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Bubble Tea in Mountain View: Verde Tea Lounge
I swear not *everything* I do lately is tea. For example, on Friday we went out to dinner and to the beach. On Saturday, we spent all day at the beach. But tonight, we experienced some really good bubble tea.
Taken by Wit’s suggestion, we ventured to Mountain View, which has many good food venues, some of which are classier than others. Dinner was consumed at a Mongolian BBQ place which was okay, like Flat Top but more low-key and fewer sauce choices (good for indecisive people like me).
After dinner we got bubble tea at Verde Tea Espresso Bar which held the magical bubble tea. At 10pm on a Sunday night it was crowded, but despite the hefty line, the bubble tea was served with amazing speed. Very impressed. Good ambience. They had all the flavors on the menu (as far as we could tell) and didn’t glare you down when you ordered something from there, unlike certain bubble tea places in Chambana…
Also, my sesame bubble tea was some of the best I’ve ever had. Bubbles were just right, and sesame, well, how can you go wrong?
We got the following flavors which apparently all turned out good:
• Strawberry – Tastes like strawberries (amazing!)
• Green Bean – no, not like the vegetable. Kind of like red bean (a sweet bean, with the skins still on) but green.
• Rose Green Tea – beautiful and tasted like you were eating a flower. I’m not sure if this is good or bad, but Bhargav seemed to enjoy it.
• Sesame – pure heaven on ice + tapioca balls.
Chillin’ at the bar. Or counter. Whatever.
Another successful tea journey in the San Francisco Bay area!
Teacrawl in Santa Cruz
So two years into college, we’ve gotten the whole barcrawl thing down. Some random Tuesday, we all wear matching shirts, 1 bar per hour until closing time. Yeah, yeah, yeah, old news.
But last night, I embarked on a new kind of nighttime journey: the teacrawl. Same principle of course, but replace the bars with cafes, the bartenders with baristas.
Bhargav and Mukund made their way down from San Jose, just to check the whole Santa Cruz thing out I ’spose. Unfortunately, I realized yesterday that my roommate Sarah and I had a Yoga class to attend that night. Luckily, Bhargav rolled with it and partook in some free yoga, and Mukund requested that we drop him off at the Santa Cruz hangout, Cafe Pergolesi.
An hour and a half later, we were stretched out, in our zone, and ready for the teacrawl.
After reuniting with Mukund, we made our way to Pacific Thai, since we had intended to find bubble/boba tea (depending on what you call it). They make you choose a tea base (green or black) and choose iced or blended (whether they just put ice in, or they make it more smoothie-like with the ice blended in). The flavors were fine, but nothing special I’d say — we tried Jasmine, which was good, Avocado, which was subtle, and Thai iced tea, which was exactly what you would expect — thai iced tea with boba (go figure). Delightful boba though. Not too big, chewy, or icy.
Here is Mukund eagerly anticipating what his avocado boba tea will taste like, as Bhargav swoops in:
But Pacific Thai wasn’t much of a hangout. So we crawled. Downtown SC.
Clock tower:
Building at the end of Pacific, the main downtown street. No, Jamba Juice is NOT part of any teacrawl.
Then we walked by every cafe on Pacific, and checked how late they were open. This was at 9:30pm. Almost all of them closed at 10. This is simply not acceptable! I’m usually offended that Espresso closes at MIDNIGHT! Come on now, cafes.
So, after passing up several other options due to early closing times, including Bad Ass Coffee, which I went to with Joey on my very first day in SC, we decided to head back to Cafe Pergolesi, where Mukund had spent some time.
And thus the sugar explosion began.
A hot chai, a mint papaya tea, an iced chai, and cookies, flavored roughly as chocolate/coconut/some kinda nut, “Mexican Mocha”, and chocolate/peanut butter/some kind of nut… I don’t know. It was a pretty epic order, and made me feel like we had some assembly to program in the middle of the night or something.
This place is pretty cool. Too cool for school. Too cool for us, probably. Some foreign hip-hop was playing the entire time. And very, very Santa Cruz. The chalkboard back there says, “dude, I know this is Santa Cruz, but please, no dope smokin’ on the patio. Thanks”
Cafe Pergolesi is too cool to have standardized seating. Bhargav’s chair was about four feet below our table. Which is okay I guess, if you have chai to worship.
