Sent to me by a friend, an excellent – if slightly fanatical "How to eat sushi" guide:
"If four or more of the [warning] conditions above are met, leave the place immediately and head to a different restaurant."
It’s an entertaining and insightful read – it mentions the wonderful "kohada" which I enjoyed last Christmas in Japan. Enjoy!
Categories: Ephemera and links · Japanorama
As a first-time visitor, Tokyo blasts you with neon-shock and the crush of millions of people. Get over that, and the giddy cryptography of all the strange language around you, and stranger things start to reveal themselves. Looking back at the Christmas trip to Japan, which is the second time I’ve been there, I think one of the things that stands out the most – aside from the people I met – was the food.
Most people assume Japanese food basically comprises cold, dead, but very fresh fish. This is not the case – there’s plenty of sushi in Tokyo, but it’s not exactly an every day staple for most people, in part because being a sushi chef requires a lot of training, and so good sushi gets quite costly.
There’s a huge range of different types of food, and the Japanese themselves seemed, to me at least, to take food very seriously. Put it this way: if you were entertaining a Japanese guest, I wouldn’t suggest fishfinger sandwiches. This little post is intended to be a guide to a couple of the dishes I tried and enjoyed the most – Wikipedia’s entry on Japanese food is a much more comprehensive beginning than this one.
Click for more…. [ack - this post seems to have been eaten in the move to TypePad...]
Categories: Japanorama
A pinch and a punch for the first of the month! Same to your modem, as my bandwidth counter has now reset, and I can update properly again. Working on another new post about Japan, but in lieu of that, a photo I snapped after doing the washing when we got back home, and it’s another label from some clothes bought in Japan. This time, a pair of my fiancee’s jeans… Lovely attention to detail. Things like this make doing housework/washing clothes interesting…
Categories: Ephemera and links · Japanorama · Thought For The Day
A pause in updating, for the prosaic reason that I keep using up my bandwidth quota by the middle of the month, which limits what I can do, especially regarding photos. Still, nearly the end of January, so I can chance it…
Tokyo is not the easiest place to see traditional Japan. The damage Tokyo sustained in World War II, and the staggering amount of wealth it generated in the years after mean that its temples are all skyscrapers. Kyoto has the Zen gardens and rice-paper screens: in Tokyo, it’s shopping mazes and LED screens. Peaceful contemplation has given way to the wisdom of crowds. But you can still seek out more traditional aspects of Japan in the captial – one of the last places I visited was a stroll garden: Koishikawa Korakuen.
Construction was begun in 1629, by the founder of the powerful Tokugawa family. It was completed by the Tokugawa’s second clan ruler, Mitsukuni Tokugawa.
“The name of the garden, “Korakuen”, came from a Chinese text… admired by Mitsukuni which said that there is “a need for those in power to worry about maintaining power first and then enjoy power later on.” Thus, the name Korakuen, “the garden for enjoying power later on” was chosen.” – Koishikawa Korakuen English guide.
It’s a strange and beautiful place, with a bridge whose reflection forms a full moon shape, and some fabulous Japanese maple trees. It also happens to be right next to the Tokyo Dome, one of the capital’s biggest concert venues, and an amusement park. As you walk round Korakuen, you can hear the clatter of rollercoasters and the big rich rock bands soundchecking, drifting through the leaves. There is a big contrast between how we enjoy power in the 21st century, and how people in the 17th century enjoyed it.
Categories: Japanorama · Thought For The Day
I was back in England late last Wednesday evening, and at work again the following morning. Hiding in bed is the usual thing to do after a long haul flight; taking cups of tea gingerly, dozing off every half an hour. Plunging into the normal routine, doing my usual morning commute was interesting because it made the contrasts between London and Tokyo all the more acute – as if I had torn sheets from two newspapers, mixed them and tried to read a continuous story…
It was the commute that struck me first. The tube seems incredibly small after Tokyo’s huge, stainless steel trains, and the business of Tokyo has to be seen to believed. When staying there, I was at my fiancee’s family’s house, which was in west Tokyo. A thirty minute train ride would take us to Shibuya, in the city centre, and one of the busiest stations in the world. I think nearly two million people pass through it every day. Tokyo’s transport network itself is huge, too – there’s an extensive underground, and an overground rail system (the underground map is here – Shibuya is to the bottom left.) The system caters well for English speakers – stations are labelled in English script and even the announcements on the train alternate between Japanese and English.
It’s the sheer business of the system that is overwhelming and overtaking, the sense of people all around, below, above and next to you – squeezing onto trains, spilling off them, coming from everywhere….
Categories: Japanorama
I am now safely back in England, and my body clock is following a little more slowly behind me. Lots to write about – whilst I do like the web, the white screen isn’t quite as nice as this, picture below. It’s a shot of rolls of Washi, traditional, hand-made Japanese paper, in a shop in Kamakura. Will update soon, sleep/work/washing/eating/wondering first…
Categories: In My Life · Japanorama
As I’m in Japan, I was unable to catch the Queen’s speech (although maybe like most TV shows, someone will put it on BitTorrent?!?). So I have searched for an alternative Christmas message, and surprisingly, found it in the label of a jumper I bought here.
Categories: Japanorama · Thought For The Day
I think I am finally getting over the jet lag. Asmuch as I loved Lost In Translation, jet-lag in Japan isn’t always always full of gossamer-lovely longing. Sometimes it’s just plain knackering and involves a feeling like your head is full of silt that can come on at very random moments.
I’m here in Japan with my fiancee, and staying at her family’s house in Tokyo, which is a thirty minute train ride from Shibuya station. Shibuya is the place with the famous multi-way pedestrian crossing that you’ve probably seen a picture of at some point. Tokyo is one of the most densely populated places on earth, but you don’t really feel it until you’ve seen something like the Shibuya crossing in motion. In many countries, having that many people lining up, ready and raring to go would feel threatening – but in Shibuya there’s a controlled feeling to what happens, and sometimes, when you cross, despite being surroundd by people, you can feel quite alone – because everyone is in their own bubble… As my finacee says, the only way a station and area as crowded as Shibuya can work is that everyone knows exactly where they’re supposed to go, and when (see these before and after pictures at the bottom)…. The sociological view that Japan is a society that values (and demands?) conformity to the group might sound like a bad thing to individual Western ears, but as soon as you come to Tokyo, you get many sliver-insights into why it’s pretty much true, and also why people put up with it…
Good things are happening in the blog-o-sphere too: Boing Boing has
linked to my Sedlec photos, which is brilliant – it’s nice to have
contributed a little to such a good site as theirs.
Categories: Japanorama
My trip to Tokyo has begun. Still slightly in the grip of jet lag, so am only going to post a couple of photos – anything longer would almost certainly not make sense… Click on the images for larger versions.
Categories: Japanorama
This year, I will be spending Christmas in Tokyo. Which is a little worrying.
Preparations for this, although they haven’t included learning "We Three Kings" in Japanese, have been hurried, many and varied, and I’ve also been busy working loads on upcoming issues of Custom PC so I have left the blog unattended for a bit.
Surprisingly, given it’s December, I’ve got quite a lot of t-shirt updates to do. The lovely worried image above is from a t-shirt design by Anko – appropriately enough an Anglo/Japanese company, which I picked up from Jean Snow’s blog.
Categories: Japanorama · T-Shirts
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