Day 11: Family History Center, Asakusa, and Shinjuku

I have a confession to make:

There are a lot of things, as a Mormon woman, I know I should do, that I don't do. And I'm not just talking about things like food storage, which I am still trying to figure out as a single person who has no intention of living in her current residence for more two years. My immediate plan for a disaster is to be on very good terms with my sister and her family, so that if there's a run on food, they will take me in and let me live with them and their multitudinous cans of wheat and their Bosch mixer.

What I am talking about is family history. I have never been good at doing it. By this, I mean I have never done any. My excuse has always been that my mom has pioneer ancestors, and all of the work for her family that can be done has been done. Lame. And, on my dad's side, everyone before my great-grandparents lived in Japan, and it's pretty hard to get their records.

But, I'm in Japan now, and, before I left, I discovered two things:

• Tokyo has a family history center somewhere close to the temple.
• Someone there speaks English.

So, today, I trekked out to the family history center. I only had a vague idea of where it was, so I started out at the building where Shane and Maria have been attending church. This building also houses the Japan MTC, which, as far as I could tell, consists of about six rooms. I met one of the teachers who spoke English, and she was unaware that a family history center existed anywhere in Tokyo. She advised me to go to the church office building next to the subway station I had just come from. Lo and behold, the family history center was inside that building! I almost hugged the receptionist when she told me. She handed me a visitor badge and ushered me inside.

This is the building.

There, I met a nice sister who also spoke English, who chided me for not e-mailing ahead of time to let her know I was coming. I thought I was doing pretty well to realize there was a family history center. I can't imagine how I would have tracked down contact information for it. She couldn't find any of my names, but she explained what I would have to do to be able to get my family's record. I now have a plan.

Plus, I negotiated the subway-including an exchange-by myself for the first time.

After I got home, Maria dressed Brooklyn and we went to Asakusa. Asakusa houses another major shopping district where Maria had been once before and gotten some killer deals. So we spent some time shopping there, and I managed to get gifts for most of the people I needed to get gifts for. As an added bonus, we also saw a shrine.


We then went home to rest up for dinner in Shinjuku.

Shinjuku is somewhat like Shibuya, in that it is a hub for a much younger, hipper crowd. Evidence of this is the fact that, to get to the restaurant where we were going to have shabu shabu for dinner, we passed a corner with about 10 drag queens standing on it. With the exception of one, it was pretty hard to tell they were men in drag. I feel weird talking about my family history experience in the same post with drag queens, but, there you go.

Shabu shabu, like some of the other food I have experienced in Japan, is hands-on. At your table, you get a pot of boiling broth, and raw meat and vegetables to cook in the broth, along with sauced to dip each in, kind of like fondue. Shabu shabu is named for the sound the meat makes when you swish it in the broth to cook it. It's pretty good. The restaurant where we ate gave us 90 minutes to eat all we could.


I think we did pretty well.

Shinjuku is also a place where you can find really expensive fruit. Pictured below is a triangle-shaped watermelon and a square watermelon, which retailed for something like $600. I'm pretty sure they taste like regular melons, but, not having $600 to spare, I guess I'll never know.


We had to settle for a different type of extra special dessert.

A word about Japanese dessert:

Prior to coming to Tokyo, there was one thing I knew to be true about Japanese dessert:

If it isn't fresh fruit or extra-firm Jell-O, it's probably made from beans. And I'm not talking about cacao beans. I am talking about azuki (red) beans. It's a lesson I learned as a small child on New Year's when my dad's family participated in the only Japanese tradition we've managed to preserve over the last three generations: making mochi. Mochi is a dumpling-like substance made from pressed rice that's been formed into balls. In the olden days, it was made by filling a stump with cooked rice, and men taking turns hitting it with mallets. Being "not pure" Japanese, as a man I taught on my mission referred to me, we make ours today using sort of a bread machine. It becomes very dense, and you have to be careful not to put too much in your mouth at a time because you could choke on it. Mochi is often eaten by itself, in a broth, or with a dipping sauce made from soy sauce and sugar. Or, it can be filled with stuff. By far, the best thing to fill it with is ice cream. The worst thing to fill it with is an, bean paste made from azuki beans that has been sweetened with sugar. It's pretty bad, and, yet, someone in my family must like it because we make it year after year. All family traditions make sense, right? Mochi is not the only thing made with an, so I have learned to be careful about anything that looks like it could be hiding an, particularly if it is labeled as a sweet.

Mochi ice cream. I have never had the green tea flavored ones.

Since I got to Tokyo, though, I have eaten a ton of fabulous sweets, from chocolate to pastries to ice cream. Not super-authentic stuff, but it's been very tasty. So tasty, in fact, that I had almost forgotten about the bean rule.

Shane and Maria have been raving about Mochi Cream since I got here, and for good reason. I have never seen anything like the store-as far as food goes. It looked like Tiffany & Co, only instead of the glass cases inside the store containing diamond jewelry, they contained mochi. We each bought a few to take home. If you buy six, they put them in a fancy box (box not pictured).

I ordered a chocolate, and a sakura (cherry). Shane and Maria got several flavors, including apple pie, chocolate banana, and orange cheese. We passed them around and took bites of each flavor. They were all amazing, particularly the orange cheese, but something about the texture of the filling bothered me. Each mochi cream had a layer of mochi, and a creamy center. In between, though, there was a layer of flavored filling which had the suspicious texture of bean, kind of like refried beans.

I Googled it just to make sure, and I was right. The filling is made out of some sort of white bean that doesn't have much taste, so it is easily disguised by other flavors.

I liked them a lot. I am trying to just leave it at that. I'm a grown-up. I am mature enough to judge something based on my own personal preference, and not be bothered by the fact that it is made out of something it shouldn't be made out of.

I haven't told Shane and Maria yet. If it weighs on your conscience, go ahead.