Thursday and Friday

Thursday was a normal work day in the office with a quick lunch in the building cafeteria. In the afternoon, Grace entered our office and asked what we wanted for dinner. Since Mike already had his fare share of Japanese meals, so I spoke up and requested seafood – specifically crab. So, after work, about 6:00pm or so, we piled into a couple of cabs and headed near Shanghai Square. You may recall, that is the area by the bay where the giant book was from our last visit.

Inside the restaurant, the first floor was entirely taken up with the selection areas, of which, their were two main parts – the live tanks, and the fresh seafood displayed in open-faced cooler tables. Walking around the coolers, I saw some fish I don’t recall seeing before – like angler fish (the deep-sea fish with the lure on its head) as well as swordfish, and some various white blind fish. In addition to the seafood, the coolers had side dishes as well, including a heaping plate of very large chicken’s feet – but we didn’t have any this time. The live tanks were of the standard Chinese restaurant variety: lobster, flounder, many other fishes, and shellfish.

While some of the group continued to make the selections, we headed up the stairs to the 3^rd floor where our private room awaited us. We all took our seats around the customary large round table and the food began arriving. Some of the items of interest were conch – looked like a large snail and as you pulled it out of the shell it just kept coming – actually pretty disgusting to pull out. I watched Mike take the first bite as he also put on a squeamish face while extracting – upon his chewing it, his face crumpled a bit more. As I ate my own conch, it became clear why. The conch had a taste similar to clam, with a variety of rubbery and chewy gobs of sea goodness. I was really wishing for some cocktail sauce. Anyway, the rest of the meal was excellent – including the crab. As a matter of fact, that crab (which looked like Dungeness, but were told it was called flying crab) was easily the best tasting crab I have ever eaten in my life, period. It was as sweet as if it had been swimming in butter it’s whole life, but without even a drop of butter on it. Wow. I ate my entire crab and half of another. I would have gone on, but I think everyone else was about done eating. I wasn’t as fast at eating the crab, as I am used to some sort of utensil to crack the shells and extract the meat – but not here, you do it all by hand and mouth – a bit of a messy affair. Nearing the end of the meal, they brought out some sort of rice soup for everyone. It had chunks of I-don’t-know-what all over in it, but once it cooled, I gave it a try. Very salty, but surprisingly good. Mike mentioned that it resembled grits. As we finished our last Budweiser’s, we headed out. Nancy and Grace took Mike and I back to the Roosevelt mall and we did a bit more shopping. Again, the abundance of workers was very impressive – In a large department store, there was a worker stationed for every section – about 1 every 20x20 foot area. And this is over at least 4 giant floors – and that is just one of the stores. Quite impressive. By 9:00pm, the mall was closing and they took us back to our hotel where we called it a night.

Friday was our last day in China. We had our 7:20 breakfast, and was in the office by 8:15am or so. We finished up a few things, said our goodbyes, and headed back to the hotel to checkout around 10:30am. Fany, from the localization team, offered to be our bodyguards for our trip back to the airport, so she walked back with us. A very impressive aerial display of 3 Mig fighters circled the city continuously for our walk back. We gathered our things and checked out. Barely fitting into the cab, we made our 20 minute ride to the airport. The ride was your standard China harrowing taxi ride, but otherwise uneventful.

We made our goodbyes and checked in about 12:00pm. Our Japan Airlines 767 left around 1:00pm, flying over North Korea over to Tokyo. On the way, we were served an obviously very Japanese lunch with a pleasant surprise. In a cupcake foil, sat about 6 mini red shrimp, complete shrimp, which included the long tentacles. However, I couldn’t resist trying them – I am glad that I did. Believe it or not, despite the feeling of the long tentacles in my mouth, the flavor was actually fantastic. They were sweet tasting with no fishy flavor at all. After about two and one half hours, we landed in Tokyo. We deplaned, found the American Airlines transfer gate, checked into that flight, and enjoyed about 20 minutes in the AA lounge before heading out to board our final segment. The flight left Tokyo at 6:10pm and is scheduled to arrive in Chicago around 4:00pm (also on Friday). I settled into my now familiar business class seat, and awaited my steak dinner. For my dinner drink, I ordered a sprite, but ended up with a gin and tonic. Not my top choice for a drink, but it sure helped me sleep. I polished off dinner, had a bowl of ice cream with blueberries and nodded off to sleep somewhere over the Pacific. Actually slept most of the way back, woke up to an omlette breakfast, and returned home uneventfully.

Well, that is it in a nutshell – until next time – take care everyone.