🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <mumble> jaw@owlnet.rice.edu (Joseph A. Watters) writes:
|The Miyako on
|Kirby also has what I call a "semi-tatami" room.  It is a platform with
|tatami mats on it and what at first look like the appropriate low
|tables.  Then you discover that they are normal height tables put into
|"pits" in the platform.  This also allows us unlimber gaijin to sit
|western style on the mats, but look like we are sitting at a
|traditional table.

Ha ha ha ha ha!  This is great!  First the Japanese master fake food,
both the plastic kind that you photograph and the flavored processed
food byproducts that you can eat, then Japanese restaurants in the
West come up with fake Japanese seating!  What's next?  I suppose if
you're sitting at one of these tables you should order nonalcoholic
beer...

|If you are a
|lightweight, order American beer, or split the Japanese ones.

I would never consider drinking anything alcoholic at Miyako other
than the "sake bomb".  This is a non-full, relatively small, glass of
beer (Sapporo, I think) into which a nice warm shot glass of sake is
dropped.  Best of all, it's a happy hour drink _and_ a dexterity test!
The shot glass fits fairly tightly into the beer glass and thus
usually makes a pretty fair splash going under.  Back when Kathy and I
used to go to the Village incarnation pretty regularly, our waitresses
usually dropped them for us, but when we stopped them in time to drop
them ourselves, the contest was to see who could make no splash.  The
ultimate feat was floating the shot glass so that its edge was held
level with the surface of the beer, then gently tapping it to send it
under.  Successful completion of this stunt earned one the coveted
Gold Star for Surface Tension.

Thank you for your patience with this reminiscence.  (-:

-- 
Ben Gamble                              B0 f- t+ w- g+ k- s- m- e r-v p
gamble@owlnet.rice.edu 
       Oh ye who go about saying unto each other:  "Hello sailor":
       Dost thou know the magnitude of thy sin before the gods?