Miso Shiro
Posted by M Sinclair Stevens.
Monday May 13, 1991
I received an order from Daedalus. The temptation to curl up with new books is great. But it's the first clear day we've had in a week, so I force myself to keep my resolve and bicycle downtown.
Japanese Whiskey
Posted by M Sinclair Stevens.
Japanese whiskey tops US and UK brands in Whiskey Magazine's blind taste tests. Japan Times Online
Sushi Lady's Daughter
Posted by M Sinclair Stevens.
Thursday January 3, 1991
I venture out for sushi. To my surprise, the post office is open. When I get to the sushi-ya, I meet the sushi lady's daughter, who is home for the holidays from Tokyo. She works for Apple computer and, of course, speaks good English. Sometimes I envy the foreigners in the cities, for whom it must be much easier to get a grasp on what is going on.
The sushi lady asks her daughter to ask me how I like the sushi. I express my enthusiasm for it, especially the way she flavors her rice, not too salty, not too vinegary, and not too sweet, yet flavorful and not bland.
Are there any toppings I particularly like or dislike? I like them all, but. since you are asking, I have one question. The menu shows eel on the platter I always buy. But I never get any eel.
The sushi lady's daughter translates the query. The sushi lady looks at me, eyes wide with surprise, and then laughs. She had always heard that foreigners couldn't eat eel, and so had always removed the offending item from my platter.
"But I love eel. It's my favorite." We all laugh.
Pocari Sweat
Posted by M Sinclair Stevens.
Perhaps because Japan is the land of vending machines, it is also the land of bizarre canned drinks. The most famous, of course, is Pocari Sweat.
We actually like quite a few of these drinks. Aquarius is like Gatorade, but not so thick and sweet. Afternoon Tea is a iced jasmine tea with milk and sugar (just the way I always drank it in America, to the disgust of my American coworkers). There was also a sour yogurt soda that I liked, but the name escapes me now.
Other names I liked were Caloriemate, and, of course my very own, M Coffee.
Sake Special
Posted by M Sinclair Stevens.
June 9, 2002
John Gauntner reports on this year's National New Sake Competition in A taste of pure gold. The entries are specially brewed for the contest and not sold. Over 1000 breweries participated with gold being awarded to about 25 percent of the entries. Nagano prefecture beat longtime rival Niigata prefecture in receiving the highest number of golds.
May 11, 2002
Another wonderful article on sake from John Gauntner at The Japan Times. This time he explores the back-to-basics trend of muroka nama gensu (unfiltered, unpastuerized, undiluted).
February 4, 2002
The Japan Times ran a special section on sake in Sunday's paper.
John Gauntner takes us on the long journey from rice to ambrosia to explain how sake is brewed and what the different sake classifications mean.
He then details the troubled times currently suffered by today's sake producers in Sake's never been better--so why the poor business? In the last 30 years the annual consumption of sake in Japan has been halved as the consumption of beer, wine, and European spirits has increased. The only good news is that sake is becoming more available here outside Japan.
In Sake brewed with a feminine touch, Rob Gilhooly visits the Ichishima Sake Brewery in Shibata, Niigata-ken to talk with Japan's first licensed female brewmaster, Shiiya Kazuko. Ms. Shiiya, who is now 60, has been brewing sake for four decades.
Hasta Manana
Posted by M Sinclair Stevens.
Thusday, May 30, 1991
I escaped from school on an errand to the main bank in Oita City. Afterward, I roam the streets furtively, with a slightly guilty feeling of getting away with something. I never played hookey as a student, but it is just as much fun as a teacher.
The weather is drizzly and cold. As usual, I browse the English-language book section in Parco. Sometimes bookstores depress me. I'm crushed by the weight of all those thoughts. There is too much to read, too much to learn, and too much to remember.
Deciding that it is better to enjoy the day, be the pleasures so idle, I go to Hasta Manana to eat eggplant and pumpkin pizza. M2 introduced me to this wonderful cafe which has a Spanish name and serves an Italian dish made with Japanese ingredients. The decor is also eclectic: a poster for a bullfight, a painting of Italian Renaisance musicians, and a black and white photo of a woman in a hat which looks like it came from a French fashion magazine in the 1950s.
How wonderfully Japanese this all is.
An Octopus in the Sink
Posted by M Sinclair Stevens.
