The Kids are All Right

 It was spring break, and after so long I finally took that trip to Japan that I booked three years ago.  I made one more attempt to see the hotaruika - and failed.  I stayed at a campground at the beach, and all the conditions were there...but the squid were not.  So I give up.  I'll stick to bioluminescent insects from here on out.  On the other hand, I got to do something I couldn't when I lived here before - jet all over the damn place using the Japan Rail Pass.  See, when I was here before, foreign residents weren’t allowed to use it, so all my train travel had previously been done the hard way…with lots and LOTS of money.  Not that the pass is cheap, but by day 4 it had already paid for itself (maybe…art teachers don’t do math on vacation, bitches).

So I wasn't stingy when it came to getting around.  Whether it was riding the rails up to Niigata to see the yaoi temple or hopping a train down to Kyoto for the afternoon to celebrate my best boy’s promotion to manager, the country was my oyster.  It only took me a couple of hours to make it to Kyoto…and ALL its tourists.  The Kawaii Kingpin admitted that he missed the pandemic a very tiny bit on that account, and I had to sympathize…the days when people didn’t bring their screaming children to restaurants truly were glorious, in at least that respect.

Of course, as I told him, it’s different when the children in question are your blood relatives.  My niblings are perfect, of course.  To demonstrate (and totally not because I have a lot of odds and ends blogs to catch up on), let me take you back to last summer.  I was planning to take Princess and Dirt Devil to the anime con, but a poorly timed water leak at the hotel I booked caused me to reconsider.  Instead, I took them and Monkey out for a day o’ fun with their favorite aunt.

We started at Barnes and Noble.  This is part of what makes these kids awesome; I can tell them I’m taking them to a bookstore and they’re excited about it.  After picking up some manga volumes, a movie, and some games, it was time for lunch.  Dirt Devil suggested sushi, so I found a place in West Omaha that had sushi, ramen, and a few other things, and ordered a bunch of food.  Monkey wasn’t sure about it, so we ordered a sweet and sour chicken to be sure he wouldn’t starve.  Guess what was the only thing left at the end?  They were especially huge fans of ramune.

After a quick stop at home for the bathroom we went to play mini-golf and waste money at the arcade.  Was there, perhaps, a bit of a Japanese theme going?  Whether or not I intended there to be, yes, there was.  I wish I could take credit for helping them to become the baby otaku that they are today, but in all honesty they have come to it on their own.  I mean, I DID show them Totoro, Kiki's Delivery Service, and Howl's Moving Castle, as well as a few episodes of Naruto and My Hero Academia.  But while Princess' tastes in anime and mine are nearly identical (Hanako-kun and Bungou Stray Dogs?  Yes, this is a girl after my own heart!), Dirt Devil likes One Piece.  ONE PIECE?!?  Also known as, the anime that I never even started - I read one chapter of the manga and decided this was not for me.  But he likes it.  And while Monkey hasn't gotten into anime much, he's definitely a gamer...his favorite character is Link, and when I asked him what I could bring him from Japan, he just asked for Pokemon everything.

After the arcade we went to my favorite ice cream place, Coldstone, and ate a shit ton of ice cream (Okay, I ate a shit ton...I think each of them took theirs home and stuck it in the freezer).  While this might be considered bad "mom" behavior - spoiling your kids by buying them whatever they want and loading them up on sugar - it seems like excellent aunt behavior.  Fortunately, my brother and sister-in-law are tolerant...if I want to take them out for the day, they're not too picky about where we are going.  They behave and we get along pretty well, and their parents get a day to do whatever they need to do, as responsible-type adults.  

Hopefully they'll still feel that way in a few years when they graduate and I take them on Le Grand Tour.  I'm pretty sure I already know what country they'll want to visit.

Cooking With Gas

I beg you not to judge Engrish and me.  Yes, during our time in Turkey we ate with the enthusiasm of a Mormon singles' ward at a break-the-fast potluck.  Or a Muslim at Iftar.  Or, if those metaphors hold no meaning for you, we were a two-girl horde of locusts, devouring everything in sight.  Because here's the thing about Mongolia in 2022: we're between a rock and a hard place.  China's closed their borders.  Russia's off playing king of the mountain.  Meanwhile, we can't just go to the store and buy things.  Admittedly, when I first came to Mongolia ten years ago, the rule of thumb was to buy rare items when you found them, because there was no guarantee they'd be there when you came back.  However, it was never to this extent.  Back then, we were talking about cherry coke...now I'm lucky if I can buy a can of coke.  I haven't seen flour tortillas in probably six months.  Hell, Korean food was one of the things I could always count on, but these days I can't even seem to find sesame oil.

