Tourists at Stanford

One of the most surprising and different things about going to Stanford are the sheer number of tourists who visit the campus on a daily basis. This number, unsurprisingly, increases during the summer. I'm not talking about "knows someone who goes to Stanford so we're touring the campus since we're visiting them" or "prospective high school student who is probably not a senior but is probably a freshman, sophomore, or junior" or even "parents of a prospective student."

Oh no. I'm talking about literal tour buses (those big huge ones with a toilet in the back and cushy chairs) that arrive on campus with tour guides who wave around little flags and whatnot. A lot of them (though not all) are Asian (specifically Chinese). They walk around campus, which is kind of annoying since it's already crowded with campers for the summer and whatnot, but whatever, that's fine. They visit the big spots around campus like Hoover Tower, the Oval, Cantor Arts Center (which is admittedly pretty awesome), and Memorial Church (which I have NOT been to yet, though to be fair, I tried to go with a friend and it was CLOSED probably because someone was having a wedding in there, so I did try at least...). That's fine, whatever, those are awesome places around campus to go and among the "must see" kind of spots. Like, if you only had a limited amount of time to spend on campus, those places are the big ones. The cactus garden, masoleum, and angel of grief are really awesome, but they're also really far.

So I don't mind people going around and being tourists and looking at those things. Or well, I only get mildly annoyed when they block the entire road and make it impossible to bike through or around.

There is one thing though, that the tourists do that piss me off to no end though. And, I will say, it's primarily the Chinese tourists that do this (though I think there's a partial reason for this), which does not help the image of Chinese tourists. Our classroom is right next to memorial church. Tourists will walk by and glance into our classroom since we have the windows open for ventilation, as it can get pretty stuffy in the classroom (and it lacks an ac). What makes me want to kill someone though, is when the tourists actually stare into our classroom, and get their face super obviously close to the window and poke their head in. Um, hello? We are obviously in class. Also? WE CAN TOTALLY SEE YOU. There's no one way mirror, so we can see that you're staring at us and at our classroom and it's really really distracting and disturbing.

Like really really distracting. I can't sit on the whiteboard side of the classroom because I would seriously, probably get super pissed if I sat there since that side is the one that you can see from the window really well.

That's not even the worst of it either.

So when they stare, I just get really really annoyed. However, some tourists have pulled out cameras and taken pictures of us in our classroom while staring at us through the small gap in the window. What. The. Hell. Is wrong with these people. What corner of the planet is it okay to take pictures of students in a classroom as they're watching you without even asking if it's okay? SERIOUSLY. I mean, I think most cultures would find it rude if you went up in their home country, less than ten feet away from them, and take their damn picture while pretending like they couldn't see you.

Dear Chinese tourists: this is not okay. Dear other tourists: this is still not okay, no matter if you're in a different country or not.

I swear to god, if I catch someone doing that, there are two things that may or may not happen. One, I might pull out my phone and take a picture of them. This, however, disrupts the class. Two, I might get up, lose it a little bit, and tell the person to stop taking pictures because it's EFFING RUDE AND I DON'T WANT MY PICTURE TAKEN. Who takes pictures of students anyways? I mean, we're not exactly kids any more but still. It makes me feel like I'm on display in a little box; an uncomfortable feeling.

Though speaking of taking pictures of kids, maybe it is a cultural thing after all. There's a student in our class who's from China, and we were talking about how cute Japanese elementary school kids are and stuff, and somehow we were talking about them walking home and stuff and the Chinese guy casually mentioned that he would/wanted to take a picture of the elementary school kids, and justified this by saying that of course he would ask the child first.

We pointed out to him that a) they're still kids so asking them doesn't really do much b) he's a stranger and c) he's a man taking pictures with little kids and oh yeah, d) society kind of frowns upon this both in the US and in Japan because these kind of actions are things that pedophiles do. I mean, I will not disagree that those kids are really freaking cute, but to go up and ask them to be in a picture with you? SUPER SHADY. You never know with intent, and it's not the same as going up to someone with a dog and asking them if you can pet it (though I have seen times when there's a cute kid and there might be a comment of "you're kid's cute" but I feel like people generally don't ask to hold the baby, and they certainly don't go over and pick up the small child. Those kind of things get you arrested.

On a more random note, we had a pretty cool cultural event on friday. We did tea ceremony, which was super interesting to do though I think I got too embarrassed by my Japanese slash the woman didn't understand what I wanted to do slash I didn't think about passing my cup to the other person to pour slash I used the wrong form to ask and then lost confidence but whatever. Sadly though, the lunch place we were going to get bento boxes from was closed for renovation, so we had to order from a different place. I'm kind of sad now that we canceled that one culture day so people didn't have to come in and commute and blah blah. That cost me excellent free food that we missed out on two weeks in a row. But I guess I shouldn't complain, since free food is free food... but they had good tasting hamachi. Sigh.

Only two more weeks of classes. If that tourist peeping business happens again, I'm requesting to change classrooms. :x

MSG

Oh monosodium glutamate, you wonderfully delicious additive that has been demonized so much.

So MSG has a super bad rap as being awful for you and an additive and blahblahblah - and I'm not saying it's not. Oh wait. I just looked around online. Pretty much everything I've seen so far that cites scientific studies report that there is NO correlation between MSG and the side effects that people claim to feel. These side effects have been rigorously tested; the only effects ever discovered were from a placebo on a self-identified MSG sensitive person. Is it lethal? If you stuff a whole bunch of it in your face by itself (like we're talking a ridiculous amount)(or if you're a mouse), then maybe. But eaten with food? Not at all.

Clearly, the link we should be exploring more is the mental one between our attitudes towards food and the way that we actually experience taste; how our brains and mental activity mediate and alter the signals we get from taste receptors in our mouth. That'd be a pretty interesting thing to investigate, actually, if there isn't research done on it already. I mean, that study, and the whole existence of the placebo effect, validate the fact that how we actually perceive an experience can viscerally and physically effect what we're experiencing.

This whole "holy crap I feel tingly and numb because omg too much MSG" is actually known as the Chinese Restaurant Effect, because of MSG's close association with Chinese food (though, whether it's used or not in Chinese food... I'm not sure.)

Kind of ironic though, because contrary to what it seems like, MSG was actually created initially by a Japanese scientist and distributed by a Japanese company - Ajinomoto - around the turn of the century (so MSG is like, a hundred years old about). Ikeda Kikunae was working on isolating the "savory" flavory - also known as umami in Japanese (and gaining more attention as it is touted as the sixth taste). That savory flavor is the kind of thick, meaty flavor found in... meat. Or in mushrooms, as it's often explained. It's also found in konbu, a type of kelp that's used frequently in Japanese kitchens to make things like stock. Other notable foods with glutamic acid (the stuff that MSG is an artificial reproduction of) include parmasan cheese, marmite, vegemite, and soy sauce. Ajinomoto, which means "the essence of taste" started to produce MSG around 1909. Of course, it wasn't very long before China was able to produce an imitation, since this savory flavor was something the Chinese had been searching for as well. Around 1920, a man named Wu Yunchu was able to replicate the way the Japanese company manufactured MSG and called it weijing and applied for a patent on it, despite Japanese protests.

The relationship between Japan and China during the 1920s was not a productive one for Japan. Chinese people were boycotting European and Japanese goods, prompting the demand for weijing to outstrip supply - so much so that the company actually started to buy Ajinomoto and then relabeled it, repackage it, and then sold it under its own brand as "100% Chinese" (Kushner 153).

Oh China. Never change.

The whole reason I got interested in this though, is from a couple readings I was doing for class. One of them is the manga, Oishinbo, a food "gourmet" comic about creating the Ultimate menu. I just got it in the mail! The English language versions are "bite sized" chunks of story separated by theme into different volumes (e.g. volume one is "Japanese cuisine"). The one I was reading was "Ramen and Gyoza" so naturally, there's quite a lot of talk about China, and inevitably, the use of MSG. As expected, it was one of the things that the characters used to distance Chinese food from Japanese food ("Western" foods I've found, often try to do similar things). Ironic, no?  

Works Cited:
Kushner, Barak. "Imperial Cuisines in Taisho Foodways." Japanese Foodways: Past and Present. Ed. Rath, Eric C. and Stephanie Assmann. Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 2010.

Butter rice~

Right before my last Japanese midterm, our sensei (Japanese for teacher, and often used as a suffix kind of for addressing teachers/doctors/"masters" - I use it so often for my teachers that it's pretty much become a habit for me to think of teachers as blahblahblah-sensei rather than Mr./Mrs. Blahblahblah ) introduced this show to us called Shinya Shokudo (roughly translated as midnight canteen/eaterie).

Talk about cruel and unusual punishment man. "Hey students, your midterm is like, in a couple days BUT HERE'S THIS SUPER INTERESTING DRAMA ABOUT FOOD good luck studying lololol."

Obviously, since I haven't failed yet (or watched the entire series yet) I still have some modicum of self control... but tonight since we have a long weekend, I figured it would be perfectly alright to practice some Japanese listening and play an episode (or two...).

The episode I was watching today was episode five: Butter Rice. Oh man. Butter rice. Totally like... my thing.

