Osaka, Japan
I like to call this one "The Drew Carey Buddha":
I've made two trips to Japan this year. On the first trip in February, there were four of us from the US and one of the guys from Poland. We had all been working really hard and very long hours, and so when we finally took Sunday off, everyone was really silly and we had a great day. We visited the town of Kobe. During the day, we took a gondola up to the top of a mountain where they grew roses and other herbs for making perfumes. Then, we walked down to see a waterfall on the back side of the mountain. In the afternoon, we went to a museum where we watched videos on the great Kobe Earthquake in the late eighties or early nineties, and finally that evening, we were starved and decided to eat at a local steakhouse.
Kobe is famous for their beef. They hand-massage their cows, and serve each cow a beer with their final meal. This was without a doubt the best meal I've ever eaten (the chili crab in Singapore has fallen to a close second -- this one wins out for the atmosphere). Our chef, who trained for two years in France, only spoke French and Japanese. We sat in front of the grill while he prepared our food. First he started grilling garlic in front of us. He sliced it very thin and once it was brown, he removed the hard centers from each slice with his knife and spatula. We watched and sipped wine for nearly ten minutes, and grew much hungrier. Next, he served us a salad with some delicious smoked salmon, followed by grilled vegetables -- some we recognized and taught our chef the English words; others we didn't recognize and he taught us the Japanese names -- and finally, they brought out the steaks! Our chef grilled the steaks in front of us and sliced them into bite size pieces, which he browned individually on every side. He showed us to eat the first bite with only pepper, the next with only soy sauce, one with only spicy mustard, and then he started having us try combinations of condiments. It was fantastic! Finally, he chopped up some small left-over pieces of our steak and made a fried rice, and a small dish of ice cream for desert. Mmmmm. It would be worth a trip to Japan just to have a meal like this again! Our bill was over $100 per person, but well worth it. I think Motorola understands that while
traveling on business, we tend to work a lot of hours, and eating is the primary form of entertainment, so an
occasional expense like this on the expense report is not argued.
(I will try to get a copy of a picture of us at the steak house from Hubert.)
This is Greg, Hubert, Me, Lee, and Denise:
Here we are acting goofy.... smelling the perfume samples. We kept trading cameras and rotating around trying to act like we were smelling the perfumes with the camera owner at the front of the line:
Hubert was served his tea with a timer and told that the tea wouldn't be ready until his timer expired:
This is the waterfall. I realize that there's nothing in the picture to put it in perspective of size, but the green spots in the upper right are full grown trees.
Here is the view from my hotel window. Osaka is a very crowded and unimpressive city. Architecturally, I can't find any sort of character in the city - just a hi-rise building here, a school there, housing right next door, and the haze of pollution never goes away. Luckily, the friendliness and helpfulness of the people in Osaka make up for some of the ugliness of the buildings.
During the weekends, the underground shopping in the subway is just packed with people, all seemingly in a very big hurry. But I noticed one day when I was looking for a trashcan for my food wrapper that no one walks and eats at the same time. As big of a hurry that everyone is in, they still take time to stand in the McDonald's to finish their hamburgers. I monitored this for the next several days, and I never found a single person eating on the run, not even an ice cream cone!
On my more recent visit, I visited Hemeji Castle, built in the 16th century.
One of the most interesting features of the castle was this Hari-Kari stage. It was a place for disgraced soldiers to kill themselves. On the right-hand side is the stage, and in the center of the picture is a ditch for their blood to drain! The guide suggested that suicide was probably not the only use of the stage since they have found arrowhead and bullet holes on the wall behind the stage:
