Budget Trouble

Monjayaki vs Okonomiyaki

It’s always interesting to learn just what kind of google searches bring people to our blog.

Sometimes it’s the bizarre stuff, like “monkeys use onsen in winter what do they do when they get out” or “tengu fetish”.

Sorry, I don’t know what they do when they get out, presumably use a towel to dry themselves and then retire under the blankets with a heating pad. That’s what I would do, and I’m of comparable intelligence to a Japanese monkey.

And "Tengu fetish"?

Please, if that’s you who googled that, stop reading now and try to channel your sexual urges into something more socially acceptable, like good old-fashioned bondage. Though on the other hand, that unnaturally long nose does create some interesting possibilities… hmmm.

Yet for the most part what brings lost web surfers here is the usual and the mundane.

“Japanese schoolgirls”. “Fundoshi”. “Japanese food.”

Sorry, can’t do much about the first two today, but what about Japanese food? As it happens, you're in luck - that can be arranged.

Hinokuruma is listed in the Lonely Planet guides, how about that?

While running some errands in Nikko last Thursday, we stopped by at Hinokuruma (a restaurant run by our friend Shinako) and had okonomiyaki for lunch. Mine was pork kimchee, Dr Trouble’s – just pork.

His porky okonomi before cooking.

And here they are on a hot plate. Yum!

Dr Trouble tried to talk me into ordering monjayaki, but I’m not that dumb.

Fortunately, a lovely couple from Tochigi city (hi guys!!!) came to my rescue. They were kind enough to let me film them, too. Thanks!

Yes, it looks vile.

Now, I’m known to consume things that look disgusting but even I have my standards. Or as my friend, who served me my very first monja years ago in Tokyo said – “everything can be made palatable with a proper application of bacon or beer.” How true! And since I don’t like beer, I normally stick to bacon. So would I eat a pork-free monja, like this one here? Not a chance in hell.

“What if it was made by a handsome guy wearing nothing but a fundoshi?” I hear you say. Oh, shut up!

Or watch these two videos and tell me - which one would YOU rather have for lunch?

Making monjayaki:

And making okonomiyaki:

Tochigi Cuisine - Shimotsukare a.k.a. cat's vomit

A few weeks ago Loneleeplanet (a wholly excellent blog) presented a list of 10 weird Japanese foods.

While there is no way in hell I will eat live fish (I like my food fresh, that’s true, but not THAT fresh), I am open to trying just about anything, at least once. Yes, even fugu, though with fugu it might be "once" in more ways than one.

Coming from a culture that doesn’t shy away from horse meat (loves me a good smoked horse meat sausage) and many other delicacies that make foreigners shudder at the very thought, my definition of “weird food” is a bit more flexible than what can be expected of a typical gaijin in Japan.

I like whale. I like dolphin. I don’t mind eating insects (and if you fry them, hey, that’s even better) and smelly things (with a chronic sinus problem I can’t smell most stuff anyway). And smelly, fried insects? My favorite!

What gets me are combinations of foods.

Take a few perfectly innocent ingredients, such as, for example, a fish head, soybeans, deep fried tofu skin, some other stuff, including shredded carrots and radish, simmer the living daylights out of it, and the end result is enough to make me barf.

And considering that even the Japanese nicknamed this culinary wonder “neko-no-gero” (猫のゲロ) – cat’s vomit, my reaction is not that far off the mark.

Yes, it’s shimotsukare (しもつかれ) I am talking about here, of course. A traditional dish from Tochigi, Gunma and Ibaraki with all the visual appeal, texture, smell and flavor of semi-digested cat’s puke.

But first things first.

When you’re driving around Tochigi, you can see “Shimo” this and “Shimo” that aplenty. In fact, just today we went to Shimotsuke City, a wholly unremarkable place, located in the… yes, you guessed it, Shimotsuga district.

And you’ve probably heard that Ieyasu TOKUGAWA's tomb and shrine are located at Nikkō, in Shimotsuke. Why Shimotsuke (下野)? It’s the old name for Tochigi.

So it’s only fitting that the culinary delight native to Tochigi (regardless of how famous Utsunomiya might be for gyoza, gyoza ain’t from here) is also named “shimo” something – shimotsukare, to be exact.

So what is shimotsukare? This:

Looks yummy, doesn’t it?

