Tigers and Cranes

Busan is a rather pretty city. I hadn’t noticed this before, since the last time I was here, I just blew through the city on my way to Seoul, but this time, I did the proper tourist thing, and spent some more time in this port city.

Arriving in the train station, it was a quick taxi ride to “Jagalchi” Fish market, and by the sheer scale and the number of stalls and shops that sell various assortment of fresh seafood, you’d think the entire Busanite’s diet consists of fish, crabs, and shellfish. Actually, that might not be stretching the truth much, since it seemed like most people who were shopping in this sprawling market were mostly locals. Afterall, what is a tourist going to do with five pounds of slimy snake-looking fish?

The outside market is teeming with vendors, but once you enter the rather nice indoor fish market, prepare to be blown away. I’ve never seen anything like it, with rows upon rows of stalls each selling some sort of seafood, and the place is densely packed with fish tanks, holding tanks, and just plain seawater gushing everywhere, especially the floor. Don’t even think about entering this place wearing sandals. Fortunately, I was wearing a sturdy pair of non-slip shoes, and even that was a dicey proposition, as the entire first floor might as well be as slick as a water theme park.

Second floor is where patrons go to eat the abovementioned seafood. Once again, the whole of second floor is packed densely with restaurant stalls, each proclaiming to have fresher seafood than the one next to it. I must have counted at least forty such restaurants.

With this many number of places all selling the same food, how does one choose? I suggest the reader not dilly-dally trying to pick a place to eat. If you stroll through this area, every vendor will try to grab yo and amke you sit at their table. At first, I felt bad declining each and everyone, but after a while, getting desperately hungry, one must simply choose, and my criteria was which restaurant had the best view.

I chose one with a nice large (electrically operated)window facing the beautiful harbor.

Sitting on the wooden floor(no chairs here… it’s all Korean style). It was decided that the meal would be (LARGE) sashimi set. While hirame(flounder, my favorite) was one of the most delicious sashimi I’ve ever had, the sheer amount and variety of “service” dishes made my head swim. There were live octopus(I finally ate some. I tried to re-enact the sushi bar scene from the movie “Old Boy”. ), Hoya(sea squirt), some kind of marinaded fish, conch, shrimp, abalones, some othe kind of crunchy fish, and dozen other plates i can’t remember now.

and to top it all off, really excellent “meh-oon-tang”, a type of spicy fish soup.

If you are a seafood lover, I can hardly recommend a better restuarant(s) than the one you will find in “Jagalchi” Fish Maket. Make sure you bring your appetite.

My correspondent in Jolla-Do, Korea(the Tigers and Crane media empire is vast) has sent back some great pictures from the sea-side town of Masan[마산].

Masan is a port city on the southern tip of Korea, and as such, seafood, and from the looks of it, “Mung-Gae” or “Hoya” or “Sea Squirt” are plentiful.

It is interesting to note that in 1274, Koreans (Kaya? or is it Bekje?) staged an invasion of Japan from this very city, along with a bunch of Mongolians. We know how that all turned out.

Masan, written in Hanja and Kanji as “馬山市” (MaSanShi) is fairly close to the huge city of Busan to the east, and according to our good friend Wiki, is the originating city for “spicy monk fish soup”, which was feautured on Iron Chef. Oh, really? I have to find that episode. I tell you, it’s a good thing they make a soup out of the monkfish, cuz that’s one ugly looking mofo.

Also, it seems that Himeji City (With the greatest feudal era Japanese castle still in existence) in Hyogo Prefecture is its sister city.

Okay, enough Jeopardy trivia. On to some photos!

Here we have a photo of “Masan Fish Market”. Oh, man, you just know that big fish on the sign means good eats are lurking within.

Clams and bivalves of all size and shapes. And for that authentic flavor, the flooded ground. This is heaven for those who seek fresh seafood.

More clams and… what are those long-ish tied up thingies? Sea cigars? They might be some type of mussels. And on the top right corner, what appears to be disgusting looking sea-sausage… or sea worms. Cooool.

Ah, sea squirt. Don’t they look delicioux?

Some fresh conch. These things have indescribable taste. Possibly my favorite drinking snack.

Octopus, mung-gae, sea cucumber, sea worm(?) and others sashimi.

“Beef from the field” as some used to call it in Korea, soy beans have been a very important part of Korean and Japanese diet. There are many ways to prepare it, simplest probably being edamame (pronounced eh-da-ma-meh, not i-da-mami) in which soy beans, with the whole shell is boiled with some salt and served, usually, as appetizers or for beer snack.

