By MARLENE PARRISH, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

TOKYO - Tokyo is huge. If you stand on the top level of the highest skyscraper and do a 360-degree turnabout, you will see city to the horizon. It has parks, but no suburbs. High-speed roadways run through canyons of architecture, but numerous side streets, large and small, define neighborhoods, and each 'hood has its own main street and koban, police station cubicle.

TOKYO - "Birds do it, bees do it, even all the Japanese do it ..."

Apologies to Cole Porter.

Toto, we're not in Kansas anymore. Nope, we're in a bathroom in Tokyo about to alight on a (ital) ne plus ultra (end ital) electric toilet. In America, we sit, we go, we wipe, we flush.

TOKYO - Practice your chopstick skills before you go to Tokyo, although all restaurants keep at least a couple of forks set aside.

-- Unagi donburi. Donburi means "food arranged on steamed rice." Unagi is eel. Some people freak out because eels look like, um, snakes. Cooked, it's just a piece of fish, sweet-sauced and served over rice, often with shredded omelet to the side. Delish.

Chicken wings are inexpensive, succulent, a cinch to cook and they reheat beautifully. Usually served as an appetizer, they make a great entree, too. As for the menu -- for Labor Day, to name one example, or another occasion -- what goes with burgers and ribs goes also with wings: potato salad, coleslaw, corn on the cob, garlic bread, watermelon and ice cream.

Company's coming for a Fourth of July cookout.
Odds are, burgers are on the menu. Unless you are feeding the whole neighborhood, puh-leez don't settle for preformed patties, frozen or not. When you select the meat (it doesn't always have to be beef) and form the patties yourself, you get to control the quality of the meat and portion size while customizing the flavors.

Dessert was the last thing on my to-do list for Sunday dinner. I slathered an herb-and-garlic paste on the leg of lamb, set the table, prepped the vegetables, thawed out the bread, cleaned up the house and was looking forward to a wee nap before starting the countdown to finish dinner.

The horses are at the gate, their jockeys stand high in the stirrups, bets are placed and the crowd is going wild.And there they go!No, not the horses, the mint juleps.

If you don't make soup in the winter, don't call yourself a cook. It's a winter rite of passage. There's hardly a kitchen task that is easier or more rewarding than making a pot of soup from scratch. The essentials: favorite recipe, fresh ingredients, sharp knives, good vibes. Whistle while you work.