The New National & Dan's last day

Thanks to last night's red wine (and the thicker curtain on my window which I hadn't used til now) I was able to sleep in this morning -- until 7.30AM!

I met up with Dan at 10.30AM because we had an appointment with Mamoru Ota, Producing Director, Drama Division of the New National Theatre, Tokyo. We made this appointment so that we could take a look at the actual theater that Enjoy was presented. And although Okada has been rehearsing in the studio at the New National all week, for some reason it took all this coordination and bureaucratic mumbo-jumbo for us to just look at the Pit, the smallest theater in the complex. In fact, we almost backed out on the idea of trying to see the theater because, in reality it bears the least amount of actual inspiration or helpfulness for our purposes -- and besides, we'd seen the space on the DVD, how different can it be?

We waited under the watchful and doubtful gaze of the guards until Ota came to pick us up. The Pit is a humble modular blackbox, seating up to 300. OK I am being utterly facetious when I say humble. Really, it's like way better than St. Ann's Warehouse. I mean, it's huge, lots of height, a gajillion lighting instruments, totally flexible... I guess I'm not used to seeing legit like regional theater spaces or whatever, but I was very impressed. From the DVD the space looked kind of like a lecture hall and much smaller.




So today was Dan's last day in Japan. His brother Jason (aka the Magical Prince) had taken off to Hokkaido (from where he sent Dan a photo of a RIDICULOUS uni bowl -- most heinous food porn EVER) and Hinako had gone hiking somewhere, so we went on our own excursion: to Chofu. A suburb of Tokyo, there is a temple called Jindaiji there with an area famous for its soba noodles. Below, a sign in the restaurant detailing the cross section of a buckwheat grain, and how the noodles in this restaurant does not use the outer layer of the grain, which produces a lot of scum. Soba noodles, as commonly known, are purplish in color, but the soba here was white, and shaped like fettuccine.

Here is Dan looking mighty doubtful about his slimy nameko mshrooms.

After hitting the Yukari hot springs (which I will blog about another time) and the soba, we wandered through the Jindaiji Temple grounds,

then back towards the Parco Department store in front of the station. Danger!! I didn't realize Dan would be such a shopper. I think it must have been because of the "last day" syndrome that he had very little self-control in spending. He bought a bunch of stuff at Muji, a super-cute green messenger bag, ten pairs of socks at the Paul Frank store. He almost bought a pair of glasses at a store called "FAMOUSCRAP." The use of English here never ceases to amuse.

For our last dinner together we went back to the yakitori place he liked so much. We had the same waitress, who recognized us and was so sweet.
Some highlights:
Pork belly!
From left to right, two skewers of standard negima (chicken and green onion) and quail eggs;
Enoki wrapped in pork belly (which Dan claims he is going to be the first to introduce to Philly);Mozzarella Cheese wrapped in shiso seaweed -- hmmmm I understand what you're going for, but really, not so much -- plus that's not mozzarella cheese!?We had ice cream from a convenience store, and it was time to turn in. This was goodbye! Wow it's hard to imagine -- spending a week in Tokyo with someone you don't know very well, working and playing together, could have easily been a terrible disaster, but spending this time with Dan was truly a pleasure from beginning to end. Safe trip home!