A Day with Lorenzo

Posted on 2006/03/23 06:41:22 (March 2006).

[Sunday 19th March]
Last time I'd met Lorenzo in Japan (see here) our travel schedules had conflicted so badly that we'd literally only been able to spend about an hour together. This time it had turned out again that for some of the time Lorenzo was in Japan, I would be out of the country, but it wasn't as bad this time - we did at least have a whole weekend where we'd both be in Tokyo.

So today Lorenzo and I had a whole day together to catch up and wander around Tokyo. This was really great - not only did we have loads of time to have a really good natter, but we were also able to share some of our knowledge of the big city with each other, and I realised again it's not such a bad place to live after all. We spent the afternoon around Shinjuku, including a visit to my favourite Tokyo park (Shinjukugyoen) and also a trip up to the top of the Tokyo Metropolitan Government Building to see the view (although it was very hazy. We also had a late lunch at Al Dente - the only place Lorenzo will eat spaghetti in Japan. Clearly I couldn't fail to enjoy it, given that it had been sold to me with such a glowing endorsement! Towards the end of the afternoon, we popped back to Lorenzo's hotel room for a bit, and then decided to head over to Ikebukuro for the evening.

The venues for the evening's entertainment in Ikebukuro were somewhat obvious - drinks at Quercus, dinner at Rohlan, then more drinks back at Quercus. Like everyone else I take to Rohlan, Lorenzo did the standard "I can't believe it's not pork" routine when he tried the vegetarian tonkatsu. I have to admit I am now quite worried that they've just been feeding me meat all along, and not telling me! Anyway, I certainly enjoyed dinner (as always), and I hope Lorenzo did too. Quercus was very quiet - I think this might be the first time I've been on a Sunday - but I did still recognise a few of the die hard regulars. We had a wide ranging whisky tasting session, all over Scotland and also taking in Japan. Lorenzo seemed pretty taken with the Chichibu - so it sounds like we have another convert to the school of thought that says Japanese Whisky is actually pretty good after all.

All in all a very nice day - great to see Lorenzo; great to have a really long chat about life, the universe and everything; and great to be able to spend time enjoying Tokyo together.

Lorenzo's pose at the Afternoon Tea is somehow *suggestive*, not to say effeminate. Was it deliberate? I do hope so. Otherwise I imagine you must have squeezed your buttocks hard during the whole encounter and never let him walk behind you...!

Posted by Sheri at 2006/03/23 19:58:16.

As a matter of fact that was quite deliberate, mostly because the whole point of us selecting the tea room was the fact that in Japan it is a quite girly thing to do (going get some tea in such a place)... John experienced the gayness of it all some days earlier when he went with Chie and a bunch of female friends there... :)

Posted by Lox at 2006/03/23 22:32:59.

I believe Lox is referring to this occasion:

/john/pictures/japan2005second/08-26-tokyo/SANY0013.JPG

Posted by John at 2006/04/15 16:20:13.

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