Butter rice has forever held a special place in my heart. There's something that's so nostalgic about it (or, as they'd say in Japanese, natsukashii) that keeps me coming back despite the oh my god this is unhealthy kind of feeling. But I mean really, how unhealthy is it when you consider the fact that a lot of other sauces that you'd put on it anyways probably aren't that much more nutritious than butter.

I like salt on my butter rice, rather than soy sauce. :) My grandpa used to eat it that way (my dad too) and one of my special skills is picking up the really probably not healthy but rather simple dishes from my grandfathers. Butter rice was one of them (oatmeal, salt, and butter is another one I think, and mizithera pasta from the Old Spaghetti Factory I picked up from my other grandpa).

Butter rice is also ridiculously easy to make. It's a good go to food for leftover rice when you're like, "crap, I have all this leftover rice but I need to use it up somehow but I'm pressed for time so I don't want to cook anything-slash-I just plain don't want to cook anything HEEYYYY butter salt and rice.

Pretty sure I'm going to die of a heart attack. Or clogged arteries. Or high blood pressure. One of those.

This week, the freshmen from the seminar I'm TAing asked if I could talk about Japanese food. I was shocked. They asked if I could talk, on a day that they didn't have class. A good number of students showed up too. ...I kinda got too excited by all the random random stuff you can talk about with food though, so I'm a little worried I was a bit too unorganized. Oh well. Hopefully it was interesting. Seriously though, I could talk about that stuff for hours and hours and hours and hours....

That reminds me though. I have Japanese homework due this weekend. I suppose I should go do that and stop thinking about food hahaha.

Shark fin soup

Taste for Shark Fin Fades Slightly in China

For something that doesn't really taste all that great, shark fin soup is a ridiculously popular and prestigious dish in Chinese culture. I had the chance to taste it at my uncle's 80th birthday at a restaurant that still had some fins from before they banned it in California. I shudder to think at the cost, but then again, that's how it should be. Expensive, so that fewer people can buy it, thus decreasing the demand for shark fin, hopefully. The shark fin in the soup is pretty tasteless; it's really just there for texture. The majority of the taste comes from the broth it's in. I think when I ate mine, I tried a little bit of it, then gave the rest to my parents (or someone) because I didn't care for it much and was already full from the ridiculous amount of food that had already come out.

Personally, I don't have anything against the dish itself, nor the fact that it involves eating shark. I do not, however, condone the practice of finning - the practice of just cutting off the shark's fin and dumping the body back in the ocean to die - and the fact that, in order to keep up with the demand, suppliers are depleting the shark population, which has huge effects on oceanic ecosystems. If there were a way to use both the fins and the body for the shark, instead of just dumping it, along with a way to contain overfishing, I don't think there would be too much of an issue with eating it; on the contrary, I think it's a part of the culture and perfectly fine to eat if caught in an ethical way.

But controversy aside, I wanted to take a look at why Shark Fin Soup carries so much cultural capital and prestige with it, and its history, and how it got to this point - and by quick look, mostly I mean looking at wikipedia and the links in the references and on google. Hooray, "research."

From what I've been reading - both on wiki and other sites like NY Times and Time Magazine - the soup itself originated during the Ming dynasty and was a delicacy only for the rich (presumably because it was pretty dangerous to catch, not to mention difficult). However, in the recent years, due to a rising affluent middle/upper middle Chinese population, more Chinese families can afford to splurge on the soup.

I'd also hazard a guess that as the number of affluent families increase, so too does the need to differentiate and to distinguish themselves from those families they consider beneath them in status. Doing so involves the consumption of not only foods, but other status symbols that carry cultural capital and prestige. Hence the increase in demand for shark fin soup. My hypothesis would be that if one were to observe the social status/class of the people who consume shark fin soup, the majority of these families would fall within that grey area of families who are trying to change classes, or whom are at the top of the middle class or bottom of the upper class. Those families are at the highest risk (or potential) of social mobility, and probably the ones that require the most conspicuous consumption of goods that will help them stay in their desired social class. Just a theory though. It could also be lots and lots of really rich people.

Also interesting, and slightly tangentially related, according to someone interviewed by the Times, is that the three treasures of the sea in China are abalone, shark fin, and sea cucumber. I never would have expected sea cucumber to make that list on account of... how easy it is to catch them. Unless sea cucumbers secretly had these mouths with rows and rows of teeth. That would be terrifying.

Further reading:
Bird, Maryanne. "Man Bites Shark." Times online. February 2001. http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,100660,00.html?iid=fb_share

Wikipedia. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shark_fin_soup

Qin, Amy. NYTimes.com "Taste for Shark Fin Fades Slightly in China." (see link at top)

Japanese Worcestershire: WOOOOSTAAAAA sauce

So Japan has this sauce they use for tonkatsu (breaded pork cutlet. Link for moe info, but oh man. This stuff is some of my favorite Japanese food) that's ridiculously tasty. It ranges in consistency from syrupy with the consistency of like, gravy, to viscous and runny like Worcestershire sauce, and is absolutely delicious. Growing up, I knew it as "the tonkatsu sauce" and later as "the bulldog sauce" since the brand we often bought was Bulldog. I thought it was a weird name, but whatever, not like companies don't have weird names sometimes... and I mean, siracha sauce has a giant rooster on the front.

For the longest time while I was in Japan there was this stuff labeled ウースターソース（uusutaa sousu - pronounced kind of like "Woostaaa sauce") that I thought was oyster sauce. Ha. So wrong on that account. I was stupidly buying import Worcestershire sauce when really, it was sitting there staring me in the face. Apparently, "Worcestershire" is too hard to katakana-ize, so it just changes into "uustaa" sauce.

To digress a little, other words have gotten similar "too hard to katakana-ize treatments. There are a couple of words in Japanese for all-you-can-eat style eateries. One of them is 「食べ放題」(tabehoudai)「ブーフェ」(buufeh) and「バイキング」(baiking/viking). So tabehoudai translates as something like "all you can eat,"
buufeh is obviously from buffet... and then there's viking. We were like wtf? when my friends and I first saw it. It turns out that originally, it comes from the Scandinavian term, "smorgasbord" (supposedly, the English use of the word, as well as buffets themselves also come from this after a World Fair event that used it to showcase Swedish food) however, this proved too difficult to say, so it was changed into the easier to say, "viking." Since, you know, vikings, Scandinavia... it totally made sense. Actually, I'd be really interested in seeing if there's anything explaining that connection, or if people back then were really just like "oh hm, what else is Scandinavian? Hmmm... VIKINGS. Vikings totally ate a lot too, so let's call our all you can eat thing a viking!" Facepalm.

Anyways, back to woostaa sauce. I get emails and stuff from the Huffington Post and New York Times whenever they run food articles, so one came up for how they found the original recipe for Lea & Perrins Worcestershire Sauce in a skip that detailed what exactly went into the "spices" and "seasoning" on the ingredients label (spoiler: it's not vegetarian friendly). Things that include stuff like lemons, pickles, and anchovies. While the recipe didn't include how to make it, nor how much sauce it yielded, it was still a more complete picture of what went into the sauce since even the manufacturers often spoke in code, or didn't know the entirety of the recipe.

One of the code words they happened to use was "bulldog" or "bulldog clip" - and while I have no idea what that actually means, I have a huge hunch that those code words are the source of the childhood tonkatsu sauce I grew up with. I saw that article and went "OH MY GOD IT ALL MAKES SENSE." Apparently though, the Japanese worcestershire sauce uses pureed apples as a base though? But yeah, that's where that logo comes from (I think).

A little bit more on this Japanese Woostaa sauce: it was originally thought of as the Western equivalent of soy sauce, which is why it appears EVERYWHERE in Japan (not just at tonkatsu restaurants, but especially there too). I think it's also used in hambagu (hamburger steaks/patties) and other things... I guess kind of in the way Worcestershire sauce is actually used lol (I use it in meatballs. Nom.) Japanese cooking uses soy sauce as a flavoring, so during the later Meiji and Taisho periods (~1868 to 1926) when Japan was rapidly Westernizing in the name of modernization, Japanese chefs, when making Western foods, would use Worcestershire sauce as flavoring for like, everything (essentially, the same way they would use soy sauce for Japanese foods). That's the period when there was a huge influx of Western influence on everything in Japanese culture, from food to fashion to ways of thinking and the emergence of new "moga" modern girls who fashioned themselves off of western women (think the 20s) and read Western thinkers. The popularization of Western food is generally traced to this period, though other foods (mostly either Dutch based or Iberian) were around in the Japan from the 16th and 17th centuries. Also, lots of the Westerners in Japan at that time didn't actually come from their native countries, but were transplants from China - hence the huge British presence.

