Monday, December 06, 2004
Respite
Now THAT was a weekend.
Friday night I caught up with Aki in Yokohama, and after some signature aimless, indecisive wandering we managed to find an Izakaya with a relatively small number of people waiting to get in. I am amazed that even with the sheer number of places to eat near Yokohama station, you need to get in line to get into pretty much every single one on a Friday night. It was worth it though, because the food was quite tasty indeed. I'm not sure how widespread the 'Doma-doma' chain of Izakayas is, having only been to one in Kannai and Yokohama, but both times I have been impressed with the food, so I will keep on going back.
Sated and searching for something to do we contemplated making the 15 minute journey up to Kawasaki so we could visit a Hub - for some reason Yokohama doesn't have one yet, and this is a situation that needs some serious rectifying. However, I remembered Tavern, a similar English-style pub that Mike and I patronised a few years back. At the time, they had Lamb-burgers, which were 10 different varieties of awesome on a bun, but sadly the lamb-burger no longer exists. Tavern however, does. To be honest, I don't really remember the previous visits - hardly surprising considering my drinking habits during study abroad - but (while a bit crowded) Tavern stacked up well against Hub - and I will strongly consider a repeat visit there too.
Of particular note was the fact that they had XXXX on the menu - and being the true Queenland bogan that I am, I just could not resist the allure of the orange can. Considering how much of that stuff we drank in my first year at university (before swearing off it, because we just got sick of it) I got a bit of a kick out of it. I am not sure if it was the alcohol or nostalgia I was tasting, either way, it tasted good.
Saturday was Dawn's going away party in Mizunokuchi, and while it is a bit of a trek to get out there, it is usually worth it. It certainly was this time round.
Dawn had tracked down an izakaya in which you have a private room, complete with karaoke system. Karaoke box and izakaya in one - double the goodness. Along with Danielle and another dozen or so Nova English teachers and assorted Japanese friends/students we piled into this room, and after a few drinks the karaoke got started.
By the end of the night, (around 2 am) everyone had piked, bar Dawn, Danielle, a couple of particularly good value Japanese guys and myself. Voices became a little hoarse, after prolonged rowdy karaoke and we decided to call it a night - I think the fact that Dawn had to be up at the crack of, uh, dawn to get to the airport played a part in that decision. At this point, the typhoon that would injure a few people and knock Tokyo around a bit was only getting warmed up - we walked home in the freezing rain.
I kipped on the couch for a couple of hours before giving dawn a hand with getting to the bus stop, as I was heading that way anyway. One thing that hampered the journey was the complete and utter impossibility of finding a taxi early on a Sunday morning. It's not like Australia where you can call and book one, we didn't even see one that we could hail. Being that the weather had done a backflip of political proportions and was warm as hell (in winter, at 6 in the goddamn morning) and Dawn had a fair bit of luggage, we stopped at a Shell station to see if they knew any cab companies operating, and if they could call us one.
It turned out they couldn't, so they did us one better, and one of the guys gave us a lift to the station. Just about all the rumours you hear about the Japanese being helpful and friendly are true. I was waiting with the luggage, so I don't know how Dawn sweet-talked him, but it worked. With Dawn waiting by the airport bus, I headed home and made it to bed around 8am.
I woke up a few hours later and bummed around for a while, wandering to Matsuya for some breakfast/lunch and noting that it was about 25 degrees, where the day before it would've been all of 12 or 13. Along with bringing down all kinds of leaves, branches and debris, the typhoon messed up the weather patterns in Tokyo something fierce for a few hours there.
I would've been content to simply lounge around for the rest of the day, but instead I met Anne and some Thai and Japanese friends of hers and we went to the Thai Embassy in Meguro for the annual King's Birthday celebration. As far as celebrations go, there was nowhere near enough alcohol, but an abundance of free (and very tasty) Thai food, so I guess that made up for it. The ceremony itself didn't appear to be anything too fancy, people lit candles and sang to the King's health at one stage, but for the most part, it was simply a social event in the sprawling gardens out the back of the embassy. Quite nice really.
I also managed to organise to meet Tony, one of Anne's Thai friends, on Wednesday. The nice part about this is that Tony works for a recruiting agency, and with some luck, will help me get out of my current situation. I will keep everyone posted on how that goes.
The offical function ended around 8.30 and people started heading home. Not wanting to pussy out at the end of a great weekend, I headed into Shibuya with Anne and we hit up Hub for a few drinks. One thing Hub does is the 'Strong Bull', which is a pint of Vodka redbull, but as well as the redbull, they add a bit of draught beer. The taste is a little interesting, but it has grown on me, and it is delightfully fizzy.
After downing a couple of those, we decided to call it a night, and I made it home in time to get a reasonable night's sleep. Reasonable in the sense it was long enough, although entirely unreasonable in the sense that I was awoked by my alarm in order to come to work. Can't win 'em all, I guess.
