Balloon Shapes By Cops » Japanese Food and Drink

Sake Tour of Kobe

Silentjim — Mon, 16 Mar 2009 03:28:37 +0000

The other week we took a 15 minute ride on the train to our local sake brewery area, and did a very pleasant tour of some of the breweries and their bars
I blogged about it at my wine, beer and sake blog at MoIppai.com :
Sake Tour of Hyogo Part One

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Post tags: Drinking in Japan, Japanese Food and Drink, Nihonshu, Sake

Ebisu Festival, Nishinomiya and the Big Tuna

Silentjim — Sun, 25 Jan 2009 05:10:20 +0000

Every year, around January 10th there’s a festival held at the Ebisu branches of shinto shrines throughout Japan (well at least I think it’s throughout I’ve only ever been to the local one in Nishinomiya).

This is a 3 day festival where thousands and thousands of people queue up at the shrine to give money and pray, and also to buy, not sure what you call them, blessed “charms”? – essentially sticks with leaves on tied up with coloured ribbons and stuff (just googled it – “talismans”, or translated from the Japanese fukusasa -
lucky bamboo grass) that are blessed by the priests and bring good luck to businesses in the coming year (as seems to be traditional with these kinds of charms talismans, you bring back the previous years one and chuckit in a big pile before queuing up for the new one).

This festival is great fun and we go every year. One of the key attractions is a big tuna donated by local businesses which people queue up to stick ￥5 coins to, again, supposed to bring good luck I think.

Big Tuna

Another big attraction is the thousands of food stalls that line the streets and back streets leading up to the shrine. Never seen so much food! Every year we tuck into turkish kebabs, yakitori (chicken on sticks), karage (deep fried chicken – pronunced with a hard ‘g’) and sake from a wooden square cup.

This year I also tried squid on a stick – which I’ve been seeing around for years but never had the courage to try…pretty tasty!

Squid on a stick

For some reason aswell, this year nearly all the food stalls were rolling their food in fried eggs – pork on a stick wrapped in egg, chicken on a stick wrapped in egg, fried noodles wrapped. Must be the new trend.
For those that don’t know, Kansai is quite famous, food wise for takoyaki – which are balls of dough with octopus in, covered in mayonnaise and a brown sauce. Delicious. But of course there’s always the problem that octopusi (? – octopuses?) are quite large so you have to cut them up into small pieces, but how big should those pieces be??

Here’s a solution…

Takoyaki

Just use tiny octopusi and stick the whole thing in! (ok, sometimes one of the legs will poke through the ball, but hey, nothing in life is perfect)

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Post tags: Ebisu, Japanese Food and Drink, Matsuri, Takoyaki, Yakitori

Beer Garden and the Okinawan Party

Silentjim — Mon, 09 Jun 2008 03:13:17 +0000

The other Friday, I went out with my work colleagues for a party.

We went to a beer garden in Osaka. I’ve blogged about beer gardens before, but just to recap, they’re not like English beer gardens (where the garden part is kind of important, trees, grass, etc.), here, due to lack of space, they tend to be on the roof of department stores or hotels, so the beer is more important.

Basically, you pay 3000Yen and it’s nomihodai and tabehodai (all you can eat and drink!).

I didn’t know at the time, but it turned out to be my “oiwai” party (wedding celebration party). Which was great They made me drink a lot, and gave me a beautifully wrapped envelope with money in for my
wedding.

Aki and I are going to a newly opened sushi restaurant in Ashiya with the money – they do amazing sushi!

As it’s not really summer here yet, the beer garden shut early (8:30) so we went to a very cool Okinawan restaurant afterwards.
I don’t know how engineered it was, but I ended up right at the front of the small stage they had for live music.

Okinawan Singer

So when this fella came on…(the Japanese Omar Sharif)…

(apologies for the poor quality of the photo, but it was taken with a mobile phone, and I was drunk ) he spotted me straightaway and started talking to me (where are you from, etc. ). Then said he was going to sing some songs in English. He sang “I love you, I need you, I want you…” kinda embarassing.