Seriously though, if you've never tried tonkatsu, it's a pretty awesome dish. Pork cutlets are breaded and then fried until crispy golden brown, and then served with tonkatsu sauce. The sauce, if you go to nicer tonkatsu specialty restaurants, is all house made, and you can grind a little bit of sesame seed into it. Delicious stuff. I'm getting ridiculously hungry thinking about it. I miss tonkatsu so much...
Tonkatsu restaurants also usually serve meals with cabbage salads and a bowl of rice, both of which you can usually refill for free - hooray, all you can eat cabbage (actually, the dressing is pretty tasty... so I usually eat a bunch of this haha). Good tonkatsu is moist inside, but has a crispy outside. Some places put cheese inside, or roll thin slices of pork around other things such as asparagus. So delicious.

...and now I really crave tonkatsu. Man, this is the problem with studying food sometimes. You get bad cravings for things when you have a bunch of food still in the refrigerator, or for food that is literally thousands of miles away...

Hint hint, parents, whom I know totally read this. Can we have tonkatsu for dinner sometime? Please? lol. Maybe I can convince my brother to make it sometime...

Sources:
   Schlesinger, Fay. "Original Lea and Perrins Worcestershire Recipe Found in Skip" Mail Online. November 2009. Accessed 16 December 2012. http://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/food/article-1224736/Original-Lea-Perrins-Worcestershire-Sauce-recipe-skip.html
   Ishige, Naomichi. The History and Culture of Japanese Food. London: Kegan Paul, 2001.

Ice Ice Baby

Before today, the only ice hockey I had seen consisted of The Mighty Ducks 1 and 2. Never been to a game, since, growing up in California where it doesn't actually snow... there aren't too many professional teams (though, I do remember there were teams at the ice skating rink I used to visit as a child in Berkeley). We have one in northern california - the San Jose sharks (who apparently used to play at the Cow Palace).

I had no idea there was another league outside the NHL. Apparently there is - the ECHL. And apparently San Francisco just got a team: the Bulls. And apparently, my parents had purchased tickets to go to the game... so to avoid what happened with the football game last time, where my family went without me and I was just kind of stuck, I said yes, I'd go (despite this looming amount of work for school that keeps on staring at me, that I'm still procrastinating on as I write)

Ice hockey,  it turns out, is a lot more interesting to watch than certain other sports for the whole game, especially when the players fight or take a fall. There were some pretty spectacular falls tonight too. Plus, it's only three periods long! I'm totally okay with this. I actually found it hard to sneak in a little bit of reading when I could, because there was always something going on, and the puck was always moving back and forth, so it never really got boring to watch.

It seems so... angry and violent though. Near the end of the third period, one of the players ripped off his helmet and gloves and started punching one of the other players. It took a lot longer for the refs to pull them apart than in other sports.

Speaking of refs... ice hockey is not a sport I would like to ref. I think I'd rather ref any other sport, even if I could skate really well (which I can't). The moves I saw the refs pull, and the jumps, and near misses (and some hits) the refs were subject to... yeah. Seemed kinda dangerous.

But overall, that wasn't too bad. Kinda fun, actually, despite not knowing what was going on most of the time and not being able to keep track of where the heck the stupid puck was.

*

Also, recently it was thanksgiving... my first one back in the states in two years! HOORAY, AMERICAN FOOD. I'm thankful for turkey and stuffing and thanksgiving food! Except we had thanksgiving in NorCal this year (which, for a while, we had thanksgiving in San Diego because that's where I was going to school and stuff) so we had a Chinese thanksgiving with the extended family. My siblings came back home too, so it was really nice to see them again, despite wanting to kill my brother several times (he still has this magic way of pushing my buttons just the right way. I guess that's the job of brothers...). He's so frustrating sometimes! lol. But I am really glad I got the chance to see them again, even if the butt did forget to bring the rice cooker back up for me.

Chinese thanksgiving means Chinese sticky rice stuffing with the mushroom and sausage stuff and turkey, potato salad, rolls, cranberry sauce, gravy, and deviled eggs. Oh, and party punch (which is a combination of sorbet and 7 up, no alcohol involved), and pies. But no regular stuffing, and no mashed potatoes. NO MASHED POTATOES OR STUFFING. I was actually kind of sad. Ironically, I've had those the past two years, and it was the turkey that was always lacking (though, my first year we *did* have turkey and my second year in Japan we had the best chicken I've ever eaten). Seriously. Those two things are my favorite parts of thanksgiving. ...AND WE DIDN'T HAVE THEM. SUPER SAD FACE. Chinese sticky rice stuffing is also pretty good, but it's like they combined the mashed potatoes and stuffing and made it Asian by turning it into rice.

I know what I'm making for dinner over the next few days...

This thanksgiving, also, will forever be remembered as the infamous thanksgiving where our uncle maybe tried to kill us (or at least make us sick) by putting out rancid butter. Like seriously, when we went to the adults asking if they noticed something funny about the butter, my uncle was like, "Oh yeah, that butter's kinda old..." So old, apparently, that both the taste and texture changed. It tasted like mizithera cheese to me (and Parmesan to my cousin, and blue cheese to my brother), and had the texture of crisco. It probably wasn't wise of me or my brother to actually continue to eat it once we put it on our rolls... I'm not sure how much he ate (he spread it all around the outside of his roll), but I had put it on half my roll and kept eating it to make sure it was really kind of strange tasting with a weird texture.

Shoulda trusted my taste buds when they said "WOAAAAAAAAH SOMETHING IS OFF." I'm not sure if it's the cause, but I got a little sick the day after, and I'm blaming it on the butter because my brother felt a little not well too, though for not as long. Maybe I ate more butter? I had no idea butter could actually go bad like that though. -_-

I'm not ready for thanksgiving break to end. D: I NEED MORE TIME. I don't know what happened to all the- oh wait. Yes I do. I went to Disneyland for two days, then driving up and down took basically two days (though I did get a lot of reading done during those days), and then thanksgiving happened, and then the day after we went wine tasting which took all day, and then my uncle had a birthday party I didn't find out about until the day before thanksgiving and we went to the hockey game, and now, somehow, impossibly, we're at Sunday, with school - week 9 - starting Monday. WEEK NINE. WHERE DID THE QUARTER GO?! Seriously.

Next quarter, I'm taking less classes. D:

Sakuragi-cho, Yokohama

...stupid blog service, not backing up my last draft. It was all written and everything, and I was having problems publishing. I thought that it had auto-backed up... but apparently I was wrong. Sigh. All last night's hard work gone. I thought I had saved it to my c&p clipboard, but I had accidently overwritten it with my united milage plus number. -_-;

Oh well, what can you do.

Yesterday I spent the day in Sakuragi-cho, Yokohama, because my friend had won an auction for two pre-showing tickets of Rurouni Kenshin, a live action movie based off a manga/anime series. It's pretty old (ie, mostly my generation or older know about it) but it's a fun series about a former assassin turned wandering samurai who does good to atone for all the people he killed. The main character is this dude named Himura Kenshin, and he's played by Takeru Sato (who also was in one of my favorite dramas, Mei-chan no Shitsuji aka, Mei-chan's Butler).

I was super excited to see the movie before I left, since it meant that I wouldn't have to rush around trying to worry about seeing the movie before I leave in two days (omg). There was a mention of maybe a cast member appearing, but we weren't really pegging our hopes on that.

But then, at 3:10, they announced that we were having a guest visitor. We were still pessimistic, that it would be like one of the side characters.

But no. Freaking Takeru Sato and the producer walked out on the stage, and part of my inside exploded into fangirly goodness. He's so. Freaking. Cute. Takeru, not the producer.

Sadly, we weren't able to actually get his autograph or anything, since he was up on stage the whole time and they started the movie right after, nor were we able to take pictures of him since I'm pretty sure we would have gotten kicked out. But oh. My. God. WE GOT TO SEE THE REAL TAKERU SATO LIVE EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE~ ^_________________^

Kay, enough fangirling for now. :)

Sakuragi-cho also is home to the instant noodle ramen museum. So I mean, that was an obvious, must go to place before I left. It's pretty cool, with part of it being a museum complete with all the instant ramen Nissin ever made since its inception (complete with a huge amount of flavors from your basic chicken to cheese curry to BBQ flavored ramen, PLUS instant spaghetti which actually looked pretty good) along with an interesting animated movie (with English audio options!) about the history of instant ramen and how Momofuku Ando, its creator, came up with the idea for both than and for cup noodles (apparently, it's because Americans suck {or used to suck} at using chopsticks and eating from bowls, so they switched it to a cup with a fork). Really, it's a super interesting place.

On the third floor though, they have a place where you can make your own cup ramen by adding in flavors and so on, as well as an actual "ramen factory" where you can make the noodles themselves. Oh. My. God. Sadly, you need to sign up for a specific time slot for those, and all the time slots we could attend were full (and the factory was completely sold out). Oh well. Next time.

I also caved into buying a book about the history of ramen. It's all in Japanese. So help me god, I will learn enough Japanese to be able to read that book by the end of this academic year. But I mean, it's about the research Momofuku Ando did on the history of ramen. HOW ON EARTH COULD I RESIST BUYING SOMETHING LIKE THIS? The answer was, I couldn't, and yeah, now I'm paying to ship it back home lol.

That area is really pretty though, and I wish I had spent more time there. At night too, they light up a bunch of things and it's really really pretty. Stupidly, I forgot to bring my camera with me though. Need to get better about that...

