Tokyo Midtown was nicely lit-up this year. It was a cold night but people were out in droves taking in the sights.
Whoever designed it did a good job choosing the medium and the colors. Who would have thought optical fiber can be used thus? (Well, not me at least) The rounded structures reminded me of jellyfish at the Monterey Bay Aquarium...
Monday, December 31, 2007
Year-end revelry
December in Japan turned out to be the most intense partying month yet. It is the time of the Bounenkai (忘年会), where everyone ranging from long-lost friends to customers gather to dine, feast, chat and push the limits of one's liver. Luckily for me, I don't / can't drink so while every night saw me at a restaurant, I emerged largely unscathed except for the occasional tobacco-smoked-infused jacket (which incidentally is the thing I hate most about Japan).
Most of the food was good, especially Shabu-shabu (しゃぶしゃぶ) at a place called Shabu-sen (しゃぶせん) in Shibuya. But what I personally liked was getting the chance to know my coworkers better at the personal level. By this time (my 4th month), we have a cordial working relationship; people in the vicinity are no longer too shy to approach me for something. However it is outside of work where most Japanese coworkers loosen up, and in particular, once the alcohol touches the lips.
They seem to understand and remember that I don't drink, so Oolong Cha (乌龙茶) is automatically ordered for me nowadays. Being a foreigner and someone who doesn't need any external stimulus to go wacky, I get away with it :) And hence I get to watch in astonishment as my fellow revelers get addled as the evening wears on. Prim and proper ladies start to flirt shamelessly, serious and studious gents loosen their ties and reveal joke-ridden sides of their personalities which I had never met before. It was hilarious in a "Lost in Translation" kind of way because slurred and rapidfire speech made it more difficult for me, already struggling to decipher the complex casual forms, to understand all that was bandied and laughed about.
But their flushed and happy faces said it all; it was party time in Japan.
Most of the food was good, especially Shabu-shabu (しゃぶしゃぶ) at a place called Shabu-sen (しゃぶせん) in Shibuya. But what I personally liked was getting the chance to know my coworkers better at the personal level. By this time (my 4th month), we have a cordial working relationship; people in the vicinity are no longer too shy to approach me for something. However it is outside of work where most Japanese coworkers loosen up, and in particular, once the alcohol touches the lips.
They seem to understand and remember that I don't drink, so Oolong Cha (乌龙茶) is automatically ordered for me nowadays. Being a foreigner and someone who doesn't need any external stimulus to go wacky, I get away with it :) And hence I get to watch in astonishment as my fellow revelers get addled as the evening wears on. Prim and proper ladies start to flirt shamelessly, serious and studious gents loosen their ties and reveal joke-ridden sides of their personalities which I had never met before. It was hilarious in a "Lost in Translation" kind of way because slurred and rapidfire speech made it more difficult for me, already struggling to decipher the complex casual forms, to understand all that was bandied and laughed about.
But their flushed and happy faces said it all; it was party time in Japan.
Sunday, December 16, 2007
Ba re- bo- ru
Until recently I've long since forgotten the thrill of volleyball--the thumps of the ball on the court echoing around the arena, the shouts of teammates calling out formations and encouragement to one another, the rapid-fire smash-wham! of a spiker's attack slamming off a blocker's outstretched arms and ricocheting back into the attacker's territory, the crash of a receiving player onto the floor as he/she dives at full-stretch to retrieve the ball at all costs... the excitement, the intensity of matches back in the day have been resurrected!
The past weekend my weekly volleyball session reached its zenith--my team became champions for the first time in four attempts so I was very happy :D A fitting finale to the last session of 2007.
Volleyball is a team sport and thus calls for not only individual skill but good teamwork. Seldom are the virtues of communication, cooperation and trust more emphasized but since new teams are formed every time, gelling into a cohesive unit is not easy either.
First one needs a good blend of attackers, receivers and of course, a decent setter--the person who sets up the ball for the spike. The setter determines the flow of the game and is almost always the difference between victory and defeat. Of coursee, as it's a team game, if done well, the constant shouting of encouragement, patting of the back, high-five-ing among teammates soon create a feel-good aura which boosts the team even more.
