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Back in the day, when we were all busy bees in Tokyo, working away at the Lado group hive and rocking out every Sunday for band practice (the band that never played), my old friend Kumar Sivasubramanian would get great pleasure out of trying to wind me up about my diet. I don’t eat meat, see. This was a source of endless entertainment for old Kumar, who if we had dinner somewhere would taste a bit of whatever I was eating and say something along the lines of “Hmmm, not bad, it just needs a bit of hmmmm…. I’m not sure…it’s lacking… something… oh! I know what it is! – MEAT!! AHAHAHAHAHA- HAHA-HAHAHA!!”. He would role away laughing and I and Anne Kobayashi would wrinkle up our noses at each other and grimly return to our Tofu steaks.

He’s at it again. Here’s the mail he sent me today, short and to the point with two links:

Have you ever heard of Turducken? IMAGES LINK WIKI LINK

So I click and discover that Turducken is an American dish (those wacky Americans!) that consists of deboned chicken stuffed inside a deboned duck, which is then in turn stuffed inside a deboned turkey. You bake it very slowly for a long long time. The juices of the meats intermingle and soak into the sausage-meat stuffing you have somehow squeezed inside that inner chicken and then you carve this meatstrosity and serve it so that every slice contains three soft succulent meats. In short: A VEGETARIAN NIGHTMARE!!!

Good ole Kumar. Well, I had to laugh. To be honest, I’m not particularly militant about my eating habits – they’re my habits and I don’t especially want to share them with anybody. I guess a lot of people expect non-meat-eaters to be more like these guys: PUNK YOU! Sorry to disappoint. I’m just not like that. Maybe I should be. But I’m not. But anyway, oddly enough, this stuff fascinates me. It really does bring carnivorous gluttony to a whole new level of awesomeness. Especially this entry from wikipedia:

The largest recorded nested bird roast is 17 birds, attributed to a royal feast in France in the early 19th century (originally called a Rôti Sans Pareil, or “Roast without equal”) – a bustard stuffed with a turkey, a goose, a pheasant, a chicken, a duck, a guinea fowl, a teal, a woodcock, a partridge, a plover, a lapwing, a quail, a thrush, a lark, an Ortolan Bunting and a Garden Warbler. The final bird is small enough that it can be stuffed with a single olive; it also suggests that, unlike modern multi-bird roasts, there was no stuffing or other packing placed in between the birds. This dish probably could not be recreated in the modern era as many of the listed birds are now protected species. LINK

SEVENTEEN BIRDS!!! Awesome. What would that taste like? Can you imagine? Well, at least the smaller song birds were free range eh? That last bit: the final bird is small enough that it can be stuffed with a single olive… That kills me. Those zany French!

*Sigh*

Getting a mail like that from Kumar reminds how much I miss him…

It also makes me realise that Turducken would have been a great name for our band.

Here are some other random links I have been meaning to get rid of:

Agnostic Bus – Good moral here.

Gay Scientists Isolate Christian Gene – If only it were true…

THE BROKERS WITH HANDS ON THEIR FACES BLOG (Updated today! Revel in financiers’ misery as our economies crumble! Some of them are even starting to cry!)

School Culture Festival today. Lot’s of students running around excitedly in costumes, handing out flyers and trying to drag poor innocent bystanders along to watch their performances. One ends up being pulled in several different directions at once and inevitably missing something. I think my Japanese listening skills may have improved since last year though as I seemed to have a slightly better grasp of what was happening during the stage acts. I don’t want to hear “Country Roads” again though. I’ve heard that song one too many times today. This weekend should be busy. 英会話 at the Clinic tomorrow morning. Then back to the Culture Festival to catch whatever I missed today. Then Randy Weston live (singing Country Roads?) at Kamigamo Shrine tomorrow evening (which I expect will be awesome) and the Veggie Fest on Sunday. I’m planning to hand out some Deep Kyoto cards to hapless victims foreigners. Speaking of which there is a poll up on D.K. on the subject of commercialization. I think I may have been overdoing the ad thing both there and on this blog too. What do you think? Has Deep Kyoto Sold Out? Cast your votes!

This is Randy Weston:

Just a few links for a you today. Last night I had a lovely dinner at one of the restaurants overlooking the Kamo river on Pontocho. We had really great seats on the balcony and the food was absolutely fantastic. Naturally, I’ve recordered the occasion by putting the restaurant up on Deep Kyoto: 招月庵.

Not entirely unconnected, today’s vocabulary on Japanese Reboot is all fish related. Specifically the fish I ate last night: 魚

And finally here’s a video I found on boingboing today that made me smile. Ed Rondthaler (looking remarkably chipper for his age) on the bizarre vagaries of English spelling.

