NaPoWriMo Day 1

I thought I’d write about one of my favorite things for the first day of National Poetry Writing Month. FOOD. So here. YES. FOOD.

Food

When did it all get so trite?

And predictable and dumb?

Basic sustenance exaggerated

into gluttony.

Or worse: fetish

#WholeFoods

All these damn food pics!

As if you need

to elevate the experience of digestion.

Isn’t the miracle

the food itself?

The feast before you fit for consumption,

give thanks!

Do not summon my a-salivating

all over my computer screen.

Losing my appetite

over vicarious hunger games.

“Someone threw a snow cone on my windshield! I thought I crashed into a rainbow!” LOLOL a line from Bob’s Burgers Also a flashback pic of getting food with my bfffffff

***No T no shade to all my friends who post food pics. KEEP THEM COMING. I love em. I just love to hate em too sometimes. Cuz I’m always hungry.***

Sayonara, Japan!

Hello! I meant to put this post up right before I left Japan, but since I am a poor packer and was packing til the last minute, I forgot to do it! I’m already home, but here is the post!

homecoming! just before landing =)

This trip to Japan changed my life! I cannot believe that I initially did not want to come here. There were some personal reasons and there was also my inner perfectionist’s perpetual fear-mongering: what if I fail and I don’t do it right? What if that’s not what I’m supposed to do? The what if-ing was exhausting to sustain and would have paralyzed me for who knows how long. It was not the kind of life I wanted to have after graduation. Not a life driven by fear.

So I moved here! And when I decided to keep a blog, I thought of why I wanted to write. I didn’t know who was going to read it.

“Writing is…that oddest of anomalies:
an intimate letter to a stranger.” — Pico Iyer.

So whoever you are reading this, friends, family, strangers, thank you so much for reading! This trip has been such an adventure and I enjoyed writing and sharing pictures. In a way, I feel like I was writing to another stranger — an alienated part of myself. In my fearful habits, I kind of neglected spontaneity, joy, and bliss…all things I believe are in our true nature. To be kind of cheesy, I’m not a stranger to myself anymore! Each blog post served as a kind of a reminder to myself of what happens when I just LIVE. I don’t need a screen of fear to allow only certain parts of life to soak in, I can be open to ALL of it. And look at what happens when I do! (The following pics and explanations are things that could have easily been separate blog posts on their own, but here they are altogether =).

There were so many times where I was just in the right place at the right time.

like the time my friend was like, "Oh hey I have an extra ticket to an Eric Clapton concert, wanna come?" SURE! sold out at the budoukan.

And what are the chances of this: once on Japanese TV, they were having a special on how Uniqlo is taking over the world. I caught the part of the footage that showed one of my best friends from NY at her job in Uniqlo in NY! AHHHHHHH! Right place, right time!

and oh hey wanna go to an awesome digeridoo concert?...for the concert, we had to take off our shoes! i loved the ceiling...very beautiful listening experience. i got a cd!

digeridoos!

If I just trusted myself, I would end up where I wanted to be. Like the time my friends took me to their friend’s — Keiichi Baba–‘s art show. It was in an old gallery studio building in the backalleys of Ginza. We supported his friend and took part in the interactive parts of his art showing…we became a part of his art! It was so creative and I loved it. There were other artists with their own little exhibition rooms that we didn’t have time to see (we were headed to the digeridoo concert afterward) and I wanted to go back! There were lots of cool antique stores in the building too. I found my way back the following day ALL BY MYSELF. And I went back at night, when all my visual points of reference were kind of distorted. I was so proud of myself for finding it again, and had so much fun enjoying the other art works!

cool piece by keiichi baba

Living here I learned that you can live with joy every day. I finally realized that there are so many forces beyond my control, forces that are so vast and mysterious. I stopped trying to untie its knot of mystery and just LIVED in it to let life live through me. Previously, life would just kind of happen to me, and I’d take furious mental notes, judge, and analyze every perception or what I thought I perceived over and over again to create a narrative that would ultimately make myself miserable. Classic over-thinker. I just thought it was a characteristic of the human condition. I would classify events as good or bad, big or small, important or useless. But there is only life! Its moments are never too big or too small because life is constantly shifting and growing and changing.

organic farmer's market every saturday. i could walk to it in 7 minutes from my house! i loved meeting the farmers and i loved the cheap prices too lol. like this bunch of gorgeous vegetables were 500 yen...$5-$6...made delicious things

doesn't matter where you're going, but how present you are to enjoy the moment! like on journeys on the subway! unusually empty. usually it's PACKED! once it was so crowded i was standing up and my cheek was smashed against the back of this guy's business suit!

no special occasion, just getting tapas with host mama and friend!