We found this amazing American place called Bobby's or Bubby's or something like that that had American foods (Mashed Potatoes? YES PLEASE) along with sweet sweet pies. Oh my god. Pies.

My friend thought I wasn't serious about getting pies after dinner. To be fair, I'm not overly fond of sweet things, nor do I have an especially large sweet tooth. I can usually resist things like ice cream easier than I can, say, a super delicious steak. Mm, steak.

But pie? Especially banana cream, strawberry, or a good fruit pie? I CRUMBLE LIKE A PIE CRUST. This place also had a banana mocha pie (omfg?!) which they were sold out of (nooooooo) and then they sold out of the banana pie (extra NOOOOOOOOOOOO), but their apple pie and the crust were really tasty. Still kind of sad about the banana pie though. Still really want the banana mocha. They said the chocolate pudding was their most famous but yeah... I love fruit pies more.

Soon though. Soon the tasty pies shall be MINE. Japan has really nice cakes and sweets and parfaits, but I've missed the wonderfulness that are things like peach crumbles and banana cream pies.

Two and a half more days.

Holy cow.

Oldschool Rare Food Adventures

So, it seems that I have found another Foodie in Japan whom I've ended up becoming friends with. Oh man. She's *that person* who knows all the good restaurants and all the good places to go. She's been there before, and has recommendations on what to get. Plus she's pretty good company and really quite fun to talk to.
In our latest cultural culinary exchange, she took me to this small house on the river


that I've walked by every week on my way to my Tuesday school, and that I pass by on a bus every other week on my way to my Friday academic school. It sits on the edge of the street and the riverbank, with support structure on the wall below it. It looks really really old on the outside, like one of those houses that's well lived in, but not necessarily well maintained. Outside is a red lantern (the only indication that it's a restaurant and not only a private home) that the owner lights up at night.
The owner is this lovely old woman who runs the whole place by herself. She buys, preps, cooks, and serves everything herself in her ridiculously tiny kitchen. Like seriously, if you only count the stove area and the sink, my kitchen is about the same size. To be fair though, she has a nice amount of counter and prep space, making it a pretty decent kitchen for one person to move around in. There's a fridge in the middle, and next to it, a giant TV that sits atop a ledge, which is actually a doorway to the old lady's pantry and extra refrigerator/storage space. It's pretty awesome looking.


The place, she said, is about 42 or 43 years old; it shows on the inside. Everything is that almost yellowish, sepia kind of color on the walls. It has that kind of dirty old Chinese hole in the wall look to it (which, is another indication of how awesome it is). The seats too, at the bar, were these super oldschool red plushy bar stools. There were no menus; only slips of paper with the menu items pasted to the wall. My teacher told me that this was a really good representation of what old restaurants used to look like in Japan, which corroborates my earlier suspicions with the restaurants in Takahashi.


So apparently old restaurants were really small. There was the table we were sitting at, which seated 7 people around it. Maybe 5 seats at the counter. And then there was a private room. That was about it. The whole place was really short as well; some of my taller guy friends might have had to stoop. Also, there were cobwebs EVERYWHERE in this place! There were spiderwebs on the chopsticks at the table we sat down at, a couple barely visable lines running up to the lamp, where they joined a larger web with a spider in it. There were spiders in the windows.
But my teacher insisted that this place had this amazing shake, or salmon, though today she didn't have the sashimi, only the cooked one. I do enjoy eating salmon, though I feel like sometimes it can be pretty hit or miss on how good it tastes.


This salmon though, was a type of rare salmon. It's called 「ときしらず」(toki shirazu) and is translated kind of as "doesn't know the time" due to its irregular migration timing (or, the popular story is that they simply don't care and they just kind of wander around). My teacher said that normally, salmon return to their hatching grounds some time in the autumn. However, these salmon return sometime July through September. Perhaps it was supposed to taste delicious because it was younger (and younger animals do tend to be quite delicious).

Oh, the Internet says they're also called "spring chum" in English, and are of a different variety than the chum you can find on the northern part of the Northern American coast (from Alaska to Oregon).

Seriously though, it was one of the best things I've had during my stay in Japan. Freaking. Amazing. She salted the salmon before cooking it, and it had just the right amount of moistness and saltiness to it. She served it with daikon (which you were supposed to splash soy sauce on). I mean, I'm not even the biggest fan of salmon, or skin in general, but the skin of the salmon was excellent. I'd eat more of it if I could. It was actually soft, with no trace of the scales or anything, nothing to make you remember that it once came off a fish. I wouldn't say it beats out Kobe beef, but you know what, it's right up there with it. So freaking good, from such a tiny hole in the wall place. Definitely not the kind of food I expected from that place. I guess that just goes to show the old adage about assumptions.

It had a bunch of other random things too. Gyoza that was ridiculously delicious. (I'm such a sucker for gyoza). Plus this cut of beef that - I was told - only yields 2 g per cow or something tiny like that. Maybe not 2 grams. Maybe 200 grams. Probably that. I forget what it's called though... something. It was really tasty though.

Also among my favorites was the flower part/stalk bit of wasabi. Hawasabi, it's called. Pretty spicy, in that wasabi kind of sense, but it was also pretty tasty :D Oh, and my second favorite that night was definitely the somen. The somen was handmade; a little bit harder and a little less sweet than normal. It was made by this old dude the shop lady knew. The sauce that she used also used pretty expensive ingredients as well, so the dipping sauce was also really tasty. One of the best somen's I've had. :)

Still though, I think the salmon was the best!

This restaurant, despite its looks, had a bunch of things that were "rare" kind of in Japan/Niimi because the lady told us that she thought of these dishes herself. Like the somen? That was her creation. Kind of inspirational, to hear it from her about how she decided to make all these delicious things!

In exchange, I gave her a little tupperware full of chili. :D I made it in my rice cooker, and oh man, it's pretty freaking tasty. :) I added a dash of vinegar and A1 sauce, which made it a bit tangier, and ohhhh that was just the right thing it needed.

I almost didn't want to give it to her since it was so tasty hahaha. I had it today as chili cheese nachos. Nom.

What a way to celebrate the (extended) fourth of July! Nachooooos and no bean chili.

I swear I'll post about something that's not food or bug related sometime. Soon. Maybe.

Nachos & Wild Boar

I wonder if this is how it always works. Right when things start to get going, you end up leaving. I'm finally hanging out more with my teachers... right as I leave! Why couldn't this have happened sooner?! Also this year's first year JETs are pretty awesome (as are the friends I've made in my year); why am I leaving when they're just coming? Yar.

note: not drawn to scale (probably)

Monday night though, one of the teachers came over to my place for a little culinary cultural exchange. She brought me inoshishi, or wild boar, which is something of a local specialty? Or if not a local specialty, it's really common around this area because there are hoards (herds?) of wild boar that live in the mountains. I'm told by some of the other ALTs who drive in this area that seeing them (dead) on the road is a fairly common enough sight. I've yet to actually see one in real life (though it's probably for the better, since I've heard they're fairly dangerous - see picture hahaha). 

still probably not to scale, but who knows.

Really though, I've heard their tusks can do some pretty serious damage. That's actually one of the things they hunt up in the mountains, so whenever I hear gunshots, I generally assume that they're trying to shoot a wild boar (rather than a monkey or something.) I've also heard that they're kind of pests out in the countryside (which is where I am). They get into gardens and crops, rice fields, and other places humans don't want them (mostly everywhere - poor boars). If you need an example of how dangerous they can be, I suggest watching Princess Mononoke. Those boars can do some serious damage. Plus it's the boars who decide to retaliate, and the boars who are demon-posessed and yeaaaaah. Yeah. 

Lookit how freaking cute the baby ones are!
Oh. Em. Gee.

So they get hunted, and in Niimi, my Tuesday/Friday city, they're something of a local specialty (also apparently among the locals here too? For my teacher anyways.) I had wild boar ramen from an instant box package, but never like... fresh? When I told this to my teacher, she decided to take it upon herself to show me; we decided that she would come over and cook some wild boar for me, since apparently she has some from somewhere and it was pretty cheap, whereas going to a restaurant would probably be on the pricey side. It also meant that I got to try a more home cooked version of the wild boar, since apparently my teacher eats it frequently enough with her parents for her mother to not like the taste of it! 

I have no idea where my teacher ever got it though! I've never seen this in the grocery store (maybe I'm not looking hard enough). Or the butcher's. Maybe from a farmer who had to kill one? I'm not really sure. But she came with some pre-seasoned (and with onions) so we cooked some of that up so I could have *fresh* inoshishi. 

It actually wasn't bad. I can't describe the flavor beyond "well, it doesn't taste like beef or pork... but it tastes like... meat." It was kinda chewy though. She said that some people think it's smelly? I could get used to eating that though. It really wasn't bad, and worked pretty well over rice.

