Cruel but Tasty
I am off to Shinjuku in Tokyo this morning, essentially the red light district of Japan, of which I was totally unaware until just before arriving.
Shinjuku is the busiest train station in the world, with something like 5 million people passing through A DAY... craziness. And I thought Clapham Junction was mental...
Today I am meeting my Japanese teachers from my days of studying Japanese in the UK, Hongo Sensei and Echizenya Sensei tonight at 6pm at Starbucks. I am so happy I get to meet them because 1) obviously, it would be great to see them again and have them show me their home turf and 2) I really want to get tickets to the sumo wrestling Grand Tournament and you have to do it all in Japanese. Not to comment on their teaching abilities, but I don’t think a couple of months of tourist Japanese is sufficient to prepare one for booking sumo tickets by phone. So yes, there was that aspect to the meeting, too.
The hotel in Shinjuku is crazy! 24 hour party people!! Neon lights and people just everywhere. I met up with my Japanese teachers this evening and went to a VERY posh Japanese restaurant on the 6th floor of some high-rise building overlooking Shinjuku station. My Japanese teachers did the ordering, as nothing in this place was in English and I always like to eat like locals. At our table were two hotplates where the waiters placed two huge metal saucers and filled them with broth. Then they brought over two boxes full of noodles, vegetables, raw chicken, tofu and eel. Yes, you read that right - eel. When the broth was boiling we put the food in and watched it cook.
Then the waiters brought over a box with its lid closed. As they put the box on the table, I noticed it was moving ever-so slightly. Upon opening the box, I learned it contained live shrimp - LIVE SHRIMP! Apparently, we were to put in the boiling broth live - just like cooking lobster. So we each had the pleasure of taking a shrimp in some prongs and holding it in the boiling water until it was cooked - how cruel! At least I took the time to named mine before plunging them into their fiery death… whereas my teachers, who obviously have been desensitised to the act, took great pleasure in saying "sayonara!" to their shrimp and holding them down in the broth. But I gotta admit, it was damn tasty...
Drowning shrimp
After saying “sayonara!” to my teachers (but omitting the deep boil part) I headed back to my hotel to do some washing the old fashioned way - in the tub using my travel shampoo as soap. Travelling in style…