I’ll admit it wasn’t all roses. Sometimes I felt like SUCH a hopeless. monolingual. American. Most human relationships consist of minds interacting with each other through words/language. But for relationships to truly thrive, I think there’s some deeper recognition that needs to go beyond just words. Like how when my parents first met they felt like they knew each other forever. Or how when I went to my best friend’s house for the first time, I was hit with an overwhelming sense of deja vu and comfort even though I had never seen it before. So even though my Japanese was fair at best, I am so grateful that people just liked me for who I was regardless. It was more of a feeling!

Tatoeba–For example. On the Saturday before I left, I had a going-away party. It was hosted by a beautiful lady who is like the queen of Japan (if Japan were ever to have a queen). She is so kind to me and pulled out all the stops for my going-away party. She held it at her house and hired the most famous sushi masters in Japan to make us sushi. WHAAAAAAAAAAAT. I didn’t know they were famous masters…my Japanese teachers, who were just as flabbergasted as I was at the whole event, had to point that out to me: these guys never do house calls. I sat at the head of the table and got served first. I was kind of tearing up and not just because of the divine deliciousness of the sushi.

we started off with this...ahh-maaaaazing.....salmon roe...ikura? i didn't even know what i was eating sometimes but it was ALL SO FRESH. fresh fresh fresh fresh fresh.

i took a bite of this, and was like, "WHOA. WHAT IS THIS? IT'S SO DELICIOUS" it was so melt in your mouth soft and creamy and subtle. and it was you know what? fish foie gras. i can't even. wow. so amazing. and fresh. did i say fresh?

he made everything fresh in front of us, including the wasabi!!! he ground/swirled the wasabi root thing, and the end product looked so freshly whipped! like cream! he had me taste some with my finger for my approval ahhhhh!

round one: can't name all of these but WOW. it was like eating fish gems.

wow wow wow wow. he could just put together the sushi with two light slaps of his hands. scoop out some rice and ~pack!pack!~ the sushi was made, perfectly shaped and balanced...not too much rice, not too much fish, not too much wasabi...AHHHH!

round two: there was some grilled eel i think? and grilled fish? so good. i tried with all my might to finish it all. and i succeeded. YUSSSSSSS.

I think they were saying something like, “Here’s how you could make this on your own at home!” Hahaha. Yes just like a master. I felt so grateful to the hostess and will always remember the experience. I always liked Maya Angelou’s quote, “If you don’t like something, change it. If you can’t change it, change your attitude.” I saw it on a poster in the library when I was very young and really internalized it; it helped me cope with all my allergies and stuff. I still love that quote and would like to add that sometimes there really is nothing to change, like Buddha says, “How wonderful! How wonderful! All things are perfect, exactly as they are.” On that note, it’s so good to be back home with my other `ohana =). Thank you for reading and whether I continue with this blog or not, I hope you enjoyed it! Here are some last Japan OGFSssssss.

on one of my last days i met up with an old college friend! (wow that makes me sound old haha) we went to this hawaiian restaurant and it wasn't "authentic," but it was SO GOOD. kalua pig and rice with an egg on top in a bi bim bap style sizzling black bowl (so it can get all crispy and delicious at the bottom). so amazing.

and then we went out for ice cream! or sorbet in my case =). you could choose up to three flavors and they neatly scoop it for you into a cup. they give you bits of delicious kobu (seaweed) on the side to cleanse your palette...i loved this touch (so japanese!). it brought out so many richnesses of each flavor. guava BAM! orange BAM!

