21.06.12 - Turning Japanese

A colder day today and quite cloudy. A morning walking around the Lone Mountain area where I’m living, had a Peet’s Coffee (the local chain - v good) and trying to locate Mike’s Second Hand Bike Store. I really fancy getting a second hand bike to pedal around on and cycle over Golden Gate bridge. Find it, no bikes in sight, realise it’s a second hand motorbike shop.

Head to Japantown. SF has one of only three remaining Japantowns in the US, it is mostly residential but the focal point is the Japan Center, essentially a mall with Japanese restaurants and shops. Lots of noodles and Hello Kitty, a mixture of things that the Japanese think tourists want to buy and what the American Japanese actually want. Apparently quite a few celebs have been and left their mark (see below). There is a cool Japanese store selling original Japanese products. One top seller is an electric erasure, for those who just can’t be bothered to rub things out manually and a pair of blow up breasts, not sure if these are a joke or not. Lunch was a delicious buckwheat noodle soup with a Bovril-like broth and tempura vegetables and prawns, yum.
    Walking up more hills and then down more hills, my calves were definitely feeling a bit stiff this morning. Stopped a man on a bike to ask where I could buy a second hand bike and he suggested an ex-rental and as I was heading in the right direction I went in search of a set of wheels.  Couriers here look just as unwashed as in London, apart from he had three gold and diamante nose piercings; bling and grime meet in one man. I found a shop owned by a man from Lyon, with a Russian sidekick, where I bought an ex-rental, very sit-up, bike with a huge, flat seat that I look ridiculous on. Then spent about as much again on safety accessories, lights, helmet, lock, blah. Funnily enough Mum rang as I was there, she obviously knew that I was contemplating ditching the helmet!

The windy streets of SF...............................

..............The windy street of SF.
The only high volume of tourists that I came across in the day was this lot going crazy for SF’s famous crooked street. It’s amazing what people find exciting. I found a tree with wild plums on it and ate two.

A San Fran theatre production found in the local paper.
Ride off on my new bike to Chinatown. Completely different to Japantown - although no reason why they should be anything like each other - very busy, lively, grotty, definitely more criminal. Head up to the Cathedral, only have to get off and push up one hill. We’re allowed to sit in the choir stalls for Evensong, there are about 30 of us. The all male choir of 14 are an odd looking bunch with the faces of criminals but the voices of angels. They’re on my my right so I can hear them on one side and then an echo of the final note ringing down the nave in my left ear. Really, really good singing - and that was just me. Lol. The junior choir master turns out to be an organ scholar from New College, Oxford. Luckily it was most of the way through before I noticed that he was wearing heeled, soft black leather shoes underneath his cassock. They were so weird and creepy, he was not short so I have no idea why he felt the need to wear heels, does it help when playing the organ? When he played everyone out he controlled two sets of organs from one keyboard; one in the choir stalls and one at the other end of the nave. It was so cool it almost made me forgot about the shoes. As I was leaving the Verger caught me, apparently the organ is one of the best in America and they do yoga on a Tuesday on the cathedral labyrinth. I think I’ll have to tick that box next week. He gave me his card which I thought was funny for a Verger but why shouldn’t he have a business card. As I was leaving another man was playing the organ and I’ve never heard it played so amazingly, I think that he was testing it, playing the high notes and the lows. blowing the pipes. At times it sounded like a whole orchestra and then like a single instrument rather than, as so often, just lots of pipes competing to be heard.
    Some of the road surfaces here are awful, you really notice on a bike, cracks and potholes everywhere. But I made it to the opera house in one piece, quite early, so I wandered around the building, which is a very traditional opera house style, wide staircases, gold balustrades, columns and vaulted ceilings. There was a pre-performance talk going on; a run down of the story about some of Mozart’s musical techniques. It is given before every performance. Then I climbed the many flights of stairs to my seat in the gods. I was really excited about the evening until...a screen descended from the ceiling above my row of seats projecting what was on the stage with full close ups. It was so

 distracting having the light of the screen in my peripheral vision that my blood started to boil. On reflection I did let it annoy me disproportionately but I think that if you’ve bought a ticket for the theatre then you want to see a live performance and not a screen with close ups of the singers showing all the lumps and bumps and cracking make-up. I decided that I would move seats after the interval but I was not allowed to sit in a lower section because I hadn’t paid for a more expensive ticket even though there were spare seats. Then to add to my rage I was charged $4 for a bottle of water. I spent most of the second half composing my letter of complaint, which I sent the next day - no reply as yet - but you can’t get over the fact that the music is superb and that’s what I will remember longer than the annoying things. But, the screen was beyond irritating. Cycled home trying to avoid the steepest hills - just about possible.