Ocean, Karaoki and Cow Tongue

Last weekend could be summed up in two really descriptive words…new stuff, or new things. Actually there are probably tons of words that are better then those, but I think I’d rather describe my new experiences in whole, rather then waist them on a few words.

A few of my friends here at the church, Manami Sato, Haruka, and Hisashi, who happen to be some students of mine, and happen to also be around the same age as me invited me along to Matsushima. What is, or who is, or where is Matsushima you might ask? Well, let me tell you. It’s about an hour and a half or two hours drive north east of Ayashi. I don’t know if it’s named after anyone famous, or what the meaning of the word is. If I had to make up a definition for the name, I would write that it means beautiful clear blue water scattered with little islands with steep rock faces…or something like that. Check out my pictures. Well, I don’t have them up right now because my computer is having mental problems. Anywho, getting back on track. Next weekend, the young adults have a camp/retreat shindig at the church, one of the days we are going to Matsushima, so we went to check out the beach. We went to this one private beach way out in the boonies. We took some TINEY roads, then finally came to a beautiful sandy beach with a small island out about 100 yards that you can swim too.

The water was surprisingly warm. Im used to the Pacific ocean on the west coast of America, and its way colder on that side of the ocean. Matsuhimas water was even warmer then Catalina Island, or anything thing that I’ve swam in SoCal. Instead of really heavy driftwood longs, there is drift bamboo, which is sweet for making forts…cause its Way lighter. When we go back, I think I’m going to try and build a raft…I’ll let you know how that goes.

Monday is my day off, and again, I was invited to get cultured. This time Tomoari and I took the train downtown and met our friends Haruka and Manami Suzuki at the train station. We went to the bookstore because I needed to buy a bunch of textbooks for my classes, so we got those all ordered. Next they showed me a couple of small grocery stores that sells imported foods from America…Like peanut butter. I thought it was kind of funny because they were excited to show me all this American food, but when we walked in, I didn’t really recognize anything other then Skippy peanut butter, and the various El Paso Mexican food. But all being that aside, I was really happy they showed me, because even though there was a bunch of stuff that I didn’t recognize, its good to know where I can get familiar food. Oh one last important bit of info that I gathered there. They sell Timtams! Yeah, soooo I’ll probs be introducing Timtam slams once it gets a bit cooler.

After our little shopping experience, we were back on our mission to go do some Karaoki. This was the main part of our trip down there, and to be honest, I wasn’t too excited to go do it. Once we got there, I quickly found out that Karaoki in Japan is much different then how it is in North America. We walked up to this counter, which looked like something you would find at a fantasia or castle fun park when you pay for mini golf or something. Only here, you pay for a private room, then they give you a mug. You get a mug because when you turn around, you can help yourself to all you can drink soft drinks, slurpies, tea, and soft serve ice cream. Once we filled our mugs, we were off to room 47.

Our room had a “L” shaped booth with a tale. There was a large LCD TV, and you have these wireless remote things that you order your songs on…quite cool. You also get a menu cause you can order food. So we ordered some fries. After, three and a half hrs of Karaoki, and many mugs of various drinks we left, walked back to the train station where we were meeting the other Manami, Manami Sato, the same one from Saturday at Matsushima.

For dinner, they were treating me to a famous Sendai meal, cow tongue. I didn’t really know what to expect, but I figured that it would be a cool experience. When we got to the restaurant, there was only seating right up at the bar, right in front of the cooks. Normally this would be a cool seat because its kind of fun to watch them chop up and prepare the meals. But since I’ve never had cow tongue, it was the worst seat because if I didn’t like it, or if it made me gag, I can’t really hide it from the cook because he would practically be breathing on my food.

But, when the food came, it looked very appetizing. The cow tongue shared the plate with some cucumbers, then, we had a bowl of rice and then a bowl of soup…which I learned was some sort of cow tail meat broth. I tried to tongue and it was not bad at all. It was a little tougher then other cuts of a cow, but the texture was not bad, and it was very well seasoned. So, cow tongue is not bad at all. I’d recommend it to any meet lover. Everything was very tasty, even the soup. But, I didn’t really care fore the little chucks of tail meat.

After dinner, we went and did the Japanese photo booth thing, I guess its really big there. I figured that out because went down some hall way and there were like 10 huge booths, but it was pretty cool. Then after that we hopped in the car and drove up this hill that’s just outside of the city. It is a place that has a beautiful view of the skyline, but since it was dark, it was hard to get a good picture. So perhaps someday I’ll go back and take some pics for yall.

The weekend was sweet, and I loved how each day just had something completely new. Something I’ve never done before, and don’t think I would ever to if I wasn’t here.