- party time: part 2 -

15 february - strawberry buffet at Shinjuku Hilton Hotel. costs arouns 3,500 yen per person but it's a 2.30-6.00 pm buffet. those who went - me, susan, louise and siti. we didn't book in advance, but the wait wasn't that long after all. we were given a 6-person table - comfy sofa and leather chairs with pillows! if only the ceiling and the toilets looked (and smelled) more glamourous...

and the sweets hunt began!

we started off with the strawberry section - a variety of desserts with strawberries in them - strawberry jelly, strawberry yogurt pannacotta, strawberry tart, strawberry brule, strawberry shortcake, strawberry cheesecake, strawberry mousse, strawberry bavarois... most of them came in cute cubic containers (porcelain or glass).

then the chocolate section - 3 lovely chocolate fountains - milk, white and bitter chocolates. we made chocolate fondue with marshmallows, strawberries, melons and pineapples (i think, not sure for the last one). other than the fountains there were chocolate mousse and normal chocolate cakes, and many other kinds of cakes and sandwiches, and waffles and crepes - not only were there sweet stuff, there were chicken & onion sandwiches too. apart from the strawberry kueh with green things on top (it tasted weird) everything else was nice. especially the camembert cheese cake.

the drinks - apart from the tea and oolong-cha - they came in small shot-glasses. the chocolate drink was good - it's like concentrated cocoa, ohohoho.. sorry it's my first time drinking liquid chocolate, very ulu yes. the strawberry + carrot drink and mango + pineapple drink were nice too, but the kiwi + grape juice drink was too sour for sweets buffet. the soymilk with pistachio drink was not so nice, probably because it tasted like chinese bubble tea..

unlike SweePara, there weren't rice and pasta, but instead, lots of dumplings and bao. i know there's this big fuss going on about chinese gyoza, but i'm sure (i hope) those gyoza and siumai were made in Japan. everyone must have loved the siumai, because the whole tub was gone just a while after it's served. and it seemed that the steamed pork bao and peach-shaped bean bao were less popular.

lastly the ice-cream - 1 of 8 flavours, and our own choices of toppings. i got vanilla with chocolate chips and almonds, but i was too full to enjoy the ice-cream..


after the buffet, louise left for Harajuku, and the 3 of us remained in Shinjuku for a movie. we watched Le Scaphandre et le Papillon (The Diving Bell and the Butterfly). an award winning french movie - you should've seen the movie's opening, it was like.. "nominated for this" "nominated for that", and next it says it won 38 awards and you'd see the list of 38 awards filling the cinema screen all at the same time.

it's a true story about Elle's editor, Bauby-Do, who suffered the Locked Syndrome and became paralyzed. he could only use his left eye freely, so the doctors let him communicate by blinking - 1 blink for "yes" and 2 for "no". that was how he managed to "write" a book about himself, through an assistant sitting next to him everyday, reading out alphabets and guessing what he wanted to say with him blinking. but he was an unfaithful husband - he loved his kids, but he had no feelings towards his wife anymore - he had a lover, who did not have the courage to see him after he became an almost-vegetable. but when she called him and told him how she loved him, he told her, with his own wife as the eye-movement translator, "i will wait for you, everyday".

man.. poor wife..

in the end he passed away, 10 days after his book was published. it's a sad movie. sad, french, art movie - with occasional flickers of teats and balls.

by the time it ended, it was 9 pm. and we actually had the appetite to have a late dinner... and not tiny take-away meals, it's curry. omelet curry and curry gratin. i think i gained a few more pounds because of these parties.. and probably gaining more for the coming class party. yep.

but for now, no more sweets please.