Tokyo Tidbits

Perks of the job

I attended a social event hosted by my office for various media related people. Rather formal, but I always enjoy letting people know that a person like me also exists/works in my office AND that I do something other than crunch numbers and make policy recommendations. Most people I meet have studied economics or have been working in the government for a long time. Then I come along and blurt out that, 'nah, I studied history and basically stumbled over here last year from San Francisco...'

And with everyone being so polite, there was a ton of food leftover so I got some free sushi and shumai. Wish I had dogs instead of cats since I can't eat that many shumai (and I wasn't about to share the sushi with my cats!).

While I was eating the sushi, I watched a rather strange food show on TV. There are way too many food shows now. My mom says its b/c they are cheap to produce, but it's insane how every other show seems to be about finding the best ramen shop, or a competition on who can make a specified entree in 3 minutes, or whatever crazy idea they come up with. This show here invites actors or 'talents' to eat 4 dishes each. One of the dishes is something that person totally can't stand and the show is about trying to guess which dish that is. They take turns eating the dishes and through the conversations, the guests try to find out which dish is the 'bad' one while they 'act' to hide from the other which dish they don't like themselves. So they ask each other questions (like when they last had the dish or how they like it prepared otherwise) and they both pretend to absolutely love each dish while studying the facial expressions of the other while they eat. In the end, they ask each other to 'jisshoku' (eat for real) each dish one by one. As they both bite into each dish, they stare at each other and one will say "ha ha, I actually love this for real" while the loser might say, "Ugh, I tried to fake it but I hate walnuts..." This night, one guy had onion soup, lobster, walnut ice cream, and mangoes (he lost with the walnuts). The other had papaya, lamb, celery sticks, and truffles.