BurgerWeekly Post: Smile Burger in Kyoto, Japan

In keeping with tradition, here's a copy of my contribution to BurgerWeekly on Smile Burger, a hole-in-the-wall burger shack to which I spontaneously offered my patronage in the middle of a sunny, long walk in Kyoto last week.

The original post can be found here: Smile Burger!

Also, burger lovers in NYC should consider going to BurgerWeekly's "Burgerversary 100" party at Blue Smoke in April.  Were I not 12,000 miles away, I'd surely be in attendance.  Burgerversary!

Burger Ordered: Smile Burger

The Experience: A hearty 新年快乐 (xin nian kuai le – Happy New Year!) to all of the Little Meisters out there who celebrate the Chinese New Year. After partaking in the New Year’s revelry (which lasts more than a week) for a few days, Burgermeister Josh escaped the firecracker-bombarded streets for the much more tranquil confines of Japan. Thoughts of juicy burgers had taken a temporary backseat to temples and tempura.  Until, that is, Josh stumbled upon Smile Burger, a little hole-in-the-wall nestled comfortably amongst the storefronts of a busy thoroughfare in downtown Kyoto. Despite the early hour (it was barely 11 AM), and the fact that hamburgers aren’t exactly on the top of the list of local foods to sample while in Japan, Josh decided to honor his title as Burgermeister and give Smile Burger a try.

The dulcet tones of Avril Lavigne greeted the Burgermeister as he walked into the one room shop, not exactly the artist he expected to hear during his vacation in Japan. The place was tiny, as most establishments are in the Land of the Rising Sun, with only three tables and a take-out counter, behind which the lone proprietor – a young and cheerful Japanese guy – does his burger-flippin’ magic.

The Taste: Burgermeister Josh was initially tempted by the picture of Smile’s “Q Burger”, which appeared to be a quintuple-patty burger stack. However, discretion being the better part of valor (and hoping to save room for more traditional Japanese fare later), he settled on the classic Smile Burger. Josh had walked in hoping that the patty would be made with Kobe beef (this was Japan, after all), but was disappointed, if not unsurprised, to see that it was 100% Australian ground beef, seasoned in salt, pepper, and nutmeg. What the burger lacked in adornments (only lettuce and tomato), it more than made up for in condiments (ketchup, honey mustard, and Thousand Island dressing, all of which were already applied to the burger when it was served). A small portion of pickles and potato chips were served with the Smile Burger, which was presented rather nicely on a wooden board.

Despite somewhat low expectations, Burgermeister Josh was more than a little impressed with the Smile Burger! His initial doubts about the over-saucing of the burger were proven unwarranted, as the Thousand Island and honey mustard combined to create a tart relish flavor, with the ketchup providing its standard tomatoey sweetness. Not to be outdone by the sauces, the sweetness heartiness of the patty itself was readily apparent, the nutmeg in particular emerging in each bite. Josh doesn’t subscribe to the purist notion that burgers should be unadorned with seasoning lest they taste more like meatloaf. The Smile Burger was distinctly sweet and nutmeggy, and, Josh thought, all the better for it.

The Verdict: The Smile Burger had its shortcomings. The meat was slightly overcooked for the Burgermeister’s liking, which he was able to chalk up to his inability to convey his temperature preferences in Japanese. It was also quite greasy, though a burger of all things can be forgiven for a little grease. The pickles and chips that accompanied burger were by no means offensive, but Josh has always been of the opinion that French fries are the only suitable sidekick to a hamburger. These small demerits were not, however, nearly enough to dislodge Josh’s high perception of the Smile Burger. Overall, it was a tastier, more satisfying burger than any of Josh’s middling burger experiences in Shanghai. Shanghai may have glitz and glamour going for it, but, at least with this minimal sample size, Kyoto may indeed have the better of the burger scene!

Smile Burger is located on Higashi Oji Dori Street in Kyoto, Japan.

Japan Part III: The Food

It was a dark and stormy night.

Okay - that's certainly a bit cliched and dramatic.  But it was dark (what kind of night isn't?), and it was raining.  It was also cold, and there wasn't a sole to be found on the streets of Okayama.  It was my first night in Japan.  I had taken the train up from Takamatsu, where I had landed that afternoon.  Okayama wasn't my final port of call, nor was it the city I was most excited to visit.  But it was my first night in Japan, dammit, and I was going to see what Okayama had to offer in terms of food, drink, and other excitement.  The answer was quickly discernable: not very much.

