It's All Kannon

Well well well.. So much since last Wednesday!! Sorry it took me until Saturday to update the page, but as is bound to happen more in the future, life is getting interesting!! Let's see.. first off, I must tell you about the Kannon Ball! Go click on it to read my half-hearted story and see some great photos! I have to give big shouts out to Bubba and Iggie for replying to me, getting that Kannon was a goddess, but not realizing I was in Kamakura!! Bubba even found out more than I knew!

The Shido Temple Chronicle describes how a diver exchanged her life for the Ball, by the grace of the Kannon worshipped at Shidoji. It also adds that the recovered ball was placed between the eyebrows of the Buddha image at Kofukuji in Nara. The crystal ball, which represents clairvoyance even in the Western world, was thus placed in the "third eye" of imagination or transcendental wisdom in Indian tradition.

I'm going to redesign the site soon, and it may yet get a domain of its own!! But, enough about that crap.. On with my life!! My brain forgets things easily, but here's what I recall about this last weekend!! On Sunday I met a great girl named Aiko!! We hung out in Ikebukuro all day, where we went to Amlux (that'll be a link soon!), went shopping, did some Karaoke, and.. oh yeah, I met a member of the Yakuza!! He came up and shook my hand, showed me his missing digits (last 2 on each hand) and his tattoos... Bruce joked that he was trying to recruit me, and Aiko seemed more than a little nervous at the encounter. I took it all in stride, just more of my wonderful adventures here! Following the big long day in Ikebukuro, I met Bruce in Meguro (yes, my home town over here, but WAY north of me, in Meguro's business district) where I had the most amazing culinary experience yet!! The place was Tonki, the flagship of a small chain of Tonkatsu restaurants. Tonkatsu is a deep fried pork cutlet. It tastes amazing! Apparently, tonkatsu was introduced to Japan through a Dutch trader in the 19th century, and has been a hit ever since. Tonki uses a special system of battering and boiling, where the pork sees no less than 3 dips in batter and 2 different cooking pots. It's incredibly good, and at Tonki you sit around a big long bar made of birch or some sort of light wood, watching the cooking go on right in front of you. We had to wait in line for an hour, but the line-up was within watching distance of the main eating area (3 feet back in fact) and full of lively conversation (including one older gent who thought I was an Iranian Sailor). If you ever come to Tokyo, I will take you to Tonki in Meguro, guaranteed. It's served with rice, miso soup, a whole ton of shredded cabbage (which I actually ate!!) and with an interesting sauce (kind of like a thick worstershire sauce mixed with soy sauce) that is just called "Sauce".. go figure..

I think I'm going to track down a soba place, so that I don't just get addicted to Curry and whatever it is that Yoshinoya serves!! Oh, look for a general photo gallery of daily life here, shortly after I put in the Amlux/Ikebukuro update (the way I'm headed it won't be til week's end)..

Thanks again for stopping by, and don't forget to email me, check out my always-being-updated web site, and so on and so forth.