my japanese encyclopedia T part 1
another week closer to parentdom - word has it that our baby has flipped out of the breech position and is now upside-down in preparation for the upside-down world it will encounter for the next lifetime, so we're pretty happy & await tomorrow's ultrasound - in the meantime here's the first part of the letter T, which is taking some time to write - i hope to finish this encyclopedia really soon because i don't want the baby announcement to come while i'm trying to talk about vending machines...thanks to ikahana for motivating me to get this stuff done...
Tea I've decided against ranting against one of my most hated southern staples in this space, in order to try to keep as many friends on my list as I can since I know I'd offend a fair amount of you with my depraved thoughts. So instead, I'll just say that its wonderful to be in a country where saying the native tongue's equivalent of "I'll have a tea to drink" results in a small ceramic drinking vessel that's so hot you have to hold the cup with your thumb on one corner and your pinky finger on the opposite corner as you imbibe an earthy green beverage of the gods, rather than some glorified glass of icey brown sugar water. Well, enough of that.
I drank a hell of a lot of tea in Japan. I think my main problem with "sweet tea" (I get queasy even typing that) is that to so many people in this region, there simply is no other way to drink tea. I love having vending machines full of black tea, milk tea, green tea, oolong tea, all of them in hot or cold varieties. I love going into temples that offer matcha (the powdered variety they drink in tea ceremonies) in a tearoom, which I shelled out yennage for regardless of my last drink. Let's face it, if I can kick my morning coffee habit for a week with green tea and still function afterwards, you should know how much I love it.
In addition to all of the tea I drank, I came home with some different varieties of tea that I'd never had before. First, there was the special grade of green tea that I bought in Kyoto which is not easy to import here (a friend who works at a tea store had to pull some strings to get it previously). Then I bought a big pack of tea made from soba which gives everything a nice grainy taste. And then there's another small pack I bought in Kyoto that isn't actually from tea leaves at all, but some homebrew of twigs or something that I sampled outside of the Ryoanji temple which blew my mind, but I'm saving it for a special occasion. S' oka-san said that there's nothing really special about it and she in fact makes it on her own, but I've never had anything remotely like it on these shores. Maybe it could be imported in & blow the mind of my fellow brainwashed citizens. But I'm not holding my breath.
Television I didn't watch as much TV this time around as I normally do, and of the TV I did watch it seemed that most of it was pornography. But on the morning we left, I decided to watch some quality children's programming to balance it out. As we were in Yokohama, the show I tuned into was called Yo! Kids!! (because they're, y'know, YOkohama KIDS, get it?). It only took 4 minutes of this program for it to become my favorite TV show of all time.
Thank goodness the link above has pictures, because it can show you the setup better than I could describe. Its mostly a musical program where a group of 4 young girls around 10-13 years of age corral a largely unwilling mass of children into singing and dancing along to a number of songs. The songs are transcribed on the tv screen in katakana for kids at home, and interspersed between verses are grunts of "C'mon!" and "Okay!" by the Flavor Flav of "Yo! Kids!!", this guy with a blue helmet that made me think of Dumb Donald from the old Fat Albert cartoon.
As the link shows, the children for the most part ignore whatever choreographical maneuvers are expected of them, as the camera zooms in on kids who stand bewildered by the environment, often standing still or wandering off-set or something equally enteratining. Every once in awhile one kid will get worked into a fever and do his own manic choreography, which the cameras jump on because they're happy to get any activity out of the audience. Its all adorable as hell, and I was genuinely melancholy when its 30-minute time had elapsed. My first question after I stopped laughing (which went throughout the whole show and about 4 minutes into the next program) was "Can Oka-San record "Yo! Kids!!" for me, uh, and our future child?"
I have a dream that a couple of years from now, we will go to Japan and our toddler will be part of the stoned-looking chorus for one episode of "Yo! Kids!!" A bright future planned for my offspring, I say...
Tempura Bars When S' brother visited America for the first time back in January, we tried to give him a good time. We fed him pretty well, we took him to the Atlantic Ocean, we drove him up to the north Georgia mountains to see waterfalls, and due to his love of thug culture I granted his request to see "dangerous areas of Atlanta". He made it all up to me in spades by taking me out for an afternoon of pachinko playing and an evening at a tempura bar (he also planned to take me to a shabu shabu restaurant that uses octopus instead of beef, as well as a night of karaoke, but fate declared otherwise).
The bar in question was Ten-ichi, a well-established tempura restaurant that has about 7 or 8 locations in Tokyo and Yokohama. We ate at the one in Yokohama station, located within the Takashimaya department store. A tempura bar is very similar to a sushi bar, as you sit at a small semi-circular bar with a chef within the circle. He takes your order, places the ingredient in the flash fryer briefly, and then pulls it out and shakes the oil off of it before placing it on your plate. You're given a plate of grated daikon and there's that "tempura sauce" (whatever it is - ponzu? I can't recall offhand) that you can use to accompany it, but with tempura this quickly prepared and presented the chef prefers you to do little more than squeeze a lemon over it and add some salt if you desire.
