What could be in The Nashman's Shinkansen baon?
I just love customer service in this country. (Either that, or someone leaked to the public that I am a delusional minor royal/celebrity.) For the past 5 nights, I have entered the grand lobby of the Hotel Metropolitan garbed in tattered jeans, flip flops, Kikkoman dribble on my old t-shirt, and reeking of sake looking for an ethernet port. I was not booked in this hotel nor was I visiting the coffee shop. Yet on every ocassion, I got loads of bowing from the concierge and that crisp "Please feel at home smile" from reception. And I was NOT even trying to discreetly steal wifi reception by sitting in the lobby pretending to be a businessman. I had my loud YELLOW cat5 cable which I openly connected to the hotel's local area network. That was all I ever did in the lobby - sit there undisturbed till the wee hours of the morning and free internet. Bliss.
Now, can you do that in an overpriced pretentious bawal tsinelas at sando sa lobby hotel in hellhole Manila?
Today, we took the bullet train back to the ryokan in Asakusa, Tokyo. I got some local delicacies for my afternoon snack. One rather nice treat which elicited an "I'd rather die than eat that" hissy fit from my Teutonic traveling companion Hil was a generous serving of locusts (Or were they big crickets? I could never tell the two apart once cooked.) Insects contain more protein per gram than any other edible animal below us in the food chain. Which is good for someone as fat and pregnant as me. The locusts (or big crickets) were prepared in the same way as the sweet pusit common in my beloved Las Islas Filipinas. Except that when you bite into the sweet locusts, you emit a crunchy sound, sorta like the sound of stepping on a big Claire Danes - Manila cockroach. Yum.
Do you want fries with that? My yummy organic protein snack. Rather than drinking those pricey synthetic protein shit sold in so-called health and fitness stores, eat insects instead if you want to grow muscle.
I should have known never to take coffee served in a metal cannister. This brand was a MAJOR diuretic, I kept going to the loo to take Niagara Falls-like pees. I could probably solve the drought problem in most deserts by drinking this super black coffee. Noah would be shaking in his boots at the amount of piss I expelled during the 1 hour trip from Nagano to Tokyo.
Shibuya Shopping District near midnight. Heaven for some, hell for me.
HRO Karl Willem visits Tower Records Tokyo. You gotta give the Japs credit, their musical tastes are so diverse. I had a field day shuffling through the large collection of world music. HRO Karl Willem is listening to a great live album - Otis Rush and Friends Live at Montreaux 1986. I got an Audrey Hepburn postcard to give me sweet dreams each night.