First prize this time? A box of juicy persimmons :D
The past weekend my weekly volleyball session reached its zenith--my team became champions for the first time in four attempts so I was very happy :D A fitting finale to the last session of 2007.
Volleyball is a team sport and thus calls for not only individual skill but good teamwork. Seldom are the virtues of communication, cooperation and trust more emphasized but since new teams are formed every time, gelling into a cohesive unit is not easy either.
First one needs a good blend of attackers, receivers and of course, a decent setter--the person who sets up the ball for the spike. The setter determines the flow of the game and is almost always the difference between victory and defeat. Of coursee, as it's a team game, if done well, the constant shouting of encouragement, patting of the back, high-five-ing among teammates soon create a feel-good aura which boosts the team even more.
First prize this time? A box of juicy persimmons :D
Sunday, December 02, 2007
"Anyone can cook"
Remember these words from the movie Ratatouille? I just watched it so it is pretty fresh in my mind. Funny how life throw little coincidences at one sometimes. You see, after volleyball today a friend and I went looking for a quick dinner before heading home.
The venue this week was someone's little brother's high school--don't ask me how they got the keys to the volleyball courts but as usual everything was well-organized. Fewer players this week, great games. I just love diving all over the court rescuing balls--that just means I'm still rusty...should really anticipate balls better. The best players move before the opposition hits the ball.
Anyway, the high school was in a residential neighborhood and my friend spotted this "Chanpon (チャンポン)" noodle restaurant a few blocks away. Chanpon is a type of soup noodles from Nagasaki (長崎), milky seafood broth with lots of veggies and err... seafood. Very nice on a cold day after sports. Chanpon is also famous for being a staple of sumo wrestlers (don't know if it's true).
The proprietor was an old man with somewhat unkempt shoulder-length hair and he barely said anything to us when we entered. If he had tattoos he would have been a perfect yakuza. Besides the menu, there were pictures of mushrooms and short descriptions of their virtues on the wall. Clearly he was passionate about mushrooms. According to some of the printed material, different types of mushrooms were good for cancer, high blood pressure, etc. (Are you cringing, C? :) )
Not that he was very communicative... even when we ordered two large orders of Chanpon he just grunted and set about cooking it. The kitchen was humble, bare, spartan, yet somehow he managed to fashion some pretty good food!. Our Chanpon was very good. The noodles: just the right kind of chewy-ness, the soup: not too oily/milky/salty (his secret: clams), the gyoza: browned in the right places. It was hard to believe that such good food can come from such a simple place and from the hands of such an unlikely-looking chef.
Truly, anyone can cook.
When I complimented him, he grunted thanks and even graced me with the shadow of a smile. He obviously knew his stuff 'cos he then regaled us with takes of how he got each ingredient right. How did he end up being what he is now? Did he sit down one day, weary from fights and power struggles in the underworld, and turned to food for salvation? Did he meet his true love while picking mushrooms to make chanpon but lost her because the lure of the yakuza was too strong? Maybe this restaurant is his way of atonement, his avenue to happiness after a life of hardship and bloodshed.
(No I didn't have any alcohol, if you're wondering)
In the words of Anton Ego, "Not everyone can be a great artist, but a great artist can come from anywhere."
The venue this week was someone's little brother's high school--don't ask me how they got the keys to the volleyball courts but as usual everything was well-organized. Fewer players this week, great games. I just love diving all over the court rescuing balls--that just means I'm still rusty...should really anticipate balls better. The best players move before the opposition hits the ball.
Anyway, the high school was in a residential neighborhood and my friend spotted this "Chanpon (チャンポン)" noodle restaurant a few blocks away. Chanpon is a type of soup noodles from Nagasaki (長崎), milky seafood broth with lots of veggies and err... seafood. Very nice on a cold day after sports. Chanpon is also famous for being a staple of sumo wrestlers (don't know if it's true).
