Shibuya, Shinjuku at closing time.
Today was my first full day in Japan again, and I spent most of it in Shibuya getting my hair cut. I also walked around checking out the local shops and picking up a few things. Even though it has been close to 6 months since I was last here the place seems very familiar to me. Instead of 6 months it feels more like 6 minutes. It wasn't that hard to get my bearings and remember where everything was. It felt really easy to navigate though the city. The stations are however a different story, with the execption of monzen-nakacho all the stations in the system are as confusing as ever. I am still surprised at how well I was able to remember some of these places. I suppose when a place like Tokyo makes a big impression on someone its hard to forget what its like there.
Afterwards we went drinking down in Shinjuku. We headed there by the means of the Yamanote line which was sort of packed. We ended up going to a umecho place which served up many different kinds of the drink. It was a great experience since its hard to get good umecho in the states I was quite please that the selection was so large. Out of the six different types of umecho I tasted only four were bad, not bad in my opinion. What was interesting was afterwards though. Most of the time on my last trip we headed back before 10pm, but tonight we were out past that. This gave me a unique opportunity which I didn't get on my last trip here, which was to see places close for the night. It was quite interesting to see a once lively crowded Shinjuku only hours ago, only to become a more quite subdued place.
Now don't let this think the place was empty, far from it, Shinjuku was still as busy as San Francisco's Union Square during the afternoon. It was quite a sight to see most of the people heading towards the subway instead of out into the city. I also got to see some of the homeless who camped out in front of closed buildings, some even had futons. There were also some girls puking in allyways and of course an ambulance or two parked out in bars and other establishments, no doubt coming to the rescue of people who had a little too much fun that night.
Tonight is also the start of what I hope will be a continuing trend for the rest of the stay, which is to buy a different midnight snack at a convini, try it out, and tell everyone what its like. I'm not sure the exact format yet, but i'll go with this right now. Tonight I had an orange flavored drink and two different types of onigiri, ebi and uni, and a salmon one. Both onigiri were the same brand and cost ¥180 and ¥165 respectively. The first one I tried was the ebi and uni, which is shrimp and sea urchin roe in English. The ebi was decent, something that you might expect when you buy nigiri ebi sushi in the states. The uni was kind of bad it wasn't actually a piece of uni, but rather a little bit used like mayo on a sandwich. Overall I would give it 3 out of 5 points. Second was the salmon. One of the most common types of onigiri one sees in Japan, every convini you see will probably have this flavor in stock. This one was spot on the salmon was in nice big pieces, although not as much as some others I have had in the past, but the salmon was nicely salted and matched perfectly with the rice. One problem I had with both onigiri was the nori. There was no separation between the nori and the rice before opening so the nori was left moist, not my favorite, but some may like it like this. Another thing was the nori didn't cover the whole onigiri it left the corners white, again another form of preference, I like my onigiri completely covered in something whether it be nori or some other ingredient. Therefore I will have to rate this salmon onigiri a 4.5 out of 5, because of those small preferential things and also because I didn't feel there was enough salmon in there. The orange drink was pretty tasty, I cant give much more detail then that because I cant quite remember what it tasted like, but I think I'll give it a 4 out of 5. I would definitely put it down as one of the better drinks I've had, but you probably wouldn't see me rushing the convini to get it.
Here are some highlights of today:
Big Nintendo Wii ad in Shibuya
Shinjuku at night
Tonights midnight snack
Heres a link to the full set of pictures for the day: link
A new host, an uncomfortable flight, and back in Japan!
Well let me start off by saying sorry, the site was down for a while because I was changing hosts. You might say to yourself what you just got a new host. Thats true, but it really sucked. I found a host that seems to be a lot better, both in terms of performance and in customer service so I'm going to stick with them for a while and see how it turns out.
