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Thursday, June 25, 2009

♥ NYC Seminar, Morimoto, and Lesbians



This past weekend I headed to New York City with my little sister to attend the pre-depature orientation/seminar for JET and have a little last hurrah with her before she goes into surgery.

Hijinks occured.

Morimoto

Masaharu Morimoto is one of the Iron Chefs of America and Japan... a ridiculously adorable cook with fucking amazing food. Briana and I have always liked him and after watching a gazillion Iron Chefs, we decided he was not only the best, but invincible (yes yes he has lost, but rarely, he's the shit, shut up). So, when told we should have the best possible time I decided the way to go was to try and get reservation at his NYC restraurant in Chelsea. I shockingly did and on Friday BriBri and I got dressed up in "casual chic" (really, what the hell does that even mean?!) and headed down to near the Chelsea Piers to go to the messiah's restaurant.

Least to say, this was the best culinary experience of my life. The service was impeccable, the ambience perfect... oh it was fantastic. We were so excited that we fangirled quite a bit, and I am not ashamed to admit that. We were impressed down to the clear chopsticks (which we stole) and the unique plates. Morimoto, sadly, was not there, but in his place we have the ever darling Marcus who made sure there was no soy cooked or poured into any of our food so Briana would be completely fine. I had a $14 4oz glass of plum sake and it was the best damn thing ever, haha. I'm sure the entire experience added to my taste buds having a constant orgasm, but you get what you paid for, and well, we paid a fuckton. The food was delicious. I've never had real sushi rice I discovered, but I did at Morimoto's. You could subtly taste the vinegar and it added so much more to the maki rolls. They used fresh eel for our unagi and it was just so... aaaaahhhh. I feel like I need a private moment. So Briana gotthe Surf 'n Turf with Wagyu Beef (basically the Americna version of Kobe Beef) and I got the seafood toban yaki, a delightful seafood menagerie cooked in a wooden bowl of sorts. This was just amazing. Delicious. However, even if Morimoto makes them, I do not like scallops. But the meal was just... delicious, divine, perfect.

But that alone is not what made the night.

When we first arrived we were placed in a room sort of off to the side, the only other people in there was a part of around six middle-aged guys, very unattractive middle-aged guys. Briana left to go to the bathroom and I sat there very slowly sipping my sake, mainly because I wanted to get my worth of it, when one called over asking how I was... so I sadi good and went back to sipping. He asked what I was having, said sake, asked me if it was good, I said yes. Then he went away and we were left alone until we started fangirling again. Their "leader" asked where we were from and we said Maryland, he then asked what we were doing that night and I, without a moments thought, said we were on a date. His response; "Aw that's great... we would love to see you kiss." My sister's response; "We don't do shows."

XD.

Least to say they left us alone. However, later that night we ordered room service and our guy came in and upon noticing we had only one bed (booked through Hotwire) became very cordial and fancy, laying everything out for us. He handed me the check to sign and said "ALl you need to say is I Do eh?"

So all of New York City believes my sister and I are a lesbian couple.

And so we continue on tot he next day.


JET Pre-Departure Seminar

There is a lot that I could ramble on about this, so I'll try and make it short to save you all from endless text. It was actually a LOT of fun. I was very nervous going in, but as soon as I sat down and people started arriving and chatting, things got very casual and quite entertaining. Sarah (my fellow curly-haired Shizuoka gal) and I finally met in real life, so that was very exciting. Even though she's in Hamamatsu (other major city in Shiz at the other side of the prefecture) I foresee many adventures in the future. As well as with the rest of the Kansai/Chubu NYC JETs, we were a very interesting table, we Table 5.

It's always interesting when you meet a facebook friend in person for the first time. You're used to seeing this two dimensional picture and just a bunch of words, so when you see the actual being you sort of freak out. Maybe that's me. I dunno. You sort of semi-recognize a person, but you've only seen their pixels, so seeing them animated is a little off-putting. I've also noticed that everyone has the same expression when they are trying to figure out if they know a person, and they all say the person's name with the same inflection. Haha. It's like, I think I know you, I hope I know you, but if I don't I don't want ot be so ridiculously wrong in my assumption, so I won't go right out and call you by your name. Instead I will ask you if you exist by simply saying you name as a question. It typically works. I did it to. I want to test this in the future. Anywho, it was very cool to actually meet these people that I'll be living in Japan with, even if we don't live that close to one another. Least to say, the NYC JETs are an extremely entertaining bunch. Especially where batons are concerned.

Imagine a group of 100 21-to-30-year-olds waving batons around screaming out answers to some very silly and intelligent questions,a ll the while trying to one up one another by lifting their batons higher than the other teams. Hahaha, least to say there was some smack talk starting and I was quickly labeled as dangerous because I was quick, which prompted the mediators to make us all pass the batons. Then we failed. Figures. Our team (Yellow ftw) ended up tying for first, so that was exciting, though I had the reputation the rest of the day as the crazy baton girl that had a crazy interview thanks to the keynote speaker recognizing me haha. That was fun, I wish I had gotten a chance to talk to him later on, but I was never able to meet up with him after his speech.

A lot of information was thrown at us, some useful, others not at all. The lunch was quite delicious and I had no idea what I ate... apparently I had some lotus root, which, if i did, it was quite delicious and i highly recommend it. 'Twas crunchy. What I wasn't a huge fan of was a giant ball of miso on a toothpick. I'm a bit texture person so that bothered me. The flavor wasn't terrible, it was just... different. I really don't want to know what I'm eating in Japan. I hope they just tell me after, so if I like it I can rest easy knowing I like bizarre weird things. Oy. But yeah, poor Briana was left at the hotel all day (though she seemed very happy playing the Sims 3), so I opted not to go out drinking with everyone (I don't know if anyone from out table went out actually) and instead headed back for another fun filled night in NYC.

The Rest

We headed out to more asian food and Times Square that night, and the next morning met our father at Sarabeth's at Central Park South for Father's Day brunch. Step-mum and half brother joined and eventually we were back on the train to Union Station.

NYC is a fantastically amusing place. Japan creeps closer and I cannot wait to get there.

I loved the seminar all in all. I loved meeting people and now it's truly truly happening. Schwee.

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そうですね。。。
8:13 AM


♥ Kristina



      The Curls. The girl. The Nippon.

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