So that's the situation.  For an entire, glorious week, nobody told us "bahkwei."  (I knew I was well and truly back last weekend when I tried to go to LaRosa for dinner and left without eating because they didn't have anything I wanted...and I tried to order three different things!)  Instead, each dish was more delectable than the last.  However, no meal we ate the entire trip was as tasty as the one we cooked ourselves.

Okay, let me back up.  After returning to Hidden Cave from our balloon ride, we chilled a bit before being picked up again, this time by Tolga, who whisked us off to his family home in Ayvali.  Their family business is a restaurant called Cappadocia Home Cooking.  And they very kindly let you be the chef!  Sure, they did most of the hardest parts of cooking, like grocery shopping and washing the dishes, but still.  You know me - I'm kind of addicted to this sort of thing.  But I feel like I should get some points for getting Engrish hooked on it, too - not only did she buy the family cookbook, but when we got back to Istanbul, she stopped us at a shop along the street to pick up a Turkish rolling pin.  Now that's dedication!

When we got to their home, they treated us to tea and these amazing little...heaven help me, I'm going to sound like a pretentious British git...biscuits (sorry, there's really no better name for them - cookies just isn't accurate), dusted with powdered sugar and cinnamon.  After chatting with us they brought us to the kitchen, which was huge and made of stone - like a barrel vault?  I actually know pretty much nothing about Turkish architecture.  There were plenty of jars of canned, home-grown produce - they actually own these huge apricot orchards.  It felt really inviting - they told us, "Our home is your home!" (I'm not that easy to fool, guys - if this was my home it would be a huge mess - but thanks for playing!)

Over the course of two hours they showed us how to make SO many dishes.  As we cooked they let us in on a lot of little secrets, like not adding the garlic til last (otherwise it overtakes the other flavors while cooking) or peeling the eggplant in stripes (although I can't remember the reason for that one).  By the way, I just want you to recognize the restraint I'm showing in holding off on eggplant jokes, in spite of how often Engrish ordered it on this trip.  Probably because I need those jokes for tomorrow's post, but I digress.

The dish I was most interested to learn was the so-called Turkish ravioli.  It was amazingly simple to make, WAY easier than Italian ravioli.  I'd actually eaten it the night before at Seten, but it was just okay.  It was served warm, rather than hot, and the sauce just didn't wow me.  Well, Tolga explained that dishes that are served with yogurt - Turkish ravioli, for example - have to be cooled off before you put it on, or else you end up with a big, runny mess.  As far as I could tell, though there was no excuse for the sauce - Cappadocia Home Cooking tossed theirs in butter with some paprika and...maybe some parsley?  Something delicious.

When we finished our chores, they brought us back into the dining room where a host of dishes was already laid on the table, including the tastiest vine leaves of the whole trip.  We were both a little worried that they'd want us to eat everything...we'd had to finish the biscuits earlier, although they were so tasty that I, at least, wasn't complaining...but they didn't, and somehow we managed to make it all the way through dessert.  It was scrumptious, but I could hardly move when it was all over!  I doubted we were going to need our dinner reservation that night, after all.

That trip 14 years back was the first time I went to a cooking class, at Petra Kitchen in Jordan.  Since then, I've learned to cook Nepalese, Chinese, Thai, Italian, Indian...not to mention all the dishes taught to me by my OG masterchef, Bronte.  Over the years learning to cook has become one of my most favorite traveling activities.  There's something about food that is so fundamental to who a people are.  There's something about cooking together that draws people together.  Oh, and there's the fact that my family is a little more understanding of my rock-and-roll lifestyle when I come back ready to cook tasty meals for them.  

Ups and Downs

It was a dark, and stormy, Monday afternoon...

After two LONG years, this spring break saw me finally, FINALLY on the road again.  It would have been nice if I could have gone to Japan - had that trip I planned two and a half years ago, sitting on a beach in Toyama watching the firefly squid roll in - but that hope was in vain.  Instead, I finally caved and went with the suggestion Engrish tentatively made, back in January or so: we could always do Turkey.

Now, if you have been patiently waiting the last 11 months (haha) for me to write words*, you will no doubt be aware that I've done Turkey before.  Seven years ago, I led an intrepid band of my rag-tag students there.  Seven years before that, I led an intrepid band of my ragtag self there.  Maybe in another seven years I'll go back, and finally see Pamukkale (I've been kicking myself for not going there since 2008.  True story).  I had a blast both times, but I did basically the same thing both times...just with kids the second go-round.  This time, though, Engrish was my wing-girl, so futzing around in the city for a week would NOT do.

