This week's food column:

So I did go to Disneyland back awhile ago and it was very strange because there were moments when I thought to myself, "Have I been here before?" The layout of the place was often identical to the layout of the Disneyland I went to in Florida when I last went in middle school. Of course, it seemed much more exciting back then. Most of the rides are the same as they were back then, but this time most of them seemed pretty tame. Luckily, I still like good old fashioned fun for children, so I had a good time. Space mountain was still pretty scary actually. More than once on that ride I was sure we were either hurtling into real outer space or a wall. Either way, I was fairly petrified. Turns out that rollercoaster has some wickedly fast turns. Woopee. We also had a huge buffet dinner for like 20 bucks. It was awesome. And it was served on Mickey Mouse shaped plates:




About a month ago I had dinner at my boyfriend's family's apartment. We had a fabulous home cooked meal provided by his mother. I hadn't eaten such good food in quite awhile. We had this one dish that was a bit similar to the kind of stew we'd make back in the states. In Japan it's called niku jaga, meaning "meat potato." Niku is meat, and jaga is short for jagaimo (potato). The ingredients were mainly beef, potato, onion, and carrot. But the beef was that thinly sliced beef that is so commonly found in Japan, that is not quite so common back home. The sauce was what really hooked me though: mirin or cooking wine, with brown sugar, and soy sauce. Amazing. Sweet, salty, and delicious. His mother told me how to make it and a few weeks later I tried it. I swear, I'm not a good cook but it was the best thing I've ever made, in the kitchen at least. I definitely plan to make it again. Perhaps we'll make a good cook out of me yet. Anyway, back to the dinner. It was a couple days before my boyfriend's birthday so we had cake, and jeez was it the best cake I'd ever had. I don't know how to describe it: light, fluffy, creamy, with strawberries on top. The cakes are really good here cause they aren't too sweet like desserts back in the states. Oh what a meal. I'm still dreaming about it.

Another recent food adventure I had, faithfully embarked upon on a Disgusting Tuesday, was eating escargot! I had always (never) wanted to try it, but lately I've been able to try almost anything. In fact, I am decidedly on the lookout out for new, disgusting, strange foods to try. So when my friends Adam and Amanda and I were trying to find a place to eat the other night, we happened upon an Italian restaurant chain called Saizeriya. We'd never been there and so we we peeked at the menu that had been helpfully parked outside on the sidewalk. I admit it was not a very impressive menu, but the moment I saw escargot on it, I knew we had to eat there. Here was an opportunity that I couldn't pass up. It came out on a round platter, with little craters in the dish, each containing a little snail swimming in a pool of garlic sauce. I don't usually even like garlic very much, but these things were surprisingly delightful. They had a pleasant taste and texture. I couldn't believe it. I'm sure escargot must be even better at a more expensive restaurant, or perhaps in a more appropriate place such as oh, I dunno, say, France?



Honestly, I shouldn't have been eating at such a boring, low quality food establishment. Personally, I think the Italian food in Japan is pretty bad. Or maybe it's not bad but it's just very different from any Italian food I've ever eaten, especially from the Italian food I've eaten in New York or Italy. It's just extremely Japanized in a way that I cannot appreciate, as of yet. In addition, I shouldn't have been eating at such a place because I was in an area called Shimo Kitazawa. In Shimo Kitazawa, probably any restaurant would have been better than Saizeriya.

I recently discovered Shimo Kitazawa in the past few weeks and I've gone back there quite a few times. It's a bit like Harajuku, but bigger and better... and less strange. Harajuku is the place where people dress like crossbreeds between Little Bo Beep and Marilyn Manson.
There are always tons of young people in Harajuku, and lots of interesting and exciting clothing shops, cafes, and restaurants. Shimo Kitazawa has less weirdos, and more vintage clothing stores and record shops. It also has lots of cheap, interesting, amazing, and delicious resturants, bars, and cafes. It also has a lot of live music venues.

I went back there again this past Saturday with my boyfriend and we found an old vintage toy shop that sold every toy imaginable from the past. It was wonderful. I admit I bought a few things. They had really nicely made figurines of literally every Disney character that ever existed. Even the unimportant characters that you never see toys made of. Like the owl in "The Sword in the Stone."