I personally like to pour out a bit of soy sauce and dip em in and eat them with chopsticks, because that’s the kind of refined dude I am, but most people just seem to squeeze the beans into their mouth, barbarian style.

Speaking of soy sauce, it’s also made with soy beans. Kikkoman is the prevalent brand most people are familiar with. But maybe not everyone is familiar with the brand’s spokesperson and mascot, “Kikko-Man”. No, really.

The link below will take you to a little flash movie about exploits of “Kikko-Man”, who comes from the “Planet Soy” to do battle with evil “Foreign Sauces” like worcestershire and mayo. I guarantee you, once you hear the refrain of the song “Show Me, Show You(which is a clever word play, “shoyu” is, of course Japanese for “soy sauce”), you won’t be able to get the tune out of your head.

Kikko Man Movie

Where was I?

Another wonderful way to enjoy soy beans is natto, with which many westerners recoil in horror. Perhaps it’s the fonky smell, which kind of reminds me of my well ripened socks in summer, or perhaps it’s that gooey, stringy spider-web like snot that these fermented beans produce. Whatever, those that do not partake in these mystical beans are seriously missing out. These things are great on top of a steaming bowl of rice, or stirred in a cubed fresh raw tuna or squid, or fried, which makes a great beer snack.

On a blog-magazine called “The Sneeze”, there is a segment in which the owner of the website tries to eat many (to his thinking) disgusting things. He tries eating natto, and here’s a snippet of what he had to say.

“This particular batch was made by a company in Japan called Shirakiku. I haven’t been able to determine if Shirakiku is a food manufacturer, or just a store that sells gag gifts and practical jokes. It might be both.

Not unlike Michael Jackson, these harmless soybeans had undergone some kind of hideous transformation. They were now a freakish version of their former selves. (Which, coincidentally, should also be kept away from your children.)

The most disturbing aspect of this stuff is it seems to get “activated” when you stir it. What I mean by this is, (and I may actually weep, but…) the slimy coating on the beans develops into stringy, stretchy, marshmallow-like strands that will forever haunt my dreams.”

Check out the full article Here. (It’s Steve, Don’t Eat It! Vol. 6)

Let’s not forget its versatility as soup base, in the form of miso soup in Japan, and den jang soup in Korea.

For a while, few months back in Japan, one could barely find any natto on the storeshelves, as there was a craze that took place where natto was seen as a diet food. It turns out that it’s not really, but who cares? It’s one of the most versatile and nutritious food out there, not to mention very tasty.

On my previous post, I talked a little bit about my misadventure in Inchon Airport. I would like to return to talking a bit more about the city. Now as a fairly large city on the coast next to the largest city in South Korea, Seoul, Inchon sees a fair bit of Seoulites visiting on the weekends, eager to escape the crowd and dizzying hustle and bustle of the city. Because of its proximity, less than 45 minutes from Seoul by car, some Seoul workers have decided to move out to Inchon to better be able to afford the ubiquitous high rise apartments.

For those that do make it out to Inchon for a day trip from the capital, the main draw probably is the sea. I wouldn’t exactly call it a picturesque beach city, more like giant mud-flat beach front. Nevertheless, where there is ocean, there is seafood, and Inchon has them in great giant spades.

A friend of mine took me to the sea food market as a farewell lunch type thing, and they would see me off, as Inchon Airport is rather conveniently located in the same city. And I, being an eater of anything that swims, was pretty happy. The drive out to Inchon was quite pleasant. One either has an SUV or a sedan in Korea (quite distinct from Japan, where SUV has all the cachet of a farm tractor), and my friend drove a Hyundai Santa Fe. Except, unlike Santa Fes sold in America, this one was a noisy, clattery diesel. Didn’t smell like one, though.

Anyway, like many Korean drivers, he drove like a maniac, and upon finding a parking space on the street near a fish market, we headed off to see just what kind fresh sea food would be available for sale. All along the sidewalk were huge nets that were spread apart, drying in the sun, apparently ready to be mended by the fishermen. The smell of the sea, salty and tangy, made me hungry like a proverbial mofo.

The market itself is a shock to the senses. All around is the din of fishmongers calling out their wares, and many implored me to take a gander at their fine, live crabs, as well, that particular seafood smell was omnipresent, and the sheer sight of all things swimming and squirming and swimming was enough to make anyone apoplectic.

The crabs that were on sale did look mighty fine, though, and quite a bargain too. But what would i do with a live crab three hours before my flight leaves Korea? Would they confiscate live crabs at Japanese customs? I had no idea. Regardless, my buddy does buy three large crabs, and asks the rubber booted fishmonger’s wife to hold it for us.

