Performance Art, etc.

By Scott--

We have a new art piece in progress. Yesterday Tor managed to spill half a bowl of noodle-dipping sauce into his lap, on his jeans. He insisted we go back to the hotel, but we convinced him it would be okay. It eventually dried, of course, and six hours later when we were at the hotel he didn't even bother to change! So we've decided to "spill" something from every meal in Japan onto Tor's jeans and never wash them. It will be an olfactory/culinary/visual piece. Suggestions welcome re the title.

The Tsukiji fish market was really a blast. The variety and amount of fish was mind boggling. And you'd never be able to do anything like it in the US--there were motorized carts whizzing by all over, and if you and they weren't careful you could easily get run down. My favorites at the market were the guy using a huge electric saw to cut frozen chunks of halibut; the barrels full of writhing, dark eels; the guy cutting up the eels who first, with a hearty laugh as you watched, spiked them through the eye to hold them to his cutting board, then sliced them up; the almost neon-red fish; the cuttle fish in their ink; the fat blobs of octopus.

I love soba noodles, and today for lunch we went to an old, "famous" soba place near Ueno station--Ueno Yabu Soba. It's a small place, and wasn't too hard to find. I loved how, when I asked an old gentleman in a business suit where it is, he nodded, did an immediate about face, then led us about a block to a corner and pointed down an alley. Kathy and I had soba, she the soba tempura, with big fat shrimp tempura. The kids giggled when a young woman near us slurped her noodles VERY LOUDLY, and I pounced on them a little for doing so. I like the custom of slurping. It's also pretty practical. It helps get those noodles up. Liv (you've seen the photo) had some udon that never quit, they must have been two feet long.