It has a somewhat viscous consistency and is a little sweet and a lot sour. And normally, people from other parts of Japan refuse to eat it. Can’t say I blame them, really. It took a certain Kansai transplant ten years to bring himself to try it, and another ten years to convince himself he liked it.

In Dr. Trouble’s family the dish is traditionally served on New Year’s day.

Grandma Trouble has her very own secret shimotsukare recipe, which when I asked about it, she flatly refused to share with me. It’s the “you ridicule it and don’t eat it, you don't get to watch me make it” principle. Fair enough.

image: not sure, found somewhere on the intrawebz

I promised her that maybe next year I will try… Maybe…

Kayabuki in Utsunomiya - Where Waiters Are Monkeys

We were bored today and thought that seeing a couple of monkeys in goofy costumes would be a swell idea. No, we didn’t go to a cosplay event, we went to Kayabuki.

Kayabuki is a restaurant (actually, an izakaya, to be precise) in the Miyukihoncho part of Utsunomiya (address: 4688-13 Miyukihoncho, parking available) where two monkeys work as waiters (or waitresses – sorry I didn't feel like pulling down underpants). Their names are Yacchan (presumably a boy) and Fukuchan (presumably a girl, though I’m not sure).

Tonight only Fukuchan was on duty. And let me tell you, the masked and wigged monkey in the mask was a very creepy sight.

And if not for those monkeys, there would be no reason for Kayabuki (phone: 028-662-3751) to be famous. It’s a less-than-average izakaya. Somewhat dirty and grungy, but not enough to be a skanky dive. The food is OK, but just barely this side of OK. The service is non-existent. No wonder then that when a British TV crew visited Kayabuki some time ago, some customers said that the monkeys were actually better waiters. At least they brought you things, which cannot be said about the human staff.

Do you want a hot towel?

We were being purposely ignored for about 30 minutes. So much effort went into that ignoring that I was beginning to worry that mamma-san and her helper might sprain their necks from turning their heads to avoid looking at us.

But when we finally managed to place our order (teppanyaki x2 and oolong tea x2), the food arrived relatively quickly. Mamma-san’s helper for some very strange reason insisted on explaining the menu to us in English. Even though Dr. Trouble was answering her in perfect Japanese.

Inside Kayabuki

Oh yeah, the menu… ignore the fancy menu posted on the wall. The one with stuff like boar, deer and duck. There’s none of that, that menu is just for show. Today’s choices were: teppanyaki with chicken and tofu with meat. Plus the usual sides of kimchi, gyoza and tempura (which consisted mostly of onions).

Tonight we were treated to only one monkey, Fukuchan. And thank goodness, because that was enough to creep me out. The monkey did her schtick of delivering hot towels for about 30 minutes and then disappeared behind the bar.

Fukuchan getting friendly with customers

That was our cue to pay and leave. Oh yeah, speaking of paying… Our bill should have been 2200 yen (teppanyaki 900yen x2, plus oolong tea 200 yen x2), but we were charged 2600 yen and no explanation was forthcoming as to why. I was planning to leave a tip for the monkey (the sign on the wall asks you to do just that) but after being overcharged 400 yen, I changed my mind.

Fukuchan sans the creepy mask

Conclusion: it was interesting for one night, but we won’t be back. I can ignore nasty attitude (god knows, I have plenty of that myself) but I won’t put up with being ripped off.

Here's a short film, sorry about the cellphone camera quality:

PS. And you better not mess with Yacchan, he is 4th dan in karate:

I "heart" Brazilian Supermarkets

My friend just called and told me she was on her way to a Brazilian restaurant in Moka. And that resulted in two things:
1. me getting very hungry, and
2. this blog post.

Funny, because just yesterday I was reading on some other blog a bunch of useless, racist drivel about Brazilian Japanese (no link, because racist nonsense shouldn’t be advertised). And the day before I went shopping at a Brazilian supermarket in Moka (bought pickled beets, sausages and Inca Kola).

Takara Brazilian Supermarket in Moka

So, yes, in case you didn’t know, there are Brazilians living in Japan. Quite a few of them. And Peruvians. Also quite a few of them. And Bolivians and other South Americans, but not so many of them.

How did they get here? By plane, presumably. And yes, they are of Japanese descent, but it might be hard to realize by looking at some of them.

The story goes like this: back in prehistoric times, sometime around the beginning of the 20th century bunches of impoverished Japanese peasants were enticed to immigrate to Brazil. And so they did. Until 1941 almost 190 000 people left Japan in search of a better life in Brazil.

The immigration from Japan to Peru had started even earlier, back in the late 1890. Anyway, fast forward to the end of the 20th century – that’s when the descendants of those Japanese, in order to escape the instability of Latin America, came knocking on the door of their “motherland”.

A small mercado in Kanuma

Those “returnees” are known as “dekasegi” and while many do struggle in Japan, because even though they may look Japanese, culturally they are not, there are also many success stories. But you don't hear much about those successes, because really, like, who cares?

You just hear about those who lost their jobs due to the economic downturn and about the Japanese government’s scheme to pay them some laughable amount of cash and send them back to wherever it is they came from.

But where were we? Ah yes, Brazilian supermarkets. Yes, these people need to eat, and I for one, am very glad for this fact. Since this is not Tokyo and I can’t just hop to a local import food store, I am very grateful for our local Brazilian markets. Because they stock all sorts of stuff, and not only from Brazil. And while I am very happy in Japan, every once in a while I crave pickled beets or proper chorizo, and yes, even Inca Kola.

And now, if you excuse me, I have a lovely beet salad to consume.

Jingle Bells Chicken Smells

Our very traditional Christmas dinner is over… And thanks to the Colonel and a local cake shop, it was a smashing success.

Yeah, the Colonel… I know this topic has been beaten to death on various J-blogs already, but not everyone who reads THIS blog frequents other J-blogs (and did I just include myself in the ranks of J-bloggers? Hell must have frozen over and the fat lady is singing…)

But where were we? Ah yes, the Colonel.

You see, it’s traditional in Japan to eat fried chicken on xmas day. Why? Simply put, turkey is/was too much of an assault on the very genteel Japanese taste buds, not to mention the fact that it’s pretty much impossible to cook a proper turkey in a standard Japanese oven. So, back in 1974 KFC got the brilliant idea to use this fact to their advantage and have themselves a merry, little xmasy fried chicken marketing campaign.

And as with all “new” things in Japan, there were only two possible outcomes – come January 1975 it was going to either fade into obscurity or catch on in a big way. There is simply no middle ground when it comes to trends in this country.

And as we all know by now, the campaign has caught on, big time. So big that now, only some 30-odd years later, eating fried chicken for xmas is considered “traditional”.

Other retailers have jumped on the fried chicken bandwagon and if you’re not a fan of the Colonel, you can get your xmas dinner from just about any food purveyor, from a local grocery store to the Hotto Motto bento seller.

Our “traditional” Japanese xmas dinner also included pizza and cake. “Traditionally” it should have been a strawberry cake, but I am very pleased to say that chocolate cake is gaining ground too.

Of course, this being Japan, the cake came from a cake shop, because:
a) no proper oven, and
b) nobody wants to slave in the kitchen, especially since for 99% of Japanese xmas day is just an ordinary work day.

And needless to say, this being Japan, every cake looks like a little work of art...

And why do we put candles on top of a Christmas cake? Well, it might be not baby Jesus’s birthday today, but it IS somebody’s birthday, so why not?

And now, if you excuse me, I need to look for some indigestion medication.

Happy Holidays!

Sendai - the Capital of Gyu-Tan (grilled beef tongue)

This is Yoshi's debut as a travel blogger. Not bad for a first-timer, wouldn't you say?

It’s been a decade since my last participation in a job-related meeting of the Japanese, by the Japanese, for the Japanese, in Japan. Ten years ago it was in Fukuoka, and this time - in Sendai (Miyagi prefecture), in the north-eastern part of mainland (if you can call it “mainland”) Japan.

Sendai is also called “ A City of Trees” and that was the excuse a bunch of plant biologists (and I’m one of them) used to organize a meeting there.

This city of one million inhabitants (and counting) was established by a “one-eyed dragon” local ruler in the early 15th century (Tokugawa Edo period). His name was Masamune DATE (伊達 政宗) who lost his right eye to smallpox (hence the nickname).

 

Sendai's famous one-eyed founder on horseback. 

 

This “one-eyed pirate”-looking overlord (who also allegedly converted to Christianity at some point later in his life) was a fearless, intelligent and ruthless politician. Ruthless enough to assassinate his biological brother. And oh yeah, he was also into good food – and Sendai is known for its nice cuisine, because nothing calms down the nerves after a good massacre like a yummy bowl of gourmet goodies. Apparently, he was not only an expert at chopping off heads, but also generally good at chopping and cooking stuff in the kitchen, too. According to all historical records he was an exceptional cook, I believe the words "culinary arts" were even used to describe his cooking.

Masamune Date’s name and character overwhelms Sendai. I mean it (but I don’t mean that deadly sibling rivalry is a commonplace occurrence here these days). There’s a bronze statue at the Sendai castle, his mausoleum - Zuiho-den, and his name was even borrowed by a local FM station - Date FM, but the pronunciation is ‘deit’.

Another interesting historical fact is that he sent his retainer, Tsunenaga HASEKURA (支倉常長) on a diplomatic mission to España (via the Pacific and Mexico). That dude’s Christian name (yep, another “alleged” convert) is Don Felipe Francisco Hasekura!!! Now, how’s that for charming, huh?

 

Roses were brought to Sendai from Europe by Hasekura 

Well, let’s proceed to my trip to Sendai. At the meeting, I realized how uniform everything in Japan was… men in their cheap suits (on a researcher’s salary you can’t really afford Armani or another Versace, unless you marry rich) looked like any other government-issue businessmen you could encounter on a Tokyo subway platform.

It appeared that I was one of the very few participants wearing… let’s say, “relaxed” clothes and four-year old sneakers. But hey, I didn't marry rich, and I happen to like my sneakers, after four years of constant wear they’re fused with my feet.

However, I realized one extremely basic fact that for some reason had eluded me until then. It was so easy and convenient to participate in a meeting conducted in my mother language. See? That’s what ten years of living abroad will do to you.

The boring scientific part took two days and there was even a celebration for those young, promising researchers in cheap suits, who provided a nice poster. Five PhD students got a prize for the best poster of the meeting and the “Daruma dall” was bestowed as an award by the organizer.

 

The winners with their daruma. 

 

In general, a Daruma doll has only one filled-in eye. However, in Sendai, because of Masamune Date, it is considered a taboo to have a one-eyed Daruma, or so the organizer told us...

Daruma is a representation of an ancient Indian Buddhist monk, Bodhidharma, who is also known as the founder of Zen. Anyway, the awarded young scientists with bright future all have Darumas with two black eyeballs, as a result. You know what? Actually that Zen founder is not an East-Asian! It is hypothesized that he was an Indian-born Aryan of uncertain heritage, but reportedly - with blue eyes. Yes, Zen was established by a blue-eyed guy (allegedly)! Chew on that, all you Asian culture freaks.

 

Zen style garden 

 

 

And even more zen. 

 

Because I happened to know one of the head honchos at the meeting, I was invited to visit Matsushima islands (松島), with the head honcho himself acting as a local guide.

Matsushima is popular sightseeing place around Sendai and is considered as one of the “Three Views of Japan”. Whatever. Matsu (松) in Japanese means pine. I expected to be able to find matsutake (松茸) mushrooms there but the weather was bad and it was not the season for mushroom picking.

 

On the way to Matsushima 

 

Instead I had tons of oysters and a little bit of Ascidiacea (ホヤ) as the chef’s seasonal recommendation. Was it good? Hmmm… Let’s just say it was interesting, OK?

Another thing that Sendai is famous for is gyu-tan 牛タン (grilled beef tongue). I have to say that Sendai has a lot of yummy foods to offer (and that I can understand why Mr. Date was rumored to be a gourmand) and is definitely a place worth visiting.

Eating gyu-tan also made me realize how long I’ve been living outside of Japan. Last time I had gyu-tan in Sendai was in 1998. Back then, I was also in Sendai to join a boring scientific meeting (no fancy trips to Matsushima that time, btw). I remember eating gyu-tan in the 20th century was like chewing on a leather jacket, my jaw was ready to crack, and tears started to come out unconsciously from the sheer effort involved…
What a difference ten years make when it comes to food technology!

