Asia Tour Day 3-4: Everyone's a rockstar

(written earlier yesterday at Narita)

So jet lag finally hit yesterday (Tuesday) and I woke up at 4:30-something in the morning and knew there was no hope for me. I ended up doing the only thing that I knew how to do in the wee hours of the morning in Tokyo--go to the Tsukiji Fish Market again for more sushi breakfast. (FYI, it *does* get more expensive if you order a la carte and keep asking for toro.) Ended up also buying some wellies (aka gum boots) there which will come in handy when I head back to the still-supposedly rainy San Francisco.

After breakfast, it was time for work. The rest of the day was pretty much a blur of heavily-caffeinated haziness, to the point where I couldn't even go out for the group dinner. I ended up running out and grabbing a quick bowl of yummy ramen and sleeping off my jet lag. This morning I woke up and had to pack up quickly before grabbing a bowl of piping hot soba down the street. More work, sushi lunch (I know understand why you don't eat sushi on days when the first market is closed. It was closed today.), and a two-hour bus ride later, I'm now hanging out at Narita awaing our flight to Seoul.

Before I leave Tokyo, some more random observations:

- Everyone wears sunglasses all the time. Forget rockstars. In Tokyo, you'd think that everyone's a rockstar judging by how many people wear their sunglasses indoor. Even when it's cloudy.

- The Japanese are obsessively clean, even though there are never garbage cans anywhere. Maybe they are so zen they can make garbage disappear magically.

- The Japanese are obsessively clean. You have to take off your shoes even when going into a dressing room to try on clothes in a store, and not to mention the disposable face masks they give you so you don't smear your makeup on the clothes.

- The Japanese are obsessively clean. You don't eat while walking in public. When you get food to go, that means you're taking it to go home or to the office to eat it, and not to eat it in public. Ever. Ice cream cones are perhaps the only exception..., or at least I like to think so make myself feel less like the dumb foreigner for eating mine while strolling the streets of Shibuya.

- They are big into vending machines here. Even for restaurants! For small ramen and soba joints, you literally "buy" your noodles from the machine, and then hand your ticket to the attendant when you sit down at the counter.

- Small is beautiful. Food portions, pastries, flower bouquets--everything is small and delicate and people are okay with that. When's the last time you saw short-sized drinks at Starbucks? (That was so 90's, by the way.) Here, they're the norm.

- Adam Smith was right. Division and specialisation of labour is the way to go. This philosophy extends to food in Japan. Sushi restaurants serve suhi, robata serves robata (grilled) food, tempura serves tempura, and noodle joints serve noodles. None of this multi-food-types silliness! And yes, there are even restaurants dedicated to tonkatsu (deep-fried pork chops).

- You don't eat sushi on the days when the fish market is closed (Sundays plus 2 Wednesdays each month). Period. Don't question it.

Domo arigato, Tokyo. I'll definitely be back.