shinjuku day 2

One thing that's interesting about Japan is that the available technology is pretty close to that of the US.

In the computer industry, there are a few laptops that are smaller than what you can get in the US. But otherwise, things are similar.

I don't think I've seen any CRT monitors/tvs. It's pretty much all LCD/Plasma/etc.

I haven't really looked for gadgets. But the area that sets Japan apart from the US is cell phones. I'm blown away by how small and thin the cell phones are compared to our dinosaurs. Keiko showed me one today that looked like a lot of the phones you can get at home - with bigger buttons 'for grandpas.' Peter bought a cell phone 4 years ago and it was more advanced than most of the popular models at home (RAZR, for instance.) His phone had a GPS device in it - I was on a bus, in the middle of nowhere, and I could see a map with my location.
I really like this Japanese Media Skin phone. The big screen plays streaming video without any lagging.

shinjuku

Today was travel day. I came over to Shinjuku from Sendai and Peter was coming from Seattle to Shinjuku. I ended up at a ramen shop for lunch and an izakaya for dinner. Somehow I remembered the word for chicken balls (tsukune) and got about 4 of them.

So then I got an email from Peter: "Stuck in Anchorage! More Soon!"

Well what the heck. It turned out that his flight was diverted to Anchorage because of an oil leak? I swear I'm not flying on Northwest again - the flight attendant on my flight was complaining because of all the cutbacks.

Anyway, he should be here tomorrow.

sendai part 2

I was walking through the big street, Chūō-dōri, and saw the logo of MI, Musicians Institute on a magazine. I went inside the building, a guitar shop, and found out that it's actually the site of MI Japan. Pretty neat. (My uncle co-founded the school in Hollywood)

I've been starting the days in Japan with a stop at the Starbucks and then a stop at Mister Donut. Mister Donut is pretty great. The donuts are less sweet than most donut shops in the US. Plus they just taste super great. According to Wikipedia, the guy who started Mister Donut was the brother-in-law of the guy who started Dunkin' Donuts and in the 90's, the US chains merged. But the Japanese chain is completely separate now.

I successfully avoided all instances of beef tongue (gyutan).

I went to Sendai Castle, or to be more precise, the grounds on which Sendai Castle stood. It no longer exists and there's not too much to see. But I had a really good lunch there; sushi & soba. The waiter gave me a kokeshi which is a little wooden doll as a present.

I also went to an art exhibit at the Mediatheque...

Tomorrow, back to Tokyo...

sendai

Getting to Sendai yesterday was quite an adventure.

After the 10 hour plane trip, I had to take another hour trip to Tokyo via the speedy train (shinkansen) and then take another shinkansen up to Sendai. I don't know why I chose Sendai to visit this time. I think it was the farthest city northwest of Tokyo. My last couple of trips, I've been to the southeast of Tokyo.

In any case, I chose a hotel that is not close to a train station. Note to self: next time I travel, hotels must be near train stations. I took a taxi, everything was fine.

Today I had some tasty oysters from a farmers market. It was 3 oysters for 100 yen. So I had 6 of 'em. Not a bad little meal. They had all sorts of scallops and oysters at this market. After that, I went to an izakaya to get some bar food (chicken on a stick with rice and a little fish.)

Food Distribution

Menu Food Inc. of Canada last month recalled "cuts and gravy"-style dog and cat food in cans and pouches manufactured at two U.S. facilities between Dec. 3 last year and March 6 after it received an unnamed number of complaints from customers. The recall affected 53 brands of dog food and 42 brands of cat food sold under private-label and national brands across North America.

http://www.marketwatch.com/news/story/fda-blocks-wheat-gluten-imports-chinese/...

This is a little disconcerting. One manufacturer of pet food affects 95 brands of pet food. That's a heck of a lot. It makes you wonder about human food.

I wish I had numbers for how many restaurants in Washington do not use either Food Services of America or Sysco as their food supplier. It's hard to find restaurants that make their own french fries or hashbrowns from real potatoes. Most are likely purchasing some kind of pre-manufactured potato product...

It's tricky because FSA, at least, has different grades of food. For example, I tried 4 different kinds of peaches while working there. The best was not bad but the worst was not good. Here's a handy reference guide in case you're interested:
Food Services of America Brand Guide

re-reading this, my point may be unclear; it's that before I worked at FSA, I didn't realize that nearly all the restaurants that I went to used manufactured potatoes because I never thought about it. But once I realized that there are 4 grades of french fries and there are many kinds of fries, you get about 10 varieties of fries...and this seems like real variety but they're all the same, flavorless and bland fries that every other restaurant has. It made me value the smaller places which cut their own fries.

But also, you realize how dangerous it is that only a few companies control a large amount of food in restaurants we go to.