Love, meeee ❤

P.S. WHOA I just published this on WordPress and nowadays every time you publish on wordpress they congratulate you on your __# of posts, and give you a quote about writing to help you keep going…look at which one I got! “My ideas usually come not at my desk writing but in the midst of living.” — Anais Nin — isn’t that crazy!!!! cool. yay. bye.

So College

Hi guys! In less than a month I’ll be leaving Japan and going home. Who knows where the time goes? College already seems like a lifetime ago, and now I am trying my best to enjoy the present instead of lamenting how Japan too will soon become just another memory!

shibuya at night. look at all the people in the dark waiting to cross the street! with all the neon to guide us.

This past week I met up with my old college professor for dinner. We met at Shibuya Station in front of the Hachiko dog statue, the meeting place for hoards of hip students. He could easily pass for a student so I worried I wouldn’t be able to find him. But we did! He’s everyone’s favorite Asian Studies/History professor who’s living in Japan right now (should be a no-brainer for all my college buddies hehe). I was so excited to see him because he wasn’t there last year, and now that I’m a grad, we could toast to ourselves with drinks! A geek to the core, that was very exciting to me. Kanpai! He took me to eat okonomiyaki in the back alleys of Shibuya, also very exciting. Lot of pachinko parlors and dubious little doors (and we went into one of them for dinner! so cool).

It was so good to see him and catch up! Amidst our reminiscing about college and pouring drinks for each other, he asked me what I wanted to DO. WITH. MY. LIFE. I gave myself a long, dramatic, self-indulgent pause. Which, as my professor pointed out, was pretty much an answer in itself. Oh geez. All that fancy liberal arts education to arrive at the same uncertainty that’s characteristic of all life anyway. However, as I waved goodbye and became just another four-foot-something girl in the crushing crowdedness of Shibuya’s subway station, I felt kind of hopeful: I physically carve out my own little four-foot-something space for myself every day. What’s stopping me from finding my own niche in LIFE!? I may have been kind of bleary from Shibuya’s sprawling neon landscape and/or the sake as I scurried away into the night and squeezed myself into the subway, but THAT WAS MY THOUGHT. Hopefully once I find my niche, it will be the awesomest four-foot-something niche you have ever seen. (P.S. Prof, if you’re reading this, thanks again for dinner and next time I’ll treat cuz it’s gonna be a rich niche! Mata ne!!!).

earlier in the week it was pouring! and the raindrops made the neon look kind of mystical. i thought so anyway.. it translates as "PLEASE WAIT." good things come to those who wait!

And keeping up with the college theme of the week, a couple days after I met up with my professor, a friend took me to his alma mater’s annual Fall Festival. He went to Keio University, and he explained to me that most big universities in Japan hold a campus-wide fair every fall. Keio’s Mita Festival was just SO COLLEGE. How else can I put it…the exhilarating earnestness…the winking juxtaposition of lofty — towering buildings that communicate “higher learning”– and lurid — hallways papered with flyers promising who-knows-what at party XYZ. Different clubs were trying to raise money and different awarenesses were trying to be raised. It took me back!  And before I start sounding like too much of an old lady, here are some pictures =)

all these booths were selling food for different clubs. can you see the octopus one? i tried octopus balls (tako-yaki) for the first time! they were sooooo good and made fresh by the students.

i also had some pig sooop lol so cute. and the illustration is hilarious. it tasted so homemade like the kind my dad makes. japan has a pretty serious food culture and i guess that extends to the younger kids too.

this was pretty intense. my school did NOT have this at our college fairs/festivals. they have a thai boxing club, karate club, etc. and they put on a show for all these bloodthirsty co-eds lol. look at the ref patting the guy down for weapons! also note the sweeping trees and the building's collegiate-looking arches in the background. SO COLLEGE.

This next video is of the school’s “Latin Club.” Many of the clubs had their own classroom like this where they offered various entertainments and foods or drinks. This one called their room “Cafe Latina” and sold tea and guacamole, salsa and chips. And then there were other rooms like the Filmmakers Club, where they showed student films (duh ;)), Tarot Club, Psychology Club, where you could get yourself analyzed with an intense and revealing looking color-coded “Character Test,” get your caricature drawn…so much! SO COLLEGE.

and then they were like, "and this is a poncho!" but mostly i just thought that guy was kinda cute hehe.

