Weekend in Nara: A Foreign Food Frenzy

I feel a bit sheepish writing yet another post about foreign foods. I'm probably supposed to be writing a detailed piece on the origin of the soy bean and recount how I spent several days carving a slab of tofu into the shape of a samurai before immersing it in soy sauce and serving it to a geisha. But I eat plenty of delicious Japanese food in Kanazawa, so when I blast off to a bigger city for the weekend, I'm all about fulfilling my foreign food cravings.

One thing I really miss about home is cafe culture. In Seattle I spent a fair amount of time hunkered down in independently owned coffee shops, sipping lattes and playing Scrabble, while the ironically tattooed baristas noisily foamed milk and contemplated their facial hair. As the rain continues to fall in Kanazawa, I long for a cozy cafe to read my book in at 9 o'clock at night. Turns out Nara is just the place to do this. The city has a number of adorable little cafes; all bright, colorful and modern in that shabby chic meets Ikea catalog kind of way. It is all a bit ironic (maybe even more so than a hipster tattoo) since Nara is famous for being one of Japan's oldest and most historical cities.

My friend Kate and I decided to indulge in both the old and the new Nara: we photographed ancient temples and gawked at Japan's largest bronze Buddha statue & then frolicked off to munch on organic doughnuts and Israeli falafel.

Third Place Cafe

I have never been able to muster up much excitement for a muffin. "Muffin shmuffin!" I've always thought. Actually, I have never thought that. But I've just now discovered that it's really fun to say out loud. Anyway, when muffins come in flavors like black sesame, matcha (green tea) with black beans & walnut my interest has been piqued. The owner of Third Place Cafe says her muffins are American inspired, which is to say huge, and she bakes them fresh all day long. My black sesame was still steaming when she popped it into a paper bag for me to take home. I longed to lounge around in the European feeling, sunlit, cafe but alas sightseeing called.


Floresta

The people behind Floresta are pretty smart. They positioned the doughnut case right in front of the shop's wide open entryway, so that you can't possibly walk by without being magnetically pulled in by the enchanting little o's. The doughnuts are made with organic, natural and free range ingredients and they actually taste healthy. Yes, healthy doughnuts, an oxymoron for certain. That is, unless you tuck one away for the next morning. Whereas my "natural" doughnut was tasty eaten on the spot, my Early Gray flavored one released its hidden greasiness overnight and left a nasty, oily film in my mouth. Kate and my favorite thing about Floresta? A message written on the company's brochure: "The owners wish to provide safe and delicious doughnuts for everyone." Amen. Dangerous doughnuts are a serious problem and it takes a lot of courage to be proactive, really step up to the plate, and actually do something about it.

Falafel Garden

Traveling with a vegetarian isn't for the weak. Especially in Japan where nearly every dish is spiked with dashi, a fish based broth. Yes, vegetarians are nice people (well, sometimes), and perhaps they have higher morals than I do (I eat animals, but I recycle, OK?!), but getting in between me and my dinner is serious business. So I was seriously excited to stumble across Falafel Garden while doing some pre-trip restaurant research. Kate and I talked about Falafel Garden for the week leading up to our trip, we talked about Falafel Garden on the train ride to Nara and we talked about Falafel Garden while sitting in Falafel Garden. The quality of this highly anticipated meal could make or break the trip. The familiar panic set in while I scrolled the large menu. I only had one shot to get this right. Would only a fool order the grilled eggplant and baba ganoush pita sandwich? Should I get a falafel since the place is called Falafel Garden? I finally decided on the chicken shwarma sandwich and threw in a side of hummus for good luck. It worked. The chicken was super juicy and flavorful, the pita was packed with fresh veggies and each bite was smeared with the creamy hummus. Turns out I didn't only have one shot to get it right. FG does take-out, so I was able to enjoy an incredibly drippy, overstuffed falafel sandwich on the train ride home.

Café Wakakusa 

Absolutely starving, and therefore too hunkry (hungry + cranky) to track down another restaurant from this super helpful guide, Kate and I took a chance on a no-frills okinomiyaki joint whose name may forever remain unknown. I had been unimpressed and uninterested in the popular savory pancake for several months, but this little greasy spoon unexpectedly restored my faith. Full bellied and rehydrated, we were able to continue our cafe quest and ended the night at Cafe Wakakusa. Inside, everything from the walls to the floor to the cafe owner's pants and shirt were different shades of vivid green. I decided to stick with the trend and ordered a matcha latte. Kate was entranced by her mug of hot chocolate, topped with zigzags of chocolate sauce. A fashionable couple (is there any other kind in Japan?) came in, slurped up big bowls of yummy looking pasta, and left. We listened to soft Japanese lounge pop (a band which I now love and still can't find mention of anywhere online) and I begged the owner to open a second branch in Kanazawa.

XXX

This now (mostly) concludes the food portion of this post. Here are a collection of photos from our weekend trip in Nara, a quaint, easy to navigate city outside Kyoto that is now one of my favorite places in Japan. We also took a side trip to Akame Shiju-hattaki Falls, a beautiful forest about an hour outside of Nara for a day of hiking and waterfalls.

Nara's most famous temple, Todai-ji, was built in 745 and houses Japan's largest bronze statue, a 15 meter tall Buddha perched on a lotus flower. In person, it is truly a beautiful and mesmerizing piece that is hard to walk away from.

The cherry blossoms were already blooming.

Nara is famous for a huge, sprawling park that is home to thousands of free roaming deer and just as many moss covered stone lanterns.

Class photo day! 

 One of Akame Shiju-hattaki's 48 waterfalls.

Every city, town and village in Japan seems to have it's own culinary specialty, even if it's just a very slight variation on a popular national dish. This old gal is serving up one of the best sweets Kate and I have tasted in Japan. It's a delicious twist on taiyaki, typically a little fish-shaped cake made of pancake batter and filled with adzuki bean paste. In this case the batter was sweet potato puree. It was soft, creamy, sweet and earthy. Perfect with a cup of tea, or in my perfect world, a glass of milk.

The Sweet Potato Truck!

There are times when I actually forget that I'm living in another country. My workplace is sandwiched between two bustling Starbucks and situated across the street from a 24 hour McDonald's currently advertising four special "Big American Burgers."

But a few months ago, my BFIJ and I were making our way to a conveyor belt sushi restaurant when I heard an extremely loud, obnoxious, sing songy man's voice that seemed to be coming out of the sky. "Is it God?" I asked Yoko. "No," she assured me, "Better. It's the sweet potato man."

Sure enough, a little truck was inching it's way down the road, blaring a looped message in Japanese. Even bundled up in my gloves, scarf, coat and hat it was brain-freeze-cold outside and the idea of holding a red hot sweet potato in my hands sounded very appealing. "We gotta get one!" I called to Yoko and ran into the street to flag down the truck.

I'm not sure how prosperous this old fashioned venture is, but I love the idea of a vendor selling a single delicious product. The old man hopped out of his truck, selected a rock roasted potato from his stash and plunked it into a paper bag. That's it. No butter, no salt, certainly no blasphemous mini marshmallows. But I'll be damned if these completely naked Japanese tubers aren't the creamiest, most flavorful, absolutely luscious potatoes I've ever tasted. Recently, I bought another, for less than half the price of the truck tater, at my local grocery and it was even better. Unable to control my sweet potato lust, I hightailed it to the register, and spent my walk home dreamily munching on my purple skinned breakfast.

Here's a video of our sweet potato truck encounter, featuring Yoko translating the truck's message:

When in Japan, Learn to Make Tortillas

My friends, the time has come. The time has come to stop living a life without tortillas. I don’t even know how I made it this far. You see, back at home, the humble tortilla was a part of my daily life. Nearly every night I dragged one across the flame of my gas range until it warmed and softened, blistered and charred. I’d tear off strips and christen each with a few drips of Tapatio or Sriracha. Sometimes I drizzled the whole thing with truffle oil and a sprinkle of garlic powder. It's a reliable comfort food on it's own, and even better when wrapped around any number of tasty bits and pieces. I know I said all those nice things about rice, but the truth is you can't wrap that shit around anything!

I was golden for about three weeks after Cathy personally delivered a jumbo pack of flour tortillas, along with two cans of beans (refried and black), to my apartment door in Kanazawa. I rationed as best I could, while still dutifully sharing the bounty with my equally needy BFIJ two doors down. We feasted on pork fajitas, chicken shitake burritos and spinach and cheese quesadillas. We sliced avocados, sautéed onions and peppers and topped every chile and cumin scented creation with a dollop of plain yogurt. And then they were gone.

Then one day I realized: I can make tortillas! The ingredient list is short and basic and they don’t require an oven. Truly authentic tortillas call for lard, but I found plenty of recipes online that substitute easy-to-find vegetable oil.

Despite the lack of lard, I set out to make the tortillas as authentically Mexican as possible. I balanced a cutting board over the kitchen sink to create a countertop, rolled out the dough with a tall-can of Kirin and cooked them in a nonstick frying pan. With every roll of the can, Mexican grandmothers everywhere felt a sharp, stabbing pain in their hearts. They clutched their chests as the dough met the Teflon. Their daughters frowned, diagnosed them with heart burn and sent them off to bed with a handful of Tums. Lo siento, abuelitas.

It took a bit of fiddling with the heat and the thickness of the dough, but by the end I had a short stack of chewy tortillas, bubbled up in places and properly spotted with char marks. Perhaps they weren’t the best tortillas in the world, but they certainly seemed to be the next morning when I wrapped one around a heap of scrambled eggs and avocado. Not bad for a ghetto rigged operation conducted by a Jewish girl in Japan at midnight on a Thursday night.

Foodtopia : Kanazawa

"You know this is probably just gonna be fair food, right?" Yoko's glass must have been half empty as we slosh slosh sloshed through Central Park's lawn-cum-swamp, our wellies ankle deep in muddy slush and melted snow.


"Really?" I was disappointed. Really disappointed. I'd been looking forward to Foodtopia, Kanazawa's annual winter food festival, for weeks. Especially since we'd absentmindedly mixed up the dates and arrived at an empty park, bouncing like bunnies and starving, the Friday before.

But then I smelled it. The unmistakable scent of barbecue. Fresh local oysters, pried from the cold waters of the Noto Peninsula, steamed and whistled on long grills, sending smoke signals of love up into the sky for all to see. Fat scallops, giant shell-on shrimp, and butterflied squid were pierced with skewers and painted with a sweet soy sauce. If this was fair food, then I was a hungry carny. I channeled Templeton the rat from Charlotte's Web: "A fair is a veritable smorgasbord orgasbord orgasbord..."


The park was a sea of tents, each one selling some sort of eye catching, delicious looking treat. This being a festival, there were many foods on sticks. But instead of corn dogs and fried Twinkies, we were salivating over tender dumplings, filled with everything from pork to garlic and greens, portable strips of okinomiyaki and skewers of mochi balls.


"Today is the best day of my life," I said to Yoko as we passed a tent selling freshly fried tofu doughnut holes, as light and fluffy as a Danielle Steel novel. 


We decided to take a lap before committing. We were not about to make a rookie mistake. Only an amateur would fill her belly at the start of a food festival, only to miss out on what awaits at the very last tent. But surely we needed energy for this trek so we scooped up a plate of barbecued oysters and entered the maze of tents.
Our second commitment of the day was to a warm bowl of rice absolutely covered with negitoro (chopped fatty tuna belly and green onion) and the big ol' orange salmon eggs that go pop between your teeth. It was shockingly cheap and I ate my half slowly, savoring each little blast of seawater, the creamy tuna and chewy rice.
There was absolutely no way we could turn down the crab shells filled with hunks of crab, gooey crab guts and sweet claw meat. I may not be able to see the Sea of Japan from Kanazawa, but Foodtopia is proof that it's seafood stacked waters are only a 20 minute train ride away.


After sampling sesame coated chicken wings, chunks of jiggly mochi rolled in matcha powder, the aforementioned scallops and several dumplings it was time for something hot and steaming. We did what the Japanese do best, wait in line for something delicious, and were rewarded with the best bowl of ramen I've tasted in Japan. Rich and meaty, but not too oily, perfectly al dente noodles and excellent accessories; it was my first taste of Kyushu ramen delivered by a shop that traveled hundreds of miles to make me happy. 


"What's that singing? Is that live A Capella?" Of course it was. What better way to work off a belly full of food than to jog over to a big stage where four Japanese 20 year olds were belting out American oldies while two Japanese guys beat boxed in the background? Love Potion No. 9 (or as they sang it: Ruv Potion) will never be the same again. Yoko and I sang along, danced and clapped, while the audience sat still and silent. The girls smiled big, giggled and waved at us from the stage.

The older I get, the more I crave sweets, so we capped off our morning at Foodtopia with a visit to the taiyaki stand. The popular little fish-shaped pastries are traditionally filled with adzuki bean paste, but here we could also choose from several custards with flavors like vanilla, chocolate and espresso.


 "Today is the best day of my life," I told Yoko for the seventh time that day.


Then we did what nobody wants to do after they've skulked around a food festival for hours, stuffing themselves silly like Templeton the rat: we went to work. Sometimes the best days of your life are only two hours long.


 

Instant Ramen Museum: Osaka Weekend Part II

I have recently taken on the role of Crazy Food Museum Girl. If I had children they would probably be sitting in the back of a station wagon right now, sighing, rolling their eyes and whining. "Mommmmm! Do we have to go to the canned corn factory? We just toured the Ritz Crackers museum for Dad's birthday!" So I'm thinking it's a pretty good thing I don't have children. They would have totally ruined my plan to visit The Instant Ramen Museum in Osaka and that would have totally sucked because this museum is what dreams are made of. 

Top 5 Reasons Why The Momofuku Ando Instant Ramen Museum Made My Heart Go Pitter Patter:

1.) They have English audio guides! As I mentioned before, Yokohama's Ramen Museum was a bit of a let down because everything was in Japanese. But here I was able to soak up all kinds of useful instant ramen knowledge. Like, did you know that Momofuku Ando, creator of Cup Noodles, also invented the Styrofoam cup? Fascinating! These facts don't just grow on trees, people.

2.)YOU GET TO MAKE YOUR OWN CUP OF NOODLE! That's right: capital letters. Capital letters mean I'm serious about how awesome this is. This is awesome. Drop three 100 yen coins into a vending machine and an empty Styrofoam cup will drop out. You are then invited to sit down, in my case with an entire elementary school class on a field trip, with a basket of markers and decorate your cup. Then, take it up to the assembly line to receive your noodles. Here you get to choose what flavor broth you want (I chose Seafood) and four ingredients. I selected little bits of freeze dried asparagus, imitation crab, scallions and fish cakes shaped like little pink hearts and stamped with "Love." Next, watch as your cup is properly sealed and wrapped in cellophane. Brilliant! The Cup Noodle Factory wenches should also be mentioned: not only are they amazingly chipper and patient, they know that everyone wants to take about a billion photos of their personalized Cup Noodles. Without being asked, they automatically pose and hold up the cup for photos after every step.

3.) The museum is bright, clean, colorful and The Instant Ramen Tunnel highlights Cup Noodle and instant ramen packages sold around the world, from past to present.

4.) If you come on a day that was not the day that I came, you have the opportunity to make fresh ramen noodles. The museum offers hands-on courses, every day except Monday and Tuesday, so you can learn to stretch, knead, roll, cut and taste homemade ramen noodles. This only costs about $5.
 
5.) Oh, and speaking of money: the museum is free. Hurrah!

Perhaps I've slurped up all the noodle museums Japan has to offer. Fortunately the country is full of food obsessed tourists, which means there are many culinary theme parks.  Get in the car, kids! We're going to Gyoza Stadium!

God Bless the Burrito: Osaka Weekend: Part I

I've said it before and I'll say it again: burritos bring people together.

Example #1:

When I marched into Bank of America last year, primed to pull every last cent out of my account and move them all to a less sheisty institution, it was the love of burritos that kept me loyal to B of A. I sat down with one of the suit-and-ties, expecting the inevitably boring bank transaction, the lame banker jokes and the fake, forced, laughter. But then...

"You're from California?" he asked, squinting at the computer screen. "So am I!"

It's only logical that a conversation about California quickly turned to burritos: how we love burritos, how we miss burritos, how we don't love Seattle burritos, how we should run away together and eat burritos until sour cream pulses through our veins and we cry Tapatio tears.

The next thing I know he's reversing the charges on my account, permanently removing a monthly checking fee that had plagued me for years, moving my savings into a high interest account and giving me homemade chocolate chip cookies from his desk drawer. I considered canceling my afternoon plans so we could have cocktails in his cubicle. The other bankers ceased their fake guffaws. They were on high alert; they detected real laughter. They were suspicious as to how two people in a bank could be having such a good time.

It's the burritos, man. I'm telling you. They breed trust. They are a gateway drug to friendship. I would never trust a burrito hater and I don't recommend you do if ever in the unfortunate situation of being faced with one.

What does any of this have to do with Japan? Well, if you just calm down for a second I'll tell you. Jeez.

I'd been hearing about El Pancho, a Mexican restaurant in Osaka, for months. Two different people have told me that when they visit the city, they try and eat all of their meals here. I have to admit I was skeptical. One of these people is from England, the other from the American midwest. Not exactly the food capitals of the world. Uh oh. I felt a bad bad side of me start to creep in. I was morphing into my evil alter ego: Snobby McFoodie Pants. First I thought: "Pffffft. What do you bitches know about tacos? Have you even had real Mexican food?" Then I thought: "Pffffft. You're in Osaka! A food lover's paradise! Why would you eat that fake ass Mexican bullshit when you could be eating amazing Japanese food?"

Now, five months into my stay in Japan and desperate for anything wrapped in a tortilla, I was determined to track down this El Pancho during my weekend trip. Because burritos also breed good luck and sympathize with the directionally challenged, El Pancho turned out to be right down the street from the club where I was going to see an improv show. It was perfect! I'd treat myself to a Mexican dinner and head to the show. I managed to find the restaurant in the crowded Shinsaibashi district, walked into the elevator, and went to push the number 8, but it was already glowing.

"Are you going to El Pancho?" the Japanese girl asked in flawless English. I told her I was. "Are you meeting friends here?" I told her I wasn't. Two minutes later I was sitting at a long table with her and twelve of her chatty friends, most of them foreigners like me, ordering a Dos Equis and drooling over the extensive menu.

"How do you all know each other?" I asked the girl on my left.
"Oh, we all work for the same company here in Osaka. We're English teachers for AEON."

Dudes. Would you believe me if I told you that's the same school that I work for? Well, it is! Weird, huh? A very coincidental coincidence made possible by the magic burrito. So that is exactly what I ordered. Not a magic burrito, but a chicken one topped with red enchilada sauce, melted cheese and crowned with splotches of sour cream and guacamole. Some of the gals and I also split a quesadilla. There was Cholula on the table and two legitimately spicy homemade salsas served with chips. Admittedly, it was not the best burrito in the world, but it was pretty good (really good for Japan: the only other "Mexican food" I've had here involved cut up hot dogs floating around in a greasy cheese puddle) and I was in heaven. Not even Snobby McFoodie Pants dared to rear her ugly head. I was eating refried beans! There was hot sauce! It was like the crisis in the Middle East had finally ended. Time reversed and the earthquake in Chile never happened. People finally stopped saying "That's what she said!" Everything in the world was right again.

God bless the burrito.

Rice: Not So Boring After All

I must confess, I have always treated rice as a second, or even 4th, class citizen. A devoted noodle slurper, bread muncher and baked potato fan (it's the perfect vehicle for gobs of sour cream) rice has never been high on my starchy side-dish priority list. Sure, I've leaned on rice in times of need: to cool my mouth after a fiery bite of Thai curry or to keep the beans and carnitas company in an infant-sized taco truck burrito. But rice has always been my Joan Cusack of carbohydrates. Never the lead role. Always a bridesmaid, never a bride. Until now.

My rice cooker has easily become the most-used appliance in my kitchen (well, actually my rice cooker lives on top of the washing machine, but whatever). Every night I engage in the rice ritual: scoop the short grains from the 10kg bag and pour them into the rice cooker, wash the rice at least twice, scrubbing and swirling until the water turns milky, drain, add fresh water and a dash of salt, and set the timer for 10am. That's right, the timer. The Japanese have combined their two favorite things, rice and technology, allowing me to wake up to fresh rice every morning; the little yellow "warming" light kept aglow until I manage to slog out of bed and scoop it into a bowl.

