Five Eleven O Six / Japan II

More adventures from Tokyo...

I finally made it to the Tsukiji fish market on the morning before my first day of work (on a Saturday, no less). I got there at 7am... and much more like it, this time there were quite the ruckus. Forklifts, bikes, fish, aprons everywhere... I dropped into one of the many small sushi shops there and had a rice bowl with some of the best sashimi ever. Good salmon, tuna and roe... and I normally don't even like the big kind of roe so I think it the freshness made a huge difference. I'm definitely going to have to go back again before leaving Tokyo.

Then I went to Ryogoku, the mini Sumo town of Tokyo (if anything about Sumo can be called mini...) Apparently, you can see them practicing in the morning if you show up early but this week and next week is one of the three sumo tournaments of the year so the stadium was closed (unless you bought a ticket, of course, $60 and up - but I have been watching lots of sumo on TV as it requires no language skills to understand ;) But I did go to the excellent Edo-Tokyo museum near by and also had a bowl of Chango-Nabe, the traditional body fortifying stew that sumo wrestlers consume by the trayful to gain weight. I only had a bowl and barely managed to finish it all.

For my first day of work, I went to Sanseikai hospital in Yokohama and saw their ER. It turned out to be very small which was odd considering that it is one of the famed trauma hospitals around, but it turned out this was because they only take care of critically injured pts so their volume was not that high. I learned a lot about the Japanese emergency medical system and did note that (not to bore everyone) they had a nice hand held Sonosite iLook ultrasound machine and, despite their older facilities and equipment, computerized physician order entry(!) They also took me out to lunch for traditional Yokohama Girun-Nabe (rare sizzling beef eaten with vegetables with raw egg) which was excellent, though it is my priciest meal in Japan yet at $487 for 5 people.

I also met this British Vietnamese girl on the subway. She was reading a lonely planet Tokyo so I said hi and we made plans to go out for dinner at Shibuya. Later we met up and found dinner at a random ramen shop... turns out she is here for a six month stint, working for a UK bank. Unfortunately, the more we talked the more it was obvious that we had no interactive chemistry. I'm not sure why, as we had very similar interests (she had traveled a lot, liked food and was interesting) and I did think she was cute, especially with the accent, but this has happened before as well, with another person with whom I should have been very compatible... but I suppose you can't always explain these things. We ended up going to a couple bars after dinner and dancing a bit but no mas...

On the opposite note, I met up with the Australians and New Zealanders for one last night of partying before they left Tokyo. We all went to this club called Velfarre (pronounced like the social institution, I believe) where they had Trance night. Very interesting overall, though I think you have to be high to really enjoy it. I did manage to take a couple quick films before a stern security guy tapped me on the shouder - I guess they were afraid of me stealing their trance music secrets or something... Did meet a japanese girl though and we got along really well though she barely spoke English... so funny how these things work...

I also made it to the Museum of Emeging Science and Technology though it cost me like $10 just to take the train across the bay. The museum is wonderful and presents things like nanotechnology and robotic engineering in an interactive way. The best was this giant LED globe they had which displays the Earth as it looks that day from space - sweet. They also had a special exhibit on 'The Brain' which was supposed to be really neat and is, but mostly it was stuff we learned in medical school so it felt like it was back in class again.

A few more short topics...

I brought the wrong cable for my camera. D'oh! But it only took some gesturing and pointing before I managed to buy a card reader and now I can upload pictures. I have also added a few pictures to my last entry below...

They don't have a lot of gardens (Koen) here but for some reason the ones I have been to are very peaceful... almost, eerie... I can see why they have lots of ghost stories here...

Expensive. Japan is pricey. Cheaper meals cost anywhere from $9-15 and even the street food ranges from $3-6. They were selling corn for $4 the other day. $4! Good lord, that's a lot of money... well, it's all relative... I only complain because for the price of lunch today I could have had three meals and lodgings in Cambodia or Thailand...

One thing I don't understand about sumo. They fight in this round ring about 30 feet across on a square dirt mound but the square is only slightly larger than the fighting circle so more than half the time, when one wrestler loses, he gets pushed out of the ring and falls off the mound into the crowd. I would think that if I was paying primo bucks to sit at ringside, I would want some protection from 300+ lb falling masses.

Lastly, people are always snickering when they say my name. At first, I thought it was because of the american thing but I have learned that my name can be broken down into Niku = meat, Udon = noodles, Panya = bakery... a constant source of amusement.