It's legal to drink at 15!?

I just went up to the executive level for breakfast and while there I was reading a newspaper article on drinking. They just did a report here that says one or two drinks in a night can actually be good for you but to make sure you stop at four. I guess that's not so weird, what is weird about it is that in the article they recommend that people approaching the legal drinking age should not have more than one drink a night. I found it odd that they listed that in there and reading on further I found out that in Australia the drinking age is 18, ok no problem right, and that people aged 15 - 17 are allowed to drink under parental supervision. I guess they figure that if they have two years of drinking under supervision they will be more responsible when they are allowed to drink at 18..

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Last night I walked down Pitt st to find something to eat, I was surprised to find most of the retail stores closed at 7pm. I don't know why that surprises me since most Ireland and Germany were the same way. Anyway, I ended up looking at bunch of different places till I saw the menu of Edinburgh Castle which had prawn and calamari risotto. Feeling in a seafood mood I went inside, I know when am I not in a seafood kinda mood. Anyway, in this place you go up to the bar and order your food/drinks, they give you a table marker and your drinks and the guy brings the food over. I had a Blonde ale and it was very American-ish which was sorta disappointing. The food however was great, took a picture but it was too dark to see so I didn't post it. Speaking of pictures, I did some work on my Flickr site last night to include the Sydney pictures. What I had to do was create a new 2009 Collection and then in there put the previous 2009 collection, now named 2009 Monthly and the Sydney Collection into it. Inside the Sydney Collection I have a set for each day. To keep things consistent I did the same thing with the 2008 Collection so that Japan is now under 2008 and I have a Monthly Collection for 2008 as well.

Back to the restaurant.. They had techno music playing and had Cricket on the TV which was really cool, apparently the Australian National team is away right now but they return home on next Sunday for a day/night match. I am really interested in going but the tickets are $85 a seat and I don't really think Jessie would want to sit in a Cricket Pitch all day. I'm going to see if there are any local teams I can go see today, but at least I got to see some on TV last night if nothing else. It's not as boring as everyone made it out to be but then again that was watching one hour while eating and not watching an entire day long match.

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I've never had a blister on my foot and let me tell you it really really sucks! Especially since it's on my right foot which is already a problem since it's still stiff and the muscles are not back to full strength yet. I guess it's probably because I have not done this much walking on that foot since November but I think a big part of it is these sneakers which are not the most comfortable things to wear. When I got them a few years ago they were very comfortable but since I've been visiting the foot doctor they have not been, they didn't work well with the inserts that I had to wear and they certainly don't work well now. The back of them rubs against the lower cut and creates aggravation there, because of that I am walking odd in them. Now that I have a blister wearing them is nothing but annoying. What else did I bring? My work shoes which are ok, they also rub a little against the cuts but not as much as the sneakers and my really old sandals. I wore my sandals to the pool yesterday and that was actually comfortable but the part flat part your foot sits on is all ripped up so they will not be comfortable to wear for an extended period of time, plus I won't wear my sandals with socks and with my blister and cuts I think it's important for me to wear socks. Plan for today is to look for new sneakers and maybe new sandals.

I just tried on my sandals with Thorlos and they are the most comfortable of the three pairs of shoes I have, the work shoes are a close second and the sneakers are really not comfortable at all. I guess I will wear sandals and socks, at least the socks are green so it's not too bad. I just have visions of Cliff Claven walking around in sandals and white socks to shake out of my head and maybe I'll get over sandals and socks. I can't wear them without socks because of the bottom part being all ripped up. I don't know if I'm describing the ripped up part correctly, I just took a picture to show you what I mean.

King of Iron Chef, in-deed!

Hiroyuki Sakai won the Iron Chef tournament and was named King of Iron Chefs. I was very upset when that happened because he beat my favorite Iron Chef Chen Kenichi, now I think I know why... Both Chen-san and Sakai-san are masters of their cuisine, I would say Chen's food is the best Chinese food I've ever had and Sakai's food is the best French food I've ever had. I think the difference is that French food has more depth to the flavors then Chinese food.

In Japanese you would put "-san" on the family name to show a sign of respect. One thing I find interesting is that Chen Kenichi is the only Iron Chef to use the Japanese writing of his name. Japanese (and Chinese) names are always listed last name first so on the paperwork here it is Sakai Hiroyuki but in American it is reversed with first name first. Chen Kenichi is listed that way everywhere...

