Over the weekend, while digging into a huge bath tub of a bowl of shaved ice in a Korean cafe (which, by the way, served the shaved ice with a scoop of ice cream, fruits, condensed milk, and fruity pebbles) my friends and i got into a conversation about food- in particular, food that arrives from the sea.

I guess we were talking about food in general, and i don’t really remember how we got on to the topic, but i swear, i can talk about food all day. One of my friends mentioned that she was preparing pork for some crazy dish she was about to make, and the story actually grossed me out.

“You found some weird pig part in the meat? What was it, a pig’s ass?”
“No… it was much more gross than that.”

Really. I was intrigued.

“Perhaps a pig’s genital…?”
“No… worse. I found a… a… nipple.”

Yeah. That’s pretty gross.

The laughter having subsided, my friend asked whether or not there’s anything from the ocean I wouldn’t eat. For example, would I eat a sea worm? What’s a sea worm anyway? You mean like a sea cucumber? Hell, yes, i would eat it. It’d be slimy with a horrible texture, but definitely edible.

How about a cute dolphin? Well, see, now that’s a dilemma. How would it be cooked? would it be fried, all crispy, served with mayo? Hm. In that case, bring on the ‘Phin and chips!
I would even grab a fish out of the water and chomp on it, as if it were an apple. That’s the kind of barbarian I am. But I say no to beef. At least american beef. Are you kidding? what with mad cow disease floating out there?

I would have to say, that out of all the sea creatures that inhabit the world’s ocean, my favorite would have to include squid and its ilk. (which got me to thinking… if Noah’s Ark story is true, and all the creatures drowned, did all the sea creatures get wiped out too? They couldn’t have drowned? Surely Noah didn’t carry aquariums and fish tanks in his ark? I should ask a priest.)

Ah, squid. A tentacled, messed-up looking tube of pure protein and chewy goodness. As some of you may know, i am a sushi philistine, never knowing what makes one sushi better than others. I do have it on the top authority, however, nothing beats a squid sushi or sashimi. And the best part is, unlike say, a dolphin, with identifiable eyes and a cute bottle nose and all the nifty acrobatics tricks that it can do, i never feel bad about eating a squid, because, well, these things look so ridiculously alien.

I for one am in total support of deep-space exploration, because, hey, who knows what messed up looking creatures are out there for us to snack on? An andromedan puffer-fish? Or maybe tucanis tiramisu flounder? Maybe even vulpeculan veal-fish. The possiblities send shivers down my spine.

A friend of mine has sent me a link to a well known(?) Squid specialty restaurant in akasaka, tokyo called “Yokatokoro.” How cool is this, they have a tank full of live, jet-squirting squid for the diner to choose and munch on. I think i could probably live here.

送

Kun-yomi: おく (る) [oku-ru]
On-yomi: ソウ [sou]

送る: [okuru] to send (something), to escort someone, to see someone off, or to live a life.

送別会- そうべつかい[sou betsu kai]: A farewell party
運送会社- うんそうがいしゃ [un sou gai sha]: A shipping company

An example of a “運送会社”.

an amusing website about “illegal brands” that i found online caught my eye. It reminded me about the time when i found a pair of cheap headphones in a minimart, and the brand was “SORNY”. I don’t know… i do like saying “SORNY”. Hm, i wonder if anyone actually looks at the said merchandise and thinks “yes, it sounds like SONY, so it must actually be pretty good.”

A “SQNY”? that’s pretty clever. i guess they’re targeting those with myopia or drunks. I wonder what country produces these cheap knock offs.

I think this is more a parody than a rip off. Of course “kuma” is japanese for a bear.

In a similar vein, here’s “PAMA”. I like the fact that the leaping puma has a perm. “Pama” is a japanese and korean for “perm”. heheheh.

And this. Well, it’s a candy, but made to look like a box of Marlboros. When i was little, i used to always buy similar candies, well, actually they were gum, and it even had white powder so that when you blew into it, a puff of white “smoke” would appear. Hey, it worked! Got me hooked on smoking.

What does the pack say? “warning: are you not going to look carefully? Look carefully~!! It’s not cigarettes, it’s “yuht”(korean candy)” Zalbollae= will you look at it carefully?

From the photo, it looks like there’s even a menthol version. Get one for your favorite kid!

from bizarre area

渡る

わたる [wataru]
meaning: to go across, to cross over something

Have you seen this? You are at a store, let’s say, and there’s a bratty kid causing a huge ruckus, generally making life hell for the parent and everyone else around the little thug. You’d think a firm disciplining would be in order, but in the current PC climate, it’s somehow seen barbaric to yell at a kid, and heaven forbid should you smack a kid around. It’s gotten so that were one to lay a smack down in a form of corporal punishment, the blasted kid would snitch on you, and off you go to the slammer, and the kid, well, i suppose the little puke deserves what s/he gets because they’d be hauled off to a foster home or a foster parents who would probably scar the little bastard for life. I think.