After that we had Okonomiyaki for dinner. It's a famous Japanese dish that I badly wanted to try. Usually you make it yourself, but at this place they cook it for you. It's basically a savory pancake made of flour, fried in a pile of noodles, egg, cabbage, carrots, other random vegetables, meat, huge delicious prawns, and some amazing brown sauce smothered on top of it all. It's just a big, gooey pile of goodness and they cook it on a big flat metal table in front of you. We ordered one plate and shared it between us, cause the servings were enormous. The place was a tiny crappy little hole in the wall, and it was super crowded. But, boy, was that food delicious. We finished the night with some Baskin Robbins ice cream (yes, they have it here. they have everything here, and more.) Again, I must relate the deliciousness of the ice cream. I ordered a new flavor called Blueberry panna cotta. Hot damn. If it's available in the states, I recommend you get over there immediately and try it.

P.S. This blog is becoming a bit like a food column in a magazine. I do apologize if you are not as into food as much as I am.

The important parts of culture: food and the words you need to know in order to acquire it

Well, some new strange foods I've tried are the following: pigs ear, and frog legs. Both of which I happened to eat at two different Okinawan restaurants. Okinawa, if you didn't know, is one of the most famous tropical Japanese Islands. It's a very popular vacation spot.

Anyway, pig's ear is apparently an Okinawan culinary delicacy. I ate it when I was attending a company party. The individual branch schools often host parties for their students, Japanese staff, and teachers to attend. I don't technically have to attend, but let's just say you win your staff's favor by attending their school parties. Sometimes these parties are held in the actual schools. This party, however, was held at a restaurant. It was a set meal for everyone, so someone ordered a bunch of famous Okinawan dishes for everyone to try. This just so happened to include pig's ear. Even the Japanese students were telling me I shouldn't eat the pig's ear, because it's basically just cartilage. I tried fried chicken cartilage once, also in Japan. It was awful. I have to wonder, why would someone choose to eat such a thing? "Oh, waiter, I'd like some fried chicken please, only please hold the meat." I guess some people like a good helping of crunchy bone-like substance every now and then. Anyway, I was glad to find that pigs ear wasn't quite so terrible as chicken cartilage.

As for the frog legs... well, you know what they say: it tastes like chicken! There's not much more to say, except that it was hilarious seeing how the legs were still attached. They were also disturbingly muscular looking. It was very bizarre because it was obvious that what we were eating had once been a frog. Much rude picture taking ensued at the dinner table. Here's a nice example:



Eating frog legs is just one of many strange eating experiences I've had with my friend Adam. (See earlier blog entry on eating scorpions). We both have Tuesdays off, so I end up hanging out with him a fair bit. Luckily, it turns out he's a pretty good eating partner, and I'm always looking for more of those. My criteria includes the following: they need to like many different kinds of food. They need to be adventurous and willing to try strange, new things. They need to love eating out. They can't be picky. They need to love meat. That last one is probably the most important, actually. Anyway, as a result of all this, Adam and I have made a pact to try a new and possibly disgusting food every Tuesday. We call it: Disgusting Tuesdays. Lovely.

In other news, I started Japanese lessons a few weeks ago. The class is held two days every week, on Tuesday and Friday mornings. There's about 15 people in the class. The teacher speaks a little bit of English, which is nice and helpful for me, being the only native English speaker in the entire class. There are no other Westerners really. There’s a bunch of Chinese women, three women from Laos, one from India, one from Indonesia, a girl from Thailand, two Korean women, a doctor from Colombia, and a younger guy from the Philippines. It’s quite interesting to see what problems people from different countries have with Japanese pronunciation. Though it can be rather frustrating when the Chinese students have a much easier time with pronunciation, and the reading and writing of Japanese script. It's also annoying cause some of them are rather cocky about the fact that they are better than other students. Whenever we have to read something out loud in class, and someone like myself is reading a bit slowly, they will blurt out the answers before I can come up with them myself. It's not that it's embarrassing really, but I don't like that they deny me the chance to figure things out for myself. It's very annoying, because I know I'd be able to get the answer if they just let me.

I admit I am still VERY slow at reading and writing. But I have been learning quite a bit and I am very excited about it. I've really been getting into it, trying to study a lot on my own time. Just in the first week I learned how to write and read in Hiragana. The Japanese use three different writing systems: Hiragana, Katakana, and Kanji. Kanji are the ancient Chinese based characters which are much more numerous and complex than the other two writing systems. Katakana is a phonetic writing system, mostly used for writing foreign words that use sounds that are not familiar to Japanese people. Like hamburger becomes "hanbaagaa," ice cream becomes "aisu kurimu," salad becomes "sarada," and so on. Hiragana is also phonetic, but used for Japanese words. It is much easier to learn than Kanji anyway. So my teacher started us on Hiragana. After a week or two she started us on Katakana. I can now officially read and write in both Hiragana and Katakana, and I am extremely surprised and proud of this amazing feat. Though I read like a small child; I'm constantly sounding everything out. Nevertheless, it is amazing to look around on billboards, the train, or in restaurants and be able to read things finally. Once I read a word, I may not know what it means, but at least I can look it up in a dictionary.

