Updated: Never — Philip's Blog

23:56 JST

The weather today was disgusting. Rain, rain rain. Horizontal sheets of water. Really unpleasant.

This morning, we went to see the giant panda at Ueno Zoo, but it turned out that Ling Ling died of a heart attack a couple of years ago. Perhaps I need to rethink my fondness of Japanese cuisine a bit. Happily though, there were many other animals to cover for the disappointment. Particularly interesting was the aye-aye forest. Most of them asleep, but the one or two who were awake were highly entertaining. There was also a hyperactive Galapagos Tortoise, but of course it can't compete with an astro-chelonian.

Pity about the Panda. There's one in the Berlin Zoo I've consistently failed to visit for the past couple of years though. Maybe next year we should visit Berlin a couple of days early and see about the Panda.

Dinner this evening reminded me of why I don't mind sitting in a small metal tube pointed at this island for all too many hours. We spotted the restaurant by the (very!) cute waitress letting out the previous party. It was a tiny place. Three tables only. The kind of place I gravitate to.

Our starter was sashimi, including a bowl of small living fish. I'm actually not sure which fish they were. It was not ikizukuri, which I've had in Kyoto two years ago, but a bowl of small eelish creatures. I understand other people's sensitivities towards things like that, but really - carrots weren't uprooted by choice either, get over it. Just bite once and the vital problem isn't so vital anymore. Also on the plate were uni and some other tasty things. It was realy, really tasty

This was followed by a fried fish and udon and then cold soba. Yum yum!

All this was of course accompanied by some tasty sake.

The cute waitress disappeared at some point, but the food made up for her absence. We have the address of the place, we'll be sure to visit it again.

I asked Sato-san to ask Them to turn off the rain. It seems They have misunderstood though, and it now started snowing. This is suboptimal. I'll have to spend more time in restaurants. I'll end like the Panda, mark my words!