Thursday, June 12, 2008

Tokyo's new Subway Line + Saki & Sushi

Thanks to Jon Justice for letting me know that Tokyo have just got a brand new subway line. The Fukutoshin Line will be Tokyo's 13th subway line and has a grand opening on Saturday.

Japanprobe said that to commemorate the opening of the new line, there's an art exhibition being held at the a large department store that featuring a huge mosaic made from used train tickets. The video's below and Jon says to look out for "a brief glimpse of a metro map made out of candy and uh, diamonds(!)."


I now think I know where some of the wackyness & weirdness of Japan comes from - drinking Saki.


On Wednesday night me & fellow foodies Mex, Chris & Hazel from Londonist (& www.nom-nom-nom.co.uk participants), Niamh, Tim, Lea & Dave were lucky enough to be invited to a Qype night at Tsuru restaurant with Akashi-Tai Sake Brewery. We ate lots of lovely, lovely sushi, but also drank lots of lovely lovely saki. Now the fact that I just said "lovely lovely saki" is very unusual as usually I'm not wild about the stuff. I've only ever drunk it warm and on Wednesday night thanks to the staff at Tsuru I learnt loads about sake / saki (possibly not how to spell it), but mainly that the really, really good stuff should be drunk cold, is smooth as silk and hugely alcoholic.

The drunkeness hit us like a sledgehammer wrapped in cloth. After about three very small glasses, you think - "Hello I've only drunk three glasses and this stuff hardly tastes alcoholic - so why do I feel like dancing on the ceiling". Trouble is the alcoholic content ranged from 14% to 19%.

Tim said "Although it got increasingly difficult to keep track of everything we tasted as the evening went on, our hosts did a good job of pairing different drinks with different foods. All of it was tasty."

We managed to keep (sort of) sober enough for photos:

Qype at Tsuru by Tiki Chris

But I truly know why when you've drunk that stuff, ideas like "let's make a massive set of mosaics out of Tube tickets and then let's have a cat as a station manager and then let's get Ikea to kit out our carriages with furniture" seem to just come out of nowhere.

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