Dining with Brumhilde... and ghetto food

Our sempai introduced us to the local all-you-can-eat when we first got here, because that's one of the things one should know about when one moves into a new neighbourhood. They're called 'viking' restaurants here, because the locals seem to think that the Vikings of yore ate this way. Anyway, this one is called Stamina Taro and it's on the road to Koriyama. Since we do half days once a week at the board of education, it's an excellent opportunity to take some time to load up on meat and vegetables that would otherwise be too expensive or time-consuming to prepare at home.


The system reminds me of Korean barbecue restaurants in Sydney, what with the gas powered grill in the middle of the table where you cook meat and stuff. The menu is a little more extensive than that though. They've got meat, vegetables, ramen, miso, cotton candy, self service crepes, sushi, soft drinks, tea, coffee, beer, wines, soft serve, pudding, salads, kimchi, takoyaki, karaage, katsu as well as an impressive cake and pastry bar.

One item that looks kinda suss though is a sweet of some kind in the dessert area. It seems like a dough made of rice flour and agar, filled with bean paste. The bean paste is alright, but the dough has the consistency (and dare I say it, the taste) of semi congealed candle wax. I took one for the team to bring you the following picture. Yes, I had to eat them afterwards.

I've taken to calling them "zombie boobs".

Other than that particular menu item, the rest of the place is actually pretty decent, for ¥1050 (about AU$10) at lunchtime. If anyone of youse wanna come visit, I'll bring you there for lunch. Just remember to bring elastic pants.

Since it's the end of summer, the local combinis have started to sell oden, beloved by impoverished otaku in Akihabara, reviled by almost everyone else. My Japanese phrasebook defines it as "Japanese hotchpotch", but that doesn't help a lot. It's an assortment of daikon, eggs, fish paste and tofu based items simmered in a clear, savoury broth in a common pot. Customers have the option of fishing out the items themselves as they eat, or picking a few into a container as takeaway. Oden carts are a common feature in a lot of anime, manga and J-dramas, and I'd dearly love to try some from a real cart, but the display at the combini next door will have to do.

'Dun that look good? ^^

This is the setup at the combini. I'm not kidding.

What can I say, I love this stuff! It's cheap and nasty, but it feels like a nice warm hug when you eat it. So far I've tried the stuff from Lawson and 7-eleven, as well as a prepackaged supermarket version, and I have to say the stuff at Lawson wins, simply because the broth doesn't smell or taste like dog food. The canned oden I bought from Akiba for fun will have to wait until I'm desperately hungry or on my last yen before I'll open it up.


Mmm mmm good. They gave me some mustard, which gives the dish a nice kick, but I didn't use it this time. I like the tofu pouch, cabbage roll and fish cake, but I have to say my favourite is the skewer of fatty pork. Oh yum.

Who needs to cook? XD

Lost in Translation (or Misdirection)

I went to the Press Start orchestral game music concert with the help of Sent and Nanaholic (thanks guys! Hope you got the check in the mail) right after the Shibuya matsuri. Great stuff that. Makes up for missing the Play! concert in Sydney on account of the JET pre-departure orientation (boo!). I think I was the only one who really enjoyed the Loco Roco piece they played with a choir singing complete gibberish in accompaniment. I like the game, so sue me.

The rest of the concert was pretty good, and in the survey form they asked us to complete I requested "Objection!" from the Gyakuten Saiban series (that's Phoenix Wright's theme for English speaking folks). Maybe they'll play it next year, hehe. But what made my evening was the final encore of One Winged Angel with choral accompaniment. Sounds pretty ordinary, except that Uematsu Nobuo himself was leading the piece on synth. *fangirls*

Funny story on the way back though. I had intended to catch a connecting train to Tokyo where I would catch the last shinkansen back to Koriyama, but the nice folks at the JR office in Yokohama who sold me the ticket gave me the wrong platform number.

...

