And So It Goes

Less Pain

The pain from the toothache has subsided, but it's still there, just at a low throb, probably helped by the pain pills they gave me (something called Voltaren, which sounds like a villain from a cheap Saturday-morning cartoon). Hopefully, the antibiotics the dentist also prescribed gave me will keep anything from getting out of hand and destroying my root system; unfortunately, antibiotics have side effects. If you know already, I don't have to tell you and if you don't I'm not going to, and I'm going to leave it at that. Tuesday can't come soon enough.

Apropos of nothing, at lunch today, I mentioned that I'd heard Krispy Kreme Doughnuts was coming to Tokyo, somewhere in Shinjuku. One of my co-workers, who has an interest in American junk food, as it were (he has family living in Hawaii he visits fairly frequently), took the trouble to look it up after lunch, something I hadn't bothered to do. First, he discovered that the company blocks access to the Krispy Kreme website -- making me wonder what the hell the IT department does all day and what the hell kind of guidelines are they using -- and stymied, called his wife at home and had HER look up the information for him -- making me wonder exactly how interested HE is American-style doughnuts.

It turns out that today is opening day: another of my co-workers, who sits behind me, turns out to have seen this on the TV news, complete with story that Krispy Kreme apparently gave away 500 boxes of doughnuts inside Shinjuku Station last weekend as part of their promotion. Man, my timing stinks. Teeth problem or no -- too late now to worry about that -- I may check them out this weekend.

Today's Statistics:
Number of Krispy Kreme franchises in the United States: 360
Number of countries with Krispy Kreme franchises: 11

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Teeth

I was at my desk this morning when I was suddenly overcome by a pain in my back lower jaw: a toothache in one of my remaining wisdom teeth, hitting me with a vengeance. I felt a little pain there a few days ago, but it had subsided. This time, it didn't, and a trip to the local drugstore for some topical anesthesia didn't help, at least beyond a few minutes. The pain got worse and worse, and nothing I did seemed to relieve it.

At one point, I was over by the office "kitchen" (a very tiny room with a sink and a big hot-water dispenser), holding a wet washcloth to my face, and I let out a loud moan -- more frustration than pain, really -- and when I turned around the security guard from the front  door was there, a look of concern on his face. I waved him off, saying daijoubu, daijoubu.

But when I started to return to the office, damp washcloth pressed against my jaw, I ran into one of the upstairs managers just outside the office door. Apparently the guard called him, and he looked worried. I wasn't focusing well, so I didn't catch the significance of of one of his gestures until later: while we were exchanging primitive communications, him trying to figure out what was wrong and me trying to say it was okay, sure, whatever you say, he made a sort of punching gesture with his fist.

It wasn't until I got back to my desk that I figured out that he was asking me if someone had hit me, and that I'd probably agreed with him. Ooops.

I called up T.H., my native-English intermediary who worked upstairs,¹ and let him know, so he could quash any rumors about fist fights in the subcontractors's offices. Nothing yet, but I prefer not to be surprised.

Dental history
In any case, the pain didn't subside and I could NOT concentrate on my work. So there was no getting around it, I had to call the dentist.

That's not as simple as it sounds. I knew my problem was a wisdom tooth and that it would probably be extracted, something that the dental surgeon who extracted one umpty-ump years ago back in high school told me. The thing was, that tooth-extraction procedure was such a horrible experience -- needles being painfully jammed into my gums, hazy visions of enormous pliers being shoved into my mouth, the feeling of my jaw being jerked up as the guy pulled out the tooth, the rubbery and inert jaw the procedure left for an hour or so afterward, and the two or three days of pain that the codeine didn't really help with. Which meant I still had the other three wisdom teeth left, because NO WAY was I going to face those needles again. Well, until now, it looked like.

I called the medical practice I normally go to, which shares space with a dentist's office. They gave me the number, and I made an immediate appointment for the afternoon.

The appointment
I went home and lay down for an hour, then took the train to downtown Tokyo and the dental office, the pain level rising and falling to a dull roar. The dentist, an American from West Virginia², examined my mouth and took some x-rays³. The verdict: not one, but the THREE remaining wisdom teeth needed to come out. In fact, he seemed surprised I was feeling pain from a lower tooth, as he thought I ought to be feeling pain from one of the upper ones, it was so bad-looking. Also, good teeth, but bad gum disease -- not bad considering that my time between dental visits isn't measured in months or years, but Presidential administrations.

