Japanese is my favourite food!

Seriously! It is the best! I didn't even think I felt like Japanese tonight, but just had the yummiest udon noodle soup with the most tasty lightly battered and crisp tempura! Soo good! And I got to sit at the bar and watched the chefs. I wanna work in a japanese kitchen! I was just sitting there with a big grin on my face watching the open kitchen. Heres some interesting things I noticed about the chefs (and kitchen)
* They are all men
* They are all wearing clean chefs clothes (no spills)
* They have loads of different types of fresh noodles - homemade and soo good
* The pots are huge that the soup is cooked in and instead of using a ladel to get the soup out, they use small saucepans.
* For the tempura, they have 2 lots of oil, 1 is for the veg and 1 for the meat
* They put the tempura into (and out of ) the oil with chopsticks (very cool, and means that the oil drains off)
* They only use the big drainy spoon to clear out the oil of the extra batter
* The tempura I had was - prawns, pumpkin, eggplant, seaweed, a leaf (very pretty and tasted good), mushroom and maybe some other stuff
* The bowl of noodles was bigger than my head but thankfully they didnt fill it (yet i am still stuffed)
* I am learning to slurp, but I still eat noodles like a foreigner
* After I ordered (involving pointing to the menu) the waitress asked me something, along the lines of big or small. I thought she was talking about the portion so I said small (as the people next to me had buckets rather than bowels!) but it turns out she meant the size of the udon noodle, mine were the thiner variety - but still yummo.

Was great! I told the restaurant guy - oyshikata (and he understood me - oh it means, delicious!)

I keep forgeting to bring my camera - there are so many things I want to take a picture of! Tomorrow definitely!

Heres an email from my observations at work on monday. I arrived in Tokyo around 7pm sunday night, Monday night went home and ate sushi, edamame and gyoza from the supermarket (yum), Tuesday I taught all day then went out for drinks with work ppl which turned into 4 of us girls, continuing our drinking (gin & tonics) and ending up singing kareoke in a kareoke cube (little room with couches and soundproof) Very Fun. Too many G& Ts and no dinner makes Natty a hangover girl. Teaching today was painful. Off to a girl from work's place to pick up a warm jumper and then home for an early night.

Oh heres the monday email....

So work is not exciting and I had lunch by myself but it was both yummo and
fun!

I went downstairs and got told there are loads of restaurants and places
that do bento boxes. so I figured I could point and buy one.
I found myself a little place and was about to point and get a bento box,
when I noticed the people to my right putting money into a machine and
getting tickets for food. Well that sounded fun. so there were a few
pictures with names in japanese. So i picked a picture that didnt look too
scary and matched up the japanese symbols with those on the (coke like)
machine - and yes it took a while. I got my ticket and went into the
restaurant and put the ticket in front of the cook and she started asking
me something in japanese. I got all freaked but managed to pick out
soba...udon. I replied with "udon". I ended up with a very yummy meal of
rice with katsu curry sauce, and a big bowl of udon noodles and soup -
yummo and all for 500 yen (which i have since found out is about $5)

Other amusing things about tokyo
- the toilets are heated (speaking of toilets - the bus driver stopped the
bus yesterday so he could use the toilet at the back of the bus - very
amusing, we were all wondering why he was stopping - this was during the 2
hr bus ride to town)
- the only restaurants open last night (sunday night) were indian and
korean (I ended up joining 3 random american businessmen for a korean
dinner)
- men bow their heads to you when entering lifts (beats hk where they snort
and smell ;)
- After the fireman stopped ppl walking past (as the firetruck was turning in) he bowed to us! So cute!
- Oh did I mention some japanese men are cute (unlike the chinese ones!) and some are tall!

Thats all so far....

Nat




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