Mr. Wake

Are you understand?

Name:
Location: Kamakura, Kanagawa, Japan

Wednesday, February 09, 2005

Meat

Saturday night Shacho and I went out to get steaked. And steaked we got.

We went to a place in Ueno, a section of Tokyo, called "Gain."

At Gain we were to meet Shacho`s bodybuilding friend. And which would he be? Could he perhaps be the gentleman with the dyed blonde hair who`s doing a poor job of hiding a pair of pythons beneath a skin-tight spandex shirt? He was one of those giants who seems like he`s become too big to handle delicate items. It seems surprising that he can take off his sunglasses (at 10 o`clock at night) or lift his wine glass without destroying them.

Shacho left the table to chat with the chef and order for us. During this time I chatted with the bodybuilder. And there`s pretty much only one thing you can talk about with a guy like that. Answers: for 20 years; an hour per day; yes, but it used to be 4 hours per day.

Shacho returned with the chef, a pudgy, silver-haired man who was dressed like a dentist in a Godzilla movie (if there is such a thing). Shacho introduced him as "sensei." Sensei was carrying a plate of moist, red slabs. The charcoal oven was right next to our table -- actually, everything was right next to our table. Gain only seats 32. Sensei plopped himself on a stool, slapped the meat on the grill, and spanked it with a spatula.

Each plate was garnished with a sad heap of vegetables -- corn, carrots, green beans -- as if it was illegal to serve steak without them. Shacho`s and my steaks were half a kilo each and the bodybuilder`s was a full kilogram of cow. For those of you who enjoy Big Macs as opposed to Royals with cheese, half a kilo is a 17 ounce steak, and one kilo is 2.2 pounds. Each was devoured completely in reverent silence. The bodybuilder was taking individual bites that would have been a full meal for my wife.

Dessert. Two scoops of vanilla and a cup of coffee. Sensei was back at the table chatting a laughing about bodybuilding apparently. Upon request he knelt down and presented me with a bicep for squeezing. Sensei was a freakin rock.

Shacho poured a sip of wine into his dish of ice cream. "Is that the Japanese style of eating ice cream?" I asked hoping my tone conveyed that I knew full well that it was the Japanese style of eating ice cream on Krypton. "It`s my style." He answered. Now, Shacho was wearing a suit. Suits in restaurants can have an effect on people who do not usually wear suits. The non-suited assume that weird things that a suited one does with food are how it`s done, and bodybuilder dribbled some Beaujolais Nouveau on his ice cream with complete seriousness. Well, when on Krypton, right? So I had a red and vanilla float, myself. Actually tasty.

1 Comments:

Anonymous Anonymous said...

dude, you are one step away from eating a snickers with a knife and fork. tread lightly.

12:54 AM, June 04, 2005  

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