The streets of Okayama were cold, rainy, and, most perceptibly, empty.  One of the main drags, through the middle of a which flows a rather nice canal, was as quiet as a snowy mountainside in midwinter.  One could imagine it being a nice place for a stroll, but on this particular night it was just a cold place for a stroll, with very few, if any, enticing places for sustenance.

My exuberant traveling spirit somewhat dampened, I eventually turned back towards my hotel, hoping against hope that I would find somewhere - anywhere - to grab a quick dinner.  All thoughts of an authentic, amazing Japanese culinary experience had yielded to the desire for two things: food, and warmth -- perhaps not in that order, but as quickly as possible.

I ducked into what I hoped was a restaurant, and found myself in a small room, with just a countertop bar, and (of course) nobody in it.  An older woman was futzing about in the kitchen preparing food for the evening's patrons (why she needed to prepare was beyond me, given the lack of street traffic).  She came out and smiled, gestured me into a chair at the bar, and said in Japanese what must've been "What would you like?"

I looked around, decided that there was no way she would have an English menu, so I just shrugged my shoulders in an attempt to convey that I was indeed hungry, but didn't know how to describe what I would like to eat and also didn't care that much as long as it was hot.  In China, this probably wouldn't have worked.  Miraculously, however, she nodded, smiled again, and glided back into the kitchen from where I soon heard the sizzling of food being prepared.  She came out with some tempura style somethings (not meat, perhaps potato or some other root vegetable, I'm not really sure).  I managed to reason out the Japanese for "hot sake", which she gladly poured for me, along with a beer for herself.  And I started to eat.

The tempura was followed by some soup called oden, with all sorts of fun vegetables and meat inside it.  After that, she fried up some yakisoba noodles, prepared on the hibachi grill with soy sauce, cabbage, carrots, and other veggies.  Each "course" was filling enough (and delicious enough) to satiate my appetite, but after each I made the "mistake" of clearing my plate (I couldn't help it), which signaled to her that I wanted more.

That was my introduction to both food and hospitality in Japan.  That one meal changed my entire perspective on the trip -- I'm sure I would've come around anyway, after a good night's sleep in Okayama and a train ride (everyone knows how trains can cure any depression for me) up to Osaka the next day.  But her willingness to just cook for me, without being able to ask what I wanted to eat, made all the difference for a cold, tired traveler on a rainy night in Okayama.  Throughout the meal, she sat with me, sipping her lager as I nursed my sake.  She tried to make small talk, but most of the time we were both content just to sit, understanding that we couldn't really communicate with each other effectively.

That was, as they say, the tip of the iceberg.  From Okayama I went to Osaka, where I embarked on a mission for okinomiyaki, an Osaka speciality sometimes known as Japanese pizza.  The joint I had been directed to by the New York Times travel section had been, to my chagrine, torn down.  But I quickly found another buzzing "pizza" hut, frying up delectable and large saucers of cabbage, potato, egg, veggies, pork, some barbecue style mayo sauce, and crunch fish flakes.  It was, hands down, the best thing I had in Japan (along with the other, much cheaper, okinomiyaki I found in Nara a few days later).

Other culinary highlights included the Nishiki Food Market in Kyoto - a long, narrow open market full of fish vendors, tofu donut makers, and other oddities that I couldn't even figure out.  I sampled some "street sashimi", several yummy nuggets of raw tuna marinated in two different ways.  This was, surprisingly, the only raw fish I ate in Japan.  I perhaps naively assumed that sushi was more ubiquitous in Japan than it was elsewhere, but it's just as much of a delicacy there (if not more so) than it is in the US.  So unless you're prepared to fork over a large wad of yen, sushi is probably not the ideal meal, even in Japan.

I went to Honke Owariya, a noodle house in Kyoto that has existed since 1465.  The cold soba noodles were served in 5 small bowls, stacked on top of each other, along with a dish of eight or so "toppings" including egg, shitake mushroom, spring onion, and shrimp tempura, with which one could make five little "make your own" noodle plates.

These are takoyaki, balls of dough and octopus in a tangy sauce.  They didn't appeal to me at first, but after trying them at a mom and pop shop in Nara, I can say I'm a fan.

