Paul and the Magical Sushi-Go-Round

So that's going to be the title of my first childrens' book!

Actually, Paul, Akemi and I went out for a little ¥100/plate sushi action at Kura Sushi this past Monday (Memorial Day). I mentioned this place before in a previous post. It's actually a chain, and this time we went to the one located in Kanazawa-Bunko. I've said it before - it is the model of technological sushi-efficiency. Each table is equipped with a touch-screen computer that allows you to not only order specific pieces of sushi, but it also tallies up your bill as you slide your empty plates into the slot at the end of the table. Mind boggling! Akemi and I ate a meager 4 and 6 plates, respectively, while our friend Paul ate an astounding 39 plates! What an absolute glutton!! We coaxed him on to make it an even 40, but he claimed he was "saving room for dessert". And he wasn't kidding! He managed to polish off not only a brownie sundae at a nearby Baskin-Robbins, but topped it off with a large scoop of matcha (green tea) ice cream. Geez - what a pig! Out of all my friends, he outdoes everyone when it comes to eating and putting away the beers! Paul - you really give us a few good laughs with your uber-indulgent lifestyle, but man, you better slow down or you won't make it to 30!

Cheers, my little wasabi-peanuts!

Lowrey Wedding

Hi guys! Not to bore you with more photos of drunken debauchery, but I just wanted to share some pics with you from a wedding we attended last Saturday, 19 May, for our friends Dave and Nobue Lowrey who had their ceremony and reception at the Grand La Meridien Hotel in Odaiba (Tokyo). I know Dave from my previous tour here in Japan when we both worked at the main clinic in Yokosuka. The ceremony and reception were probably the most lavish affairs I have ever attended. Following the wedding the new couple honeymooned in Guam and then headed back to Okinawa where Dave is currently stationed as an exodontist. Nobue's family owns a real estate business up in Kamiooka, a great little town just south of Yokohama. Cheers to the new couple!!

What's That Lump?

That "lump" is Luna, of course, as she tries to hide from having her teeth brushed and her nails cut, but can't quite squeeze her stumpy butt completely under the couch! She's our sweet little perpetually-hungry Vietnamese pot-bellied chihuahua!

Boston Chowdah / Philadelphia Freedom

Hello Friends of Nature! Akemi and I recently traveled back to the land of Wal-Mart, big food/big people, and monster trucks! We were gone 20-30 April, spending about 3 days in Boston vacationing then the rest of the time in Philadelphia attending my Endo meeting and visiting family. Boston is a great city, one that I would really consider living in if the winter weren't so depressingly and unbearably miserable. Philadelphia, on the other hand, is fun to visit (especially Center City) and great to see family, but it definitely earns the nickname 'Filthydelphia' (and I guess more recently, 'Killadelphia'). I don't think that I could really be happy living there. It's a nasty, nasty city, and people are lucky if they can escape to the outlying suburbs or away from that area all together.

In Boston, we stayed at an 80 year old hotel, the Boston Park Plaza Hotel, officially listed on some historic registry of something or another. Our room and bathroom were clean but tiny, which really makes me wonder if Americans were pygmie-sized 80 years ago. Food in Boston is to die for, including the local specialties of clam chowder, oysters, lobster, and just about any ethnic food you can imagine. While there, we took in the local attractions, including the Freedom Trail, Boston Common, Fanueil Hall/Quincy Market, North End (Little Italy), the Boston Museum of Fine Art, Newbury Street (and other incredible shopping areas), and also a Red Sox game at Fenway Park. In Philadelphia, we stayed at the Crowne Plaza Hotel in Center City, a great starting points for most of the great restaurants, bars, and shopping in the area, as well as walking distance to the Convention Center where my meeting was held. It was a great opportunity to visit family and get an attitude adjustment away from the grind of Navy dentistry. Anywho, here are some Boston pics. They are as follows (top to bottom) - Oysters and beer at Legal Seafood; Outside of our hotel and Legal Seafood; Boston Common; Boston Cemetery (site of Paul Revere gravesite); Old state house/site of Boston Massacre; Freedom Trail sidewalk marker; us in front of Sam Adams (the patriot and the beer guy); Akemi and the big man; Paul Revere (now can you remember all the lyrics to the song of the same name by the Beastie Boys?); Akemi on the Democrat Donkey. The last two are from Philadelphia - Akemi with Tony, Lysa, and Ellie; Akemi teasing a patriot at the Liberty Bell.

