Jul 16 2008
Nippon The Fourth
Konichiwa.
This morning I made it safely to the office by myself again. I am getting a hang of it by now. The day itself was a lot of work - introductions, presentation preparation and a demo at a potential partner. It all went very well, but was - yet again - exhausting. It still did not rain and thus didn’t cool down a degree, so I am unusually tired due to the heat.
However, I managed to unriddle yet another curiosity in the morning. Over the past three days, whenever I smoked outside the building, I noticed other smokers. But unlike in Europe, where you have neat little piles of cigarette stubs, this place was all clean. So I went to the next level and carefully placed my fags in different places around the building. And everytime I came back downstairs, they were gone! So: what are the Japanese doing with theirs and who is constantly cleaning mine? Today, I took a deep breath and approached a lonely man and asked what he did with the fag ends. It was very hard to explain, as he did not speak any English, but with hands and a foot, I managed. And it turns out: They all have pocket ashtrays where they place the stubs in after they are done smoking. I felt so barbarian. I don’t even want to know who picked up mine and what they said about me…. So Yoshio went with me to the 7eleven and got me one for myself. Phew. Yet another option to blend in!
At lunch we went to a Korean barbecue place next door, which was very delicious. I forgot to take pictures unfortunately, but you barbecue your pieces of meat yourself and have loads of pickled vegetables and stuff with it. Yummy!
We then went to the demo and afterwards Kanji treated us to sushi in Shibuya. Now, I love sushi. As my boyfriend does not, I haven’t had any sushi for ages (yesterday was just take-away, that doesn’t count). Tonight was once again a revelation. Dump the schnitzel, get out the fish. We tried a lot of different ones, started with sashimi and went on to the nigiri. 
The Japanese make them look a lot nicer than the ones I had in Europe so far. The one on the right there is a nigiri of a babyfish that you can only get for three weeks per year - I forgot the name unfortunately, but it was very spicy and nice and I have never eaten this before.
The prawn nigiri was as fresh as it gets - right out of the aquarium in the restaurant. “oishii” means “delicious” in Japanese, and I said that a lot tonight 
The guys then convinced me to try the Japanese eel, even though I do not like eel at all and this was also very very good. And the prettiest nigiri of the evening. We finished the meal with a cucumber maki and a scallop soup and called it a day.
No matter how stressy a day is - looking forward to the food is always helping
So I went back to my hotel, where Fred sat waiting for me and am now enjoying the view from my window down on Shibuya.
Oyasuminasai!
/S.
