March 20, 2006

• Japan At Last! Part 2-Yokohama and Fugu!

  Well okay folks, now that all my guests are gone, and i dont have to
  worry or lose any more sleep over the talent show (which went off
  fantastically thanks for asking it will be in another post) I can
  finally get back to posting pics from my japan trip…

  again, all the photos are located in albums at www.photos.yahoo.com/rveblade but i will be putting up highlights over myahh

  so lets get to it shall we?

  After returning from the sapporo snow festival, I spent the next
  several days in tokyo and its surrounding suburbs with my good friend
  andysensei. Andy lives in musashikoganei, which is approxmately 30
  minutes west of shinjuku and almost 45 min to an hour away from
  downtown tokyo.

  So Andy had the weekend off teaching, and he and i decided to take a
  train ride to nearby yokohama, one of the largest citites in japan
  besides tokyo to go see the festivities going on for chinese new year
  
  why dont they design more U.S. resturaunts all cool like this?
  
  Gong hai fa choi! but why so crowded, you may wonder?
  
  ohhhh…because of the dragon!

  So Andy and I watched the parade for a while, and this dancing dragon
  which is basically two guys balancing on each others shoulders, AND
  balancing on six poles as they walk around and do all this jumping
  about.
  

  That is why you can see them above the crowd.
  

  We also ate a ton of chinese new year food like niku man…those little
  buns stuffed with pork or beef. Although I also purchased some japanese
  hot dogs. How are they different from american dogs?
  

  After watching the parade we walked around chinatown until we found
  some temples. I have this unknown need to walk into asian temples…i
  know, go figure. So we did and we took some pics
  
  
  
  Look! It’s Sexual Harassment Panda! (south park reference, for those of you not in the know)
  
  I dont know what siegfried and roy thought was so hard about this…

  Oh well. After that it we wandered over toward the harbor and came
  across a street performer…I am a sucker for these kind of things, so
  we stayed and watched the guys whole performance. He was darn good
  too…he juggled knives and an apple and took a bite out of it while
  juggling…not to mention the unicycle and the flaming pins and the
  yoyo and other good stuff
  

  
  
  
  the statue of liberty street performer
  
  Around this time we finally started to get hungry so we decided to head
  back to tokyo…or more specifically shinjuku to track down a
  resturaunt where we could dine on the delectable dangerous delicacy
  known as fugu…or blowfish to the rest of all y’all
  
  here’s to hoping i don’t die!

  Now the reason the puffer fish is so poisonous is that it contains a substance known as ttx or tetrodotoxin.
  Basically, tetrodotoxin stops the action potential from releasing any
  neurotransmitter to propagate the action potential to the next neuron.
  tetrodotoxin affects the amplitude
  of the presynaptic action potential which has an affect on the
  following postsynaptic potential. Or in more simple terms…your
  neurons wont fire, and therefore your brain cant make your body do
  anything it should…like breathe or make your heart beat.

  
  long story short, the chefs prepare it so only a little bit of the
  poison remains and it just gives your tongue a pleasant tingle. Above
  you see some fugu salad and sake, course 1 of the meal
  
  
  hmmm…i am not so sure about this tomfoolery…

  followed by some fugu sashimi
  
  followed by course 3, fugu prepared in yet another way which i do not recall
  
  then fugu tempura
  
  grilled fugu…aka teppan fugu
  
  OH NO! THE POISON IT’S GETTING ME! HELP! HELP! ANDY!
  
  OH NO! ANDY’S POISONED TOO! WE’RE GOING TO DIE!

  heh…j/k folks
  
  i forget what this is, but you can bet it has fugu in it
  
  hmmm…it appears i mean nabe fugu…or fugu stew! Basically they give
  us a pot of boiling water…or rather than pot, i mean a wicker basket
  with just a piece of PAPER in it, and we cook the fugu in the boiling
  water for like 5 minutes then eat it
  
  like so…

  <br>
  
  
  Ah well, at least we went out happy…

  -J

  More pics to come!

  • 9:04 pm
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