Had literally mountains of sashimi tonight. There was some other stuff, too, and it seemed like every time I was ready to pass out and fall under the table, the waitress would come by with another platter of fish. This was at a place in Ginza, with a line stretching all the way down the block. Luckily we had a reservation – I noted that the one white guy I spotted waiting on line was seated about an hour after we were. The reason for this seems to be the classic combination of high quality and low price.

The table was already laid out with a variety of dishes for us when we sat down. Let’s see, a cup with a couple of prawns and some asparagus and sauce. Some crabmeat covered with some goopy green sauce. A boiled snail, still snug in his shell. Pumpkin puree with fish roe covering two scallops. One more, I forget. Plus individual small grills with a couple of pieces of beef, fish, assorted veggies. All of that was just for starters! Then a mountain of sashimi, about ten kinds, all done exactly right. Then there was a plate of cooked fish cheeks in heavy sauce. Then a huge platter of sushi – and along with the usual suspects there was raw crab legs, oh god was that good. Miso soup. Ice cream. I think I’m leaving something out. There was enough food to feed an army. Then, as we were ready to leave, we were each handed a plastic bag with some cooked eel inside, perhaps to eat on the train ride home or as a midnight snack? Add on beer, sake, wine and the bill for 5 came out to around US$300 – amazing for this quality and in Ginza to boot.

I was so bloated after dinner that, after saying goodnight to my companions, I wandered around for a bit, some air to walk the dinner off. I found myself standing in front of Bic Camera, one of the mega electronics stores. It was still open, with an iPod and iPod accessories display out on the street. I was tempted to go in, but in this shop they play their “theme song” every 60 seconds on the PA. “Bic a bic a bic a bic camera.” I knew I couldn’t deal with that.

So, just back to the hotel, where I’ve been flipping over to the NY Times and CNN, wondering when a verdict will come down in the Phil Spector trial.

13 years ago, when I first came to Tokyo, I wanted to live here more than anything. And, as it often happens, that dream did not come true. Over the years, across at least 50 return visits, I came to appreciate that Hong Kong was, if nothing else, a far easier place for westerners to live, and started to be grateful that I could maintain my idealized version of Tokyo all these years – staying in 5 star hotels, eating at the most interesting restaurants, traveling everywhere by taxi.

Taxi. One thing that stands out to me is that all of a sudden, for the first time, I’m encountering a lot of taxi drivers who speak at least basic English. Combined with my basic Japanese, this makes the short, expensive trips a lot more pleasant. In Hong Kong, taxi drivers are sitting there in shorts and a t-shirt, with the radio blasting, the two way radio blasting, and them screaming into their mobile phones, every bump in the road proving that their shock absorbers have seen better days. In Tokyo, the taxi is silent and the driver wears a tie and gloves. I suppose the flip side of this equation is that taxi rides here cost about 4 times more than HK taxi rides.

One of my Tokyo staff will be making his first ever visit to Hong Kong next week. I tried to explain the differences in a nutshell and it came down to the very structured external Tokyo vs. the chaotic and anarchic life in Hong Kong.

At this stage, if I was offered a move to Tokyo, I might opt to remain in HK. But Tokyo offers a lot, at least on the consumer level, that HK does not offer.

And in my experience, HK remains sadly unique in the way that the greedy donkey fucking ass raping shit eating real estate developers have taken over the city since the British left, with the rubber stamped approval of what passes in HK for government and the tacit approval of the public at large. Everyone complains but no one does anything because there is no system for anyone to do anything.

The greed of the real estate developers infuses almost every minute of life in HK. The horrendous rents they charge affect the price of everything from a candy bar to a visit to the doctor to a phone call. The hold they have over the retail sector places severe limits on personal choice. And the expensive rents prevent artists from gaining any sort of proper foothold. When your rent is a thousand a month, you take chances. When it’s 200,000 a month, you play it safe.
It carries through, too. Everyone kills themself to buy some over priced, poorly constructed rabbit hutch. And then take advantage of the current irrational exuberance of the stock market to rent out their cubbyholes as if they were renting Malibu beachfront property instead of 500 square feet with a view of the carpark next door.

So I guess you can tell that I’m in one of those moods where every place I travel to strikes me as a more human place to live than HK, whatever the faults are of those particular places.

I got into a similar deep funk at the end of 1998, for different reasons. I ended up leaving HK in 99, returning to the US, but soon feeling as though that was a huge mistake and coming back to HK 2 years later.

I do expect this mood will pass. But not tonight.

Of course there are problems all over the world. The news today about wheat prices being at an all time high can’t be good news for the majority of the population. The combination of the high price of oil plus the oil companies all announcing record profits doesn’t seem to spur anyone to action. Genocide. Disease. Terrorism. Celine Dion announcing a new album.