Food and Drink
Do: Try the spaghetti with nori (dried seaweed) and mentaiko (spicy fish eggs)
Don’t: Try the cabonara, bolognese or anything else purporting to be Italian
Do: Go for Korean for a spicy food fix
Don’t: Go for Mexican for a spicy food fix (they took the American fast food version and did what we all thought was impossible- made it blander!)
Do: Go for sushi
Don’t: Go for one without a conveyor belt until you’ve had years of practice
Do: Experiment a little at the sushi bar
Don’t: Go for the one that looks like whale meat (it is!)
Do: Copy how the locals eat
Don’t: Copy the drunk salaryman with the red face and untucked shirt does (slurping the spaghetti, putting soy sauce straight onto stuff etc.)
Others
Do: Get U-sen piped music channels (including BBC and Virgin Radio) in your home
Don’t: Listen to the BGM (background music) and Bossanova channels- it will seem funny at first, but the 100th time you hear ‘the Girl from Ipanema’ in Excelsior Cafe the joke will rub off
Do: Go shopping in the second hand CD shops
Don’t: Buy J-pop. Ever. You have been warned!
Do: Go for a look at the outrageous yakuza fashion in Osaka
Don’t: Use the word ‘yakuza’ as you point them out to your friends (It’s an insult)
Do: Admire the temple on the top of the hill
Don’t: Walk up the hill the see it- you will see hundreds more without that unecessary effort!
TEFLtastic 
Im with you on most of these, but the mentaiko/nori spaghetti thing?? NAHHHHHHH as an Italian (well ok half Italian) that just conjures up images in my mind which I never want to turn into reality.
As I read somewhere before, some of the Japanese attitude towards sushi made outside of Japan, really becomes laughable when you consider that these people are responsible for mentaiko spaghetti.
I guess there’s a tiny sliver of chance i could be wrong, and its good, but nah everything Italian in me tells me this is not a good combination.
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Just don’t think of it as pasta. The fact that some places serve it only with chopsticks should help with that… There’s a great place in Harajuku that only serves Japanese spaghetti- recommended! If not, there’s a restaurant sponsored by the Italian government in Shiodome (half way between Shimbashi and Hamamatsucho stations)
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ha ha that’s a fair point i guess. I got something against fish eggs tho – i can do caviar (i know that sounds hella fancy) and some sushi but that’s about it. Restaurant sponsored by the Italian government sounds good. I need to get round those parts to go to the embassy so…
nice one!
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