There's an octopus in my sink.
Which echoes of the Twin Peak's line, "There's a fish in the percolator," but I'm not making this up, and I haven't watched too much Twin Peaks. There really is an octopus in my sink.
Edamame
Posted by Jeanne Belisle Lombardo.
At the local Safeway the other night, I was mentally transported back 13 years to one of Beppu's main coastal attractions, the defunct and anchored cruise liner in the bay. This ship had been converted into a tourist attraction, and while it had been gutted and refitted, thus dispossessing it of much of its original charm, it boasted a top-notch restaurant and a beer garden. What was it that led me to recall that place that in retrospect seems a pink elephant of a structure, an eyesore in the bay? Edamame.
Ramune
Posted by M Sinclair Stevens.
Here's a blast from our Japanese past--these little bottles of sweet, lemon soda with the marble inside that you pop to open. Is this why it's called soda pop? The marble mechanism fascinates kids and brings back happy memories of being a kid for us old folks.
I found Ramune here in Austin at Central Market, our favorite supermarket. (Although I'd like to move to cooler climes, AJM says we can't, because anywhere else wouldn't have Central Market. We can find anything there.)
Elsewhere
Kiyo waxes nostalgic about Ramune and explains the name.
Nils illustrates how those lazy, summer, Ramune memories are formed.
Pizza Delivery
Posted by M Sinclair Stevens.
月曜日1991年４月２９日
Ted Mack amazed me by ordering a pizza over the phone. I find it difficult to communicate on the telephone to Murakami-sensei even in English. I can't imagine trying to order a pizza in Japanese. He must be a regular customer, though, as they didn't have any trouble with his order or following his instructions to his apartment.
Of course, I don't really see the point of eating pizza in Japan. But we seem to be having an Austin reunion day here, just hangin out, eating pizza, and watching videos.
Ted's apartment is further away from Oita Station than I've been before, on the other side of the bar district. I only come to Oita to shop, not drink, so I'm pretty unfamiliar with anything beyond the shopping arcades. On our way back, M2 and I are heckled by drunken men. I don't feel afraid, as I would in the US, but we keep our distance. It's so different from my sleepy, little neighborhood in Kamegawa. I'm glad I wasn't assigned to Oita-shi. My neighborhood is so quiet (except for the motorcycle gangs racing along the beach highway at night) and friendly, and well, neighborly. I suppose it's not a good thing that Kamegawa's populated mainly by old people and children, even if I think it makes it quaint.
Still thinking about Ted's Japanese skills...I know he's speaking Japanese with a heavy accent because I can understand a lot of what he says. Is that why when foreigners are together they throw whatever Japanese words they know into the conversation? I think we're the only ones who can understand each other's Japanese.
Hasta Manana Again
Posted by M Sinclair Stevens.
June 9, 1991
Hasta Manana is one of those little European restaurants that you read about in the lives of famous authors. You descend from the street into its small whitewashed room, into the heady smells of baking cheese, garlic, onion, and spices.
Behind the bar, a bar made of salvaged, but unrefinished, wood are the cup boards--arranged in such a way to make you think how the word originated. Row after row of cups, all European in style, rest two deep on the shelves, in sets of 6 or 8, a singular one here and there in their midst.
The barstools are covered with a dirty and torn brocade. In salvaging the furnishings, nothing was redone, so the restaurant seems older than it is and authentic, not designed. Authentic save for the braids of plastic vegetables that give the cashier's counter the air of a cheap Italian restaurant.
The customers are mostly young, smartly-dressed women. I wonder where all the men in this country are. Probably in a dark, crowded office. Women here have free rein to the fruits of men's labors and they enjoy the rewards of new wealth: shopping, eating, going to the theater.
Two other women, both Japanese, sit at the bar with me, also writing. I always regret that I learn how to live in a life just as I am about to leave it. Perhaps, once I master it, I have to go on to something else. Or maybe after I decide to leave, I pay closer attention to the details around me, and I let go a little and let myself play. After all, when one is leaving one has nothing to fear, nothing to lose, in being thought foolish.
M2 said it was important to have friends for whom she didn't have to edit herself. And then she took her discussion further and said she liked people who liked those parts of her that the majority of people wished her to edit. It is best, I agree, to be loved not only for who we are, but for those things that make us different.