Unfortunately, the Japanese use all three writing systems together at the same time. So all three could be used within the same sentence, which can get rather confusing. It also means I can often only read parts of sentences. Well, hey, it’s a start. I’m very excited to be learning something again. I didn’t realize how much I missed being in school and using my brain and learning things. Sometimes I think about quitting the job and going to school again to learn Japanese full-time. But, that would require money I either don't have or can't afford to spend. So, I will satisfy myself with a mediocre class taught by volunteer teachers for free. At least it's two days a week! But man, oh man. Sometimes I just want to learn faster! I really want to be able to converse with people already. Sadly, I still have a long way to go... but I shall persevere.

Anyways, more to come later. I must divulge the dirty details of my splendid visit to the extremely tame and child-friendly Tokyo Disneyland. I faced Space mountain for the second time in my life and I am thoroughly proud to say that this time Space mountain didn't conquer me, I conquered space mountain! Oh yes, that's right. I even sat in the front row again. (God that was terrifying as a child...)

Earthquakes and ice cream and other nice things...

Last week I went to Ikebukuro with my friend, Amanda. In Ikebukuro they have an earthquake center where you can learn what to do in disasterous situations. Sadly, most of it was in Japanese so I’m not sure how helpful it really was. Honestly, I was interested in going because it was free and my guidebook’s description made it sound like those simulation rides at Universal studios. In reality, it was a bit less exciting, but still rather impressive.

First we attended a workshop addressing the proper ways of "escaping" a room on fire. They had created a smoke maze made up of many little rooms connected by closed doors. The first room was completely filled with a smoky substance that smelled rather sweet, like the stuff they released on the dance floors at Barmitzvahs when I was thirteen. It definitely did the job though, because it was impossible to see anything in that room. It was rather embarrassing because Amanda and I weren't totally sure what they were telling us to do, and each separate party had to go through the smoke maze while the rest of the group watched them on a screen. Amanda and I, the only foreigners in the room, were very conscious of the fact that we were being watched by a large group of Japanese people. I couldn’t see anything, so I crouched down low and followed the wall with my hands and eventually found a door. We made it out okay, but pathetically we managed to disobey most of the directions. We failed to cover our mouths properly, Amanda didn’t bother crouching down low, and we forgot to close all the doors behind us. Big F for the foreigners.

Next was the earthquake room. Each separate party got a turn in the earthquake room while the rest of us watched on a movie screen outside. When it was our turn we were paired up with another Japanese couple, making us a group of four. We earthquake room was made up to look like a kitchen. There was a fake stove with a pot and a kettle on it. We were told to sit at the kitchen table and wait. On the table were four cushions, one placed at each seat. As the room began to violently shake we had to cover our heads with the cushions and hide under the table. We were told to hold on tight to the legs of the table. The simulation was pretty creepy. They had simulated fake debris falling outside the windows of the room and the teakettle flew off the stove and onto the floor next to our table. Obviously they had lots of sound effects, as well. Luckily the kettle was actually attached to the wall by a metal wire, so it couldn’t actually hit any of us. After what felt like 3 or 4 minutes the simulated quake stopped and we were allowed to come out of hiding.

I now know exactly what to do if I am sitting at a table that has a cushion on it and an earthquake hits. Sadly, if I am anywhere else when the next earthquake hits, I will have no idea what to do. It was a nice idea, but not sure if they needed to spend all that money creating this earthquake simulation room just to give us some very simple and rather impractical information.

Seriously, though, I would really like to know more about earthquakes because the week before I visited Ikebukuro’s earthquake center, there was an earthquake in Toyko. It was sometime in the middle of the night, so I was rather groggy when I woke up. My bed was shaking quite a bit, the clothes in my closet were swishing back and forth, and the lamp on the ceiling was shaking. I was so sleepy, I don't think I realized how strong it was. While earthquakes are rather common here, this one was a fairly strong one I hear. The epicenter was actually pretty far away, but people seemed very surprised that we could feel it so strongly in Tokyo. It was about 6.8 on the richter scale. I hear Japan is long overdue for another huge earthquake, having had a massively destructive one back in the 20s. Here is an informative passage I stole from a 2004 BBC news article:

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“Japan is one of the most earthquake-prone countries in the world, perched on top of several converging tectonic plates.