In exchange, I made "American"-ish food for her. I made nachos! They're kinda Mexican-American, yeah? Or Tex Mex. Personally, they were kinda crappy nachos since I had to use the cheesy kind of Doritos (I'm a tortilla chip purist hahaha) and the meh kind of Japanese cheese that goes from deliciously gooey cheese to solid plastic cheese in about one minute away from a heat source, microwaved it instead of baking it in the oven (oven gives it that amazing color, but I only have a tiny toaster oven and I never make "only a little bit" of nachos) and Japanese sour cream (which I suppose is better than NO sour cream) that's also kind of... solid. I did make guacamole for her (she said I was the first person she knew whom actually bought avocados at the grocery store) and added some left over jalapenos and hot sauce I needed to get rid of. The guacamole, honestly, on its own is pretty good, and apparently enough to convince people that I'm good at cooking (ahahaha. Though to be fair to myself, a Mexican-American chick gave it the green light, which, somehow validates it as being pretty damn tasty).

Score another win for (home made) nachos in Japan. 

We also talked about the state of marriage currently in Japan, and about how single ladies will often try to emphasize the fact that Oh Man, Do They Love Cooking when trying to net a man. She actually told me that while she does enjoy cooking, she generally avoids mentioning it so that it doesn't look like she's trying to find a man! I found this fascinating. Also, apparently, guys here look for that in a girl; how well she can cook, and whether or not she likes to. The uh, gossip around one of my schools is that one of the teachers does precisely that to try and appeal to men. She also said that they often look at the kind of bentos single ladies bring to school or company or whatever, since a homemade bento (versus a storebought one) indicates one's skill in the culinary domain. Cute bentos = likes cooking. Oh Japan. Personally, I think cute bentos = loads of time on your hands. 

My teacher explained though, that this was part of konkatsu, which means Stuff You Do When You're Looking For a Man/Marriage Partner. So you do things like make your lunchbox every day - yourself - to show the world that Yes You Do Love Cooking because Wow Doesn't That Make Me Look Like Perfect Wife Material. My teacher also claims that she can tell when a girl makes a bento, and when her mother makes the bento. Japanese women also will go to dating events/speed dating setups, or will go to parties in hopes that they will meet Mr. Stable Job And Marriage Prospect. They try to act cuter around guys (since apparently, guys dig that kind of thing here or something). There are dating websites.

Interestingly as well, they also have dating services that will help match people up, a lot like those websites, except with a lot more help. She said you submit your profile and they help match you with someone else. Then, they help you arrange for the first date, and chaperone the two of you for about half an hour before leaving you on your own. Apparently some people she knows met like that? 

Given the context of what women do in Japanese society (don't ask, I'm not sure) and the kinds of roles they fill and the opportunities they have to meet people, I guess this kind of service makes some sense. 

Something else she told me that was pretty interesting, is that here in the countryside at least, men who work at schools are way more attractive (though I'm not sure how much of that was projecting...) because they have stable jobs and can take a little more vacation than your average salary men. On the flip side though... women who are teachers are considered to be too clever and smart, leaving many female teachers as single ladies.

On a different, more food related note, I also managed to make chili in my rice cooker, since I lack a proper slow cooker. Who would have thought! I mean, I've made stuff like meat before in my rice cooker, and I made a stew with it before, but oh man, the chili actually turned out pretty good, and didn't require too many extra things that I didn't have. Actually, I had a bunch of chili powder I had brought with me back from the US, along with some uhhhh I forget the name, something- arbol de molido that basically was like holycow spicy. Really freakin' tasty though. So tasty that I can't believe I didn't make it sooner. Once you get the prepwork out of the way as well, it's a pretty easy recipe.

The only downside is that you can't use your rice cooker while you're cooking the chili, making things like prepping rice for chili and rice, something of a problem. I almost considered buying two, hahaha. #asianworldproblems

Runny eggs, my nemesis

Sunny side ups.

Bane of my culinary existence.

I made breakfast potatoes for dinner; I had a lot of potatoes I needed to get rid of, and I love having breakfast for dinner sometimes. I mean, I love breakfast. The large, lazy Sunday morning type where you have the time (and energy) to chop up potatoes and make some nice eggs and stuff, maybe some bacon to go with.

Eggs, hidden by the potatoes so you can't see the failure.

Japan seems to not really dig these kinds of breakfasts. Most places I go either a) Don't have breakfast or b) Have a "morning set" that comes with toast, a salad, and like, coffee or tea. Maybe some places will have egg salad with that or a sausage or something. But I don't really see eggs and toast for breakfast (otherwise I'd be more inclined to eat out for breakfast!). So it's nice to sometimes make it at home, whether for breakfast or dinner or whatever. Eggs in a basket are my default "oh hm, I need to finish these eggs and/or this bread" go to egg meal.

My default egg-for-breakfast is the scrambled egg, mostly because it's really easy to make, despite creating another dish to clean. Plus they're pretty tasty.

However, I do really like a runny yolk kind of egg, and there's something... happy, about sunny-side ups. They also go quite well with bread.

The problem is I can't make them to save my life. Or anything with a runny yolk for that matter (save the eggs in a basket). Mine always end up too overcooked, or the egg whites aren't cooked enough. I've tried reading about it online and watching videos.

Tonight, I tried to make it by steaming it at first. I don't think I was supposed to add water though. Oops. For some reason, in my head steaming = presence of water. My eggs ended up kind of... soppy and wet. Dripping, even. It was kind of... not so great. Plus the insides were partially cooked, so the bottom part was that pastely kind of yellow that's not so tasty. Sigh. The time I tried to make it before this, the insides ended up thoroughly cooked. Oops.

The second attempt tonight involved trying to baste the egg in oil, or, as the video recommended, butter, nearly browned (oh man, does that smell ridiculously good). It still turned out partially cooked inside though. I think I'm cooking them for too long? It doesn't seem like it's that long... it feels like it's cooking for a minute and then BAM slightly solid insides BAM BAM fully cooked yellow yolk. Ugh.
The basted egg method though... yeah, I was planning on experimenting all tonight with making runny eggs, but after that last one - cooked in butter - my arteries pleaded no more. Right, that's one method I'm not trying again (at least, not with butter. Maybe canola oil or something less fatty).

Tomorrow, I'm actually going to have breakfast! At least, that's the plan.

And if I fail again, there's always breakfast potatoes to make everything better.

Japanese TV foods

One thing I'm really curious about about Japanese food culture, is when they shoot the food kind of glamour shots. In the states, there have been documentaries about how often the food is doctored, or has makeup artists or how they use glue to make sure the pizza doesn't slide when you cut it. But Japanese shows often go to the restaurants themselves and they'll show how the food is made and then they'll show a shot of the food being picked up with chopsticks, then people consuming it. To me, that seems harder to fake, but then again, I never imagine they would use nail polish to make food look brighter and tastier!

Plus there's this idea, I think, that Japanese food is kind of "pure" in that sense - that what you see should reflect how the food really is. I don't know if Japanese people think the same way, but I do know that McDonald's burgers more closely resemble their ads here in Japan!

This TV show about food... they have this plant that looks like giant brussels sprouts hahaha. I wonder if these shows are like Good Eats (since they're showing where all the food comes from, giving a kind of cultural context for the food, then showing you how to prepare it complete with recipes, commentary, and guests). Ahhh they're showing this beautifully marbled steak rice bowl! It looks so. Tasty. But like I was saying before, they show you a shot of the top sizzling as it's cooking (I suppose you could maybe use a blow torch for that) but they showed a shot of the dish and then someone picked it up and ate it so...

Maybe it has to do with the Japanese aesthetic for beautiful food in the first place? I don't know, but I want to find out!

They're also showing someone's travel diary... It looks amazing! They drew pictures of all the dishes they ate with commentary and I'm so jealous of their drawing skills hahah...

Some dreams you just gotta chase

It looks like I'll be doing a bit more chasing After all. In an apparently rare day, we failed to see any manta at Manta point. Or well, most of us did. I think there was one person - a guide - who saw the manta.
Not going to lie, I'm really disappointed, especially since I was diving for two days to avoid this and seeing mantas was seriously the only reason i came here) But no... Yesterday we didn't even make it out to the scramble because of the snorkelers and the sick lady. Yeah I want to chase after my dreams, but not at the expense of the enjoyment and well being of other people (generally anyways).
Part of me wishes I wasn't so kind though. That's the super sad part, the part that's like, "you came all the way here to see manta, and you're leaving empty handed? I am disappoint." It kinda sucks to try to fulfill your dream (at your own expense! This was still an expensive trip) and then fail (though on the bright side, the dive spot we went to yesterday was excellent, and we saw the sea snake, and I still got to dive after a freaky moment of vertigo underwater, so there's that).
But I'm not going to give up. I'll save up my money, and try coming again someday. One day I'll make it out and swim with the giant mantas. One day. This is a dream I think worth chasing; one of the things (actually the only thing right now) I want to do before I die.
Wait for me mantas - I'll be back.
*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*
On a brighter, less serious note, Okinawa has some of my favorite combining foods and drinks. Taco rice, spam musubi, and these two drinks:

The one on the left is "sanpincha" and the one on the right is "shikwasa" I might have written about it last time I was here? Oh well. Sanpincha is actually jasmine tea (a stronger version apparently) and shikwasa is like calamansi, the Philippino name (I think) for it. It's like a lime... Kinda, but a bit sweeter and has a little different flavor.
Very tasty though. I want to bring it back to Okayama with meeee!

