After work today, I went to renew my train pass at Shibuya Station with the assistance of my coworker Akiyo(my Japanese ability is still low, so I need help sometimes at the ticket offices). On our way to the ticket office, we quickly passed by what looked like a farm stand in the middle of the station. Deciding to return after renewing the train pass, we hurried to the office, hoping it wouldn’t be closed by the time we got there. After the renewal, we hurried back to the little stand to see what the oba-chan was selling. When we returned, we realized that it was a recreation of an Okinawin shop, selling things like goya(a bitter green vegetable), burnt sugar candies, and all sorts of other interesting Okinawin things. I bought a bag of potato cookies and two little bags of sesame candies. Akiyo bought some kind of skin care stuff, not sure what it was, but she seemed happy. After parting ways and thanking her for the assistance, I headed back to my apartment. Recently, there’s been a truck in my neighborhood selling gyoza(which I forgot whether I mentioned or not in an earlier post). After that one evening, when I last saw the truck, it never returned, leaving me a little sad and lost without those delicious gyoza. However! Tonight, the truck returned, though sadly after I had already bought my dinner on the walk up the street. I figured I’d eat what I already bought for lunch tomorrow and raced over to buy some gyoza. The guilt sank in though, because with the dinner I bought, I had already ate yakitori, freshly prepared by a kind oji-san near the train station(my stomach grumbling… ). I’m terrible when it comes to food! As soon as I see something unique, I have to try it, especially if it looks fresh and smells nice. I should really tell of my food journey in proper sequence, but maybe it’s funny to make it sound like a whirlwind of delicacies. Anyway, as I left the station, it wasn’t hard for my nose to pick up the scent of freshly grilled meat, which led me to the smiling yakitori oji-san up the street. This, of course, was on the way to the gyoza truck, which I failed to see around the corner at the time. The gyoza truck has a special smell too, but not quite as powerful and distinct as the smell of roasting chicken parts over fire, HEE HAW!

This entry was posted on Tuesday, May 25th, 2004 at 11:07 pm and is filed under Japan. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.