Report From Nagano

Part 3 of a continuing saga

by Eric Wenocur

Subject: Report From Nagano III: Music & Food, Food & Music
Date: Tue, 3 Feb 1998 10:31:30 -0500
From: Eric H Wenocur (EHW_LTS@compuserve.com)
To: editor@s2n.org

Greetings from the Night Shift!

Three days in and it's going fairly well. I haven't fallen asleep on thejob yet and I've been sleeping 6-7 hours during the day, so I am startingto adapt. Plus I kind of like the low-key late night scene here. I justhope my plan of avoiding major jet lag when I get home actually works. Theungodly return trip can put your body into a mode that has no actual timerelationship at all.

It doesn't help that we still don't have much to do. Production peoplehave been pouring in the last week, and there is some activity here atnight, but most things are working fine and there is not enough going on tokeep us busy. I guess that could change drastically when the Games start,or maybe not. I suppose I shouldn't complain about being paid to sitand...think. I guess they are cutting real segments from here already,since I know there is stuff on the CBS Morning show and news. It is hardto tell what is actual programming and what is practice.

The last night before this shift started, which was Saturday here, a bunchof us went out to this yakiniku (Korean style barbecue) joint. I eat thissometimes back home and the Japanese like it, though they have differentnames for some things. We were told that this restaurant had particularlygood chicken. So we ordered a "set meal", which included meat andvegetables for 8 people, but it did not include any chicken so we made anadditional order of that. Then it turned out that the portion was small sowe ordered some more. So, we are cooking this meat on the gas grills inthe tabletop, and of course you have to cook the chicken thoroughly. Atfirst taste it seemed underdone, so we kept cooking it. Now, if I mentionthat the menu was only in Japanese and we picked out chicken by using thepictures of raw meat, you can probably guess where this is going. On firsttaste it was clear to me that this was not chicken. It was extremely toughand chewy, but had no real flavor. We ended up asking a British guy at thenext table who spoke Japanese what we were eating.

Intestines. Of course, after we found out nobody wanted any more. It didnot taste bad, but the texture was really nasty. To be honest, I wassuspicious when they first brought it out--it just did not look like rawchicken to me. But I figured maybe they had some kind of special marinadeor something. The power of suggestion! It sure is a good thing we had TWOorders. Then it occured to us that perhaps the guy who suggested thechicken has been eating intestines all this time and not realizing it!

I should note that the Japanese use the term "set" to mean a meal thatincludes several items, such as main course, soup and rice. In other wordsit's a "complete set." For a while I thought they meant it was "set" as infixed, or unchangeable, but they love the concept of the meal "set". Thisworks out well at McDonalds where they already have that whole "meal deal"thing going.

I finally found a Japanese dessert item that I like. It's kind of a filledpastry, but the dough is like pancake batter and they cook it in these sortof shallow muffin tins so that it comes out shaped like a hockey puck. Theone with vanilla custard filling was good. I passed on the bean pasteversion. We got these things in the "food court" of a nearby departmentstore. They also had a French-style bakery which had some very good bread,and some really weird stuff like a mini sub roll with pork cutlet at oneend and spaghetti with sauce at the other end. I bought a baguette andsome Japanese-made Camembert cheese which was also quite good. Nicelyrunny. Today (Tues) went over to this bakery near the Media Village andgot some more good bread and other oddities. One turned out to be a verynice chewy French bun filled with macaroni salad. Then tonight, at theNAOC (Olympic Committee) Broadcasters Welcome party, they had littlepotato-salad sandwiches on white.

More good news: On the way to the bakery I passed a little music store. Very well stocked; they have guitars, amps, violins, horns, audio gear,guitar effects boxes, keyboards and two baby grands! I spent about a halfhour playing on this white Yamaha G-5. It was in tune and played quitenicely. The sale price for this piano was 165,000 Yen, which is about$5500! The owner said I could come back and play whenever I like (I justhope that next time they don't have the TV blasting in the background). This was a great find, and only a few hours earlier I had been lamentingthe lack of any pianos around.

Which brings us to the musical segments of the story... A few nights backwe went to this Indian restaurant which features live music. It is a tinyrestaurant that has a ground floor with a few tables, a tiny corner bar andthe kitchen (which is run completely by one Indian guy). Then there is avery steep winding staircase to this upstairs kind of "club" area with twolevels which looks down on a tiny stage that is kind of midway between bothfloors. It is sort of like a very small version of the Bayou inWashington.

There was this kind of band which consisted of an older guy that playedjazz vibes (actually rather well) and a young guy playing upright bass. Then the vibe guy would switch to Kurzweil piano and one of the waiterswould get up there and sing and play harmonica. They did really awfulversions of American pop songs, like "Honesty". The singer did the wordsbut we don't think he actually understood what he was saying; justreproducing the sounds. After about 30 minutes the waiter would go back towork and the vibe and bass guys would rush out of the club and head over toANOTHER club up the street where they would do a set of American rock androll on different instruments! An hour later they come back and do anotherset of jazz and bad pop songs. We eventually figured that the older guy isprobably an owner of both clubs (and a third) because he also seemed to bethe maitre'd of the Indian place. It was like they were the only band intown! So we're eating Indian food in Japan and listening to American musicplayed by Japanese restaurant workers. Very strange.

Another night we went to the Liberty Pub, and they had a live band as wellcalled Jazz Monkey. What they actually played was more like instrumentalfunk, or maybe jazz/funk. To my surprise they were pretty good; drums,bass, guitar, keys, vocal and three horns. They had tight arrangements anda very good feel. But, naturally, it was louder than shit, hot, smoky andcrowded. All my favorite conditions!

Last Sunday I visited the local Zenkoji Temple, which is famous throughoutJapan. The building is quite old and essentially open to the outside so itwas very cold. Apparently they have a huge statue of the Buddha therewhich nobody has seen for some 350 years because they believe they will goblind if they look at it. How do they know it's still there? Underneaththe floor where the statue is located is a little passageway which is pitchdark inside. You walk through the passage by keeping one hand on the walland the transition from dark back to light symbolizes death and re-birth. Along the road to the temple there are quite a lot of shops sellingreligious icons, incense, groceries and bean paste confections. The mainanchor studio for CBS is right next to the temple and they have a hugeboom-mounted camera out front. I'm sure you will see many views from thisduring the Olympic coverage.

Tonight I had a decent pizza at DIC (Delicious Italian Cuisine), a fewblocks from the IBC. This place seems to be all Japanese, but must havehad an Italian involved at some point because they have excellent gratedcheese on the tables, risotto and homemade tiramisu. They've been inbusiness since 1971! One of the problems of working nights is that thereare fewer places open. We are supposed to get vouchers for food at the IBCcafeteria during the Games so we will probably go there more often.

That's about all of interest for now!

-- Eric

For pictures documenting some of the highlights of Eric's trip, check out this Web page.

Copyright 1998 Eric Wencour, all rights reserved.