Kaitenzushi- The sushi-go-round.  You might have seen them on TV, but I can tell you firsthand that they are for real, and rather commonplace at that.  There isn’t a single urbanized area in Japan that could even imagine calling itself that without possessing at least one Kaitenzushi (lit. revolving sushi, sushi-go-round).  It’s kind of a busy, hustle-bustle atmosphere (kind of like a McDonalds or a diner) that says to the customer, “Eat!  Eat!  Eat!… Now leave!” However, you can get some really decent raw fish, usually for cheap.
Here’s how a sushi-go-round works:  You enter and have a seat on one of the bar stools.  Behind the bar are usually around 3 sushi chefs working nonstop, hands a whirl of rice, wasabi and choice fish cuts.  One gives you a big mug ‘o tea, and from there you’re off and eating- basically you grab anything that passes by you that looks good.  If it’s not on the kaiten-track, you can holler your order out to one of the chefs and they’ll fix it up for you and put it on the line.  Usually the chefs make about 8-10 plates of the same dish and put them on the line, and then make 8-10 dishes (each dish has about 2 pieces of sushi on it) of whatever looks like it’s going fast.  Anyway, there are various colors of plates. Each color or design stands for a different price- so one plate might be 150¥, another might be 200¥, and so forth.  When you’re done, one of the chefs comes out, counts up the plates you had, and gives you the bill according to how many plates of what you ate.
I’ve only been to kaitenzushis twice- once two years ago, once right around New Years’ this year (year of the Tiger)… I prefer a more sit-down, relaxed environment.  However, that little bug inside me was just itching to to fill my face with the sweet, fresh taste of cold tuna, yellowtail and squid, so I convinced a couple friends to go to one for dinner.  My friend Satoru and I reached our bursting fill at 12 plates each.  One of the other guys we ate with, Tetsuya, who isn’t even that big of a guy, polished off 23.  To give you an idea of how speechless I was stuck from the apparent limitlessness of his gastrointestinal system, the family of three sitting next to us ate 21 plates altogether.  I started referring to my friend as the “Mugen no ii”- the Somach of Infinity.

Osetchi-ryori – There’s not much to tell here.  Osetchi-ryori is the name of the special group of traditional foods that are served on New Year’s in Japan.  There’s a lot of foods that compose osetchi-ryori, too many to comfortably list.  I, like many foreigners, am not too fond of this kind of food.  It’s strange to look at, it doesn’t taste very good, some of the textures of the foods are quite questionable (there’s one that’s like eating a stiff mushroom composed entirely of pinhead-sized tasteless ballbearings.  It squeaks like fingernails on chalk when you eat it).  When you eat it you realize the only thing keeping these foods around is tradition.  As for appearances, most of the foodstuffs look like they were once pulled out of the sea- there’s no other way I can account for some of the foods in osetchi that are naturally blue and pink.  Sometimes people ask me how to say “osetchi” in English… they try to think of it first, and often stumble a bit, like “New Year’s Cooking… no… Foods of New Year… no… Foods that come in New Years…” and I usually interrupt them and tell them “Abomination of Nature” works better.
There is one food of osetchi-ryori that I like.  I forget the name, but from afar it looks like a small, spongy round, yellow loaf of bread.  Up close, you notice that it has a definate rolled appearance to it- it looks like sliced cross-sections of a small human brain.  But it’s kind of sweet, and the texture isn’t offensive to my being, so I can often manage to work it down.

Another popular dish of New Years’ is mochi- spongy, stringy, cheese-like (texturewise) rice cakes.  The preparation that’s special for New Years’ is called O-zooni, which is basically a rice cake floating in a thin soup.  I’m not too fond of mochi- I like stronger tasting foods better.  Plus, they say that every year around New Years’, old people choke and die on Mochi, because it’s stringy and gets stuck in their throats.  Like we’re talkin’ over 50 people a year here.  You figure they should just stop eating mochi, but that would be like telling an American not to eat ham for Christmas or turkey for Thanksgiving.

Emmanuel Lewis- The little freak of nature was featured on a Japanese evening variety show recently (about 70% of prime-time TV in Japan consists of variety shows).  He was driven in a limo to the studio, he talked a little bit to the hosts, they showed some clips of what he’s been doing recently.  Meanwhile the female hosts are screaming “kawaiiiiiiiiii!” (He’s SOOOOO CUTE!) and patting him and poking him like a kid.  My dark mind was imagining what he was really going through in that studio.  Everyone’s going, “you’re soooo cute!” and he’s smiling a childlike grin while saying “Kill me.  I am an adult male trapped in the body of a child.  Destroy me so that I might finally know rest.  Please, for the Love of God, KILL ME!”

Video store- In Japanese video stores, they actually have a section for “costume movies” like Power Rangers, Godzilla, Masked Rider, and all those other movies and TV shows both domestic and foreign that feature one or more barely dexterous costume-wearing people, stomping around a Paper-mache urban or rural landscape while shooting poorly animated lightning bolts out of their mouths.

Mononoke Hime- “The Monster Princess”.  Look for this one- it’s the latest and last Hao Miyazaki film to be made.  Disney, fearing competition on any family animated movie front, went berserk buying up the rights to his movies, and is now translating them into English.  It should be out pretty soon, both the subtitled and the dubbed versions, as well as all his other movies.  That’s ‘ol Disney for you: “If you can’t beat ‘em, CONTROL THEM UTTERLY.”
I saw Mononoke Hime in the theater, and I must say it was one of the better movies I saw- The music, sound, animation and story were absolutely amazing.  The thing that I liked best about it was that it was about a war (namely, the war between people and nature)- both sides had protagonists and antagonists, and when it came down to it there was no clear “good side” or “bad side”, and there was also no way that one side could get its way without being a detriment to the other.  These sorts of situations happen in life, and it’s rare for something like a movie, especially a “children’s movie”, to deal with these ideas.  Cool flick.
 
Porno Software- Something I noticed when I went shopping for computer software- all the places that I’ve seen have a “Pornography Software” section, just as sure as they have a “games” section, a “productivity” section, etc.  Just something I noticed, since they don’t have that kind of thing in America.

Tokyo- I noticed recently that when I go to Tokyo, there’s this peculiar feeling that manifests itself in me as the train arrives in the outskirts of the heart of the city.  I get filled with this general sense of life and excitement, being surrounded by thousands and thousands of people, each doing their own ‘thang.  My mind starts buzzing, the wheels start turning, and I get carried away with my thoughts.  I seem to do some of my best thinking just wandering around the streets of Shinjuuku or Shibuya.  It almost always feels like the first day of Spring when I go to Tokyo, you know what I mean?  It’s hard to describe this feeling in words.  The only thing I know is, if I ever start to feel like this when I think about Home, I’ll be totally set.

And finally… Sylverster Stallone sells HAMS!!!  On TV!!!!  Do other Americans know this?  Actually, I thought there was something poetic in his selling of the hams- I mean, even in a suit the guy’s face looks like about 4 strategically-placed handfulls of raw meat.  Another drop in the legacy of film and music stars that sell out in Japan so it doesn’t seem like they’re selling out in the Motherland:  Schwartznegger, Jodie Foster, Dennis Hopper, Scottie Pippin, Harrison Ford even (but that was 3 beer commercials some 2 years ago, but still…)!