How to Make Two Minute Noodles

First, catch your noodles... Haha, just kidding. Of course, you all now how to make two minute noodles (aka instant ramen). You've all been broke students. But did you ever stop to think about how they were made before they were put in the packet? Well, I sure didn't, but a recent trip to the Instant Ramen Museum in Ikeda changed that.


We went with (L to R) Hiromi, Kiyo, Rizzie and Kaori. I teach Kiyo and Kaori every week, and the outing was their idea. Kaori did the organising and booking, so big props to her! And thanks to Kiyo for this photo and some of the others in this post :)

Yup, not kidding. Instant Ramen Museum. Actually, it's The Momofuku Ando Instant Ramen Museum. Mr. Momofuku is the man we have to thank for the miracle of two-minute noodles. Also, isn't it the cutest-sounding name ever? I just keep wanting to say it. Momofuku. Momofuku. Momo. Fuku. Mooo Mooo Fuuuu Kuuuu.

Ahem. Anyway. Instant ramen debuted in 1958, and the entirely self-contained Cup Noodle followed 13 years later. World changed, in my opinion. I mean, imagine the world withough two minute noodles. It would be a dark, miserable, and, most of all, quite peckish place.

Instant ramen has also been re-engineered for space travel. Japanese astronaut Soichi Noguchi took a supply of "Space Ram" with him on his mission in 2005.


The history displays were actually really interesting, but the main attraction for us was the opportunity to make instant ramen *from scratch*. Actually starting from the flour and oil and... stuff... Which we had to knead together...


And then wring it through a noodle-izer...


(Yes, we did get to keep the bandannas.)
And then, it got put into moulds and deep-fried. (The moulds are heart-shaped because it was February, and, you know, Valentine's day and stuff...)


And then, ta-da! Our very own handmade chicken flavoured instant ramen. We also got to design our own packets. Cute huh?


Mine is bottom centre, and Clinton's is bottom right.

So, it was a fun and really interesting outing. It certainly changed how I look at the humble two minute noodle.

SNOWWWW II: The Snowening

So, I know the last post was mostly pictures of snow. Well, so is this one! Because we went to the Sapporo Snow Festival. Which was very exciting, because I have wanted to see it since I was in primary school. True story.

The main attraction of the snow festival is the snow sculptures. Sculptures of all kinds of things, but this being Japan and all, there are some things you can expect to see,

like anime girls,


Mario,


and Totoro.


Pretty cool, huh? (Haha, no pun intended :P) But check this shit out... The main attractions were about three storeys high, like this zoo animal piece:

And this replica of a Korean palace (Edit: wait, no, wrong pic. This is a replica of some other building. But it's still REALLY BIG)

I heard that the SDF are involved in trucking in all the snow and ice required for these babies.

These sculptures were at the main site along Oodori (literally 'big street', it's a sort of boulevard of parks running across the middle of Sapporo), but there were two other sites. The Susukino site, south of Oodori, had ice sculptures running down the middle of the street, and managed to mop up the last couple of Japan cliches that the Oodori site hadn't covered:

Fresh fish


and Gundam.


Oh wait I love this shot too... How awesome would this anime be?

SWORDMAN, MEGAROBO AND MERMAID CHICK. I think there's even a dragon in there, too. Hell fuck yeah.

Of course, snow and ice carving isn't limited to decorative items. It can also be used to make...

INNER TUBE SLIDES!!1! We did have to wait for about 45 minutes in the queue, but it was free!

Besides the snow festival, Sapporo is also well know for beer, since it's where the first brewery in Japan was built. We headed over to the Sapporo Beer Museum for a squizz. As you can see, Clinton was pretty excited about that:

And I was pretty excited about lunch in the 'beer garden' (read: beer hall).

It was the Sapporo Beer Garden's speciality called 'jingus kaan' (I'm pretty sure that it's named after Genghis Kahn), which is lamb and veg cooked on a hot plate at the table. Tasty McTasterson. Ah lamb, how I have missed you... Delicious, delicious sheeps.

There's Snow Place like...

SSSNNNNOOOOOOWWWWW!!


LOTS of snow:


And a snowman!

But more of that later.

So, it was Christmas and stuff. Even here in Japan! Our winter break started on Christmas Day, so we started celebrating after work on Christmas Eve, of course! We celebrated with a 'traditonal' Japanese 'Christmas dinner' of fried chicken, and Christmas cake.


Although, the chicken was from Family Mart, not KFC, which is where REAL Japanese Christmas dinners come from. But Family Mart chicken is more delicious. The Christmas cake was actually really nice, too. I thought it was iced, but it's actually slathered in real cream, and filled with real cream, and strawberries. I thoroughly endorse it.

On Christmas morning, we got up early and got on a train! And another train! And then another, AND ANOTHER! Six hours on trains! Best Christmas EVAR! (/irony)
But it was in a good cause because we ended up in Hakuba, Nagano. And there was a lot of snow.

We spent three days up there snowboarding. This is not terribly compatible with taking photos, so here's just one bad pic of me and my hired snowboarding gear. (My board had lightning on it. Awesome!)


Yeah, that's right. I learned to snowboard in three days. Boo-yah!

Goodness me, we were sore after that, though. So we went and had a soak in a local onsen on our last day. It was like magic. About 90% of the soreness disappeared. We wished we'd gone at the end of every day!



In other news, recently, we bought stufff for having nabe, because it is delicious. It's just a big ol' pot of soup you boil up on the table, and you put stuff (like cabbage or mushrooms or wontons or meat or whatever you like) in it and haul it out when it's cooked and eat it. And then you whack noodles in the left over soup. It is officially on my top ten best things ever list. Here's me and the inaugural nabe:


Mmmmmmm.... Definitely introducing this to our back-in-Melbourne lifestyle.

Do You Like Shiny Things?

Check this one out:


Oooooooh, shiny. It's the Golden Pavilion at Rokuon-ji Temple - aka Kinkakuji. It's actually covered in actual gold, and we went to Kyoto last weekend to see it. Getting there was a bit of a trial - the guidebook said it was just a bus from the station. They failed to mention it's about forty minutes worth of bus. Gahhhh. So, it wsa a bit late in the day when we got there, and the best of the sunlight had passed, but the temple grounds were still very pretty.


They also had a nice little outdoors teahouse thingo going on, with classy red umbrellas amongst the trees. So we stopped for some afternoon matcha. The matcha was, you know, matcha, but the sweet was so nice that we bought some to take away.




There were also vending machines for omikuji (fortunes), and they had various languages so I got one in English. Mine says

"In the wonderful moonlight, how glad I am to find a way to go along.
Your fortune: Pretty Good.
Your fortune will be better and better as if the dark road got lighter because of the moonshine. Go slowly but steadily and make your own way, and everything will go well."

Then there's a whole lot of random bits of advice for various situations, like Expected Visitor, Missing Thing, Speculation, Marriage, Childbirth, and Illness. My favourite is the cryptic "Removal". The advice is just "Ask another person".

So, do any of you guys want to remove something for me?

Hiroshima - We Had a... Really Nice Time.

We went to Hiroshima for the weekend, spontaneous-like. It's a rather nice, laid-back sort of place. Not too hectic. Lots of trees.

Here's what a bit of Hiroshima looks like:


We stayed in a hotel called Hiroshima Grand Intelligent Hotel. With a name like that, how could we not stay there? It was a bit swish. They even had a suit of armour in the lobby:



We decided to get the heavy shit out of the way on the first day, so we started with the A-bomb dome:



While we were there, we were approached by a volunteer guide named Akemi who was hoping to practice her English on us. She was lovely and informative, and told us some interesting stuff. Like, the reason that so much of the A-bomb dome building is still standing is that the dome was covered in copper, which melted instantly under the blast. So, the hot air could rush into the building and blow all the windows out, allowing the air pressure in the building to equalise and preventing it from collapsing totally.

Akemi also showed us to this statue that survived the A-bomb:


It's a statue of Jizo the Buddhist protector of children, pregnant women and travellers. You can see statues like this in lots of places in Japan, with their little bonnets and aprons. Akemi showed us how the surfaces of this statue that were directly exposed to the blast were rough where the quartz in the granite had melted. The areas of the statue that had been shadowed from the heat blast were still polished and perfectly smooth.

After Akemi waved us off, we headed for the memorial museum. It's a very interesting place. The first half of the display covers the "capital H" history of the Hiroshima bombing. They cover stuff like the history of Hiroshima, the history of the development of the A-bomb, why Hiroshima was chosen as a target, etc. And you go "Wow, this is all interesting and educational, very sobering food for thought, etc." Then, in the second half of the museum, it's all personal stories, belongings left behind by bomb victims, pictures of people with their skin hanging off, a whole head of hair that came out all at once when someone was brushing it the week after the bomb... It gets very visceral and very personal. And you come out going "Gnah... Bluh..."

