The Great Gift Exchange

Last weekend all the girls had basically either went out of town or had gone somewhere the previous week. V and I were leaving to go back to Taipei this weekend (for which we missed our flight...) and V was headed back to the US eventually from there.

We ended up meeting everybody on Wednesday for dinner and a gift exchange. So everyone headed to Shibuya, where we met up with Iz and M right on time. D was late, working too hard. Without a clear plan, we headed towards some restaurants in search of an izakaya. An izakaya is a restaurant whose main existence is to service the alcohol needs of the after-work crowd.

This crowd in general has many needs and are satisfied by a wide array of choices specific to only Japan. In one of my classes, the teacher asked one of the students which she prefers, Asahi or Sapporo. She didn't really know how to answer, and some other students tried to tell her Asahi. Asahi Super Dry is the best selling beer in Japan, but almost all the beers are the same. I've bought myself a Kirin lager, Sapporo lager, and Asahi Super Dry all at identical prices in order to do a taste test. The Kirin lager really was just ok. I've historically appreciated Sapporo a little, so we'll see how that carries. I've heard that Yebisu made by Sapporo is actually pretty good.

Nearly every beer sold is another version of a weak pale lager and quite mediocre. Americans are no different of course drinking 90% Budweiser, Bud Light, MGD, Miller Lite, etc, etc. All those above? Pale lagers. America basically invented the category. The difference is that I don't have to drink what nearly everyone drinks in the US. I was pretty much only doing Belgian whites for a few weeks before leaving the country and having to drink 5% beers has become only barely passable. In addition to beer, highballs and sours are also typically offered, both of which are basically coolers. To be frank though, it is kind of nice to be able to order a chick drink with no repurcussions. You guys know what I'm talking about; sometimes you just want a lemonade with alcohol in it...or something.

Well Wednesday we actually left the apartment a little early to hit up the Odakyu Department Stores food court. Ba wanted this special yokan - red bean jelly bar thing from a store called Toraya, so we found a location and went to buy it. They actually had a number of other flavors too and the place looked so promising we bought ourselves small sizes of all of them.

From left to right we have red bean, brown sugar, green tea, honey, and white bean. We've already tried all of the but brown sugar; red bean and green tea are pretty damn delicious. The rest of them were good, but only good if ya know what I mean. Ba knows what he's talking about I guess, because they seem pretty famous. They also seem pretty expensive. Well more than seem. V found out that they've been the official provider of desserts to the Emperor since 300 years ago. Maybe not that long, but almost that long.

So anyway, everyone had these snacks and there's this giant bread looking thing that V and I have been holding onto for a while. I couldn't wait, so I picked apart the packaging and started into it. I liked it very much. It's like a puffy rice cracker with a brown sugar coating. The thing is really long, but you kind of just suck it down and before we knew it there wasn't that much left for D.

Iz's fault. V and I had never been to a 270 Yen place before so we hit up three or four of them until we found seating. These stores are basically izakayas (I guess) that sell nearly everything on their menu for 270 Yen. That's brilliant. So all the drinks are basically 270 Yen, most of the food is 270 Yen, and we had basically our cheapest bill yet. Also you get to use this sweet touch screen pad to order.

We ate nankotsu - cartilage for the second time and it's pretty good prepared the way we always eat it (fried). What tastes bad fried though, really? The coolest thing about the 270 Yen is that there is such a huge variety of food and all of it's pretty good. Our spread was kind of all over the place with various yakitori-like dishes, some katsu on a stick and a bowl of fried rice.

I had a beer and ordered a Hoppy, which is a nonalcoholic version of beer. Its not actually beer at all because it hasn't been brewed, but it kinda sorta tastes like it. In a Hoppy, the alcohol content is brought back up by adding nihonshu. The end product is not delicious. Not drinking it again.

About this time, we stopped ordering food and started handing out gifts.

Here's Iddddzumi with her cookies and kit-kats. The kit-kats are cherry flavored and V loved those cookies! I went to bed last night and this morning we had one left.

M has a box of chocolate covered potato chips on her head, but she didn't actually bring anything. The other box of chocolates is from Akira; thanks Akira! D got V a Cambodian scarf and me a box of coffee. Yay!

We sat there happily munching away on all this crap, and the servers were nice enough not to bitch about it. Those goddamn potato chips were too damn good. I think I need to ban those from my life.

The rest of our weekend has been fairly uneventful thusfar. We successfully missed our flight yesterday morning and rebooked for today. I forewent (is that a word?) lunch to eat this Calorie Mate. There isn't a huge selection of energy bars in Japan and Calorie Mate seems to be the most popular by far. Too bad it tastes terrible. Why do people buy this stuff?

It's also super bad for you. I can get bars in the US that are pretty much fiber, protein, and carbs but still taste good. This thing was something like 4g of protein, 0g of fiber, and all grams of fat. They do have soyjoy here, so I might have to rely on those.

Flying out shortly. We'll be J + V -> Taipei (Sat) -> Tokyo (Mon). Gonna eat the crap out of all the fruit on that island.