Another really cool thing i saw were small baby octopi, the kind where you don’t even bother cooking and just dip em into some sauce and eat them live, squirming and choking you from inside out. I didn’t try this, being a wuss that I am. But I hear they go really well with some soju.

There are absolutely astoundg number and variety of shell fish, some as big as my fists, and some typically smaller manila-clam looking bivalves. Oysters were plenty, and so were all sorts of different variety of multi-hued mussels. I’m getting hungry just typing this.

So we return to retrieve our crabs, and head off to a VERY casual restaurant where all the chairs are plastic, and interior decoration consisted of fading beer posters on bare walls. Each table was round, with a pit in the middle, and in this pit the proprietor of the place placed a metal pail of VERY hot natural wood charcoal. The effect, in this early summer day, was unbearble heat, but one figures it’s all part of some kind of exotic culinary experience.

First, they bring out a pair of gloves for each diner. Not rubber or nice ones with flowers on them or anything, just coarse, cotton workman’s glove, presumably to shield one’s hand from the intense heat and to guard against cuts. Then they bring out a arge metal bucket, in which to toss in discarded shell fish, and the piece de resistance, the bivalves themselves in another large pail. And with that and some tongs, we got to work on placing these mussles, oysters, and clams on the fiery grill in front of us.

If you ever have a chance to do these kinds of grilling, take my advice and wear some safety goggles. When the outside of these shellfish reach a critical temperature, without any warning they will go *CRACK* and pieces of calcium-laden shell bits will go flying in supersonic speeds, usually towards your face. After a while, I felt like I was facing a firing squad, and learned to not look directly at the cooking shellfish, but rather obliquely, and with a hard squint, lest i be henceforth be known as the “one-eyed sea shell shucker”.

Oh, right. The taste. It was incredible, these fire grilled shellfish. The fire essentially concentrates all the liquor these shellfish have inside, making them taste severely awesome. In fact, giant clams are usually pretty tough and tasteless, but using this method, they had the most excellent sea-weedy flavor and just the right chewiness.

We gorged ourselves like it was going out of style, and just when i thought we’d finished, the owner saunters over and on the very same grill lays out a pot and with remainder of shell fish, makes some excellent hot(temperature and spiciness) seafood stew.

But what about the crabs?

My friend tosses these on the grill too, and I am amzed that they can shove more seafood into their maw. I was done, man, and gave up my claim on the crab to these ravenous wolves. I’m pretty sure they were extremely delicious as well…

I’m not really sure where this “custom” originated, but at many sushi restaurants outside of Japan you can see diners pouring out a liberal amount of soysauce( called “murasaki” meaning “purple” in sushi parlance) on to their small dish and mixing a heavy dollop of “wasabi” and creating a mutant greenish sauce in which a piece of sushi is dunked in.

Now, I’m no sushi snob… in fact, I can hardly tell a difference between a cheap 100 yen kaiten zushi(one of them color coded conveyor belt places)and 1000 yen chu toro. But on the other hand, I’m sure as the sushi chef goes to work on his daily masterpiece nigiri sushi, making sure to apply a thin coat of wasabi paste in between the fish and rice that he believes achieves the perfect balance in taste, no doubt he sheds a silent tear as the patron dunks the whole shebang into a vat of soysauce and wasabi.

Speaking of wasabi, the kind you get in America and elswhere outside of Japan (and maybe Korea) isn’t even true wasabi at all. This may surprise some of you, especially those of you who believe they grow naturally in small plastic tubes labeled “S&B”. Some call wasabi “Japanese horse radish”, but like napa, brocolli, and my personal favorite brussel sprouts, wasabi are actually of cabbage family, in which the root of the plant is used for culinary purposes.

In better udon and soba shops in Japan, wasabi is served as a whole root, with a small hand held grater to finely grind the root into the noodle sauce. It’s hard work, sitting there grating and grating, all the while eyeing the delicious plate of soba or udon, but your hard work is ultimately rewarded since the real wasabi, or “本山葵” [hon wasabi] lends a fragrance and taste that no tube borne fake ass wasabi can attempt to emulate. As an added bonus, many places have little plastic bags with which you can take your left over root home.

In Korea, wasabi called “gochu neng-i” [고추냉이] also grows in secluded spots next to clean, running streams. Here, apparently, though, folks also harvest the stems and the leaves and make kimchi. And of course, the root is used as well.