Anyway, back to the point.. I got to La Rochelle wearing my Mets jacket and the head waiter say it and asked if I was from NY. When I said yes he told me that Sakai's son just graduated from Cornell University and was expected back tonight. He then told me to come with him into the bar for a minute before going into the dinning area, once in the bar he told me he was going to get Sakai so he could come talk to me. :D

The bar area was beautiful, the restaurant is on the 32nd floor of an office building and the view of the city was amazing. The bar was red and had glowing lights shining on it making it look almost neon. Behind the bar they had a glass bar with the bottles on it, that bar had blue neon lights under it. Ordered a glass of wine and they brought me some olives and pastry puffs while they went to get Sakai from the kitchen! He came out with an interpreter but we didn't use him, Sakai speaks English but I guess the interpreter was there in case people couldn't understand his accent. We talked for a few minutes about NY and why I was in Japan, I mentioned how I travel for work and that I was going to Australia in Feb. He and Chen are going to Australia to hold a cooking seminar soon, that would be awesome to go to but it's sooner than Feb. After we talked I got my picture with him, he really is an awesome person and is as friendly as he appears to be.

So, onto the dinning area. The dinning floor manager (Vahid Pishkar) is from Iran and has lived in Tokyo for 20 years, as part of his job at La Rochelle he went to Paris for one year and had to learn basic French. He also speaks fluent Japanese, Iranian and English although he didn't know the English for that blue stuff that grows in Blue Cheese, I told him mold and showed how to spell it..

He came and chatted with me between the first few courses, we talked about George Bush, Barak Obama, 9/11, my job, my travels, his travels, our communal dinners, the Mets, American Baseball, Japanese ballplayers and other various topics.. After a few courses he told me that Sakai's son had just arrived and would like to come to talk to me.. Sakai Shingo graduated from Cornell University in the summer and was planning to stay in America and open a restaurant there but his dad asked him to come home so like any Japanese person would do he came home. We talked about NYC, Upstate NY and cold snowy winters. Apparently it does snow in Japan but nothing like in Upstate NY, he had many days where he ended up sleeping in the library because he didn't want to walk back to his dorm.

So, now in between each course I had either Shingo or Vahid coming over and chatting with me. It was awesome, everyone there was amazing. Shingo actually gave me a few pointers on how to cook foie gras and told me that I really should get ahold of some burdock for cooking for one of our communal dinners, he even told me how to cook it so it is not too tough. Speaking of foie gras, we know it's liver but what I didn't know is there are two kinds. The most common and easier to cook is duck liver, the better but much harder to cook is wild goose. Here is the bad thing about it.. There are "farms" that grow ducks for foie gras, those "farms" lock the duck in a very small cage ala Veal and feed it nothing but corn, ducks can't digest corn correctly so it causes the liver to grow to unusual size and they end up dying of liver failure. The liver that it produces is a tough foie gras which means you can over cook it with no fear of screwing it up. Wild goose as the name suggests are not caged animals, they are fed corn but not enough to cause liver failure which means that when the animals are killed the liver is still healthy. The healthy liver is very hard to cook, the trick is to only pan fry each side for a very short amount of time and then put it in the oven covered with some kind of sauce (he recommends something sweet like black truffle sauce) so that the liver almost steams from the sauce. Again, you have to only cook it for a very short amount of time or else it will get overcooked and be very chewy.

What else did I learn tonight? Japanese written language is a bastardization of Chinese and Latin. There are three different Japanese written character sets. The oldest is Kanji which was based on ancient Chinese. Kanji can't be pronounced, they are symbols to project meaning and based on the placement and arrangement they mean something different. You can't just take a Kanji symbol and translate it to a word or words, you need to translate the whole sentence in order to gain it's meaning. The second written character set is Katakana which was also based on Chinese. Katakana came into being when new things were introduced into the Japanese culture such as tomatoes, forks and spoons. The Katakana is usually a one symbol for one word association, for example there is a katakana symbol that literally means tomato. The third and final is Romaji, Romaji a bastardization of latin letters and is pronounceable. They have letters for sounds so Shinjuku would be three romaji letters, one for shin one for ju and one for ku. With the advent of phones and text messages Japanese people are going away from all three of these methods and instead using western spelling of their words which is why in the last 5 years alot of signs have been changing over to english letters. Six years ago Japan was very much the Japan from Lost in Translation with no understandable signs. Because cell phones cant text Kanji, Katakana or Romaji they needed to put road signs and such in a written character set that people could text.

The concern amongst traditionalists is that Kanji, Katakana and Romaji are all going to be a thing of the past in another 10 years or so and that everything in Japanese will be written out with English characters. Iron Chef Michiba is one of these people which is why everything in his restaurant is written only in Kanji, he apparently won't even use Katakana or Romji because he feels they are the first step in Japan losing it's culture.

