Saturday 21 June 2008

Birthday stuff...

Having already taken me on a bead shopping-spree in Asakusa Bashi [浅草橋] last saturday, Greg took me to a very nice French restaurant in Hiroo [広尾] called Chez Tomo.




We entered past the open kitchen and the signatures of the Troigros Brothers (two very famous French Chefs whose restaurant Tomo used to work in when he was in France) and then turned the corner to a very peaceful, white-dressed dining area. Tomo apparently cooks for the love of food and only just covers costs on lunches, and as the majority of his customers are regulars, he changes the menu often.

I had a very nice foie gras fish terrine (very nice foie gras!) and Greg went for a form of black pudding (which looked more like a chocolate brownie. I have to say I prefered the look of mine, the idea of a slab of blood didn't really appeal. on the other hand the slab of blood didn't look or taste anything like what I expected and it had a surprisingly soft texture. Moving on, we both took the hot and cold veges which arrived on a square plate neatly laid out in a grid. There each of the 30 or so little veges were all different, and we spent most of the time working out what they were before eliminating them one by one. For the main course I took white fish in a tomato soup which came with a prawn sitting on a bed of finely diced vegetables. Dessert, which is usually the most difficult to avoid dairy products, they offered me several non-cow related options involving fruit and sugar. I took the cherries, which then reappeared in a very tasty red wine sauce. In addition to the tastiness, the sauce also tried to make me more drunk.

The food at Chez Tomo was excellent, and I was particularly impressed with their ease at dealing with my anti-cow product allergys. The atmosphere was more cosy, and the service more personal than L'Atelier, and we hope to go again...

The second-half of the afternoon involved heading to Shibuya and buying tickets for Indiana Jones, which was out on general release the very same day.

After the movie, we went to Tight to wait for people joining us for dinner...which was at ISM (our favourite hard-to-find restaurant)...a lovely lunch and a great night with friends all arranged by my Greg. Merci Buckets.

Tuesday 17 June 2008

Your Mission, should you choose to accept it...

I've been invited, by my Professor, to join a JGS (Japanese Geological Society) collaborative mission to China, following the SiChuan Earthquake in May.

The dates of travel have now been set, although we are still unsure of where precisely we will be allowed to visit (due to safety issues and other less official factors). The visa applications are on their way and details of our journey to ChengDu are being finalised via a volley of emails. I am starting to feel like I should be more important than I actually am. Having glimpsed the list of the Geotechnical Team Members, I am the only female and possibly the least qualified person on the entire team.

I am starting to feel very small.

Sunday 15 June 2008

Wiiiiiiiiii

WE got ourselves a Wii. My first console ever. We consider it a technological 'investment' and considering we had 20 000yen worth of gift voucher for Bic Camera and the other bits and pieces you inevitably have to buy in addition to the Wii are that bit cheaper here in Japan, we couldn't not buy one...Actually, we would have bought one of those super-duper massage chairs, but it was definitely out of our price range - more like one months rent or maybe two.

After spending most part of the day checking out the prices in several different shops in Akihabara [秋葉原] we ended up paying 5000yen in cash for the Wii (comes with one Wiimote, nunchuck, console, but no game). Then, using the store points from buying the Wii, we bought a second nunchuck (it turned out that BicCamera was the cheapest place to buy a nunchuck at 1600yen. Bic Camera also sold a rechargable battery pack (and charging station seperately) for the Wiimote...

Heading off to BookOff we bought a second Wiimote (again the cheapest we found - including our scouting of the second-hand exchange shops), Mario kart (new) and Rayman's Raving Rabbids Returns (new) - both a tiny bit cheaper than the RRP in the main shops. We also splashed out on Tetris for the DSlite which brought the total spent at BookOff to 15000yen.


When we finally got home we unpacked everything and plugged it all in and did all the setup in Japanese...which wasn't too bad. However, the news being in Japanese is a bit of a bummer (supplied by Goo). And after vigorous checking of the setup, there is definitely no option on the Japanese market console to change the language (unsurprisingly). On the brightside the english menu is exactly the same setup as the Japanese one, so if there were any big issue with understanding what the Kanji says in the options, we just need to pop on the internet to see what the english manual says...Anyway, it's turned out that the Wii also has the added function of making us improve our Japanese. Just as long as we need to tell people that they need to shake their nunchuck up and down or round and round it's fine.


Oooooooh unpacking!