With the rain finally easing off we set out to walk around Ueno, a market and shopping area just North of Akihabara that also hosts Japan’s oldest Zoo. The station was a 20-minute ride around the Yamanote line from our hotel and we started out late morning.
Walking around the market area we saw plenty of fish and vegetables on sale alongside handbags, trainers and sunglasses. Throughout our visit the market was full and bustling with crowds all going about their business, giving a ‘real life’ feel to the area not found in the fashionable districts like Ginza. We left the market to the West and backtracked up Chuo Dori to Ueno Park and the Benten-do Shrine.
After snapping photos of pretty much everything, cats, fish and ninja turtles included, we moved on to Ueno Zoo and spent a good couple of hours wandering around looking at the animals there.
Ueno Zoo Monorail
The zoo is normally ¥600 to enter but was free today, and is nicely laid out in two halves with a short monorail and footpath running between them.
Eventually we were feeling a little footsore and went back to the market for a bite to eat. Well I did at least – K looked rather ill while I ate my Octopus Balls (not as gross as it sounds) and didn’t seem hungry after that. Heh.
TV Spot: Riko Narumi from the J-Dorama One Litre of Tears is the new face of NTT Docomo. She appears on most trains and all the NTT leaflets, as well as a few TV ads.
There’s also an ad for DHC (for MEN!) that appears mostly on the trains and never fails to make us laugh – it shows three guys with a bizarre… I don’t know.. scalp cooler? You have to see it to appreciate how mad it looks. Sadly it’s not yet on YouTube.
With the global economy in the toilet and the local economy deader than a dead thing down a well, M and I turned our thoughts to the various ways we could save cash. The obvious ones – careful driving, big excess on the car insurance, changing suppliers and turning stuff off – were pretty much all taken care of, so I had a think about food and stuff.
I’ve already switched my cereals from branded stuff to Asda’s own, but I saw something on B3ta the other day about using a teabag twice. Oddly enough we’re currently drinking our way through a box of PG Tips Pyramid bags (which I bought for the free Monkey, heehee) and I’d noticed how much tea juice we were actually getting out of them.
Please leave your teabagging jokes at the door, thanks.
Anyway, I was going to leave the once-used teabag on the spoon somewhere but, M being M, I found a handy saucer strategically placed next to the kettle. Sure enough, it contained the slightly soggy teabag that was used to make an earlier cuppa.
Obviously, the process is the same, but does require a little more squeezing than the first-use scenario. It did cross my mind to leave it on the saucer again and go for a third cup but by that time I’d already binned the bag, and even I’m not that much of a Clampett.
When we picked up our dog, Bobby, about a year ago, we were not quite sure how old he was, save that he was somewhere around his first birthday. Quite how someone could come to kick this wonderful mutt out of their home was beyond us, but we decided on an arbitrary date towards the end of the month, and it was decided that the last weekend in June would be his Birthday.
So here we are, Bobby’s 2nd-ish Birthday.
It almost didn’t happen because he escaped from the garden on Friday and disappeared for three hours while M was looking for him and I was in Scunthorpe wondering if he’d been hit by a car. It turned out that some guy up the road had found him and taken him in, called the local dog’s home and was just about to have him picked up when I spotted them and claimed him.
After a brief bit of scolding, all was well and we went to bed.
Saturday dawned and we went into town to grab some burgers and sausages. K came over around 2pm, followed by my mum a little later, and we fired up the BBQ to celebrate a whole year of Bobbyness. There was much mirth as Bobby wrestled with the longest sausage in the bag – knowing it was too hot but not wanting to let it out of his grasp in case someone pinched it – and he was rewarded with bits of cheese, burger and all sorts. He even had ice cream, bless him.
Of course, there was fat dripping all over the place, and at some point M decided to give him a birthday BBQ version of Bread and Dripping which was, quite frankly, disgusting. He loved though.
Ignoring the threat of the rain and high winds that are currently battering the UK, we took the opportunity to drag the barbeque out of the back of the garage on Saturday before the bad weather all kicked off and bought a few quality burgers and sausages.
