All things animal

Well we lived through the hurricane - there was one point where I woke up and the building had stopped creaking and was now literally screaming in anger at the hurricanes attempts to remove it from it's foundation, but I couldn't feel any swaying or anything so felt confident it was OK [for 'confident' read 'lay awake wide-eyed and ready to leap into the cupboard at the first sound of glass breaking, lest I be sucked from the room at this high altitude'] and eventually dropped off.

The boy woke up later to a noise that he described as 'firemen with jet hoses directly outside the window firing not water, but bird seed at the glass'... I am SO glad I didn't wake at this point, though I have no idea how I slept through it.

In the morning all was calm, and cooler. Although a lot of train lines were suspended.

We have so far been brave in our Japanese dining, and embarked upon revolving sushi bar, tempura and shabu-shabu restaurants.

The one you see pictured is Shabu-Shabu [we went to Mo-Mo in Shibuya - where they have english menus - yay!]. This is thin strips of beef and a bubbling pot of boiling water in the middle where you swirl the beef on chopsticks for less than a minute and it's done! Then you dip it into one of 2 sauces and yum!

Perfect for me - I know exactly what I'm eating! Can you picture such a restaurant in Glasgow ... boiling pan of water combined with all-you-can-drink beer? Imagine the queues at A&E...

It's all you can eat, so once you've finished your fill of beef slices then you chuck all the veggies in for a beefy vegetable soup - no waste - clever, no? It was great and we're definately going back!


The revolving sushi bar was great fun - the staff were so friendly. I was expecting revolving sushi, but instead there was plates with Japanese signs on them for what they were, written with Kanji and Kana so the boy and I couldn't read them. Puzzled faces = menu with pictures!

I hadn't realised but it seems to be the norm to include Wasabi [hot hot Japanese horseradish] through sushi here. I nearly fell through the table! Trying not to draw anymore attention to our big Western selves, I motioned the women over and replaced the word 'tomato' with the word 'wasabi' in my prepared Japanese phrase: Can I have this without ...' and all was fine again. I have also memorised the word for water!!

And yesterday at Sunshine City we went to a tempura restaurant [well chain - probably the McDs of Toyko]. Tempura is fish and vegetables fried in a light crispy batter with either rice or noodles. It's practically Scottish! [Actually brought over by the Portuguese]

Everytime we go towards a Japanese restaurant I'm so nervous - especially this one as it was full of Japanese men - everything in me wanted to run to KFC [I place I wouldn't frequent if you paid me in Glasgow, but it's familiar] but so far I've not lost my nerve. And everytime the food has been fantastic and the staff just lovely.

So we went to Sunshine City yesterday [no yarn - it's an aquarium] in Ikebukero. I did however manage to squeeze in a visit to a Hello Kitty gift gate. It was cool although the seals and otters looked quite sad in their confined little spaces. There were some cool fish we'd never seen, and a whole lotta spider-crabs [see below]

And finally, some shots of the view from our hotel. When the woman opened the blinds I nearly fell on the floor - we're so high. Only the 26th floor as well. I remember being so excited that our hotel is the highest in the area - I didn't really think about it until we go here and we looking down ...


You can see Mount Fuji [on a clear day - we haven't had one yet], a stacking car park, a ferris wheel, a dog nursery [directly below where they all run about on the roof all day] and so so so mch more! I think we could just look out of this window everyday for a fortnight and constantly see new things.