Anyway, enough lessons.. Back to dinner.. How good is Sakai's food? When Iron Chef Masahiko Kobe got married they had their wedding and reception at La Rochelle.

Without further ado I bring to you a course by course description. :) The names in " " are the way they are listed on the menu.

Course 1 - "Fruit tomale inside crab with 3 kinds of fresh clams" This dish had a shrimp sitting atop of a tomato, inside the tomato was crab and a sauce made of three different types of clams. The sauce on the outside was a clam/pesto which was amazing!

Course 2 - "Foiegras saute with truffle sauce" Do I really need to say anything about this? Holy shit was it good! It was a large piece of wild goose foie gras over a crispy potato with white asparagus and black truffle sauce!

Course 3 - "Organic vegetable salad with consomme jelle" This was a salad of very fresh vegetables, it included zucchini, corn, asparagus and a few others, it was all wrapped in a cucumber and was on top of a honey sauce. Very nice fresh course to balance out the richness of the foie gras.

Course 4 - "Hokkaido Ezo abalone with hard clam sauce gratin" OK, I'm over my abalone hating officially! There are three different types of abalone, there is Japanese, Australian and American. The Japanese is soft yet firm, it has a little bit of a "crunch" when you bite it but not much of one. The Australian one has no "crunch" and is the softest of them. The American one tends to be "crunchier" and a little harder. There is no definitive answer as to which one is the best, Sakai will only use the Japanese one. Morimoto disagrees and prefers to use the American one because he likes the crunch.. Huh, learn something new every day.. Or in this case lots of things. Oh, my opinion of this? Amazing, the gratin was to die for, I ended up putting the rest of it on my bread! The abalone;s texture was like eating squid, but had more taste than squid does.

Course 5 - "soup" This was a soup made of burdock and some bullion. It was very good and supposedly helps alot with digestion. It tasted alot like Hikama, very earthy.

Course 6 - "Fresh fish from south of Japan" This was a langosteen wrapped in sole cooked in an lobster and crab sauce. It came with a few veggies. This was probably the most disappointing dish, it was great but not as good as the others. I think the lobster and crab sauce reminded me to much of a lobster bisque and that didn't fit right with langosteen and sole.

Course 7 - This was not listed on the menu. After your meal and before dessert they brought a cheese cart by, anything you got off this cart was extra. I got some Sheep Milk Blue Cheese, some beer soaked cheese and some hard cheddar. The cheddar was very good as you would expect, the beer soaked cheese was amazing but the blue cheese stole the show. The blue cheese was so fresh that if you cut a piece and left it on a plate for a few hours the mold would be grown onto the plate! Vahid recommended I eat some with honey and black pepper and holy crap it was so good, I would have never thought of cheese with honey and black pepper but trust me it's worth trying.

Course 8 - "Grand dessert" This was a caramelized peach in a peach and honey sauce with a scoop of vanilla ice cream. Yummm..

Course 9 - "cafe" They brought out the coffee with a small plate, the plate had two pieces of home made chocolate, two pieces of sugar candy and one piece of marshmallow. The chocolate was still warm and gooey inside so when they say they made it fresh they meant they JUST made it fresh!

Shall we play the guessing game? I will tell you this one was more than yesterday's meal, but since nobody guessed at that one you don't really have a frame of reference do you.. Come on, I want some guesses.. :)

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Two other things I wanted to share.. One - There was an opera singer in the lobby of my job today during lunch.. She was good, I listened to one song. Two - I went into a Head Shop on the way to La Rochelle today, everything in there was in English. It was like walking into a normal American Head Shop.

Crap it's late.. I am going to get dressed for bed and then start resizing pics. I might not get them up tonight. If not I will get them first thing in the morning..

Return of the Breakfast

I got up really early this morning and went down to breakfast.. Today's breakfast was a bit different because I am getting sick of this whole fish thing.. Oh, wait.. Who's blog is this? But seriously today the salmon was a little under cooked so the skin was a bit less crunchy than I like but the mackerel was good. I also had noodles, a tofu & veggie dumpling, egg, pickled "green vegetable" (forgot what that was, but it was tasty), brown seaweed with mushrooms, salt pollack, chili rubbed berries and miso soup.

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I keep meaning to post the list of Yen coins/bills.

Coins are:
1 Yen
5 Yen
10 Yen
20 Yen
50 Yen
100 Yen
500 Yen

Bills are:
1000 Yen
5000 Yen
10000 Yen

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I saw a really neat statue today, it was of a naked man holding up a baby to the sky. There are plenty of statues of women with babies, but I can't think of any statues with men holding babies.. I took a picture of it and will post it later tonight..

