When it gets humid,
please, eat, drink and be merry
'til your heart's content
Today on the way to work I definitely felt the humidity. I've felt too hot even on the comparatively cool days. However, it was no matter because I was already excited for our post-work plans. My two coworkers, Simon and Aykut, and my friend Masa had made a plan to go to Shakey's, a pizza chain in Ikebukuro after work. At the restaurant they have tabehodai, or all you can eat. It's buffet style and the buffet has a section of pizza, a section of dessert pizza, a section of pasta, as well as a salad bar and some french fries, curry, and of course, rice. I caused a stir by putting the curry on top of the french fries on offer, in true Irish style. It's very common to order curry and chips at the chipper (fish and chip shop) in Ireland. I always try to eat it once when I'm there visiting my family. Obviously it is not common here though, as one of the girls working behind the buffet started laughing right away and tapped the girl next to her, they both laughed and I smiled at them and told them it was good. The pizzas came out very frequently and had lots of choice. Some of the options were quite interesting. There was some delicious tuna pizza, pizza with mayonnaise on them and lots of pizza with corn on them. The dessert pizza had some interesting flavours too, with coconut-mango, blueberry and apple pie pizzas. We all ate a ton and it was quite a fun night.
On the train on the way home Masa taught Aykut and I a great Japanese expression, which he very correctly said is a good one to know considering our circumstances. It is "ichi-go ichi-e" and it means "treasure every meeting, for it will never recur" or basically is used to describe once-in-a-lifetime moments. I think a direct translation would reduce it to "first chance, first meeting" but I could be slightly off. According to Wikipedia it is "linked with Zen Buddhism and concepts of transience." I was very grateful that Masa taught us the phrase and took a picture off of the dictionary entry he looked up on his phone so I wouldn't forget it. I think it is a beautiful phrase, but in a funny way it also nicely summed up our evening. I was very happy to have tried the buffet pizza joint, but I don't think I really ever want to go back.
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