Oishii

This morning we went to the fishmarket, where we almost got run over thousands of times by men (not one woman, I noticed) driving these wierd go-cart type cars with boxes on them and a bizaare steering mechanism where you stand up and turn a big wheel like you're on a ship. Then I dragged Zack to Daiwa sushi where, as the guidebook promised, the line snaked around 5 or 6 times but actually moved much faster than we expected--some guy from Dallas named Tony told us that some other person told him that the line would take an hour. I suspect the guy that told Tony that was in cohoots with the owners of the sushi place next door that Tony defected to upon hearing this. Sucker. I finished my sushi breakfast of champions (and Zack his Kappa Maki and miso soup) the same time that Tony finished his. We then took the subway back to our neighborhood with Tony and another Daiwa sushi line defector--Mark from Austria, who now lives in Germany. But we ditched them so I could get my sunglasses from the hotel. Once in the hotel, we had to fight the urge not to sleep, which we did.

I then convinced Zack that it would be a good idea to rent bicycles. Everyone in Tokyo was riding them all over the place, including old people who usually had at least one basket attached to theirs, and middle aged women who usually had at least one child seat attached to theirs (plus baskets). Zack resisted in much the same manner as he had resisted letting me drive the little electric car I convinced him we should rent in San Francisco. A fight ensued, but was resolved; I think what settled the matter was when he realized how ineffectively slow and rickety these bicycles were and that we weren't really riding at a much faster pace than we were walking.

We lit candles and got fortunes at the Shinto shrine next to our hotel. The way you get fortunes is by pulling a stick out of a box and then matching up the Japanese characters on the stick with the Japanese characters on this set of drawers and then opening the drawer that matches and taking out a piece of paper. Then you're supposed to tie the fortune onto these metal rods. I got a really bad fortune, actually, which I'm still upset about. Seriously bad. It said things like "People will hurt you. Sick loved ones will not be healed. Your lost articles will not be found."

We checked out the Tokyo National Gallery, which had a great overview of Japanese art in ten rooms on the second floor. Really beautiful stuff. Then we bought some prints in the giftshop. I still have a lot more shopping I feel I need to do here.

Speaking of "checking out," when we ate dinner last night at a restaurant that had no English menu despite the fact that the sign outside read, "We have English menu," a waiter said he didn't speak English that well but when I asked what kind of sashimi he had he said "I'll check it out." Zack said, "Unless this guy learned his English from 90210, it's pretty good." I still think that's hilarious, and I've been laughing about it since last night.

My dad gave this speech at KJ that said everything in Japan would be persistently similar but strangely different. So far that's true. I can't wait for more fish.