The Baby Sea?
I met our downstairs neighbour earlier this week. She is from Brittany, works nearby in Nakameguro, and has a nice six month old baby called something elegant and French like Clothilde.
She asked me if I worked, to which I replied 'not yet but looking'. When she heard that I worked at the BBC until recently, beamed a huge smile at me and said 'ha, you'll have no problem finding work here, it's so hard to find English speaking childminders, I have a load of friends with similar age babies to *name of elegant French baby* - let me put you in touch with them'. I was rushing off to the tube (probably on another feasting mission - I can't remember now) so I didn't question her odd logic.
I realised later that when I said BBC, she must have heard Baby Sea, hence the childminding advice.
I must learn not to mumble.
Noodles and trip to Kappabashidori
It was going to happen sooner rather than later, and I'm delighted it did - I have found a kitchenware partner in crime, Marta, and have therefore been able to go back to Kappabashi-dori (the kitchenware district, also known as the Road to Shangri-La for Elizabeth).
Marta and I went along for some noodles, and then to mooch around kitchenware shops, looking for all the world like 5 year olds on their first trip to Hamleys. I am now wondering which pieces of furniture I can hock to fuel my crockery habit. I don't think Angus would miss the dining room table...
Be still my beating heart - the source of the problem at Kappabasha-dori
Tea ceremony pt. 2
Here is a picture of me (centre) and the top of Marta's head (right) at the tea ceremony, having a fine old time.The tea is powdered and must be whisked in a certain pattern with a bamboo whisk. Mmm, there is more kitchenware potential in this past-time, I must look into it further.
Applying for services
Applying for vital services (for example, phone lines) is made very easy in Tokyo as there is usually a kind soul making lots of nice cash by providing the interface between complicated service provider instructions and stupid foreigners such as myself. I was particularly taken with the following line during one application procedure:
If the way you normally write your name makes the total longer than 15 letters, then putting a shorter nickname in place of your given name, or replacing it
with just a first initial, is OK. For example, if your name were Alexander
Fritzpatrick Bogumasus, you could enter it as Family name: Bogumasus; Given
name: Alex which comes to 14 characters, including one space.
What I want to know is, who the hell is Alexander Fritzpatrick Bogumasus? Surely someone with such a luxuriant name wouldn't dirty their hands by arranging access to utilities? And why on earth, if your name is Alexander Fritzpatrick Bogumasus, would you shorten it to Alex, and not Fritzbogey?
Curl Up Cafe
Angus and I took a walk deeper into the ward we live in on Saturday, and had a cup of coffee at an establishment called Curl Up Cafe. WITH CATS! 15 or so fine kitties were available for our ministrations while we were being refreshed. What a strange experience. The other people at Curl Up Cafe were all local (i.e. not originally from The Realm Of Boris Johnson or nearby) and had a fine old time tormenting the cats to various degrees. What a strange institution cat cafes are.
A very patient, long suffering cat (although it looks like it might be a stray ring-tailed lemur who only came in for a cup of coffee and was forced to wear a silly hat)
Dance festival
When wandering around on the hunt for some groceries on Sunday night, Angus and I found a huge dance festival in one of the streets off the main drag (Yamate-dori) behind our flat.
Dance troupes were taking it in turns to perform traditional Japanese dances, to some surprisingly rocking music. The costumes were beautiful - sashes with painted waves and dragons, lots of coloured silk, soft soled ninja boots with a separate big toe that look very good for creeping across ceilings in.
The most interesting thing was that the age range within each dance troop ran from about 4 years old (or, just about old enough to wear a little version of the costume, and follow what everyone else was doing) to somewhere in the region of 90. One of the dance troops bunched all the older ladies together in the middle of their formation, and they used their walking sticks as props in the dance.
Sadly we didn't have a camera with us as the dancing was very impressive and an unexpected treat.
The other thing which I loved about the dancing was one of flags (What? You thought I liked it just for its merits?).
One of the dance troupes had two men at the rear, waving enormous, light flags, with beautiful Japanese characters on and delicate silk paintings of stylised animals. And one of the flags had, underneath all the beautiful artwork, in massive Roman characters, the message "PASTA MANIA". This makes me very happy.
Now down to the important stuff
This blog post has been crashed by an interloper if there isn't a detailed run down of the gourmet delights that Angus and I have been enjoying lately.
Without wishing to toot my horn too much, one of the fatty treats to have come our way recently was home-made - ramen noodles in miso soup. Here it is:
Very tasty, very easy, very cheap, very filling.
And here's the strange wonder we had for dessert after the ramen. The black cubes are flavourless jelly (with gold leaf on - as all dessert should have), the green ones are green tea flavoured, and the white balls are made of rice starch. There's also a layer of sweet bean paste underneath, and a couple of black beans at 10 o'clock.
It's amazing how quickly our tastes have changed, this now seems like a perfectly acceptable dessert, despite its savoury and bitter qualities.
I shall be campaigning hard for sandwich shops in London to stock this pudding.And here's a picture of my number 1 favourite snack - jelly within jelly (how post-modern). It's cubes of hard set vegetable jelly, inside a soft set vegetable jelly. I'm wondering how I can import this to Britain in decent quantities - I think it would be very popular.
Savoury jelly - what's not to love?And finally, the real revelation of Japanese food so far (apart from jelly within jelly which took a bit of thinking about) is the salad dressings. I didn't even think that salad dressing would be any different in Japan.
Here is my new favourite recipe for a delicious and mightily addictive salad dressing that has briefly existed in our kitchen recently.
Ginger Salad Dressing
Ingredients:
3 tablespoons sesame oil
2 tablespoons rice wine vinegar
1 tablespoon soy sauce
About an inch of fresh ginger root, peeled and cut into a couple of lumps
2 teaspoons lime juice
1 clove garlic
1/2 teaspoon pepper
I put it all in the blender, guzzed it, added a little bit more ginger and some sesame oil and then whizzed it round it a bit more to make sure it was all blended nicely and has no lumps in.
That's all for the time being. Hope you're all having good summers.
Ja mata!
PS.
If anyone can help me translate my note to the local mosquitos into Japanese, that would be very helpful. It goes:
Honourable Mosquitos of the Kanto plain,
I understand that, in our ignorance, we have moved to a former swamp.
I understand that, being larger than your average Japanese body, and so pale I'm luminous, I'm a more attractive prospect than a Japanese person, when you have your eye on an easy feast.
And I understand that you have young to feed, and a knawing hunger of your own that you must fulfill.
But I would be eternally grateful if, when choosing a piece of me to bite, you avoided your current preferences of biting me right on the bony bits like my elbows, ankles and knees. There are much more satisfying (and less irritating) parts of me that you can access, with the added bonus that you won't have to watch me dancing like Bez while I am trying to kill you.
Thank you!