---Diversion of the Day


---Thought of the Day
I was walking to work today (across the street) and I started to think about how people in cities almost never get direct sunlight. Sure, the sun is shining in the sky but it's always blocked by some building so you never get that direct sunshine.

Go Go Go Go Lions Gooo Gooo

It's late at night and I probably should be in bed so I apologize in advance for any random tangents this may go on.. I am going to try to keep it somewhat in order if only for you the reader.. :)

First of all may I just say that the Shinjuku train station is fucking huge! I went in to get the Shinjuku-Seibu line and after walking around for a while I had to ask someone, apparently the Shinjuku train station is in two parts. The Keio Lines (main subway lines) and the JR Lines (trains to locations outside Tokyo) are all in the main building, there is another building that houses the secondary Subways (the commuter rails). The Shinjuku-Seibu line is apparently in the secondary building because it's a commuter line not a main train and not a subway.. Anyway, it's a good thing Japanese people speak English to me.

That's a gift I seem to have, so many people tell me that Japanese people don't speak English, but every time I talk to them they speak to me.. Trick to talking to Japanese people, be humble and be very patient with them trying to speak. If they think you're in a hurry or will cut them off/correct them they will not talk to you. It's easier to say you don't speak English than to sound stupid doing it. Remember that Japanese people take pride in everything they do, if they don't feel 100% sure of their English they will not speak to you if they think you might look down on them in any way!

Something I didn't realize about Japanese people - everyone know that when you take or hand a business card to Japanese person you use both hands and present it to them as a gift and I'm sure you know that when you take a business card from a Japanese person you always take it with both hands and read it before putting it away. When I say put it away I don't mean stuff it in your pocket I mean put it in something so they know you consider it as important as they do! Anyway, where was I.. Right.. So apparently this custom also hold true for credit cards, receipts and train/baseball tickets. Even on a lesser note on merchandise. I bought a stuffed animal of Sam and the lady at the counter handed the stuffed animal to me to look at and then handed me the bag for me to put it in.

Ok, so now where was I.. Back at Shinjuku, right.. So, I asked someone and they sent me to the secondary building. Bought my ticket to the Seibu Dome station and headed onto the first train. To get to the Seibu Dome you have to take the Seibu-Shinjuku line into Seibu then you have to take the Nishi-Tokorozawa line one stop before finally taking the Seibu-Sayama Line down to the Seibu Dome. Don't worry if you can't read Japanese the signs change every few seconds so you can read it in English letters and Japanese letters and all the maps have both letters too.

Got to the stadium just after 5pm and got my ticket! Section 53 Row 20 Seat 5 if you care. The way the stadium is designed is it's all one level, they have a walkway halfway between the field and the concession stands, I was in row 20 of the upper half of the stadium. I don't think that stadium would have a bad seat. The stadium holds about 36,000 people and it was sold out, ironically a bunch of people on the 3rd base side must have purchased tickets and not showed up, there was a few whole sections empty..

They had a visitor seating area at the stadium which was the left field bleachers, the fans over there were trying real hard to make enough noise to drown out the Lions fans. It almost worked in the top of the 1st when the Lions pitcher walked the first two batters he faced. It was not looking good.. The manager came out and talked to the pitcher and he didn't allow another man to reach base until the 5th inning! The Fighters pitcher however got beat up! I don't know why in Earth they let this guy pitch for as long as they did, he allowed 7 runs on 10 hits in 3 innings (4 in the 1st, 1 in the 2nd and 2 in the 3rd)!

By the way, the Fighters suck in general.. I don't know how they managed to get in the playoffs let alone to the 2nd round! They didn't have one batter hitting .300, most of their lineup was batting between .215 and .250, I think they had one guy hitting .280! Ok, average isn't everything they must hit some massive home runs right? Wrong! Their cleanup hitter had 8 home runs for the entire season! To put that in perspective the Lions cleanup hitter had 46! Matter of fact, the Lions only had one guy in their lineup who hit less than 8 home runs! I guess they did it on pitching, but not on the guy who pitched tonight, he stunk..

By the way, I want you to think real hard about the term "Domed Stadium". When I think of a stadium with a dome I think of Houston, Montreal, Milwaukee and Seattle which all have domes that cover the roof, you know what else they have? Walls! Silly me thought I didn't need a jacket because I was going to a stadium with a dome, what I didn't realize was that the dome was supported above the stadium with beams. The effect of a cover over the stadium was wind, and lots of it. I was ok till about the 6th inning when I started to have to blow on my hands..