 

I'd rather enjoy macha tea and a rice cake with edamame paste than chew old leather jackets.

OK, my next destination in the general Sendai area would be Tashiro Island (田代島), an island of cats!!!

PS> And what my poor husband doesn't realize is that with that last sentence he just decided MY winter break plans for me. The magic word - "cats"!!!

Conveyor Belt Sushi revisited

I’m not a sushi snob. Though I have all the right in the world to be. I’ve spent many a miserable weekend slaving over slabs of fish, mountains of rice and endless nori sheets at a certain sushi establishment, where I was one of only two gaijin allowed in the kitchen (the other was proprietor’s husband). So yeah, I’ve paid my sushi dues. And believe me, there’s nothing to make you appreciate sushi like getting up at the crack of dawn to receive a shipment of fish.

And so it’s somewhat amusing when I hear (or read) comments from foreigners in Japan that go more or less like this: “I haven’t had any good sushi in (insert a city name here) yet, but then again, I’ve only been to the conveyor belt sushi places so far.” Why is it funny? Because most of those people wouldn't know good sushi if it hit them in the face (or sat on a plate in front of them).

Somehow, the general idea that most visitors to Japan seem to have is that if you didn’t eat it at Tsukiji (or spend untold thousands of yen on it elsewhere) then it wasn’t good sushi.

I had a boss once who whenever she heard that comment from someone, she would invite them over for a sushi party at her house. She would get takeout from a conveyor belt restaurant, place it in a really fancy box from somewhere else and serve it in a very elaborate setting. And how many people who said, “I haven’t had any good sushi here yet, but then again, I’ve only been to the conveyor belt sushi places so far” realized they were being fed conveyor belt sushi? None. Ten out of ten oooohed and aaahed over the “expensive,” “gorgeous” and “amazing” fish and happily chomped it down in blissful ignorance.

Such attitude is not unique to foreigners. My own mother in law will not eat sashimi from Tairaya (a supermarket chain), because as she says, “it’s awful”. However, sashimi from Otani (a different supermarket chain) is acceptable to her. Yet when raw fish was bought at Tairaya and put it on a plate in front of her without announcing where it had come from, she proclaimed it “fresh” and “delicious”. The poor woman wouldn’t be caught dead anywhere near a conveyor belt restaurant, but I very much doubt if she could spot or taste the difference. But I guess those are the perils of being a raw fish snob.

Personally, I have nothing against conveyor belt sushi restaurants. They serve a purpose, namely – they’re cheap. And they serve it well.

And if they were really as bad as some foreigners seem to think, then there wouldn’t be gazillions of them all over the country. I like them. I eat at them. But then again, I’m a cheapskate.

I like that fact that everything at Sushiro is 100 yen (plus tax), because I'm not a fan of the different color plate - different price system at Genki Sushi.

So Much to Eat, So Little Time

“Oh, I could never live there, I can’t imagine eating raw fish.” This is what I hear quite often when I tell people (mainly from the US or continental Europe) that I live in Japan.

So what’s up with this raw fish bit? Do these people really think that here in Japan all we ever consume is sushi and sashimi? And the answer unfortunately is - yes, they do think that.

Sadly, whenever Japanese cuisine is mentioned, raw fish is the first thing (and sometimes the only thing) that immediately comes people's minds. Granted, not to everybody’s mind, but to a surprising number of people nevertheless.

Soba noodles - no raw fish here, but still as Japanese as... well... raw fish.

Which, if you ask me, is quite dumb. It’s like thinking that all Americans ever eat are hamburgers, Germans – sauerkraut and sausages, and Russians – borscht. And everybody knows that’s simply not true. In addition to hamburgers, Americans love their hotdogs, Germans – black forest cake and beer, and Russians – pierogis and vodka. And the same is true about Japan. We like and consume all sorts of food over here, including everything that has been mentioned above. Yes, even hotdogs and black forest cake, though not necessarily at the same time.

A bowl of hand-made ramen at Omiya ramen shop in Utsunomiya

In fact, the sheer variety of food in Japan can be mind boggling. You’d need several lifetimes to try and sample everything that this country has to offer in the culinary department. And that’s just the Japanese cuisine. Then there’s French, German, Italian, Chinese, Brazilian, Indian, Iranian Korean and scores more.

I luvs me some good Korean bbq.

