Japan: The Journey Continues

Continuing the food-on-a-stick trend…
Along with meat, we also found great big balls of barbecued mochi on sticks! 
Elisa took Claire and I down the Izu Peninsula to Nanadaru – The Seven Waterfalls – a little “hike” (it was mostly paved), that is a popular local tourist site.  The start of the walk is on the main road, and is lined with little food and knick-knack stalls, just like everything else in Japan. 
We bough black bean hard candies and Claire bought a fuzzy mandarin orange key chain.  There were people selling giant bags of dried local mushrooms and other funny smelling but probably delicious vegetable type thingies.  Next to the man selling the candy, was a large, round barbecue that sort of looked like a tire rim.  Already sauced and roasted mochis stood lined up along the outside rim.  Others stood in the inner circle, charcoal briquettes somehow roasting them to a golden deliciousness.  I’m not sure how – they were an awful long way from the heat, and it was mostly smoke, but these big ol’ balls of rice came out pretty delicious nonetheless. 
I love mochi.  It’s so toothy and chewy!  These hearty dumplings provided the right kick to do this very challenging “hike” – in which we followed a girl in heels.

I expected to see a lot of odd things in Japan, but I did not actually expect the fairly large derivation in food and international cuisines. I expected some “American” food – the Japanese love KFC, I had heard about Freshness Burger (which, by the way, doesn’t always come with the hamburger part), and MacDonald’s is of course everywhere – but French and Italian restaurants abound.  Of course, everything is Japanese-ified, as shown here in this matcha cream puff. 
I had no idea that there was a well known cream puff store below the Silver Temple in Kyoto, and while retrospectively it doesn’t come as a surprise – the Japanese also really seem to like creamy things – the fact that the three flavours to choose from where custard, chestnut and matcha just made my day!  Matcha cream!  You might be able to get a matcha cream latte in Vancouver (I don’t know.  Can you?), but this green, gooey custard coming out of this delicate but giant pastry was a bit of a surprise!  It’s all about fusion, people.

By the way, I had chestnut.  I pretty much hate matcha, actually.

More Japanese Food Pictures

Let’s continue, shall we?  I shouldn’t be doing this before lunch – it’s going to make me very hungry.

Claire and I arrived in Japan on a Saturday.  We spent our first week adjusting to the time, exploring Numazu and going on day trips around the Shizuoka area.  The following Saturday, after climbing part of Mt. Fuji in the morning, we headed to Tokyo to meet up with our friends Rowan and Dave.  On the Sunday of this weekend, after having to leave our totally crazy old-school capsule hotel at 8am, we went to Akihabara, the electronics district, to buy electronics and eat at a Maid Cafe.  Yes.  A Maid Cafe.
I had heard of this strange institutions, but it didn’t even cross my mind to go to one.  Dave, however, was quite excited about the prospect, just because it’s so damn Japanese.  I mean, where the hell else would it be considered even mildy possible to have young women in French maid costumes (which were more demure than I was expecting) serve you food in a cafe that clearly has no kitchen?!
Part of the appeal comes from the fact that in Japan, tiping your servers is not at all customary.  As a result, service is by no means poor, but it is not attentive the way it is in Canada.  At most restaurants, no one will come to take your order, fill up your water glass, or bring you the check, until you yell out Sumimasen! – basically, excuse me.  It’s not considered rude in the least, even to bellow it in some of the louder bars and restaurants.  In a maid cafe, however, the “maids” give more attentive service.  The girls will bend down to table level to take your order, add the milk and sugar and stir your tea or coffee for you, and in the case of my omrice, draw Doraemon on it in ketchup for you.  We went to the same cafe the second time we were in Tokyo because my friend Christina and Dave’s Japanese friends want to see it too.  Christina had them write “Happy Birthday” on her omrice, and they sang Happy Birthday to her, even though it was not her birthday.

