gifts, food and companions

yeah! we all need to get some oriental passage once in awhile.

thursday. it's a bid warm today. i was woken up at around 9:30 this morning by snoopy scraping against the door that separates the living/dining room and kitchen from the rest of the house. i'm not sure why he did that, but since i was sleeping in the bedroom nearest to the living room, i heard it. my aunt woke up late today, she was suppose to be in the office by 9am, but didn't wake up til half pass. hahaha. good thing she's the boss.

oh, before i forget. i wanted to note that in japan, the toilet is separated from the rest of the bathroom. so what they have is a toilet room and a bathroom. japanese toilets are pretty interesting. if you take a shit, you flush one way and if you take a piss you flush the other way. it's a very practical way for conserving water. instead of having one knob for the hot water and one for the cold, you have a knob for setting the temperature and another to turn on the water. it's pretty efficient, i think.

so continuing the story of what i did yesterday, wednesday. after lunch, i was going to go back to the condo, but instead i decided to go for a walk to see if i could find the bookstore that i went to when i was here the last time. along the way, the first thing i saw was yokohama stadium, home of the yokohama baystars of the japanese baseball league. after taking some pictures of it, i continued on this street that looked vaguely familiar to me. i had no idea where i was headed but it felt like i was going in the correct direction.

after walking about 15 minutes, i saw to my left the place i wanted to go to. isezaki-cho mall, a street consisting of shops, restaurants and pachinko arcades that stretches for a number of blocks. located near the beginning of the street mall is yurindo, a japanese book and stationery store. it was much bigger than i had remember. actually, i didn't realize that it had 9 stories. the foreign books were located on the 7th floor, so i climbed the stairs and found a small section of english books and magazines. books in japan are pretty expensive so i just got one, flowers for algernon. i heard it was a really sad book, but definitely worth the reading.

after paying 902 yen for it (roughly $9.00), i left the bookstore and walked down isezaki-cho. i went into a lawsons convenient store for a bottle of oolong tea and continued walking until the end of the mall. since by now, my feet were a little bit weary (i probably walked about a km), i decided to head back to the condo. along the way, i spied a gift shop, and debated if i should go in. i decided at the very last moment to go check it out. it was a pretty nice shop with japanese dolls, japanese bathrobes, samurai swords, sake cups, tea cups, banners, etc., etc., etc. surprisingly, the prices weren't all that bad, so i got a couple of gifts for people. the lady working in the shop was probably in her mid-50's and spoke english reasonably well.

she told me that further down isezaki-cho there's a building called, "the landmark," which has shops and is the tallest building in the area so you can check out the scenery. i told her that's great, maybe i'll go there later. after spending about 7200 yen (roughly US$72.00), i walked out of the shop saying maybe i'll be back later to get more stuff. oh, that'll be great she said. generally speaking, if you pay cash in japan, you don't have to pay the tax. i didn't pay the tax. so with my bag of gifts in toll, i headed back to the condo.

we decided to stay in for dinner tonight. my aunt made rice with chicken and a fried egg. it was pretty good. my aunt isn't much of a cook, but she's been trying to make this dish for a japanese friend of her's who just had a baby. in hk, and i'm guessing canton as well, after a woman has a child, she's suppose to eat this dish called "ginger vinegar" (literal translation), which is made from cooking ginger, pig's feet and eggs in black vinegar and sugar. unfortunately, they don't really sell black vinegar here in japan, so my aunt had to improvise and use white vinegar with some black coloured beans. it turned out pretty good, except that it's really freaking sour. oh, you don't have to be pregnant to eat this either. the funny thing is that both my aunt and i agreed that the eggs are the best part of the dish.

after dinner, i went to the market and picked up some more eggs for the ginger vinegar, two types of popicles and a pack of almond tofu. that was the extend of my day. i spent a lot of time on the laptop typing up my blog, playing games like freecell and listening to music. went to bed a little after 1pm.

back to thursday.

