Irasshai!
This is supposed to mean “Welcome!”
I keep bellowing it without warning at Gabe when it appears he’s about to pass out from exhaustion. Same goes for you.
For a few brief moments this thing was going to be called Koinpai, neatly synthesizing the joys of the Tokyo International Coin Convention and the karaoke-inducing quantities of sake, biiru, and shochu which accompany it.
Then we found the melon. Clark (a securities trader turned coin dealer who lived in Tokyo for ten years and boasts a lovely Japanese wife) had lead us to the polished marble food court nestled in the basement of a Shibuya department store. He pointed at a piece of fruit.
“That melon is fifteen thousand yen. One hundred and fifty dollars.”
“What!”
“It has a perfect T stem, if you look at the top. Excellent shape. And the presentation box, of course.”
This perfectly ovaloid cantaloupe did have some very nice veining on the surface, I had to admit.
“But how long can a melon last? A week? Ten days? It’s total insanity.”
“Oh, no, no, no. You would never eat it. It’s a gift.”
That (presumably) sweet orange flesh wanted to tell us something.
A few quick notes on this blog:
1. It’s going to be mostly photos. That way I get to write less.
2. It will be banged out in my usual shoddy manner, totaling no more than 18 minutes to compose a day, so that I can spend more time away from the computer. Therefore expect typos, glaring omissions, sentence fragments, and fish brain fragments splattered across your screen. Right now, for instance, it’s 530 am and I have just pounded on Gabe’s door so that he will “get the F**K up and we can make it to the fish market while it’s popping.”
3. There is a sneaking suspicion at my office that this “business trip” is a massive boondoggle; that all it really amounts to is a fairly luxe paid adventure for two old friends. Absurd, granted. Just don’t forward this blog to anyone in Concord, MA.
This is supposed to mean “Welcome!”
I keep bellowing it without warning at Gabe when it appears he’s about to pass out from exhaustion. Same goes for you.
For a few brief moments this thing was going to be called Koinpai, neatly synthesizing the joys of the Tokyo International Coin Convention and the karaoke-inducing quantities of sake, biiru, and shochu which accompany it.
Then we found the melon. Clark (a securities trader turned coin dealer who lived in Tokyo for ten years and boasts a lovely Japanese wife) had lead us to the polished marble food court nestled in the basement of a Shibuya department store. He pointed at a piece of fruit.
“That melon is fifteen thousand yen. One hundred and fifty dollars.”
“What!”
“It has a perfect T stem, if you look at the top. Excellent shape. And the presentation box, of course.”
This perfectly ovaloid cantaloupe did have some very nice veining on the surface, I had to admit.
“But how long can a melon last? A week? Ten days? It’s total insanity.”
“Oh, no, no, no. You would never eat it. It’s a gift.”
That (presumably) sweet orange flesh wanted to tell us something.
A few quick notes on this blog:
1. It’s going to be mostly photos. That way I get to write less.
2. It will be banged out in my usual shoddy manner, totaling no more than 18 minutes to compose a day, so that I can spend more time away from the computer. Therefore expect typos, glaring omissions, sentence fragments, and fish brain fragments splattered across your screen. Right now, for instance, it’s 530 am and I have just pounded on Gabe’s door so that he will “get the F**K up and we can make it to the fish market while it’s popping.”
3. There is a sneaking suspicion at my office that this “business trip” is a massive boondoggle; that all it really amounts to is a fairly luxe paid adventure for two old friends. Absurd, granted. Just don’t forward this blog to anyone in Concord, MA.
1 comment:
Awesome. Can't wait to read more! And photograph your food so we at home can be extra jealous.
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