Unfortunately, due to a family emergency, Sophie has had to return to Australia and will remain there for the forseeable future. If circumstances permit, she may return but at this stage it cannot be said when or even if that will be.
In the meantime I will continue to live and work in Japan and hopefully keep updating this blog.
Monday, January 26, 2009
Wednesday, January 21, 2009
Rawberry!
I love Japanese food. I love it soo much. Especially, I love sushi and sashimi. Mmmmm, raw fish!
There are a lot of sushi places in Melbourne, of course, but Australian sushi in general tends away from uncooked animal - the demands of local tastes, I guess. Since coming to Japan, though, I've had the opportunity to try several things that probably wouldn't sell so well in the QV food hall. For instance, I've had squid and octopus sushi, which are surprisingly un-rubbery. Also, natto sushi, which was not a good move. Clinton nearly threw up on the sushi train!
This past week, though, has topped all of that.
To start with, on Saturday we went for a meal at a crab restaurant. Here is the meal we had:
It included a starter, some boiled crab, crab sashimi, a cup of savoury custard with chestnuts at the bottom, soup, crab au gratin (basically mac cheese with crab), crab tempura, crab sushi and then ice cream (vanilla, not crab) with matcha.
It was mostly pretty tasty, and all very pretty to look at. The crab sashimi was a bit weird, though, and highly inelegant. We had to dig the raw crab flesh out of the leg cases, and it was not going without a fight. To be honest, the effort wasn't all that worth it. It didn't taste of much. It was just a sort of mildly seafood-ish jelly. But, it was an adventure just the same.
Hard to top, you may think, but nay, I say! (lol. "Nay"...) Not in Japan!
On Monday night, we went out to an izakaya with our new Japanese language class/ language exchange group. Oh, so much yummy Japanese bar food. There were many mystery things on sticks. But my eye was drawn to the picture labelled (on the English menu) "Horse Sushi"....
A couple of the Japanese ladies in our group said it was their favourite thing ever, so I said "We must order this so I can try it". And it was thus.
Horse looks and tastes a lot like beef. It is very nice. I wouldn't bother with crab again, but I'd eat more horse sushi or sashimi - "bashimi" in Japanese. (n.b. for the Japanese speakers amongst you: ba being the other reading for the kanji for uma 'horse', geddit.)?
Man, talking about food is making me hungry. I could eat a horse!
(rofl.. "Nay!")
There are a lot of sushi places in Melbourne, of course, but Australian sushi in general tends away from uncooked animal - the demands of local tastes, I guess. Since coming to Japan, though, I've had the opportunity to try several things that probably wouldn't sell so well in the QV food hall. For instance, I've had squid and octopus sushi, which are surprisingly un-rubbery. Also, natto sushi, which was not a good move. Clinton nearly threw up on the sushi train!
This past week, though, has topped all of that.
To start with, on Saturday we went for a meal at a crab restaurant. Here is the meal we had:
It included a starter, some boiled crab, crab sashimi, a cup of savoury custard with chestnuts at the bottom, soup, crab au gratin (basically mac cheese with crab), crab tempura, crab sushi and then ice cream (vanilla, not crab) with matcha.
It was mostly pretty tasty, and all very pretty to look at. The crab sashimi was a bit weird, though, and highly inelegant. We had to dig the raw crab flesh out of the leg cases, and it was not going without a fight. To be honest, the effort wasn't all that worth it. It didn't taste of much. It was just a sort of mildly seafood-ish jelly. But, it was an adventure just the same.
Hard to top, you may think, but nay, I say! (lol. "Nay"...) Not in Japan!
On Monday night, we went out to an izakaya with our new Japanese language class/ language exchange group. Oh, so much yummy Japanese bar food. There were many mystery things on sticks. But my eye was drawn to the picture labelled (on the English menu) "Horse Sushi"....
A couple of the Japanese ladies in our group said it was their favourite thing ever, so I said "We must order this so I can try it". And it was thus.
Horse looks and tastes a lot like beef. It is very nice. I wouldn't bother with crab again, but I'd eat more horse sushi or sashimi - "bashimi" in Japanese. (n.b. for the Japanese speakers amongst you: ba being the other reading for the kanji for uma 'horse', geddit.)?
Man, talking about food is making me hungry. I could eat a horse!
(rofl.. "Nay!")
Sunday, January 11, 2009
Do the Ladder! - Drinking in Japan
This week at work I taught the meaning of the term "pub crawl" to students. See the books we use to teach over here are packed with lots of words, idioms and phrases that students will find useful for interacting with any English speaking natives they encounter. Be it here in Japan or overseas. "Pub Crawl" as it turns out is one of those necessary words. Awesome!
One student I taught had actually spent about a number of months travelling in New Zealand, so he understood perfectly what a pub crawl was all about and informed me that in fact the Japanese had their own turn of phrase for this delightful pastime. "Hashigo-suru", which translates approximately to "Doing the Ladder", is used to describe an evening of drinking in as many different bars as possible. With each bar visited representing another rung/bar on the ladder.
Also, speaking of beer, here are some 130ml beer cans I bought, because well... they're tiny! I must say though the novelty of tiny beer soon wears off when you finish the beer after about three or four mouthfuls. Regular beers cans are shown here for scale.