It might be a teeny little stick with some teeny little morsels of chicken on it, but this one was one of the best teeny little snacks I had in Japan. 
Elisa and I spent an afternoon in Numazu going for a bike ride and running a few errands.  We stopped for groceries, and outside many grocery stores is a yakitori stand.  These kebabs of meat and green onions or garlic cloves, dipped in sweet sauce or sprinkled with salt and pepper and grilled right there for you are the exact kind of regular street food I wish we could get in Vancouver.  The sauce was delicious, the chicken moist and the the green onions added the right amout of spice and crunch.  Plus it was small and cheap, and it was extra fun to get to share this with Elisa, standing next to our bikes in the setting sun.

A Culinary Photographic Tour of Japan

So, rather than make one post per picture of my foodie Japan adventures (which I’ll never get around to – it’s a loftier goal than Sufjan Stevens’ albums!), I’ve decided to give you all the quick and dirty low down of my trip.  A few pictures, a few ancedotes, and enough rice to make you full just by looking at it.

Actually, no.  There is not a lot of rice here.  Rice is boring to take pictures of.   But boy, did I ever eat a lot of rice.  I read somewhere that the Japanese don’t believe they’ve had a full meal if there hasn’t been some rice, so there was always a bowl of rice.  And I was very good and never put soy sauce on it. 

Anyway.  To the picture.  This is pretty much the very first thing I ate in Japan.  Elisa (pictured) picked Claire and I up from the train station and took us to this ridiculous sushi-on-a-conveyer-belt restaurant, where we ordered on a computer screen with a pointing stick.  Elisa could not remember the name of this particular dish, and luckily knew enough Japanese to ask the server to find it for us.  It is Sakura Ebi – many tiny shrimpies with their little eyes still on, mixed with beans and tempuraed in a big cake.  I gotta tell you; when you haven’t slept in 24 hours, you’re so tired that the room literally feels like it is moving, and you’ve just had a huge lump of deep fried shrimp shot on to your table by a conveyer belt, it’s pretty much the most delicious thing you’ll ever eat.  Not that I remember now what it actually tasted like.  Damn I was tired.

 

Next up, we have some sukiyaki, or hot pot.  We didn’t really go for sukiyaki while we were in Japan.  There are entire restaurants devoted to it, but it was still pretty damn hot (October in Japan is not like October in Vancouver), so a room full of gas burners and boiling soup didn’t sound so appetizing.  Still, we ordered some at this ridiculous 50’s-style (Japan, not American, so no pink booths here, but lots of rough wood and tinny music) izakaya in Shinjuku. 

I didn’t eat a lot of this hot pot.  It was very spicy, and I don’t really do spicy.  But there are two very special things about this pot of soup, which you can see if you look carefully.  One – it came with hot dog in it.  But not just any hot dog.  Fish hot dog.  This little sausage was as pink and uniform as any crappy hot dog in North America, but fishy.  Awfully strange!  Two – You will notice behind the burner, a bottle of Kraft brand grated parmesan cheese.  Yes, folks, this Japanese speciality comes with fucking shakey cheese for you to liberally sprinkle on top of your spicy fish hot dog!  Yum!

Well, aren’t I verbose.  I can definitely write more than you can read in one sitting!  And this is cutting into time when I really should be working.  So!  Watch out for the continuation of my Japanese saga on Friday, when we’ll talk about omrice made by maids and meat on a stick.

Let’s watch TV about food!

As my Japan trip fades farther and farther away, I’ve become a little less motivated to write about it here.  I promise I still will, but I might just post some of my favourite food pictures, just because they are so damn pretty!  

In the meantime, I’ve mostly been focusing on Christmas, and all the associated food guilt and food joy.  My main anxiety this Christmas was the fact that I have gained 10 pounds since last year, and that, as mentioned a few posts ago, presented a problem for my ski pants.  And we went to Big White to go skiing this Christmas!  And these were ski pants that really required me to be 10 pounds lighter than I was last Christmas to fit nicely.  So, I’m twenty pounds off my pants, basically.  Luckily, with the aid of a belt and one unbuttoned button, they still fit, but man.  I’ve really got to get on those 20 (or 50…or more) pounds!