Now lets get back to the topic at hand. I finally made it to Tokyo yesterday night, but that was after a long flight. This isn't bad in itself, but I had to fly on Northwest that would be NWA for all you hip cats out there. The flight was incredibly uncomfortable and what really turned me off was you have to pay for alcohol, thats like a shot in the arm and a time warp back to the 90s. I haven't flown international or long haul on a American airline in about 8 years (the last time was delta in 98) I have been mostly using carriers from other countries like Virgin Atlantic, and JAL. What It seems like US airlines are missing is service quality. On Virgin and JAL quality was top notch. Meals were not great, but they still tasted okay and drinks were free. They also give a lot of food too. NWA the service was spotty and the food was horrible. Another thing the last meal was served an hour before landing. Some people didn't recieve a hot portion of their meal until 15mins before landing, and they only gave them $10.00 voucher for inflight food on their next flight as compensation. Although I wasnt part of this group it sure felt messed up that they only gave them a voucher.
Now back to Tokyo. I arrived last night and had about the same type of first day I had last time, went to sushi, then to a bar. So it felt really ãªã¤ã‹ã—. I didnt take many pictures today so i can really upload what I have right now, but I'll be sure to do it tonight or tomorrow.
day 4 pictures up more to come.
Day 4 pictures are up now too. I am uploading day 5 pictures right now, when those are up i'll post a link too, or maybe do a couple days and post them all at once.
More pictures!
I got more pictures up. Today its the pictures of Day 3, note I don't have pictures of day 2. These are also the first pictures I took with my new digital camera so the full size images are a lot bigger. I also accenidently deleted the photos for the first couple hours when I was messing around with the camera.
album link
A great panoramic image generator
I have been searching for quite a while to find a really good way to generate panoramic images from all the pictures I have taken and I think I've found one of the best. It goes by the name autostitch and its based on research going on at University of British Columbia. Best of all the program is free! I had been using Adobe Photoshop CS and CS2 to generate panoramic images and it did a somewhat decent job, if all the conditions were perfect that is ergo you need to have a tripod and make sure the lighting is the same or the image doesn't turn out correctly. However, autostitch doesn't have similar limitations. It can do a pretty good job at stitching images together without that many noticeable differences other then some slight color changes due to different exposure settings. Now this doesn't mean you use any images, you should always try and stand one spot and try to use the same aperture, shutter speed, iso, and have some overlap between the images taken. It isn't perfect, but its the best I've seen so far.
Yatta! Finals are over and things I forgot happen when you don’t sleep
Well finals are officially over here at SFSU. Whether or no I did well is yet to be determined, but I'm not letting that worry sum fact have any bearing on the enjoyment that I have right now. Not having to worry about school for four whole weeks not to mention being out of the country for most of that period feels damn good. I had a lot to do today or yesterday or whatever. This is sadly the result of the chronic disease I have called procrastination. That was my own fault for one of the things I had to do, but the other was the length of the assignment I had for the other, which might I say I was working on long before this deadline occurred. Just a bunch of pain in the ass work that seemed so repetitive that I thought my mind was going to explode.
Lets get back to the point at hand though shall we? As a result of all this work I had to do I didn't get any sleep at all so as of right now I have been away for 30 hours strait. For anyone that has done this before I'm in the phase you would call the eye of the hurricane. I've battled the fierce wall of sleep, and other non-related symptoms to get to this point. Now I'm not sleepy or tired I'm just awake. Soon this will pass and I will be out like a light for another 12 hours or so. One thing that I can say is that I forgot the feeling you get when you are close to reaching this point. The sense go dull and your mind feels numb. It feels like your head is wrapped in dozens of layers of saran wrap and your head is going to explode. That second part may be the result of drinking a ton of Red Bull a drink I've grown to loathe, yet since there is no easy way to get my favorite energy drink, Bawls, and since the other enery drinks around are even worse, I have to settle for it. I think I'm going to watch some TV and relax and wait for the storm of sleep to catch up with me again.
First day of the my summer in Japan up, and my host really sucks.
Okay so I finally got the pictures from the first day up. It took so damn long, longer then I ever thought it was going to take. There seems to be several limitations to this package that I have, for one I cant compile external programs I need for this thing to run, the server seems to be under tremendous load so I get inconsistent generation of thumbnails which requires me to go through extra hoops to get it setup correctly. The package is nice with 100gb of storage, more then enough to hold the pictures that I'm taking. I'm thinking that I will need to switch to some other type of gallery again, I have tried going through a bunch of different ones in the hopes of finding one that will work. I think that I might need to switch to a gallery where I don't need to rely on the server to do my resizing and just do it myself and upload the originals plus the thumbnails and everything else. Well finals is almost over so I can figure this out more after that.
