Sendai trip

So the flight over was uneventful, since it was a short trip I was able to pack all my stuff into a single check on bag. I bought some Tumi luggage last year under the optimistic impression that my office was going to send me to the Far East on a regular basis, but my boss managed to justify sending himself every time instead. I also had a box of miscellaneous items that I brought over for my friend living in Sendai. It included two large canisters of protein powder and a bike computer, I was sure that it was going to get me cavity searched for smuggling drugs or a bomb. On the flight I used some silicon earplugs and was actually able to sleep for the first time, this helped me adjust to local time quickly.

Fri - We landed on schedule and Immigration was smooth enough, about an hour wait. The customs agent just laughed as I flexed my arm, pointed to my atrophied biceps and said 'puroutinu pawuda.' At least I avoided the cavity search. Then I paid the luggage delivery service to send the box to my friends office and went to catch the train to Nishi-Magome where my friends live.

Nishi-Magome is the last stop on one of the several subway lines crisscrossing Tokyo. It's a pretty straight shot from the Narita airport, you can do it with only one transfer if you are lucky. I am pretty familiar with the route, so I feel comfortable making the two hour trip by myself.

I got to my friends house at around 5:30pm, dropped off my stuff and grabbed a bus to Yokohama to meet him at his office. There was another American guy visiting his branch from Dell's home office in Texas, so the three of us went out together. Dai decided to take us to the new 'Budwieser Bar' a version of Hooters with really cute young girls in skimpy lycra Budwieser emblazoned mini-dresses. I say Hooters, but being Japan there was a couple elements missing. A point made clear when the girl came by with a bag of french fries with some flavored salt and asked us how many times would we like her to shake them. She dutifully sang a little song as she shook the bag up and down as we looked at each other bemusedly. If she had been blessed with more than a Japanese 'A' cup the effect would have been more entertaining, but less amusing. I had to explain what the point of the whole procedure was, and we all had a good laugh. Dai in a fit of newfound cruelty had the girls smash hard boiled eggs on our heads as he laughed maniacally, they put little band aids on our foreheads, which I must admit didn't appreciate the glass like shards of the eggshell impact. Another one of his co-workers and his wife Yoko joined us as the American went home early to prepare for his trip to Shanghai the next day. We ate some tasty food and drank some more beer.

Sat - We went to get Dai a haircut (he has great Anime style hair) and I got us a pair of Shinkansen tickets to Sendai where we met our friends Howard and Maki that evening. We got some beers and Futomaki for the train (public drinking is present everywhere) and headed north. We went out for good sushi and then had some more drinks at a somewhat disappointing british style pub.

Sun - In the morning we were supposed to go to an On'sen, but Maki was hung over and delayed us to the point where we scrapped that plan and delayed it for the next day. Me and Dai had suffered through Howard's excessive and notorious snoring, but we still managed to get some sleep. We hung out at Sendai station and met some odd characters, having beef tongue for breakfast and going out to an Izakaya for food and beer late in the afternoon followed by more drinking and a hostess bar where me and Howard practiced our Japanese.

Mon - We went up to the mountains, picking up Maki at her hometown along the way. The On'sen that Maki found was tucked inside an oxbow in a steep gorge carved by a twisting shallow river. There were several different hot spring pools available, one inside one on the bank of the river and one under a sheer cliff of dense foliage. The food they served in the inclusive lunch was great, and we all had several beers. After a nap we took one more dip and returned to Sendai where we once more ate and drank before grabbing a bullet train back to Tokyo.

Tue - In the morning we went to a big fish market near Ginza. There were many small shops, and not being in a big hurry, we chose a shop with a long line. The place served great chirashi sushi bowls. I had Toro, Uni and Ikura. It was delicious and fresh, although I still feel that California Uni may have a slight advantage in flavor. Later that evening we met Dai's sister and his wife Yoko at a great little Italian style restaurant. The owner made us all his special items, little pizzas, home made paté, and carpaccio. The draft beer and wine for the girls flowed liberally.

Wed - Dai had to work, I went to a nearby town Godanda and explored. After a bit of wandering I found a Starbuck's and after recaffeination I went to the arcade to watch the kids execute insane amounts of fast twitch memory reflex action. I found a pool hall to kill time until Yoko called me and had me meet her in Shibuya. We wandered about until Dai got off work and had a drink at a fancy wine bar serving particularly foul 'Japanese' wine from middle Izu peninsula. They had a massive wall mounted LED display that used clever modules made up of RGB LED elements firing into square light pipes so that the color for each pixel was mixed at a single point.Dai came and found us, as Yoko's sense of direction was off by 90% that evening and we went for Thai food and several pitchers of cold draft beer.

