Sunday, February 8, 2009.
Though it may be a little late in the game (seeing that I'm back in America), but I've figured out a way to make it so that you can now post comments. Click the link below to do so. You can also now comment any most previous posts.
Living Life Differently These Days
10:22 PM
10:22 PM
Tuesday, February 3, 2009.
While food in Japan may be weird I got the ultimate heap of weirdness when I got pizza one night. This is the night before the "really big thing" I keep promising to talk about, but I figured this story was worth discussing at least once. This was the night before we were to leave Kyoto. We were looking at nearby restaurants and saw that were in walking distance (of course) of a pizza parlor. Now I knew pizza was going to be different then it was in America, but how different could it be? It was pizza for pete's sake, this was a nationwide favorite. How weird could it possibly weird.
The answer is: Pretty fricken weird.
While I was expecting them to use some unique toppings, walking into this place and looking at the menu was like looking into the human brain. I didn't recognize ANY of the combination's they had! I was amazed at some of the toppings that included (but not limited to) hard boiled eggs, squid, cherry bits, tuna, BBQ sauce (okay, that was normal), and...well, take a look for yourself...
...and I challenge you to name three of those pizzas that are familiar to you. I ordered my pizza custom made, which means it consisted of pepperoni, bacon bits, ham, and parmesan cheese (yes, the parmesan is extra) on a thin crust with red sauce. After paying ¥1,500 ($15) we walking back, I opened the box, and prepared myself.
The pizza was, in all honesty, pretty good. Lite in filling and the sauce tasted more like spaghetti sauce then pizza sauce, but it wasn't as horrifying as I expected it to be. I got one more pizza with the same toppings, when if I ever come back to this country I WILL get a pizza with hard boiled eggs on them! That just seems like too big of an invite to pass up. Living Life Differently These Days
4:32 PM
4:32 PM
.
Before I write about the rest of my journey, I figured it would only be fair to share some more photos from the Japanese museum I visited. Let's call this post "Japan Museum Part に (Two)." Some of it's interesting, some pretty, and some just plain weird. Some will come with commentary and some will not. Either way, enjoy the pictures.
The big stairway. Believe it or not, we had to go up three of these escalators before we even got into the museum.
Whenever you saw one of these signs it meant you could take a picture of that item. Some items were sacred and they didn't want you to photo them (not that it mattered, I tended to take pictures of anything I wanted to anyway ^_^).
I don't think I'll ever understand things like this, but it's surreal to say the least. Time Burton could find a lot of inspiration for his weird movies just by visiting a Japanese museum.
You might not know this just by looking at the picture, but the room is actually a model. I simply put the camera inside this glorified doll house and took a picture. The detail was so rich that my buddy asked me which room I got this picture in. I decided to be mean and said my ticket was randomly chosen to enter a replicate Japanese house of the samurai era.
Coins and jewelry were always a big part of the Japanese barter system. These days Japan doesn't value jewelry as much, prefering to use the metals for electronics and housing, but oddly enough coins are still the main way to pay for things (as opposed to paper bills, which aren't used as much).
I'm not sure what this is. It looks like the top of the Empire State Building, but I'm not convinced the Japanese had anything to do with production of "Planet of the Apes."
Living Life Differently These Days
3:42 PM
3:42 PM