reminiscing about sendai

 I, like everyone else around the world, have been glued to the screen watching the news coverage in Japan. And like everyone else, I just don't know how to put into words how I feel about the whole tragedy, and can't even begin to imagine how those remaining in Tohoku feel. Their homes, family and friends - their lives - wiped out in an instant, and continue to live in fear of aftershocks on top of a nuclear situation. My heart really goes out to them. It's sad to think that one of the last places I visited in Japan before returning to Australia probably won't ever be the same.

Stepping off the shinkansen in one hot summer day in August last year, I had no idea what to expect from Sendai. Essentially, it was just a town that up north that I felt I should see; What exactly it was that I was supposed to see there, I had no idea. But travel fatigue had set in, and I was tired of moving from place to place every day. So rather than spending a day in Sendai and another in nearby Niigata, I booked a hotel for two days and hoped I would find stuff to keep me occupied for the time.

Although I had heard of this 'Tanabata festival' that was pretty huge there, I pretty much just ignored all information about it, thinking it wasn't really relevant to me. After all, Tanabata is celebrated all around Japan, it from my previous experience, it just involves people tying their handwritten wishes to a bamboo tree, and eating star-shaped jelly for school lunch. Plus, in Gifu it's celebrated in July, so I thought my chance to see a larger festival with more bamboo and star-shaped foods was over.

As I walked around the station and saw the giant paper lanterns adorning everything, however, it slowly dawned on me that I maybe should have read up on the Tanabata festival a little more. Maybe the people of Sendai weren't just being lazy and hadn't neglected to take down their month-old decorations.

Being in a town that was known for its festival, it's needless to say that it was pretty packed. But as an avid Japanese festival fan, I couldn't really complain. With the crowds of people came fireworks, performances, a cheerful atmosphere, and of course, stalls upon stalls of festival food.

It was a weird sense of denouement going to my last festival in Japan, and seeing how much had changed since the first festival I went to during my first week in Gifu. Rather than wanting to try every single food offered at the food stalls, I avoided the often-questionable beef skewers and made a beeline straight for the jaga butter and takoyaki. The novelty of seeing people wearing yukatas had worn off so much that I barely batted an eyelid seeing young guys rocking a yukata with orange crocs and anime hair.

Festival celebrations aside, there was more than enough things to fill my time. Initially it does feel like most other towns in Japan, but walking through the city, you notice the history of the area reflected in everything you see. The town is famous for being established by Date Masamune, who, according to my academic research, is a famous eyepatch-doting samurai that wields up to six swords at once and speaks in a mix of Japanese and English. Okay, so maybe the creators of anime may have exercised their artistic licence on the part, but still, his impact can still be felt in Sendai. Crescent-shaped designs - an homage to Masamune's famous helmet - is incorporated into architecture, street signs, and street lamps throughout the city.

Maybe it's the stories that Masamune was also gourmand that made food a focus there, or maybe it was the food that influenced his decision to relocate there. Either way, it's a city that takes its cuisine very seriously - it's said to be the origin of quite a few different foods, like zunda mochi, hiyashi chuka, and most famously, gyutan. Gyutan is itself is ox tongue that is lightly seasoned, sliced, and grilled, which has become a delicacy all over Japan. It's said to have originated in Sendai after WWII - Occupation forces stationed there often threw away the tail and the tongue, so one restaurant owner decided to use this cheap cut of beef at his restaurant. The restaurant became popular, and now, it's seen in just about every yakiniku restaurant in Japan.

I like the idea of Sendai and gyutan; It shows the people's resilience in tough times, the ability to make the most of what they have, and prosper. Let's hope the spirit of gyutan in Sendai, Tohoku, and the rest of Japan still lives on.

two little pigs

I know this shouldn't come to a shock to people who know me, but I like food. A lot. So, after taking a photo of the upteenth coffee while out with friends, I decided to listen to their suggestion and start another blog to focus on food... um... moreso than this one. Here's a post from that blog, eat-a-ducky. They'll be less blog copying and pasting from now on though, I promise. 

In two days time, people all over the world will be surrounded by friends and family and enjoying each other's company in this festive time of the year. And presumably, this will also involve my favourite pastime: food. It's the only time of the year where it's not just justified, but expected of people to gorge themselves on a week's worth of food in a single sitting. For many, this involves Christmas ham or turkey. And for the lucky few, it involves turducken.