I stumbled across this interesting Japanese webapge through a tip from one of my readers. It’s kind of cool, in that it ranks what’s popular in Japan right now, apparently, anything from music to food to other sundry items. I immediately headed for popular drinks because I am a thirsty fiend, and I want to know what other thirsty Japanese fools are drinking. Here, in order:

1. 果実の贅沢　つぶたっぷり温州みかん

This is a “Cannel”( a bottle made from a can. I trademarked that word, so if you use it, please send money) of orange juice from Sapporo. I really really dig this stuff, since the juice has a gajillion little orange sacs that burst in your mouth. That sounds a little dirty, but I assure you, it’s a mighty fine stuff. And not only does it taste real good-like, but it’s obvious we all know orange juice is supposed to be good for you. Therefore, you can not only enjoy drinking something with little sacs that pop in your mouth, but be confident that it’s doing your vitamin-C lacking body some good too. Oh, and metal bottles rule for a clumsy oaf like me.

2. Gokuri　オリジナルグレープフルーツ

This is another “cannel” product, and similar to our above sapporo “onsu” orange juice, it’s made with some percentage of grapefruit juice by Suntory, Sapporo’s archrival. Definitely an inferior product compared to the Sapporo’s exploding sac orange juice. It is pretty refreshing, though, and we all ought to drink more of something called “gokuri”. And a little known trivia about grapefruits: It’s called grapefruit because despite being somewhat larger than your standard grape (by, oh, a factor of about 100), they grow in a bunch, sort of like grapes growing in a bunch, so some farmer dude called it that. Me, personally, would have called it “kinda like orange but sourer fruit”. or “Klobsf”.

3. 桃の天然水

This stuff is sweet water, that taste like peach, no more, no less. Literally meaning “Peach’s Natural Water”, it’s actually pretty good. I have no idea what percentage of it is peach juice, but if you sort of hold the water in your mouth and breath through your nostrils, you get a pretty good facsilmile of peach flavor. Make sure you don’t snort it through your nose while you try this.

4. Qoo とってもオレンジ

I think it’s a blue cat that markets this drink, and I can’t resist something called “Qoo”. What exactly is it? It’s kinda like orangy water, kind of like Tang. In a word, pretty gross. But I really do like the mascot, and you can get this stuff in Mc Donald’s in Japan with your teriyaki burger. So there’s that.

5. 充実野菜

“Perfect Vegetable” juice from Ito En, makers of green tea. I had metric gallons of this stuff while I was sick, suffereing from influenza last year. I figured something this awful tasting HAD to be good for an illin’ fool like me. All it did was turn me sickly orange, as if I had jaundice.

from Ranking Ranqueen

It’s been unusually warm in the states, and although it may not seem like it, it’s warmer than usual in Korea and Japan this year too. That may mean earlier than usual blooming of sakura, aka cherry blossom. In America, many cherry blossoms have already done their blossoming thing, hardly noticed by anyone. I noticed, of course. Walking back from a Border’s with a medium coffe, no cream, i noticed all sorts of familiar petals on the ground, and lo! Sakura! white ones, at that. I stared at them, cuz, you know, they’re pretty and junk, and passersby looked at me as if i was daft.

In Japan, during the sakura viewing season, the whole country seems to go into a sakura frenzy, people usually talking about where and when they’re going to a sakura viewing at a park or whanot. i’m especially amused by weather forecasters detailing where in Japan saukra are blossoming.

They take this stuff seriously.

And it’s hard to not get caught up in the excitement, actually. And, i have to admit, although they’re just flowers on a tree, they are quite pretty, especially when gathered along a street and in groves of hundreds.

I recall being in Korea at about that time last year too, and incredibly, sakura, or bud-kkot, as it’s called in Korean, were in full bloom as well. I was astonished at sheer number and beauty of Korean cherry blossoms, and i pointed out all the pretty trees to my driver, whom just shrugged and said, “big deal, they do that every year.”

To Koreans, it seems, cherry blossoms are just bunch of short lived flowers. You can certainly tell the differences in two cultures there.

A little while ago, i posted about “matcha kit kat”, the green tea infused kit kat. That’s pretty cool, you know, but just as cool might be this sakura flavored kit kats. dig it, mang!

Yea, indeed i suck at this blogging thing. You may wonder where the deuce postings have been recently. True, i am still living out in the sticks, with my beer supply running dangerously low, and grueling work, but i did manage to post something last night. it was a really good post too, about robots and czech beer and such. But i have no idea where it went. Oh, well.

We all know by now that vending machines are plentiful in Japan. Everyone, especially those new to Japan comments on this, as if vending machines don’t exists elsewhere in the world. But, i suppose, it’s the sheer variety of goods you can buy that excites some people. I’m sure there’s even a Japanese blog dedicated to this subject.

Even so, this one took me by surprise. Do you all like yakiniku, AKA Korean BBQ Japanese style? I know I do, and what’s really different about Japanese style grilled meat is the sauce, called “tare”. it’s simply a dipping sauce, usually sweet, that you dip your cooked meat and shove down your gullet.