After a few songs, he asked if a “James” was in the audience…I raised my hand, and he told me to stand up.

He told eveyone in the restaurant I was getting married, and they all cheered and said congratulations. Again, pretty embarassing, but really nice. He then tried to play the wedding march on his shamisen!

It didn’t end there. Okinawan music is great for dancing to, and this restaurant gets everyone dancing round the tables. So one of the waiters got some drunk salaryman up and dancing and they shuffled round to me and lifted me off the floor (I wasn’t that drunk! – we were sitting on the floor, this is Japan remember), and we started a conga like dance around the restaurant.
Everyone was so friendly, I got lots of hugs from sweaty salarymen, and high fives and hand shakes from everyone. Great fun!

I’ll try to scan some pictures of the dancing in (I didn’t take any obviously, a friend gave me some).

All in all, a fantastic night, and the food was great too. I recommend Okinawan pork, very soft and juicy.

Taiko Drumming

Okinawan Singers

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Wedding

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Post tags: Beer Gardens, Japanese Food and Drink, Okinawa, Shamisen, Taiko

Waiter there’s an Eye in My Soup

Silentjim — Sun, 16 Dec 2007 06:56:04 +0000

Since I’ve been at my new job, we’ve been going out for lunch every day, and most of the time to different restaurants – it’s right in the heart of Umeda (Osaka), kind of the central place, so full of restaurants.

In the first 2 weeks, we only visited the same place once! So everyday I’ve been having different food, which has been exciting, but with some surprises.

Just a few days ago, I had an Indiana Jones moment…not the “kickin’ Nazi ass” kind (or rather “kicking Nazi arse”), but the, “What the hell is that in my soup” variety.

You get soup with nearly every Japanese meal (miso soup of some variety), this one had large chunks of fish in it, and was pretty tasty. I noticed a rather odd looking chunk, so poked it with my chopsticks…it rolled over to reveal an eye, it was a fish’s head! (I’m sure Chun would appreciate that). Apparently it’s the best bit of the fish, and the other people were a bit jealous! I on the other hand, couldn’t eat anymore.

I had to explain to them, I was English, and, well, we don’t do fish’s eyes.

Went back there on Friday, and no head this time, so could eat the soup

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Post tags: Indiana Jones, Japanese Food and Drink

Jim The Salaryman

Silentjim — Tue, 20 Nov 2007 06:46:56 +0000

First day of work in a Japanese office! First day as a salaryman. (Salaryman is Japanese English for (Male) office worker).
Scary!

Commuting with all the other salaryman at 8 this morning got to my work early so I could be shown around.
It’s a small company, only about 11 people, but only one guy speaks English (he’s half Spanish). The boss speaks English, but doesn’t want to with me – wants me to get up to speed with my Japanese! Yikes.
Every morning there’s a meeting, and I had to give a brief introduction – very embarassing (and I found out later, I should have stood up. No-one told me. Doh!).

It gets worse. Next week I have to give a 5 minute “omoshiroi speechi” – interesting speech. On anything I want. Double yikes!

The work itself is fine, so far a doddle, except that the pc is obviously in Japanese, and it’s using Windows Vista – which I’ve not used before, and it’s shockingly different to XP, so I don’t know where anything is, and I have to learn the Japanese for all the options.
Microsoft have even f%!&ed about with Word to make it seemingly, less user friendly, so it takes me ages to use that aswell. Doh!

Nice people in the office though, went to lunch with a couple of them to a small Japanese restaurant. One of those where you put ￥500 in a machine, which spits out a receipt and you give it to the waiter, and about 2 minutes later he gives you a plate of TonKatsu (deep fried Pork cutlet), rice and miso soup. I think it might be their regular lunchtime haunt. Guess I’ll be going there a lot.

Brain’s all shot to pieces now, but got to do a bit of studying before bed. Gambarimashoo!

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Post tags: Japanese Food and Drink, Salaryman, Windows Vista, Working in Japan