In our house, however, we somehow acquired the tradition of half a Chinese roast pig. I'm not sure how it started, but according to the legends (i.e. my dad), someone got sick of the inevitable ham-leftover meals and decided to order a pig from a Chinese restaurant. It turned out to be a resounding success, and now, my family spends most of the year fantasizing about the next Christmas pig. Family gatherings will inevitably lead to discussion of how much pork will be consumed, which family members are letting the team down (the dreaded salad eaters), and the next generation of rising stars.

So when my mum ordered a whole piglet two years ago, we were a little more than excited. Could our family be able to completely devour a whole animal in a single sitting, or would this little piggy get the better of us? For us, this was our Everest. Sure, we can't run that fast, and we're far off from creating the facebook, but we can damn well eat.

And after marathon seating over lunchinnerupper, we finally did it. There were obstacles to overcome (lettuce-munching cousin, I'm looking at you), but it was an incredible exhibition of teamwork at our dinner table. When my brother was finally overcome with meat sweats, or my cousins couldn't stand any more pork crackling, those on the bench got their second or third wind, piled it onto their plates and soldiered on. My dad and my uncle valiantly fought over the the scraps of pig that the others couldn't stomach. Our motley crew of 12 managed to finish that whole pig once and for all. We could all go home with our heads held high.

Family: 1, Roast Pig: 0

Our sense of self-satisfaction didn't last very long though.Returning home from our relative's place with smug, satisfied looks on our faces, my mum mentions there's one more surprise this Christmas. "I know how much you guys love roast pig, but isn't it bad that you can't eat as much pork as you want because your cousins eat most of it? That's why I ordered two pigs! One just for us!"

I looked at the pig sitting on our dining room table and my heart sank. It felt like some terrible teen horror movie where you think the bad guy has died, only to find it calmly waiting in the darkened living room.

Let's hope this year doesn't require calling for reinforcements (read: hungry friends) to finish the job. I guess as much as I love Christmas food, even I have my limits.  

belated gastronomic adventures

Thai Basil Chicken "Ga Prow" inspired burger-
Chicken patty, lettuce, roasted capsicum with basil stir-fry sauce and egg in a Turkish bread roll.

I used to pride myself in liking food more than the average person. But now? I'm not so sure. Turns out, while I was away in Japan, someone took my two favourite pastimes - food and reality TV - combined them, and created one of the hugest trends in Australia in the last few years. I still can't believe that a cooking show forced the Australian federal election to be rescheduled to avoid competing for TV ratings.

I guess for everyone else in Australia, they may not have noticed this change, but after an extended absence, the change is so drastic it feels like it's just being dangled right in front of my face. I left Melbourne thinking I knew a bit about food since I knew how to bake chocolate chip cookies, but now I'm meeting people who know how to temper chocolate. And I had no idea scooping ice cream could actually become outdated. Scoops of ice cream with whipped cream, wafer, and cherry on top? Pfft, please. That is so 2000 and late. More like quenelles of vanilla-bean ice cream served with crème chantilly, cherry compôte, and almond tuile.

Gingerbread + Snickerdoodles = I'm a genius.
Or, so I thought until I googled "gingerdoodles" five minutes ago.

Don't get me wrong; vanilla bean ice cream and almond tuiles sound awesome, but I just can't believe this has happened in my absence. And now, thanks to my current employment status, I've got the time to make Heston Blumenthal's ridiculously simple chocolate mousse, and my own experiments with food (gingerdoodles anyone?), but no shows to watch to give me new (and probably more original) recipes to try out. Sure, due to their booming popularity, they'll probably be back in 2011, but will everyone be over the bandwagon just as I'm hopping on?

nectarine-shu

So, needless to say, judging by my regular involvement with Japanese conversation nights, deciding prospective employment based on whether it involves Japanese, and the fact I find myself watching Japanese cowboy movies, it's safe to say I'm still not over Japan.