Some gyoza and ramen near the train station in Takamatsu.  Sprinkled in between were random restaurants stumbled upon in the same ilk as the first one in Okayama, as well as a dinner of fried meat and veggies (delish, but heavy) with a Japanese friend of a guy I met at the hostel I stayed in Kyoto.  All in all, the food was terrific, if not initially a bit difficult to find.

Japan Part II: Kyoto

While planning my trip to Japan, I quickly faced the realization that I wasn't going to make it to Tokyo.  The global airline conspiracy that I'm convinced exists obviously monitors national holidays, and so even though I had the foresight to book in early November, some four months in advance, flights to the Japanese capital were already way more expensive than normal.  So I compromised, knowing I wanted to get to Japan and not really caring if that didn't include Tokyo, and booked a low-cost airline flight to a city of which I had never heard: Takamatsu.

It didn't take long scouring the Internet to realize that I wasn't going to spend five days in Takamatsu.  There appeared to be very little there other than a nice view of the water (the few hours I did end up staying there confirmed this).  So the question became how to efficiently budget my time so that I could see as much as possible, and still make it back to Takamatsu on Sunday to catch my flight back to Shanghai.  Several possibilities were within shooting distance: Matsuyama and Hiroshima to the west, Okayama, Himeji, Kobe, Osaka, and Kyoto to the east.  I decided that my primary destination would be Kyoto, for its history and foretold physical beauty, and while I would try to hit as much as I could on the way to and from the old capital, I would make it my primary stomping grounds for the trip.

Boy was I glad that I did.

Kyoto is a city of two temporal mindsets; a capital steeped in imperial history without refusing to usher in the hustle and bustle of a modern urban environment.  The countless temples, shrines, and palaces are scattered throughout the city, and are surrounded by the modern city, which in and of itself is quite lovely.  It has virtually none of the steel splendor for which Tokyo is known; aside from the Kyoto Tower, which looks like a miniature version of Seattle's Space Needle, I don't think any building eclipses 20 stories in height.  This provides for stunning views from high ground, of which there is plenty in the mountains that form a bowl in which Kyoto is nestles, of the low-rise cityscape.

I saw a sign on my first day there that declared Kyoto to be "The Walking City."  So walk I did, weaving my way in and out of the narrow alleyways, mountain paths, and myriad temples.  The tourist map of the city that my hostel gave me was initially quite daunting - there was no way I was going to see everything in just two and a half days.  So I just walked, and saw as much as I could.

Unlike some of the ancient capitals in the West (think Rome and Athens), much of Japan's historical treasures have been restored and rebuilt, either because they burned down (everything in Japan is made of wood) or because of the focus paid to maintaining the true essence of the building.  This struck me as an interesting contrast from the way we traditionally treat historical artifacts in the western world, where we seem to be impressed only by how old something is, and how little it has been interfered with.  History, in Japan, is preserved through restoration and constant upkeep -- the tour guide at the Imperial Palace noted that the palace's maintenance, which is purely for symbolic value, costs Japanese taxpayers millions of yen every year.  She said that each of the buildings have their roofs completely redone every 30 years, which requires so much cedar tree wood that it takes 25 years to gather enough. Restoration and reconstruction, according to the strict guidelines of how it would have been built in the past, was a refrain I heard at virtually every historic site I visited in Japan.

One of the refreshing things about Kyoto is that it didn't seem at all repetitive, as I thought it may have been.  Each site had its own character and history, and even if I couldn't understand all of the Japanese descriptions on the various displays, I felt like I saw something different each time.  From the Imperial Palace in the center of the city, to the Golden Pavillion, to the Inari Shrine, to the Kiyomizu-dera Temple, to the Nishiki Food Market, to the Kyoto Museum, to the International Museum of Manga, to the various restaurants and bars I went to -- I don't think I was disappointed by a single thing I did in Kyoto.

Kiyomizu-dera Temple, which offered great views of the city and cool architecture.

                            

The Imperial Palace in Kyoto is governed by the Imperial Housing Office, which regulates visitors to the old residence of the Emperor.  At 10AM and 2PM every day, foreigners can show up and take a tour, which I did.  The palace itself has been stripped of its furniture (when the Emperor visits Kyoto, he stays in a different palace nearby), so the tour only consists of the grounds, which were cool in and of themselves.

The garden inside the Imperial Palace.  Pretty nice for a backyard.

