Japan パート Three - Still Tokyo (It's a big place)

As I said, we had several "what the heck did I just drink??" moments. They play like a comedy reel in my head that I wish I could share but all I can do is post the pics I was able to capture. This is what happens when you can't begin to read a language so you are forced to point to photos and hope for the best.

Supposed to be water

Supposed to be anything but tea, which Steve hates)

Supposed to be coke (was coffee)

Your guess is as good as mine

Mmmm -sweat.

Besides questionable beverages, we also ate more strange things in one trip than most people eat in a lifetime. It started accidentally, when we visited an area of Tokyo called Roppongi. First, I have to say, Tokyo blows my mind because it's so big and there are so many parts of it that are as big, crowded and crazy as Times Square. And yet it's clean and everyone's so polite and reserved (except when grown men start a flash mob dance to a song by young girls in Akihabara. We'll get to that later.)

Back to Roppongi. And questionable food.

Here is a view of Roppongi:

http://travel.cnn.com/tokyo/drink/roppongi-tokyos-most-controversial-night-spot-002352

And here is a random spider outside where we ate dinner

And there's the Eiffel Tower in the distance. Who knew Paris and Tokyo were so close together? Why did it take us so long to get here?!

Random pretty building

And here's where we had our first taste of....

Blowfish.

I.e. Pufferfish.

I.e. Fugu

I.e. -- lethally poisonous.

Apparently, Blowfish can kill you if not cooked properly. No kidding, you need a license to serve it. We were skeptical -

 Fortunately, we were given several ways to eat it as well, including eating it with the bone, eating it's chin, or eating part of the grill cover.....

Ok it actually said Gill cover, but is that much better?

At least if this was going to kill us, we were in a beautiful place -

We dug in-

and survived!

And the list of weird food consumption continued after that, to include:

-turtle (while not that crazy, it was actually the hardest thing for me to eat -- not a fan)

-more blowfish (because when you find something potentially lethal, you try to eat it as much as possible apparently)

-dried squid in a bag (from 7/11, of course)

and - locust

Surprisingly sweet, unsurprisingly crunchy.I actually liked it.

 

 Rebecca, not so much.

And besides all the strange food and drinks, we also saw many accidentally hilarious signs and learned some "Steveisms"...which I'll explain next post.