2015-08-01: Seekrits

Saturday training is at a school of some type. Pretty much the same people as Friday night training but at least we don't have to share the hall with the Kyudo people. When the Kyudo people start shooting their arrows the length of the hall we have to leave. I reckon we could take them if we really wanted to stay. But I am trying to be a Lovely Guest so I won't go starting archers vs. polearms battles just yet. The kiddies at this school do a fair bit of art and it is displayed all over the walls.

Cold Romans! The kiddies may be as puerile as me

Part of our plan to be Lovely Guests involves doing a demonstration of jukendo and tankendo. This means draping our host in armour and poking him with sticks while he is slightly not sure of what is happening or why. We claim to be teaching him the secrets of jukendo. When he learns them we will poke him with the other sticks.

I know something is going to happen.

And so far it all seems fun...

It's a little different to naginata but not too far

oh lord simon is a fat heavy bastard...

"A way to a Man's heart is through his Chest". that is the secret...

And my turn!

Secrets learned, art mastered, on to the next thing!

I am not sure this approach would work with everyone. It seemed to go over well and so I congratulate us on our awesome host choosing skills.
One of the things we have noticed about our less than awesome tourism skills is that we spend an inordinate amount of time in halls with wooden floors, wearing the same clothes and hanging out with people from effectively the same sub culture. We therefore try to take as many opportunities as possible to do the local things and so avoid the conversations where people ask us advice on a place we have been and all we can remember is how to get to the dojo (or the nearest pub).

Pretty sure this is a stoop. I was in 12 Angry Men at High School. They talked about stoops a lot. No one was murdered on this stoop.

Sometimes these opportunities are as simple as recalling something from tv about the place or people. Sometimes it is from drunken rambling conversations in bars (oh yeah, we often can comment in great detail about bars close to dojos in cities we have been).

This is a fireman (or a policeman). He wears the shirt of the bar he was at so his wife knows where he was that night He cannot comment in much detail about the bar.

One of those conversations occurred the other day at Skinners Loft (a bar surprisingly far from a dojo) when discussing quintessential Jersey things. Taylors Ham is apparently a North Jersey speciality (the Southern Jersey people have other names for it and so are sub human monsters).

This is the bar his T shirt advertised. It has zero signage and painted over windows. It also has a Police Fraternity badge on the door. After this photo it had a vast number of drunken cops (or firemen) outside. A bus full of them and their empty kegs pulled up.

One of the places recommended for sampling said Ham also featured in the Burger discussion. After a hard day of training we shall refuel.

Places Review: New Park Tavern (It is a secret bar!)

mapref
https://www.facebook.com/pages/New-Park-Tavern/120676404610430

There is a hint of mistrust in his eyes after the afternoons fun. "We are going to another secret thing? ummmm okay I guess".

I dislike places that have a facebook page and no website. I dislike facebook generally and only joined it when a significant percentage of the people I wanted to talk to started using it. I also find that the endless drivel customers put on business facebook pages turns me off the business a fair bit. Kind of like Metallica, I like the band, I dislike the fans. I love this bar.

The problem with 3 people and things cut in half is that I am bad at basic math.

Menu is all of three or four items. Two guys do everything. They do it well. You want to order drinks in a fashion that ensures you aren't sitting on an empty as the guys are dragged into a hairy dog tale at the other end of the bar though.

Chips and bacon count as infinitely dividable. I am good with 0, 1 and infinite. 2 is tricky.

The food is some of the best we have had in NY/NJ. I don't know if it was a lucky night or we were just crazy hungry or what. Americans on the internet talking about food can normally be ignored by any other culture in the world I think, they have a whole bunch of code words and seem determined to bitch about something, anything.

Oh and I am good at unknown. There are zero Polski Ogurki, One Sandwich, Infinite portions of fries and an unknown reason for lack of good cameras at this table (actually the reason is because I forgot to sing my "things to carry with me" song so I left the camera at home).

Maybe they bitch about something to make them seem like good reviewers. Even then the primary compliment for a place is "The servings were huge". We care about flavour and rarely bitch about things (except nationalities other than our own - and that is Australian style banter we both picked up whilst there).

Rating: 9.5/10. (It was so good we went back to check we weren't obscenely drunk and over praising it).

Of course just because there is a massive police presence in a slightly seedy area of town doesn't mean you are guaranteed safe I guess. We have never really had problems anywhere in the world and so are bad people to take advice from regarding dodginess of areas.

I don't think they have dingos in America so I guess someone else stole the baby. Meryl would spend a week in the Miss America Diner and have the accent down pat.

I figure it is because I have the look of someone so ignorant it must be a trap. When I was having a smoke outside a guy in a nice enough car came around the corner with a flat tire. Then he did a fast U turn and drove away on his flat tire. I didn't check his plates for New Jersey vs New York. So I guess there is a chance it is an area some people are nervous about.