Kappabashi

A few weeks ago, Mondo and I went to Tokyo to hang out for the day. We spent time in Kappabashi, Asakusa, and Roppongi. In this post, I'll focus on the first part of our trip in Kappabashi.

Kappabashi-dori is famous for two things. The first is "kappa", a mythological creature
from Japanese legends that has a plate shaped head and loves to eat cucumbers (and children)--yeah, very strange, if you're interested, here's a link to the Wikipedia article: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kappa_%28folklore%29
The second is kitchen supply stores, including ones that sell the food models that are displayed in front of many restaurants in Japan. It might sound like an odd combination (well, I guess actually it is a little odd) but it was fun and interesting. The pictures are two famous buildings with appropriate themes for the neighborhood, a kappa statue (there are MANY lining the streets all over the district) and a food sample store. Click on the food sample picture if you want to see how realistic the models are. They really are amazing . . . and expensive.

I'll continue the trip in the next post.

Japanese Burritos!

As I've mentioned (several times!) before, one of the only food items I miss here in Japan is Mexican food. When I visited America in December/January I had planned on bringing back cans of refried beans, which are nearly impossible to find here. I realized that could end up making my suitcase MUCH too heavy, so I decided to bring back dry pinto beans instead, so I can make my own refried beans. Yesterday and today I worked on my first try.

Cooking the beans was the easy part; time-consuming, but easy. They turned out pretty tasty. I experimented with different seasonings and ended up adding red chili powder, paprika, cumin, salt, pepper, and olive oil. I finally found a grocery store that sells a brand of salsa that's made locally, so it's not too expensive. For sour cream (which is rather difficult to find here) I substituted plain yogurt. The hardest part was tortillas. I have seen them here (only frozen, not fresh), but they are crazy expensive. I thought about what I could use as a substitute, and finally realized, since I'm in Utsunomiya (which is considered to be the gyoza/pot sticker capitol of Japan) I should use gyoza wrappers! They're not too different from tortillas, except for their size. I had originally thought that I could make very small versions of rolled burritos, but quickly realized that would be impossible. My compromise: put beans and cheese on a gyoza wrapper and then top it with another and fry both sides. So they ended up more like what some people call tostadas, but they were delicious anyway.

Maybe next time I'll splurge and buy real tortillas-it would definitely save some time . . .

America Vacation 2007 (and 2008): San Jose

(Note: I've tried several times to upload pictures, and it's not working tonight, so I'll have to add the pictures later. Update: the pictures are finally uploaded, but smaller size than usual. As always, click on a picture for a larger version.)

On January 2nd, I flew from Portland to San Jose, California to visit family and stay with my cousins. I stayed much of the time at Elaine & Tim's house and also visited Vic & Mary's place (uncle & aunt). My other "grew up through childhood together beloved cousin", Paula, (sister of Elaine) also spent an extended weekend there with us.

Elaine picked me up at the airport on a beautiful, warm, California afternoon with the greeting, "enjoy the weather today-a storm's coming from Alaska tomorrow!" So we made as much as we could of the weather that afternoon and early evening. We went to a nearby park and played Bocce (an outdoor, Italian version of bowling-very fun!) and watched a beautiful sunset.

The next day we went to San Francisco to take our "What's Up Doc?" movie location tour. In spite of the beginning of the arrival of the storm and the rain it brought, we had a VERY fun time finding and taking pictures of locations from our favorite movie (our meaning "Elaine & I"-Tim,thanks for putting up with our craziness!). I have several pictures of that part of the trip, of course, but I'm going to make a whole separate entry for that adventure, possibly on my auxiliary blog. I'll keep you posted, so to speak.

Even though the weather got nasty (with wind so strong that it knocked down trees and cut the electricity at Tim & Elaine's house for several hours), Paula braved the storm and (thankfully!) arrived safely Friday evening. Much of the rest of the weekend was spent hanging out and playing games including Carcassonne, Ticket to Ride, and various new and old card games. I also showed pictures that I'd taken in Japan during different trips with visitors. Paula and Caitlin had to return home at the end of the weekend, and fortunately the storm had mostly passed through by then.

Other fun activities included playing a variety of funny Wii games ("Now what do I do with this controller?) and listening to old 45s of disco songs (you know, 7-inch 45-rpm records, those little records that only have one song on each side-they used to sell them so that when you heard a song on the radio that you liked you could just buy . . . oh, never mind . . . ) I had Mexican food three times and In-N-Out Burger, hurray!

So again, Elaine & Tim and Vic & Mary, thanks for hosting and for rides from and to the airport, and Paula, thanks for making a long drive for a short time to visit while I was there!!!! I had a great time!