I really did try to prepare for this. Knowing my life in Melbourne would be devoid of 100 yen goods, quality stationery, ubiquitous convenience stores filled with seasonal confectionery, and cheap karaoke, I stocked up on pens, consumed every type of Kit Kat imaginable, and sang my arse off. By the time I got to Tokyo, I was in full "don't know the next time I'll be here" mode, and making sure there was no butter-flavoured chip unbought, and no sushi uneaten. Sure, my last sushi meal in Tokyo was like $60, but when else would I be able to food this fresh, and eat uni straight from its shell?

And sure, to some extent it worked; I don't really have much of an urge to eat raw fish on rice, and I've definitely OD'ed on Kit Kats - I've still got a couple sakura green tea flavoured Kit Kats in my pantry that I have no urge to eat. But there's one thing I do miss probably more than the adequate amount.

Umeshu. With a lack of mixed spirits available, and not being the biggest fan of sake, it was my other option when I wasn't feeling like beer. It was the drink of chilled Friday nights at home with friends, and my drink of choice at karaoke. I sampled it all around Japan - the Shikwasa umeshu down south in Okinawa, the red-shiso type in Nagano, and sipped some locally-produced ones after a long day of snow festival-ing in Hokkaido. It's the drink I associate with Japan - nay, it's the drink I associate with the last few years.

Yes, I know this makes me sound like a raging alcoholic, but my point is, I like this drink, and am still trying to fathom how I can still enjoy it in Melbourne for $35 when it used to cost me less than $5. I did try to bring some back, but because of duty free alcohol limits, it was less than I wanted. It doesn't help as well I have this issue with trying to ration things, in which I essentially don't use or eat things for fear of using them up, but end up never using them at all, or find the food's expired before I've even sampled it. It's for this same reason I blu-tack stickers on things rather than, well, stick them - I'm paranoid I'll have a sticker emergency and will actually need to use that sticker properly later.

Anyway, back to the point: What's a guy to do when a future without his favourite drink awaits? Why, try to make it himself of course! Fortunately for me, it's much easier than brewing beer or making wine - essentially just steeping sugar and ume in some alcohol for a few months to a year, and drinking the result. It's just so simple! Which is why it seemed like such a good idea to bring back a large 4-litre glass bottle made specifically for umeshu-ing. As long as I had this bottle, I could make it whenever I wanted, right?

Um... yeah. Turns out there's a couple more obstacles in my way making it a little bit more difficult.

Shochu's kinda expensive in Australia, as expected, but I have heard of other umeshus being made with other alcohol, like brandy. I didn't really do much of a search, but I couldn't find the rock sugar that's normally used either, but my favourite umeshu has honey in it, so I could probably use that when I make it...

Oh yeah, and one other minor problem. Ume (Japanese plums) doesn't look like its available in Australia at all. Yeah, just a minor hiccup in my quest to make Japanese plum wine.

While shopping though, I stumbled across some unripened nectarines. They kinda looked like Japanese plums, though bigger and not as green. Plus, I looked up 'nectarine' in Japanese, and one translation came up as 'sour peach' and ume are quite tart.... So with my in-depth research and analysis complete, I bought a kilo and started hunting down the rest of the ingredients.

And here's the finished product. Although it won't be ready to drink for another few months, let's hope it tastes just like how I remembered. Or, well, drinkable. Or safe for human consumption. I really shouldn't set my standards too high, considering I have, you know, zero of the three original ingredients.

marketing in the boroughs

When I planned on meeting up with my friends while in Londontown (Yes, because of Kanye West, I will henceforth only refer to the capital of England as Londontown) and they asked me what I wanted to do while I was there, I really had no idea. I've already been there a couple times before and done the stereotypically tourist things, like see Tower Bridge, Big Ben, and London Eye, and with the travel fatigue setting in, I really didn't care. I mainly just wanted to catch up with friends over a coffee and a meal. Or five. I was just hoping they had a couple ideas to find food.

Boy, am I glad I left the sightseeing plans in their capable hands. Well, I guess there was less of an emphasis on seeing sights and more so on eating and sampling foods. Only five minutes into arriving at the Borough Market and I was glad I made it. Based on stereotypes I guess, I wouldn't normally associate England with quality food, but that's about to change.

Olives on top of olives, mushroom patés, whoopie AND banoffee pies, It was all too much for someone who probably dedicates way more than the adequate amount of time thinking about and consuming food. Then there were the cheeses.

