They say wireless cafes are easy to find, but we haven't had any luck finding one when we've had the computer with us. Yeah, there are the PC Bang, but we're not sure we're up for that.

Anyway, we needed a break yesterday so we stayed in Shibuya. Topped off Tokyu Hands and wandered around a bit looking for a 100 yen store we never did find.

We ate dinner in the loveliest tempura restaurant, Tenmatsu. The old ladies in kimono guided us through our ignorance and were generally very kind. We arrived at opening and were the only two in the restaurant besides a group of already drunk old guys. All of us sat at the counter. The volume and cheer of their gabbing grew with the amount of liquor they drank. We didn't mind because it removed attention from us and was generally entertaining. Old guys speak really clearly when they're just-right drunk and it was a good chance to practice listening. One dude yelled "魚はたべたいです！" like he was reading it from a textbook.

This was the first time I'd eaten in a tempuraya. I'd heard that tempura is an art like sushi and that chefs train for years. But I had no idea that it would be as exquisite as it was. Even though we eat tempura all the time at home, we were completely disoriented by the array of seasonings brought to us. They'd brought us the ingredients for us to use to create the mixing sauce how we like it. And, there was more than just the broth-based sauce. We had plum sauce and also course salt and lemon to try too. We each picked a 6-course set with 3 vegetables and 3 other things fresh that day. At the counter, you can see the big vat of hot oil and all the other accoutrements of frying—batter and flour and utensils for moving it all around. The chef moves in a certain rhythm, not unlike the rhythm a tea practitioner uses where every move is fast, deliberate, and careful. Not a drop of oil spilled.

We ordered a bottle of cold sake and watched the whole thing go down.

The freshly fried things arrived at the paper stations in front of us, barely leaving a footprint. We ate them fresh and hot, and the things crunched lightly and deliciously. He gave us prawns, some kind of small white fish (the whole thing) splayed and deboned, the flesh soft as a pillow. We had scallops too, which were actually like pillows. For veggies, we had green beans and mushrooms, yam and lotus root. At the end, he put on our plates a fried eel spine that had been tied into a knot. One of the women said to dip it in salt, so we did. It tasted just like a frite. The meal finished with a small bowl of ten-don, a cup of miso soup, and bancha.

At the end, the woman complimented us on our hashi skillz. Afterward we thought that they must get a lot foreigners in there who can't use chopsticks. It may have been a relief to her that we didn't drop food every where or revert to using hands for everything. Our poor language skills and ignorance of the tempuraya might've made it seem like we were totally green.

More Shibuya after dinner. We wanted to stop at a donut place we saw called "and on and" so we did that. Then we went to Bic Camera (again) and stopped by this wacky store called Don Quixote　「ドンキオーテ」, which apparently is a huge discount store for every little thing. Small caverns among the goods hold all the people, which are constantly squishing past each other to get what they want. All the while, several soundtracks competed overhead. It was a trip. It kind of reminded me of the depot scene in Apocalypse Now. We found a bunch of foreign candies and cookies, the expensive and rare-in-Seattle kind. We didn't buy anything though. It would've been too much of a hassle!

1. Mark City dept. store. 2. Shinjuku. 3. International forum. 4. International forum.