I bring this matter up to my friends, who for various reasons, have chosen elementary school teacher as their profession (i’m guessing they are masochists), and the question i pose to them seem reasonable.

“Hey, so if your kid misbehaves in class, do you smack them around?”
They look at me like i’m some kind of a child-abusing monster, glaring at me and replying,

“No, you jerk. That would be wrong. I try to nurture the child, and gently remind them about the necessity of social politeness without damaging their self esteem. You jerk.”

Wha…? I press on.

“But i mean, let’s say the kid’s REALLY bad… so bad that he is really disruptive. You would at least cuss ‘im out, yeah?”

“NO! Don’t you understand? The children at that age are really impressionable. You have to have a gentle hand in reminding them that while a disruptive behavior is undesirable, you have to tell them that they are loved and expression of individuality is a wonderful thing! You jerk!”

Oh, man.

You see? This is what’s wrong with kids these days. All this coddling and worrying about their feelings have turned the lot of them into little hellions, out of control, acting like lunatic monkeys when they don’t get their way. This lamentable situation is compounded in a country like korea, where a kid, especially a boy, is pretty much allowed to do as they please until junior high or maybe even high school. I’ve been reading stories of mothers getting BEAT UP by their young sons because the mom wouldn’t let little kimmie play lineage online. If i was a father, and i came home to that, you can bet that there’d be more than a gentle “tut-tut, that’s not nice.”

What they need to do is to teach those little punks that life ain’t peaches and cream. No sir, it’s more like gruel and a kick to the ass. Sooner the young ‘uns learn this harsh lesson in life, sooner they’ll settle down to becoming a cog in the machine.

In a well disciplined, take-no-nonsense machine.

So this boot camp for pansy kids in Pohang, korea, is just the thing for your tubby lad. Basically, as a parent, you trick your kid into taking a ride with you to the industrial town of Pohang (where they grow things like destroyers and steel beams, not pansies) with promises of ice cream cones and choco-pies, and when you get there, kick their ass out of the car with a gleeful “See you in a week!”

And what exactly happens in this boot camp for children? Well, they wear a military uniform, even down to the heavy steel helmet (”You will learn to bow!”) and roll around in mud and stand around in freezing water, US navy seal style. And of course, the ever-present drill seargent who take no gruff from no one is constantly yelling and mocking the kids.

Overnight, these children find themselves transported from the world of video games and junk food to a Spartan beachhead where unforgiving drill sergeants boast they can make cows bark and dogs moo.

The teenagers do push-ups and deep knee bends. With barking sergeants tailing them, groups of seven puffing teenagers charge into freezing water, balancing 120-kilogram, or 265-pound, black rubber boats on their heads. They turn in cellphones and eat and sleep in Marine barracks, getting up at 6:30 and going to bed at 10:30. Here they are nothing more than numbers.

No. 227 is Kim Ki Seol, the teenager who slept through the amphibious landing exercise.

“My parents sent me here because I always pick fights with my brother and play computer games too much. They said I should learn the value of family while training here,” the glum boy said, looking at his sand-caked sneakers. “I wish this program would be over soon. There is no fun here.”

“I thought my parents were joking,” said Kim Soo Ram, a cheerful 13-year- old who said her parents drove her here. “I was virtually dragged in here. But now I kind of look cool in the uniform.”

Does this seem harsh? Well, if you saw some out of control kids in korea, and the hell they can raise, you might quickly come around to the idea that harsh discipline is sometimes the only way to go.

number 393 might have to come back to this camp maybe couple more times…

from International Herald Tribune

i remember seeing these guys for the first time.

they were deep yellow, nay, i daresay ochre in color. and they smelled a bit funky, and to my skeptical eyes, definitely slimy. i am, of course, talking about sea squirt, alternatively called “hoya” [ホヤ] in japanese and “mung-gae” [멍게] in korean.

watching an NHK special program one day about some industrious japanese fishermen(and women) who harvest these animals, i was struck by the sheer amount of bizarre creatures that inhabit the earth. even more strange is the human desire to snack on these weird critters. At first i thought the fisherman were harvesting apples. Then i thought to myself, “self, now you know that apples don’t grow in the ocean. Apples come from an apple plant, and you gotta dig them carefully from the ground and wash them thoroughly”.

So these weren’t apples, then. more like reddish, round, spiky, squirty, sea slugs(actually, a type of anemone, i think). I watched the program in fascination as the fish dudes pulled up a thick rope from the depths, and dangling on this rope were maybe a hundred of sea squirts, all of them spurting jets of water from their spiny protrusions in concerted panic. Undisturberd by this rather rude behavior from these invertebrates, the fisherman calmly pulls out his pocket knife, makes couple of neat incisions on the creature, and chomps into it as if it were an aquatic apple. With a big grin on his wizened face, he proclaims “yummy.”