Wheels of comté, thousands of types of parmesans I had never seen, and drunken cheese. I didn't even know cheeses could get drunk. But wow, it was pretty good. Makes me wonder what other foods would be better if they were inebriated.

bangkok belly

While I was worried about going to Bangkok during Golden Week (a week of public holidays at the start of May), looks like I probably went at a good time compared to how it is now. Sure there were still protesters and military around, but while we were visiting, other than seeing quite a few military people around, and the inconvenience of the trains closing at 8 at night, it didn't seem as dangerous than I thought it would be.

Although I've done Bangkok a few times with my family, since we go fairly frequently, it's less about the places to see and more about the shopping and the food. So it was kinda a good break from my regular Bangkok trips to visit the touristy places again.

And, what better way to take a break from my regular family food visits to Bangkok than by going to cooking classes?

It didn't take long though before my high aspirations to see Bangkok from a new perspective quickly dissipated, and I went back to just eating food. 

Not even trying new ones, either. Just the same ones, every day. But seriously, We're talking about mango and sticky rice here - can you really blame me?

fuk!

Aaah, Fukuoka. When I first looked up information about what to do in Fukuoka, other than it's "city in a city" shopping centre, not that many sights came up that made me that interested in visiting the city. The only thing came that kept coming up was that they were famous for food. Would that really be enough to entertain me for two whole days?

Oh, how little I know me.

The first night we arrived happened to coincide with a huge fireworks display right across from our hotel. One of the few things that Gifu has to boast about is the fact that they hold two of the largest fireworks displays in all of Japan, which costs somewhere in the millions of dollars and goes for a couple hours. So, fortunately that left us with a perfect opportunity to roam arounds the streets of fukuoka while most other people flocked to the direction we had just come from.

Once we got into the heart of the ctiy, we found some yatai - food stalls with seating set up right on the streets. I would usually associate that kind of food with Thailand or other parts in Asia, so it was an unexpected change from the regular restaurants that I've seen throughout the Japan.

mushroom tempura

We settled for the emptiest one, which turned out to be a the only tempura stall as well. If my obsession with travel/food shows has taught me anything, is that the food places with lines for a reason, and vice versa. But, after talking to one of the other customers at the stall, turns out this place normally attracts a huge line of locals - the locals who all happpened to be watching fireworks - which is why the other tour guide -approved stalls were full.

Oh man, I don't even know where to start with how awesome the place was. It was run by a husband and wife who had been running this stall for 30 years - the husband's father was one of the first families to start up this yatai thing in Fukuoka. The drinks were cheap (5 bucks for like a litre bottle of beer), and the experience of watching this old man make fresh tempura batter out of the back of his truck, fry things in front of us and eat them straight away was amazing. Best tempura ever.

The next day, after making our way to the "city-within-a-city" shopping centre, we found ichiran, a famous chain for their tonkotsu ramen. Though I've been to a Ramen shop with tickets before, this one took their ramen a little more seriously. partitions separated customers with a curtain right in front. the waiters opened the curtain collect the ramen preference sheet and serve the food with minimal talking and eye contact. Apparently, it's to help customers appreciate the flavour of the ramen, though with Ramen this tasty, it didn't really need much help.

Dammit, I was hoping to go to Fukuoka just to say I've now visited every one of the main islands of Japan, but now all I'm thinking about is eating awesome ramen and tempura again.

tokyo again! i'm sensing a trend....

Aaah, Tokyo.  It's a place I'll always be amazed with every single time I go. Although I've done the touristy thing there quite a few times, the city feels so huge that I don't think I know it well enough to even recommend places for people to go. But just this past week, a couple friends from Australia visited and kinda expected me to have an idea for some places to go see. They were already planning to visit Kyoto, which is known for its traditional temples, so it seemed kinda pointless seeing any fancy temples or shrines in Tokyo if they were going to spend the next few days seeing them in a much better place. So here were the three places I came up with:

Miracle Fruits Cafe, Ikebukuro

Don't let any stories you may have heard as a kid fool you; there are magic beans. You're supposed to  swish the flavourless bean-shaped fruit around your mouth, like a lolly/candy for a few minutes, and eat it with stuff like this:

This here is lemon and other fruits in a lemon fondue sauce . Apparently the fruit has a special chemical in it that messes with your sweet/sour tastebuds. So while the above fondue tastes ridiculously sour, after having the bean, it makes regular lemon eaten by itself taste like lemonade.