I believe it was she who first suggested Cappadocia...I'm pretty sure she described it as, "That place with the interesting rock formations."  Fortunately, I speak engrish, and I know enough about Turkey to guess, with pinpoint accuracy, what the hell she was talking about.  We booked our flights - I got us overnight bus tickets to Goreme, she found hotels - and two weeks back, we found ourselves under warm skies, looking at green grass, and breathing mask free.**

After an early check-in the clerk called "lucky" (because our room was, in fact, actually ready at 7:30 am), we walked down the street to what is apparently Goreme's only coffee shop that opens before 9 - King's Coffee.  The owner didn't seem too appalled that I ordered a coke to go with my "toast" (grilled cheese)...maybe that was because Engrish ordered a Turkish coffee like a decent human being.  On the other hand, considering the number of times Engrish was offered Nescafe, as though that was remotely related to actual coffee, maybe he's just been around enough tourists over the years to become jaded.  Who knows?

At any rate, my first order of business was to get to Urgup and enjoy an art lesson - ebru, Turkish marbling.  (Good to know that the pandemic didn't change everything, eh?)  I left Engrish to her own devices (which I had no doubt would involve hiking up the biggest cliff she could access) and caught a taxi to Kappadokya Ebru Sanat Evi (or Ebru Art House).  

I had a brief run-in with marbling when I brought the kids seven years ago, but I didn't get the chance to really indulge in it.  This time I wanted to be able to understand it, so that I'd be able to do it again once I was home.  The owner, Guler Somturk, and her daughter were really patient about answering all of my questions as well as guiding me to learn the basic forms.  We were having so much fun that I didn't even realize when my two hours were up.  The only shame is that I had to go so early that Engrish missed out on sampling at the winery across the street.

I returned to the hotel to find her sitting in the sun reading (for approximately the last time...unlike some people she didn't work her way through 200 chapters of a webnovel during the week).  After taking a shower we went out looking for something tasty.  After I'd abandoned her that morning, some weird old broad in the cafe had suggested a restaurant for us to try...however, after we took a look at their menu we decided trusting weird old broads that randomly start conversations with you in cafes was a bad idea.  We wandered around Goreme's main drag, finally getting reeled in by a big place called Kebapzade.  Where we might have gone a little overboard.  I mean, this was our first REAL meal in Turkey.  After getting to the bus stop the night before we had iskander kebap at a nearby mall, but that was all they had on the menu.  Here, we took one look at the menu and ended up ordering what felt like one of everything.  And maybe I was just starving by that point, but I still think their pottery kebab was my favorite of the whole trip, because it was so juicy and flavorful.  More on those later, though.

At that point, I could no longer put off the inevitable.  Although at that point I was ready to be rolled back up the hill to the hotel, I had promised Engrish hiking.  It could have been worse - as mentioned in the first line of this post, it was stormy, which seemed to concern some of the passersby, but Engrish was not to be deterred and I actually like the rain.  Worse come to worst, I would get soaked and have an excuse to spend the evening reading snuggled up in our cave.  My plan was to delay us tackling anything too strenuous by going to the Goreme Open Air Museum.  Along the way, though, we got distracted by something shiny - the famous "fairy chimneys" (aka, interesting rock formations).  

We actually intended to end up at the museum, really.  It's just...the trail that should have taken us there didn't.  Possibly because we willfully wandered off it in a different direction.  And by we, I totally take the blame for that, because my internal GPS kept telling me we were moving back in the direction of the town, rather than away from it.  But the scenery was pretty nice and the trail wasn't terribly steep, so all was good.

Or, rather, it was...and then it wasn't.  In a very short amount of time we found ourselves getting higher and higher on the ridge that my internal GPS kept telling me separated us from the town, and I let us keep going, because I knew that this would actually turn into a shortcut.  And it did.  However, I made Engrish go up the last, steepest bit to make sure before I climbed it.  The moral of the story is, if you don't want to pay to access Goreme's sunset point, there's a back way in, but be prepared to work for it!  

*Joke's on you - I've written lots of words.  I just haven't published any of them because they were fucking depressing.  Nobody really wants to read about my nerd cave, or my (futile) attempts to kick my ass into a slightly less round shape.