K had walked the 6.5 miles to our house as part of his preparation for climbing Ben Nevis at Easter, and while his feet cooled down we grilled the meat to within an inch of its life… well you know what I mean. All the while fending off the attention of our dog, Bobby.
A burger in a bun with added cheddar and chilli BBQ sauce, washed down with the last few cans of Christmas beer, and all was right with the world. We even made Bobby a sausage inna bun since he’d been so well behaved.
That was a test BBQ – from now on it’s the real thing, with guests and music and everything.
Through a string of coincidences, I had come into the possession of a George Foreman Electric BBQ Grill complete with trolley, 36 quarter pounders and a dozen bottles of Budweiser. There was only one thing to do – have a barbie!
Given the UK weather’s propensity to chuck it down every chance it gets, I decided to move my car out of the garage, just in case. It seems I had displayed remarkable foresight in doing so, since the heavens opened as soon as I set things up. Either I was lucky, or the switch on the socket in my garage is linked to that great shower system in the sky.
K was over, as well as my mum, sister and wee niece. I set up the folding chairs in the garage, opened a beer and pretty soon the aroma of burning cow filled the space that would normally smell of diesel and wet grass clippings. It was heavenly, and the grill worked a treat.
We did some pasta and salad, and K and I had nipped to Asda for buns, peppers and sauce, and the whole lot went down just great. There was much chatter and laughter even though it rained all the way through, and a bit of shouting and more laughs when the dog escaped, pausing only to wolf down the pieces of burger that my neice had so carelessly left unguarded.
Over the weekend I nabbed a couple of bottles of Reggae Reggae Sauce which was featured on the BBC’s show Dragons’ Den some time ago.
I had the family coming over so we dug some chicken out of the freezer and decided to slap it all together with some rice. Some of the chicken turned out to be pork but it all went down exceedingly well with a few onions and some Naans.
The sauce is really very nice indeed. It’s not quite as hot as the lastI had, which had my eyes and throat burning before I’d even started eating, and basically turned the kitchen into a no-go zone for a few hours, but given it’s a consumer-grade sauce (haha), what it lacks in fire-breathing ability it makes up for in taste. It’s quite tangy while having a good kick, and I recommend it.
The only downer is shelf-life I guess. Because there are no preservatives in it, you have to use the bottle within five days of opening. This won’t be a problem here, however
A few people have asked about the Whale Steak I had in Tokyo so I figured I’d elaborate.
I initially asked the girl on reception where I could eat whale, but after a misunderstanding in which she must have thought I was trying to score some crack or something, I gave up and resorted to using t’internet.
The restaurant I went to was called Kujira-ya and it’s in Shibuya. Exit Shibuya Station and look for the 109 Department Store. There are two – 109 and 109 Men’s – and you want the Ladies’ version. 109 is between two streets that form a V-shape, and Kujira-ya is on the right arm of the V. There was a camera crew there when I went – strange but true.
There’s a set Whale Steak meal that costs ¥1600 (About £8) which consists of about 8 pieces of whalemeat, a bowl of rice, crispy fried bits, soup and various flavourings. The little old lady will occasionally appear and disappear to refill your cup of tea as well. The whale is delicious and not at all fatty – I enjoyed it so much I went back again a few days later.
At the far end of the restaurant are five tables for two in a simple, stylish room. If you get the window table, you can sit and watch teh world go by in relative privacy while you eat.
M and I were mooching around our local Netto store for some bargain or other when we came across the rows of 2L Coke Zero bottles. It’s that there new diet/sugar-free version of the cola and we figured we’d give it a go to see what all the fuss is about.
Turns out it’s actually very nice indeed. It’s very smooth, much like Diet Coke, and doesn’t taste too radically different from the original. Served with ice, it’s pretty good. Between us, we polished off the 2L bottle in under 24 hours and that’s pretty good going for us.
I also noticed that it’s very dark. Maybe it’s my memory going, or the fact that I always used to drink Tesco Value Sugar-Free Cola, but the actual colour of Coke Zero is a very thick black, with not a great deal of light getting through at all. It’s not quite up there with Guinness black, but it’s pretty close. Wasn’t Coke always a reddish-brown colour?