The damage to my wallet for this will be up to ¥50,000 per tooth for the extraction -- price depending on degree of difficulty extracting or maybe weight of the teeth, I don't know -- and maybe ¥150,000 to treat the gum disease after I do the extraction. I say "will be" because I haven't done the extraction yet: the dental surgeon, not the dentist, yanks the teeth, but he wasn't in til next week and didn't have an opening until Tuesday. So I got a script for painkillers and antiobiotics, an emergency number, and the name of the Keio University dental clinic in case of dental emergency.

The pain is down to an annoying-but-livable ache, but I still have to face the nightmare of a triple extraction on Tuesday. No choice: deterioration is the only thing to look forward to if I do nothing, since teeth don't magically heal. Nonetheless,  I can't help envisioning David Cronenberg's movie Dead Ringers, imagining a surgical-scrubs-garbed Jeremy Irons wielding those bizarre surgical instruments he uses in the film. Brrr.

Today's Statistic:
Number of teeth in the human head: 32

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Notes:
¹T.H. is Japanese, but lived in the US for 15 years -- mostly New Jersey but including 4 years at Syracuse University -- so he really is absolutely fluent. Of course, it's fluent New Jersey, right down to fluency in obscene Italian gestures. You can tell when he's mentally switching languages because, I swear, even his posture changes.

²I asked his nationality to be sure, because I figured that when got around to asking about the last time I'd been to the dentist, I could supply the correct cultural reference, such as "some time when Margaret Thatcher was at Number 10" or "when Brian Mulroney was still Prime Minister". God knows what I would have said if he'd been Australian, since I have no idea who's Prime Minister now, let alone back then. Possibly someone named "Bruce".

³The x-rays were taken in the small, windowed closet -- space being tight in Tokyo buildings -- holding the x-ray machine and a stool. While I sat on the stool wearing a lead-lined apron, the dentist pointed the barrel of the emitter at the side of my face, stuck the little strips of film onto holders, and had me clamp them in my mouth . He stepped outside, shut the door, fired the machine, opened the door, pulled out the holder, swapped for fresh film, and repeated the procedure.

However, for the last shot, the film holder was so far back in my mouth that I automatically gagged and spit it out. No problem, he replaced the holder with a differently shaped one -- which I also gagged on and spit out. So he resorted to holding the film with a pair of forceps, kneeling in the closet with me, holding the forceps in my mouth with one hand and signaling to the nurse outside to fire the machine with the other. And *I* was the one wearing the lead apron. 

Cigarettes and Pizza

Cigarettes...
Did a bit of Christmas shopping today – mostly of the window variety – at my favorite big-box electronics stores in Akihabara. Biggest item I actually purchased (rather than lusted after) was a hard-drive case, which hopefully I can use to hold the hard drive of my old (and now, non-booting) Apple G4 computer and recover some files.

On the way home, near Kawasaki Station, I also returned to a little store I’d stumbled across a few weeks ago while wandering through a nearby residential neighborhood. It’s across the street from LaZona, the huge and sleek new shopping center there, just a tiny storefront on the edge of side street: I discovered it as I was taking a shortcut through the neighborhood trying to get to LaZona. The store – whose name I don’t recall – had a Philippines flag on it, which is what got my attention. Curious, I went in, and sure enough it was a Filipino food store, presumably serving expatriate Filipinos.¹ I browsed a bit, looking at the various offerings (adobo sauce mix, snack foods, Coca-Cola made with sugar instead of corn syrup, etc.) and bought some items. I’d come back today to pick up a few more items, including some gifts for a co-worker.

The co-worker, a mostly American-raised Japanese guy I’ll call T.H., is a heavy smoker, and when I go the States, he always asks me to pick up some packs of Marlboro cigarettes for him. Yes, they sell Marlboros here, but they’re domestically manufactured and according to T.H. they taste different from the U.S. versions. When I’d been in the Filipino food store the last time, I noticed that they sold Marlboros, with the labels indicating that they’d been manufactured in Manila. I asked the store owner if they tasted differently than the Japanese versions, and she shrugged and said, “I don’t know, I don’t smoke. But people want them, so I sell them.” I bought a couple of packs, and gave them to T.H. to try when I came to the office on Monday.

Later that day, T.H. came to my desk and simply said, “More.”

So, a few more packs today.