Bend It Like Beck

Hello all! Paul and I went to see Beck perform last night at the Nippon Budokan Hall, and it was fantabulous!! He put on an incredible show, whipping through all of his best songs. I would have to say that out of the entire set, there was maybe one song I didn't recognize. His band is spectacular and put on a great show. Beck didn't dance (I understand he used to put on quite a spectacle at shows past). Maybe he's had some injuries and can't keep up the physical intensity show after show. Instead, his bongo player did all moves. He was the "sakura" for the show - sakura means "cherry blossom" of course, but it's a slang term at concerts in Japan for the people the concert promoters hire to rile up the crowd and get them excited about the show. He is a permanent band member, but he also served as sakura nonetheless! It was neat to attend a show at the Budokan, from a historical perspective, considering it is the same venue that multiple famous artists have performed at, most notably the Beatles, who were the first to play there in 1966 despite criticism that the building is a holy site to be used strictly for martial arts. Many of you may be also familiar with "Cheap Trick Live at Budokan". I don't know why that's so well-known. The building itself is a lot smaller than what I imagined.



The most innovative part of the show was the use of marionette puppets representing each of the band members. The "puppet show" was choreographed to match everything the performers were doing and broadcast on the large screen above. Even their costumes matched the clothing of the band. It was an absolute hoot! Unfortunately, I couldn't snap any photos during the show because the camera nazis were on patrol, so here are some pics I ripped from the web. Judge for yourself, but the Beck puppet looks uncannily like Owen Wilson!

Look Mom!

I finally joined the yakuza (Japanese mafia) and got the prerequisite arm-length tattoo! Just kidding of course. Akemi and I went out with some friends from work a couple weeks ago because we were curious about this "hard rock" bar called Bar Dude. That bar was kind of lame, but we had a good dinner at a favorite izikaya called Raku. Junko-chan brought along this novelty fake-tattoo sleeve that we had a lot of fun with.

Uncle Moz

Who's cooler than cool you ask? Why Morrissey, of course! "Pushaw!" I say to all you naysayers that say he's old and he's a has-been. Quite the contrary! He gets better and better with age - just like umeboshi (sour, pickled Japanese plum), like Akemi would say. He's not producing WalMart-ready, candy-coated radio hits (not that he ever did), but his music (his lyrics) nowadays is just as witty, heartfelt, complex, and important as it ever was. He has really become one of the elder statemen of alterna-rock, very comfortable with himself and his image. He's that cool, eccentric uncle you never had. And to boot, he's going to be touring like a madman this year, making stops in smaller venues all over the U.S. Heck, he's even playing the Moroccan Shrine Auditorium in Jacksonville, FL. That's like Beck playing at a public library (which, incidentally, would maybe be the coolest thing ever!).

Below is a photo of him I had to include. I ripped it from the Morrissey-solo fansite. He's pictured here with Kristeen Young, his current protege who is now touring with him. It goes without saying that her music, like any of his other pet projects, is definitely not as good as his. But maybe that's by design! If you want to see a fantastic, recent live performance of his, check out the DVD "Who Put the 'M' in Manchester".
Mozzer - still rockin' the pompadour in the free world.

St. Patty's Day Madness!

