Adventures in Japan

Flea Market With Ink Sauce

Even with such a late night full of aimless wandering, we managed to get up and out of the Orange House by noon. We met Ben and he guided us to a big, open-air flea market. It was pretty nifty. Japanese people, on the whole, are pretty fashionable (if you ignore the orange mullets) and the flea market made for some great people watching.

It was fun to walk around and look at all the cool looking clothing on sale, on display, and on the people walking around, but it was basically all a big tease for me. Nothing there had much of a chance of fitting me. Kinda sucked. Spent the whole day going, "Kim would like that... Kim would like that... Kim would like that. " Sometimes being a gangly goof has it's drawbacks.

No such problems for Ben though. He bought a whackload of clothing. And some toys. I bought an odd little clay head from a gaggle of giggling girls.


It was only fifty yen, and it seemed to make the girls giggle even more than usual.

It took us a few hours to get through all of the Flea Market, so we decided to unwind (and warm up) at a nearby mall. We shopped for a bit and then decided to grab a bite to eat. I forget what everyone else ordered, because I was too busy admiring my own plate of food.


Look at that. Is there any way to make that look even more appetizing?


I didn't think there was, but I guess I was wrong. You might want to wipe the drool from your chin, you don't want to wreck your computer lusting after my Squid Ink Spaghetti. Believe it or not, the best part of the Squid Ink Spaghetti story is still to come...

January 26th is Australia Day down there in Australia. Seeing as a whole heap o' Ozzies come to Japan, one of the nearby bars had an Australia Day Barbecue this evening. Trev comes to visit us in Japan and gets to experience some Australian culture. We sat in a loud, crowded, smoky bar and ate BBQed kangaroo. Plus we drank some XXXX and some Crown Lager. Also plus: Carla abused the free vegemite on hand. I declined. We saw kimono girl and Skeezy Kiwi again. Poor, poor kimono girl.

David met up with us and then almost immediately took off again. He had buggered up his foot and it was starting to pain him. We Left Tin's Hall not long after and headed over to the Green Leaf, the guy manning the barbecue (it may well have been Tin himself) tossed us some complimentary grilled lamb. It was tasty. And hot. The Green Leaf was much less crowded than Tin's. We drank some non-Aussie beer and ate an Authentic Aussie meat pie. We finished the evening off by scuba diving near the Great Barrier Reef and hand feeding wallabies with eggplants we had picked earlier in the day.