Unfortunately, it's not completely miraculous. It wears out after a short while (I should've ordered two fruits) and while it makes cherry tomatoes super sweet, and regular tomatoes taste like cherry tomatoes, it still makes green juice taste like crap. Rather than getting the tester one, I should've gotten the lemon parfait.

Ninja, Akasaka

I'd been there before, so I already knew how awesome it was. Turns out, when you go again, it's still awesome! I ordered the same course I had last time, but food was still worth it. Which is saying a lot, since it's not the cheapest restaurant in the world. But hey, any restaurant that has food AND ninja magicians must be pretty good...

The Lockup, Shibuya

There weren't many places that could potentially top the ninja restaurant, but this one was pretty close! The theme is kinda confusing, since it's a jail-type themed japanese bar with monsters... I think. Anyways, it's main thing is that it's a restaurant that arrests someone in your group and takes your group to a cell, which happens to have menus and stuff.

Food is surprisingly good (winners: taco-style rice in a hot stone-bowl) and the cocktails are probably the main reason to go. My drug addict cocktail came with a pill you add to the drink, and the experiment cocktail  comes with 5 mixer flavours for a standard cocktail, which are then mixed with the standard beaker by using a dropper. Oh, and one drink has an eye in it.

Wow, who would've thought there'd be such good prison food?

So essentially, seeing Tokyo involved going to a miracle fruits restaurant, a ninja restaurant, and a prison restaurant. I'm just glad my friends are just as preoccupied with food as I am.

mental note...

"Russian Takoyaki" is not referring to some cool new fusion food involving Japanese octopus balls cooked in a Russian style accompanied with caviar, vodka, borscht, or anything remotely foreign. And is more likely to be an abbreviation of "Russian Roulette Takoyaki", where one ball, instead of being filled with Octopus, is filled with ridiculously spicy mustard.

Also, it might be recommended to never put a whole takoyaki in your mouth at once, just in off chance you are unknowingly involved in a cruel Japanese pastime that involves scarring people for life after eating said mustard-filled takoyaki, and may not ever look at takoyaki the same way ever again. Even right after you hosted your very first takoyaki party, using the takoyaki cooking set you got for your birthday.

rocky

Alas, my trip back home to Australia is already at an end. Despite being able to check a number of things off my list of things to do, namely eat food and meet up with friends, it feels like this trip was still a little too short. I did end my trip on a high note though, catching up with friends for lunch, before having a final family dinner at my all-time favourite restaurant in Melbourne.

Unfortunately, my favourite restaurant just also happens to be a sushi restaurant. Even the sushi chef there was asking me why the hell I'd be eating Japanese food when I could do so for in a couple of days. Part of the reason I did go though was mainly to reminisce as it was always the restaurant I'd make my family go to for special occasions, like my birthday, or something like that.  And for the awesome sushi of course. Plus, in Japan, I so don't make enough money to be able to go to a fancy sushi restaurant, so I did also justify it by thinking of it as awesome-grade sushi that I myself would never be able to eat in Japan anyway.

But after tonight, I'm totally glad I went. After gorging myself with awesome fancypants sushi (highlights: yakiniku-style grilled beef sushi, and marinated kingfish belly sushi) and while driving home, we encountered one of the less-often visited mascots of my city: Rocky.

For those who aren't completely familiar with the story of Rocky, he's developed a loyal group of fans - namely me, and any of my friends that I can convince to also be supportive of an unconventional city mascot.

As you can see, Rocky's kinda.... special. He originally started off as humble roadkill, unfortunately situated on a stretch of street that many people pass over. What resulted is Rocky being pancaked and presumably difficult to uh.... remove from the road.

The city's solution? Cover the corpse of Rocky the Roadkill Possum with a pile of gravel. That way, no one would know that anything was wrong. Except for the unusual pile or rocks in the middle of a frequently used road. What seemed to eventually happened though, is the rocks directly on top of Rocky adhered to the outline of Rocky's body, while all other rocks  that weren't directly on top of him seemed to disappear after countless drive-overs, leaving a perfectly preserved outline of Rocky's almost-forgotten self.