The proprietor was an old man with somewhat unkempt shoulder-length hair and he barely said anything to us when we entered. If he had tattoos he would have been a perfect yakuza. Besides the menu, there were pictures of mushrooms and short descriptions of their virtues on the wall. Clearly he was passionate about mushrooms. According to some of the printed material, different types of mushrooms were good for cancer, high blood pressure, etc. (Are you cringing, C? :) )
Not that he was very communicative... even when we ordered two large orders of Chanpon he just grunted and set about cooking it. The kitchen was humble, bare, spartan, yet somehow he managed to fashion some pretty good food!. Our Chanpon was very good. The noodles: just the right kind of chewy-ness, the soup: not too oily/milky/salty (his secret: clams), the gyoza: browned in the right places. It was hard to believe that such good food can come from such a simple place and from the hands of such an unlikely-looking chef.
Truly, anyone can cook.
When I complimented him, he grunted thanks and even graced me with the shadow of a smile. He obviously knew his stuff 'cos he then regaled us with takes of how he got each ingredient right. How did he end up being what he is now? Did he sit down one day, weary from fights and power struggles in the underworld, and turned to food for salvation? Did he meet his true love while picking mushrooms to make chanpon but lost her because the lure of the yakuza was too strong? Maybe this restaurant is his way of atonement, his avenue to happiness after a life of hardship and bloodshed.
(No I didn't have any alcohol, if you're wondering)
In the words of Anton Ego, "Not everyone can be a great artist, but a great artist can come from anywhere."
Saturday, December 01, 2007
Rancid shark meat
(Copyright, The Guardian UK, 2006)
I enjoy the British sense of tragic and subtle comedy; Perhaps when it comes to food, they have little right to make snide comment about someone else's cuisine but this article is pretty interesting, especially when the author tries to use historical perspectives to explain why some foods turned out the way they are (horribly wrong?!).
Rotted shark, anyone?
Touring Europe, Feargus O'Sullivan has tasted some memorably repellent dishes. Here are his all-time 'favourites'
Friday May 26, 2006
The Guardian
Lithuania
Lithuanian cooking has all the subtlety of an injured caribou trying to hide in a cabinet full of glass figurines. It is a country with 100 ways of cooking potatoes - all of them dull - and Lithuanians loathe vegetables or spices coming between them and their carbohydrates. The national favourites are Cepelinai ("Zeppelins"), hefty airship-shaped grated and mashed potato dumplings stuffed with mince, then boiled. Despite their name, these are anything but airy. Instead, they cling glutinously to the bottom of the stomach. If these prove too ponderous, you could always try potato dumpling soup (meatless mini-zeppelins in hot milk), potato pudding (a brick of grated potato baked in the oven) or potato sausages (potatoes cooked in chitterling casings). Of course, there are also pork, mushrooms, and the occasional sprat to liven things up, but these tend to be equally self-effacing and bland. Perhaps, after centuries of domination by Russia and Poland, the Lithuanians reckon that if they keep their food uncovetably boring, their neighbours might just leave them alone.
Iceland
Do you have a taste for rancid blue cheese, but find it can be improved by the added tang of rotten fish? Then try Iceland's great speciality, Hakarl - putrefied shark. Hungry Icelanders found that the uremic acid that renders raw Greenland shark inedible could be removed by burying the meat in gravel for a few months, producing a sort of piscine Jerky with an ammoniac stench so powerful it could blow the doors off a Transit van. If your courage fails you, you could sample Iceland's milder delicacies, such as sheep's head jam, mutton smoked in its own dung, or rams' testicles. To be fair, Iceland's traditional fare reflects its punishing sub-arctic environment more than its inhabitants' warped taste buds. Sadly, though, when it comes to eating out, modern Icelanders have too often replaced stringy puffin or wind-dried cod with grindingly insipid versions of international staples: flabby frankfurters, cardboardy pizzas, admittedly wonderful sushi and sweet, bland curries that resemble nursery puddings. It is enough to make anyone long for a slice of smoked blubber.