Hello good friends. I've got a lot of updating to do, which I'll try to do over the next few days. But let me first start with our outing from last Saturday, St. Patrick's Day. We started out by going to Yokohama station to meet an old friend, Jason, from our time in Virginia Beach. He is currently on TAD to NAS Atsugi from Misawa Air Base up in Aomori where he is stationed. He brought a classmate along. It was great to see a familiar face! We started off the day with a trip to the Ramen Museum in Shin-Yokohama. The museum is on two-floors, the ground floor having a big giftshop and a small area highlighting a brief history behind ramen and how it is made. The basement level showcases a recreation of a typical street market from late 1950s Japan. It features eight different ramen shops, each offering a style of ramen from a different region of Japan (most regions have their own provincial style). We tried a Hokkaido shop, which uses a miso-based broth - a style I had been looking at trying. Needless to say it was delicious! The only topping I got was thinly-sliced ham, so if I ever go back I want to try something with more veggies. Overall, I highly recommend doing the museum at least once. It's definitely a tourist-trap, but good, kitschy fun.

View of the "city basement" at the museum

From there we made our way to Minato-Mirai 21 (MM21) in Sakuragicho for a stop at Hard Rock Cafe Yokohama. Now, I'm not big on the Hard Rock chain and we rarely ever go there, but our friend Jason collects the shot glasses from them so we wanted to take him there for shopping. We also walked around Queen's Square and took a few photos.



After that, it was already beer o'clock, so we made our way to a favorite surfer bar in Yokohama called "Stoves", where we hooked up with our friend Paul. Stoves is a little pricey and they're very slow at getting the food out on a busy night, but a good time was had by all.



From there, we proceeded on to The Green Sheep pub for an evening of St. Patty's debauchery. The place was a little too overrun with gaijin (especially U.S. military) for my taste, but after Guinness #4, it didn't make much difference. Here's a few more photos:





The evening ended with a late-night snack at Matsuya beef bowl restaurant. The following day wasn't nearly as fun - I ended working on my lecture for the Tri-Service Dental Conference, which I will cover in my next entry...

Until then, later suckas.....!

Babel On & On

Hey, check out this movie! Now, I'm not going to give away the entire plot synopsis here because it will totally ruin it for you, so you'll have to see it for yourself. I think all of the critical hype was warranted, because it is a well-crafted, original, introspective movie. It's basically set in three locations, Morocco, Mexico/U.S. (California/Mexico border), and Tokyo, Japan, featuring characters that are all linked by a series of events that are slowly unraveled through the course of the movie. It's one of those movies that I'm glad I didn't know a lot about beforehand. Isn't funny how those movies that you experience with a clean slate always have the most to offer? They're usually fresher and more innovative that way when you don't have that bias of seeing the carefully selected key scenes force-fed to you through the t.v. spots and movie trailers over and over. Naturally, my favorite scenes in the movie were the ones from Tokyo, but overall I really enjoyed the sweeping cinematography of each of the locales, communicating a real sense of isolation and loneliness. I was left wondering if Japanese teen culture is as out-of-control as it is depicted in the film, but then again I don't know any Japanese teenagers. Somehow, I don't suspect that most kids here live that sort of indulgent lifestyle on a day-to-day basis and that the character, Chieko, gets caught up in it through her own desperation. Incidentally, Brad Pitt does a great performance, one of his more believable roles since "Fight Club".

Add this one to your queue!

Perverts On Parade

Here's an interesting photo I took last weekend while messing about in Shibuya. I think these guys were advertising phone service by NTT. It was kind of creepy, nontheless, as they were all over the place!

S'now Fun

Wassup! The weekend before last we went snowboarding at Happone up in Nagano, site of the 1998 Winter Olympic games. Nice trip and wonderful accomodations at the Rosenheim Lodge, but the conditions were pretty bad in that the snow was slushy the first day, then frozen the following morning. Most of the slopes are definitely intermediate to advanced, so being that I hadn't gone snowboarding in three years and that the conditions were pretty bad, I felt like a beginner! I even busted my ass hard on an icy path the second day. I thought I fractured my coccyx! I'm still sore. Not to mention, when you do "extreme" sports in Japan, whether it be surfing or snowboarding, everyone believes they are an expert, so the slopes (and beaches) are jampacked with aggressive "experts" all rushing to muscle their way through the crowds, trying to make the hundreds of thousands of yen they spent on tolls, lodging, and the season's most fashionable equipment and accessories all worth it. If you take up any of these activities, don't think that the typical polite Japanese demureness still applies. Prepare to do battle!

