the heart knows what it wants

hey, everyone,

Sorry, Mum, if im getting your hopes up with all these posts (it feels unsustainable) but its our first day in the largest city in the world and i am plenty excited. also using a japanese keyboard so apologies for the punctuation in advance.

well, NJ, huey and i are sitting around drinking our duty free in NJs apartment with 180 degree views from the 22nd floor (regarding duty free: make no mistake, you can bring in 2.25 litres EACH), after a pretty interesting dinner at a place up the road from us in ... Tsukishima. Huey and i have this massive apartment a few blocks from here and we reckon we have the walk home sussed, so we are swilling. the mixers are terrible. My brother James, and his wife, Tamaki, are putting us up, and they have been so lovely and generous that i feel magic in the air.

Going back a bit, the flight was a bit crap, we took turns at stretching out but none of us (apart from four-asahi huey, who woke up furious) got any sleep, so me and march-of-the-long-sleepless penguins NJ, were feeling tres shabby when james greeted us at narita at 6.30am.

was james bothered? no. after our showering and staggering around James, Tamaki and Alina took us to darling harbours equivalent x 15, called Aqua Land or something, and we just walked around blinking. theres heaps of water surrounding the part of the city we were in, and it kind of felt like we were in sydney or something. after lunch, i started trying out my japanese, and... it works, and i am stoked. there are a lot a hand gestures involved, but damn it, the japanese love it if you try. i bought five ferry tickets to a place i couldnt pronounce properly in a currency i cant convert and it was ace. so we got on this ferry, which took ages and was playing this weird music and reversing for no reason, and came back home. i think we were all still feeling a bit tired and odd and displaced.

so we crashed out for an hour or so and i woke up just FEELing it all. we went and met up with NJ and saw james off (who is out playing piano in ginza and hopefully meeting us back here soon), then NJ, huey and i set out to explore. we chose a restauarant at random which we now know to be a BBQ one... the menu was all japanese so i used my best phrasebook to ask the waiter to... please order for us your favourites and we would love to try your speciality, etc, all the while stressing the no meat vibe... beers were $4 a pint and so crispy-cleary good. so the food starts arriving and it is meat, duck, pork, turkey, pheasant, god knows (some of the hand gestures were indiscernable), and there wasnt a great deal i could eat, despite the best efforts of my two noble tasters.

i eventually found the word vegetarian (you just slur it, apparently), and rice (ko-me? his little face lit up) and we also signalled game over and no more food please ... which was the arms crossed in front of your chest (no deal). so, njs working himself up to ask for the bill and ta-daaaaah, the waiter brings out the speciality, which despite the language difficulties was clear was hearts of some kind, on skewers, and then the waiter stood behind them to watch them eat them. ha! it was disgustingly fun to watch and we left a big tip, which was good because we left our phrasebook behind and the waiter, bless his heart, bicycled up the street after us to give it back.

anyway, enough from me... arent you glad i aint emailing this drunken ramblings?
tomorrow we are going shopping for electronics and having a japanese BBQ down by the river.

miss you lots everyone at the thought of whats ahead, but damn it, i love this town.