It’s not like I want to be thin or anything, but it would be nice to have a pair of ski pants that I don’t have to unbutton at lunch!  And in the land of ski pants, it’s fit into these ones or go to men’s, and I don’t want to do that again!  They have no hips!  I’m thinking about doing Weight Watchers, but the cost, and my previous failures at calorie-reduced diets makes me nervous.  I like eating, and I didn’t really like it when I wasn’t eating.  I should do more sports.

It doesn’t help that my dad got cable and all I do know is watch the Food Network.  Especially today.  A Top Chef marathon is pretty much the worst thing for controlling my food intake EVER.  Hmmm, let’s see.  I’m going to a)sit on my ass all day, b) while watching people make and eat delicious food, and c) stuff my face all day!  Yay.  

Food television and food books are not good for my ass.

Ramen!

Oh little bloggy.  How I have ignored thee!  One would think for the amount of time I spend on the internet while at work, I would find the time to pay you a little attention now and then.  But fear not!  Here I am again, to fill you with words and pictures of ramen!

Delicious ramen in all its noodly, porky, brothy glory. 

This photograph, courtesy of my lovely travel-mate Claire and her fancy camera, is of a bowl of scrumptious ramen, courtesy of Mama-san and Papa-san in lovely Nirayama, on the Izu Peninsula in Shizuoka Prefecture.

I was staying with my friend Elisa in Numazu, about two hours south of Tokyo by shinkansen.  She is living in this small city teaching English to Japanese high school students, a job that many other white kids are doing in the area.  All of these kids – Assitant Language Teachers or ALTs – try to get together fairly often even though they live fairly far apart, because someone to talk to is always a good thing when you’re living in a foreign country by yourself.  Often they get together in Numazu because its the biggest thing going, but on Mondays, some ALTs meet for ramen in Nirayama, two train rides away from Numazu at Mama-san and Papa-san’s for ramen.

I’m not entirely sure how long this has been going on, but it is older than just Elisa’s bunch of ALTs, but I do know that it’s pretty much the best thing ever.  The owners of this humble little noodle shop in this small town that has about as many rice paddies as it does houses seem to look forward to all these white kids coming in on Monday evenings, and for more than just the revenue they generate!  They insist that everyone call them Mama-san and Papa-san, and Elisa said they were excited to meet Claire and me!  They let us hang out in the front room of the restaurant after closing, watching TV and chatting with us while they clean up.  Both times we went, Papa-san drove us back to Numazu, which was super awesome because bus service to Elisa’s apartment sucks.  They gave us steep discounts on our dinners – a giant bowl of ramen and five freshly made gyoza for only 500 yen (just a little over $5)!

But as wonderful as Mama-san and Papa-san were to us, and continue to be to Elisa and her ALTs I’m sure, I bet people wouldn’t keep going every Monday night if the food wasn’t just so damn delicious!  I ended up eating a lot of ramen in Japan – it is easy to order – but our ramen in Niryama was definitely the best.  Perfectly done noodles, flavourful broth, gently fatty slices of pork.  Mmmmm.  I want some right now!

What was extra special about ramen in Japan is it is one of the few Japanese dishes that isn’t readily available in Vancouver.  It is on some menus at sushi restaurants, and there is Ezogiku, but apparently it isn’t as good as it used to be.  In Vancouver, you’re much better off going to Hon’s for Chinese noodle soup than you are trying out ramen in a Japanese restaurant. 

So Mama-san and Papa-san, thank you for your ramen and gyoza.  They’ve spoiled me against the local offerings, and no bowl of noodles will ever taste as good again.

Arigato for waiting

Well, I’m back from my Japanese adventure.  I’ve actually been back for about two weeks now, but the blog was not the first thing I thought needed attention.  I may have been wrong, as there as been no traffic to this poor little site for a long time!

What is there to say about eating my way through Japan?  Lots, actually, as I pretty much did just that.  Maybe I didn’t always opt for the best, most authentic choices.  Menu navigation was not always easy or possible.  Many places did not have English menus or menus with pictures, so seeing as how I can read no Japanese, it was impossible to order anything!  My travel buddy and I often resorted to take-out from 7-11 and Lawson when faced with no other options.  Of course, a Japanese 7-11 is in a completely different league from a North American 7-11 (as in, they are amazing), but it still felt like the easy way out.