There were about 20 items on the Ten-ichi menu for tempura, including lots of things I've never seen in American restaurants (octopus tempura, a fish similar to sardines, etc). We didn't order from a menu and instead had the chef just prepare whatever he wanted for us. I think we ended up trying all of the items, and the culinary overdose from such a food marathon guaranteed a night spent in bed unable to lift a muscle only to awaken the next morning by saying "I'd like to do that again!" Does anyone know if there are tempura bars anywhere in our country?
Tea I've decided against ranting against one of my most hated southern staples in this space, in order to try to keep as many friends on my list as I can since I know I'd offend a fair amount of you with my depraved thoughts. So instead, I'll just say that its wonderful to be in a country where saying the native tongue's equivalent of "I'll have a tea to drink" results in a small ceramic drinking vessel that's so hot you have to hold the cup with your thumb on one corner and your pinky finger on the opposite corner as you imbibe an earthy green beverage of the gods, rather than some glorified glass of icey brown sugar water. Well, enough of that.
I drank a hell of a lot of tea in Japan. I think my main problem with "sweet tea" (I get queasy even typing that) is that to so many people in this region, there simply is no other way to drink tea. I love having vending machines full of black tea, milk tea, green tea, oolong tea, all of them in hot or cold varieties. I love going into temples that offer matcha (the powdered variety they drink in tea ceremonies) in a tearoom, which I shelled out yennage for regardless of my last drink. Let's face it, if I can kick my morning coffee habit for a week with green tea and still function afterwards, you should know how much I love it.
In addition to all of the tea I drank, I came home with some different varieties of tea that I'd never had before. First, there was the special grade of green tea that I bought in Kyoto which is not easy to import here (a friend who works at a tea store had to pull some strings to get it previously). Then I bought a big pack of tea made from soba which gives everything a nice grainy taste. And then there's another small pack I bought in Kyoto that isn't actually from tea leaves at all, but some homebrew of twigs or something that I sampled outside of the Ryoanji temple which blew my mind, but I'm saving it for a special occasion. S' oka-san said that there's nothing really special about it and she in fact makes it on her own, but I've never had anything remotely like it on these shores. Maybe it could be imported in & blow the mind of my fellow brainwashed citizens. But I'm not holding my breath.
Television I didn't watch as much TV this time around as I normally do, and of the TV I did watch it seemed that most of it was pornography. But on the morning we left, I decided to watch some quality children's programming to balance it out. As we were in Yokohama, the show I tuned into was called Yo! Kids!! (because they're, y'know, YOkohama KIDS, get it?). It only took 4 minutes of this program for it to become my favorite TV show of all time.
Thank goodness the link above has pictures, because it can show you the setup better than I could describe. Its mostly a musical program where a group of 4 young girls around 10-13 years of age corral a largely unwilling mass of children into singing and dancing along to a number of songs. The songs are transcribed on the tv screen in katakana for kids at home, and interspersed between verses are grunts of "C'mon!" and "Okay!" by the Flavor Flav of "Yo! Kids!!", this guy with a blue helmet that made me think of Dumb Donald from the old Fat Albert cartoon.
As the link shows, the children for the most part ignore whatever choreographical maneuvers are expected of them, as the camera zooms in on kids who stand bewildered by the environment, often standing still or wandering off-set or something equally enteratining. Every once in awhile one kid will get worked into a fever and do his own manic choreography, which the cameras jump on because they're happy to get any activity out of the audience. Its all adorable as hell, and I was genuinely melancholy when its 30-minute time had elapsed. My first question after I stopped laughing (which went throughout the whole show and about 4 minutes into the next program) was "Can Oka-San record "Yo! Kids!!" for me, uh, and our future child?"
I have a dream that a couple of years from now, we will go to Japan and our toddler will be part of the stoned-looking chorus for one episode of "Yo! Kids!!" A bright future planned for my offspring, I say...
Tempura Bars When S' brother visited America for the first time back in January, we tried to give him a good time. We fed him pretty well, we took him to the Atlantic Ocean, we drove him up to the north Georgia mountains to see waterfalls, and due to his love of thug culture I granted his request to see "dangerous areas of Atlanta". He made it all up to me in spades by taking me out for an afternoon of pachinko playing and an evening at a tempura bar (he also planned to take me to a shabu shabu restaurant that uses octopus instead of beef, as well as a night of karaoke, but fate declared otherwise).
The bar in question was Ten-ichi, a well-established tempura restaurant that has about 7 or 8 locations in Tokyo and Yokohama. We ate at the one in Yokohama station, located within the Takashimaya department store. A tempura bar is very similar to a sushi bar, as you sit at a small semi-circular bar with a chef within the circle. He takes your order, places the ingredient in the flash fryer briefly, and then pulls it out and shakes the oil off of it before placing it on your plate. You're given a plate of grated daikon and there's that "tempura sauce" (whatever it is - ponzu? I can't recall offhand) that you can use to accompany it, but with tempura this quickly prepared and presented the chef prefers you to do little more than squeeze a lemon over it and add some salt if you desire.
There were about 20 items on the Ten-ichi menu for tempura, including lots of things I've never seen in American restaurants (octopus tempura, a fish similar to sardines, etc). We didn't order from a menu and instead had the chef just prepare whatever he wanted for us. I think we ended up trying all of the items, and the culinary overdose from such a food marathon guaranteed a night spent in bed unable to lift a muscle only to awaken the next morning by saying "I'd like to do that again!" Does anyone know if there are tempura bars anywhere in our country?