Okinawa

(now with pictures!)

I swear, some day, there will be a post written about the Philippines. Before I forget about everything even. Sadly, that day is not today, since what's fresh in my mind right now is the trip I took with some friends this past weekend down to Okinawa.

Okinawa - for some quick basic geography and facts - is a cluster of islands (and a prefecture I guess?) southwest of Kyuushu. From Takamatsu in Kanagawa Prefecture, Shikoku, it takes approximately two hours to fly to the main island of Okinawa and the capital city of Naha. This is further away than Korea is. There are a bunch of islands, and it's often referred to as the Hawaii of Asia (or of Japan).

Indeed, it is kind of like the Hawaii of Japan as far as climate and culture goes, but with a more Japanese twist. The main city is Naha, where most of the flights go into. The airport is ridiculously close to the rest of the city proper, and connected via monorail (called the Yui Rail I think?). From there, you can travel down the line for a fairly decent price; about 290 to Kokusai Dori (one of the main tourist shopping areas) or double that(ish) down to the end of the like where Shuri Castle lies. Either way, it would have been a nice airport to have a layover in, since the domestic security area took a relatively small amount of time to go through (can't say anything about international though). Fly in, pop over to Kokusaidori for an hour or two, pop back in to the airport.

I went with two other JETs - both ladies - so we had a kind of girl's trip. My friend, who's amazing, organized the hostel we were staying at, which was about halfway down the monorail and a short walk from the station. We managed to get a discount through booking through hostel world, so the hostel - called Guest House Kerama - was ridiculously cheap: 1000 yen only (about $11 per night). They had a washing machine and drier available, as well as a bunch of games and a kitchen, refrigerator, and showers. Oh, and probably most importantly, free wifi.

For the price that we paid, we got a pretty sweet deal. The showers were relatively clean (though there was a pervasive kind of moldy smell) and there were always people hanging around. We kind of chalked this up to islander attitude. The staff was friendly and helpful (even if sometimes the places they told us about were closed) and the whole place had this really relaxed attitude. Can't say too much for the quality of sleep though. I'm biased and can sleep almost anywhere, but like, occasionally, despite it being lights out in the rooms the downstairs was still fairly noisy enough to where I almost pulled out my headphones. Oh, and it was really really warm in the room, but no plug for the fans and no air con (though, they did have a unit, it just wasn't warm enough I guess, despite the fact I was sweating). We were really close to the ferry terminal as well, which is where a lot of the day ferries depart from for the Kerama Islands (another archipelago). I guess I'd stay there again, if I was really looking to save money. I think though I'd need a day at least in a nicer place. Call me spoiled but after years of using the public showers at swim meets, I'm willing to pay a little extra for a nice clean shower area.

We landed sometime in the afternoon, and after dropping off our stuff, made our way to visit Shuri Castle (and stopped for some amazing Taco Gratin. That probably took a year or two off my life, since it was potatoes and taco meat and cheese and cream sauce and ohgod heaven. But this was because they didn't have rice {wtf} to make tacorice with).

Shuri castle is very very different than the rest of the castles in Japan. Rather than being built in the typical Japanese style, it was built in the Ryuuku kingdom style, which feels distinctly more... Chinese. Probably because of all the red painted onto the buildings and the dragons. So many dragons. It's like they combined Chinese and Japanese styles into a fusion or something. The Okinawan kingdom was famous for dragons, and used this motif EVERYWHERE. Even the tops of the castle - which, on Japanese castles, often have this kind of fish thing on the edges and corners - are full fledged dragons in the same kind of pose as the fish things on Japanese castles. I wonder if they're better at keeping the birds off the top of the roof.

Sweetest chair ever.

Inside was also pretty amazing, though these castles, due to all the fighting and wars that have gone on in Okinawa, have been rebuilt multiple times. The interior was more Chinese or Korean in design, with a couple of sliding panel doors here and there. There were also lots of pillars (red of course) and small Japanese courtyards with bonsai around it. The castle also has a bunch of people dressed in period wear, which is pretty cool.


Actually, it took us a little bit of time to find the castle at first. There were signs, yes, but they were spaced out just far enough for us to question whether or not we were going the right direction. Such questions led us past a small lake with these wild... I'm not sure if they're ducks or if they're geese. They're as big as geese are, definitely (which honestly, made me slightly paranoid about walking too close to them). But obviously, we eventually found the castle.

The castle, in addition to its multi-language brochures, also turned visiting the sites into a kind of game, presumably for the kids that visited it by encouraging them to collect as many stamps as they could (and alas, only junior high school and younger kids were allowed to win a prize for collecting all the stamps in a given path). Oh Japan. Our own trip slightly transformed into "spot the stamp booth" as well, and we merrily stamped our way through the castle grounds. Quite an interesting way to go about doing that though. Not too expensive either, after the initial setup costs. You basically just need to keep buying ink, assuming the stamps don't get stolen. And man were there a lot of stamps. We didn't even get half of them.

This is what 8 bowls look like. Pretty!

We walked back to the station and decided to hit up Kokusai Dori, a street with a bazillion different shops geared specifically towards tourists and Okinawa souvenier gifts (omiyage). There were several stores that I think had one shop on both ends of the long street, and a dozen places that sold pretty much the same snacks and pretty glass cups. The street is actually really pretty at night though; everything is lit up, giving the street a very different feel than if you walk down it during the day. Also, since it was saturday evening, we saw a lot of foreigners (probably Americans) and marines walking around. Despite the list of food things that one of the girls had on foods to eat in Japan, we ended up at an Indian place with a fairly cheap all you can eat curry special thing. It wasn't too bad, but I had like... so many bowls lol. We also ran into this group whom we saw at the castle, then had separated from, then saw again getting off the monorail, then saw again in the restaurant. Stalkers. lol. They were there first though. But it was like the Philippines all over again.

Oh, and my personal favorite:

We saw two Green Rangers. You know, from the Power Rangers? Tommy the Green Ranger. Two guys (my friend confirmed this with the power of uh... observation) in the green ranger spandex suit, shoulder gear, boots, and helmets. I mean, these were really good cosplays of the green ranger. One of them had a video camera as well. We were kind of like "...wtf?" while some inner part of me (and a little outer bit too) freaked out and was like "OMG OMG OMG GREEN RANGER." Actually, seeing other people's reaction to seeing two Green Rangers walk down the street was kind of priceless... especially because people were usually really loud and vocal in their reactions. I heard two guys across the street flip out about it haha.

Ahhh, the 90's. My childhood. Good times. It makes me kind of sad that a bunch of my students have probably never actually watched the Power Rangers (or at least, seen them in that style/version).

Thank you Japan, for making that day freaking awesome.

Okinawa Part II (coming soon)

Korea!

Right, so I know I said I would post something about the Philippines like... a while ago, and I haven't gotten around to doing that yet (or even taking them off my camera). I figured that during all this down time, it would be more or less the perfect time to do so (if I don't go stir crazy from sitting in my chair all day long).

My goal for March is to be ridiculously productive and churn out a bunch of things I've been sitting on for a while. Such things include but are not limited to:

1. Looking at scholarship information. Yeah I should do that soon.
2. Reading the Food & Culture Reader by Counihan. It's GIGANTIC. And I mean like, it's about as big as my neuroscience textbook, and that thing was huge. I'm getting it from my school on wednesday, so we'll see how long I have to get through that beast.
3. Study more Japanese (and turn in the test on time for once).
4. Write, speak, and read more Japanese. I really want to try to write more in Japanese, since I think it'll help me remember things like grammar and so on that I'm struggling with.
5. Read through Axis.
6. Get my stuff together for Okinawa. YAAAY.
7. Upload pictures from the Philippines, the hospital in Thailand (which had kind of amazing sunset pictures).
8. Write more blog entries (new goal: two or three every week!).
9. Write about the Philippines.
10. Look up crazy cooking projects
11. Attempt to make tortillas again (despite the fact I'll be stateside in about six months).
12. Study kanji via the kanjibox app - at least 30 minutes every day. (Or like... an hour. Split into ten minute segments, with 5 minutes drills and then doing the quiz portion. Also, good god, doing drills gets kinda boring.)
13. Study kanji from the JET book, at least one or two a day.... yeah about that.
14. Mend black pants (or find a tailor...).
15. Do silhouette paper cut out art with water colors
16. Write letters to people and stuff.

Right. So those are kinda goals for the month I guess... and not necessarily in that order.

Anyways, Korea! Korea gets written about first since it was more recent and also shorter (and thus, will take me less time).

Where to start.

Oh right. Korea was awesome. I went to Seoul for less than 48 hours - we left Okayama on a flight around 10 am on Sunday (which for some reason required us to leave Takahashi around 7ish), and left some time around 5 o'clockish Sunday. Oh wait, the 7 o'clock makes sense now. It was a (kinda) secret trip with the other female teachers at one of my visiting schools; none of the men at school knew about it. Or well, one did, since if something happened to us - all of us - the school would need to know something about where we were and stuff. So our vice principal had been informed about the trip.

One of the teachers who lives in Takahashi offered to give me a ride to the airport so that I didn't have to meet my Japanese Teacher (JTE) in the neighboring city, which I gladly accepted. She came over to my place a little before 6:30 am. I was... mostly ready, haha. I had been packing the night before (since I seem to be incapable of packing before the night before). We went to pick up another teacher, and then swung by the school to see if the other teachers were there. They weren't, so we assumed they had left before us (since we were a little late)... and turns out, we had assumed wrong. We actually weren't the late ones!

We flew out of Okayama Airport, which apparently, does international flights. The airport itself is kinda small, but not too bad? I guess it could have been worse. Security was kinda... yeah. For some reason they did a full body pat down on me. Maybe because I was a foreigner; who knows. But I thought it was kind of amusing they had a person standing there whose job was to hand baskets to people for them to put their stuff in. Ahhh, Japan.

From Okayama to Seoul, it actually doesn't take very long - a little bit under two hours, or not quite long enough to watch an in flight movie since the announcements (during which they paused all videos) were repeated in Korean, English, and Japanese. Korean Air also gave us food for the short flight (much to my surprise) and they had the in flight consoles in the headrest of the seat in front of you. Awesome. This flight was ridiculously better than pretty much all of my flights to and from Japan. Video consoles! Movie choices! I found myself wishing the flight was longer so that I could finish watching Cowboys and Aliens. They also had the Puss in Boots movie (which I really wanted to watch).

I liked Korean Air. Definitely will fly them again.

But on to actual Korea! Seoul's airport (Incheon) is really really nice inside. It reminded me a little bit of the domestic wing at Manilla, or the airport at Thailand. Nice interior, even if the walk towards the baggage claim and immigration took ages. Immigration was a speedy process as well, as was baggage claim (though I think the fact that our group moved slowly helped too). There were twelve of us on this Korean spa-shopping spree.

Actually, that was the whole reason (the majority of) the teachers were going in the first place: to take advantage of cheap Korean cosmetics (at least, cheap compared to Japan), eat Korean food, and do a beauty treatment. Some of the art teachers were going to a museum... but that was about it.

We met up with our tour guide lady, whose name I can't remember, and boarded the bus that would take us to Seoul. The trip took about an hour, and required us to wear these ridiculously large seat belts that made me feel like I was strapping in to a space ship or something. Seriously, buckle does not need to be that large. When we arrived at Seoul (after passing a cute place called Jessica's Kitchen, which I woefully didn't get a picture of), we went straight to the duty free shopping center, where you could buy things from Korean cosmetics to Korean souveniers (like chopsticks) to brand name merchandise (Louie Vitton anyone?). I don't think they were actually much cheaper than the states are... but Japan has this bad habit of making everything outside of Japan look ridiculously cheap in comparison.

An hour later, when we boarded the bus again, everyone had armfuls of bags with stuff except for me. I had a bag of... man, I don't even know what I bought. Korean spoons?

The next place we went was the hotel, where we were able to drop off our things and freshen up a bit before we set out to do our next activity: beauty treatments!

We walked and took the subway to this place called Este, and wow, just wow, the streets of Seoul are, quite simply, amazing. Along the thoroughfares, the sidewalk teems with vendor stalls selling small things, clothes, and food. The street food looked kind of amazing, and more than once, I saw a stall selling churros. Churros! There was life everywhere, but it never got the feeling of being too crowded, or too much. Totally different than Tokyo, or even Osaka. Osaka I just feel kind of lost in and I'm like ahhh I don't know what to dooo, but Seoul has enough small shops with friendly looking exteriors that invite you in without the throngs of people like Tokyo. It's weird though, because, like Tokyo, Seoul is a megacity, and the national capital area is supposed to be the second largest metropolitan area, and its subway the second busiest in the world, according to Wikipedia.

At the beauty place, we split into two groups so that we didn't overwhelm the place, and one group dressed up in Korean costumes and the other group (the one I was in) went in first. After changing into these pajama-y looking things, we went and dipped our feet in a little foot bath, then went into a room that we thought looked curiously like the entrance to hell (actually, I think it might have been named that too). The floor was stone and heated to a comfortably warm temperature, so we lay down on the floor and relaxed for a bit until they moved us to the next room. The next room was down a small hallway and through a tiny wooden framed door I had to duck to get under (yet still hit my head on). Inside, rock salt covered the floor with a blue towel laid out for the three of us to lay on, with small pillows for our heads. About halfway up this small room - I think it was tall enough for me to kneel and not smack my head, but it wasn't much bigger than that - the walls changed from giant pink rocks of salt to round charcoal pieces. Not like, grill charcoal, but you know the ones that look like wood? Those lined the top halves of the walls and the ceiling. It wasn't too long (especially since I was running on little sleep) before we all drifted off to sleep. I have no idea how long I slept, but I awoke to the soft sounds of snoring, and tried to fall back asleep, unsuccessfully. So I just lay there in a semi-meditative state, waiting for them to come fetch us. I swear, it seemed like they forgot about us or something. It was like a low temperature sauna in there, and I could feel myself starting to perspire from having been in there so long.

Thankfully, they came to get us not long after I woke up, where they led us back upstairs to the tables and had us lie down before covering us in a heavy blanket. Massages, facial masks, more lotion massages, and facial treatment followed. It was super nice and relaxing. The masks were kind of weird - it was my first time using one. They used this stuff that had snail essence in it (I swear, it's all the rage right now in Korea since practically every company had something that was snail essence they were trying to sell - and that people were buying). It left my face soft... but kind of sticky. Like a dry sticky, so it wasn't really a bad feeling?

After we finished, we changed and waited for the others to come down to the lobby area. They served us tea and snacks before I remembered that I had brought my makeup and figured why not. So I went back up and put make up on, and when I came back down...

You would have thought I had done something like transformed into Sailor Moon or something. The teachers were super shocked haha. I guess I never wear makeup to school - let alone purple eyeshadow - so it was really different than how they normally see me? I'm not sure what they were thinking.

I'm also not sure what they were thinking when they were like 'YOU SHOULD MAKE UP Soandso-SAN BECAUSE MAKE UP GENIUS." I am far from a make up genius. But we were in a fun kind of mood, so I agreed and we all ran upstairs and looked at what they had (not much) and what I had (even less). Another teacher did a makeover for this other teacher, giving her a very natural, light makeover with a bit of green and white eyeshadow (the teacher giving the makeover was an art teacher, go figure).

For my vict- I mean, subject? Volunteer? They kept calling her my open canvas lol. For the teacher I was working with, I decided - since I didn't have many options - to go with a blue that would match her sweater. And black eyeliner. As I was putting it on though, two awful thoughts went through my head.

1. Oh god, I'm going to make her look like a hooker.
2. Oh god, it looks like I'm giving her black eyes.

This was the first time I'd ever done makeup for someone that wasn't me... and now I understand how freaking hard it is. You're never sure (if you're using a pencil) if you're stabbing them too hard as you put on eyeliner. We couldn't find any black eyeliner... so I had to go with brown.

Overall, it ended up looking... alright? Not the best, that's for sure. I was worried that others would think she looked like a clown or a hooker. It was really... dramatic makeup. Really like, obvious too. Dark blue isn't the most subtle of colors. When all the other teachers saw her, they all had interesting... reactions. Most of them were shocked. Most also started laughing (which made me feel really bad). This was a teacher around my mom's age... so yeah, blue probably wasn't the best of choices. She took it in stride though, and gamely. I told her she could take it off if she wanted and I wouldn't be offended but she decided to keep it on. It did make her look a lot younger - like maybe, in her mid-thirties.

After beauty treatment came my personal favorite part: korean bbq. Oh man. They had 8 colors of pork that you could cook, and as much kimchee and lettuce/etc as you wanted, along with a spicy kind of hot pot soup. I love how like, everything in Korean cooking is red haha. BUt oh man, the food was freaking delicious. The best part is that it only cost about 1,000 yen - or like, $10. Or at least, it should have. It turns out, the vice principal gave us money to go on the trip (wtf? WIN.) so we didn't actually have to pay for dinner in return, someone was in charge of buying a gift for him haha. But holy cow. He just gave us money to use and we were all like... shocked. I guess he likes Korea too?

After food was more shopping in Myongdong, which is kind of like a cross between Harajuku and Shinjuku but so much more awesome. We passed a Taco Bell (!) and several vietnamese places (!!!) before arriving at this store that sold things students at the local design university made. They were pretty cool things, no doubt. We got about an hour to run around and shop, so I kind of wandered with a group who looked at cell phone and iPad cases... and along the way we found FRO-YO but I was TOO FULL (which was the other thing preventing me fromgoing back and buying a taco from Taco Bell).

The last thing we did that day was take the subway to the Lotte department store/super market, where we loaded up on nori, kimchee, and all sorts of other wonderful korean goods. I managed to find nacho cheese (!), jalapenos in a glass jar, and mondu or whatever you call those round tasty korean rice things. Oh, and ridiculously cheap shin ramen. I wanted to cry since I didn't have more space in my suitcase. I think my suitcase was half korean nori haha. In case you're wondering, Korean nori is sold in little plastic containers with enough for one person (or I guess two people sharing) for one dinner. They have the big ones too, but usually they're a little bit smaller than palm-sized (for medium sized palms). They're also flavored quite strongly, unlike their Japanese counterparts. Additionally, they're a little thinner and crispier, lending to a different eating experience. They're also really really tasty. So glad I brought a suitcase over.

Now, for the most part, people seemed to understand either Japanese or English relatively alright (at least, easy stuff) so we were able to get around using pretty much only Japanese with a smidge of English here and there. At the checkout counter, however, the girl I think only spoke KOrean, so when it came time to ask her for a bag (since you had to buy your own bags, or bring one from home) I did lots of gesturing and saying things in other languages that weren't Korean. She just looked at me dumbly. Even with pointing at the bags and gesturing that I needed them. Eventually though, she understood, but I was just kind of... shocked I guess.

We took the subway back to our hotel - by then it was almost midnight - but found out that the last subway train didn't go all the way to our stop... when we got kicked out of the train. Lame. We were about two stations away, and a relatively straight shot but seeing as how everyone was carrying shopping bags, we decided to hail a taxi and split the costs. So worth it. I was so dead on my feet at that point.

The next morning, we woke up bright and early, packed, brought our stuff down, and set out to an okayu place. Okayu is rice porridge, or as we call it in my family, jook. In my family, it's also known as sick food, but I guess in Japan they make it taste better so people actually eat it on a more regular basis? Korea too. They had things like abalone okayu, but I settled for boring potato okayu... which ended up tasting a lot like the jook I have when I'm sick, but slightly better. Oh well.

After this, we split up, with some people going shopping, others going to a museum, and others (like me) kinda wandering around. Or well, my plan was to go to the river canal, then to the Gyeongbokgung Imperial Palace and then back to Myeongdong for some lunch and shopping. A couple of teachers had nothing to do, so we all went around together for a bit. We stopped by this old church place (I think, as they were starting service) just to take a look at this old cathedral in Seoul. After that, we went down to this canal (cheonggyecheon) they had turned into this cute walkway with painted walls. During the summer, some people take a dip into the stream. I was also told there were shops along the canal,.. but that must have been outside the canal area proper. I did spy a place that said 'Dos Tacos' and was like OMFGGGG but managed to hold myself back.

While there was no beautiful vegetatation when I went, the canal was still there, and along the canal they had created this amazing frozen ice sculpture... thing. They had made it by letting water drip down and freeze so that it froze in things that looked like icicles on a tree. Really really gorgeous (though it also drove home the fact that it was absolutely FREEZING). Eventually, we left the canal and went off to look for this oldtowny place two other teachers wanted to go to, passing this amazing looking temple along the way.

Korean temples, like Japanese temples, tend to have the same kind of shape as Chinese temples, but the colors they use for all of them are really different. Korean temples were really brightly colored, with a green base kind of color. I noticed this on the palace ceilings and roofs and walls as well. It was a kind of... tealish green, but there were also lots of bright primary colors. I forgot what Chinese ones were like (probably lots of red) but Japanese ones don't tend to be so brightly colored (excluding the 'gold temple' and the 'silver temple').

Along the way to our destination (am I even saying that right? Look what staying in Japan has done to my English!) we walked through this little shopping district, and something caught my eye so I made the other two teachers also stop haha. What caught my eye?

Shin ramen socks.

Heck yes. They were white socks with the shin ramen logo on it. I thought it was hilarious. The shop also sold an assortment of knicknacks and gifts and souveniers, like chopsticks and spoons. I found a really gorgeous spoon and chopstick set with flowers on it that cost somewhere around the neighborhood of eight dollars. Probably on the expensive side. But they're metal and oh-so-pretty. I also found turtle chopsticks, deer chopsticks, and cellphone charms with things like kimchee or korean BBQ on them haha. Oh, and another really cute pair of socks with a bunny on it! I'll have to try to get pictures of them up sometime. :) Fingers crossed!

Dang, this is getting kinda long. I'll wrap this one up and finish talking about the Gyeongbokgung Palace in the next entry. :D

Part II here!

Cheese (._. ) (and other interesting foods)

I don't know if I've written about cheese in Japan (probably?) but today's adventure to the grocery store prompted an entry. I think I've written about the melty cheese before... but maybe not.

Right. Let me backtrack a little and start off by saying, I love cheese.

Japan - at first glance, anyways - does not love cheese.

Let me be more specific. I love hard cheeses and I also love really flavorful cheese; blue cheese, feta, pepperjack, goat cheese (oh god, goat cheese). Japanese people, I've found in general (and in the supermarket), prefer cheese with creamier and more subtle flavors than a giant mouthful of OHAI THERE BLUE CHEESE.

So I got really excited today when I saw something that was was labeled gouda and looked like black cracked pepper. So excited I bought it.

cottage cheese... kinda

the top is all smooth...
this does not bode well

Then, I saw a little tub that said, カッテージチーズ, or cottage cheese. I got even more excited. I haven't found cottage cheese since I came to Japan. So I bought that too.

It tastes... uh, interesting. This was after I mixed it up. But it's kinda like cottage cheese... without the liquidy stuff you usually find in the can with it. So it's kinda dry? Interesting tasting. It's not quite as strong or tangy as the cottage cheese I'm used to... and it's more crumbly. But it's not bad I guess? I mean, I'm still eating it...

Actually, a couple bites in, as you chew, it starts to taste more like cottage cheese, albeit slightly creamy cream cheese.

Apple juice shots!

My other grocery store find (and subsequent impulse buy) were apple juice shots made by the same people who make that probiotic yakult drink. Shots of Aomori (the Japanese equivalent of Washington, as far as apples go) apple juice. So I figured, WHY NOT. I bought a pack; it had six of these little things. I guess the name of the brand is "chichiyasu" and on the bottom in Japanese, it reads "APPLE AOMORI"

Hooray Japanese!

Oh yeah. On the topic of weird foods... or well, not weird, but interesting foods, I recently went to Korea (maybe I'll get to that soon, since I don't have classes right now, so in theory I can work on writing about them...).

The food there is fantastic. Needless to say, I came back with a suitcase full of shin ramen (Best. Ramen. Ever.) and Korean nori, which is cut into more bitesized pieces of salted (and sometimes flavored) dried seaweed.

Another thing I brought back though, was this:

CORN!

This is one of the things a lot of other teachers bought: corn tea. The aftertaste in your mouth is literally like you just took a giant bite of sweet corn. It's a really... peculiar flavor, to say the least. Tasty though, which is why I came back with a giant box of it. 

Augh, I can't stop eating the cottage cheese! It just tastes so... weird at first but then as you chew (and that feels kinda strange too) you forget that you were initially freaked out by the creamy hardness of the cream cheese. 

"Fusion" Food

Dear Japan,

We might have created a crazy version of sushi that does not exist anywhere inside of Japan (ie, caterpillar roll, dynamite roll, to name a few) but what you've done with basically every other kinds of Western food pales in comparison. Even our panda express is probably more Chinese than some of the things you've done to western foods.

This came about because I happened to turn on my TV and by chance, they had a program on about - of all things - burgers in Japan. Like, proper hamburgers. Kinda. I mean, they're not the hambagu patty things my students are so fond of. This program showcased several interesting burgers from prefectures all around Japan.

The one I happened to come in on was an udon burger. Not just any burger, but a "sanuki-udon" burger.

I guess I should mention that from now on, the word "burger" shall be used loosely to refer to "things between two bread-based buns."

In this hilarious part of the show called "OPEN THE BURGER~" (or, "open tha bagah") they "reveal" what's inside the burger in two ways. One, they split it down the middle by pulling it apart all slow and dramatically. Second, they open it up from the top and take it off layer by layer. It's pretty amazing to watch (and really funny too, because they do it so dramatically). It's also funny to watch all their reactions when eating it, because I swear it's a requirement to scream at the top of your lungs "UMAI" or "OISHIIIII" which is like saying "THIS IS REALLY FRIGGIN TASTY." I also have a hunch that this is part of the reason why it's not considered impolite to talk with your mouth full; otherwise how else are you supposed to announce to the world that it's so freaking good? So good that you'd break societal norms of finishing your food before you speak.
So the sanuki-udon burger has a poached egg, udon that's been deepfried and drenched in some ginger teriyaki sauce, and a chicken patty.

Like I said, loose definitions of the burger.

Next was the korroke burger, which was yakisoba, wrapped in a large gyoza wrapper, breaded, and then deep fried so it's like a coroquette. Then it's put on a bagel bun. Holy dang.

The next one actually was made with fish - katsuo, and had mayo and something else my mind has blocked out. Oh yeah, one of those leaves. Shiso, aka perilla, aka, beefsteak plant. Beefsteak plant? What an interesting name.

Dude....

This next one, rather than having a bread based bun, uses deep fried tofu as a bun for tonkatsu (breaded pork cutlet). Wut.

I'm pretty sure Japan has managed to make burgers more unhealthy than the KFC double down. Either way, this is amazing. I wish I could go hunt these down, since some of them actually sounded kinda... tasty.