Like many Japanese people, I have taken to eating rice two or three times a day. The grains are so deeply incorporated into the culture that the Japanese words for breakfast, lunch and dinner (asa gohan, hiru gohan & ban gohan) literally translate to morning rice, afternoon rice and evening rice. I have actually started to crave rice daily and it just seems to taste better here: a little nutty and a little sweet with a satisfyingly sticky mouth-feel. In the morning, I often have a bowl of warm rice sprinkled with furikaki, a rice seasoning, sold in dozens of varieties. I prefer a mix of thinly shredded nori, toasted sesame seeds and bonito flakes. Sometimes I top my morning rice with garlicky sesame spinach and a scoop of homemade daikon kimchee. On a less stinky morning I'll swirl a couple of beaten eggs into a bubbling pan of dashi, soy sauce, sugar and mirin then shake the soft cooked, umami coated, eggs over the warm rice. But sometimes I just want the simple comfort of plain, unadorned Japanese rice.

When I leave Japan, one of the things I will miss most is onigiri; the humble rice ball. Stuffed with a nugget of smoked salmon or maybe a pickled plum, and wrapped in a sheet of nori, onigiri are the perfect snack and a bento box staple. I make onigiri at home every morning, using my adorable little onigiri holders to mold the rice into perfect triangles. But what I really love are the ones from the convenience stores. I don't know if they're blessed by manatees or simply coated in crack, but man can 7-11 make some tasty onigiri! I could eat about 32 a day. My favorite part is the initial snap of the seaweed, closely followed by the soft chew of the rice. When I'm feeling simple I go for the triangles stuffed with a tiny blob of tuna mayonnaise or a tangle of dark green konbu. A fancy day means onigiri bearing raw tuna and green onion or a hunk of crab. I recently met a girl who works in the local 7-11 bento factory. I actually met the person who makes my precious onigiri! I nearly asked for her autograph.

Things I Miss: Episode 1: Brunch

Something was missing from my Sunday mornings. I couldn't quite figure it out. I did a mental checklist. Hangover? Check. Obscene laziness? Check. Book and magazine reading in bed? Check. It took a couple months, but I finally nailed it. Brunch! There is no brunch!

In Japan, breakfast is not usually a public affair. A typical morning meal is eaten at home and consists of rice, miso soup, grilled fish and pickled vegetables. The rice might be topped with a raw egg or, horror of horrors, natto: fermented soybeans with the consistency of snot and the smell of rotting kittens (I know, I'm sorry, but doesn't that sound like it would be the worst and the saddest smell?). Natto is the antithesis of brunch. Natto is bad. Brunch is so so good. There is really no better way to spend a weekend afternoon. All you need is a collection of your favorite messy haired friends and a plate of fluffy biscuits suffocating under a healthy (I do not use this adjective literally) blanket of sausage gravy. Extra points for a Formica table, bottomless coffee and delirious fits of laughter inspired by lack of sleep and the events of the night before.

I brought up the topic of brunch with Yoko, my BFIJ (Best Friend In Japan), who agreed that something had to be done immediately, if not sooner. We would have to forgo the Formica, the bottomless coffee, the biscuits and gravy, the restaurant, the pretty much everything I mentioned above, but damn it! There would be brunch!

In recent weeks, it seems all we do is have brunch. We are good at brunch. Last week we whipped up some excellent pumpkin spice pancakes, but there is one particularly simple meal that has us smitten. First, split a baguette of crusty bread. Then send a smear of soft butter, studded with chopped garlic, down both sides. Next, sprinkle with shredded cheese. Japan has no respect for cheese, so we are forced to use a flavorless and processed pre-shredded "white cheese." You should use a mix of freshly shredded Parmesan and mozzarella or Havarti or Gorgonzola or one of the other delicious cheeses that you are lucky enough to have access to, you bastard. Pop the bread into the toaster oven to melt and crisp around the edges. Meanwhile, fry some sunny side up eggs with salt and pepper. Make sure the yokes are nice and runny so you can stab them with your fork, let the velvety orange mess drip all over your bread, and make noises while eating them that are more appropriate for the bedroom than a brunch. Oh, but don't eat yet. You forgot the fresh basil, silly. Tear some up and scatter it across the bread before topping with your perfect egg. Shake a little Tapatio over the top, serve with a fruit salad, and you're in the business of brunch. Take that, natto.