Yep, I ended up on the wrong train, missed my connection in Tokyo and had to slum it on an overnight bus (after some frantic searching by the JR staff at Tokyo station) that got back to Koriyama at 4:45 in the morning. At least I got a partial refund, but the rest of my morning and subsequent day was pretty much trashed. I really should be positive and say I learned that there's always a way out in a tight situation, but I reckon it's ok to be just a little bit cheesed off with the JeRks in Yokohama. Never trust the folks in charge, peeps, especially if you can check things out yourself!

Taking a shrine to life in Japan

Summer is a time for festivals in Japan, and every city, town or village will have its own variant or other celebrating everything from cucumbers to cats. The major one is of course the one that celebrates summer itself, and being the new guys in town, the lot of us ALTs were asked to help carry a portable shrine (called an omikoshi) around the city to bring people good luck during the Sukagawa Natsu-matsuri.

If you think it's just a matter of rocking up and walking around the city with the shrine, oh boy. The shrine itself looks smallish and manageable, but it's supported on a set of wide crossbeams so that a lot of people can carry the thing at the same time. And boy do they need a lot of people for the job. A typical omikoshi tips the scales in the region of 1-2 tonnes (I think), depending on the mood of the guys who made the crossbeams. In a small town like mine, a team of about 20-30 people take turns to carry it for about 2-4 hours, but in a big city, the contingent can number up to 100 people and they carry it around for 4-6 hours, possibly in the heat of the afternoon sun.

Still think it's a piece of cake? You really need a lot of coordination and communication to pull something like that off, especially when you have to make frequent stops to shake the shrine in front of shops whose owners have given a donation for the privilege. This is why in the Katamari Damacy game, the sound effect for an omikoshi team was a bunch of people shouting in rhythm. The constant shouts of "sei-ya... so!" actually serve to coordinate the footsteps of the team, because getting your toes stepped on or otherwise kicked while carrying a 2-tonne chunk of wood really isn't very funny. Especially if you've bought cheap matsuri split toed socks and everyone else got the steel tipped versions.

Us ALTs were in the Nakamachi contingent, and got to wear typical Japanese labourers' clothes, which consisted of buttoned up cotton shirt, pants without zips or buttons (!) and an indigo dyed apron. Then we all put on a thick cotton happi coat called a hanten in order to absorb all that sweat that comes about when you wear said shirt, pants and apron.

It rained the first night in Sukagawa, and in apology, the matsuri committee went all out to load us up with beer, presumably to dull the pain of carrying the shrine. I was a little wiser the next day, after waking up feeling like crap and still in pain anyway.

A shrine keeper who let me take his photo. These guys are supposed to be celibate I think. Oooer.

Everybody's got an omikoshi!

Mmm mmm yakisoba stall...

The omikoshi that the bunch of us from Nakamachi were carrying. My photo does the details on the shrine no justice.

The committee were a nice bunch though, and treated us all to dinner and a nice reception with good food (mmm katsuo sashimi) and yet more beer on both days.

And because I'm a masochist at heart, I went to Tokyo the following weekend and did the Shibuya matsuri as well. Pain is your friend!

Here's a video of omikoshi shenanigans I took while on a break from shrining in Shibuya:



I'm a little glad this only happens once a year...

The flowers and the bees, the birds in the trees (image intensive)

Sukagawa calls itself a garden city, and it's not hard to see why. I can take a trip to the local supermarket and come across no less than 30-odd species of flora and fauna on the sidewalk alone. It's a refreshing change from grey concrete and sunburnt foliage in Sydney.

All this green is good for the soul. The fresh air ain't half bad either. and since it's nearly the end of summer right now (all the cicadas have finally shut up and died), a lot of flowers are blooming with a vengeance. Methinks it's one last hooray before fall sets in and the cooler weather slows things down a bit.

Here are just a few of the characters that populate this city:

Ok, ok I kid. The last one isn't exactly from the neighbourhood. It's my air freshener.

