I just typed the search string “nagoya late night stupid drunk motherfuckers” into the Yahoo Japan search box on a whim, to find a good pub out here tonight. Quite unexpectedly, this blog was listed 5th. Damn, I feel like I own this town already.
Later: Why is Nagoya food so salty? It’s like a monkey got loose with a salt shaker in the kitchen or something. Bad, bad monkey.
Moriyama Sumo Program
I’m really looking forward to seeing sumo for the first time. We’re going to the Nagoya tournament on Saturday. Here’s an article about sumo barely surviving as a school sport in Kanazawa:
Wrestle Mania
It’s worth clicking for the photo alone.
Money quote from a Ministry of Education spokesman:
Nowadays it’s difficult to promote a sport where the participants are basically naked.
Wow, it’s reassuring to see the education of a Japan’s youth in such able, perceptive hands. Following this logic, we’re sure to see the sharp decline in swimming in school athletic programs fairly soon, right?
“Right now,” she told me, “right now is fine.”
There’s a memorable profile on Karl Taro Greenfeld, written by the man himself, over at Time Asia:
Tokyo Popped
His writing, as always, is vivid and enjoyable. Sometimes I suspect he and Gibson go out for strolls into the Tokyo night, each mentally recording all they see.
Growing Pains
The kitten grows as I type these very words. The trip to the vet two days ago showed his growth rate as what I thought to be impossible. The first time we weighed him, he was 220 grams. The second time, only six days later, he was 330 grams!
His eye is getting a lot better. The goopy stuff leaking from the burst eyeball cleared up as a result of daily eye washing, medicated eye drops, and the antibiotics course we feed him. Sight will never be restored to that eye as it is too damaged, but some of the coloring has been restored – it was previously just a protruding white blob.
He has gotten a lot more vocal and mewls when he wants attention, food, or both (pretty much all the time). We trimmed his nails because they get needlelike fairly quickly, and bought him some scratching posts. The posts came with some powdered catnip and I was curious as to the efficacy of “cat cocaine” on a kitten, so I dabbed a teeny bit on his nose. Pow! He went into hyperspeed for about 1.5 seconds, streaking across the room, banging his head on my computer, then rebounding and racing back to us. So, catnip does work on kittens, but not for very long. I’ll save the rest for when he gets older, maybe craft a little freebase pipe for him out of glass tubing as a post-op recovery present.
We’re going up to Nagoya to see the Sumo tournament tomorrow, but I’ll find some time to post some more pics of him soon. Damn. Never woulda thought I’d be catblogging. I’m a dog person, if anything.
“Price check on aisle 9…”
Wataru-kun must have lost his price tag again.
So it begins:
School to put electronic tags on students to monitor safety
Paired with the Ministry of Health’s decision to implant foreign dogs (actual canines, not gaijin) with microchips to “prevent rabies,” I think it’s fairly obvious where this is heading. The next time any of you have to renew your visa, don’t be surprised when they ask you to submit to a subdermal implant… On the brighter side, would this mean we no longer have to carry around our gaijin cards?
The Inferno Begins
Sweat is dripping down from my scalp, running over the back of my neck, and soaking my uniform’s collar. The sunlight is so intense today that it’s hard to look out the windows. The lab next to our office is very nice and cool so everybody escapes there under the pretense of doing experiments. Please turn on the AC in our offices you cheapskate motherfuckers. Out of thirty five or so employees who work in this office, only myself and two others remain.
Our beloved manager must have Moroccan ancestry or something. The guy is sitting tall in his Enterprise chair and never seems to sweat at all, even in August when it gets crotchrottingly humid in Japan. The girl on phone duty looks like she has succumbed to heatstroke or dehydration, which would be bad for her but good for me since I could stop willing a heart attack on myself just to be able to ride in a nice, air-conditioned ambulance and sue the company for inhumane working conditions… Ah, who am I kidding, anyway? If that shit was possible, somebody would have done it by now, right? Right?
Update 1: I found my own “experiment” to run. Yay.
// Hypothesis: If you hook up enough batteries to a flashlight bulb, it will explode.
// Method: Hook up a shitload of batteries to a flashlight bulb.
// Observations: Very bright flash.
// Conclusion: The filament burns out, but the bulb does not break. Next time, try MORE POWER.
Update 2: The guy nest to me was using a heat gun and he (accidentally) singed the hairs on the back of his fingers, creating the most nauseating stench… I’ve cleared out of the lab for a while because the smell is recirculating.
“Not a bad sandwich just a boring one.”
My only memory of an authentic Philly cheesesteak (in the sense that I had it in Philadelphia when my dad took us; I don’t think it was from a reknowned shop), almost twenty years ago, is much the same as this man experienced:
I’m standing in the street in line with some obviously neighborhood guys talking college basketball betting, just like in Armour Square but instead of talking Illinois, Notre Dame and Wisconsin they’re talking Syracuse and Holy Cross. I asked them what I should get on my sandwich and this guy with a gold Italian horn and a green, white and red T-shirt tells me to get cheese-whiz. Cheese-Whiz!?! I don’t know from Philly but in Chicago no Italian neighborhood guy is gonna tell you to put cheese-whiz on anything.
So I resisted this Italian Stallion’s advice and got mine with provolone. The result was a very bland sandwich. The bread was soft and chewy instead of snappy, like Italian bread that been kept in a plastic bag. The meat was bland and overall this was a colorless, blah sandwich.
Find the full write up and an interesting comment thread here:
http://www.roadfood.com/Forums/topic.asp?TOPIC_ID=2912
I just discovered the Roadfood site today via a link on Deliverance. Roadfood looks like it might be a good cross reference for Chowhound, which we used on our trip back to the states last year to find the best eatery in Thai Town.
It was also the first time for me to visit Deliverance, where I found a well-founded rant about brake dust, the invincible enemy of People Who Somewhat Give a Shit About Their Car’s Appearance.
Simple Fare
Sometimes, after a long day on the road and a few beers, Japanese comfort food just seems more appealing than anything else. This photo was taken at a robata-yaki shop in Kochi that we found late at night after checking into the hotel.
Yes, the fish are eaten whole. On a related note, the kitty ate two whole frogs next to a rice paddy today. The vet later told me that frogs are potentially bad because they have a lot of parasites. Maybe I should cook them next time.
Curled up
Yoda curling around a rain gutter pipe outside the vet’s office.
Kochi Castle
Nam and Merin in the rain. That dot up on the hill is Kochi Castle.