This chai was friggin’ AMAZING. It was the most spiced chai I’ve ever had — left your throat all tingly! And just the right amount of foam. Yummmm to the max.
Bhargav summons the power of the iced chai, which was kind of too milky and not as intense as my SPICY CHAI of wonder and amazement.
After another hour of chilling, our favorite barista said we had to leave so he could go kill zombies, and thus ended the epic June ‘09 Santa Cruz Teacrawl.
This must be repeated.
welcome to my genkan
This week I moved into my new room in Santa Cruz and unpacked my 67 pounds of luggage for the summer.
My bookcase came in handy, and I documented it with my iPhone:
These happen to be right in the entry to my room in my apartment — so if you could say a single room has a genkan (an entryway, and in Japanese houses this is where all the shoes are kept) this is my genkan.
About a day after emailing this photo to Noam, a wonderful thing happened. This picture came into my inbox:
FYI now that I’m in Santa Cruz, I might have more pictures/updates about that. I know, crazy to think that I might interrupt a sentence coming out of my mouth and say something that’s *not* about Japan, but hey, it could happen.
In short, there will be a lot more of this:
and this:
Dekichatta Kekkon: Shotgun Marriage
There are about 12 million dramas about marriage. But the one with a combination of the most funny moments and intense stares, would have to be Dekichatta Kekkon (Shotgun Marriage) from 2001.
Starring:
Chiyo-chan (Hirosue Ryoko), sleeps with Ryuunosuke (Takenouchi Yutaka) one night, and they don’t talk again… until she realizes she’s pregnant. Ryuunosuke resigns himself to marry her, and hilarity ensues when the two of them attempt to become a couple, face Chiyo’s overprotective and potentially violent father, and deal with the antics of Reina, Ryuunosuke’s stalker, who befriends his completely ridiculous mother.
Meanwhile, Chiyo’s older sister is at wit’s end putting up with a 10 year relationship with Abe Hiroshi’s character, who will NOT propose. But he can give a damn good massage. On the side, there is the slutty friend of Chiyo’s, who keeps throwing herself at Tsumabuki Satoshi’s character, who is extremely tempted, but keeps quoting his grandfather’s conservative advice about love and sex, all in his grandfather’s Kyuushuu-ben accent (or wherever he was supposed to be from). And Chiyo’s doctor, who is hopelessly naive and enthusiastic about everything (especially Chiyo’s pregnancy) to cheerleader proportions, falls hard for Chiyo’s sister.
d-addicts had a relationship chart already, but it was in Japanese and very wordy, so here’s the translation:
And now a couple of screenshots.
Chiyo, realizing she is pregnant and her father will never allow her to marry Ryuunosuke. Crap!
Ryuunosuke. Asking the dudes for advice, and then not listening to it:
Abe Hiroshi. “Marriage, for a guy, is the END OF THE WORLD.” Says the guy in the 10 year relationship. And man, wtf is up with your hair.
The doctor, with his unbridled enthusiasm, out of proportion to the situation.
Yeah Chiyo, you’d best be listening to their advice. Look, Tsumabuki Satoshi is even wrinkling his eyebrow at you.
More groups of 3 people sitting in a line. As usual, Abe Hiroshi is complacent, Tsumabuki Satoshi is sincere, and Ryuunosuke has some decision regarding Chiyo to deal with, in which he will have good intentions but everything will spin out of control. Just the way it is.
Overall the show is pretty funny. Eventually, the baby becomes more important to the story, and it takes on a little bit of a touching/serious tone, but still, the two leads are great together, and the other characters keep things lively and ridiculous. This is the first time I’ve seen Hirosue Ryoko and liked her, and Takenouchi Yutaka was certainly way less sketchy of a dude in this show than in Long Vacation.
Other fun fact: Hirosue Ryoko herself, a couple of years after starring in this show, had her own dekichatta kekkon, when she became pregnant and proceeded to marry Takahiro Okazawa in 2004. The two divorced last year, according to Tokyograph.
This drama might be a good older drama to check out, especially in moments when you need to get your Abe Hiroshi fix (or, your < insert favorite wildly popular star among this cast here, since they're all really famous > fix)
And finally, one last gratuitous screencap of Abe Hiroshi:
