My Summer Vacation

I always loved the first day of school. It meant a new unicorn Trapper Keeper, a closet full of new Fall clothes and a fun little assignment called "What I Did Over My Summer Vacation."  Still sun burnt and scratching at lingering mosquito bites, I enjoyed reminiscing over my summer and writing about my family vacations and frequent trips to the community pool.

So here it is, What I Did Over My Summer Vacation: Jewshi Edition. This will mostly be a photo essay, but I can't resist a few words.

In a nut shell: I saw a lot of art, played a lot of Scrabble, ate approximately 5,657 ice cream cones, sweat so much I looked liked like my entire body was painted in melted butter and wore the same outfit nearly every day while hauling a massive backpack full of unworn clothes around Naoshima, Takamatsu, Tokushima, Miyajima and Hiroshima. Oh, and I went camping. So I was dirty, sweaty and fashion challenged. But you should still look at the photos because dirty sweaty vacations are the best kind. Well, minus the dirt and sweat parts. 

If you ever come to Japan, or if you're currently here, you must must must visit Naoshima. I just used bold and italics so you should know I'm being totally serious. It's famous for being an art island, which means it's crawling with modern art galleries and outdoor sculptures, funky cafes and restaurants (something I constantly long for here), chill people and the most amazingly cool public bathhouse that looks like this on the outside:

And like this on the inside:

We were sleeping on the beach, so it was a nice treat to do our nightly scrubbing and soaking at this artsy little sento. Naoshima also has beautiful beaches and everything on the island can be reached by pedaling a bright blue rented bicycle.

Another highlight of the trip was the Awa Odori dance festival in Tokushima. The normally sleepy city is invaded by a million tourists who come to watch the 80,000 participating locals who wear costumes and do traditional dancing and drumming in the streets. We wandered the streets, beer in hand, sometimes getting pulled into the big dance circles to shake our booties, old school Japanese style.

There was, of course, lots of eating: Tom and I took an udon making class, which you already know about, ate oysters in Miyajima and visited Okinomiyaki Village in Hiroshima, which fulfilled my gimmicky food tourist needs. This "village" was, in fact, three floors of okinomiyaki stalls. Hiroshima-style okinomiyaki is different than it's Kansai cousin; instead of a mixed up meat, seafood and vegetable pancake, it's meat, seafood and vegetables are sandwiched between a thin crepe and a thin omelet. It's also stuffed with noodles, usually soba but we also tried one with udon.  


Ok, I'm doing that thing. I'm doing that thing where I say I'm not gonna say much and then I can't stop blabbing. It's the "you hang up, no you hang up" of blogging. So without any more adjectives, nouns, verbs or even adverbs, I give you:

What I Did Over My Summer Vacation

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.

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.


 

You're Invited: Dinner with Yoko, Michael and Me!

I said God Damn, I love technology. Ok, that's a lie. I don't really love all technology and I certainly don't want any of you (*ahem* Leez) to think I love technology because then you might wanna talk about it with me. I really hate talking about computers and flux capacitors and the latest cell phones that can take your basal body temperature while you talk into them. But I do love having the ability to make videos from afar and post them for you to see! I also love Skype. Now there's an invention I can support!

So, let's just say that you have really been wanting to go out for okonomiyaki with Yoko, Michael and I. Here's your chance! You can now! Just watch this video. Not only will you get to have dinner in a real live Japanese restaurant, you'll get to meet my new (read: awesome) friends!

Okonomiyaki is a popular dish made famous in Osaka, often called Japanese pizza. I happen to think it's more like an omelet meets a Korean-style scallion pancake. Egg is mixed with veggies and your choice of squid, shrimp and/or pork and sometimes a handful of skinny noodles. The finished okonomiyaki is painted with a sweet brown sauce, squirted with a zigzag of Japanese mayonnaise and sprinkled with bonito flakes. We also ordered some veg and grilled squid, sans okinomiyaki, as you will observe in the video.

Ok, dinner's ready - let's go!

Heaven is Only Ten Floors Up

I have quickly discovered my favorite place in Japan. A place so magical, so exciting, so exotic - I am put in a right tizzy every time I visit. The department store. Yes, the department store. The tenth floor to be exact. But let's start at the beginning: Floor One.

When you walk into an American department store, you are confronted with a maze of glass cases filled with makeup and perfume, manned by a sweet smelling army of rosy cheeked ladies.

Walk into a Japanese department store and the same glass cases are filled with the most delicate, fancy-looking, absolutely artful sweets and savories. There are rice crackers with perfectly edible, tiny Autumn leaves pressed into their centers. There are chewy, pastel colored sweets filled with chestnut puree. There are hundreds of hand crafted delicacies, and I cannot even begin to detect what most of them contain. They are all certainly works of art, floating on colorful tissue and carefully packed in pretty gift boxes. The best part? There are samples! I stroll slowly through the aisles, toothpick in hand, brow furrowed, unable to ask the sales clerks about what I have just tasted.

When I get bored of this, I take the escalator to the tenth floor (or the basement, depending on the store) for the real culinary thrill.

I leave the prim and proper, orderly and dainty, first floor behind and step off the escalator into the loud, chaotic mishmash of what we in The States might call a food court. Luckily, there is not a Hot Dog On A Stick in sight.

As I walk through the aisles of unidentifiable foods, stall keepers holler staccato sales chants at potential customers, and thrust toothpicks and tiny spoons under my nose, urging me to try a bit of this and a bit of that. It is all delicious, these mystery snacks. Most of it is fish: chopped up, sauced, spiced and mixed with other tasty things.

I buy a scoop of cucumber kimchee, fiery red and laced with sesame seeds. I taste spoonful after spoonful of various fish eggs, popping the tiny orbs between my teeth as I marvel in my good fortune. I crunch ribbons of dried kelp and
am surprised by the crisp snap of cold, marinated sea snails.

Then there are the raw meat and fish counters, a selection of seasonal produce, the prepared foods section boasting freshly fried tempura by-the-piece and glimmering sashimi. People line up for made-to-order okonomiyaki, a savory pancake of sorts nicknamed "Japanese Pizza." Old ladies crimp the edges of tiny, pork filled dumplings while college students ladle crepe batter onto hot, black grills and wrap the elastic pancakes around whipped cream, chocolate sauce and bananas. There is an amazing bakery with golden baguettes, crusty rolls and pastries. I even spy a Japanese bagel dog!

All. On. The. Tenth. Floor.

Us Jewish folk don't believe in heaven or hell. In college, I asked my mom where we go after we die. Unable to answer the question, she promptly mailed me a copy of Where I Go After I Die: The Jewish Guide to the Afterlife. It basically likens the afterlife to a Choose Your Own Adventure. Awesome. I'll choose Floor Ten, please.