| Thursday, October 11, 2007 |
| Dinner with Pooh-San and the Boss |
Asakusa's street izakayas= fantastic food and strange company. After an onsen tour with a girl named Sonal, who was on a post-law-school, pre-corporate-world tour of Asia, we came here. Immediately, a group of salarymen and OLs adopted us and began ordering plate after plate of food for us, and even offering to share dishes they were about to eat. One of the men (oddly enough, from Okayama city) was extremely friendly, mostly sober, and spoke English. His boss talked at us a fair bit, mostly for the purpose of saying dirty words in Japanese while giggling, but he was drunk when we arrived and too smashed for syllables by the time we left.
 A tubby man at the end of the table, wearing a wife-beater and gold chains, was identified by nickname "Pooh-san" due to his love of beer and honey. Halfway through the meal, Pooh-san's girlfriend strutted in with high heeled boots, acrylic nails, auburn-accented hair, and a skirt short enough to reveal tatoos up her thigh. The Boss pointed out that she had "good fashion," just like Sonal and me. I suppose he was drunk enough to mistake backpacker eveningwear (cleanest non-T-shirt outfit in your wardrobe, with something shiny for distraction) for yakuza chic. Damn, did I put my leopard-spot nails in with the bug spray or my mildewed handtowel?? Bossman actually did fall off his stool once or twice, and became intent on groping his girlfriend at the table and/or trying to drag her into the alleyway for alone time. It was classic. Or just weird.
When I returned here with Sonal and Welshman Paul on my final night, we only befriended a thuggish, chain-smoking, whiskey-downing guy who resembled Jabba the Hutt. Oddly enough, he was carrying with him and cuddling a Dachshund.
 This building was in the "kitchenware" neighborhood of Ueno, and each teacup is an apartment balcony. I waited and perused the cutlery/ladle bins of the shopfront below, hoping for a resident to emerge-- a human spoon! -- but no dice.
On Saturday morning I left Tokyo and headed for onsen paradise in Izu. The first one I visited was an elaborate spa complex with the option to sleep overnight for 2000yen in communal lounges. The baths ranged from standard bubblers to a black tea tub to an Egyptian salt bath to a rocky outdoor tub open to the rainy skies. Secretly, I love the cotton jammies you get for the purpose of lounging between soaks: too-short bottoms and wraparound tops. Stumbling into such a resort, it would appear you'd been loosed into a mental hospital. Grown adults in floral or seafoam green sleepwear wander, snack, watch TV, or nap on the thick-carpeted floor, while old women in shorts and polos march around with buckets and mops. By midnight, darkened rooms containing rows and rows of reclined armchairs are filled with silent or snoring patients. I curled up in a captain's recliner chair in the family lounge, and slept like a rock until the Voice of God came on the speakers for a 6am wake-up. Glorious Japan!
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posted by Raychaa @ 4:42 PM  |
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| So wrong it's right. And then wrong. And then wrong again... welcome to the inaka. |
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Name: Raychaa
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About Me: “No man, not even a doctor, ever gives any other definition of what a nurse should be than this - 'devoted and obedient'. This definition would do just as well for a porter. It might even do for a horse. It would not do for a policeman.” (Florence Nightingale)
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