Geological instability causes around 1,000 tremors in the country each year, although many of these go undetected by the public.

Every time they do strike they are a reminder to the country's capital, Tokyo, that it is long overdue "a Big One".

The last major quake in the city was in 1923, and records suggest the geologically precarious Kanto region - where Tokyo in located - will experience one of a similar size about every 70 years.

The 1923 quake, known as the Great Kanto Earthquake, killed more than 100,000 people. Although building and safety standards have greatly improved since then, experts predict that a major quake in the capital could still kill several thousand people and shake the world's financial markets.
…

The urban density of Tokyo - home to more than 12 million people crammed into an area of just over 2,000 sq-km - therefore puts it at great risk.

A government earthquake panel said in August that there was a 70% chance of a quake around magnitude 7 hitting Tokyo in the next 30 years. The city government has predicted a quake measuring 7.2 could kill more than 7,000 people and injure around 160,000.”

~~~

Pretty scary, eh? So now I can see why most Tokyoites are so nervous about earthquakes. I still have to get over my tendency to think that being in an earthquake would be exciting. Sometimes I almost wish a big earthquake would strike just so I could see what it’s like. I remember loving that movie “Twister” because I had never experienced a tornado. I thought the idea of trying to escape a natural disaster sounded so romantic and exciting. I know it's silly, but I still think that way sometimes. Since the awful earthquake hit China last week though, I have realized the seriousness of our situation in Tokyo. Who knows when the next big one will be?

Anyway, enough about earthquakes. Let’s talk about ice cream! Following the earthquake center, Amanda and I went to a large mall-type complex called Sunshine City. It has tons of clothing stores, a little theme park (of sorts) called Namja town, an observation tower with an aquarium in it, and a place called Ice Cream City. Ice Cream City turned out to be a mini museum about the history of ice cream in Japan. There was an arcade as well, as there often are everywhere in Tokyo. Lining the place were vendors selling packets of astronaut ice cream, strange flavors of Gelato, such as black sesame (the ice cream was actually black), and stretchy ice cream. The list of strange ice creams continues. I liked that everyone let you taste flavors before buying. We walked around and tasted all the flavors that a.) looked tasty or b.) looked really odd and possibly disgusting. There was also a room of freezers stocked with little cups of the strangest flavors of ice cream I have ever seen. A few examples are squid, octopus, shrimp, crab, curry, corn, and chicken. I, of course, just had to try one of these disgustingly strange ice cream flavors. After much deliberation, I chose chicken flavored ice cream. Well, here’s the thing… never eat chicken ice cream.



Chicken ice cream is basically bland, white ice cream, with minced fried chicken chunks mixed into it. The ice cream was boring and tasteless, and didn’t even taste like chicken. How utterly disappointing! (And those minced chicken bits sure didn’t do the ice cream's texture any favors). I’m pretty sure I remember finding a bit of cartilage in there, too.

After this exciting edible adventure, I settled upon a nice cup of gelato to calm things down a bit. I ordered a cup of two flavors: blueberry and rare cheese. Now rare cheese sounds pretty strange too, but it was actually amazingly delicious. The two flavors went together extremely well.

After Ice Cream City, we wandered Namjatown. I'm not sure how else to explain it except that it was kind of like an indoor theme park. There were no rides, but there was tons of food, such as Gyoza town. Gyoza town was filled with tons of vendors all selling their own versions of those tasty Japanese dumplings. There was also a three-story maze of many elaborate theatrical themed sets: a Florentine town, an Egyptian tomb, a haunted forest, and so on. It sure reminded me of Disneyland. I wasn’t really sure what the purpose of this place was, but people seemed to be playing some kind of game that involved wearing a big plastic cat on a string around your neck, sticking it into these little portals around the maze of theatrical sets and pressing buttons a lot. We foreigners, as usual, had no idea what was going on. We just enjoyed admiring the amazingly extensive detail put into the theatrical sets.


What really surprised me though, was the bathroom. In the last stall there was a large scary face sculpted onto the wall behind the toilet. When you sat down and closed the door, a trap door snapped shut on the top of the stall. The lights went out, thunder noises commenced, and a loud, booming voice began to yell threatening things in Japanese. Flashing blacklights revealed skeletons painted on the walls in glow-in-the-dark paint. What could be more frightening than sitting on a toilet in the dark, not sure what’s about to happen to you?