While I was lying in bed, trying unsuccessfully to get a nap before my flight back, I thought of how each city in Japan was famous for something. Granted, my city in Japan seems to be famous for one of my least favourite fruits, at least it's famous for something. What can my city back home in Melbourne boast about? Well, I guess other than fantastic sushi, it also has a pretty large roadkill animal as well... and that's pretty much it. I wonder if they ever made a marimokkori for my city, what would it be...?

foods to eat over Christmas

Yep, after 18 months living in Japan, I finally visited home in Melbourne... twice in a span of less than two weeks. As much as I wish it was because I'm ridiculously loaded and could afford to do it for the hell of it, it was mainly due to the fact that I had a friend's wedding for a weekend, and then coming back for Christmas holidays, as well as not wanting to make it one long trip from wedding to new year's, which would have used all of my annual leave for the rest of my contract year. And, after spending one Christmas in Japan, I can safely say that Christmas in Japan certainly isn't the same as Christmas back home. Especially when it's not a public holiday, and everywhere you go has already taken Christmas decorations down before Christmas in preparation for New Year's decorations. I think the memory I will always have of Christmas in Japan is sitting in a ramen restaurant eating tonkotsu ramen while listening to The Beatles. Granted, I'm a huge fan of tonkotsu ramen, and the restaurant we were at, but still, not quite the same as gorging yourself in the presence of your family.

So this year, I decided to make sure I was back for a traditional Christmas, to hopefully OD on all things I missed in Australia so I could get through the last six months in Japan. And sure, while Guitar Hero, friends and family were all on my list of things to be excited about, being me, I also had to make a list of foods I had to eat while in Australia. I figured that two weeks back home required careful deliberation and planning of my meals to ensure I got my fill of everything I wanted to eat that I couldn't in Japan.

Foods to check off my list:

• Mexican

cinnamon & orange duck tacos

 

• Lamb

 

•  Thai food

 

Basil chicken & rice

•   Cheap, non ¥3000 pizza

• Yum Cha

• Quality Burger

 

 Mushroom melt burger

 

• Christmas Pig

 

• Cheese

Things yet to be eaten this trip:

• Souvlaki

• Jaffles

• Falafel

• Bailey's Cheesecake

• Lemon Meringue Pie

Food related milestones achieved:

• Taking a bite out of a giant chunk of ham

sleep and food

I always wondered what the preoccupation was with the preoccupation with sleep Japanese people I'd met seemed to have. Granted, I hadn't met many, but I always wondered how on earth everyone seemed to sleep on public transport, and how students slept in class. And how every single student I'd ask "How are you?" to would always reply with "I'm sleepy", "I'm tired" or a combination of the two.  Was it the lack of sleep the students had each night due to studying til the wee hours of the morning? Were the teachers equally buggered from the ridiculous workload they had here, normally working til 8:30 or later at night, that made them sleep deprived too?

And even though I'm getting enough sleep (with the occasional late night watching Heroes or The Amazing Race) I've succumbed to this sleeping thing to. Every day at around 2:30 pm, I feel my eyes get too heavy to keep open, my head slowly slumping down, before I quickly jolt back up once I become aware that I'm about to fall asleep, only to feel my eyes get heavier and my head sinking down. What the hell's happening to me!?!?

After much time pondering, I'm wondering if this sleep thing is like a part of the culture. I've seen heaps of teachers with their heads slumped at their desks, napping, or blatantly sleeping every now and then, especially after work. Which, you'd normally think would be a no go thing, you know, being slack at work to the point of napping and being completely unproductive. But apparently, as long as you're at the bottom or top of the work chain, it's actually deemed okay. Rather than seeming so lazy and unproductive that you're sleeping during work,  it's thought of a good thing, where you've worked hard that now, despite your best efforts, you can't help BUT fall asleep.

I also have a feeling my school lunch is contributing too. There's this thing called kyushoku here for lunch at schools, which means, rather than bringing your own lunch every day, a (Japanese) nutritionally balanced meal is served at school. Every lunch time, students from each class carry the huge containers of food to the classroom, where they dish out their lunch themselves. Lunch usually consists of rice (although, it's noodles on Tuesdays, and bread on Thursdays), soup, salad/vegetable thing, something fried, and milk.

