One week!

Six days from right now, I’ll be on a plane from Tokyo to Hokkaido.
Two weeks from now, I’ll be floating somewhere over the Pacific.

One year goes by really really fast.
Goodness.
People keep asking what I’m going to fit in before I go, if I want to see or buy or eat something.

No, not really.

Partially because work is really busy, and partially because, well, I’ve been here for a year.

Thanks to Typhoon Melor (known to Japanese citizens as Typhoon #18), my last pair of sneakers from the states is probably not coming home.  Two have fallen prey to the wear and tear of Tokyo pavement, this last pair was doing okay, but after a few soakings, I begin to wonder whether I should stick my feet in them at all.  Like I said, not coming home.

On an unrelated note (but really, don’t all notes relate somehow to food?), they opened a wagyu hamburger place that’s smack in the middle of my walk home from Ebisu station.  I dragged a friend there for dinner last week.  It had opened the weekend before, but I was too busy playing in Kansai to check it out.  Plus, it’s kind of hard to march into a giant hamburger store by yourself.  Ramen, yes.  Burger, hm…

Yes, it was a $15 hamburger.  It came with 5 little wedges of potato.   We thought that was kinda stingy of them, but then we took stock of the burger.  The burger was delicious, and humongous.  Well flavored, good quality meat (made from black, raised-in-Japan bovine = black cows = blacows (the restaurant name)), savory tomato sauce (not ketchup), and for me…ahem…jalapeno + cheese.  Really good.  I think I have to eat gruel + boiled spinach for two weeks to compensate for the hit to the arteries(not happening), but reaaally good.

I go back to work now.