...and Pizza
Dinner was inside the LaZona mall, at the local branch of California Pizza Kitchen – yes, they have them here – which I’d also stumbled over last month. I had a Five-Cheese Pizza, a cup of Tortilla Soup, and a Coke. I also got a coupon good for ¥500 off on future visits to this and other American-franchised restaurants in Japan owned by the same company, which, according to the list on the back of the coupon, turns out to include Tony Roma's, the Hard Rock Café – and the Bubba Gump Shrimp Company. That's right, that theme-restaurant chain based on the movie Forrest Gump. Gad, there’s a Bubba Gump Shrimp Company in Tokyo?  Why would a country that sets such store by fresh – even raw – seafood be in the market for the American-style deep-fried whatevers of an American seafood chain? The mind boggles, and I guess I have to check it out for myself. Not to eat, probably, just to look. Though given that I have –  of my own free will and more than once –  eaten at T.G.I. Friday's and Outback Steakhouse, I ought not be snobbish here.³

Notes:
¹As I understand it, Filipinos here largely work as domestics for the wealthier expats. The bulletin board at the expats’ favorite grocery store (National Azabu in Hiroo) shows a lot of that, based on the Help Wanted/Jobs Wanted postings there. So goes the economic progress of Japan: thirty or forty years ago or earlier, Japanese working as domestic servants for wealthy – or even not so wealthy – expatriates based in Tokyo would seem perfectly normal. Now, it’s unimaginable that any Japanese person would need to.

This was brought up for me when I browsed through a Japanese phrase book I bought from a bargain-book catalog and came across several pages on Japanese phrases to use with your domestic servants, including a section entitled “Interviewing a Maid” (including sentences like "Will you take care of children?" (Kodomo no sewa o shite kudasaimasu ka?) and "Can you cook Western food"? (Anata wa seiyō-ryōri ga tsukuremau ka?)).

“Buh?!?” was my instant reaction, because I knew, without even thinking about it, that it was wildly out-of-place. I looked at the copyright page, and sure enough, the book was copyrighted 1969, with a last printing date of 1991.

²I once told T.H. about this seafood theme restaurant chain, found across the United States, and he refused to believe such a movie-based restaurant actually existed, or that these places all have fake bus benches out front where Bubba Gump impersonators sit and pose for pictures. “Come ON, you’re making that up,” he said.  I wasn’t, and I had to take a picture of the branch at San Francisco’s Pier 39 shopping center at Fisherman’s Wharf on my next visit to the States, just to prove it.

³Lest you think that every brand name of the American culinary arts here – including, of course, McDonald's, Domino's Pizza, and KFC (aka "Kentucky") – involves either pizza, burgers, or all things deep-fried, I should also point out that there are outposts of the food empires of Wolfgang Puck, Todd English, Roy Yamaguchi, and Lawry's The Prime Rib here in Tokyo.

Christmas party

The other company I do work for -- very little, actually, but I kind of like the place -- held its own holiday party, but being western-owned was a Christmas party, held at an Italian restaurant near the office. Which meant, unlike the bōnenkai a couple of nights ago, a few dozen people standing around a table of food and drinking the all-you-can-drink beer and cocktails, chatting and having to go outside to smoke. My friend Liz was not there, so there was no danger of karaoke suddenly breaking out afterward. 

Bōnenkai

Once again, the company I work for had its year-end party (or bōnenkai) tonight, conveniently (for me) near the local train station so I didn't have to make a long trek to get home.

The trip home, in fact, was made a lot easier by the fact that the izakaya where it was held is across the street from the local Ito Yokado department store, where I stopped by on the way to the party to buy a bicycle. It was something I've been meaning to get around to for a few months, so this seemed a good a time as any, since I was getting a bit tired of walking to the train station all the time.

I picked out a fairly standard Japanese shopping bicycle, which looks a lot like the one in the photo. Mine has three speeds, built-in bike lock, automatic headlight (built-in generator, in other words), and cost about ¥19,000, which is, again, fairly standard (the six-month insurance policy that came with it -- half the cost of the bicycle paid if it gets stolen -- was new to me, though). The streets are filled with nearly identical bicycles, ridden by everyone from housewives to commuters -- though the ones ridden by housewives usually have a child seat or two attached. And, of course, no one -- practically no one, actually -- wears bike helmets. (A pediatrican friend of mine back in the States is rather militant on the subject, though she managed to restrain herself when she came to visit me a couple of years ago.)

In any case, while the bike was being prepped (pedals attached, city registration paperwork done and sticker attached), I went over to the izakaya for the bōnenkai. A fairly standard affair -- a dozen people at a couple of tables eating some food and all-you-can-drink beer and cocktails, chatting and smoking. And afterward, I walked over to the department store, picked up my bike, and pedalled home in ten minutes. Easy peasy.