**Mostly...I was a lot more hesitant to burn mine than Engrish was, but even I didn't wear mine that much.

Shokugeki no Becky

Yesterday-ish (depending on what side of the international date line you are on), I graduated with my MA in Art Education.  It was pretty anticlimatic.  With covid still being a thing, there was no chance of me making it to the ceremony, and in fact, I couldn't really even go out and celebrate, because Mongolia still shows few signs of getting their cases under control...although restaurants DID reopen yesterday for takeout and delivery, and I'm at least allowed to leave Zaisan, so Engrish and I got together for Indian and beverages and bitchin'.  I thought I'd at least have my name published, but as the grad office had to remind me, I checked the "no publication" option when I applied for graduation - my cyberstalker may be on his best behavior due to his custody trial, but I wouldn't put it past him to act up in the future, so least said, soonest mended.

Homemade salsa

The true upshot of this change in my status is that I no longer have to confine myself to APA format and can use as many four-letter words as I want, which means that it's about time for me to start blogging again.  Yes, I'm going to blame my ongoing delinquency on grad school, which, coupled with a pandemic that never seems to end, robbed me of pretty much all motivation to write "for fun."  It's true that the pandemic is ongoing, but this is probably something that I actually should write about, so I'll pick up where I left off:  Food.  As mentioned WAY BACK in my last post, I have finally learned the fine art of cooking your own damn meals, every damn day (ah, yes...those four-letter words!  How nice they feel!).  This last lockdown was our fourth, and let me tell you, they suck major balls.

Note: Note how I normally stock my fridge.

You may have picked up on this if you're one of my six regular readers, but the kitchen is where the most evidence of my status as a counterfeit grown-up is found.  In a typical year, a close inspection of my refrigerator will reveal coke, a pitcher of lemonade, condiments, and eggs (which may or may not be edible, because even a 6-pack of eggs goes pretty slowly for me).  Typically my freezer has ice and frozen chicken breasts.  Sometimes bread, if I've been on a French toast kick.  It's not that I can't cook...it's more that there's very little reward for cooking food that you're only going to eat by yourself.  I mean, think about it - after doing all the cooking you STILL have to do all the cleaning, and not once during the meal does anyone tell you how tasty it is (unless you talk to yourself.  Which maybe I do).  The reasonably rational side of me thinks that cooking your own food should be healthier and cheaper, but after the last six months, I have very little evidence to back that up.  Although maybe (probably) that's just me.

Newest culinary discovery: Homemade chocolate sauce

However, at the very least, I've unlocked this particular adulting skill.  Although my first week and a half of lockdown I subsisted on a rotation of pasta and red Thai curry, I've gradually opened up all sorts of new worlds of culinary discovery.  My fridge and cupboards are stocked with a variety of ingredients that I can use to make single servings of different things, throwing in a handful of this and a splash of that.  Turns out, there are cheats I never knew about.  I finally figured out that chicken wasn't the only meat I could freeze a single portion into a ziploc baggie, quick and easy to defrost in a can full of hot water.  I've also learned to chop or grate my veggies or cheese, FINALLY reusing those take-out containers I've been collecting the last year and a half to store them in the freezer.

Another cheat: indoor weenie and/or marshmallow roast

My bags of groceries look less and less like an eight year-old turned loose at the checkout with a big wad of birthday cash.  Okay, I'm willing to admit that, more often than not, restocking my coke supply is what forces me to go out shopping, but along the way I've found good meat at our Rosie's, mozzarella cheese at the little shop in Enkhjin apartments, and Korean ingredients at almost all of the shops in Zaisan, ensuring that, at the very least, I can make that spicy marinade that Bronte taught me, back in the day, and - BONUS! - I can make a whole bunch of it at once and freeze that into ready-to-go portions (the smaller, round takeout containers are best for that).

Throw in cabbage and tteok-beokki and it's basically dalkgalbi 

I've also braved the pitfalls of ordering your groceries online.  I wasn't quite convinced about this one...last summer I attempted to make Good Price bring me a flat of Coke, and that didn't work out.  The idea of letting someone else pick out your veggies just seemed like asking for a bag of produce that was about to go off.  Just before the first lockdown ended, though, I got to missing pizza pretty badly.  I dug up my old recipe for flatbread (or the closest recipe I could find), threw some pasta sauce and mozzarella cheese on it, and called myself a culinary genius...but had to admit that it was missing something.

V3: Using homemade alfredo for sauce and with jalapenos added.

Which is crazy, because I actually love cheese pizza, but my own just needed a bit of something more.  Pepperoni is basically non-existent in Mongolia, so I went for the #2 pizza topping, Italian sausage...mainly because I knew Rosewood Market made it AND that they delivered.  

And that's how I ended up down the rabbit hole.  About once a week I make a big list with all sorts of things I could live without, but since I'm already living without human contact, seem a lot more necessary.  Big baked chocolate chip cookies?  Better have two.  Huge jar of tahini?  Much better than making my own!  Avocados that I will forget to use until they have gone bad?  Sounds good to me.  They usually have salsa, but the last couple of times it didn't show up on the website, so I even got all of the ingredients and made salsa myself, which may be the first time in five years I've done so.

