So, last week I had my first bad experience with ordering something off a menu completely blindly. We all went to Ginza to a five story toy store to get baseball tickets (awkward place to buy them, I know, but the concierge said it was really our only choice), and decided to find a fun place for dinner while we were there. Ten of us crammed into one booth in an Okinawa food restaurant (the difference between that and Japanese I have no idea). I pointed at something in the menu, expecting noodles, maybe squid or something. A plate of squiggly clear-ish things came out and I was excited to eat whatever it was. I took a bite –the taste identical to bacon, but the texture was like thin hard octopus. I ate a couple more bites and decided to pass the dish around the table to see if anyone else could figure out the awful porky taste. No one had a clue (and only a couple could swallow the stuff) what it was, so I tried to communicate with the waiter who smiled as he grabbed his ears and said “Porka! Porka!” I asked him if he meant pork ears… I ate deep fried pig ears for dinner.
Last weekend:
Friday night (the 10th) the Marines (who have a living quarters on the embassy compound) put on a big BBQ/ party for all of the summer hires. I didn’t even know they had a place on the compound, but they had the bash in their bar, and the whole place was really nice! (I may or may not have entertained myself outside for a while catching frogs and making a live “toad-em pole”… my record was 4.)
On Saturday we went to Yokohama. First we went up the Landmark Tower. It had the fastest elevator in the world – 69 stories in under 40 seconds. It was almost like taking off in a plane! And what a beautiful view it was from the top. We could see so much of Tokyo, and even despite the fog we could see Fugi! After that we went to an art museum which was featuring Parisian art from the 16-1800’s. I am pretty sure I enjoyed that stop more than anyone… I think they all waited out front for at least half an hour for me and I even skipped one of the large rooms! Oh well. 
After that we went where everyone was excited to go – China Town. I had some good new food, but other than that it was basically another big reason for people to try and sell needless “novelty” crap. I had spoken to one of the guards out front of the New Sanno before we left (I’ve befriended quite a large portion of the staff here) and he had suggested we hit up the Landmark Tower as well as Hakkeijima Island (a manmade island). A man at the tower stopped me and asked if I had been to the island, and when I told him I hadn’t he pulled out a pen and paper and wrote down each train we would need to take to get there as well as the fare for each transfer and the time of each train ride. It was absolutely awesome of him, but I have been finding that whenever you ask for help here people REALLY go way above and beyond to make sure you are ok. So, anyway, we got off the train one stop past the one the man had suggested and wound up on a HUGE beautiful beach full of groups of your Japanese people (almost all of who were shooting off fireworks – a regular summer pastime, I guess). 
We got some food and drinks (and of course fireworks of our own) from a convenience store and busted out the sheets we’d taken from our hotel, and spent the night on the beach. It was the most perfect night I have ever had. Around midnight four Japanese college football players came and started hanging out with us (they had been to California to train for football- since it is not such a prevalent sport here- so the spoke a little English), and I don’t think I have ever had so much fun! We didn’t realize that the sky would be completely lit up by 4am, 
so our sleep was a little short (like, I was the only one who got more than 30 minutes), so we enjoyed our first Japan sunrise (I guess now we know why they call it the land of the rising sun), caught the first train back at 5:30 (and got home after 8), and slept most of Sunday.
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