Although, in our case the effect was lessened somewhat by the HORDES OF SCHOOLCHILDREN. Or perhaps the effect was increased. They did make me want to go "GNAHARGHAGAHH".

Outside the museum, there's tree that was struck by the a-bomb blast, but then recovered and sprouted new leaves. You can see on the trunk, about half the tree was blown away, and then it regrew.





Actaully, we went for a walk past the remains of Hiroshima castle, and found a gum tree that had a sign on it saying it had been in the blast as well. But it was too dark for a decent photo. (It gets dark really early these days...)

Oh speaking of trees, another interesting the Akemi told us was that after the bomb, an appeal was sent out to all the other prefectures of Japan for trees. 6,000 trees were sent to Hiroshima. So that's why these days it's a really leafy place.

For dinner, we had some tasty Hiroshima-style Okonomiyaki. It's a little different from Osaka okonomiyaki. It has a sort of pancake on the bottom.



The next day, we headed for Miyajima, an island about an hour away from Hiroshima by train and then ferry. It's the site of the famous 'floating' torii (you know, them big Japanese orangey gatey things), and lots of other templey shriney sacredy things. It's cultural 'n' shit. Also, very, very pretty and packed with tourists.

Here's the floating torii seen from the approaching ferry:



And here it is from the land:



And here it is at low tide. People like to walk up and touch it. We were too knackered by then, though:



We have a lot more photos. It's one of those things that somehow fills you with a great urge to take pictures from all angles. It is pretty cool, though. And the associated shrine is also pretty cool. It's all on stilts, over the water. You can see little fish swimming around and everything.



Moving away from the beach, there's also a big ol' mountain on Miyajima, called Mt Misen. We took a cable car up it. You go up a loooong cable car to the top:



Over forest that looks like this:



It's referred to as 'primeval' forest, since it's never been interfered with by humans (except to put a cable car in, I guess).

After the first cable car, you get on another cable car between two peaks, and you see this view:



Specky, huh? There's some excellent scenery to be seen up Mt Misen. Also some of these:

The flame in this temple has (allegedly) been going for 1200 years. It's one of the Seven Wonders of Mount Misen, which also include a very sad looking plum tree that apparently used to be a holy man's staff but took root and sprouted leaves, a hole in a rock that has water that allegedly rises and falls with the tides, and an arch made by a big rock on another big rock. And some others I can't remember because I can't find the pamphlet now. Here's Clinton under the rock arch:



We walked back down the mountain, and it was very beautiful but damn our legs ache now. Luckily, at the bottom of the mountain we found a lovely, tranquil teahouse in whic to sit and have afternoon tea. This is what Clinton had:



And I had something called zenzai, which was a kind of sweet soup of red beans, chestnuts and mochi. It was yummy:



Then we toddled back to Hiroshima Station, and hopped on the Shinkansen back to Osaka and the working week. Sigh.

Sophie Hits Tokyo - Day Three

The first thing we did was check out of our hotel, and try to stash our luggage in a coin locker in Tokyo station, so we could pick it up before getting back on the Shinkansen. Turns out, it's ridiculously difficult to get a coin locker in Tokyo station. We literally had to loiter about until we saw someone take their stuff out, and then swoop on the empty locker.

Having done much shopping over the past two days, the third day was our Culture day. We started with a stroll through the part of the Imperial Gardens that is open to the masses. It's a very pleasant park, and also contains the remains of Edo Castle. Here's me in the remains:


There's a lot of general greenery,


and some bamboo,


and some koi,


and really awesome, BIG spiders in the bushes! Check this lady out! She's all multi-coloured and shit.


After the Imperial Gardens, we headed for Ueno Park, because that's where the Tokyo National Museum is. Ueno Park is also pleasant, and has some cool pathway lamps, with little Japanese scenes painted on them.


The museum was great. Their main display was a chronological display of Japanese art. It was really interesting to see the development from 4000 year old ceramics to the ceramics, paintings and textiles that were much more recognisably Japanese. Oh, and there were samurai helmets and armour and swords. Cooooool, but also educational! We learnt the difference between a tachi (a big sword that hangs from your waist by a chain, and has the sharp edge downwards) and a katana (a big sword that you stick through your obi, and has the sharp edge upwards).

After the museum, we had a little time to kill, so we went to Ginza and had an expensive afternoon tea. Ginza isn't all that interesting. It does have some bright lights though:


Then we headed back to Tokyo Station, got our stashed luggage, and settled into our Shinkansen seats. I snoozed at record speeds all the way back to Osaka.