Adventures in Japan

Super Lukiwski Bros.

Other than that quick one about the snag, this place has been kind of dead. Sorry. The thing is, my brother has been here for the last few weeks. Don't believe me? I have photographic evidence.



This is what the sink looked like the night Ry arrived. That's not counting what we downed at the nearby izakaya. It's been good having him here. Although he makes me feel old. And out of shape. And every girl everywhere stares at him. And giggles.

What have we done? Well, as I type this he is in Atami staying with his magician friend. Last week he stayed for a bit with some dude he met on the flight over. Ry is a popular boy.

We've done yakiniku. A lot of izakayas. For my birthday, we went out to a swank restaurant. Ry and Carla had soup that tasted like popcorn. It was cold. And delicious! The night after that we went to a beer garden.

Beer gardens are gardens on the top of buildings where you drink beer. And eat a lot of deep fried foods. The beer garden we went to had only two elevators leading to the roof, and there were long lines to get in to these elevators. We are not line waiting people. We took the stairs for a bit and then caught a couple completely empty elevators. But the elevators we caught didn't go all the way to the roof. SO we poked around a but more and found a service elevator. We shared said elevator with an old cleaning lady heavily laden with toilet paper. She seemed happy. At the beer garden we befriended some of the people at the table next to us, they accompanied us to karaoke and then to a rock club where Ry gimped his ankle and I sweated a lot.

What else?

Karaoke!



Also: we, meaning more than just Ry and I but less than Carla, went to a restaurant where the girls all wore costumes. Short costumes. Good times. Later on, Ry realized that he had forgotten his bag there. His bag with my birthday gift to him and his passport in it. Before that we went to watch some wrestling. The Japanese enjoy wrestling. Any sort of fighting really. Even if it involves really fat guys. But even though they enjoy the spectacle of fisticuffs and such, they are not all that vocal. They sometimes clap.



We were a bit more loud. We were also a bit more drunk. Good times.



After the wrestling and the costumed eating, we went to a hat party. You had to be wearing a hat to get in. I think. I was not the clearest of thinkers. Along those lines: on the way to and from the hat party I and Ben and Yusuke enjoyed a bit of bumper bikes. Basically, you try to knock another person over or run them into obstructions. It was good fun. Except for the fact that I was not using my bike. Jon's bike took a bit of a beating.

Back to the hat party. We all wore Gizmo hats. You know, the little fuzzy thing from Gremlins. Once in, we danced a lot. And drank. And smoked.

At some point during the evening, I found a wrestling mask. In the hat party bar. I wore it. And the Gizmo hat. I am not a cool person.

What else? We've gone to Kyoto and Kobe and Nara and mostly forgotten to take pictures.






That's about it I suppose. If I, or anyone else remembers anything, it might get posted.

One more thing, there is an interesting story behind this street hot dog.

The Frankfurter Was A Mistake

The dude was all like "200 yen, y'all!" but the sign said 300 yen. So I was all, like, "Bargain!"

But it was so not a bargain. Not at all.

Meat!!!

The title should be about Canada Day I suppose, but our Canada Day was all about meat. Not all about, truth be told, but meat is what I'll remember.

The plan had been to have some kind of picnic/bar-b-q in a park somewhere. So of course it rained today. We didn't have much in the way of backup plans, so we hung out around Ben's place, trying to think of what to do. It's hard to think with air this thick with heat.

We decided to try out this Brazilian place we had heard about. We had to wait for about half an hour, what with our lack of a reservation. The host was quite friendly. He explained to us all, since it was out first time, how the it all worked. There was a round marker of sorts on the table. On one side it was red, the other green. Green, as we all know, means go. As long as the marker was green, they would keep bringing us meat. Once we were full, we need only flip the marker to red. Easy. Plus there was a salad bar.

And it was a GOOD salad bar. But I dared not go back for seconds. I'm Canadian man, I know what's more important. Meat trumps salad, always. So we had some chicken, some pork, some lamb, some rib meat, some chicken heart (tastes like really intense dark meat), and lots of different kinds of beef. All so, so good. One of the best dining experiences I've had in this country.

Once we flipped over to red, they brought out our desert, which was roasted pineapple with cinnamon. I don't like pineapple, never have, but I had three servings. Fan-fugu-tastic.

Happy Canada Day!!!