Dear Friends,
The last few days have been filled with the essentials: good food, better company and fun. Let’s take a look at the days in review:
Thursday: It started as a quiet day with me sitting around twiddling my thumbs. Then it hit me, “I have the house to myself!” I took advantage of my solitude and started youtubing like crazy. The singfest started with Diana Ross’s “The Boss,” which of course me led me straight to her 1979 Caesar Palace show. I watched all seventeen clips (some songs on ridiculous repeat– ten or more times). I’ve learned many things from my devotion to Diana Ross and her Caesar Palace tutorial: I can’t turn emotion on and off, love (alone) is the boss, extreme passion for a song can overcome a lack of dancing skills.
Can we watch the most glamorous, amazing, sexy woman to ever grace a stage for a moment please (and for a moment, I mean five minutes and eight seconds)? “Who’s the boss, who’s the boss?” Love and Miss Ross!
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZdGu0dkK5Qk]
Diana at 3:23: “Get up here and dance with me girl!”
Thursday night: I’ve fallen in and out of love many times, with many things and many people, but I’ve never felt love like this. Let me tell you about my newest, most passionate, intense love. It started on Tuesday when I was feeling a bit under the weather and decided to get soup at a corner restaurant in my neighborhood. Right beside the beef and mushroom soup was an interesting looking broth with perfectly golden meat swimming in it. I scooped some of that “soup” too. When I took it home, my housemate RT told me that the dish was a very popular pork dish that takes four hours to prepare. Friends, I wasn’t a big fan of pork. I thought pork (excluding bacon) was overrated. Friends, I’ve been a damn fool. Since putting that divine pork in my mouth, I’ve been back to the corner shop three times! One day, I bought enough pork that I’d have enough for breakfast the next morning. My god the pork is good! So, the other night, I asked RT to wed me to the pork; I wanted the pork dish to know that I was not only helplessly in love, but would forever be faithful. He actually started to do it, but then started to think it was crazy and stopped mid-ceremony. Now, I ask you, what could ever be crazy about being really in love?
* Porkie without the gravy.
For Porkie:
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nmtQvqRK6oE]
Friday: As you all know, my days off have been little more than food and drink fests (actually, the name of this post should’ve been “Food and Drink Fest”). So, when my co-worker B suggested that Friday be spent at an architecture exhibit, and checking out Tokyo entire from the observatory deck in the Tokyo Municipal Building, I jumped on the idea with real enthusiasm. Six weeks in and I’ve seen only a few neighborhoods in Tokyo; so, I put my gray walking boots on and got ready to sightsee, to fill my eyes with beauty, to observe different things. All of those things were accomplished, but not at an exhibit that we never made it to, but in a restaurant. The problem (which really wasn’t a problem at all) was that we started with lunch, and stayed with lunch for quite a while. B introduced me to Salvatore Cuomo, a restaurant in Shinjuku, where the buffet, for 1500 yen, is all you can eat until 3p.m. Are you kidding me?! It’s an amazing deal, especially in a city where one sushi lunch is easily 1500 yen and won’t leave you anywhere near full. A pizza, outside of lunch hours, at Salvatore Cuomo is 1800 yen, so we lined up for the buffet of pizza, pasta, seafood, salad, desserts (brownies, profiteroles, and cake), again and again. We washed the sins of our gluttony away with lightly sweetened peach iced tea, and started on the second and third rounds.
* Plate 1: pizza, squid, spaghett in wine sauce, salad and french fries.
* Plate 2- Keeping it simple: pizza with olives, white pizza, sweet potatoes, and french fries.
* Pizza with tiny fish… look closely, you can see the eyes. Yum!
*Thinking more food would get in the way of dessert, we decided it was time to get the sugar in:
When I commented that I hadn’t eaten a meal that wasn’t memorable and superb the entire time that I’ve been in Tokyo, B informed me that Tokyo has more Michelin stars than any other city in the world, and almost more than twice than second place. So believable.
After lunch, we headed to Tokyo Municipal Building’s observatory. Sadly, Friday in Tokyo was gray and hazy, but it was cool to take the ear-popping ride up to the top and see Tokyo spread at my feet. B said it best, when he uttered that we had “the God view.”
* Shinjuku captured by B.
