Among other things, like crowded trains, crazy porn and jailbait school girls, Japan is known for sushi. But in all of the time that I've been here I hadn't had it. That all changed a couple of weeks ago when I met up with dBang/Diana, a fellow ryuugakusei/留学生 from Seattle, and her friend Yukari, a Jochi student who had studied in Seattle, for dinner. The plan was to meet a lot of people later for karaoke but the three of us needed to eat first. Diana and I had never had sushi in Japan so Yukari took us to this really cheap and tasty place in Shinjuku.
I wish I could have taken more pictures of the place, but it wasn't that kind of atmosphere. But here's what I did take. The picture on the right isn't so clear, but you can see the sushi passing by in the fore front. And behind the sushi there's an image with several plates. The type of plate lets you know the price of the sushi. We all tried to stay on the cheap end with sushi for 105¥ or at most 250¥. Although the more expensive ones did look pretty tasty. Also there's self serve green tea. There are tea bags and cups available and implanted right into the counter are hot water spigots.
All in all, it was a good first-time sushi experience. But my second sushi experience was even better.
The second happened not too long ago after a late night practice session at the dojo for kempo. The dojo we went to that night was in Harajuku and right in front of us was a
Yoshinoya. It's a great cheap place to get beef bowls and Mia had never been before. We wanted to eat dinner, if not there than somewhere in Harajuku, but in Japan you sort of have to follow the group and two people does not qualify as a group. So we ended up getting on the train to Shinjuku and set out to find a Yoshinoya there.
Needless to say, we didn't find one, which is sometimes the way things work out when you set out to find a place. We walked around for quite some time trying to find that glowing orange sign, passing lots of stores and lots of restaurants.
A little bit of a tangent, but, we passed a really good store with lots of beautiful scarves, and people who know me know that I love scarves. So of course I had to stop in and get one. I think I'll end up going back there for some omiyage/おみやげ....
After the scarf purchase I was out of money. Absolutely no bills in the wallet and only 500¥ in my change purse. We stopped at an ATM and from there went down this small side street. We turned a corner and voila, a kaitenzushi place! Mia and I looked at each other and decided this was the place to eat. Mia had never been to kaitenzushi before so this was just as just good and ended up being even better than Yoshinoya.
We entered and sat down, but unlike the first sushi place I went to this one didn't really have any dishes going around the turntable. Mia and I grabbed two but we weren't exactly sure we were supposed to. Then we figured out that we were supposed to order whatever we wanted directly to the chefs. I wasn't sure if this was because they were closing in about an hour or so or if that was just the way the place was run.
We ordered several plates before a guy in a suit came in and sat near us. We didn't take much notice of him until he helped us get a bug out of the ginger. Then we started talking with him. Hs name is Shota and at first we thought he was a salaryman but it turns out that he's just a fourth-year studying law. He asked us at one point if we had a lot of Japanese friends, to which I replied that we were in a Shorinji Kempo club and so we knew people that way. And coincidentally, he does Shorinji Kempo too!! We were all so surprised at such a crazy coincidence. After some more chatting he told us that he was treating us to dinner. Mia and I didn't know what to think, and of course we declined at first, but he was really insistent so we just went along with it.
Outside of the sushi place we got a picture with him and I even got a video of him with Mia performing one of our wazas.
We've been chatting with him ever since and we plan to meet up with him before we had back to the States.
That night was the first time in a long time that I was really glad I was in kempo. But that's another story for another post, ne.
The photography museum was pretty amazing and had the photographs from the World Press photo contest. We couldn't take pictures inside the exhibit but there were some pretty cool photos outside of it. 
Inside there was a pretty snazzy place to put your umbrellas, a lock-up of sorts. You put your umbrella in, pull out the key and when you're done you just unlock it. 
