For those of you who want to hear more food adventures...

On Sunday I got a call inviting me to go out for the day with a professor from USC and a few other people. I got picked up first and we stopped off at someone’s house for tea. This man who I thought was Japanese came up the stairs and I greeted him by saying ‘おはようございます’。 And then I was totally shocked when he said ‘I think I need a jacket’ in perfect English. Amazingly it clicked in my little mind that he was the professor. He and his wife are 3rd generation Japanese Americans. Anyway we went to the Japanese Historical Museum in Narita. It was way exciting, every little area was filled with neat things from Japanese history. One of my favorite things was a set of matchboxes that were all kind of pop-artsy. They had a guide in English but it didn’t talk about everything. It was really easy to tell the parts of the museum that were before Commodore Perry opened the ports and after he opened the ports. After that we went to an old style Japanese restaurant and ate what I thought was really good fish. It turned out I had eaten pretty much an entire eel. So if anyone feels like it give ‘unagi’ shot. Right down the hill from the unagi place was a huge Japanese style castle. I had seen the castle from the car last time I went to Narita. It was amazing. It kind of sat halfway down a valley so that the trees surrounding it made it seem like you were back in time. The inside was a Buddhist temple that had a high ceiling painted in all of these delicate designs. There were many separate Buddhist buildings surrounding the castle as well. Once we left the castle we headed to dinner! We ate tofu kaiseki ryori. Basically, eleven dishes all created from tofu. The first one was really good, it was a tofu soup that had a stone in it to keep it heated. It was all really good actually! I never knew you could do so many things to tofu. Dessert took the cake though, or rather the pudding. It was like a vanilla tofu pudding and it was gah-ood! I was extremely lucky to have been invited along because kaiseki ryori is really a rare treat in Japan. Before I go I have to say how weird it was talking in English! I think I forgot what English English sounded like, as opposed to Japanese English. It was all really fun though and I think I’ll be full for another whole… well a little bit, it’s snack time soon!