Cha Xiu Bao

Ponshukan, sonnet of sake from the Snow Country

To be perfectly honest with you I haven't got the faintest idea what to expect from Niigata beyond the fantasy I grown from reading the novel Yukiguni (Snow Country) by Yasunari Kawabata way back when I was in high school. 

Just in case you don't know, the novel is a compelling tale of a geisha and a dilettante in Niigata. The fragility of life and love is brilliantly chronicled and the ending is heart-meltingly grievous; you can almost hear a whisper of sadness from the Snow Country as you read towards the end.

It is the book where I first read about sake: urbane geisha pouring sake for her clientèle to have the latter paralyzed by happiness. Oh, the definitive combination of good swill and good swing -- little wonder that I had loitered away half of my boyhood in countless romantic clouds that followed. Oh, g-eisha, ge-i-sha, my gei-sh-a! My dame serves me warm sake in the cold weather. It's aerial, it's musical and it's surely beautiful.

All of which does not alter the fact that sake is not served like this in Niigata in every-day reality.

Here in Ponshukan, one of the most famous sake shops in the southern part of Niigata, sakes are sold, cold, in Iidō-hanbaiki (vending machine in Japanese), as though those for condoms. If you want the sake, feed the greedy, stone cold DIY machine with coins first; put in the same kind of plastic cup they give you in the clinic for urine sample under the stupid dispenser second and third, await the machine to dole out the fluid you wanted.

Quite a dissonance, ain't it? The romance is missed, the bubble of my fantasy popped and the disappointment is beyond diagnosis.

Depachika, Paradise Lost for our gastronome lust

Let's forget about the cute, chubby mug of Bibendum for the time being. There could be a Michelin-starred sushi bar, kaiseki ryori or ultra lush French dining room that you're set to stuff your face on while in Tokyo, but in the midst of things, "depachika" is arguably the best way to indulge yourself into the kaleidoscopic food culture of Japan in the cheap and ease.

A word formed with depa from "department store" and chika, or basement in Japanese, depachika is the Eden that never quite caught the commensurate attention of mainstream travel guides in the English world -- the wickedest sin ever committed by the articulate but sometimes malinformed travel writers. This could be, with its countless booths of wagashi and counters of patisseries, confiseries and chocolat francaise romping in various diaphanous scarves and lacquered bamboos, a Zen garden planted in spacecraft or Marianne masqueraded in kimono. Either way, a true blessing for the foodies in the know.

And thanks to the marketing savvy of the Japanese, or lack of that by the French for that matter, you don't quite need to trek across the corners of Paris with whines and frowns. With some of the most captivating designer chocolates and pastries (Pierre Herme, Jean-Paul Hevin and Sadaharu Aoki, naming just some of my favorite Parisien labels) and all the most obsessional produce from around world strewing in a single strata, it is quite possibly, to put an aesthetic point to it, an ukiyo-e of the yummiest dreams you've ever made [proofs from my Flickr photostream can be envisioned here, here and here].

Before you strike your divine blitz of kamikaze attack on the booths, in the midst of things, you can go visit here and here (sorry, in Japanese only) for the latest news and promos at different depachika across Japan.

Ladies, some school boys to whip up your coffee, and your booty too!

TSUKASA SAKURAKOUJI beams childishly, throws his arms open and exclaims: "Welcome to Edelstein boarding school for boys! You must be tired after your journey; let me help you relax."   ~Cafe Edelstein in Tokyo.

Jaysus, it creeps me out like I first caught up the Thriller MTV 25 years ago, you know, like got seized by the zombie flick and let the rap by Vincent Prince twirling in my mind all over... that's how creepy this whole cosplay thing is to me. But still, I am totally hiring these creatures to my niece's next birthday...

Tsukiji, a Rashomon experience

It's a fish market, the largest central fish market in Japan.

