Piano Recital

The pianist in the family was too busy this afternoon dashing off to ballet and then playing with the spoilers to write something up, so you have to settle for the old man and his tangent filled ramblings.

The morning started with oatmeal.  Again, I refuse to photograph this!  We got the kids rounded up and headed over to Ikebukuro.  We took a slight detour and helped a young lady open the Cafe du Monde on the southwest end of the station.  Yep, we  started the day with beignets and cafe au lait.  Again, wouldn’t want the spoilers to go hungry, so we get them all hopped up on caffeine and sugar and then force marched them at a double time rate for a mile or so.  As is always the case, they seemed to really enjoy the eating part and seemed too short of breath to complain when we reached our destination.  These are two pictures from Cafe du Monde:

This is while we are waiting for our fresh hot mini-sized beignets. The second is part of the menu above the counter.

Please note that at the Cafe du Monde in Japan you can get a chili dog for breakfast.  If this confuses you, then you need to read my Eats gone bad Tale.

After backtracking through the labyrinth that is Ikebukuro station, we made our way over to the performance hall on the top floor of a hotel.  This is one of those bizarre things about Japan that I have come to accept as completely normal.  This list includes:  a large and varied food court is on the bottom floor of every major department store.  There is a 89% chance that the food court will include a liquor store.  Weddings and recitals are held in hotels.  No self-respecting hotel owner would even think about building a hotel without facilities to accommodate both of these events.  Professional photographers at these events who will sell you their over priced pictures later.  Pizza toppings. Chili dogs are an acceptable breakfast food.

Sachan, donning a newly made dress from the fashion house of PamelaA., knocked her two piano pieces out of the park with unequaled perfection.  I was trying to take pictures with my camera and use mom’s little instant camera to record the performance.  As I told Sachan afterwards, she only made one mistake, she started playing before I was ready to hit the record button.  So on the video below, Sachan appears as a wall of white noise. I take this to mean she is either an angel (highly doubtful base on my observations) or a rock ‘n’ roll star in the making tapping into the whole solid wall of white noise thing.  Anyway, since she beat me to the punch and started playing before I had zoomed in, I was stuck recording on mom’s camera in the wide out mode.  So while you can’t actually view Samantha playing, you can at least listen to her skill that was only matched by the girl who played after her and a teenager that played Chopin’s Grand Valse Brillante Op. 18 with competition level skill and flare at the end of the recital.  So here are some pictures of Sachan taking the stage with her sensei, the very bright video, and Sachan executing  a perfect bow before running off stage.

Sachan’s best friend from shogako (elementary school) came.  So in addition to the requisite group photos, here are some pictures of Sachan and Ryoko-chan.  Once we get the formal group picture I will of course include it in a “Where’s Walker?” post.  Ryoko-chan, while very charming and exceedingly polite, is a hard one to get a smile out of.  I asked the girls to make hearts, an absurd thing Japanese females will do in photographs, in hopes of getting them to crack a smile.  Alas I fear the shogako training is a bit too stringent.

Ikebukuro is a major shopping area.  In fact, I have written two previous tales that reference this area (Slutty Kitty and The Toy Hunt).

Since we were starving, we headed over to the main shopping area to a Shakey’s Pizza.  Yes, THAT Shakey’s Pizza.  Now don’t get too excited.  In order to get there we passed a Wendy’s which, in Japan, is famous for its breakfast tuna and potato sandwich.  You may laugh, but at least it isn’t a chili dog!  We passed a KFC which has neither extra crispy nor mashed potatoes with gravy as a side.  We passed a Denny’s which does have pancakes for breakfast, along with – for the record – a chili dog, but you won’t find a Grand Slam or a Moon over My Hammy on their menu.  With the end of the Japanese school year this week, and warm temperatures, the blooming of the cherry blossoms is the only thing that needs to be added to yesterday’s vernal equinox – which was a national holiday – to ring in the official beginning of Spring.  So the next two and half weeks are an unofficial spring break.  Shakey’s, to celebrate this time of year, is offering a daily lunch buffet.  You, my five readers, do seem to have inquiring minds, so I won’t even make you ask.  I will simply tell you what was on the buffet.

For starters, there was a salad bar.  Japanese salad bars are rare and in no way should they be confused with the salmonella fest that is a Golden  Corral salad bar.  The salad bar consisted of shredded cabbage, which is far more likely to be the major ingredient in your side salad than is lettuce.  To dress up your cabbage you had the choice of adding thinly sliced onions, canned corn and cooked soy beans.

Next came a selection of three pastas.  Well, they all had different names, but in reality, they all tasted the same, except for the third one which was a nori and tarako spaghetti.  Nori is a shredded crispy seaweed.  Tarako is a slightly spicy very small pinkish in color fish roe.  You may remember a YouTube clip from the old version of this site that featured the very popular Tarako commercials.  In case you don’t remember, I have reposted the clip here.

Next came the regular pizzas.  When I say regular pizzas, I mean standard Japanese style pizzas.  About four years ago the Italian cultural attache to Britain was kicked out of the county after complaining that only thin crusted, brick oven baked, margarita pizza (traditional style Italian pizza with fresh tomatoes, basil and mozzarella) should be qualified as pizza.  Any other manifestations should be called something else.  Clearly the monsignor has never been to Chicago or Japan. Here’s a brief list of items that passed over our table:  a pizza with a teriyaki sauce, scallions, onions and nori (shredded seaweed) – remarkably dad ate this but insisted there was no chance it would replace oatmeal on his daily menu; corn, cheese and tomato sauce which was deemed surprisingly edible as opposed to the “white” corn pizza, which looked like someone had peed on it.  Turns out the white corn pizza had the extra sweet Japanese mayonnaise on it…both Brian and Carolyn lost the pizza lottery on this style.  Brian was VERY happy with his squid topped slice; the tuna, shrimp and onion pizza got three votes for being edible. The supreme potluck pizza with a heavy dose of corn and onions and sliced potatoes also got a few votes for being edible.  Pam claimed to have found a pepperoni slice, but no one else could confirm that.

The pizza was fine, but my beignets had left during someone’s rendition of Bibbidy, Bobbidy, Boo.  So I hit the rice and Japanese-style curry.  MMMMM, nothing says yummy like Shakey’s Pizza’s curry and rice.

But wait there was more.  There were the dessert pizzas.  Sachan loved her chocolate cocoa puffs covered pizza with chocolate syrup, it had some cornflakes thrown on for that extra added crunch.  Carolyn “ohhed” and “ahhed” over her banana, chocolate syrup and marshmallow covered dessert pizza.  She felt the plain strawberry syrup covered with roasted marshmallows was good to.  Both she and Brian found the sweet Japanese mayonnaise, banana and chocolate syrup pizza to be utterly inedible.

Now I realize you would like to have photographic evidence of all of this.  You must first realize that I am in no way, shape or form, creative enough to make up such toppings.  Secondly, and far more importantly, we were having way too much fun enjoying each other’s company to take a picture.  Although Carolyn insisted on taking this picture before we left.  Clearly the odd toppings had a less than positive effect on Samantha.