It was raining so hard the day before (see traffic light pic) but the weather was beautiful for the college fair. Classic autumn day! And then on another classic autumn day later that week, I went back to Shibuya while the sun was out to see if the neon made me hallucinate anything that wasn’t actually there. I wandered around for the longest time and walked past a nondescript run-down building. Along the wall, a glass case advertised what was in the building’s various floors. Weirdly enough, there were a lot of vintage used clothing stores, and in a grand advertising ploy I guess, one vintage shop showcased a tiara perched on a Malcolm X sweatshirt (MALCOLM X written in huge bold down the front) in the building entryway’s glass case. I was sold. I had to see this shop no matter how sketchy the building looked.

When I went in, I felt suffocated by the floor-to-ceiling plaid, metallic and denim. Down one aisle was a hipster and a humungous slouched-over Big Bird costume looped over on a chair. And it looked like they were having a face-off, each trying to see who had more vintage irony encoded in their similar postures. I have no idea. It was weird. I got to the end of the shop, and had to step over this mini rack of Star Wars shirts. I don’t know why they were hanging on a rack that was two feet tall! And once I got out, I was in a completely new street full of TONS of vintage clothing shops. I went into one at random and freaked out. I am pretty sure I made a noise but the hipster clerk at the front ignored me in classic hipster fashion. But I’m glad she did because then I could take THIS PICTURE!

nestled amongst used pointy shoes and the obligatory faded disney character was a vassar sweater. oh. my. stars. WHAT ARE THE CHANCES?! and were our school colors ever green??? i couldn't believe i saw this!! it was right at the entrance of the store. like VASSAR epitomized its whole aesthetic.

I went into a few more vintage shops and college sweaters seemed to be pretty popular, but they were all West Coast or Midwest schools that sounded vaguely made-up. Like San Diego Scarsdale. But anyway! I think no matter what I end up doing, it will be okay because everything is so connected. Like this week’s overriding theme: college. The connections are everywhere as long as I trust myself enough to let the connections run through me.

Whether I end up back in school: (mainly I made this video to prove to Mom and Dad that I am actually studying. Sometimes.)

Or, as I’m secretly hoping, I will discover a hidden talent like this guy at the Ramen Museum who was juggling crystal balls. It was so mesmerizing.

But in the meantime, I’m just happy to stuff my face. Here are OGFSs!! (obligatory gratuitous food shots 😉

my friend was like, "Here. Raw meat. You will try." and i did! totally thought it was gonna be gnarly. totally wasn't. it was so. good. so good! it tasted way more subtle and savory than cooked meat has ever tasted. i didn't take pictures of the other raw meat i ate like cow liver and some amalgamation (college word sup) of random raw meats. because those looked way more gnarly than this pretty pink chicken. sorry vegetarian friends.

the raw meat was so good, i thought "why would anyone want to COOK their meat and destroy it like that?" and then i ate these yakitori (individually skewered and grilled over charcoal meat sticks) and thought, "oh yeah. these are pretty good too." hehe. YUM!

Love from ME!

Me and my Mansion

Hey guys! So I wanted to do a post just on where I am living because it is awesome and I want to remember it forever. And what better way to preserve memories than video! I made one and hope you don’t get seasick because my webcam skills are heta (unskillful in Japanese).

Wow what a spaz. I also took pictures so you can get a better idea of it.

relatively neat. good thing i didn't show the closet (i.e. a pack-rat's best friend)

do you see the blue futon? i roll it out every night and sleep on the floor! like a boss! it's actually really comfortable. i just don't like having to put it away every morning. but such is the life in a MANSION!! lololol

So that’s it! Hope you enjoyed this week’s episode of CRIBS. Be sure to come back next week for an exclusive look at the homes of Pee Wee Herman and Nicki Minaj! Hahahahaha, ok I’m getting really silly. I imagine their homes would have overlapping similarities though. Maybe. Mmmm, deep thoughts. Here’s the OGFSsss. I am posting this as I eat as to mitigate the intense food lust.

went out with friends to get tapas and the place had the best paella ever. even better than the ones i had in barcelona #bragging #shutup

i had a clearer shot of this blurry picture but i feel like the blurriness better conveys the swooning nature of the enjoyment. we were at this little little hole in the wall that was PACKED with the pau hana crowd (after work crowd). the kitchen was tiny but the food was EXQUISITE!!! don't know how the one chef was doing it. like a mini factory of culinary genius.

