food!

I can't be bothered writing anything that blogworthy, yet I feel obliged to post a blog since it may be the last time for a while I'll be able to blog - I'm in the JFK airport in New York, waiting for our flight to at 7:30 to London. Fortunately, almost everywhere here has WiFi, (I think it's pronounced why-fy, not "whiffy") so I'm on my MacBook trying to use this unlimited internet before boarding and going to London, where I've heard I won't be able to access the internet as much. So anyway, I've just decided to post pictures and captions to one of my hobbies- food!


I found this everywhere in Tokyo - It's apparently beauty tea supposedly making you, well, um, more beautiful I guess...



Yay Mos Burger! I don't know if it was the perfectly-stacked, round burgers, or the amount of effort to find one of these places, but it was pretty good...


The vending-type machine in the Ramen noodle place - In an effort to rid the restaurants of waitresses, you purchase tickets for your food through this machine... and then give the tickets to the waitress...


... and moments later, steaming hotRamen!


We went to this robatayaki place, which is pretty much just cooking things over hot rocks or embers or something. kinda like a Korean BBQ, only in this photo, less ribs and beef, and more tentacles.


A huge day for me - my goal was to eat as much stereotypically-American food - so ate this pretzel, which really did make me thirsty! Later that day I also had a hot dog and a chilli dog, and a huge-arse steak, though wasn't able to finish it as well as my brother...

I even ate at a diner, with booths! Though oddly, I felt the need to order cereal during the afternoon, talk about nothing, and ask what was the deal with a number of things while I was there.

Next goal on my list of stereotypically American food-related goals: become obese!

tv & celebrities in new york

Boy, it's only been a couple of days since my last blog, but boy, the stories I could tell...



...Well, I guess I should tell you what's happened then. We've been doing the standard sightseeing thing lately of popular attractions and all the like. Today we we walked down Fifth Avenue, which is pretty much the rich street here with all the fancy shops and stuff, and apparently costs a fortune to get a shop on the street - apparently, there are quite a few stores that lose a lot of money since they don't attract enough customers to the store, but keep their shop anyway for the prestige associated with being on Fifth Avenue. What's really weird is that there are a bunch of Target ads all in Times Square, and there isn't even a Target in Manhattan!

Anyway, the highlight of the day shopping-wise probably would have been the NBC store, since it had souvenir stuff from The Office, Scrubs & Friends. After wondering why I loved the store so much I came to the realisation that two major facets of my life are watching TV and shopping, and this just combined the two. I was a little sad, but consoled myself with buying some stuff in the store. I was so close to actually buying actual Scrubs-Scrubs, but decided against it, considering I probably wouldn't wear them and that I'm too lanky to wear them anyway. Plus, I'm going to the CBS store tomorrow, so hopefully I can pick up some Amazing Race stuff.

Also went to the NBA store as well - two levels of unbelievable basketball merchandise, with jerseys, bobbleheads, a lego Lebron James, action figures, clothing, and Basketball Baboushka dolls. It was every basketball-lover's dream... too bad it was wasted on me. So after perusing (which is another facet of my life, mainly because then I can say it more) for 20 minutes , I ended up just sitting in the store for another 40 minutes twiddling my thumbs and wishing I enjoyed organised-competitive-physical group-activities, or "sports", if you will.

I wonder if video games will ever be considered a sport? I watched this documentary on the plane to the US about a guy who was a professional video game player, and has a contract and is a millionaire already. Apparently in South Korea it's also pretty huge, with people going to stadiums to watch other people play. I remember seeing it being covered on TV in Korea. I can't wait till that trend hits Australia. I'd love it if I could be paid to play Guitar Hero - then I could be a professional rocker without even knowing how to play an instrument.

Probably the coolest & noteworthy thing in New York though is celebrity spotting that's happened so far. It's way cooler than Australia since you see people other than Toadie from Neighbours. But anywhoo, while we were eating a restaurant near the hotel, Sean Penn came in to the restaurant and sat a couple tables away from us. I tried to do the keep-cool-and-pretend-it's-nothing thing, which pretty much means I tried not to stare too blatantly, and glanced repeatedly instead. Was also too afraid to ask for an autograph or take a picture since he seems like a kinda edgy guy anyways.

Also, after while visiting Trump Tower to getApprentice-related photos, I got to see the biggest celebrity there - you guessed it, Trump's hair! And also the guy attached to it! The acting cool thing didn't work this time- mainly because everyone else was staring and taking photos, so me and my brother decided to join in on the fun:

live, from new york, it's saturday night!

Man, it's been a long couple of days. Actually, more like one really long day and one shorter one. We left Tokyo on Friday around 7:00, and arrived in New York at midnight on Friday. Doesn't sound like much of along day, but we went over the international time line, so in between those seemingly short 5 hours was 10 hours on a plane to Dallas, 2 hours in the airport, 2 hours to New York, a fat guy sitting next to me taking up all of my armrest and intermittently leaning on my light button on the plane, and a number of plane/landing delays in between. It does feel weird to not be in Japan anymore, so I'm trying to look on the bright side. Not so much the bright side, but focusing on the sucky things on Japan so I don't feel as bad...

1. Couldn't find a Nintendo DS anywhere in Japan! apparently they're sold out in the country! I doubt there are shortages overseas, in fact, in Australia, they seem to be everywhere! Why didn't they spend that manufacturing time making Nintendo DSes for Japan, in particular the light blue one that you can supposedly only find in Japan? Shame, Nintendo, shame.

2. For a place notorious for it's crazy TV, I didn't really find that much crazy TV. Well, there was that show that involved two people trying to set the record for eating as much sushi humanly possible, and eating around about 100 plates of sushi at a sushi train restaurant, but still, not that zany, and only shown during the afternoon/night!

3. Banana Fanta. Eeew...

Anyway, New York's been pretty cool so far. I did enjoy some New York pizza, so I just have to eat a pretzel, and a hot dog from a questionable street vendor, and I'll be able to check everything off my New York list. I think I should have put an extra check box for watching Saturday Night Live live from New York as well. It's not the best show, but I think it sounds cool to have done it anyway.

also, my phone's working now, so I should be able to get any messages, should anyone wish to tell me how they're going in Guitar Hero, Starcraft, or anything else noteworthy. I've heard that international roaming doesn't accept SMSPup messages, or anything involving Gilmore Girls, so if you do message me, you might have to just use your own phone and avoid any Lorelai references...

By the way if there's anything you might want from New York, let me know -I expect to be receiving requests anytime now...