sushi, sake, and bad luck

There are not many photos for this blog post, because it was raining and my camera is not weatherproof. this was an amazing day, though.

i had tickets to a sushi making class in asakusa at 4:00 pm. I also added some extras on to that - a sake tasting during the class, and a tour of asakusa afterward. i had to go from hatanodai station to nakanobu station, and then take the asakusa line from nakanobu station to asakusa station. it took about 50 minutes to get there. overly confident in my ability to use the tokyo transit system (and totally not because i had fallen asleep and woke up at 2:45 pm), i left with no time allotted to make any train mistakes. I made it no problem. look at me, tokyo transit system. i am the captain now.

i obviously couldn’t get many pictures during the class, because it was a hands-on activity and i was making the sushi. i got a few photos though.

there were 3 different types of sushi classes: rolls, temari (little sushi balls), and nigiri. you don’t get to pick the one you get. I was hoping I would get nigiri, as it that is the kind of sushi i like the most and think is the most likely type for me to ever want to make again. i happened to be randomly placed into the nigiri course - awesome.

the class started with a short quiz using that paddle in the above image. a series of multiple choice (A/B) questions you answered by holding up the paddle. i got 6/7 correct. most of the questions were very easy but the last one was crazy. i don’t even remember what the question was, but everyone guessed and only around half of people guessed right.

I did learn some fun facts though. they told us that temari sushi, which is like adorable bite sized tiny sushi balls, apparently originated from women wanting to eat sushi without potentially ruining their makeup.

i also learned there are apparently nearly 30,000 sushi restaurants in japan, 5,000 of which are in tokyo. there are apparently “only” 13,500 mcdonalds in america. turns out sushi is popular in the place where sushi is from.

the class was pretty great. i am not very good at making sushi, but they gave good instructions and a pretty wide variety of ingredients.

corn, cucumber, roe, tamagoyaki (sweet omelet), shrimp, one fish i don’t remember, tuna, salmon, and torotaku (tuna and pickled daikon radish).

i imagine this will surprise no one, but sushi making is difficult. i did my best with the time alotted, and had a great time.

as mentioned before, this experience also came with a sake tasting, which actually meant “like 8 shots of 15% alcohol sake.”

I got reasonably tipsy during this, which honestly just made it more fun.

then came the tour of asakusa. it was at this point i learned that i was the only person who signed up for this. so i ended up getting a 1-on-1 private tour of asakusa from an awesome dude named hayato. hayato-san was amazing. he took me to senso-ji (a buddhist temple) and told the history of the area, the asakusa shinto shrine and told me all about shinto, several shopping streets (many of which were already closed for the day), some restaurant streets, a walk through 7-eleven with awesome commentary on what the good stuff in there is that only the real ones know about, a walk along the sumida river, and then back to the train station. it was one of the coolest nights of my life, completely unexpectedly. i thought this tour would be a big group of people and like 45 minutes, and it was instead a 1-on-1 tour for 2 and a half hours.

i am kind of bummed i didn’t get too many pictures due to the rain, but i have to remind myself that having seen it is more important than having documented it.

the first part of the tour was senso-ji, a buddhist temple:

 

hayato-san explained that this is the “kaminarimon” - or “thunder gate”. He told me this gate was originally built in the year 941, but it was relocated, destroyed, and rebuilt several times over the years. it was most recently rebuilt in 1960 thanks to a generous donation from the founder of panasonic, after he allegedly prayed at this shrine while suffering from a health issue and ended up recovering.

this statue on the left side of the gate is raijin, a shinto god of lightning and thunder. hayato-san explained to me that the circles behind him are drums, and that it was believed that the sound of thunder came from raijin hitting the drums with the mallets in his hands.

this statue, on the right side of the gate, is fujin, the shinto god of wind. the large bag he has draped over his shoulders apparently contains the wind.

this second gate is called the hozomon, or the “treasure gate”. this gate was constructed in 942, but was destroyed and rebuilt in the 1600s. it was then destroyed again by the united states in the tokyo air raids of 1945. it was rebuilt again in 1964.

i then saw a sign in japanese that i was actually able to read, which is pretty rare. it said おみくじ “omikuji”. I didn’t know what it meant, so I asked hayato-san what omikuji meant. he was very surprised i knew how to read hiragana and i got my first 日本語は上手 nihongo jouzu of the trip.

it turns out omikuji is the word for the fortunes you can get at shrines and temples in japan. i knew about these, but i didn’t know the japanese word for them. i of course had to get one. i walked over and put a ¥100 coin in the box and took my fortune. unfortunately, i got bad fortune.

this immediately had a real effect on my life, as within 5 minutes of getting this fortune, my umbrella broke, my camera battery died, and i stepped in a puddle and got a wet sock.

thankfully, hayato-san saved the day. he let me use his umbrella, i had a spare battery, and i just dealt with the wet sock. but it created a little inside joke for the rest of the tour about everything bad that happens being a result of this fortune i just got.

hayato-san told me bad fortunates are supposed to be tied up on these bars, where they are removed periodically and burned. my bad fortune is that top left one. so hopefully by now it has been burned and my bad fortune is gone.

after this, we visited the shinto shrine right next to this temple, where i did not get any photos because of the rain.

i only got a few more pictures the rest of the tour:

the cherry blossoms are just now barely starting to bloom on a few trees around here. maybe 1 in 10 cherry blossom trees have any buds on them at this point. i suspect they wont start really blooming until after i have left tokyo (bad fortune!!!!!).