Thanks to other people's cameras I bring you 2 new photos! The first is me at karaoke with Yoshiko, a friend of my awesome guide Hiroto, and the other is me at a Chinese temple in Yokohama, the second largest city in Japan, not far from Tokyo. Yokohama is known for its Chinatown, and I will always remember the lunch I had there, a fabulous marriage of two wonderful cuisines: conveyor belt dim sum!!! Dumplings and egg tartlets that you can just grab off the belt and stuff into your mouth! sugoy!
I had another delicious meal on Saturday with my guide Hanae: okonomiyaki, a cross between a pancake and pizza topping, which you make yourself on a griddle at the table. You can use different ingredients, but we made one with cod rose (fish eggs), cheese, bacon, cabbage, and some yummy sauce. It had a really nice comfort-food taste to it. In other words, I'm not going to lose any weight if I keep eating this during my trip, which I will, because it's a speciality of the Osaka region and I haven't gone there yet.
On Friday night I enjoyed an izakya, a lively bar/restaurant with an all you can eat and drink in 90 minutes special (and lots of amtosphere on a Friday night) and karaoke with my guide Hiroto and his friends in Shinjuku area. They didn't have all the songs I wanted to sing, but they did have many English songs. Then I went dancing both Friday and Saturday nights at some cool little clubs in Shibuya, one called Ruby Room, the other Loop. Both had guest gaijin (foreigner) DJs, but I liked the local residents DJs who went on before and after at both places better. One of the DJs at Loop looked like a Japanese Jack Black, wearing a beret. The cover charge was steep (about $25 including 1 drink) but worth it.
I spent a lot of time in Tokyo just walking around admiring everyone's fashion sense, which is sometimes questionable but usually quite cool. People really do dress like in the photos from the fashion site I check every week! (see link to the right). I saw a lot of girls with lightened, teased hair, like a beehive in the front, party in the back (reminded me of Amy Winehouse's hair) and a lot of guys with highlighted hairsprayed rocker hair or the baggy hip hop or skater look. Many (straight) men carry "man bags"!! Joey from Friends would be proud. I also saw some people with scary-looking fake tans, including brownish-orange faces. I guess not everyone is into the ideal of pale skin anymore. And I don't know how so many Asian women walk in heeled shoes everywhere every day and night, but they do...