Enjoy!

We had a very nice evening on Tuesday night at Nakano-kun’s house. He invited us over for a takoyaki party and I have to tell you making takoyaki is really good fun. Besides “tako” (chopped octopus) you can put pretty much anything you like into the batter mix. We tried shrimp, cheese, pumpkin… I’d like to have a go at chocolate ones next time. Those takoyaki machines are pretty cheap too. Nakano-kun’s cost him less than ￥1,000. I think I may have to get one. Much better than a fondue. I can’t abide fondues.BubbleShare: Share photos – Find great Clip Art Images.

Anyway, sitting round a table with good people, making something tasty, chattering away and quaffing a few frosty beverages was the perfect end to my Golden Week. Went back to work yesterday. And then I had today off again! Ha ha! Great life.

Oh, and today is my sister Bernadette’s birthday. Happy Birth… ah, I’d better give her a ring… she never reads this.

And before I go… for my most recent post on Deep Kyoto, having previously written here on bar “Bollocks“, I am delighted to present to you Tits.

It’s a cafe.

For the concerned: my computer is fixed (took it to Sofmap and had the hard-drive replaced) but now I have an enormous backlog of stuff to post both here and on Deep Kyoto, and heaps and heaps of pictures. What have I been doing for the last month? Well, teaching obviously. New classes are going well and they seem like a super-friendly bunch this year, thank goodness. We had a very enjoyable hanami party at the start of April (sadly sans-Kageyama), for which I volunteered my services as 場所取り (which roughly translates as place-guarder-from-the-crack- o’-dawn), hence my sleepy grimace among the pictures below.

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I took a lot of pictures of the cherry blossom too. On Shimogamo-hondori:

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On the Philosopher’s Walk:

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And on Kyodai’s Katsura Campus I caught these little beauties:

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Also, Taisho has renovated Joao, making half the counter standing only. I’m not sure I approve of this particular change – some of us prefer sitting, especially those among us in high heels – but we had a party to celebrate anyway. As you can see I have recently started wearing glasses:

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And now it’s Golden Week, and I have enough free time at last to write up some reviews for Deep Kyoto. Today’s fresh post is on Bar 探偵 (Detective Bar) which opened up last month and impressed me right away for the playfulness of both its theme and construction. Read more about it here: Bar 探偵

Advice

Here are a couple of links I’ve been meaning to post for donkey’s.

First, some good practical advice from a writer that I started following last week and it has worked wonders for me: Link to Neil Gaiman’s Journal.

And here’s a nice post from Yaro Starak, (who is famous for writing a massively successful blog on… um, how to write a massively succesful blog) on how to motivate yourself when you feel like crap and can’t be arsed and would much rather stay in a funk or better yet in bed. Your mind is your greatest asset he says, but it can also be your greatest hindrance:

[The great thing about output is the power it has over your mood. Negative emotion breeds negative actions - lying in your bed or watching TV for example - or a lack of any action at all. If you focus on creating something and just take one little forward step, the physical effort you exert effects your inner emotional state. Your ability to soldier on in the face of emotional dissonance can carry you through the darkness and return you to a state of congruent activity and thought.]

Clearly Yaro Starak is clued-in to the benefits of mindfulness. LINK

Well, here’s my little tip for getting yourself out of bed when it’s dark and cloudy both outside and inside your head. Have something to look forward to right at the start of the day and make yourself an awesome breakfast. Preferably with lots of fruit. For me it’s a bowl of cereal, one of those healthy-yet-tasty crunchy cereals with lots of nuts and dried fruit in it, and then on top of that heaps of chopped fruit: banana, apple, pears, mikan, strawberries, grapes, pineapple, kiwi, whatever you like, and add a bit of yoghurt on top of that too (why not?). These days I’m into Country Farm Fruit Crunch which I buy at Maki but which I think is available in some other Import Stores here in Kyoto. Fruit is of course expensive in Japan but entirely worth it. It’s refreshing and tasty and gives you that much needed energy boost right at the start of the day. I like a nice cup of fresh ground fully-caffeinated coffee to wash it all down with too. Awesome.