Adventures in Mobile Pastry

I dropped by Yodobashi Camera (the big electronics retailer with the really annoying jingle) in Shinjuku today to pick up some stuff, and passed through the South Exit of Shinjuku Station on the way home. At the top of the staircase down to the Yamanote Line platform I spotted a big advert for Doughnut Plant NYC, the Japanese branch of the New York City doughnut shop. It seemed oddly out of place and out of scale to me, covering the entire wall alongside the top of the staircase (with the eye-catching slogan "GO NATURAL WITH FRIEND"). 

It was when I passed the staircase that I figured out why: the sign was actually the back wall of a recently opened shop inside the station: a branch of The Doughnut Plant. Man, that business is expanding rapidly here in Japan -- and selling more than doughnuts. This store was selling cake doughnuts as well as the traditional kind, not to mention bagels, salads, and t-shirts.

Of course, it's really a franchise of the original store in New York, not a branch or extension, so it looks like they're doing things in their own way -- Japanese -- way: on offer at this store was the NEW YEAR "和" CAKE DOUGHNUT BOX - a pack of four different kinds of doughnuts: Triple Valhrona chocolate, green tea, yuzu, and kinako flavors (yuzu is a tart citrus fruit native to Asia and kinako is sweet toasted soybean flour often sprinkled on confections).

The biggest sign of this being a Japanese business were the display cases for the non-doughnut products: one refrigerator was labeled: 

PLANT SALAD & PLANT FOOD

After wondering, briefly, how there could be non-plant salads and anyways what was this place doing selling nursery supplies, the light dawned when I looked at the sign over the t-shirt rack, PLANT STORE. Ah, "Doughnut PLANT" --> "PLANT Salads", "PLANT Food", and "PLANT Store". Shows a less-than-certain grasp of idiomatic usage, clearly.

I bought a cinnamon bun and a frozen pizza-bagel, though I was somewhat tempted to buy one of the t-shirts, which has what looks like a Japanese-style slogan on it. I had to wonder if Doughnut Plant employees in New York City actually wear t-shirts reading:

NEVER SAY NO!
ALWAYS SAY YES!
BEST! BEST! BEST!

Honestly, I can easily envision a bunch of Japanese Doughnut Plant employees beginning the day with this chant. New York? Not so much.

UPDATE: And here's some pictures:

Gifting Myself

Well, Christmas Eve's Operation Brine Turkey Leg worked out pretty well: I roasted the leg/flank/whatever, made up a pot of mashed potatoes, and used the turkey drippings and a dash of white wine and Wondra Gravy and Sauce Flour to whip up some gravy. A few bumps, but that's to be expected: a bit too much salt in the brine, the roasting pan was too small and lightweight to handle well on the stove, and the mashed potatoes came out a bit lumpy, since I had to mash them with the only potato-mashing tool I had, a steel pasta ladle.

For Christmas itself, I decided to spend it in the traditional American way: shopping for gifts. Mostly for myself, as a way to treat myself. So I spent some time wandering the garishly lit shopping areas of Shinjuku (lots of Christmas lights strung up everywhere), and wound up buying a new Apple computer mouse (thinking buying an entire computer to go with it next year), a new Apple keyboard (the old one is acting up), a polarizing filter for my video camera, four foreign magazines at Kinokuniya Books, and, from Tokyu Hands, because they have everything, a potato masher.

Merry Christmas

Merry Christmas! (Or Happy Hanukkah, or whatever). T'aint't no War on Christmas here in East Asia -- that photo on the right is from the window of a hospital in Wuhan, China, which I took last year during my vain attempt to escape the relentless Christmas atmosphere (shoppers, Santas, and singing of Christmas music on PAs (Tannoys, for you Brits) everywhere here in Tokyo. No luck, exactly the same, especially in Beijing. (We did spend Christmas Day 2004 on a day trip to the Buddhist Dazu Stone Carvings outside of Chongqing (formerly Chunking), a World Heritage Site that which was mercifully Santa-free.

Now pardon me, I need to go do some last-minute shopping: since Christmas isn't an official holiday in Japan, the stores are still open. The only reason I'm not at the office now is because it's Sunday, but I did get the long weekend because Friday the 23rd was the Emperor's Birthday. No Emperor's Birthday Sales or Emperor's Birthday Songs -- well, maybe the latter is true among the right-wing whackos.

Of course, if you want the REAL War on Christmas, you'll have to see Operation Kringle Kill for that.