A few days after watching the program, i was dining with my parents, and they took me to a sushi restaurant. Now, i’m not much of a sushi connoseur, bypassing such delicacies as fatty tuna and salmon for cooked egg and raw squid. But i was really excited because as a freebie, the sushi joint threw in a plate of sliced sea squirts. Oh, how i closed my eyes as i stuffed one in my mouth, imagining that i am the grizzled veteran of the sea, rocking on my trusty boat the “sea princess”, as i pull out my rambo knife to slice open a sea squirt and taking a bite out of it as one would with a mango. As i was lost in my reverie, my dad said “what the hell are you doing?” bringing me back to reality.

sea squirt sashimi

The taste, if you’ve never had a sea squirt, does take some getting used to. It’s definitely more pungent than uni, with sort of a… well, a minty taste. At first i spat it out in disgust, and cursed my fellow diners for ordering this disgusting slimy excerement of the sea. But now, man… i can’t get enough of the stuff.

Goes really well with beer and sake too.

思い出す

おもいだす [omoi dasu]

meaning: to remember

while doing an image search, i came across this photo that disturbed me profoundly.

the character looks… looks like bae yong joon, aka “yon-sama”. i was confused because i had been searching for an image of a japanese candy(don’t ask). at first glance i thought this might be a dried squid, since i was searching for an image of a snack, but upon closer inspection, it seems like it’s a costume. an unsanctioned, unlicensed costume.

dusting off the ol’ dictionary, the word “かつら” [katsura] is “wig” or a hair piece. interesting. i learn something new everyday. the package, obviously unable or unwilling to call it “yon-sama” wig, instead calls it “貴公子様” wig. “貴公子”, pronounced “ki kou shi”, which i had a hell of a time looking up in a dictionary(my kanji-fu is still weak), means “noble youth”.

“noble youth-sama”? weak.

anyway, i don’t really know what this is all about, but if one is really interested in recreating a mushy scene from “winter sonata”, it might be an essential piece of gear. you’ll have to supply your own muffler, i suppose. but the manufacturer has thoughtfully included the dude’s glasses in the package.

this world is a disturbing place.

遊園地

ゆうえんち [yu en chi] (”yu” is a long vowel)

meaning: amusement park

遊 to play
園 park, garden, or a farm
地 ground, earth

kourakuen yuenchi [後楽園遊園地]

i read “economist” because it’s full of useful information and news without the fluff like the doings of paris hilton or whatever the hell is going on with the celebrities. and, you get a global perspective on things, like this article about parking situation in japan.

JAPANESE traffic cops were until recently a genteel bunch. Confronted with a wrongly parked vehicle, they would just place chalk marks next to the tyres, and return an hour or so later to see if it had been moved before issuing a penalty. But in recent months motorists have faced a new army of private parking wardens who enforce a no-tolerance policy with on-the-spot fines and digital photos taken in evidence.

Shopkeepers, restaurateurs and local businessmen are up in arms. Trade on busy thoroughfares is said to have dropped by 20%. Some businesses have come up with inventive solutions—like the MOS Burger chain that has started taking orders from customers’ mobile phones and delivering take-away meals to the kerbside. Valet parking, previously unheard of in Japan, has begun to make an appearance.

… Average land prices have fallen by more than 80% from their peak during Japan’s “bubble years”. Old wooden houses on 80-square-metre plots sell for as little as ¥15m ($126,000) in Tokyo, or less than half that in big industrial cities like Nagoya or Hiroshima. Once cleared, paved and equipped with car-stackers, such tiny plots can generate around ¥5m ($42,000) a year as car parks. The owners are in no rush to get planning permission to build four-storey houses. They would rather pile up cars, and cash.

i had the pleasure of traveling to san francisco a little while back, and i’m constantly reminded of what a pretty city it is, what with its hills, surrounded by the pacific ocean and the bay, as well as some lovely bridges and great food. in a lot of ways, kobe in japan reminds me a lot of san francisco, although i’m not sure how many hippies live in kobe.

one thing i do not like about san francisco is the parking situation.

i stayed in the lovely nikko san francisco hotel near union square, and as some of you may know, it’s a hotel operated by japan air(JAL). everything was dandy(except my room suddenly lost water at 10 pm) but the parking fee is exorbitant. at usd $40 simoleans per say, it’s a veritable highway robbery in my opinion. but, not wanting to have my car broken into by the san francisco recreational drug users at night, i parked my car across the street at a private garage, for a more reasonable sum of usd $30.

i really like to watch the japanese carousel parking garages whenever i get a chance. well, i guess it’s more of a ferris wheel than a carousel. viz, a car goes in to a sort of a cradle, after which it moves up or down in a type of a vertical conveyor, much as a car would move up and down on a ferris wheel. i suppose this way, one could stack cars on top of one another, an ingenious way to save space in a crowded city. but what happens if a car has leaky engine? but this is japan, of course, and these things simply do not happen. or so i’ve been told.

this particular photo is from sapporo. notice the snappily dressed parking attendants. i thought at first they were parking enforcement dudes, but then i realized they weren’t wearing white gloves.

carousel-style parking garage