I really wish I could name the rest of them, but they never did see the importance of botany when I went to school. And they wonder why their students are all soulless automatons. *sigh*

I also live right next door to the Sukagawa Peony Garden, which boasts an impressive collection of peony plants, and is apparently quite famous throughout Japan. Pity I got here in the middle of summer, and I have to wait until the next spring for the garden to really strut its stuff. Pictures will ensue when peony season comes about again.

So to compensate for the lack of peonies, I've started a small garden on my balcony on top of my air-conditioner's compressor. I even bought fake grass to turf the surface of the balcony, but gave up once I realized that the really realistic looking grass would cost me pretty much an arm and a leg (actually about $50 from the local 100 yen shop). This really is the fault of the kids at my homestay in Aizu; they gave me a few seeds from their morning glory plant and I thought it would be a shame if I didn't plant them. Curse yoo kiddies for restoring the circulation to my green thumbs! I just hope they don't turn out to be two left feet (de-volution is so not Darwin).

So far they've progressed like this:

I thought they'd be lonely, so I went out and got me sweet peas, nadeshiko (marguerite carnations) and pink lipped daffodils to plant, so the top of my compressor is looking quite busy now. Hopefully it'll be a full fledged mini garden once it gets to springtime in March. Does it look like I'm settling in? Naw...

Mr Roger's My Neighbourhood

Y'all have seen the inside of my apartment, so why don't we take a walk around the neighbourhood this time?

First off, some basic facts. Sukagawa is a small town just 30 minutes south by car from the city of Koriyama in the the Ken-chuu district of Fukushima Prefecture. They're quite proud of having the prefecture's major airport in their backyard. The local population numbers about 80,000, and a lot of them own land on which they plant crops like rice, pears, peaches (oh the peaches) and vegetables like corn and leeks (yes, the bent leeks that were featured on Yakitate! Japan).

When I first got my posting, I did some research and discovered that this was a bit of a rural district. I must admit I was a little disappointed because I was expecting to live in a shack in the middle of nowhere surrounded by cows in pastures. Not that that was a bad thing, since I like (tipping) cows, but I thought I wouldn't like living in the sticks far away from conveniences such as stores, transport and most importantly the local Animate and Mandarake.

Turns out the local definition of "the sticks" is vastly different from the Australian one, where it means your backyard is so big it takes a while for you to walk to your neighbour's. Here's why:


Back in Sydney, I had to take a 15 minute bus ride (not including waiting time) to the nearest Westfield to get my groceries. Here, there are at least 2 major supermarket chains within walking or biking distance just down the road from where I live, as well as a major shopping mall (and the local Daiso! 100 yen goodness!) not much further away. How's that for convenience?

If you're one of those who read my other web journal a long time ago, congratulations, you're special. You might also recall I took photos of the local manhole covers in Tokyo. Guess what? It looks like each town has it's own design. Here are Sukagawa's:


They really like peonies here; in fact it's the city's official flower (see the next post for why). That fan shaped symbol in the middle of the cover is the town's official logo. I can't remember the official explanation of its design, nor am I able to hunt down any info of it, but I seem to recall reading somewhere that it's supposed to look like someone waving a flag... or something.

Here's the shopping mall I mentioned above. It's called Loc Town and it boasts a 24 hour supermarket, the local Macca's, clothing, electronics and lifestyle shops, and the biggest bank of gashapon machines in the city. Joy!


This is the local pachinko parlour, a large, impressive building across the street from Loc Town. Since I'm technically a civil servant, I'm not really supposed to go in there, so this is the only pic you'll be getting of it. That being said, I've been told that I might be able to see half the staff from the city hall in there if I went ^^;;;

Local architecture and the train station at 6 in the morning:


The best thing about living here is that there's a lot more breathing space than in a big city. People are also a lot more friendly and willing to help or just have a chat with new arrivals to their neighbourhood. Heck, the people at the combini next door already know me by sight and sound and are always ready to ask me how my day was when I pop in to get onigiri or bread for breakfast. I think I'm going to like it here ^^