Timing is everything

Yesterday after work, I dropped by the Hanamasa store between my office and the train station to pick up some groceries. Hanamasa is a meat wholesaler that operates retail stores -- kind of like a small-scale Costco, doing walk-in business for tiny restaurants and such -- that sells large packages of inexpensively priced food, especially meat. They usually have an odd assortment of imported food (potato chips, sauces, biscuits) and for awhile were importing stuff from Trader Joe's -- no longer, alas. They even have turkey -- Jenny-O brand (imported from the states) either frozen or pre-roasted, as well as cut-up turkey. On a whim just after Thanksgiving, I bought one of the pre-roasted ones, since my little convection oven probably wouldn't fit a even medium-sized turkey without the use of a crowbar -- not bad, but WAY oversmoked -- giving me the old-fashioned US Thanksgiving experience, complete with far too much leftovers.

In any case, last night I pondered whether to buy MORE turkey and cook it myself this time -- the turkey parts looked manageable, certainly -- dithered a bit, but decided no.

When I got to the train station, I realized that I had left my iPod on my desk, and not wanting to go the long weekend without it (today's a holiday), I trudged back, retrieved it, put it on, and started walking back to the station while listening to the podcast of "NPR's Most E-mailed Stories", specifically the interview with Ted Allen of Queer Eye for the Straight Guy on tips for Christmas turkey dinners. I'm a fan of the show -- well, of the episodes I've been able to get my hands on -- and even have QESG desk calendar at the office, so I paid particular attention.

Allen's first advice was to cut up the turkey and roast/cook the different pieces separately. Hmm, good, I could do that, even with my small oven. And literally as I was passing the Hanamasa meat market again, he mentioned brining. This stopped me dead in my tracks. Allen raved about brining, brings flavor, juiciness, etc as I stood outside the store and listened.

Brining, in a nutshell, is soaking meat in salty water, which, through osmotic action, infuses the meat with water, salt, and whatever flavoring (spices, etc) you've put in the brine. Alton Brown of the TV show Good Eats raves about the technique in his book I'm Just Here for the Food, (which I have a copy of, of course). I've never tried it, but Allen's mention of (and effusive praise for) the technique suddenly brought it back to mind. So I turned right, walked back into the store, and bought a package of three turkey legs/flanks (inadvertantly following another bit of Allen advice ("Buy three legs and tell your kids it was an unusual turkey"). I brought them home, concocted a brine, more-or-less following a recipe from the Alton Brown book -- salt, orange juice, brown sugar, bay leaves, peppercorns -- and God willing and the creeks don't rise, I'll be having a roast turkey with real mashed potatoes (I also bought potatoes at Hanamasa) and gravy for Christmas Eve dinner tomorrow.

If it weren't for the fortuitous timing of hearing that podcast I'd probably be getting my Christmas turkey either from Leftover Turkey Stew or a sandwich at Subway's (yes, they have them here).

"Good for a customer who likes plain taste"

You can enjoy hard.
  Description of diced onions from the menu at Nathan's Hot Dogs, Shinagawa Station.

Tonight, I was in the neighborhood of Shinagawa Station, so I decided to stop by the Nathan's Famous Hot Dogs stand in the "New York-style" shopping galleria at the east end of the station (see New York State of Mind). I knew it was there, two floors below the Grand Central Oyster Bar (and since they're across from the Dean and Deluca, I could get in a bit of shopping while I was at it), but I hadn't been there before, so I got a bit of a surprise when I stepped up to the counter to order my chili-cheese dog: I was refused counter service.

Instead, a waitress seated me at a table* and gave me a menu.

It was an honest-to-God fold-out menu, with a list of sandwiches, salads, cocktails (what the hell was a "Godzilla"?), desserts, and, oh yeah, hot dogs with toppings and fries. A couple of little inserts in the menu had, in Japanese with scattered bits of English, specials and a descriptions of hot dog toppings, like sautéed onions, relish ("Minced sweety pickles. Good for a customer who likes plain taste"), and diced onions ("You can enjoy hard").

I pretty much knew what I wanted when I walked in the place, so I didn't deviate from that: chili-cheese dog with fries and a Coke. The waitress took my order, and shortly returned with it. On a china plate. With my Coke in a glass. And a real fork for spearing the French fries. You can see the picture on the right.

The ketchup and mustard containers, at least, were ordinary plastic squeeze bottles -- though they were labeled "KETCHUP SAUCE" and "MUSTARD SAUCE."

And the taste? Well, it was a Nathan's chili-cheese dog with fries, and the presentation doesn't change that. And, of course, it didn't cost any more, near as I can tell, than any other Nathan's I've been to in Tokyo -- this is Japan, there's almost no tipping in restaurants.

Of course, I did have the tiramisu and coffee for dessert, so I guess that added to the cost.

*All right, she seated me at a counter, but that's all there was available in the no-smoking section.