some really tasty small grilled sakana (fish) cooked whole - you even eat the bones! There are only a few things I've had to pass on. One was the aloe-flavored yogurt. (Ech.) Another was the surprising way the sukiyaki was served the other night. Sukiyaki is a flame burner on the table over which a pot sits and cooks a whole mess of yummy stuff like shaved beef, mushrooms, greens, onions, etc. This part - delicious! But along side, you are given a raw egg to scramble a bit in a little bowl, and you are supposed to pick bits out of the pot and swirl them in your raw egg to cool them before chowing down. No thank you! I felt guilty, but I just couldn't do it. I've been trying hard to push the boundaries of how I can stand an egg, because they just don't care to cook them very much here, omelets or otherwise, and I've been forcing myself to eat even the runniest of egg dishes, but just plain raw, I could not do. I was relieved that Otoosan seemed to have a little joke on me, when he said something to the effect that Americans couldn't eat egg sashimi and giggled. But overall, the food has been one of my favorite parts of this whole experience so far, so I'm sure I'll have more to tell later!