hakuna matata

it's our worry-free philosophy.

if there is one adjective that can be used to describe this weekend, it is definitely going to be the antonym of worry-free.

livejournal dudes, i have an RSS feed so you can have posts here delivered to your friends page automatically: e1nabobo. add that to your friends list. thanks to ocean for giving up on telling me to update my LJ and signed me up for this RSS feed instead. remember our roles: you're the workaholic dude, i'm the lazy dude.

i've had sudden cravings for onigiri (riceball) since i had my first one on winter break. i had only seen onigiri in pictures, movies, and manga, but never in real-life---until that one fated day in december. it was a rainy wednesday and i was up in san jose when the girl i was with at the time thought that it would be a good idea to get lunch at her favorite place, a japanese restaurant called "tanto." i was hungry, so of course anything that involved food would sound like a good idea; i agreed and we went to the restaurant. i ordered some tempura and she ordered some ramen dish. at that time i didn't even know that onigiri was one of the items on the menu. a few minutes after taking our orders, the waitress came back with an onigiri, nicely put on a small plate.

i gasped.

it was my first time seeing an onigiri. if you could see the look on my face you would probably be reminded of the lusty look on your face the first time you see a naked person of the opposite sex. i told the girl sitting in front of me how delighted i felt, being able to finally see and taste an onigiri. she looked at me weird and before she could utter a word my right hand instantaneously grabbed the onigiri and brought it closer to my mouth. i had to keep my mouth closed because otherwise i would have created a miniature niagara in san jose. i swallowed my saliva, opened my mouth, and took a bite of the onigiri.

it was mouth orgasm.

i suck at describing things in a flowery manner, but know that i continued munching ferociously on this onigiri because it tasted like heaven. after i killed the onigiri in a barbaric manner, i looked up to the girl in front of me.

e: dang, that was good. do they give free onigiri as appetizer or something?
h: um, no. i think that one came with my ramen.
e: ... oh.

here's an advice: never take your date to places where the probability of you encountering an inanimate object that can reveal your deepest, darkest desire is not zero. i probably made a really bad impression on the girl by stealing her food on the first date, but hell, that onigiri made one lasting impression on me, and that was all that matters.

so i have recently gone on a quest to find good onigiri down here in sandiego. veni, vidi, vici was what i was hoping for, but rather it had been more of veni, vidi, this onigiri tastes shitty.

until today.

i've tried onigiri at different fancy, expensive fine-dining japanese restaurants, but none of them managed to help me relive that moment of short perpetual happiness i had in san jose. in fact, none of them was actually able to serve food that i would consider above decent. the wise regius professor of chronology once said, "it seems odd, don't you think, that the quality of food should vary inversely with the brightness of the lighting. makes you wonder what culinary heights the kitchen staff could rise to if you confined them to perpetual darkness," but i guess that does not apply to japanese cuisine. i find it ironic that the one onigiri that allowed me to relive that moment of happiness in san jose was the one i had at a restaurant that didn't even have a waiter/waitress to clean up your table for you. they actually gave you extra napkins to wipe your table yourself, and they even ask you to return the bowl or plate that you used to eat back to the counter after you're done eating. the floor was dirty with trash and crumpled napkins, and the tray you used to carry your food from the counter to your table was patched up with ducttapes because at some time in the past, it was broken.

they say never to judge a book by its cover, its back, or a page you open randomly. the same rule seems to apply for good quality japanese food.