Unlike in England, where we have stupidly decided to have our fireworks season when it is bloody cold and miserable in November, here in Japan (and pretty much every other sensible country), summer is the season for sitting out with friends, and getting pissed under the fireworks. Yesterday was the big display along the banks of the Edo River, one of the biggest in Japan. To be honest, I was a little bit disappointed by the actual display, the firework hearts were nice, as were the Doraemon faces, but I reckon Ravenscourt Park's Guy Fawkes night display was better. The evening though was very nice. There was a really nice breeze along the river so it was nice and cool, unlike the sweaty evenings recently, and despite there being 1.3 million people there, I managed to get to the Portaloos quickly and easily, which is, afterall, the most important thing. Here are some photos from the night - all the photos I took of the fireworks were crap. Very annoyingly.
Archive for the 'Food & Drink' Category
The last time I was invited to a wedding, I managed to take 3 photos in the entire night. This time, I was determined to take more, and bought a new film on the way. In the end, I got so overexcited snapping away, that I had to leave the after-after party karaoke to buy another film, which I proceeded to shoot all of without adjusting the focus at all from one shot to the next. I don't think I was attempting some kind of peculiar avant-garde technique, I think it may have been just because I was a little bit pissed. Anyway, these were the best shots from the night - I really like the two shots of Seri and Jacob. There's a calmness in the storm there. Congratulations again to Matt and the missus.
This Sunday was the annual One Love Jamaica Festival. Organised partly by the Jamaican embassy, it is one of the many "international" (Thailand, Brazil, the all-encompassing Africa etc), festivals in Tokyo in the late spring/early summer. The Jamaican festival has lives acts, performances by Japanese dancehall queens (including Junko, the Japanese dancer who - astonishingly - beat Jamaican girls at their own game and won the World Dancehall Queen contest), and an ill-conceived Bob Marley song contest. There are stalls selling general "ethnic" tat, the same ones that were selling the same stuff last week, bedecked with Thai flags at the Thai Festival, here again, this time with their Jamaican flags. Most importantly though, there are Jerk Chicken stalls. Ummmmmmm, Jerrrk Chicken...I love me some Jerk Chicken.
This year, Eri and I arrived late, about 5 o'clock. Honestly though, it was pretty amazing that I felt well enough to go at all as I was pretty hung over after the previous night's stag festivities. Unfortunately, (though I didn't let Eri see how annoyed I was), we missed the dancehall queen show, and arrived in the middle of the Marley song contest which we quickly left. Walking through the stalls, we stopped at the hilarious "Speak like a Jamaican" stand, organised by the Jamaican Embassy people. Here, an "authentic" Jamaican was teaching Japanese people how to speak Jamaican. It was brilliant, like a wierd version of one of my lesson's, with all the embarrassment factor of when one of the elderly teachers asks you to teach the kids "something youthful" and ends up greeting you as "blud" for the rest of your time in the school. The Jamaican teacher was shouting out:
"Repeat after me: Wha gwarn?!"
The crowd shout back: "Eeto Huwa guwarnu?"
Brilliant.
The jerk chicken queue though, was long. It took us about an hour to get to the front of the queue where I found, to my horror, that the proper rice and peas had been sold out and replaced with just white rice. Sacrilege. Still the jerk chicken was good. The other that that we really noticed was that in the years we have gone to the Jamaican festival, the crowd has really changed. At first, the crowd was much more of a roots/reggae style crowd, more hippys and lots of smelly hair. Now though, it's become much more dancehall, loads more girls in little tops and (strangely for Japan), better endowed. As ever though, the larger endowment has been followed by a bit more of an aggressive attitude, not quite as nice as it used to be. Still, everything has its price...
My Valentine's haul this year is looking pretty good! It's going to be an expensive White Day this year! Happy Valentine's!
Following on from the last post, and one of the better ideas generated from the idea factory, comes this new(ish) Kitkat Hazelnut (I think), which I tried today for the first time. The bars are 2 individual fingers, wider than the usual Kit Kat size. There is one layer of Kit Kat wafer at the bottom and a lovely praline-ike Hazelnut paste on the top, all wrapped in chocolate. This was very nice indeed, one of the best of the special edition Kit Kats that I've had, possibly second only to the aforementioned Passion Fruit, and certainly, without doubt, better than the recently released salt one! It was certainly perfect for a moment of precious indulgence!