Love from ME thanks for reading =)

21st Century Schizoid Man and Steve Jobs

Steve Jobs, I hardly knew ya

This is kind of embarrassing. I didn’t know who Steve Jobs was. When I was in Ginza (Tokyo’s hugangulous shopping district..of many I should add) the other day, I happened to walk past the huge Apple store. I heard through the grapevine that Steve Jobs died, it’s a sad day for Apple, we will miss this American genius…But when I saw this shrine outside the Apple store, I was confused.

the masses paying their respects

There were a ton of fresh apples, flower bouquets, posters, and other tokens of remembrance outside the apple store. There were even police guards outside the store making sure nobody got too overzealous with their Apple love. But the picture of Steve Jobs threw me for a loop. Who was this intense-looking bearded dude? I realized that for all this time, my mental image of Steve Jobs was actually (wait for it): Bill Gates. I conflated the two powerful white men of the techno-verse! But before you stop reading out of disgust for such “blasphemy,” I want to ask: What does power look like? Apparently, I read power as whiteness and maleness, white maleness if you willllll. And institutionally and historically speaking, you really can’t fault me for thinking so. However, nowadays with masses Occupying Wall Street(s) of the world, power is starting to look a little different.

You got the power to let power go? 21st Century Schizoid Man! Thank you, Kanye.

this guy wrote a note to steve jobs on these two apple fruits and was trying to get a picture with it and the apple logo in the background

So, yes. What does power look like? In our most shameful moments and in our most gracious, it looks like us. Power is simply Being, living in recognition that this life works through interconnections we will never even be aware of. Power is admitting that even if we’ll never explicitly know every single miraculous and disastrous consequence our individual choices bring, we can still acknowledge that our redemption lies outside the border of our selves and with each other. I think that the Occupy Wall Street movement is an overall acknowledgment of this; we need not be debilitated by our lack of “knowledge” (like my ignorance of the exact contours of Steve Jobs’ face). Our knowledge is always incomplete, so in many ways, we need each other if we want to reclaim what it means to be human. (P.S. for all those taking the streets, be safe! especially YOU, you know who you are)

Ok, enough with the philosophizing! To quote Steve Jobs’ motto: “Stay hungry, stay foolish.”  And as you guys know, I’m always hungry. So with no further ado, here be the OGFSs!!!

this is called tsukemen. there used to be a tsukemen restaurant in honolulu but it closed down and i miss it every day. but behold! found some in japan!

The tsukemen soup is served on the side because it is so dense and flavorful. You dip the noodles in like zaru soba.

ok this is kind of gross and mangled looking. but there was an egg, and bits of charsiu (pork) that was grilled right before putting it in the soup. SO. GOOD. it added to the broth's smoky/spicy flavor

Thanks for reading! LOVE FROM ME, 21st century schizoid girl hehehehe

“How vain it is to sit down and write when you have not stood up to live.”

Thanks a lot, Thoreau. Here I am sitting down to write, getting to Living (with a capital “L”!), one mundane step at a time. As a lot of my fellow recent-grads know, getting settled into a new phase of life/place inevitably includes a bunch of mundane steps. Some of which I’ll detail here. I hope you enjoy it and if you don’t you can just skip ahead to the pictures of delicious food at the end. No judgement, thanks for visiting!

1. Gym Membership: Even though there’s a ton of walking all day every day in Tokyo, I still crave that endorphin high! I run kind of thick when I don’t work out (especially with all this food) so it’s just healthier for me. I convinced myself that whatever the price, it would be worth it. But the god of small favors really likes me and out of the thousands of gyms in Tokyo, I got one that’s in the midst of a special promotion! My first two months are 50% off and since a friend referred me, it was an extra 50 bucks off. Love it. The gym is a five minute walk from my apartment and has everything I need. The man who registered me gave me a tour and showed me where to key myself in. There’s a camera that sees it’s you and only you coming in, he emphasized to me. Why was I not surprised? I smiled for the camera.

