Sento update

This will seem familiar to my regular readers. But don't go "omg, he got lost again" just yet. Technically, I didn't get lost. Sento did. I knew exactly where it should be, but it did not have the common decency to meet me there. Instead, all I saw were some construction sites. (Or maybe it was there all along, but hiding from me, using the construction site curtains for cover. Tricky bastard, if so.)

So, I did not manage to get into a sento yet. Stay tuned.

Oh, another thing, about the Dobro (the Croatian restaurant). This, too, will seem familiar. We got the VIP treatment. Because I was Croatian. The Croatian chef himself came out of the kitchen to serve us our meals himself, and he was explaining every meal to my friend. And we got just a teeny bit extra, since we were splitting each dish in two, so that we both got a full set (like, we didn't need to worry about sharing a prawn). And when my gourmet friend expressed an interest in Croatian cuisine, the chef gave him a Vegeta cookbook! (I'm still unclear about where he's supposed to find Vegeta, but I guess it's his problem.)

Oh yeah. The prawns were a part of the mixed grill for two, which we also ordered. Chabapuchicchi were also part of that, as well as some chicken meat wrapped in prosciutto, peppers, eggplant, pork, potato, and I have no clue what else any more. Various, I tell you. Sundry.

And, for an appetizer, beef pate. Which I did not quite enjoy, prefering my pate to include at least some liver. Preferably 15% or more. And maybe, make it a pig product. (No pate in Tokyo. At least not in any obvious places. Sniff.) Wasn't bad, I'd just have prefered something else.

Anyway, the dinner was yummy, and we were treated especially well, so, what's not to like. Except the bill. Did I mention Bill? It's like Bill crashed our party, but we knew in advance Bill was coming, so we were dreading the moment all evening?

Naah, just joking. It was a lot, but no regrets. Okay, maybe I'd prefered my Canadian friend was of a smitten female persuasion. :) But if wishes were fishes...

Does sento wash away bad news?

I had my presentation on sarma today. It was really boring. There was a presentation on Rockies-As-Shown-By-A-Travel-Agency, a perfectly delivered, very touching story about porcupines and personal space, and a presentation-cum-degustation of a Malaysian dish, a presentation on Fusui (or Feng-Shui, if that's more familiar), beautiful presentations on Malaysian jungles and highlands and Israeli saline depths, and a Look-How-Cute-Little-Anteaters-Are one. Of course, there was also an utterly incomprehensible piece on peonies, but even that was a detective novel compared to my Recipe-of-the-Week column in Foreigner Daily.

Various and sundry replies for Linda: The baito is actually a sweet gig. I'm programming odds and ends for my lab. So I don't go anyplace I'm not already going to, and not doing anything I wouldn't already be doing. The only downside is, I'm not meeting anyone I wouldn't already be meeting. But shou ga nai.

As you might have guessed, I did go research local sarma. I went with my gourmet Canadian friend, and I was a bit nervous ("What will he say about our peasant cuisine?") but in the end he really enjoyed himself. Me, I was nitpicking all the time how nothing is really what I'm used to, even though everything was very good. My complaints were mostly based on the fact that it is a haute cuisine restaurant catering to japanese palates, and I'm used to plain old home cooking.

As you might or might not know, sarma is very sour and salty. As (some other of) you might or might not know, Japanese don't like strong flavours. Result is, I felt it was bland. Still delicious, but not the dish I know and love. Also, you only get a midget of one sarma roll for the price I don't want to put on the blog. It is not cheap.

Chabapuchicchi had a similar problem: not enough spices. White codfish (bakalar na bijelo) was the most authentic, from what we had. Shutorukuri (and congratulations for the first one who manages to decipher what that is) surprised me with paprika added to the cream sauce. I know paprika and dairy go well together, and are often mixed in Croatian cuisine, but I haven't yet experienced it on that particular dish.

However, I'm not sorry I went, even considering the hefty bill. I might go back soon, for lunch, if I have time - they have a set lunch for ¥1000, which is more than affordable, considering - but I doubt I will splurge for a dinner there any time soon.

I am continuing my weekly visits to the cute nurses in the dentist clinic. They say there's nothing better than having a pretty girl in your mouth, I don't think this is exactly what they mean. But it's good for health. I'm still in the root-canal-cleaning phase. Dunno why, but I can't but be reminded of Alien 3. One visit is not that expensive, but it accumulates. And that's just two teeth. Sigh. At least that's a regular expense, not a surprise to my wallet.

Unlike the scholarship money cuts. Yup, we got wind of the rumour that our monthly deposits will get cut by about ¥15000 a month or three hence. Plus, the JASSO policy of refunding 1/3 of whatever medical costs after the national insurance is getting axed next month (which is why I'm hurrying with my oral chimney-sweeping efforts).

