Touch Down: Tokyo

Hands down best ramen I had

It was in 1995 that I first took the skies on an Royal Nepal Airlines bound to Frankfurt from Kathmandu. My dad was doing his graduate school in Karlsruhe in Germany, and since my mom had decided that it would be best for both for us to head out to the then WWII superpower,  I found myself boarding an airliner for the very first time. And that too, an international one.

Suffice to say, it wasn't the most pleasant of experiences. Those days, economy seats didn't have in flight entertainment and the only thing you could possibly do was to sit down and stare at the seat in front of you. Occasionally the plane would go into turbulence and that was probably the only time i felt quite excited to be 10,000m above sea level. Besides that, boredom was the name of the game.

Fast forward two decades later, in flight experience has changed quite a bit. Yes, the economy seats have shrunk but you have a tv right in front of you with a usb charger for that horrible battery life of your smartphone, in flight duty free to spend all your savings into and so forth. Needless to say, if you don't carry a book, you will still be able to survive the ride just fine.

But that's not why I find flying interesting. Normally, if I am taking a flight, it's to go to places I have never been to, to let my senses feast on stuff I have never feasted on and to be culturally awkward when I am not really trying to. This time it's Tokyo's turn.

Don't get me wrong, I am not on vacation here but it feels like one. Anywhere  outside the lab feels like vacation. I am here for something entirely else which I won't bore you down with the details. Needless to say, I am here with almost half of entire faculty of mechanical and aerospace engineering, including professors that taught me and made me sleep real hard. In fact, I was sitting next to a professor that I absolutely had no fun in being her in class and she showed similar enthusiasm to mine. Two hours of being strapped together didn't really help to say the least.

O-Shashimi-Mari-Awashe

Anyways, where was I? Tokyo yes tokyo. I haven't got to go around besides last night's bing sake drinking with O-Shashimi-Mari-Awashe. Living in the sleepy part of Tokyo, near to a University that is home to the most geekiest of Japanese, the first night didn't pose much except for the fact that everything here feels incredibly clean.

So clean. Seoul now feels much dirtier.

My plan is basically to get taste of serious craft beer scene they have here in Tokyo. There's a serious amount of super interesting-super delicious beer being brewed in this country and it's the capital of a nation that is obsessed with Bir-u (Beer) and missing out on some of drafts would be a serious miss.

Here's to the next few days of Japanese Craft beer drinking!
(if they allow me to that is)