i don't think i did much today. had lunch with my aunt at the sushi place again. everyone says that i look a lot like my uncle ellie. the sushi bar was full today. one of the patrons there who knew my aunt and uncle said, oooh, he looks so much like ellie-san (in japanese, of course). i didn't really do much today, not that i can remember (i'm writing this part on friday). i think i was sitting at the condo watching tv and playing games because it's too hot to walk about.

my aunt told me that she's taking some people out for dinner tonight and that i should come along. i was a bit apprehensive since i don't know these people, but they turned out to be one of her employees and her mother and daughter. i don't know the employee very well, but had seen her several times. she seemed pretty nice so i went along. i don't know what the name of the restaurant was (have to ask my aunt), but it was located a couple of blocks from isezaki-cho.

my aunt said that when my uncle and grandfather come to japan, they like to go to this restaurant for dinner. she said she likes it as well. when we got there, they told us to use the back door, where there was an elevator to go upstairs. we went up and they reserved a room for us. it was really nice and unfortunately, i forgot my camera. but it's a typical japanese room with tatamis, a short wooden table and pillows for you to sit on. under the table, the floor sanks so you can just sit normally without having to cross your legs. shortly after we were seated, the meal began.

the meal consisted of small portions of each dish. some of the dishes are in english cuz i don't know what they were in japanese and some my aunt asked the hostess so they're in japanese. sorry. anyway, the meal started off with two appetizers, green beans in sesame sauce and sesame tomato tofu with caviar and wasabi. the sesame tomato tofu is a bit strange, but the green beans were delicious. then came a cold potato milk soup with vegetables and shrimp. since it contained milk and i didn't bring my lactaid pills, i took a tiny sip of it and gave it to my aunt. it was a little sweet, surely wasn't what i expected.

next came a plate of sashimi. i expected to have rice with this, but i guess in traditional japanese meals, the rice comes last. there were three types of fish, toro, tai and kanbachi. i believe one of the fish is talapia, but i'm not sure. they were really delicious though. the next course of the meal came in a little basket. it contained some fried fish called camasu, tsubu kai, saikgu miso, sazae kimoshizo, tamago cheese and yamamomo with honey. i think i got that right, but i should check with my aunt about this section. the tamago cheese was like bits of shrimp mixed inside this block of cheese. since i'm not going to have it regularly, i tried it and it was pretty good. cheese and shrimp. interesting combo.

next, we had a bowl containing eel wrapped in bean curd, some sort of chinese melon, taro and egg plant with a little bit of broth. it was really good. i especially liked the eel wrapped in bean curd. then came the tempura plate consisting of two pieces of asparagus, one piece of lotus root and two pieces of tofu with ofu. the taro i thought was a bit hard, but i liked everything else. following the tempura was a cold dish that had scallops and sako (some sort of shrimp) with sliced vegetables in vinegar jelly. it's a very strange dish, but the sourness of the jelly went well with the seafood and vegetables.

last came the rice and miso soup. the rice had some dried ingredients on top of it to give it some flavor. it was excellent. after the meal, we had watermelon and ice-cream along with a cup of tea. all together, it was a great meal. i was hoping that i could have had rice along with the different dishes, but it was not meant to be. it was truly a great experience.

the dinner conversation was pretty good. even though my mandarin isn't so great, i could understand some of what's being said. the little girl ended up playing patty cake with me. i spoke some mandarin, but my aunt had to translate it to the employee's mother. hahaha, yeah, my mandarin is that bad. they asked about how it is living in HK and the US. overall, i think i set a pretty good impression. didn't embarrass my aunt, which is good. the grandmother invited my aunt and i to visit them in shanghai. thank you very much i said in my not so perfect mandarin.

after dinner, while driving them home, i think we passed by the redlight district of yokohama. there were signs with women on them and one of the buildings had a sign that said, "tonight's companions" with at least 20 pictures of various women on it. then there were many girls just hanging about on the street. yeah, companions.

i went to bed not long after coming back home from dinner.