More bad news: With regrets, I've decided to stop my attempts to start Aikido again. Every week my knees feel worse - last time I had trouble walking for the next couple of days. Not fun. I don't know what I'm going to do, maybe ask about using the Uni sports hall, and starting to swim. Swimming is boring, but it's exercise, and I guess much better for me than destroying my legs in the name of health. I just hope the water is tolerable. (And that for once I do what I tell myself to do.)

Speaking of water - I still haven't gone to a sento, so...

Excuse me for interrupting myself, but I'm really annoyed. I don't know whether it's myself, or English, or Japanese, or... Whatever it is, I hate mixing writing styles. Namely, whether to write the long O as "ou"/"oo" or simply "o". It just seems so bloody inconsistent! But the fact is, if I'm writing something in Japanese and don't want to use a native script, I'll probably go with the accurate kana transcription: "ou" most times, "oo" where applicable. But if they're just words that got into English, I feel silly writing "sentou" when whoever knows the word will probably recognise "sento" sooner. Besides, I'd feel like a pompous prick. So I resolve to remain consistently inconsistent, and peeved at my peevishness.

Ahem. Okay. I still haven't gone to sento, and I think I might like to try to go today. I think I might enjoy it after working on the presentation for so long. On the 'Net I found one near Omotesando station, which is on my free route, and I'm thinking to go and try to find it. I don't have any tattoos and I've read up on sento etiquette, so I hope I'll be fine. Before that, a quick stop at the cafeteria, to see if there's still anything edible.

Till next time!

Pizza

Saturday was a cool day. We had an all-day gaming event, and after that people said there was this cool little Burmese restaurant. So we went. I hardly even knew there was such a thing as "Burmese cuisine", but apparently even people from Burma do eat, so there we went. It was a couple of minutes away from Takadanobaba station, and apparently it is a Burmese restaurant heaven, as there is at least 3-4 more in the vicinity. It was a first time I've been to that station, but seeing how there's over a hundred stations in Tokyo and I don't get out all that much, it's nothing to be surprised about.

The restaurant was small, but kind of cozy. Dalmatian feel, almost. We ordered a bunch of different things and split it between the six of us, so we had a lot of variety in our dinner. But I was particularly impressed by two things. One was a drink, and was listed on the menu as "Grass Jelly". (I actually wrote "Glass Jelly" first, then corrected it, and it's not even the first time I did it; I have no idea why. I guess I'm becoming more Japanese by the minute.) Anyway, Grass Jelly (and again I had to actively control my fingers to keep them away from the L key) looks like water with bits of black jelly suspended in it. It tastes very sweet, and the closest thing to compare with would be the Icelandic lichen syrup. But without the whole coughing crap.

The other thing was tea leaf salad. Yummy! Don't ask me to describe how it tasted like, I just can't. There was a lot of things in it: peanuts, sesame seeds, rice vinegar, probably oil, and several varieties of green. I totally enjoyed it.

Speaking of restaurants, I have to make a presentation for my Japanese class, and I'm doing one on sarma. Like a real scientist, I have to cover my bases, and so I think I'll be going tomorrow (or some time soon if I don't get a table) to a Croatian restaurant. Err, make that "the" Croatian restaurant - since there's just the one in Japan. Sarma should be a bit pricey, but I miss it, and it's not that different from some other restaurants I've been to (like, oh, I don't know, Burmese). Good thing is, I actually managed to save some little money, and also I'll be getting my part-time job salary from next month, so it should be all good. I don't even spend that much on the dentist as I thought I would.

The dentists scare me, in couple of different ways. First, I was scared of the prices - I am going to a hi-tech private dentist, and they said there's a lot of work to be done in my mouth, so I was afraid I'm going to leave a lot of money there. But it turns out that I was wrong about that - the dentist turned out to be not only quite skilled, but also very cheap in comparison to back home. So now I'm scared about getting a nerve pulled, which is scheduled for the day after tomorrow. I'm pretty nervous about that. I hope I don't lose my nerve, and get a nervous breakdown. Waiting for something like that is quite a nerve-wrenching experience, you know?

Okay, enough of that. While on the topic of money and work in mouth - last week I was at a gaming till rather late, and then decided to walk back home from Shibuya rather than brave the overcrowded last trains. It's just two stations, which translates to about... oh, maybe 20 minutes, maybe half an hour, I never measured. Anyway, I was passing the Love Hotel Hill (actually, the Japanese name is Hill where the Road Starts, or something like that, but it's universally called LHH by the gaijin population, I believe), and I got offered マッサージとブロージョッブ by a party previously unknown to me. That's a first. Wasn't even very expensive, I think. If I understood her correctly, it was actually about the same price as StarCraft: the Boardgame: Brood War expansion. But I had a book to go home to, so I did not partake of the services.

But was I tempted? Hell, it's like finding a piece of American pizza lying on the ground just inside Disneyland.

I mean, it's pizza!

But, on the other hand, it's full of fat, probably with germs on it, and you have to pay the considerable entrance fee to get to it.