Thu - Dai had to work again. I had some flour tortillas that my friend Nash wanted from the US, so I met him in Shinjuku. He took me to a Chinese noodle place where we ate nice spicy noodles and caught up on his latest working arraignments. I stayed in Shinjuku as I was meeting an old co-worker Goro-san and his wife and two boys for dinner. He and his family are herbivores, so I let him chose the place, no easy feat to find vegetarian food in Japan. The restaurant he chose had vegetarian shabu-shabu (kind of self made soup) that he had to pre-order the day before. The wait staff clearly could not comprehend that they ate onlt vegitables and insisted on serving the mixture of courses in such a way that me and Yoko (Dai was stuck at the office most of the night) ate while the poor Senzai's attempted to convince them to bring the 'main dish.'

Fri - In Japan they have a holiday to respect your ancestors. We went to Asakusa to pray at Dai's family grave site. They burned incense, scrubbed the granite monuments and arranged flowers for the Kumura family graves and a couple of old family friends that were no longer visited and would have gone neglected otherwise. We then ate great sushi and drank Sake and beer at a local place with Dai's mom, grandma, aunt and uncle. We had coffee at Starbuck's and went to Ginza to window shop. There were some interesting furniture shops and such. In the evening me and Dai met up with my old friend from Machida, Teru. Some of my mixi.jp friends were able to make it as well (many were not unfortunately) and we drank up a storm at a fancy and expensive izakaya. Teru surprised us by announcing his intent to marry one of the girls we met the last time I came to Japan around new years day.

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Sat - We met one of Dai's subordinates and his tall beautiful girlfriend. The guy looked very much like Jacky Chan and was very nice and funny. We ate and drank, killing two bottles of Shiso leaf flavored Shouchu and lots of beer. He apparently married the wrong girl, divorcing her after only a couple months. She apparently wasn't all that happy about it, and sued him for everything he had and more. His girlfriend seemed so nice though, I can understand why he thought it was worth it to throw it all away for her. I'm dying to meet his wife though as it's always informative to see all sides of a tragedy to really understand it.

Sun - Yoko had her Architectural license examination. Me and Dai got up in the afternoon and met his sister at a local festival. The monks at the temple had built a pyre covered in what appeared to be cedar boughs. After much chanting and ceremony, and with many period costumes and parading Samurai's, they lit the mound which went up in a very impressive column of smoke and flame. The monks waited for the stacks of kindling to burn down and then covered a path with what appeared to be hundreds of chopstick sized rods. These burned pretty rapidly and the monks ran through the flames, some more rapidly than others. We ate some grilled meats and Giant Takoyaki (grilled Octopus dough balls) with Beer of course. Watched a nice Taiko drumming performance, and the JAL girls cheerleading squad (only Japanese airlines need cheerleaders.) We me Yoko after her test at the Starbuck's and we all went to the Prince hotel to watch the Dolphin show and the Penguins and fish.

We capped off the evening with a couple pitchers of beer and tasty foor at Yoko's favorite italian restaurant (her sense of direction was 360% off this time, much to our chagrin.) There was a couple of wedding party celebrations happening with cute guys and girls all dressed up and well on their way to getting snokered and fully squiffified. I was sad to have to leave the next day, the last night is always the hardest.

Mon - I said my goodbye's in the morning and packed up my my stuff. The trip to the airport seemed to take twice as long as usual. I got to the airport pretty early though, checked in my bag and had a big beer and a decent (for Airport food) tonkatsu set (chicken fried pork cutlet.) Coming in to SFO is always bitter sweet, seeing the familiar landmarks and my island from the sky. The salt evaporation ponds, my office and the bridges. I pointed out Mt. Tamalpais and Diablo and the various points of interest to the Korean Tokyo University PHd. student (studying chip fabrication.)

Japan was great, I had a very full schedule and ate a ton of food and drank even more. The only low points being that my complexion was really sucky and I didn't bring enough shorts for that humidity. There were more beautiful women than could possibly be described, genes, style, and a crowd density that would make your average bat or termite colony seem capacious. The real difficulty is that finding the right girl there is like finding a needle in a giant stack of needles.