The greatness of a nation and it’s moral progress can be judged by the way it’s animals are treated.
Gandhi

All beings long for happiness; therefore let all beings be embraced in thy compassion. Buddha (The Metta Sutra)

It’s New Year’s resolution time, so here’s a quick resource guide for those thinking of giving up the yaki-niku whether for ethical, health or environmental reasons. I think the environmental reasons are pretty compelling:

A major 2006 report by the United Nations summarized the devastation caused by the meat industry. Raising animals for food, the report said, is “one of the top two or three most significant contributors to the most serious environmental problems, at every scale from local to global. The findings of this report suggest that it should be a major policy focus when dealing with problems of land degradation, climate change and air pollution, water shortage and water pollution and loss of biodiversity. Livestock’s contribution to environmental problems is on a massive scale ….”
LINK from goveg.com

Oh yeah, and vegetarians are sexy: Eva Mendes, Alicia Mayer . Damn!

But even if it feels like the right choice to make we all need a little help getting over that pain-in-the-arse factor. There are plenty of helpful tips up at vegcooking.com to help you make the transition: Many people become vegetarian overnight, while others make the change gradually. Do what works best for you. We have all the information to help you get started! LINK More importantly they also have lots of recipes.

You can also get free veggie starter kits from mercyforanimals.org up here LINK or from peta up here: LINK

And if cutting out all meat, fish and dairy seems too much for you, there’s a handy guide to more ethical eating up at eatkind.net: Ethical eating, like ethical living, is not about absolutes. It’s about doing the best you’re willing and able to do – and nurturing a will to keep doing better. LINK

Going vegetarian in Japan can be tricky to say the least. There’s a good list of restaurants and natural food stores up at happycow.net.

There is also some useful info up here:　being vegetarian in Japan .

Some very tasty vegetarian, vegan and health foods can also be ordered from Tengu Natural Foods in Saitama.

And here in Kyoto there are a plethora of vegetarian and vegetarian-friendly restaurants. I recommend: Cafe Mole, Earth Kitchen Company, Mikoan, Sunny Place, Obanzai, and Sunshine Cafe. You may also like to check out the Deep Kyoto Guide to Natural Food Stores. Oh and Falafel Garden too – let’s not forget those golden balls of nut-buttery goodness!

One last thing, when ordering in meat-loving restaurants, be very clear about what you can or cannot eat, as Japanese people are generally not so clear about what constitutes a vegetarian diet. I cannot count the times I’ve asked for a meat-free dish and had it served to me with a surprise topping of crispy bacon bits…

Here’s one thing the world must know:

Maybe you should tell the owner of the restaurant that ‘didi‘ actually means ‘elder sister’ in Hindi and Hindi-related languages such as Nepali and Punjabi. Daughter is ‘beti’. But it’s still a lovely word …looks like good food too, verrrry verrry healthy!

Thanks Adrienne, I’ll pass that on. (She knows what she’s talking about, does Adrienne).

And here’s another; in my continuing pursuit of new natto taste delights, I think I may have created a new culinary dish! When I was looking for new natto recipes last week, I kept coming across recipes for natto with advocado. They go together, it seems… “Advocado…”, thinks I. “Guacamole…”, thinks I. And before you know it I’m making Natto Tacos! Now normally making tacos I’d use a variety of beans (I’m a sort-of-vegetarian – no chicken or beef for me), so I figured I’d use a variety of natto today.

What you see on the left is the normal natto we all love and respect, and on the right black natto of which I am deeply in awe. Just look at how awesome it is:

Mix it up and awe some more:

Still, doesn’t look right for tacos though, eh? Let’s add some tomato puree…

A bit of taco seasoning (from a pack, I confess) and to bulk it up I added some rice:

Then cook it up with some of these: chopped onions, diced tomatoes, chopped apple (YES! APPLE!), and diced red pepper.

And when it’s done it looks like this:

You can serve it up with your usual toppings: guacamole, salad, taco sauce, sour cream, and grated cheese…

Slap all that in your taco shell and this is what you get:

The verdict? Well, amazingly, it’s not awful! In fact it’s good! But what with all those different flavors jostling for position within one taco shell, it’s hard to say that the natto really stands out as much as it normally would. The distinctive natto flavor is definitely there, and it does make a difference. But if you didn’t know it was there, you probably wouldn’t guess it. Which gives me an idea for when I next have guests… hehehe…

I have written previously on the delights of natto, Japan’s gift to the world, the fermented bean. (Click here and scroll down to “Beans” if you’re really interested). Pretty much the standard way to eat it is simply mixed up with piping hot rice, chopped scallions and (for the fearless) a raw egg. I’ve gotten bored with that and have decided to try something new. And after a quick search on the internet I found a lot of recipes that with but a few modifications of my own, had me quite excited. Last night I made natto spaghetti. Here’s how. Most natto you get in Japanese supermarkets is pretty much the same but the variety above is organic and therefore good for your soul and the soul of the world…. They say natto should be mixed (exactly) 424 times for perfect results and then left for 20 minutes. Check out that squishy natto goodness: Here are the main ingredients: chopped scallions, tuna, spaghetti and of course natto. I also added chopped onions, garlic and seasoning… The seasoning is a secret.