Holland
The quintessential Dutch food experience is the FEBO snack automat. These are great walls of heated compartments, all clad in shiny chrome, brightly lit and impeccably clean. Drop a coin in the slot and the door of your chosen compartment flicks open, disgorging some lump of tasteless deep-fried mystery-meat apologetically sweating grease into its cardboard carton. Nowhere illustrates better the Dutch love of scrubbed cosiness and efficiency and their total indifference to the pleasures of the palate. This sense of culinary anticlimax is everywhere in the country. I will never forget buying what I hoped was a spicy pasty in Rotterdam, only to find that it was filled with nothing but white sauce. Likewise the day a Dutch flatmate cooked us what she swore was a delicious traditional dish, then brought in a pan of reconstituted powdered mash, kale and tinned frankfurters. Even the more appealing Dutch treats, such as double-fried chips with mayonnaise, are spoilt by lack of care: the oil for the second frying is often stale, while the mayo is a form of sickly, watery industrial run-off. Thankfully, the Dutch Indonesians have improved things a little by injecting much needed care and spice into the national diet.
Czech Republic
Lard-loving Czechs damn anything they find boring as "neslany, nemasly", which means "not salty, not fatty". Happily for them, little meeting that description finds its way on to their plates. Plonked goutily in the middle of central Europe's dumpling belt, the Czechs' take on bowel-paralysing Euro-stodge lacks the occasional delicacy of the Austrians or the tangy seasonings of the Poles. A typical Czech plateful consists of great slabs of greyish flesh slathered with fatty, tasteless gravy, mopped up with dumplings that taste like kitchen roll dipped in egg. Still, what Czech cooks lack in imagination, they compensate for with meat - lots of it. Telling a Czech you don't like meat is like expressing a dislike for oxygen. The bezmasa ("without meat") section of a typical menu does not contain vegetarian dishes, but ones that have an ever so slightly lower tonnage of meat in them that the rest of the card, as the Czechs think that eggs and vegetables must be lonely without pork fat to keep them company. That people with standards so low for anything savoury can produce such exquisite cakes and beer is one of Europe's great mysteries.
Britain
We still have little to be smug about. Although we pride ourselves on our little gastro-boom, the British still eat more rubbish than any other European country. Eastern European staples may be heavy, but at least they are made of food. Our diet, by contrast, is plumped up with over-processed industrial gunk, awash with flavour enhancers, stealthy trans-fats and hidden glucose syrup. Some enjoy a shriek of horror at Turkey Twizzlers, but middle-class bottled pasta sauces, pre-packed Thai curries and supposedly luxurious ice-creams are scarcely much purer. Such a junk-filled diet hardly surprises when good eating is thought so dispensable that a 20-minute lunch break is the national average. It is not as if traditional British food is worth the nostalgia we squander on it either. Cod is officially the world's blandest fish; Yorkshire Pudding tastes of nothing whatsoever; and a country that considers a Bath bun a sensuous treat must be dead from the waist down. Thank goodness for immigration.
I enjoy the British sense of tragic and subtle comedy; Perhaps when it comes to food, they have little right to make snide comment about someone else's cuisine but this article is pretty interesting, especially when the author tries to use historical perspectives to explain why some foods turned out the way they are (horribly wrong?!).
Rotted shark, anyone?
Touring Europe, Feargus O'Sullivan has tasted some memorably repellent dishes. Here are his all-time 'favourites'
Friday May 26, 2006
The Guardian
Lithuania
Lithuanian cooking has all the subtlety of an injured caribou trying to hide in a cabinet full of glass figurines. It is a country with 100 ways of cooking potatoes - all of them dull - and Lithuanians loathe vegetables or spices coming between them and their carbohydrates. The national favourites are Cepelinai ("Zeppelins"), hefty airship-shaped grated and mashed potato dumplings stuffed with mince, then boiled. Despite their name, these are anything but airy. Instead, they cling glutinously to the bottom of the stomach. If these prove too ponderous, you could always try potato dumpling soup (meatless mini-zeppelins in hot milk), potato pudding (a brick of grated potato baked in the oven) or potato sausages (potatoes cooked in chitterling casings). Of course, there are also pork, mushrooms, and the occasional sprat to liven things up, but these tend to be equally self-effacing and bland. Perhaps, after centuries of domination by Russia and Poland, the Lithuanians reckon that if they keep their food uncovetably boring, their neighbours might just leave them alone.