Fortunately the lockdowns have usually had some break in-between them, and usually come with some warning before.  This means my cooking has gotten progressively more extravagant.  Rather than just making a bit of taco meat, throwing melting cheese on it and slapping it onto a tortilla with some salsa, I could pick up a can of refried beans, or find a jar of something approximating guacamole (it's not actually guacamole, but unlike those avocados I keep wasting, this crap doesn't go bad)...because I'd have a week or so to prepare.  Not so much THIS time, but some of the others.  That said, if you find yourself in Ulaanbaatar the day before a pandemic lockdown, you're better off not planning to go anywhere if you need a car to get there.  I mean, unless you REALLY like your car and want to spend hours in it not moving.

Lockdown masterpiece: Cheesy baked alfredo tortellini

I guess I should probably end this on some kind of positive note, and talk about how using the recipes that I learned in my friends' kitchens made me feel closer to them in my isolation, or that the recipes I picked up traveling somehow helped me to relive my experiences in other countries while I was grounded...but that's bullshit.  If I weren't fairly introverted by nature, I feel like there's a good chance that I would have done something irreparable a long time ago.  By the time I got to Engrish's yesterday I was pretty much starved for attention - I had verbal diarrhea to go with my potty mouth, and was probably telling the most boring, inane stories of all time.  Lucky for me, she'd had almost as little human contact, so either she didn't notice, or she was willing to live with it.  Maybe a little of both - Engrish is a lot kinder than me.

Other People's Cooking

Well, my penultimate semester of grad school has (at long fucking last) come to a close.  At some point while I was trying to keep my head above water I realized WHY I haven't updated my blog in so many moons...because writing "for fun" seemed particularly oxymoronic, given how much writing I was doing for classes.  Since I have four whole weeks of nothing stretching in front of me, I thought this might be an opportune time to do something about that.  And maybe to clean my apartment.

Maybe.

So one fact you will have missed out on since I haven't been writing is that Mongolia had a locally transmitted Covid outbreak.  We went into lockdown on Thursday, November 12, and it only ended last Monday, December 14.  This sucked for SO many reasons I can't even go into them all right now, but the one that may have hit me the hardest was the fact that I had to cook for myself.  Every meal.  For an entire month.  Engrish and I debated at length where we were going first when the lockdown ended, and not ONE of the contenders was covered in one of my old grub club posts.  And that made me realize that we have been to a lot of restaurants this year that I've never told you about, giving rise to this post.

See, after Blondie set sail for her next port of call we needed something to fill the hole she'd left in our lives, and it turns out food was exactly the thing for it.  There is an ongoing debate in the expat community here about which restaurant has the best burger.  Around the beginning of June I saw Better Burger listed as one of the possibilities.  The day we went, we were actually trying to go to a different restaurant, but since it hadn't yet opened, we gave Better Burger a try.  They had quite a small menu, which matched their very small restaurant, but it was hellagood.  I went for the Mac & Cheese burger, with jalapenos on top because jalapenos make EVERYTHING better, and it was filling and at a great price.  We ordered extra fries but didn't need them, we were so stuffed by the time we finished.

What we were TRYING to make it to that day was the new Dak Galbi Cheese Bar just south of the Peace Bridge.  Dalkgalbi is by far the best Korean food of all time, and I may have squealed like a child at Christmas when I flashed past it in a cab the first time.  It took us a few more weeks to make it there, partly because they were still in the process of opening, partly because Engrish was always off in the countryside during the summer.  Well, this one's a little different than how restaurants in Korea usually do it - they melt the cheese at the beginning (and give you a shit ton of it).  But aside from that it's the real deal.  When I go home afterwards, my tummy is happy and my clothes smell like memories of all my chingus, just like they should.

A few weeks after that we went to Torres, a place on the curve of Baga Toiruu near Namaste.  We decided we'd do a little gallery hopping and then try a new place, but when she came with her Mongolian kid in tow, I was afraid that it might be a problem.  I mean, I was happy that I finally got to meet the munchkin I'd been hearing about for as long as I'd known her, but hesitant to take him to a Spanish and Mexican restaurant.  Well, I shouldn't have worried - they had pasghetti on the menu as well - but since I rarely have anklebiters given into my sole custody, I hadn't really thought much about it.  Torres was another place we heard about through the expat pipeline on Facebook, and it did not disappoint.  Although at first glance, the dishes don't seem super authentic - that's an order of enchiladas you're looking at right there - the flavor was great and the portions were a pretty good size.

