Today, my friends and I went to Ginza for our last yakiniku tabehoudai trip.
I probably ate my weight in meat at this restaurant. It was so cheap, only ¥1,200 for all you can eat for an hour. It's also the only restaurant in the whole of Tokyo with Diet Coke. I suspect this cheap price (and presence of aspartame-sweetened beverages) can be attributed to the fact that owner and clientele of this place are both Chinese. I don't think this statement is racist at all-- Chinese people have a very sensible idea of how to get people to buy things-- MAKE THEM CHEAP (and made by 5-year-olds in a sweatshop). But in all seriousness, NO ONE was speaking Japanese in that restaurant. If they were, it was clearly their second language, a mere bridge that all the foreigners hesitantly crossed to get waiters to change their table grills.
We ate fast, we ate a lot, then we went to a toy store.
I went home with a belly full of meat and (for some reason) complete motivation to study for my impending doom err... finals.
Unfortunately, upon my arrival to the lounge, where most of my studying goes down, I heard the mouth watering sound of the gyoza van:
GYOOOOOOOZAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA♪
GYOOOOOOOOOZAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA♫
The entire time I've lived in Heiwadai, I've been trying to hunt down this goddamn van. I heard it once, wasn't hungry and never heard it again. I thought the ramen van was satisfactory as far as four-wheeled oily Japanese snacks go, but then my friends started getting the gyoza while I wasn't around...
I heard tales of its delciousness and grew jealous and spiteful. Why hadn't I found the van? How did the driver know to come by Azalea while I wasn't there? Was he secretly watching my every move, hounding the train station waiting for me to leave Azalea House so he could tempt all the other kiddies with his deep fried dumplings!?
Today, I heard the old man's voice cry out from the van again... The proverbial ice cream man of Heiwadai. That voice... that scraggly old Japanese voice... advertising the gyoza, taunting me with it's greasy goodness knowing that I had just essentially consumed a Chinese cow in Ginza a mere hour before... another wasted opportunity, another wasted day. Another day without that goddamn gyoza.
"Not today," I said, "NOT TODAY."
I shamelessly stormed out of the lounge, wallet in hand, and got some yasai gyoza. 12 pieces for ¥500, not bad.
The van promised it in done in 3 minutes (without using water... wtf?), but it was closer to 5. The longest 5 minutes of my gyoza-consuming life. I thanked him kindly and skipped merrily on my way.
I brought the greasy morsels up to the lounge and ate 9 of them, while my friends Fady and Harriet consumed 3 between them. We were all already full, but that didn't stop the gyoza from excreting its juicy deep-fried goodness into all of our eager mouths.
It was almost a religious out of body experience.
... considering the amount of beef we had recently devoured, this gyoza-inspired euphoria might have also been indication of some sort of delirium brought on by mad cow...
But hey, the guy included individually-packaged soy sauce and ponzu. That's not the mad cow talking, THAT's craftsmanship.
OH! And that's not even the extent of my morbidly obese day!
My good friend Oski sent me a care package from the good ol' U S of A complete with Mac & Cheese, coconut-covered marshmallows, blue raspberry Twizzlers, M&M's (peanut AND regular), Cinnamon Toast Crunch, Twix, Pop Tarts, Twilight-themed candy hearts(...?), and an awesome mix CD! PLUS: menus and pamphlets of all his favorite places in New York that I have to visit the next time I go.
...AND WHAT HAVE THE REST OF YOU SENT ME, EH? It's not too late! 10 days left! Haha, only kidding...
Not about the 10 days though.
Omg, I'm not ready to go home.
~☆ : THANKS OSKI : ☆~
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