Will Write For Travel

The goal: to arrive back in the United States, after a year spent in in Japan, and immediately get an amazing job that pays a huge salary and includes a loyal, but hunchback, butler and an office refrigerator that's always stocked with exotic cheese. In order to reach this goal, I figured I'd put in a little leg work. Or finger work as the case may be. I'm doing a little freelance travel writing for Peter Greenberg, host of a syndicated travel radio program and Travel Editor for CBS News, and my first article has just come out. Yippee!


http://www.petergreenberg.com/2010/02/10/budget-travel-tips-couch-surfing-for-grownups/#more-8060


Next up? Cooking classes in Kyoto and Tokyo...

Photos of the Week

How do you spell creepy? Um, this photo. It definitely made the walk home more interesting.

 

Finally! Milk that's NOT for homos. It's about time.

Holy mother of daikon! That's a huge...daikon. Seriously. Kitchen table wide. I've been working on this Ron Jeremy of a vegetable for nearly two weeks, cutting off chunks every single day, and I've almost completely conquered it. It's fresh from my cooking teacher, Yashida-san's, garden and tastes great transformed into kimchee or straight up as a snack.

I can't decide what's better: the look on the cat's face or the man's face. For reasons that only God and Barbra Streisand know, this man was proudly carrying this cat around the market on a clipboard. The cat seemed to have absolutely no issue with this, and calmly perched as passerbyers (including myself) pet it and cooed at it and completely encouraged this man's strange behavior. For the record, the kitty is not angry. There is a special sort of Japanese cat that comes equipped with these little smushed down ears.

I am a teacher. Oh, and a huge nerd.

I have been type type typing up this blog for nearly four months now, and just realized I haven't written so much as a lick about what occupies nearly eight of my hours a day, five days a week. My job! I'm a teacher. At a school. Weird.

It's very odd to suddenly have a new profession. Especially to suddenly have a new profession that I didn't go to school for, am not technically qualified for and never really had much of an interest in. I just woke up in Japan one morning, put on a suit, and Poof! I was a teacher! I have my own classroom (which fulfills my childhood fantasy of unlimited white board access) and students actually throw down the big Yen to sit and listen to me teach them things I learned in a 5-day training seminar while under the influence of extreme jet lag. At times, I completely forget that I'm a teacher. Recently a friend told me that teachers can get into a local museum for free. I automatically thought "Fuckin' teachers! I wanna get in for free!" Oh. I totally can. I'm a teacher now.

I teach adults, mostly university students and young professionals, with a scattering of high school students, senior citizens, salarymen and housewives. This job could never ever prepare someone to be an actual school teacher in the United States. In general, my students are the most polite, subdued, soft spoken, pleasant people alive, often to a fault. Last week when I dropped my pencil, a student nervously apologized and dove to the floor to pick it up for me.

Despite it being an English conversation school, some of my students seem to have a phobia of conversation. When faced with a simple question, such as How are you?, they stare at me silently and expressionless for what feels like centuries, like zombies in knee high socks with Prada purses. Sometimes I just want to slap slappity slap them back to life, and ask why they're paying up to $100 an hour to torture me with their silence. The money might be better spent on mime school. Of course, it must be noted that many of my students are absolutely lovely people to teach: they participate in class, laugh at my idiotic jokes and a few, perhaps tired of hearing me lament about my lack of oven, have surprised me with home baked treats.

A couple of weeks ago, I came home from work irritated by a particularly tedious class. I longed to install a hidden video camera in my classroom so I could document the little nuggets of ridiculousness and pass them  on to you people. Instead I opted for the next best thing: my oil pastels and a video camera. This is where my nerdiness comes in: I made a video. This is pretty much exactly what went down in my classroom that night.

Eat Walk Eat Walk: My Winter Holiday: Kyoto & Tokyo

As my Scottish coworker would say, I am one lucky sausage. I am lucky because I have some truly great friends, and one of them decided to fly allll the way to Japan so we could spend our winter holiday together. Yippee! Here are a just a few photos and highlights from our time together in Kanazawa, Kyoto and Tokyo.

Torii gates at Fushimi-Inari Taisha, Kyoto                                                                                                                 There are more than 10,000 of these gates, stretching for 4 kilometers, up a forested hill dotted with small shrines. We followed the path, eventually walked through all 10,000, and were rewarded with a view of the city. Each torii is marked with a few Japanese characters, which I assumed were ancient words of Shinto wisdom. Um, no. Turns out the toriis are sponsored by corporations, so they basically say shit like "Top Ramen" and "McDonald's" and whatever is the equivalent of Walmart in Japan. But there is some logic to this lameness: Inari is the God of business, so the gates are supposed to bring wealth and success.

