Dubious noodles

So much for my saying more was coming soon... apologies for the delay. I did temporarily lose my laptop power cable (I found it cowering under a duvet at the back of the cupboard), if that's any consolation.

I'm distinctly underwhelmed by my air-conditioning-cum-heater thing. It's meant to be two in one magic (or so the estate agent said), but it's suddenly got all autumnal and cold here and the machine is not cutting it so far - it hums and flashes but the air is definitely not 22 degrees Celsius.

I also had one of the first bad experiences of my 'order something you can't read and see what you get' strategy of ordering off Japanese menus. I knew it would be udon noodles, because that's all the restaurant did (though I think I overheard the couple next to me ordering tempura... jealous!), and it had the word 'miso', meaning soup, but beyond that I hadn't a clue. It came with two white slabs, about an inch across, two inches long and half an inch thick, which didn't taste unpleasant but equally didn't taste of anything much. The weird thing was the texture - they were really chewy, but in a Chewits kind of way - they stuck to your teeth and were a bit hard to swallow. Given that the other ingredients in the noodle bowl were pork-based, I have a horrible feeling that they were bits of lard. Having never eaten slabs of lard before (the one time I nearly did, in Spain, I was so freaked out by the bristles I found in the soup that I had to dispose of it all immediately), I can't be certain, but still, not so good. There were also scallop-sized white globs which were soft and tasted quite nice. At the time I fooled myself into thinking they were some kind of shellfish, but in retrospect I think I was in denial - they must have been more succulent fat from some other part of the pig. I guess that for what it was it was well-made - it's a really cosy little husband-and-wife restaurant, and everything smells delicious - and the broth that the noodles were in had a real depth of meaty flavour; it's just a shame about the pig fat.

I had to have coffee and cake to recover. Tokyo is blessed with lots of exquisite little patisseries, and in Higashi-matsubara there's one which doubles as a very nice tearoom. The lady running it was lovely, but the French labels on the cake were evidently an affectation: attempting to order 'gateau de pommes et noix' got me nowhere, so I had to resort to getting up and pointing. There seems to be an unwritten rule that all slices of cake in Japan must have a wrapper made of silver foil covering all bits of the cake that might have been in contact with other slices. I don't understand why, but I applaud the ingenuity of using muffin cases in a clever origami fashion to wrap the cake up. Those of you who have seen my attempts at origami will know that cake-wrapping is another career that's not for me...

I have a to-do list on my desk and it's glaring at me. So far I've done five and a half things out of twenty-four. I recognise that this does not represent good progress. I think I'll try to do most of the cleaning-related things today - spurred on by a cleaning-products-buying binge in the 100 yen shop (think Poundland but so much more), I'm in the right frame of mind. Assembling the flatpack bookcase and trying to get a bin system going to cope with the extremely complicated recycling rules might have to wait.

Right, I should go and do something productive, preferably from the list... though I also have a shirt to iron in preparation for meeting the current and previous chairmen of Daiwa Securities (the bank who put up the money for the Scholarship) tomorrow after school. Lots of bowing will be involved, I should have thought. We also have to do a brief self-introduction in Japanese, which will be less fun, but I'm sure it will all be fine. The week after (or next week if you count weeks starting on Sundays, as happens in Japan and Oxford) I'm off for the bank holiday to the Daiwa Securities board members' corporate retreat in Hakone, next to Mount Fuji, complete with its own luxury onsen hot spring bath...