Though, unfortunately, it's not just any milk. It's milk with 3.6% milk fat milk. Which may not seem like much, but seems way creamier and thicker than normally milk back home, and I swear, by some standards, it'd be considered to be a form of light cream or buttermilk or something.  But anyway, I swear this milk, especially when it's been sitting out for at least half an hour or so before eating, must be the culprit behind everyone being so sleepy. If it doesn't make you feel bloated and full by the end of lunch,  I'm sure the fact that it's probably been sitting out for longer than half an hour on most days mean it's filled with things that make you sleep.

Speaking of Kyushoku, just thought I'd share this video of Kyushoku time at one of my preschools. Apparently, everything that can be turned into a song, with this one combining the rules for eating Kyushoku, and saying "Itadakimasu", which is essentially the Japanese equivalent to saying grace before a meal.

summer soumen & suika school day

Oh Japan. If there's one thing I like more than collecting regionally exclusive, well-endowed phone straps, it's the seemingly random days and events that happen. I guess everything seems random mainly due to the fact I can't understand everything that's said around me, but nonetheless, it makes the days way more interesting.

So today, something was happening with the special ed. class at my school. What exactly, I'm not too sure, but it did involve the kids doing suika wari, which is essentially watermelon piñata-ing,  where a person is blindfolded, spun around a few times, and then with a stick (or in my students' cases, a wooden kendo sword) and are directed to smash a watermelon. Now, one of the pros of being the token foreigner at school, is that I also get asked to be involved with all the activities the special ed. kids do, so I got my fair share of watermelon wacking done as well,  but unlike them, almost everything I do, without fail is followed by surprised exclaimations of "jouzu! (you're really good!)" since they don't expect me to be good at anything Japanese-related. So apparently, I'm also really awesome at breaking melons with wooden sticks.

After some quality squatting around in a circle and eating watermelon time, I headed back  to the staffroom, trying to enjoy one of my last days sitting at my desk during summer holidays. That was, until one of the support teachers for the special ed. class calls my name and motions me to come outside.

 The class had decided on serving nagashi somen, which is normally eaten around summer, so the kids had fashioned a huge bamboo pipe-type thing, supported b some sticks, and connected it to the drink taps on one end, so water flowed down the bamboo, and the other hand finished at the drain. As water flowed through the bamboo, one person placed bundles of somen noodles on the top, and the flowing water carried it through the pipes.

 

Meanwhile, other students and teachers, armed with bowls of spring onions and tsuyu (a soy sauce and stock-based dipping sauce) huddled around the pipes, waiting with chopsticks to catch the noodles going by, dipping them in the tsuyu and eating it fresh. I couldn't help thinking how this couldn't be done back at home in Australia, because of the water restrictions, but at the same time, I was totally blown away by how cool it was. It's made me really keen on finding a real nagashi somen restaurant, with some apparently utilising natural water streams to carry the noodles to customers. 

Oh summer vacation in Japan. Why can't you have more days like this, and less days involving sitting at your desk and doing absolutely nothing?

ninja food

I like food. Which shouldn't be a surprise to anyone who's known me for longer than five minutes. I also like ninjas, which shouldn't come as a surprise either, since... c'mon, who doesn't like ninjas? So, after hearing about the ninja-themed restaurant in Tokyo, I had to go.

Turns out, a  ninja-themed restaurant is probably one of the few themes that actually translates well into a food thing. I mean, I like pirates, but a pirate restaurant definitely doesn't have the same ring to it.

After going there, I can say that I definitely was disappointed... except maybe for the start, when the ninja maître d' (yes, not all ninjas are stealthy and deadly, you know) was telling us that our ninja waiter was hidden somewhere in the room,a dn would reveal themselves. So, after that I was kinda hoping for our ninja to appear in a puff of smoke, or jump down from the ceiling. Unfortunately, after being summoned by a ninja call, our ninja just came through a small door in the wall, which would've been cooler I guess, but we kinda got our hopes up for a more ninja-like entrance.

anyway, I don't want to give the whole ninja experience away and ruin all the surprises, so instead, I'll just post some pictures of food...

 

Ninja Star Grissini

  

Turban Shell à la escargot... 

  

... lit by a fuse!

  

Ninja soup, heated with a 400˚ rock

  

Veal and foie gras à la creme brulée

  

 Frog Cheesecake