It happened.

Tonight I uttered the words that I thought would never escape my lips.

I said...

"I don't feel like going to karaoke."

Really. I uttered those very words. I'll try and ensure it doesn't happen again though!



I don't know how many Israeli restaurants there are in Tokyo, and I'd never been to one in London (are there any in London?) but in the last 8 days I've been to two - 'David's Deli' last Saturday and 'Shamaim' this evening. Both were very different but nice. Shamaim had a tabihodai (eat as much as you like) going on and the food was lovely -- although there was too much garlic and I've been in painful farty/burpiness since. Their wine was all pretty expensive except for one bottle which I'd never heard of, so we asked if we could try a teeny bit to see if we liked it before buying a bottle. They said no. Stingy bastards. Apparently this is a typical Japanese response to this kind of request. Oh well... their loss, as our bill would have been much bigger with the wine on.

Still, I've now had enough humous to stop fixating on it for a bit! (It's one of the things I've had intermittent cravings for since getting here).

Another typical Japanese response, apparently, is to pretend they don't understand you. Now, if someone speaks to me in bad English I'll make every effort to figure out what they mean. Japanese don't do that and many times I've said something in Japanese that the person has made no effort to understand. Maybe my stress on the word was wrong or something, but it's SO annoying that people don't try to make the effort to figure out what's being said to them, in their language, by a foreigner.

Enough. My painful stomach and I are off to bed now.