Thanks to a friend of mine who’s tipped me of this unique vending machine, I learned about a butcher shop in Kobe that has installed a tare sauce vending machine, and only tare sauce. Apparently, they have a pretty good sauce going at the shop, and they bottle the stuff, and sell it from the vending machine. This machine does pretty good business, selling about 3000 bottles a year.

From IZA (in Japanese)

Well, things are still looking pretty grim here. I am settling into a nice rhythm working all day in the boonies and coming back to my hotel to crack open a can or two of hite beer and watching satellite tv. My internet connection is still pretty spotty, but i can bang out a few words still, as you can see.

Speaking of Hite beer, in case you aren’t down with wonderful world of korean beer, it breaks down like this. There are three major brands of beer, kinda like how Japan has four major breweries (Asahi, Sapporo, Kirin, Suntory). Most popular seems to be the aforementioned Hite, pronounced, i believe, like “lite”, OB (for Oriental Beer. What’s this political incorrectness? “oriental”?!), and Cass, which is not prounced like “ass”, but like “Christmas”.

Eh?

My personal favorite tends to be Cass, since it has absolutely no beery taste… it’s like drinking yellow mineral water that also gets you drunk! There are times when you just don’t want any flavor in your beer, and Cass delivers in spades. Hite is pretty flavorless too, but it’s hideous when not chilled to super-conducting temperatures. I know this, because i drank one the other night when i found a can rolling around in my car.

Cass Beer

OB is the oldest of them all, therefore it makes sense that it’s drunk by ajussis… old korean dudes, when they aren’t swilling the “Toad Soju”. A bit of trivia… OB used to own a professional baseball team in korea, named “OB Bears”. I dunno why OB doesn’t sponsor a team no more, but now the bears are financed by some goofy company named “DooSan”. Huh huh huh. “Doo”.

Sometimes i sit around and think about contributions of various countries around the world, specifically, when it comes to food.

Idle thoughts, to be sure, but then i am a pretty idle dude. And it goes something like this. Germans have given the world such delicacies as wienerschnitzel and the radler, the Greeks, gyros. British with their assorted disgusting meat pies, Koreans… well, you know the national dish of koreans, the fermented cabbage bomb, the kimchi. Are we forgetting anything? oh, yes, what about China?

China in my opinion, has but two contributions to the world worth a damn in my opinion(yeah, gunpowder and medicine don’t mean smack to me). And i don’t care what you think these two things may be, one is the written language (kanji, hanja, hanzi) and the other, ramen.

yes, ramen.

of course, once the japanese got their hands on it, it went under a transformation from a working man’s grub to an exalted dish in which some are prepared to wait for two hours in a line to taste its magic. I consider myself a young turk when it comes to ramen soup base, preferring miso base over the more traditional shio or shoyu (salt and soy sauce, respectively) soup. Your mileage may vary. Some do prefer shoyu over miso flavor, but then i also heard that communists like shoyu better too.

Miso Ramen. Bestest type of ramen in the world.

Undisputed mastery of miso ramen is achieved in the beautiful city of Sapporo, it originated there, after all, and the ramen masters there in Susukino district’s Ramen Yokocho also go ahead and dump a generous servings of seafood such as squid and crabs in the ramen. Oh, you haven’t read my entry on Ramen Yokocho in Sapporo? For shame! Get thee to this link!

Now you know that the Japanese take ramen making seriously. Alas, i must report that ramen making endeavors in korea falls short of what’s really considered gourmet.
I recall being in Busan, Korea for the hell of it once, and despite mean as hell taxi drivers and middle aged dudes fist fighting outside the train station, it is a pretty city.

On the other hand, being hungry, I ordered a bowl of ramen at a local fast foodery. Imagine my dismay when the ramen I ordered was from a pack of “Shin-ramyon”, complete with soup base in a shiny silvery pouch. Damn, even I can make that kind of ramen! To be fair, it tasted pretty good considering it came out of a packet, but this is not what I had in mind. One can’t complain about the price, though, at close to mere three bucks, what do you want?

Things are a bit different in Japan, though. Although most ramen joints have some great tasting stuff, I urge you to avoid “stand up and eat” stall ramen. Maybe it was just bad luck, but I had a hell of a stomach trouble for days after a bout in one of those ramen places.

In Yokohama, apparently, there exists “Shin Yokohama Raumen Amusement Park”. I haven’t personally visited, but you can bet that it’s high on my list of culturally vital locations one must visit while in Japan, maybe up there with the toilet musuem.

Shin Yokohama Ramen Museum