2. Good fences make good neighbors: Without knowing it, the woman I ran into a couple times leaving my apartment is the Syrian ambassador. She lives on the floor right below me. Whoa, we’re neighbors?! In the little exchanges we’ve had, she seems so warm and kind. My other neighbors/friends tell me she is an amazing cook. Maybe that’s why it always smells so good around dinnertime in my apartment every day! The whole neighbor situation reminded me of that Robert Frost poem “Mending Wall.”: “He only says, ‘Good fences make good neighbors.’ / Spring is the mischief in me, and I wonder / If I could put a notion in his head: / Why do they make good neighbors?” Especially with the “Spring is the mischief in me” line, I cannot help but think of Syria and The Arab Spring and how even though the world’s interconnected fates have no place for fences, we still don’t know how to trust each other without them.

3. Shopping: Some of the shopping for my place was done at different Hyakuen stores, or dollar stores. And some of my shopping was done at places like Tokyu Hands. There is no American equivalent to Tokyu Hands. It is part department store, part Target, part everything you ever wanted as a consumer who has burned with the fever of acquisitiveness (read: anyone part of a capitalistic society). It is sickening. And fun. Sick fun, a pretty apt description for capitalism,  wouldn’t you say, wa wa wee wah (Borat voice)! But I digress. There are different branches/locations of Tokyu Hands in Tokyo and Osaka. The one I went to in Ginza isn’t the largest one, but still has a niche in offering a large selection of more upscale products. There were five floors within a larger shopping complex: 5F: Wellness Beauty (makeup, fitness, sleep aids), 6F: Colorful Stationery, 7F: Ginza D.I.Y. (storage — kinda like a more awesome Container Store, tools, natural disaster aids i.e. anything from adhesive to keep your flatscreen TV safe in case of an earthquake to CPR kits and hard hats), 8F: Delicious Smile (kitchen stuff ahhhh my favorite floor), 9F: Hands Collection (travel supplies, business bags, disguises&party products, clocks).

Here is the Tokyu Hands motto! "Contemplating, more extensively and in more depth, the sense of satisfaction and happiness that things can bring...The quality of your own individual style is about to improve"

So, as you can see, Tokyu Hands takes “THINGS” and the satisfaction and happiness implicit within their magical THINGness very seriously. Shopping is mundane, but can also be glorious; like anything else in life, it all depends on your attitude. But the scary part was, that when I was in Tokyu Hands, I forgot why I would ever want to stand up to live when I could just curl up on this massage cushion:

Mmmmmm, shiny...

To link back to my whole “neighbors” spiel, what if nowadays, instead of using fences to demarcate between ourselves and others, we implement THINGS? As the motto says, it’s all about you and “your own individual style.” What if the most important relationship we have is between ourselves and our stuff? Perhaps the awesomeness of these products is in direct proportion to how much we’ve allowed them to compensate for real relationships. Our hearty reliance on THINGS for happiness and satisfaction sadly betrays the fact that we often relate to each other more through our ability to consume than our ability to give.

…But I bought such awesome stuff. Ugh. And now I’m starting to go into nerd overdrive. It’s a good thing I’ve started school (more on that later!). Here’s one last pic of Tokyu Hands and stay tuned for the OGFSsss DELICIOUS FOOD YAY!

the kitchen floor, nice segue into OGFSs. see how shiny and organized! such madness made neat.