What? Too high-brow for you. No worries. There’s more fast food here than you could ever think possible. There’s even a kebab joint (halal at that!) and a taco stand in our provincial town.

Ali Kabab in Utsunomiya, cheap and tasty.

Actually, it helps to think of Japan as one huge izakaya (pub). Food is plentiful, yummy and for the most part cheap. Yes, cheap. Don’t listen to those who tell you stories about just how expensive food in Japan is. Just because they spent 10 dollars for a glass of orange juice at their Roppongi hotel doesn’t make them experts on prices in this country. Though it does make them experts on how not to travel and spend money, that’s for sure.

Kaiseki bento (takeout kaiseki) - yep, there's raw fish in here, too.

In reality, Japan has plenty of eating options for every budget and taste. My budget is rather tight and my taste – not too picky. But because I’m lazy by nature, I don’t like to cook. In most other countries I lived in, this was a tough combination. Normally, eating out, or buying ready-made food was more expensive than cooking at home. Not so in Japan. If you factor in the time it takes to make a meal from scratch, water, gas, and then still deal with cleaning up afterwards, it makes more sense to just outsource the cooking to your local supermarket, especially after 6PM (look for discount stickers).

Discounted supermarket bento (from Otani)

Let them do the slaving over a hot stove bit. I’d rather just eat. Which is what I frequently do. And then have my husband clean up. Because every man should learn how to sort plastic for recycling from burnable trash, right?

Utsunomiya Gyoza Matsuri 2009

Last weekend (yes, I’m writing about it only now, bugger off) we had a gyoza festival (gyoza matsuri, 餃子祭り) in our town.

For the uninitiated – what’s gyoza? A dumpling by any other name. Sort of Japanese pierogis. Eaten in pretty much the same way – steamed or fried. But when pierogis can come with sweet filling (yea, even blueberry cheese – barf!), gyoza is strictly savory – meat (mostly pork), cabbage, garlic and what not. I normally cook mine like this: dump a bunch of frozen gyoza in a skillet, add some water, cover and simmer until all the water is gone. Then splash some sesame oil and fry until they stick to the pan. I like to sprinkle sesame seeds on mine during this step. Serve with a dipping sauce. If you can’t find ready-made gyoza dipping sauce, just add some lemon juice to normal soy sauce and voila. Your gyoza is ready. Just had some last night, in fact, slightly burned, because my husband was cooking.

So yes, this lowly dumpling has its own festival in Utsunomiya. Why? You see, Utsunomiya fancies itself as a “gyoza city”, which is apparently supposed to be famous for its dumplings. But as with a lot of other things in Japan, it’s just a story made up by a local tourist board, because, after all, a city must be famous for something. Anything. So for Utsunomiya gyoza it was.

The city fathers even decided that the dumpling deserved a statue in its honor. So yes, we have a gyoza sculpture (represented as a woman, of course, because if a male was to be depicted as a pudgy lump of dough filled with garlic, with crooked breasts no less, I’m sure there would be an outcry from the penis endowed part of the population.) The gyoza statue turned out so fugly, however, that the only acceptable location for it was in front of the train station, under a pedestrian walkway, discreetly hidden from most passersby by rows of buses.

Very soon the city fathers realized that gyoza was not the way to go, and set their eyes on something much more refined, like cocktails and jazz. Yes, Utsunomiya, the city for cocktails and jazz. Sophisticated nightlife and music and Utsunomiya in the same sentence. LOL. Yes, I hear you laugh. But that’s OK, I’m laughing, too.

The city fathers should have stuck with gyoza, if you ask me. Fortunately, many of Utsunomiya’s eating establishments have and that’s how the gyoza festival came to pass.

So, how do you celebrate a dumpling? By eating it, of course. In three different places in the city center (one of them right smack by the Futara shrine) the local purveyors of doughy goodness stuffed with cabbage and pork set up their stands. The average wait to get your fill of gyoza was 30 minutes, though at Min-Min (apparently the best gyoza outfit of them all, though I would certainly beg to differ) it was over an hour.

We chose a less famous gyoza shop, waited our half an hour and then dug in. How fast can you consume 12 dumplings? (There was a limit of 3 dishes per person, 4 dumplings in each dish for 100 yen). Well, it depends on how hungry you are and we very purposely skipped lunch that day.