It has something to do with death. Millions of fish laid low on the ground in a suffocating stillness before any sunlight crack through the air, a tell-tale of the ephemeral of life as the translucent vapor of chillness goes up from their dead bodies -- my friend, life is as fleeting as the morning dew and as lacking of importance as a fluttering leaf, so the sermon goes. The stampede of shadows over their dead bodies, however, moves as turbulent as a sea in anger, as if vying to give the audience a visual account about how vigorous life can be by the dialectic of light and darkness. Twists and turns; length and breadth; highs and lows, they've got it all in a capsule that is dawn...

In came could be your ronin with no name, lone ranger who only does what he does for his own wallet? A samurai on the hire with marginal loyalty, huhuh? Just a day in office for the ordinary salary man? Or even a nasubito (or brigand in English) disguising in a sheep's wardrobe, who knows?! All this, goes through every day the way as though human nature would have choreographed it. All this, in a giant arena blurred with the distillation of subjectivity and uncertainty.

In the market, every face tells a story.

 

Sorry, about baseball

Elaborated ASCII art tribute to mother, from Japan.

Share more love to the special someone you love, buy more gifts home when you travel... dedicated to mom, the best chef in the world.

No Cookies for Old Men

 

Pounding mochi with regular "Nintendo cross-over with reality," Japaneasy weirdness --

itsumo no toorini (as always).

Mochi by MochiCream, kimochi!

The goodness of MochiCream's mochi, as written by Haruki Murakami:

I remember we met somewhere by the south of the border and the west of the sun, at a time when the wind was singing the Norwegian Woods. We pampered ourselves along the shore of Rainbow Bridge of Tokyo, with me holding Kafka's The Trial reading halfway through.

From that day on I start to write a chronicle about our happiness everyday after dark. And the title of it is called The Happiness of Mochi.

Ganbatte Shako-san, eat'em all!

When I was attending college, which is 2 years ago, I had a classmate from Japan whose name is Natayama. A mellow and humble (or kenson as they say in Japan) fellow; never good at conversing with others in a large part owing to his ineptitude of both English and Cantonese. For this reason probably, he was often saw alone, withdrawn in thoughts in a geekish way around the campus. Anyways, to cut long story short, Natayama and I became good friends because we're assigned to the same group in an elective, from where we discovered our common aesthetic interest on the recher-che stylishness of bathing suits selling in Japan as well as our genuine concern of the models who wear these bathing suits.

One day I got curious and asked Natayama how people in Japan pronounce my name:--

Fist of Fury Does Japan

Granddad was right about how many wrongs the Japanese did -- let there be no escaping -- the Raping of Nanjing, the human experimentation in WWII and, to crown it all, the sad, pre-matured retirement of Ai Iijima the AV actress, as if we need to take out a few drops from the bucket.

Enraged, my desire to return the flavorfavor to the Japanese is now as keen as wasabimustard. Avenge is the week to come. Alternating between rages and hungersangers, my fist of hungryfury will land on a karateka with black belt as though he's nothing more than a nigiri (sushi rice) wrapped in dried seaweed and my chopsticksnunchucks will fret into a kendoka like a tuna makizushi (sushi roll) he is.

Licking will be given to the Japanese, no messing. You just watch me.

Chaxiubao's Fishy Project Part II: A Trilingual Fish List for Your Sushi Game

341.

Below you'll find a trilingual list comprising 341 fishes (aquatic animals, to be exact). First column in Japanese, in either hiragana (平仮名 ひらがな) or katakana (片仮名 カタカナ) script, most with a kanji (漢字かんじ) follows in parentheses; second column of romaji to help you pronounce the name and in the third column is the common name of the fishes in English.

The best thing about this list is that all romaji names are arranged in alphabetical order so that even those with very scant Japanese knowledge can breeze it through and find out the Nemo he wants.

It takes me 3 weeks to patch up this list and it tops my original bilingual fishy project in leaps and bounds. I know I gonna fish out the "A-game" with this from the sushi syokunin (寿司職人, sushi master in English) behind the sushi bars in Japan come January. Yay, I gonna eat like fish in water with this fishy list of mine!