Nishiki Market, Kyoto

Jam packed with vendors hawking freshly pounded mochi, a rainbow of pickled vegetables, homemade rice crackers and skewered street food, Nishiki Market made my brain crackle with overstimulated food lover's anxiety. I wanna try that! Look at this! What are those? That smells good! We stopped at a little stand for grilled oysters with lemon and giggled with gluttonous glee. As we wandered through the over-300-year-old market, I nibbled a giant fish cake wrapped with bacon, and decided it was possibly the best thing I've tasted in Japan.

Cooking Class, Kyoto                                       

Thankfully, Cathy is perfectly happy spending the majority of our trip shoving delicious things into our mouths. We signed up for a cooking class and were extremely pleased to discover it would be held in our teacher's spacious home kitchen. There was only one other student, an adorable Chilean gal living in Brazil, and together we prepared homemade dashi for a soup, teriyaki fish, a super tasty rice, chicken and veggie dish, and a spinach & shitake salad with sesame dressing. Our soft spoken teacher, Mariko, was the perfect hybrid of a modern and traditional Japanese woman, and the class was a definite highlight of our trip. She served us tea and cool slices of slick persimmon for dessert. 

Karaoke

Remember that scene in Adventures in Babysitting when the big, scary, deadpan dude says "Nobody leaves this place without singing the blues?" Well, that's pretty much just like Japan, except instead of the blues it's karaoke. You gotta do karaoke in Japan. It's pretty much mandatory. To my shock and amazement, my gal Cathy admitted she was a karaoke virgin. So Christmas night, instead of sipping eggnog and baking Jesus shaped Christmas cookies, we sang our faces off. Wham! Snoop Dogg. Cher. Hank Williams. No cheesy 80's ballad was left unsung. This proved to be a warm-up for Kyoto, where we would link up with some superfun hostel dwellers for a late-night karaoke extravaganza. Those with stage fright needn't worry; in Japan you get your own karaoke private room, a remote control to pick your songs, a tambourine (!) and all-you-can-drink soda. No one notices the tall cans of Asahi you smuggle in with your purse.

Tokyo

Always up for something a bit bizarre and out of the ordinary, Cathy and I found ourselves booking "rooms" at a capsule hotel in the Shinjuku district of Tokyo. They only had "luxury capsules" left which meant we got a chair and a tiny desk in addition to our little cubby hole. So luxurious. It was actually quite nice, compared to a hostel dorm room, where you don't get a little privacy curtain.


In Tokyo we continued our habit of walking approximately 132,000 miles a day, until our legs ached and our feet threatened to pop off our ankles.

One morning we joined masses of other fish fans at Tsukiji Market, the world's largest wholesale fish market, where sumo-wrestler sized tuna are auctioned off in the wee hours of morning for hundreds of thousands of dollars each. We went for breakfast, but by 9:30am the queues at the most popular sushi counters were already two-hours deep. Fuck that noise. Instead we opted for fresh fish, sans the hype, and nibbled on perfectly delicious nigiri and hand rolls at a crowded counter manned by an old chef who looked like he could slice sashimi in his sleep. We also strolled Kappabashi, an entire neighborhood devoted to selling kitchen gadgets, cookware and the fake, but incredibly real looking, plastic food displays used by so many restaurants.

New Year's Eve, Tokyo

It turns out our Kyoto karaoke buddies were also spending New Year's in Tokyo, so we pieced together a 13 person posse and headed for Shibuya to ring in 2010. Normally I am turned off by traveling with such a big group of sorta-strangers: no one can agree where to go, people wander off, one girl gets too drunk and locks herself in the bathroom barfing. But no such shenanigans occurred and it turned into one of the best New Year celebrations I can remember. When the clock struck midnight, we were standing shoulder to shoulder in Shibuya Crossing, with masses of people from around the world, under the pulsing neon lights and massive plasma screens fixed to the sides of buildings.

As we weaved through the crowd, in search of a bar, we hugged strangers, shook their hands, called "Happy New Year" to everyone in our path, and really meant it. My cheeks ached from smiling. I felt connected to every single person on the street. I wasn't thinking about the future or the past or people I wished were with me or getting another beer. I was completely in the moment and so happy to be there.