One student I taught had actually spent about a number of months travelling in New Zealand, so he understood perfectly what a pub crawl was all about and informed me that in fact the Japanese had their own turn of phrase for this delightful pastime. "Hashigo-suru", which translates approximately to "Doing the Ladder", is used to describe an evening of drinking in as many different bars as possible. With each bar visited representing another rung/bar on the ladder.
Also, speaking of beer, here are some 130ml beer cans I bought, because well... they're tiny! I must say though the novelty of tiny beer soon wears off when you finish the beer after about three or four mouthfuls. Regular beers cans are shown here for scale.
Saturday, January 3, 2009
REAL Big Fish!
Alright! Happy 2009 everyone!
Due to family commitments, our winter break hasn't been quite as adventuresome as we'd originally planned. But yesterday we went to Osaka Aquarium. Get ready for some extreeeeeeeme fish!
(My camera's not very good in low light, so the photos are a bit fail, I'm afraid.)
Osaka Aquarium (or Kaiyuukan, for those of you interested in the lingo) is allegedly the biggest in the world, but its main claim to fame seems to be the two whale sharks it houses. It has a lot of other stuff too. Like otters, and a sloth! I don't think sloths are even properly aquatic. I guess they swim somethimes? I don't know. As far as sloths go, this one doesn't seem to have got the memo about being slothy - it was hanging from the top of its cage, rocking on like someone who's got their mp3 player up to loud and has forgotten everyone can see them dancing.
Never mind that, I'll cut to the chase. Here's a whale shark:
Cool, huh?
And here's another one:
Seriously awesome to see in action. As was the ginormerous manta ray:
It's hard to tell the scale in that picture, but I guess the ray was about three metres across. So beautiful. I love rays, there's something very serene about them. But that wasn't my favourite thing...
Do you know what a sunfish is? Go and look it up on Wikipedia. I've always wanted to see one, because they are freaky. I was pretty stoked when I heard there were sunfish at Osaka Aquarium. Here's one:
It came right up to the glass and blooped at me. That was pretty cool, being face to face with a sunfish.
In the same tank as the sunfish, there were some octopi. Here's what underneath an octopus looks like:
Those eight-legs move along pretty quick! It kind of pours itself accross the glass, like a liquid made of legs.
Speaking of animals that are mostly made of legs, they had some of those crazy Japanese crabs, as well. For some reason, I felt like they should have been dancing in a chorus line. With little hats and canes, right? (Please tell me you see it too...)
Also, there was a very nice jellyfish display. True, it's not an exciting photo, but I love the colours.
Nearby the aquarium is a big-arse Ferris wheel - also allegedly the largest in the world, at 112 metres high. The Ferris wheel was pretty cool, and we timed our visit just right, because the sun was going down and the city lights had just come on. Here's a view down onto the aquarium from the wheel. It's the building with the green lights around the top and the big white triangle in front:
So, I'll leave you with some random Osaka, as seen from the Ferris wheel. The aquarium is in the bottom right corner there, and to the left (right in the middle of the bottom) is the Suntory Museum, which I suspect we may be going back to another day...
Due to family commitments, our winter break hasn't been quite as adventuresome as we'd originally planned. But yesterday we went to Osaka Aquarium. Get ready for some extreeeeeeeme fish!
(My camera's not very good in low light, so the photos are a bit fail, I'm afraid.)
Osaka Aquarium (or Kaiyuukan, for those of you interested in the lingo) is allegedly the biggest in the world, but its main claim to fame seems to be the two whale sharks it houses. It has a lot of other stuff too. Like otters, and a sloth! I don't think sloths are even properly aquatic. I guess they swim somethimes? I don't know. As far as sloths go, this one doesn't seem to have got the memo about being slothy - it was hanging from the top of its cage, rocking on like someone who's got their mp3 player up to loud and has forgotten everyone can see them dancing.
Never mind that, I'll cut to the chase. Here's a whale shark:
Cool, huh?
And here's another one:
Seriously awesome to see in action. As was the ginormerous manta ray:
It's hard to tell the scale in that picture, but I guess the ray was about three metres across. So beautiful. I love rays, there's something very serene about them. But that wasn't my favourite thing...
Do you know what a sunfish is? Go and look it up on Wikipedia. I've always wanted to see one, because they are freaky. I was pretty stoked when I heard there were sunfish at Osaka Aquarium. Here's one:
It came right up to the glass and blooped at me. That was pretty cool, being face to face with a sunfish.
In the same tank as the sunfish, there were some octopi. Here's what underneath an octopus looks like:
Those eight-legs move along pretty quick! It kind of pours itself accross the glass, like a liquid made of legs.
Speaking of animals that are mostly made of legs, they had some of those crazy Japanese crabs, as well. For some reason, I felt like they should have been dancing in a chorus line. With little hats and canes, right? (Please tell me you see it too...)
Also, there was a very nice jellyfish display. True, it's not an exciting photo, but I love the colours.
Nearby the aquarium is a big-arse Ferris wheel - also allegedly the largest in the world, at 112 metres high. The Ferris wheel was pretty cool, and we timed our visit just right, because the sun was going down and the city lights had just come on. Here's a view down onto the aquarium from the wheel. It's the building with the green lights around the top and the big white triangle in front:
So, I'll leave you with some random Osaka, as seen from the Ferris wheel. The aquarium is in the bottom right corner there, and to the left (right in the middle of the bottom) is the Suntory Museum, which I suspect we may be going back to another day...
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