Sadly, the sun has been going down earlier and earlier, but we tried to make it to the Imperial Palace and take some pictures of the Imperial garden. It wasn’t to be; when we exited the train, the sun had already set at 4:50p.m. My camera doesn’t handle night-time pictures very well, and the only photo I got at the palace was a lonely swan.
So, we left the Imperial Palace and took our snap happy selves to Ginza.
* B looking in wonder and a bit of awe at the building in front of us. He’s an architect, so he’d often stop and ask, “What does this building make you feel?” I’m not sure what buildings make me feel, but I sure as heck know how Porkie (my love pork) makes me feel…
*… like dancing!
Friends, I’m going to stop here, because I don’t want to admit to you that we went to Muji and had pepper chicken, mashed sweet potatoes, and chestnut cookies; that would just seem truly gluttonous, and I’d never want to come across that way. This post is long, so Saturday (fantastic Saturday) will be in another post.
Ciao,
Val
p.s
* Come join the fun, this ain’t no time to be staying home, ooh there’s too much going on; tonight is gonna be a night like you’ve never known, we’re gonna have a good time the whole night long!
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cAQSZhazYk8]
* I love El! Even more than I now love Porkie… He had the perfect blend of masculinity, eyeliner and falsetto (not many men can manage this)… though, more men should try.
LMAO! Girl, you are EATING your way through Japan! Flower said to tell you that you will not be able to get out of Japan at this rate. He said if you put on too much weight you will have to pay for your regular luggage as extra luggage, lmao!
But seriously, good for you, Ms ku-kum-kum. The fish with eyes, though. Barf!
And how do you know you’re in Japan? Squid and pizza on the same plate! lol
Lol! You and Flower may be right, but “love taught me who was the boss,” and the boss is Porkie. I can’t turn away, it’s one of those all-consuming kind of loves (literally).
You’re so right about the knowing you’re in Japan thing– don’t forget the requisite seaweed that was on the plate. What a great country!
Um… B. Hm… 😉
the prok does look yummy. looks like pot roast! and like the meat is falling off the bone. prok is the evil meat though, so beware! (hmm — see the typo but will pretend that it is a new meme, like the porn, pron intentional mispelling of a forbidden word to evade censorship.)
Would I speak about one of your loves like that? “Evil” is harsh… what could possibly be wrong with the other white meat? (ahem)
Re: your El Debarge dissertation, I see where you may get the impression that the video is a bit campy. But, I don’t see what could possibly be “gay” about men in gladiator-type shoes, a bit of makeup, and nicely coiffed hair. The heavy metal singers do the same, and no one questions their sexuality; plus, everyone knows a teeny bit of eyeliner on a man is pure hotness. I cannot believe you had the nerve to say that Boy George and Sylvester are more butch than El (that really made me laugh)!
Ok, the fact that I was raised in the eighties, may have warped my views on “masculinity,” be patient with me.
“the bible tells me so . . .”
hmmm, re el debarge. are you kidding re the masculinity comment? that video is such a campfest (in all senses of the word) it is not even funny. he is giving me born in the wrong body, but maybe its just me. there are any number of people who were better at projecting masculinity (80s style) in female makeup than el. bowie, prince, boy george, george michael, liberace, little richard, sylvester and even mj. i think the rock hudson reveal was the turning point in the public discourse about gender constructs, sexual preference and gaydar. one effect of this has been the increasing hypermasculinity posture of musicians, especially in hip hop. even your beloved mj butched it up overnight.
mind you, i would have agreed with you back when i first saw this video, but (i ) was young and naive, (ii) there weren’t a lot of out gay men for reference, (iii) androgyny was a very popular style for artistes claiming to be straight (nobody gets away with that anymore), (iv) all the above-mentioned predecessors/contemporaries were straight identified, (v) we loved the music — but our emulation ended with the dancing — non performing males could not get away with running around in makeup and preserving their masculinity, (vi) our parents were similarly duped so we were not rebelling by listening to this wholesome music — at least it wasn’t that degenerate reggae music and (vii) there are other reasons, but i think the above is enough for now.
I just read your “Bible tells me so” comment, and I think we’re in REAL trouble.
You, eating pork?
Alert the authorities!!! This is V Smith writing these posts after all…
All I can say is never say never…. I really think you guys should’ve force fed it to me… as Sacha said, “half of my life was wasted.”