Snow, a spa and a seal doing math
It snowed today and accumulated for the first time. We didn’t get much snow before it turned to rain and washed away most of the accumulation. Today was maybe the coldest yet—I could definitely see my breath in the bathrooms and of course there’s only ice-cold water to wash up so I can’t ever feel my fingers on the way back to my relatively-warm desk.
I’ve been trying to go somewhere different every weekend, so this past weekend I went to Shinjuku and Ikebukuro. Shinjuku’s Kabuki-chō is mostly a red-light district from what I can gather, but there’s a pretty nice spa right in the middle of it. There are three indoor pools, a hot pool, a cold pool and a Jacuzzi style pool with bubbles, as well as three saunas (only one of which was cool enough for me to stay inside for any length of time) and massages. The really cool part is that the spa is on the ninth floor of the building and there’s one hot outdoor pool that’s shockingly serene considering it’s in the middle of Shinjuku. The pool is screened off so people in neighboring high-rises don’t get an eyeful, but I could still see some skyscrapers while I soaked. It was cool because it felt like an onsen, but with a cityscape instead of the usual tranquil landscape view. And, since the spa is open 24 hours and is much cheaper than a hotel room, now I know where to go when I miss the last train home.
After the spa, I went to a pretty shrine, Hanazono-jinja, also in the heart of Kabuki-chō. The shrine was all lit up at night and weirdly quiet considering it sits in the shadow of skyscrapers on all sides. I left a single yen offering and rang the big ceremonial bells—you’re supposed to leave the offering and pull the big ropes attached to the bells while you pray. After the shrine, I went to a hole-in-the-wall French restaurant for a very-pricey meal that was still worth every yen. I had French-onion soup, the most amazing potatoes gratin, zucchini in a wonderful cream sauce, and topped it off with crème brûlée.
The next day I went to Ikebukuro, which isn’t quite as fashionable and shiny as Shinjuku (but close). There’s a sort of city-within-a-city, called Sunshine City, where I found a neat planetarium, a zoo and an aquarium. I always feel funny visiting zoos because I worry about how the animals are treated. There were a couple of sea lions in a tank that looked a little small, but then again, the Japanese have very different standards for judging a space too small to be livable. My apartment seemed inhumanely small on those first few nights too. On the plus side, I got a great video of a seal doing math. The trainer would put numbers on a board (like 5+4=) and the seal would look at each symbol very carefully then bounce down a row of numbers, pick out the right one and take it back to the trainer in exchange for fish. I was pretty impressed. Unfortunately, the show didn’t seem that popular, except with a few very small children, either because it didn’t seem to be a scheduled show or because it’s so cold outside. But luckily the seal still gets fish for doing math whether there’s a big audience or not. The aquarium was nice (although not as nice as the Chicago aquarium), but very crowded of course. After the aquarium, I went to a kind of food amusement park, where I was able to find vegetarian gyoza (like potstickers) filled with kimchi and topped with melted cheese. Undoubtedly not traditional, but delicious nonetheless. I’ve been disappointed over the last few months that I rarely eat Japanese food because it’s so hard to find vegetarian versions. I’ve been surprised at how pervasive meat is in Japanese restaurants when historically Japanese considered eating animals like cows to be exotic and not a little strange. But even the vegetable gyoza at the grocery store turned out to contain a little bit of meat when I asked. Anyway, I was overjoyed to find a vegetarian Japanese dish, no matter how untraditional the interpretation. I think I just need to search more for vegetarian Japanese food, and after all, if I can’t find it in Tokyo, I probably can’t find it in Japan.