My aversion to fish was easily dealt with in most situations, though vegetable sushi is not as prominent in Japan as it is in Vancouver.  I ate a great deal of inari and tamago, which is certainly not a bad thing, but not very exciting.

Japanese pizza is a wonderous and varied creature.

Ramen is heaven.

I had a torrid love affair with vending machines.

I do promise pictures and more interesting stories in the days to come.  Staying with friends meant I had the opportunity to eat some places I would not have otherwise, and those tales will be worthy of their own posts.

So, my few and far-between readers!  I hope I have not lost you all, as I’m about to take you to Japan!

On a seperate note, I must attempt to use this blog towards an undetermined weight loss goal as well.  I’ve quit my diet program to save a little bit of money, but I need to fit into my ski pants in less than a month.  At the moment, I do not fit into my ski pants!

oyako don

Like anyone reads this regularly – or cares – enough to wonder what’s happening, but I probably won’t be posting anything for a month because I’ll be in Japan!

I’m sure I’ll have many wonderfully foodie stories to tell while I’m there, but fuck.  I’m not going to want to sit down at the comptuer and blog for any significant amount of time!  So stay tuned in October for a big looooong post about ramen and vending machine beer.

Restaurant Review: The Irish Heather

When Calories and Coulis began, I intended to review every restaurant or bar I went to.  I like going out to eat and drink, and I like critiquing restaurants smartly.  This is a desire greatly fueled by the very poor reviews Alexandra Gill givs in the Globe and Mail.

I have, of course, been to far more restaurants since starting this blog than just Two Chefs and Table and Boneta (well, and I sorta reviewed Crave, yesterday).  Some I, and probably you, have been to many times before and don’t warrant reviews.  Some aren’t cool enough to review, and frankly, I’m a food hipster, so I don’t like to admit going to such restaurants.  I kid, I kid. 
Most of the time I’m too lazy to write a review, really.

For instance – often for lunch on Fridays, my office goes to the Irish Heather for lunch.  I’ve been so many times before that I never felt the need to review it here.  We go, we have beer and pot pie and we leave.  Very Irish.  Not every exciting.  But today, we went to the new Irish Heather.

The “gastropub” is still on Carrall Street.  It’s just on the other side, in a far cleaner and less rambling space than before.  It has lost pretty much all of its gritty, dirty, cozy charm.  Exposed brick, black-stained wood, a long line of metal tables and chairs along one wall of the very long space.  There are only two tables in the new space that are reminsicent of the rabbit warren-esque layout of the old Irish Heather, and even these are only a cursory nod to the previous space.  Samuel Beckett and Sinead O’Connor quotes on the bathroom doors are good, but otherwise, the new restaurant has no charm.  It looks like every other cool restaurant in Vancouver now.

But not only have they changed the space, they have change the menu!  Pared down greatly, bangers and mash, pot pie and fish n’ chips still make an appearance, but no longer are the daily sandwiches, pasta or the burger.  A few new additions include a “gnudi” dish, which is basically ricotta gnocchi, though they call it ravioli without the pasta.  This is what I had for lunch, and it really was quite delicious, covered in a light tomato sauce with carrots.  The ricotta is smoothly lemony-minty, so as not to be overbearing.

But the point is not the food.  It’s the change.  Maybe I’m resistant to change, but my co-workers agreed.  The renovated space and the changed menu have sucked what was authentically Irish and lovelably dirty about the Irish Heather.  Now it’s just like every other restaurant in Vancouver, just with a slightly mashed potato heavy menu.  Sean Heather should have kept his cool side at the Salt Tasting Room, and let the Irish Heather be.

omffg

The double “f”s stand not for fuck or any variation thereof, but french fries. 

If you like your french fries evenly crispy, lovingly coated with sea salt, and accopmanied by a little martini in a backyard patio, then sprint, don’t saunter, to Crave on Vancouver’s Main Street. 