And this is the finished result, served up with a nice glass of “Trapiche” Cabernet Sauvignon… The culinary magic that goes on in between is of course something you can work out for yourself.
Let’s take a closer look at that… Notice the tasteful garnishing with chopped scallions and nori seaweed. I recommend the nori. The more of it the better.
That funky natto taste actually does go surprisingly well with tuna, not a sophisticated taste, more of a homely country-fare type taste. Here is my plate 3 minutes later. (You’ll be needing plenty of tissues when you eat this by the way).
This morning: Natto Pizza Toast! The ingredients are plain sliced bread, chopped onions, red pepper (that’s a magic touch that is!), tomato puree, pizza cheese and sloppy gooey natto gunk. I added some sliced tomatoes as well.
Abracadabra!
And lets take a closer look again at that cheese-coated natto topped toasted bed of taste-sensations!
Again, I was surprised. Tomato and natto go really well together. It’s a strong taste (not for the faint of heart) but I liked it. The natto is still fairly slimy but not as stringy as it normally is. The grilling does that. And this isn’t a crispy pizza, but it’s not too squidgy either. A very healthy breakfast dish! Here’s my plate 3 minutes later.
Stay tuned for further natto adventures!

Making Tako-yaki (balls of wheat flour batter cooked with pieces of octopus).

Last night we went to the Yagi’s house for dinner.
Here are some cute family photos…

First thing today; there’s a link here to a rather swish “greenmyapple” campaign for making compootas a bit more enviroment/children-friendly. They are full of nasty chemicals see. Click here to see what it’s about:　http://www.greenpeace.org/apple/about.html

They have a bunch of fun-looking activities there like designing your own T-shirts and making videos and what-not, but for those of us with less time to kill you can just do the 2-minute-send-a-campaign-letter-thing.

The same goes for this stop illegal logging campaign: http://write-a-letter.greenpeace.org/70

Rik Abel has requested more pictures of “food and bars”, so here’s where I went last night. Very cheap and very tasty 将月　(Shougetsu) which sits on Mikage Doori just east of Higashioji Doori and is super popular with University Students (it’s that cheap/tasty combo see). What do they serve there? お好み焼き (okonomiyaki – “stuff you liked fried”). Watch out for those kanji if you are in Japan – could be the most important kanji you get to learn. Here’s a reminiscence. A long time ago, in Fukushima I bumped into two aquaintances on the street one night. One was a large, loud, obnoxious American ( and thus very popular with the ladies… why is that always so?) named Thad and the other was a disenchanted (and vaguely-fancying-Thad) artistic type named Carrie Van Horn, and I said “Where are you two off to then?” And they said “We are going to eat “Japanese Pizza”. Wanna come?” and I thought: “Great! Pizza!” and got all excited (I love pizza see) and went with them and found to my intense disappointment I was eating this weird eggy thing covered in mayonnaise and fishflakes. With Americans.

The moral of this story is: don’t be close minded about food. Okonomiyaki is egg heaven on the tongue. There all kinds and varieties; Hiroshima-style, Osaka-style, Kyoto-style, Tokyo’s モダン焼き　(Modern Yaki) – it doesn’t matter, they’re all good. If you can – eat it. Here’s a site where you can get a recipe: http://www.japan-guide.com/r/e100.html but basically, it’s just eggs, flour and chopped cabbage and whatever else you feel like sticking in there (hence the name).

A couple of years ago I took my sister, Christina, to Hiroshima and ordered three servings of Hiroshima-yaki for myself, herself, and John ( herself’s better half) and as I was getting a bit miffed about doing all of the ordering all of the time, I decided to get my revenge by having my sister’s version stuffed with natto (basically rotten beans). And she loved it. But she didn’t like tofu… or sushi… What’s with that?

This is what we had last night, the hand of the waiter is ladling liberal servings of okonomiyaki sauce and mayonnaise on top. I had いか (“ika” – squid) in mine.

The final touch, a topping of dried bonito fish flakes. They come alive in the heat and wave around suggestively at you…

Finally, (because we fat pigs) we tried something new. The menu read オムのっけそば (Omnokkesoba), what could this mean? I surmised it might be a sort of オムライス (“Om-rice” – basically an omlette stuffed with stir-fried rice and usually topped with ketchup) style thing, only instead of rice inside the omlette, fried soba noodles! And I was right. And was it good?

Yep.