I haven't been out for sushi nearly as often this year - the last two times I went to Miko they didn't have any cucumbers for their rolls, which left them feeling kind of empty.  We'd heard promising things about Stockholm Sushi, though, in spite of the somewhat off-putting name, so another day we went and tried it.  There's a problem with this restaurant, though, and that problem is that it's in the middle of a cluster of OTHER good restaurants, which is probably why we'd never been there before...any time we were planning to have dinner in the area we'd already decided to have dinner at Millie's, Silk Road, or Ali Baba.  However, we finally gave it a try and it proved to be pretty tasty.  Full disclaimer: in spite of living in Japan for two years I'm not much of a sushi connoiseur.  Don't get me wrong - I love sushi, and I can taste the difference between fresh sushi and...well, not.  It's just that I'm not a snob about it.  I thought Stockholm's was pretty tasty, but a true sushi lover might despair of it, so take my opinion for whatever it's worth.

Ramen, on the other hand, I can speak about with a little more authority.  Trying to enjoy the ramen at Oishii after all the ramen I ate in the two years I was gone was a trial. For example, there was this place in Yokohama, a trek up and back down a big hill from the old school, that had the thickest, tastiest chashu pork that just fell apart in your mouth, stacked high with beansprouts and swimming with garlic.  The broth was thick and tasty and the noodles were just right.  Takesan Miso Ramen IS EVEN BETTER.  According to Engrish, it's a chain from Japan (Nagano, apparently), and it shows.  The restaurant feels Japanese, from the noren hanging over the door to the greetings of "Irasshaimase!"  And this turned out to be the first restaurant we made it to when lockdown lifted.  I mean, pretty much nothing beats hot ramen during cold weather.  And...well, I'd been cooking Korean and Mexican in my apartment, whereas I don't cook soup.  Pretty much ever.

That said, if we were sure La Rosa had been open, we might have gone there instead.  A UB mainstay, named one of the top 10 restaurants by...actually, I don't know who, Engrish told me about the list...anyways, Rosewood recently opened a permanent restaurant serving Mexican and Spanish-inspired cuisine.  From the time we learned about it we eagerly looked forward to their opening, and finally in October it happened.  We were like kids in a candy shop - we were determined to try everything.  Not that first week, of course, nor have we yet managed it on any of our subsequent Saturday night visits (partially because when I figure out what I like I have a tendency to keep ordering it, but I've tried not to give up entirely JUST yet)...at any rate, we've been gradually working our way through the menu.  Luckily most of the dishes are serves tapas-style, and relatively small, so we're getting there.  Slowly, but surely.

There have been a couple of other restaurants, but between the dalkgalbi, ramen, and Rosa we've found our new favorites.  We're still waiting to hear that La Rosa and the dalkgalbi have reopened, but...well, to be honest, I've kind of gotten used to cooking for myself.  My refrigerator makes it seem like an actual adult lives in my apartment.  Engrish and I may have eaten out three times since lockdown ended, but I think more than anything we just need to see IRL people, to talk to each other without having screens in between us.  I mean, if she said La Rosa was reopening tomorrow and asked if I wanted to meet for dinner, I'd still do it in a heartbeat.  Just not because I HAVE to.

Staycation

A sad reality of my life in Japan is the fact that I never seem to have enough money.  Case in point: I have been on vacation for a week and a half but I haven’t left Yokohama.  Unless you count Tokyo, which I don’t...who really knows where one ends and the other begins, anyways?  And maybe I’m just getting old, but the idea of two weeks of staying up late and sleeping in, and generally just puttering around however my heart desires kind of appealed to me.  And that is why after a week and a half of vacation the most I can say I’ve accomplished is drinking enough coke to kill a horse and staying up to date on my photography assignments toward my master’s.

Be that as it may, I felt that I couldn’t, in good conscience, leave my six faithful readers without any adventures to enliven their dreary existences this week.  I had a great plan.  I was going to go out to Sanrio Puroland, since my suggestion to go there with friends had been shot down by said friends.  And then I walked out of the house last Friday to do exactly that, and I realized that it was cold and rainy and I wanted no part of the great outdoors.

Well, that decision made, I started looking for what else I could do on a nasty afternoon.  I opened Google maps and started looking at the places I’ve starred over the last few years.  I have a tendency to mark places I find out about where I want to go as favorites, so that I can visit them later when I have time.*  I had been looking at the west part of Tokyo, and decided to get a little weeb-ish.