And then you start thinking about Prosciutto Speciale back home... :(

December

Yet another belated blog post. Way, way belated. No excuses, I'm plain lazy.

There were several memorable events in December. First, our Japanese group held a bonenkai. But without much drinking. Which is not really a bonenkai, but whatever. Only one guy got pissed. He was red and talkative, and normally he is neither, so you just knew something was off. It was fun - only pity that one of the girls got sick that very day, so the group wasn't complete.

We went to an izakaya, where the Canadian got us a good price for a rather large dinner set. "Good price" doesn't mean it was cheap, just that it was cheaper than it would have been otherwise. But it was quite nice. I especially liked the zosui after nabe... That was just delicious. And mushroom tenpura was also very good.

Several days later, the missing girl, the other Malaysian, the Chinese girl and me went to see Sea Paradise in Yokohama. (Hmm, I could have just written "me and the class girls". Oh well.) It's a big Disneylandish place, the centerpiece of which is a huge aquarium located in a pyramid. No, not making it up. Pyramid. It's made from glass, though, not stone. And there's all kinds of marine critters swimming around in its five storeys. And on top, there's a huge pool where dolphins and seals and a walrus and a penguin and an announcer of indeterminate species perform in a show.

There's also several amusementparkish rides, and a rollercoaster. We bought a day pass to the whole island, so if we wanted to go take the rollercoaster five times, we could, with no extra charge. Since the rollercoaster was anything but cheap, we thought we had a good deal going. However, as we came to the gate, six seconds before we would have boarded for the first time, the attendant shut down the ride. The wind was picking up, and they were closing down the rollercoaster for safety reasons. So we didn't get to ride it at all. Not even once, since the wind stayed strong the rest of the day. So that part really blows.

Otherwise, it was really cool. One of the best things was the lunch. When we became hungry, the first thing we spotted was a yakiniku place. I hadn't had yakiniku yet, and thought it would be nice to try it, but we saw the price and it was... rather more than I usually paid my meals. Like, quadruple. However, as we walked around, we saw that pretty much everything was more expensive than usual - the tourist complex effect. Then we decided it's better to eat the expensive stuff in expensive places than to eat cheap food in expensive places, and went for yakiniku anyway.

This proved to be an excellent, and in the end really inexpensive, decision. We got a tabehodai. Which means, eat as much as you can in 90 minutes. Well, we did. Thoroughly. If you haven't googled it yet, when you go for nikuyaki, you get raw meat, already flavoured with spices and sauces, and you grill it yourself on the little griddle built into every table. There's vegetables too, but the main point is meat. The four of us ate maybe 10-15 plates of various species of meat. Stuffed ourselves silly. And that's not all! For the soup is included as well, as is rice, salad bar, and - desert! And by "desert", I mean a really really tasty treat: almond tofu. Or almond jelly, if you prefer. Yum-m-my! All for 2000 yen. It might be four times the price of my regular cafeteria lunch, but it's also the most meat I've eaten since coming to Japan.

Last notable event was the New Year. There was about 15 of us foreign students, and we went to hatsu mode - or first prayer of the year. It's the traditional way to spend New Year's Eve in Japan. We went to Zojoji, the main temple of Pure Land Sect of Buddhism, where we just missed the opportunity to stand in a 3000-person line to recive the paper on which we would have inscribed our wishes, attached to a balloon and sent into the sky at the stroke of midnight. Instead, we visited the Eiff... err, Tokyo Tower, which is just next to the temple. It was very crowded, so I decided, with another guy, not to go up at that time, and go grab some food instead, since both of us missed our dinner.

When the time came to enter the temple, it was... indescribable. In a feeble attempt, I'll only say that the crowd was in a fifteen-meter wide and hundreds of meters long "queue", and when we finally went in, there was a war inside. Half of the people were fighting to approach to throw in their coins and make their prayers, the other half, having finished what they came to do, were fighting to escape to the door. It was a war, I tell you. War!

Afterwards, I went home. Most of the people went on to Meiji shrine, and then to see the first sunrise of 2009. But I was cold and my feet hurt, so I passed.

The last of the notable events, I had dental surgery today. Huzzah!

Brief Notes

I'm sleepy. Mostly because I can't sleep at night. And even less by day.

I've been to a Chinese restaurant where the serving obasan was so surprised I could say a sentence in Chinese that I got a free jasmine tea, free rice - and free iced oolong tea for the whole table of four. I was embarassed, especially the way my Japanese companions kept semi-enviously teasing me.

I've gone to another monthly boardgaming meeting. It was fun. I managed to explain Red November in (something similar to) Japanese. Much hilarity ensued, even if I couldn't explain about "gnomes" and why everything was going to hell in a handbasket.

I've seen the first season of True Blood. Props to Paquin, but Sookie is way better in the book. But Vampire Bill rocks on screen.

I need to find time to go to Akiba by day. I decided my back is worth ~¥6000.