I bitch about the dome/cover but it really was not that bad, had I been aware I would have brought my coat and I would have been fine, it's still better than building a state of the art ballpark in NYC without even a cover to protect against rain.

So.. Food.. The concession stands were all at the top of the stadium and they served a WIDE range of food, they had hot dogs, burgers, sushi, noodle soup, KFC, Baskin Robbins, Dippin' Dots, chocolate covered marsh mellows, Japanese boxed meals, corn dogs, popcorn, green tea (hot and cold), various types of beer and various mystery items. Some of the mystery items were desserts and some were dinners. I got a boxed meal which had slices of cooked eel, bacon and beef over rice with mushrooms and sliced up dicon. I also had chocolate covered marsh mellows, yumm! Oh and a Suntory beer because after all "It's Suntory time"..

So as I said the Lions scored 7 runs in the first three innings and the Fighters had not scored any before the 5th. I got to see plenty of people waving flags, every time the Lions scored a run everyone would wave these blue flags, it was pretty neat. The crowd in general never stopped, they were chanting and singing and banging sticks the whole game, I would image it being very intimidating for the visiting team.. I don't know if they are that active at every game or if it was because it was the Climax Series, I would guess the latter.

All the names on the scoreboard were in Japanese, but the positions were in English. It was odd because you would see Japanese character with 2B or something next to it. When the Lions hit home runs the scoreboard actually said "Home Run", when the struck someone out it would say "Strikeout". Ok, those are baseball terms so I can understand the English there but when they were in a big rally the scoreboard said "Great" and "Awesome" and "Nice Rally". Very strange to see the English words mixed with Japanese.

I got a program for the Climax Series because I felt I had to, it's all in Japanese but it has nice pictures.. :) I'm going to go back and read this now and see if I missed anything.. OK, three things I missed.. Sam is the name of the Lion mascot, the toilets had seat warmers and the stadium seats in general are real nice. The seat I was in had a removable pad so they could be washed and was wider than most American ballpark seats which I find ironic because most Japanese people would have no problem sitting in American seats. The seats behind home plate were recliners! How much would you pay to sit in a recliner at the stadium during the playoffs? How about $100? That's how much those seats are.. My seat was $20! My post season tickets at Shea were $150 for the playoffs and $300 for the World Series and those are not field level seats! Tickets on top of the Green Monster at Fenway are $1500 per seat for the playoffs!

On the walk back I passed a 15 story Karaoke place!

OK, I'm done now.. I really need to get some sleep.. I'll sleep when I'm dead, right?

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I uploaded new pictures to the Japanese picture page so go check them out..

Up too early... and so are you!

Last night when I landed I took the airport bus to the hotel. I guess Narita airport is not really in Tokyo, the bus ride was over 90 minutes from the airport to Shinjuku (the section of Tokyo I'm in). On the way we past Tokyo Disney before entering the main city of Tokyo. Tokyo Disney is amazing looking at night from the highway, I am looking forward to spending Saturday there. Inside the city made me think of all of the "neo-tokyo" anime and also "5th Element", the highway is three levels of road above the main city streets. Under the highway are major roads and under those roads are the main city streets. It was very odd because it felt like you were in a flying car. Did you know that Tokyo had an "Eiffel Tower"? I didn't.. I might go over to that one of the nights to check it out up close, I have no real plans to go to Paris so this might be my best opportunity to see that type of building.

Once inside the city we had to keep going down to the 2nd level of road and back up to the 3rd. At one point there was a ramp from level 3 to level 2 that went over the water and turned at a pretty sharp turn, as if that was not cool enough it had 4 lanes (2 on each side). Very cool ride, I just wish it was not so dark because my poor little cell phone camera couldn't come up with any cool pics.

Checked into hotel and went to Shinjuku shopping district which also happens to be one of Tokyo's biggest Red Light districts, I looked it up when I got back to the hotel.. :) They had sushi stands on the side of the street like New York has hot dog vendors, yum... They also have drink vending machines at most corners, and yes the Japanese buy a drink and stand by the machine drinking it. I didn't see anyone walking around with food or drink..

Announcement on the bus - Cellular phones are prohibited on board this bus as they annoy your neighbors..

Woke up with the sun this morning. It's 7:15am and I am showered and just finished typing this blog. Going down stairs for free breakfast.. :D

---Thought of the Day
"He chose you not because he saw some end with you but because he wanted to find that end with you in his hand." - Crystal City