Somewhere in the deepest wilds of rural Japan is a mountain surrounded by barbed wire. Along the wire are pillboxes containing angry, pencil-moustachioed Japanese "Self-Defense Force" recruits carrying large machine guns (to protect them from Koreans). They will shoot anyone who comes within 50 feet of the mountain. Carved painstakingly, by human hand, into the very bedrock of the mountain is a vast underground cave system. Here, Japanese scientists, dressed in lab-jackets, bifocal glasses, white hair (to make them look like martial arts masters) and, most importantly, name tags, research new ways to combine food. Mad scientists, in the infinite-monkeys-writing-Shakespeare school of employment theory, wander the corridors of the institute, babbling ever stranger untried-combinations; "parsnips and radiators", "cake and shame", "gravy and woman", in the hope that sooner or later one will chance upon a combination that will provide one of the Japanese industrial giants with another windfall. It is here that great successes like Passion Fruit Kit-Kats were first developed. It is also here that great failures like Ramen Carbonara and natto were first dragged into existance.
I believe it is here that Kinkans were first made.
One of my kids came up to my desk again today with a look on her face that reminded me of Virgil's famous refrain: "Beware of Japanese Junior High School girls bearing gifts". She was carrying a bag filled with what, at first sight, seemed like satsumas or perhaps clementines (what ever the difference between these may be). In fact, however, my English teacher informed me, they were Kinkans. I had never heard of this mysterious fruit before, although that wasn't especially surprising. There are a number of foodstuffs which are native only to Japan, and which no doubt originated in the above mentioned laboratory, and which only the Japanese are mental enough to voluntarily allow entry into their mouths. There are also a number of foodstuffs which Japan has cunningly renamed to allow them to claim that they are unique to Japan when actually they are common throughout the world: "This is a mikan. It's a Japanese orange". "No, it's just an orange". "No, it's a JAPANESE orange". "Whatever".
My student handed me one and told me "I grew them myself" - Always a deeply worrying sign. "Try it". It was only then that I found out that the kinkan though is not just a clementine or a satsuma or even a Japanese clementine or a JAPANESE satsuma, (or even, for that matter, Japanese, as I found out later). The Kinkan is just a small, sour orange-y lemon-y thing, that is filled to the brim with seeds. There is almost no fruit. It is just a seed carrying device. What fruit that there is, is so, so sour that upon putting one tiny shrivelled segment into my mouth, my face involuntarily collapsed into a prune shaped ball of flesh and nose and fear. "YES!", my student screamed as she saw me convulsing. "It's horrible isn't it".
Japan. Food experimentation. The maxim for Japanese companies seems to be that if two foods exist, and have, until now, never been combined, no greater reason is needed to combine them. This is surely the logic behind ramen carbonara, meat ice cream, and now, Cucumber Pepsi. The label on the bottle boasts of the "suprising" fusion of cucumber and Pepsi. The thing is, cucumber strikes me as one of the most pointless vegetables to combine with something else. It has to be one of the least strongly flavoured, and would pale in insignificance behind, say an onion. So why combine it with Pepsi? Coke released their zero calorie variant this month, so I am betting that this was Pepsi's last minute attempt to put something, anything, new on the shelves. Perhaps the decision involved putting the names of all vegetables into a hat and the Pepsi CEO picking cucumber out?
Anyway, didn't really fancy it myself, so got my girlfriend to try it out for me. She said it smelt like mouthwash and tasted like cough medicine or perhaps dishwashing liquid. I think the photos of her face describe it pretty well...
Edit: I have since tried it too. It wasn't too bad. Not especially disgusting. Not especially good. It tastes quite like a cocktail but without the alcohol. Fruity, but certainly nothing to do with cucumbers. The problem is, that it's a drink that no one would ever, under any circumstances, have an urge or desire to drink. Perfectly drinkable, but not the kind of thing you would buy and so destined for failure. Which is sad, as we need more ridiculous products in the world.
5/10.