Japanese cities tend to form a grid of wide boulevards connected by narrow streets and alleyways.  I thought this street was particularly cool because of the mountains in the background.  The picture also ended up having a bit of "Abbey Road" feel to it as well.

The distinctly modern looking Kyoto Train Station.  The stations in both Kyoto and Osaka seemed to serve both as transportation hubs and entertainment centers.  A very small percentage of this huge building is used for the actual trains -- the rest is restaurants and shopping malls, which buzz with people until the trains stop running at midnight.

Across the street from Kyoto Station is the aforementioned Kyoto Tower.  I didn't make the ascent, mostly due to lack of time, but also because I felt like I had seen Kyoto from above already, thanks to the various climbs I made at the shrines and temples.

The Kinkaku-ji, or Temple of the Golden Pavilion.  Wrapped in gold foil, the temple is easy fodder for picture seekers, especially when you add in the water's reflection.

One of the highlights of the entire trip was the Inari Shrine: a 90 minute hike up a mountain past a dozen or so little shrines and altars, with literally thousands of orange gates lining the path.

The view from halfway up the Inari Shrine.  Perhaps the only disappointment was that there wasn't much of a vista at the top of the hill, due to tree cover, so I had to settle for this view at the midpoint of the hike.

The Land of the Rising Sun, Part I

The Chinese New Year holiday has come and gone, and Shanghai uttered a collective groan this morning as the workforce mustered sufficient energy to ignore the post-revelry hangovers and return to work.  (Actually, the national holiday technically ended on Friday, and Chinese employees were required to report for duty this weekend as a sort of government-endorsed make up day to counteract some of the production lost to the festivities last week).  I, for one, did not return to work over the weekend, both I figured my absence would go entirely unnoticed (it's not like I'm the keeper of the launch codes around here), and because I was busy enjoying my last two days in Japan.

For five days, I had the pleasure of exploring a new world, one so unlike the one I live in now that I shudder to think that I ever associated China and Japan in the same generic "East Asian" breath.  Whereas China (at least Eastern China) is relatively flat, Japan's landscape undulates in waves of green, as if one is in a constant circular bowl, surrounded by hills, mountains, and trees.  Whereas China (at least Shanghai) is pervaded with the constant noise of a city always on the move, Japan, even its cities, murmurs along quietly and peacefully, as if the entire community (both human and otherwise) works in tandem so as not to disturb one another.  The air in Japan smells like winter (presumably this is only true in the winter), while Shanghai does not do a good job of masking what its inhabitants (both human and otherwise) had to eat the night before.  Put another way -- breathing is a joy in Japan, or, at the very least, it's possible, whereas it's becoming increasingly difficult in the polluted atmosphere of the Middle Kingdom.  All of this isn't to say that I'm dropping everything, casting away my sinophilia in favor of China's political sparring partner to the East.  But to ruin the punchline a bit: I had a terrific time in Japan, and would love to go back soon.

I face the same problem here now as I did upon returning from Vietnam.  A single post on my week in Japan would likely run on extensively, with each paragraph pushing the post farther and farther from anything resembling coherence.  So I'll start with a few random highlights, with the promise that more specific recaps are to follow:

• The trip was a whirlwind, spanning five cities in five days.  I flew into and out of Takamatsu, a small city on the northern coast of Shikoku island.  Takamatsu is conveniently connected to Honshu (the main island) by a San Francisco Bay Bridge-esque bridge that spans the Seto Inland Sea that separates the two.  So, relying almost exclusively on Japan's comprehensive and well-oiled rail system, I was able to  make a circle from Takamatsu to Okayama, Osaka, Kyoto, Nara, and back.
• Of the five cities, Osaka is the biggest, and the only one that really felt like a metropolis.  I can only assume that Tokyo, which I unfortunately didn't have time for, more than makes up for this. Here's a quick view of the Osaka skyline, from the top of the Cosmo Tower on the southern outskirts of downtown:

• There were hundreds of deer in Nara.  A few examples, along with a very funny sign cautioning park visitors about the dangers of fraternizing with the furry friends:

• As mentioned above, Japan is quiet.  That's probably the thing I noticed first about the country.  Initially, I assumed it was just because I had landed in Takamatsu, where there was admittedly not a whole lot going on.  But it pervaded the entire country -- a refreshing, tranquil silence even on the busiest of city streets.  For whatever reason, the cities were able to absorb most of the ambient noise from pedestrian and automotive traffic, to the point where mere steps off of main thoroughfare, it would have been easy to believe you were no longer in a city of several hundred thousand people (which all of the cities I went to, even tiny Nara, can claim).
• The downside of this quiet is that finding nightlife in Japan is somewhat of a daunting mission.  Restaurants and bars are all tucked away, either down alleyways or in the depths of multi-story "high"rises (none are much taller than 10 stories high, except in Osaka).  Everything tends to be quite small, so a bar is either unappealing because of its emptiness, or inaccessible because its dozen or so patrons fill the place to capacity.
• I found that as frustrated as I get with my Chinese here, the gap between my somewhat-proficient Mandarin skills and fluency is probably smaller than the gap between those skills and total incompetence.  My efforts to brush up on my Japanese before the trip were in vain, and I was frequently rendered simply incapable of communicating with local people.  This did not prevent them all from being incredibly friendly to me during my stay.
• One of the nice things about staying in hostels is you meet interesting people.  One guy I met, an Australian Jew of Israeli descent, was studying industrial design in Melbourne while pursuing his own creative passion of making toy figurines.  In the two weeks he's been traveling in Japan (he's on summer break now), he started collecting this set of figures based on the characters from a Japanese anime show called "One Piece."  He told me that there were 82 different figures, 80 of which he had managed to amass in the short time since developing the obsession.  I encouraged him to follow his dreams, and not leave Japan until he completed the full set.
• Japanese trains have something I have never seen before: a car reserved exclusively for women.  I'm told this is to provide a safe haven from male groping.  If groping is seriously a problem in Japan, where everyone struck me as fanatically polite, then I wonder why these cars don't exist elsewhere (like China, for example)?

• There are pigeons in Japan.  Not a lot, but enough for me to notice, and realize that there are none in China.  Maybe they can't stand the pollution...
• One of my favorite aspects of the Japanese city is the prevalence of vending machinese -- ubiquitous sources of hydration for the weary walker.  The vending machines even serve hot drinks: select the coffee drink, and you receive a bottle of hot coffee!

Plenty more to come.  

Happy "Spring" Festival!

Well, it's officially the beginning of the Chinese New Year holiday here in the Far East.  Over the past week or two, Shanghai has started to feel perceptibly less crowded than it usually is as all of the non-native residents flee the city to their various hometowns to spend the weeklong festivities with their families.  We've got it pretty rough here in China, as the entire country gets a week off from work, as mandated by the government.  This seems like a good place to note that China gets 21 national holidays per year, whereas the US gets only 10.  Go Communism!  I'll be spending the majority of the break in Japan -- Osaka and Kyoto, primarily -- where I hope it's not quite as cold as it is here (wishful thinking, I fear).

Speaking of the weather, the technical name for the new year's holiday is 春节 (chunjie, or "Spring Festival).  This is particularly fitting this year, as you can tell by the following view of my apartment building and the surrounding courtyard:

Not too Spring-y, if you ask me.  It's been snowing in Shanghai for the last two days.  The Chinese, however, haven't decided to name the snow after a cartoon fish... a safe and warm Nemo-pocalypse to all back home!

And Now for Something Completely Different

One of my friends here (and cajon player for The Horde) has the following disclaimer attached to the signature line of his emails:

© 2012 johnnyharu.com. All rights reserved. This email is intended for the use of the individual addressee(s) named above and may contain information that is confidential, privileged or unsuitable for overly sensitive persons with low self-esteem, no sense of humour or irrational religious beliefs. Those of you with an overwhelming fear of the unknown will be gratified to learn that there is no hidden message revealed by reading this warning backwards, so just ignore that Alert Notice from Microsoft: However, by pouring a complete circle of salt around yourself and your computer you can ensure that no harm befalls you and your pets. If you have received this email in error, please add some nutmeg and egg whites and place it in a warm oven for 40 minutes. Whisk briefly and let it stand for 2 hours before icing.


I think it's brilliant.  Anyone seeking graphic design work, check out Johnny's website, he's pretty talented.  But mostly just read the disclaimer and have a good chuckle.

The Hidden Depths of Harry the Tech Guy

"Harry, I can't print, can  you help me?"

...

"Wait one moment."

"Harry, why is my email not sending to external addresses?"

...

