There is good Japanese food in Japan (but that is Korean)
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Japan:
Tokyo (Jun/98)
There is good Japanese food in Japan (but that is Korean)
I travelled with John, my friend and boss
and we had meetings with our distributor and business partners. While
people had a hard time talking to me (because I look Japanese but don't
speak the language), I felt a lot more comfortable than I initially
expected.
The photo above is at a Korean
restaurante. I wanted to eat just simple, everyday Japanese food. But
my business hosts always wanted to take us to try "something
different", which happened to be Korean or Chinese food (not bad, but I
can get the same in California). In addition to that, John is not very
adventurours and he is not very keen to raw anything, so my
grastronomic exploration was not easy. But I had a few opportunities to
try Japanese food in Japan.
There are more photos at the restaurant and at some meeting taken by one of our hosts (a Japanese with oxygenated hair) here
I stayed close to the Shinjuku (a huge, huge, huge train/subway station), which is one of the busies areas in Tokyo. Nightlife is very active and there is always a lot of movement on the streets. We spend most of the time in Tokyo (it was hot and humid) and went from one place to another using the train.
On the weekend, we took a day trip to Kamakura (former capital of the country, with temples, shrines). Also went to the Hakone National Park (supposedly a beautiful place, but you cannot see much when the fog is as thick as a potato soup). I was considering attempting a traditional Fujisan climb, but July is not the time of the year to do it. We went to see the mountain and I know it was supposed to be in front of me, but all I could see was fog.
Visiting Japan was never very high in my priority list, but it was a very interesting and enlightening trip. I was disappointed not to be able to order food at restaurants - not necessarily because I could say what I wanted, but because they panic when they found that I could not speak fluently. But I also found that I immediately could identify with the way living, doinb business, and relate to other people. It was almost as if I had been there before.
Life in Tokyo is extremely fast paced. I
couldn't see the sense of life in the life of the Tokyo people. I saw a
serious clash between the "old" Japanese traditions and the westernization
of Tokyo. They go to work, they drink a lot at night, every night. They
play "pachinko". They go home late. They sleep in the train. They go to
work...
Need to go back with more time and get to see places other than Tokyo.
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EMAIL marcio@cyclades.com
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