Misbehaving Computers, Perfect Parks, and Korean BBQ

I've been in an on-going (although I suspect resolveable) battle with my computer (I'm on Rachel's backup computer now). It has a acute neurological condition that impedes its ability to recieve sensory imput (from me). It starts with the left mouse button and then spreads until it ignores all my input whatsoever. My father suggested I take the battery out and then put it back in, and this helps it for about twevle hours, but then the neurological disease wins again! Tomorrow I'm going to take it to the Acer center in Saitama, a suburb on the other side of Tokyo. (If anything exciting happens, I'll be sure to post about it, but I don't get a "bloggable" vibe from computer repair.) I feel bad, because the people at the computer store don't speak English, which means Brett has to come with me. He's being very nice about it, but I hate to be a burden when they are already hosting me.

My frustration prompted me to go for what turned out to be my favorite run yet in Japan. Brett had mentioned a park a few miles a way, and I decided to try to find it. Japan is full of pretty parks, but this one takes the cake. The base of the park was built around a large pond with waterlilies and other flowers. A dark, wooden boardwalk crossed over the pond. Apparently, it's so picturesque that it was part of the set for a popular TV show. It was raining just a little bit, and I could hear frogs croaking in the pond.

Behind the park was a nature preserve stretched up a hill, and I could run along a number of ridges overlooking the park. (Yokohama is a bit like one big stadium run; it's hard to run for more than a third of a mile without running up a steep hill or several flights of stairs. While this makes it hard to fight an easy run, it also means it's hard to have a run without some amazing views. I always find myself on top of some hilltop, looking over rooftops in a valley I hadn't known existed.) I got up to the ridge by running up through the neighborhood alongside the park, but I zigg-zagged down flat paths bookended by flights of stairs.

It reminded me a little bit of running on Roosevelt island in DC-- to get to Roosevelt island, you run past the Kennedy center and the Watergate hotel, over this long highway of a bridge. Then you reach the island, and there's this thick canopy and it's humid and lush and primordial and it feels like you could see dinosaurs around the corner. This park had the same moist otherworldly quality. It was a quarter mile from downtown Myorengi, with its neon signs and 7/11s and nearly constant train traffic. Running through Myorengi is an exercise in lateral movement.

Tonight for dinner, we went to a Korean barbeque downtown. I'd never had Korean barbeque before, and really enjoyed it. There's a grill in the center of each table, and you order thinly sliced meat, mushrooms, and vegetables, and grill them. There's a special brush you can use to dust the mushrooms with soy sauce once they are on the grill. It was delicious, and flipping the slices over was excellent Haishi practice. I even tried tongue, which was surprisingly good (although a little chewy. Ok, full disclosure, I put a LOT of lemon on it but apparently that's normal). I may be the world's worst former vegetarian. My only defense is that I only eat meat when I eat out.

I think food that is inherently communal--fondue, shabu shabu, Ethiopian food, Korean barbeque--is the most fun to eat. One of my friends used to joke about opening a restaurant that served a different communal dish every night of the week, and if she ever goes through with it, I'm glad to have an insider connection. I also think it's interesting that, while we eat soy sauce in the US, it's usually not mixed with other sauces, while in Japan, it's often mixed with hot sauce, lemon, or wasabi-- and the better for it. (My sister and I used to put lemon juice and soy sauce on our popcorn when we were growing up.)