One place I marked about a year ago was Shiro-Hige’s Cream Puff Factory.  This is a little place out in Shimokitazawa owned by Hayao Miyazaki’s brother, and it’s the home of the most kawaii cream puffs on the face of the planet.  I got there around 1 and was really only thinking about dessert until I stepped in the door and realized there was a restaurant with real food upstairs and it smelled delicious.  I inhaled the fettuccine carbonara, didn’t ask for a hundred refills of ice, and took my cream puff to go, which is actually pretty good behavior for me, but what can I say?  There was just something about the place that made me want to be respectful.

Next I caught the train over to Chofu.  At some point since I started watching Gegege no Kitaro I found out that Shigeru Mizuki used Chofu as the setting for his manga.  In fact the entrance for the forest is through Fudaten Jinja, so it had a star on it as well.  There’s also a Kitaro Chaya by Jindai-ji, the temple I visited last year for the daruma market, but I’d already eaten pasta and a cream puff, and since I shouldn’t reaaaaally be buying anything else, I decided to give the tea house a miss.  

I checked out the shrine itself, and then tried to find Gegege no Mori.  The back part of the shrine is restricted, but I noticed a row of stone lanterns along the east side of the shrine.  I followed them back to a small cemetery, where I could see the back part of the shrine.  Mostly it was an empty lot with a sakura tree, which was kind of disappointing, but not altogether surprising.  After all, you can’t just leave the entrance to the unseen world lying around where anyone can find it.

Although I may not need any more stuff to pack, I couldn’t stop myself from visiting Nakano Broadway, since I was already all the way out there.**  Call it a fact-finding mission in case I decide to sell off any of the stuff I already have and leave it at that.  At least on this occasion I successfully resisted temptation.  A few days later I was browsing the craft section of my friendly neighborhood Daiso when the opening song from The Promised Neverland - which I’ve just finished binge-watching - started playing over the PA system.  It was about that moment that I realized I really, really didn’t want to leave Japan.  There are things that bug the ever-loving shit out of me here, not least of which is the fact that it’s impossible to enjoy an art exhibit here (don’t even get me started on my job).  That said, it’s going to be really hard to leave it all behind.  Here’s hoping I make it back in the next life.

*The flaw in this otherwise brilliant plan is that I don’t always remember why I wanted to go some of these places.
**For the record, Nakano Broadway is nowhere near where I was, other than that they are both geographically west from the rest of Tokyo. 

Barbie Girls

You can tell when winter is almost over.  The plum trees start to blossom, and suddenly there are hina dolls displayed everywhere.  I saw these in the middle of the train station in Shiroishi last month, and saw a similar display in Yokohama Station a week or two ago.  That doesn't mean that winter is quite over, though.  It's been raining throughout the last week, which pissed me right off and was one of the reasons I decided against going to the Nagashibina.  I loved the ritual last year but standing in the cold rain did NOT seem like a fun way to start my Sunday.

This time last year I was filled with unspeakable rage because my fellow Americans were being a bunch of lunatics.  This Hina Matsuri - a festival dedicated to the prosperity and protection of girls - I'm raging again, but you'll have to wait a few months to hear that particular rant.  Suffice it to say that the timing of a holiday concerned with those blessings of prosperity seemed somewhat ironic this year.  (As far as protection goes, nothing makes me feel as safe as toting around the bachi I use for taiko class - and hey - bonus! I can practice while I walk!)

As far as I'm concerned, there was never any question as to whether or not I was going to mark Girls' Day this year with a blog.  (Seriously, people, I make dolls for my hobby.  This was always going to happen).  That said, I did try to find new things to see.  I knew there were several displays around Tokyo, and although I passed over my first choice because I didn't have time after painting on Saturday,* my second choice, though, was just a couple of stops away in Shinjuku.  Keio Plaza Hotel had a special display of tsurushi hina, hanging decorations, along with some works of art that made me think of the paintings Maria's students always paint around this time of year.  Except, you know, better (technically, at least.  I'd argue that a lot more heart goes into the student work).

Just as hina dolls evolved from the doll floating rituals, hanging decorations are an Edo-era tradition that emerged from the desire of less affluent families hoping to participate in the holiday.  Turns out the full hina display is pretty damn pricey, and not everyone could afford them.  Instead, the women of the family would come together to craft small decorations that hung from red cords.

