Cooking101: goya chanpuru

When we first arrived, my department took the two of us out for an after work party at a nearby restaurant. It was an enlightening experience for us because this was our first big sit-on-the-floor japanese style party. We got to see many of the things we read about in our guidebooks put into action. There was a lot of topping off of other people's beer and sake, lots of drinking, lots of stories and lots of great food. Among the many things that were brought out for the table on platters (including horse carpaccio - sorry but this was really tasty) was an apparently classic Okinawan dish called goya chanpuru. I was particularly excited about the chanpuru because not only was it really yummy, it also looked very simple to replicate. I thought "I can totally copy this". The star ingredient is goya, a bitter melon that looks like a bumpy cucumber. I don't know if this is readily available in the states, but I had been passing it by in the supermarket here for weeks before I realized that it was something other than a bumpy cucumber. A quick google search got me lots of easy to follow recipes for this okinawa specialty, including a very silly video. It essentially contains onion, tofu, scrambled egg, fatty pork and goya (that has first been salted like eggplant to remove some of the bitter, which I learned only after a first unsuccessful attempt at using it).

Tofu gets fried up first (and if you drain it and dry it out first it doesn't look like a mushy blob) and then the pork and onion (shown here with the ever popular IKEA wokpan and wooden thing).

Then you add in all the other bits (I put my egg in last to bind everything together) and some sauce (of soy sauce, sake, miso paste and sugar). I am not going to give the actual amounts of anything for two reasons: 1) I don't really expect anyone to make this, I am merely providing pictures to show you my kitchen adventures, and 2) I don't actually own any measuring utensils so I pretty much just winged it anyway. Here is what it looked like. It's not pretty but it was true to what I had in the restaurant and I thought quite tasty.

I Love Akiba

Well, truth be told, I'm rather more ambivalent about Akihabara, or 'Akiba' as it is called for short. It is Tokyo's electronics district. I suppose if I were in the market for a new phone or perhaps cool dingleberries to hang thereon, this would be the place to go. And I'm informed that gearheads the world over come just to window shop and catch up on the latest greatest technology. I was less excited about it all. I did enjoy the 5 story building of arcade games and video games (they distinguish between the two). The video games were all of the seated variety, with a joystick and several buttons and seemed to be variations (very high-resolution variations) of street fighter/mortal kombat. The arcade games included shooting and driving games and anything you did standing up or holding props. For a dollar each, Ryan and I hacked at vampires and skeletons with a lightsaber-like tool behind a half curtain. The graphics were pretty sweet. We died at the first big boss. By far the most impressive of the bunch were the rock band-style games. Below, from left to right, is someone kicking ass on a guitar, another on the drums, then a guy on a mock dj-ing game that we had never seen before, and some gaijin trying out dance revolution (none of these to the same song mind you, the noise in this place was deafening).

Another noteworthy feature of Akiba is the ubiquity of gals in french maid outfits. Also in attendance are a few nurses and a Little Bow Peep thrown in for good measure. I suspect that the presence of such provocative figures on every corner might be the true source of folks' affinity for Akiba.

Not to be outdone....

the music scene

Last week we went out to Yokohama to watch my friend Marianna sing. She and her band were playing at a cool little american-themed bar called Muddy's. They were serving all you can drink beer and platters full of hearty food (fried chicken, spaghetti, french fries, an awesome cheese casserole). Three bands were on the lineup that night: Marianna and the Ketchups (above and below); Fujiyama Soulmama; and Got.

The first two bands played fun bluesy songs (Mustang Sally, Voo Doo Woman, Hey Bartender, Jail House Rock) to which the crowd (particularly us gaijin) sang along. Everyone got into it and it was a blast. The last band was the local favorite. They sang Japanese oldies that everyone but us seemed to know all the words to. After the three bands did their sets (each with a last song in response to the chants of "En-cor-ay"), a hybrid group comprised of a few members of each band (and one rowdy drunk guy from the audience) got up and jammed for a couple of songs.

Here is a pic taken from the other direction that I stole from the web. Hey who is that in the crowd?

Shokihara

Our next adventure was not really a festival, but a shokihara, or summer party, hosted by my work. The professors and grad students prepared yummy traditional foods, including meats and fish on sticks, fried noodles, shaved ice and some mochi concoctions....

Mochi was prepared with the traditional bucket and mallets like so - a process whereby rice is turned into the most sticky, chewy thing imaginable. Traditional new year's fare apparently.

They also had beer and sweet plum wine, an ice block in the middle to allow us to think cool thoughts, blind pinata-style beatings of watermelon and many coworkers dressed in yukata. They even let me wear one for a while. I definitely want to buy one next summer for festival season, although the intricate wrapping

that is involved is pretty intimidating.

so many festivals

We have continued to enjoy the festival season in Tokyo, sometimes partaking in 2 per weekend. Here are some highlights.

On the way to Asakusa for lanterns we stopped by Senso-ji temple, which was having its own thing - some shots from around the place

In Asakusa there is a celebration at the end of Obon, in which you are supposed to light a lantern for deceased relatives and float the lantern down the Sumida river to release their souls. Folks line up with their lanterns about 100 yards down one side of the river, over the bridge, and down the other side of the river. Bystanders (like us) stand on the bridge (below) and watch the lanterns and passenger boats float by. We had a nice spot near the middle of the bridge. Oh and the golden turd, as it is affectionately called, is supposed to represent beer foam rising (designed by architect Philippe Starck), and is perched there on the Asahi Beer Hall.

We also attended the Bon-Odori festival held at the shrine across the street from our apartment. Odori is the word for dance and here everyone does traditional dances in a circle around the drummer. The inner circle of women in Yukata are the experts, so we all just watch them for the first go and then the little, say, four 8-count segment repeats. This one was pretty simple, but the dances start to build on one another and get pretty complicated by the end of the set. The people on either side of me were really nice, explained how things worked and pulled me out there.

Then the same weekend we went to the International festival held in Azabu Juban, which is home to various embassies and many foreigners. Each embassy had a stand with yummy foods from their home country: tacos and nachos from Mexico; brats from Germany; pork on a stick and pad thai from Thailand; chorizo from Argentina; chicken skewers from Egypt. And those were only the stands we actually went to. There were half a dozen more that we missed.

We went with our friends Michael and Momoe, who are here in the massive crowd. This is once it was getting late and thinning out actually.

Unfortunately Festival season will be coming to an end soon. I guess we will now be spending our weekends seeing museums and other sites. And soon there will be Sumo wrestling...