Day 8 - Asakusa

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Started the day in the usual fashion...Andersens bakery. In our defense we try eat something different each day. Somedays we even return throughout the day for an extra experience.
Let me elaborate.

Danishes - not the usual hunk of dry pastry with a miniscule glob of fruit or custard. These are a perfect balance of buttery pastry goodness with just the right amount of custard to keep it balanced and just the right sweetness. A thin string of icing around the edge. Some have flaked almonds, others jam, dried cherries, apple, apricot, pear or plain custard.

Sweet buns - hard to describe otherwise. Very light and very tasty. Just sweet enough and very more-ish. We think they're probably steamed and then baked so that they're quite light and almost fluffy inside with a crisp outer and sprinkled with sugar.

After breakfast, we trained to Asakusa, home of the legendary markets and Senoji Temple. Melly breathed in some incense to try and clear her sinuses (maybe it’s sow acting) and I had trouble getting a good photo because of a rude European girl repeatedly walking in front of the camera. As exciting as the markets were, the morning was made interesting by a sighting of Ralph’s doppelganger who snuck into one of the photos I took of Melly. I swear he was wearing the same shirt, shorts and thongs (flip-flops) although the newspaper was a little different I imagine.

While in Asakusa we made the requisite visit to the Japan Percussion Centre (which of course was the main reason for this ‘business’ trip). We spent a while in this fun place (well I dragged Mel around for a while). There is a floor for drums (drum city); ethnic percussion; sheet music, cds, metronomes etc; mallet percussion and general auxiliary.

We met Corri back at the markets and had yummy noodles for lunch. Mel of course had her lemon sour and there was coke for corri this time YAY!

After decided we would meet later for dinner, Corri went back to see if poor Trav was feeling any better and we wandered around a bit more. We made it over the Azumabashi bridge to the Asahi Brewery Headquarters. Had a look at the lovely art display in the foyer, and headed up to the 22nd (top) floor to the Asahi Sky Room for a scenic drink. I had a lovely beverage called beer and Melly had a peach sour which was yum also. If you look at the picture, it’s the tall building that looks like a beer (next to the one with the golden ‘object’ [sperm] on top), and the Sky Room is in the frothy top part.

A bit later on we met Corri and Trav at Ueno and headed to Watamin Chi for some delicious morsels of food. Between us we got through pepper pork, miso pork, chicken and cheese, pork and camembert skewers, raw shallot, deep fried pasta sticks, chicken meatball with raw egg, miso and rice, chicken with pickled plum sauce, pickled eggplant, cheese croquette with hot mustard, okonomiyaki, waffles with ice cream and a plentiful supply of beer and cocktails.

Thus endeth our 8th day.

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