While I have countless Japanese friends, it's an entirely different perspective being here. People are gentle, welcoming and elegant. In the subway I experiment, smiling at the business people, both men and women in their suits to vsee who will smile back. Children are not shy here and seem to smile and interact with us gaijin very readily. The city is immaculate, there is NO litter anywhere, and all the subway trains and stations are gleaming. Everyone smokes, which is odd. There are gingko trees everywhere.
Off George's balcony I just saw a Japanese raven, which was terrifying. Like a huuuuuge crow, about the size of Canadian hawk with a very long mean-looking beak. Apparently they attack schoolchildren occasionally! The air quality is far better than I expected, but it's been quite breezy. The subway system is baffling. NY's is as well, however it feels learnable...this is about 4x as complicated and even George and Brian need to pay attention to what they're doing lest you step on the wrongtrain.
Our first night, straight off the plane we went looking for food before we even came to George's. We chose a vibrant smoky pub of snackfood and warm people relaxing after their work day. mostly in my age group, the place was a little grungy but incredibly inviting..all the cooks and service staff (they were 5 in total) interchanged roles, stepping behind the grills, accepting payment or carrying out food from the entirely open kitchen that was barely big enough to turn around in. The seating capacity was maybe 25 in this place, and the friendliness was awesome. There was a long communal table of people facing each other.
They specialized in pork, and especially the nasty bits. I had a major sense of adventure and tried all sorts of unmentionables and was surprised at the deliciousness despite the unappealing squiggly appearance, if you get my drift. As we didn't know what to order, we would point at other people's food that looked good, and they inisted we try theirs to see if we liked it. To my total shock I loved it all, the stomach, esophagus, heart and everything, when I always though I couldn't handle those textures. We drank a lot of beer and shared our food with tablemates as well. Made some friends with a couple a few years younger than me and had a fantastic broken conversation, about our lives and music, mostly. He used to be a sake maker and now rolls soba for a living and we bonded about long physical work. There was something familiar about them we liked each other a lot. She was fearless and unselfconscious with her terrible english and I admired her for it. She was beautiful and unusually tall, with a tongue piercing. We talked music and had a blast and eventually had the brilliant idea to trade ipods to explore each others music for a bit. We had a lot of the same music in there! as we got drunker the place got crazier and crazier. There are some photos... We staggered home and felt asleep almost immediately. It was great to see George.
Walked all day yesterday, saw a lot of cool stuff, had a great lunch. I went to an Iyengar class with George, it felt fantastic. I really needed it. Left the galaxy in savasana. The class was taught bilingually by an indian woman. Now it's early afternoon and we're chilling.
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