Friday night I caught up with Aki in Yokohama, and after some signature aimless, indecisive wandering we managed to find an Izakaya with a relatively small number of people waiting to get in. I am amazed that even with the sheer number of places to eat near Yokohama station, you need to get in line to get into pretty much every single one on a Friday night. It was worth it though, because the food was quite tasty indeed. I'm not sure how widespread the 'Doma-doma' chain of Izakayas is, having only been to one in Kannai and Yokohama, but both times I have been impressed with the food, so I will keep on going back.
Sated and searching for something to do we contemplated making the 15 minute journey up to Kawasaki so we could visit a Hub - for some reason Yokohama doesn't have one yet, and this is a situation that needs some serious rectifying. However, I remembered Tavern, a similar English-style pub that Mike and I patronised a few years back. At the time, they had Lamb-burgers, which were 10 different varieties of awesome on a bun, but sadly the lamb-burger no longer exists. Tavern however, does. To be honest, I don't really remember the previous visits - hardly surprising considering my drinking habits during study abroad - but (while a bit crowded) Tavern stacked up well against Hub - and I will strongly consider a repeat visit there too.
Of particular note was the fact that they had XXXX on the menu - and being the true Queenland bogan that I am, I just could not resist the allure of the orange can. Considering how much of that stuff we drank in my first year at university (before swearing off it, because we just got sick of it) I got a bit of a kick out of it. I am not sure if it was the alcohol or nostalgia I was tasting, either way, it tasted good.
Saturday was Dawn's going away party in Mizunokuchi, and while it is a bit of a trek to get out there, it is usually worth it. It certainly was this time round.
Dawn had tracked down an izakaya in which you have a private room, complete with karaoke system. Karaoke box and izakaya in one - double the goodness. Along with Danielle and another dozen or so Nova English teachers and assorted Japanese friends/students we piled into this room, and after a few drinks the karaoke got started.
By the end of the night, (around 2 am) everyone had piked, bar Dawn, Danielle, a couple of particularly good value Japanese guys and myself. Voices became a little hoarse, after prolonged rowdy karaoke and we decided to call it a night - I think the fact that Dawn had to be up at the crack of, uh, dawn to get to the airport played a part in that decision. At this point, the typhoon that would injure a few people and knock Tokyo around a bit was only getting warmed up - we walked home in the freezing rain.
I kipped on the couch for a couple of hours before giving dawn a hand with getting to the bus stop, as I was heading that way anyway. One thing that hampered the journey was the complete and utter impossibility of finding a taxi early on a Sunday morning. It's not like Australia where you can call and book one, we didn't even see one that we could hail. Being that the weather had done a backflip of political proportions and was warm as hell (in winter, at 6 in the goddamn morning) and Dawn had a fair bit of luggage, we stopped at a Shell station to see if they knew any cab companies operating, and if they could call us one.
It turned out they couldn't, so they did us one better, and one of the guys gave us a lift to the station. Just about all the rumours you hear about the Japanese being helpful and friendly are true. I was waiting with the luggage, so I don't know how Dawn sweet-talked him, but it worked. With Dawn waiting by the airport bus, I headed home and made it to bed around 8am.
I woke up a few hours later and bummed around for a while, wandering to Matsuya for some breakfast/lunch and noting that it was about 25 degrees, where the day before it would've been all of 12 or 13. Along with bringing down all kinds of leaves, branches and debris, the typhoon messed up the weather patterns in Tokyo something fierce for a few hours there.
I would've been content to simply lounge around for the rest of the day, but instead I met Anne and some Thai and Japanese friends of hers and we went to the Thai Embassy in Meguro for the annual King's Birthday celebration. As far as celebrations go, there was nowhere near enough alcohol, but an abundance of free (and very tasty) Thai food, so I guess that made up for it. The ceremony itself didn't appear to be anything too fancy, people lit candles and sang to the King's health at one stage, but for the most part, it was simply a social event in the sprawling gardens out the back of the embassy. Quite nice really.
I also managed to organise to meet Tony, one of Anne's Thai friends, on Wednesday. The nice part about this is that Tony works for a recruiting agency, and with some luck, will help me get out of my current situation. I will keep everyone posted on how that goes.
The offical function ended around 8.30 and people started heading home. Not wanting to pussy out at the end of a great weekend, I headed into Shibuya with Anne and we hit up Hub for a few drinks. One thing Hub does is the 'Strong Bull', which is a pint of Vodka redbull, but as well as the redbull, they add a bit of draught beer. The taste is a little interesting, but it has grown on me, and it is delightfully fizzy.
After downing a couple of those, we decided to call it a night, and I made it home in time to get a reasonable night's sleep. Reasonable in the sense it was long enough, although entirely unreasonable in the sense that I was awoked by my alarm in order to come to work. Can't win 'em all, I guess.
# posted by Nils @ 9:27 AM 
