Oishii so!

Sunshine City!

I am such a lucky girl! For Christmas, Oliver gave me two tickets to the Sunshine City Auquarium, the highest aquarium in the world, located on the 9th floor of a skyscraper! The building itself has an amazing observation deck located on the 60th floor. We checkd that out as well.

As for the fish, there were some stranger looking species trundling along in the tanks. Obviously, a Japanese aquarium has a different focus than that of our Pacific Northwest displays, so there were many new creatures to explore. Although slightly conflicted about the rather "efficient" use of space, and the plastic foliage decorating the tanks, our exploration proved quite fruitful.

A subtle yet striking difference I noticed between our aquarium back in Van, and here in Japan, is the muttered exclaimations of "oishii so!" (meaning "it looks delicious!") from several of the genki visitors. We had a wonderful wander, scoping triangular-shaped fishies, exotic amazon creatures, enormous crabs, playful sea otters and spaced-out eels...

Christmas in T-town.....

My Tokyo Christmas was a blast! Although I had to work on the 25th, I still had plenty of time to celebrate Solstice/Christmas activities. Oliver and I held a party at our place on the 24th, it being our mutual day off. We invited a bunch of friends over for a quasi traditional Xmas meal. Serving mashed potatoes, miso gravy, roast veggies, brussel sprouts and broccoli, and smoked salmon appetizers, the finishing touch was an enormous plate of nigiri sushi our generous friend Makoto brought. In addition, several bottles of wine and champagne we kindly offered. Our meal was complete with homemade shortbread cookies, a first-time microwave/convection oven baking experience for me! We had an excellent time and stuffed ourselves silly! The sushi, mashed potato combo proved cho oishii...a close second to our family dinners we were missing back home in Van City ;)

Yuletide bling...

As you can see, Tokyo is serious about Christmas bling! Everywhere, trees and shops, little alley-ways and main streets are gleaming with bright, futuristic Christmas glory. Dryer pipe tubing, electric reindeer and string upon string of Xmas lights blaze in the chilly evening hours, while shoppers busily scurry from sale to sale. Ahhhh...the consumer Christmas of home, but without the statutory holiday! Yes, the lights twinkle and the carols jingle and everyone goes to work. These shots are taken in Shibuya on a wintry evening O-chan and I took a Yuletide walk...

Oh! And please enjoy the oki pylon :0