Iceland
Do you have a taste for rancid blue cheese, but find it can be improved by the added tang of rotten fish? Then try Iceland's great speciality, Hakarl - putrefied shark. Hungry Icelanders found that the uremic acid that renders raw Greenland shark inedible could be removed by burying the meat in gravel for a few months, producing a sort of piscine Jerky with an ammoniac stench so powerful it could blow the doors off a Transit van. If your courage fails you, you could sample Iceland's milder delicacies, such as sheep's head jam, mutton smoked in its own dung, or rams' testicles. To be fair, Iceland's traditional fare reflects its punishing sub-arctic environment more than its inhabitants' warped taste buds. Sadly, though, when it comes to eating out, modern Icelanders have too often replaced stringy puffin or wind-dried cod with grindingly insipid versions of international staples: flabby frankfurters, cardboardy pizzas, admittedly wonderful sushi and sweet, bland curries that resemble nursery puddings. It is enough to make anyone long for a slice of smoked blubber.
Holland
The quintessential Dutch food experience is the FEBO snack automat. These are great walls of heated compartments, all clad in shiny chrome, brightly lit and impeccably clean. Drop a coin in the slot and the door of your chosen compartment flicks open, disgorging some lump of tasteless deep-fried mystery-meat apologetically sweating grease into its cardboard carton. Nowhere illustrates better the Dutch love of scrubbed cosiness and efficiency and their total indifference to the pleasures of the palate. This sense of culinary anticlimax is everywhere in the country. I will never forget buying what I hoped was a spicy pasty in Rotterdam, only to find that it was filled with nothing but white sauce. Likewise the day a Dutch flatmate cooked us what she swore was a delicious traditional dish, then brought in a pan of reconstituted powdered mash, kale and tinned frankfurters. Even the more appealing Dutch treats, such as double-fried chips with mayonnaise, are spoilt by lack of care: the oil for the second frying is often stale, while the mayo is a form of sickly, watery industrial run-off. Thankfully, the Dutch Indonesians have improved things a little by injecting much needed care and spice into the national diet.
Czech Republic
Lard-loving Czechs damn anything they find boring as "neslany, nemasly", which means "not salty, not fatty". Happily for them, little meeting that description finds its way on to their plates. Plonked goutily in the middle of central Europe's dumpling belt, the Czechs' take on bowel-paralysing Euro-stodge lacks the occasional delicacy of the Austrians or the tangy seasonings of the Poles. A typical Czech plateful consists of great slabs of greyish flesh slathered with fatty, tasteless gravy, mopped up with dumplings that taste like kitchen roll dipped in egg. Still, what Czech cooks lack in imagination, they compensate for with meat - lots of it. Telling a Czech you don't like meat is like expressing a dislike for oxygen. The bezmasa ("without meat") section of a typical menu does not contain vegetarian dishes, but ones that have an ever so slightly lower tonnage of meat in them that the rest of the card, as the Czechs think that eggs and vegetables must be lonely without pork fat to keep them company. That people with standards so low for anything savoury can produce such exquisite cakes and beer is one of Europe's great mysteries.
Britain
We still have little to be smug about. Although we pride ourselves on our little gastro-boom, the British still eat more rubbish than any other European country. Eastern European staples may be heavy, but at least they are made of food. Our diet, by contrast, is plumped up with over-processed industrial gunk, awash with flavour enhancers, stealthy trans-fats and hidden glucose syrup. Some enjoy a shriek of horror at Turkey Twizzlers, but middle-class bottled pasta sauces, pre-packed Thai curries and supposedly luxurious ice-creams are scarcely much purer. Such a junk-filled diet hardly surprises when good eating is thought so dispensable that a 20-minute lunch break is the national average. It is not as if traditional British food is worth the nostalgia we squander on it either. Cod is officially the world's blandest fish; Yorkshire Pudding tastes of nothing whatsoever; and a country that considers a Bath bun a sensuous treat must be dead from the waist down. Thank goodness for immigration.
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