Apart from gyoza, there was the usual hodge-podge of street food – anything from Indian curries to kebab. There was live music, a win-a-car contest from a local radio station, stuff for kids to do and other things I paid absolutely no attention to. Because that’s not why you go to a gyoza festival for. You go there to stuff your face silly with slightly burned dumplings.

I've had their kebab before and it's actually pretty decent.

And as the kebab and gyoza were decent, the live music was dreadful. The band couldn't quite decide whether their inspiration was Native American or West African.

But hey, you can't say that provincial Japan isn't all multi-culti and stuff. :)

Feeling Touristy in Asakusa

Our first impression of Tokyo was “wow, there are so many foreigners here!” And “wow, English! They speak English!” Granted, it was the foreigners that spoke English, but still, the effect it had on us was impossible to describe. And our joy impossible to contain. After going for weeks on end without seeing another white face (apart from my American co-worker), Tokyo felt just like New York. So multi-ethnic, so full of variety in all shapes and sizes, so melting pot. Yeah, you know you’ve been living in the countryside, if you think that Tokyo is a melting pot, but there you have it.

And in order to get our gaijin fix for the coming months and enjoy hearing not only English, but also French, Spanish and Urdu, we headed to Asakusa.

I am ashamed to admit, but we had never been to Asakusa before. Number one touristy place in Tokyo and yet somehow it had not been graced with our presence. Until last Saturday. Of course, the fact that we HAD to go there to take the train back home (Tobu line to Tochigi) was merely an irrelevant coincidence.

Once in Asakusa, however, our disappointment was hard to hide. If Tokyo was New York, then Asakusa was its Chinatown. A lot cleaner and better organized, that’s for sure, but still – Chinatown. Even many of the vendors were Chinese pretending to be Japanese. Pretending to speak English. Selling “made in China” genuine Japanese souvenirs. In other words – business as usual.

But at least in New York we had a reason to go to Chinatown every so often – after all, dumplings don't make themselves, and fresh shrimp don’t grow on trees. Everybody knows they come from all sorts of goofy little shops off Canal Street.
Asakusa was different. There was really no reason for us to be there (apart from the Tobu line, but for that we didn’t need to wander the streets).

Making ningyoyaki

So what do you do in Asakusa when you don’t want a rikshaw ride (at least two of the pullers turned out to be Chinese who spoke Japanese), or have no tacky souvenirs to buy (except for that "made in China" Asakusa Hello Kity cellphone strap), when the big temple is covered in ugly scaffolding and there are so many people inside that you don’t even feel like getting close to the building?

Feeling very touristy in Asakusa

You go and have yourself some whale. Fried whale. Whale sashimi. Whale steak. Whale curry. Whale soup. Whale whatever. It’s all yummy and the prices were shockingly (for Asakusa and for whale) affordable.

The restaurant had no English signs on the doors, there was only Japanese writing and a discreet picture of something resembling, yes, a whale. Located at the back of something that looked like a seafood shop (probably to camouflage the fact that it was whale they were selling – better not to upset those foreign “save the whales” zealots) but with a separate entrance, the place was tiny. Just four (or maybe five) tables, a cheesy curtain over the door, and the ever present smell of cigarettes (the place is not smoke-free).

I don’t remember if the menu was bilingual, I vaguely recall that some items might have been labeled both in Japanese and in English. But maybe not. By that time, I was tired, sweaty, smelly and hungry. Very hungry. Lack of English on the menu was the least of my concerns. I was so starved I would have gladly eaten a stack of zebra burgers with a side order of fried snake skins. And besides, I’d had whale before, I just wanted to check if it tasted the same over here.

And the verdict? It was better than I’d remembered it. Juicy, succulent, done just right, perfectly yummy Minke whale. (Yes, it’s “Minke”, not “mink” as many people seem to think).

It was also cheap. A dinner for two set us back around 3000 yen. And considering that a hanafuda card-size piece of whale meat at our local supermarket costs around 600 yen, this was an incredible deal.

Hmmm… suddenly I regret I didn’t buy that package of whale curry. But hey, at least that gives me a good excuse to go there again. And eat more whale. And maybe even take a rickshaw ride and buy a tacky souvenir.

Taking a rest in Asakusa