Heres the link to the gallery with the first days pictures: link
I hope it works well for you guys if you don't see thumbnails try the resized images, if those don't work then the full sized images should.
Some Shabu-Shabu Love
I have just tasted a bit of heaven and its name is Shabu-sen. Tonight we decided to head on over to Shabu-sen, a little shabu-shabu place in Japantown. I've been there twice before, but today is different. Today we went when they have all you can eat shabu-shabu or sukiyaki. Before I delve to deeply into today experience there I'll share what i remember of my first two visits. The first time we visited the Shabu-sen it was a Saturday Night. We were promptly seated next the counter which had a good view of them preparing the food. All of the waitresses were Japanese and spoke it as well, this is a plus epically for Japanese tourists that are visiting the city. They use a combination of portable electric and gas stoves to heat the shabu-shabu and sukiyaki pots. We were lucky enough to get a gas on at the time. It seems as though the majority of their stoves are electric. Don't get me wrong I like electric stoves too, but with gas its far more responsive to the temperature you are setting it at.
I ordered the pork and was quite pleased with the taste and flavor of it. Although it wasn't kurobuta it was quite delicious. With the meat they serve a plate of vegetables most of it was napa cabbage, but they also included negi, carrots, shitake mushrooms, tufu, udon, and dried shirataki, albeit in smaller portions. They also served a bowl of rice and two different dipping sauces, ponzu and goma. All in all the first night was good with one little problem, the goma had way too much garlic in it. That overpowered all other flavors in the sauce and made it hard to use for me so I stuck with the ponzu for most of the night. The next time I visited I tried out a combination plate which included prime rib eye and dry aged rib eye. Both were good, some of the better beef I have eaten in the United States. The sides were the same but the goma sauce was actually good this time and I used it almost exclusively throughout the meal.
Now on to tonights dinner. We ordered the all you can eat platter which is only offered Monday through Thursday. They have time limit of 90 minutes where you can eat all you can. We started off with the beef, they served the same vegetable plate as before, but in addition we were also got a small bowl of zaru soba, and wakame salad. The wakame was good a nice blend of sweet and spicy. The soba however I was not so impressed with, the soba was over cooked and the soba sauce lacked saltyness and was a bit on the sweet side. The beef that was served was good, not as good as the prime or dry aged, but it did have a little marbling which made it more tender and flavorful. Next we tried a mixed plate of pork and beef. The beef again was good, however the pork was not that good. Compared to the porked I tried the first time I was there this was a few levels worse. Its not bad pork just not what I expected from this restaurant. Initial the service was slow, it was very busy and seemed like the waitresses had their hands full. When the crowds settled down the service became faster. The third plate of beef came out a lot faster then the second. So thumbs up on that. A big thumbs up on the goma sauce this time. They have fully redeemed themselves for the first nights problems. The goma sauce was great this time around. Great sesame flavor and it was thick and creamy it fit perfectly with the beef sort of ringing in the big flavors and holding them down.
All in all a great meal. I will go back again.
I’m Back! With a new domain to boot!
Greetings peoples of the web world. If you have browsed to my site I must have given you the link. Some of you might remember that I started a blog right before I left for Japan this summer. I had a super fun time and like it so much I'm going back! Yeah thats right I'm heading back this winter right after Christmas. I hope to have another great time and blog about it. So in case you didn't notice the name of the blog has changed. I thought that Japan.06 didn't fit the blog since its not just 06 anymore and not just for one trip. Now you maybe wondering what the hell is Wagyuified? Well i dont actually know myself either I just thought it was a fun word to make up. Also I thought this blog would be more about Japan from now on. I'll be blogging about food, wine, computers, Japan, architecture, and whatever else I feel like talking about.
Another improvement is that this site is not hosted from my house anymore. I've decided to use a webhosting service so it should load a hell of a lot faster. This also means that I'll be posting all the pictures I took from Japan too.
In case anyone is wondering where the other blog entries are from my previous site. My server at my home (where i was originally hosting it from) is down, there are some server issues and I cant get it back up anytime soon. As soon as I do I'll try merging it with this blog. Also as you may have noticed the theme is also different, there are still some tweaks to this theme I need to do before its working fully so be patient as I try and work it out.