Monday, September 06, 2004
Bird-themed Weekend
Friday night dinner with Anne and Belinda was a pleasant affair. It was good to catch up with Anne, even if it did remind me that she has made the (rather intelligent) decision to leave Nifco - and seems happy working at the Thai embassy. Of course, if I was being given 10 day business trips to Thailand, complete with hotel accomodation, I would be pretty contented too.
Toriyoshi Dining was a nice venue for catching up, and the food was decidedly good. However, I must admit that I still favour the smoky, beer-house style bird-on-a-stick to the more refined yakitori we enjoyed Friday.
Of course, no night in Shibuya is complete without a bit of karaoke, so we sang badly to a very eclectic mix of songs (Nirvana, Mr. Big and Snow all made appearances) for an hour or so before playing the 'catch the train home' game. In true, irritating fashion Kat and I made it back to Yokohama just in time to miss our subway train. After some coarse language on my part, we made it home.
With miserable-ass weather forecast for the entire weekend, we were unable to engage in many of the activities we would like to while Kat is still in the country, so after sleeping late we went in Yokohama, Kat bought a few souvenirs and things like that and we ate some ice cream. One thing you appreciate over here is good ice cream, because it is few and far between. Japan is a land of soft serve, and while soft serve ice cream isn't inherently bad, in the ice cream heirarchy, it languishes somewhere at the bottom. Haagen-Dasz is where it's at.
Perhaps the most notable item bought in Yokohama was my ticket back to Australia for the end of the year. It is now official: I shall be back in the country from the 28th of December until the 10th of January (mostly in SE QLD, but I will make it up to FNQ for a few days). Mark it in your calendars dear friends!
Anyway, to continue the bird-theme, (not intentionally mind you) Kat and I headed out to Free Birds, a hawaiian-mexican influenced bar/restaurant about 15 minutes walk from my place. The walk is generally a pleasant one, but can be ruined by several things. Perhaps the most relevant one being torrential fucking rain the kind of which I have never seen in this country. It was not a mere shower, the heavens did open up, and it did PISS DOWN. We did have umbrellas, however we both were pretty much saturated from the knees down by the time we made it to Free Birds. (On a side note, there were no birds there, let alone free ones. False advertising suit is in the pipeline).
The food was an acceptable attempt at almost-mexican, the coronas were cold and the tequila was... well.. like tequila. We made a note to return, preferably when the weather is slightly better.
Sunday was another day of miserable weather, which pretty much labelled it as a 'stay in bed, eat junk food and watch DVDs' kind of day. We did venture outside, but only to visit the video store and procure alcohol and food. On an irritating note, my local video store does not have copies of Battle Royale 1 or The Ring 1 (the original Japanese version - not the Hollywood remake) on DVD. (Why carry both sequels on DVD but not the originals?! WHY!?) Damn me and my lack of VCR. I will head into the Tsutaya DVD/CD rental megastore near work sometime this week.
And now, here I am, stuck at my desk for another week. Well, it is 10 minutes until lunch time, there may even be an afternoon edition, depending upon how bored I get.
Toriyoshi Dining was a nice venue for catching up, and the food was decidedly good. However, I must admit that I still favour the smoky, beer-house style bird-on-a-stick to the more refined yakitori we enjoyed Friday.
Of course, no night in Shibuya is complete without a bit of karaoke, so we sang badly to a very eclectic mix of songs (Nirvana, Mr. Big and Snow all made appearances) for an hour or so before playing the 'catch the train home' game. In true, irritating fashion Kat and I made it back to Yokohama just in time to miss our subway train. After some coarse language on my part, we made it home.
With miserable-ass weather forecast for the entire weekend, we were unable to engage in many of the activities we would like to while Kat is still in the country, so after sleeping late we went in Yokohama, Kat bought a few souvenirs and things like that and we ate some ice cream. One thing you appreciate over here is good ice cream, because it is few and far between. Japan is a land of soft serve, and while soft serve ice cream isn't inherently bad, in the ice cream heirarchy, it languishes somewhere at the bottom. Haagen-Dasz is where it's at.
Perhaps the most notable item bought in Yokohama was my ticket back to Australia for the end of the year. It is now official: I shall be back in the country from the 28th of December until the 10th of January (mostly in SE QLD, but I will make it up to FNQ for a few days). Mark it in your calendars dear friends!
Anyway, to continue the bird-theme, (not intentionally mind you) Kat and I headed out to Free Birds, a hawaiian-mexican influenced bar/restaurant about 15 minutes walk from my place. The walk is generally a pleasant one, but can be ruined by several things. Perhaps the most relevant one being torrential fucking rain the kind of which I have never seen in this country. It was not a mere shower, the heavens did open up, and it did PISS DOWN. We did have umbrellas, however we both were pretty much saturated from the knees down by the time we made it to Free Birds. (On a side note, there were no birds there, let alone free ones. False advertising suit is in the pipeline).
The food was an acceptable attempt at almost-mexican, the coronas were cold and the tequila was... well.. like tequila. We made a note to return, preferably when the weather is slightly better.
Sunday was another day of miserable weather, which pretty much labelled it as a 'stay in bed, eat junk food and watch DVDs' kind of day. We did venture outside, but only to visit the video store and procure alcohol and food. On an irritating note, my local video store does not have copies of Battle Royale 1 or The Ring 1 (the original Japanese version - not the Hollywood remake) on DVD. (Why carry both sequels on DVD but not the originals?! WHY!?) Damn me and my lack of VCR. I will head into the Tsutaya DVD/CD rental megastore near work sometime this week.
And now, here I am, stuck at my desk for another week. Well, it is 10 minutes until lunch time, there may even be an afternoon edition, depending upon how bored I get.
# posted by Nils @ 11:21 AM 
