We went from the sake festival to a karaoke bar – karaoke is a big thing in Japan and there are facilities offering karaoke all over the city. We went to one not far from where Lekshmi lives with Karina – Lekshmi’s friend who bought the Christian Louboutin shoes. What happens is that one ends up renting a private room which was assigned for our use for an hour. The price we paid – about $75 – includes the use of the room and an alcoholic drink for the five of us.
We select what songs we want to sing and then whoever wishes can join in the singing. Several of the songs that were selected were ones that I was not familiar with. Mini got into the act with Copocabana singing it with several of the others. Mini and I sang John Denver’s “Sunshine on my Shoulders” and I was the one who primarily sang Elvis Presley’s “It’s Now or Never”. Our selections of songs really dates us – especially my choice of the Elvis song. Such is the generation gap ………. because the others chose songs that were less ancient.
Following karaoke we went to dinner. The plan was to go to this local place that serves gyoza but that did not work out because when we got there, it had just closed. So we ended up eating tapas at a local haunt which was actually pretty good – even if it was somewhat expensive.
The previous day Lekshmi took us to a well regarded sushi restaurant. We had to wait for about an hour to get a table – which tells you how popular the place is – and the restaurant only serves sushi including run of the mill stuff as well as the more exotic choices. I have not been one for sushi – my one experience was at a restaurant in LA and it was not good – enough to turn me off for years. But being in Japan, I felt that I absolutely had to give it a try and I am glad that I did because the sushi was really quite good. I tried pretty much everything – the others were far less enterprising. We had ordered a platter with a variety of different items just to get a sample of the different items being served. There was one item that I gave up on very quickly – I don’t know what it was but it seemed like cartilage and was quite crunchy and tasteless!
We also went to a Japanese tea room in an unusual setting with lots of vegetation and flowers serving exotic types of tea. People wait for a long time for an opportunity to go through this experience. It is used as a setting for conversation while people imbibe tea. There are a couple of snacks that are served if one so wishes though the primary objective is just to drink tea and chat!
Dinner with tapas ended our fairly busy day …………….