Now for my OGFSssss, hope you don’t have an empty stomach! (or full, if you don’t like sashimi)

homemade Oden, one of my favorites!!

homemade onigiri (rice balls, some plain some with beans)

These next OGFSs were delicious too, but their enjoyment was a little compromised.

fussy omnivore's dilemma: in tsukiji they killed this fish right in front of me and i ate him. he was still moving and ahhhhhh i think he could hear me chewing. him. sorry fishy =(

delicious fried pork-ness (tonkatsu)

the man in the middle always amazes me. his arms and hands are really red. see the huge silver vats? the tonkatsu deep fries in there and as soon as they take it out, he slices it with his bare hands, no gloves or anything! itai! (ouch)

Ok, I have to wake up early tomorrow, so until next time! Ja ne! =)

Toilets and Big Brother

Hi everyone! So far I’m just loving it here and am so thankful for every minute, even the ones where I kind of don’t know where I’m going. On the plane ride over, it was good to be surrounded by people speaking Japanese. I haven’t studied Japanese since high school, and forgot pretty much everything. But language has a way of lingering in the dubious shadows of the brain. Overhearing the couple in front of me chatting about what time the plane would touch down, I thought, “UDE DOKEI! That means digital wristwatch! That is related to time!” And then I flushed with a pride that was both exhilarating and very embarrassing. Little victories. Hopefully I’ll pick up the language more impressively later.

The plane also had these cool touchscreen TVs (is that redundant, is it just “touchscreen”?) built into the headrests in front of you. I gasped at the vast number of options I had for my in-flight entertainment. But before I could settle on How I Met Your Mother, The Simpsons, or that X-Men sequel/prequel, my touchscreen shut off. At first I was filled with techno-phobe dread: I friggin broke it; this always happens when I’m around electronics and enjoying myself. But then I looked around and noticed that everyone else’s had shut off too. We all wore similar expressions of bewildered thwartedness. And then the touchscreens all flipped on again at the same time all on the same channel. Rejoice! But wait. The screen started playing NHK, Japan’s national public broadcasting organization. We were all gonna have to watch the NHK news before we could have our pick of television heaven. Couldn’t change the station. Couldn’t turn it off either. Interesting.

When we arrived at Haneda International Airport, I almost forgot how much I hated flying. The airport was so sparkly! The bathroom was amazing, and they offered rooms for people to shower in too and rooms just for general refreshing. In the stall in the picture below, there were three sink/showers and even one coming out of the toilet (called a bidet, French, no?).

this is a handicap bathroom but still...it looked like a mini hospital

And then a dear friend picked us up, but he had misplaced his parking validation voucher thing. After searching in vain, we all kind of freaked because of that ridiculously expensive exorbitant replacement fee. We went up to the parking attendant and explained ourselves. Instead of sneering at our mistake and demanding money, he said, “Not a problem at all. You don’t need it. We know exactly when you came in and have your license plate on record.” Whoa. Yay no exorbitant fee, but whoa. Talk about heavy surveillance.

Which brings me to this: Technology being employed to see when you exit and enter a toilet stall! I had to take a picture of this while I was waiting in line for the toilet at a department store in Ginza. On the wall we queue against, there’s this light-up layout of the whole bathroom, a picture of what kind of toilet style each stall is, and the red light goes off as soon as the person in it unlocks the door.

waiting in line made efficient! no more awkward crouching to peer under stalls!

That was just crazy, right!? Big Brother is everywhere and Japan is no exception. Sometimes I forget how much of our culture is rooted in voyeurism, and how much of what we do or do not do is based on who may or may not be watching. Sometimes I forget how modern sleekness can go hand in hand with the most expert surveillance. So is Big Brother watching you on the toilet? (Ew.) Maybe I just have an unhealthy obsession with toilets and wanted to intellectualize it with some political commentary.

Anyway, it’s now time for my Obligatory Gratuitous Food Shots (maybe I will call them OGFS? If you pronounce OGFS as one word, perhaps it kind of sounds like that moment of swoon when something is so delicious you descend into incoherency. Maybe?). I had a super swank Japanese breakfast this morning. hot rice porridge with its own gravy on the side, crispy grilled salmon, mushroom miso soup, gobo salad, deadly tofu, noodle soup with raw egg, sweet eggs with vegetables.

breakfast of champions

Here’s a close-up shot of the tofu, the only closeup I got and turned out I couldn’t even eat it.

deadly tofu with crab in peanut sauce

Tofu, I love you, but that’s the second time you tried to kill me in Japan. The first time you were cheese in disguise, this time you were bathing in a sneaky peanut sauce. I love you anyway, I praise thee food gods forever and ever amen. Ok, til next time, kiotsukete! =)