"Wait one moment."

"Harry, can you explain to me why the projector in the conference room is project different colors than the ones I have in my Powerpoint presentation?

...

"Wait one moment."

"Harry, 我靠， 操你妈, 我电脑完全坏了，快点修复吧!"

...

"Wait one moment."

Sue Harrison, the lovely nurse at my elementary school, had one response to students who came into her office, regardless of whether they came in for a sprained ankle or the flu: "here, have a Saltine."  You can imagine how unhelpful a Saltine was after scraping my knee during gym class.  But there it was -- a Saltine, no matter the ailment.  The same appears to be true for our tech support guy at work.  No matter what the problem is, Harry will respond the same way: "wait one moment."  Several hours later, you're lucky if the problem has even been considered, let alone fixed.  New hires frequently have to wait days to even receive a computer, because Harry's busy jiggering it to meet company security standards.

To be fair to Harry, if the the Shanghai branch of J.D. Power & Associates has one area of real need, it's IT Support.  Harry's on an island by himself, with no support, and a horde of colleagues breathing down his neck for tech support that he's often not well trained enough to provide.  One or two days a week, he's not even in the office, because he's sent to another one of McGraw-Hill's segment offices in Shanghai to serve as their only source of technical support.  So it would be unfair to blame Harry and Harry alone for all of the offices technology issues.  Especially when you consider that at least some of the issues facing the staff could be avoided if employees simply read the mass emails that Harry frequently sends out to avoid having to speak to everyone individually.  I read those emails, or at least try to, and so I often avoid problems.

That said, I would be lying if I said that I hadn't always just associated Harry with the bumbling comedy of errors that he frequently is.  IT Support is, probably, the most thankless position in any office, but Harry's level of inefficiency often makes my experience at Paul, Weiss seem flawless from an IT standpoint.  So I always, perhaps unfairly, wrote Harry off as the somewhat incompetent tech guy I thought he was.

That is, until I received the following email from him a few weeks ago:

Hi Joshua,

Have you read Peter Hessler, a former New Yorker journalist’s 3 Novels called China Trilogy? Separately, they are <River Town: Two years on the Yangtze>, <Oracle Bones: A journey through time in China> and <Country driving: A Journey from China from farm to factory>. If you want to know China better, you cannot miss these 3 fantastic books!

This piqued my interest, more about Harry than about the books themselves.  Not only is he a reader, but he apparently reads books in English, and perhaps even the New Yorker?  I had to find out more.  Yesterday, I got the opportunity.  Harry and I happened to leave the office together, and during our short walk to the office I found out that there's far more to Harry the tech guy than meets the eye.  He's a smart, insightful guy, who loves to read, and loves to talk about reading.  Here are some of the things I learned about him last night:

• He studied law and history in college (why he ended up a tech guy is beyond me).
• On history, he says: "I like studying history because it's fun to see how often we repeat the same mistakes over and over again."
• One of his favorite novels is Orwell's 1984, because it reminds him of the Chinese autocracy.  He's not your typical stick-to-the-party-line Chinese citizen.  Picture a quiet revolutionary, sitting in a sparsely-decorated apartment, reading up on the "real world" while his countrymen are being fed misinformation.  Okay, maybe that's a bit dramatic, but that's the image I got last night.
• After I mentioned that I studied modern Chinese history for my thesis in college, he said, "Ah, you probably know way more about Chinese history than most Chinese people, since the information we are provided with is all propaganda and Party promotion."
• We started talking about classic Western writers, and I mentioned that James Joyce's Finnegan's Wake had been recently translated into Chinese, which I found appalling considering how impossible it is to understand in English.  His response: "Oh, yeah, there's also this guy...Thomas Pynchon...who wrote "The Rainbows of Gravity."  That one is hard too." The fact that he's heard of, let alone read part of Gravity's Rainbow is amazing to me.  Calling it "the Rainbows of Gravity" just is icing on the cake (that's how possessives are translated in Chinese, not unlike Spanish and other romance languages).
• This morning he came by my desk to recommend another book -- Robert Harris's Fatherland, about a world in which the Nazis had prevailed in World War II -- and to ask if I watched "Desparate-ly Housewives."  According to Harry, he was "really sad" when he saw the last episode.  "All those hours watching them.  And then it was over."  Tears were shed.

So, yeah, there's no question who the most interesting guy in the office is.