Really, these have to be some of the best fries I’ve ever had.  As my sister aptly observed last night, usually when you start getting full, you pick out only the crispiest, tastiest looking french fries to finish off, but all of Crave’s fries would pass the test at another restauarnt.  It was impossible to level one potatoey morsel on the plate!  Oh yeah, the rest of the dinner was really good, too!

On another note, I’ve noticed that many (some…a couple?  “Many” is surely a stretch) people have stumbled upon this little bloggy after searching something along the lines of “How do I know I’m fat?”, or once, the simple “I’m fat” (minus punctuation, but whatever.)  Obviously, this blog would appear in the results because of my “How does facebook know I’m fat?” post. 

I’m disheartened.  I’m not sure what the people making these searches are hoping to find.  Do they want proof that they are not, in fact, fat?  Or proof that they are, in order to support some sort of dangerous diet.  I don’t want to get into a discussion of eating disorders here, nor do I want to accuse my possible readers of anything like that.

What I do know, however, is the people making these searches probably did not expect to come across anything like this blog.  I’m not going to offer any guidelines to fatness, and while I may come to the point where I’m actually chronicling my attempts to lose weight (my scale is broken, I’m going to Japan…I’m full of excuses), I would hope that this blog does not turn into that kind of site or resource.

So go to Crave and eat the french fries and enjoy them.  Live your life, and do what you need to do to make yourself happy and comfortable, but don’t second guess your own body, or look to the internet to tell you what you should look like.

The Wheels on the Bike Go ‘Round and ‘Round

I’m about to go on a bike ride.  A bike ride to Notte’s Bon Ton, a funny little bakery here in Vancouver that makes the best damn butter cream in the world.  Which would be why I’m taking my bike, because I could easily eat 2000+ calories worth of butter cream and icing sugar this afternoon, and the 20 kilometer round trip ride will offset that a bit.

 This is my bike.  Please excuse the tights hanging out of the basket.  I was trying to tan my lily white legs.  

“Her” name is “Philip”, but I can’t remember the last time I actually referred to my bike with that pronoun or name.  Really, it’s just a bike.  A damn nice bike, but really neither a female nor a female named Philip.  

My bike is my primary source of exercise and transportation.  I ride my bike the 3km each to and from work four times a week.  I take it on errands occasionally, but it’s a bit hard to fit my purse and my groceries in the basket at the same time, plus I’m totally paranoid about it getting stolen.  It wasn’t a cheap bicycle, and I don’t want to replace it.  The store I bought it from closed.

I love my bike.  I love riding my bike, even if riding up the hill to my house only serves to underline just how out of shape I am, despite all the bike riding.  And therein lies the rub.

As I mentioned, bike riding is my primary source of physical activity.  I like to say I swim, but I can’t remember the last time I actually went. I ski in the winter, and I have been taking ice skating, but generally during the summer and fall, all I do is cycle back and forth from work.  And as many people now know, in order to exercise for weight loss, the body needs to continue to be challenged physically.  If the same movements for the same time periods are repeated over and over again, the body settles into that movement and stops changing.  You burn fewer calories and your muscles develop less.  Particularly in the small amounts of time that I’m riding my bike.

And you know what?  That really cheeses me off!  I hate my body for this.  I hate that I’m not rewarded physically – at least to the extent and ends that I would like – for my daily efforts.  I’ve been riding my bike twice a day, four days a week for six months now, but it’s not enough.  I think I would weigh the same had I been taking the bus or driving a car the same number of times.  What’s really annoying is that I don’t think this is the case for everyone.  I’ve heard lots of success stories of people losing lots of weight just by walking to work everyday.  Shouldn’t my cycling get me the same ends?

Clearly that’s not the way my body operates, or it has everything to do with my food consumption.  Either way, I’ll continue to ride my bike because I like it.  It’s nice not to wait for the bus, it’s faster than the bus, and I get to feel self-righteous about it.  But clearly I’m going to have to change my perceptions of what my cycling is.  It may just be transportation, not exercise.