Anyway, enjoy our pics!



Shabu-shabu at Rosenheim

Traditional Japanese beer...uh, tea ceremony

The Good, The Bad, and The Supergroup

So there's this new group/album that recently came out called 'The Good, The Bad, and The Queen', comprised of Damon Albarn of Blur, Gorillaz, Clash bassist Paul Simonon, former Verve guitarist Simon Tong and Afrobeat pioneer and Africa 70 drummer Tony Allen. Yet another Albarn side-project, this one takes a different direction from the electronic-campy Gorillaz and goes the route of a more spacy, mellow-happy dancehall/reggae vibe. Though the lyrics center around current social issues in England, the sound is more of a trippy Radiohead-goes-to-Disneyland feel. I've been reading a lot of reviews which describe it as "boring", but I disagree. You have to give it a serious listen while just chilling out at home or while riding the train and you'll catch all of its little intricacies. Historically, I'm not a big reggae fan, but I think this album appeals to me because it's very "British", if that makes any sense. Definitely high on my current playlist. Go check it out mon!

Munchen

Hi folks. Watched that movie, "Munich", the other day. Steven Spielberg masterfully tells the story of the 11 Israeli athletes that were kidnapped and subsequently murdered by Palestinian terrorists at the 1972 Munich Olympics. Now I'm neither Israeli nor Palestinian, so the movie did not have an emotional impact on me so much as just feeling empathy for those athletes that were just there to compete and were dragged into a nightmare waged on behalf of diametrically oposed ideologies. The story covers a crack team of Israeli military specialists led by Eric Bana (from that stinker, "Incredible Hulk") that goes undercover in Europe to track down and assasinate each of the terrorists that were involved in the assault. The majority of the movie is a very interesting vengeance story, watching the group meticulously track down and kill several of the terrorists. Their assasinations are almost in humorous in how clumsily and fraught with error they are carried out, particularly all the of ones that involve explosives fabricated by the resident bomb "expert" played by Mathieu Kassovitz (who uncannily looks like a cross between Daniel Stern and Horshack from 'Welcome Back Kotter' - there's your dose of pop culture references for today). The story is a little sketchy in regards to the French informant 'Papa', who provides all of the whereabouts of their targets but also seems to set them up for failure. The ending is a little bizarre also, involving a juxtaposition of the main character having sex with his wife along with scenes of the murder of the Israeli athletes. I guess it's supposed to represent a duality-thing of the taking of life vs. the creation of life. Whatever, Spielberg. Anyway, it's worth a rent so go check it out superfriends.

A Day's Outing

Hello friends! Sorry it's been a couple weeks since my last entry. Not too much going on other than running errands and staying busy with work. I did complete editing my movie, "Travels Down South", on my computer and I hope to show it to you soon. I'm really happy with my first attempt at filmmaking/movie editing and can't wait to shoot additional footage. Who knows...maybe at some point I'll even write up a screenplay ("and send it to L.A., I'll get it done yesterday...aaagh shit" - ben folds five). Yesterday, Saturday, was just a really nice day out with Akemi and our pups. First, we took a short train ride down to Taura St. and walked up to plum tree park way up in the hills to see the new blossoms.







From there, we went up to Akemi's home town, Sugita, to visit a gallery where her dad is having a exhibit of his watercolors. This batch of work showcases her parents' trip to Germany last summer.





We finished the day with a stop at our favorite local pub, Cafe Bar Honey-Style, for beer and snacks. Thankfully, they didn't mind having pups there. In fact, the staff gave them new names - Stella is now "Simon" and Luna is now "Sammy" - don't ask me why. Needless to say, they were pretty exhausted by the end of the day.







That's it for now! More updates to come...