The ones at Keio Plaza were made of kimono silk by quilting artist Mitsuyo Matsuo and her artist group, Himawari.  I've bought a LOT of fabric scraps in the last month or so, and it made me think about how cool it would be to make my own tsurushi hina...but since I already have a backlog of sewing projects I want to make, this probably won't happen anytime soon.  Making my own display, on the other hand, seemed relatively straightforward and not too time consuming.  I've been thinking about using my nendoroids to set up a hina matsuri display ever since I read about the Hatsune Miku hina doll made by Mataro last January.**

I learned a lot about the meanings behind the dolls when I visited the Ando Doll workshop in Kyoto last fall.  I tried to keep it in mind when I made my own Hina Matsuri display, but I didn't have dolls that fit.  The top step is supposed to be the emperor and empress.  Since I didn't have any nendoroids that are couples, I just chose my favorites.  The next step is supposed to be the three court ladies, but I only have two female nendos.  Instead, I made this the warrior step and included my sword boys and Roy Mustang.  The third step is supposed to be the musicians, so I went with a general ntheme of entertainment and called it good.  You might notice that I'm lacking most of the furnishings that go along with the set, but with a move looming there was no way I was buying more crap to pack up.

The VERY sweet icing on this year's doll cake was going to the Strawberry-holic buffet at The Strings Omotesando with Sensei and the Director.  About a month ago I decided I needed to eat as many strawberry desserts as I could before the season is over, and having them all at the same time seemed like a good idea.***

Apparently these buffets have themes.  I mean, besides “strawberries.”  There were at least a couple of other strawberry buffets going on recently, one with the theme of cats and another that featured - wait for it! - Godzilla.  This one was, appropriately enough, doll-themed, with so many Barbies scattered around the buffet and tables that they must have visited every Mandarake on Honshu to round up enough to pull it off.  As far as the food goes, there was a token lunch side, with salads, curry, and the best damn mac and cheese I’ve had since I last made it in Mongolia, but I don’t think anyone wasted too much time on real food.  We were all there for the desserts, and they were excellent.  That said, at 4500 yen we were all keen to get our money’s worth, and it’s possible that all three of us ate more than we should.  I definitely wanted to just lie down and have someone roll me home with a stick; as it was, I went into hibernation mode as soon as I got to my apartment.

I was about to say that was how my Hina Matsuri ended, except that’s not quite true.  I’ve been taking a photography course for my master’s this term, and our current project is light painting.  I originally wanted to work with shrine imagery - I still do, and I’m pretty sure this is going to play into my final portfolio - but then I thought about the nagashi hina and decided - since it was just after Girls’ Day - to make my own as a subject for my photo.  This course has been much harder than I was expecting, but at the same time, I’m pretty happy with some of the photos I got.  I’m still hoping to improve on them by taking photos in the stream near my house, but for now I feel like I have a good start.  

*I'm still hoping to write about the place it was later.  I mean, I probably have to write a Shinsengumi post at some point, right???
**I think I'd have a lot of fun designing other pop culture dolls with them, but the clock is ticking.
***Time has proven otherwise.

Local Gods

I went to a lot of festivals last year.  And I mean, a LOT.  I literally couldn't help myself - experiencing everything about Japan had become my raison d'etre, after all, and it paid off in my artwork.  I told myself that this year I'd try to be a little more diverse, maybe make it to some of the international festivals that are always happening in Ueno, or down by the Redbrick Warehouse, but to be honest, if I'd had the chance to go to either Yokohama's Yogafest or the sumo tournament at Setagaya Hachiman-Gu Festival two weeks back...well, you can probably guess where I would have been.  If I'd had the choice.  Which I didn't because I spent that weekend in a bloody IB training.*   

However, festivals and Japan are kind of inseparable, and just because I didn't have get the time to go to the ones I would have have hoofed across Tokyo for doesn't mean I've totally missed out.  Here's the deal.  It's any old Sunday, and you are marching your way to church, because somewhere down the road somebody's playing something traditional with a good beat, and when you see the mikoshi, or in this case, the taiko, parked at the side of the road everything makes sense. 

I didn't stop to check it out just then; I was on a schedule and church represents a three-hour block when I can work on my current sewing project without trying to figure out what anime I will "watch" next.**  However, when I left just after five, the Hachiman shrine at Senzoku-ike had their matsuri in full swing, so I stopped by to appreciate the atmosphere.  After all, I'd put in my time with my own God...I didn't see any problem with paying my respects to the god of warriors and Japan's protector.

I followed the music to the kagura-den - the "stage" you often find in Shinto shrines.  What I was really interested in was the drums; I took a taiko lesson a month ago and have been deliberating over going back ever since (on one hand, it's so damn fun...on the other, my finances have trouble keeping up with my hobbies, and I can't bring myself to even think about giving up nihonga).  The noh performance was just icing on the cake.  Now, I've been known to joke around about falling asleep during noh, but when you're just stopping to watch a few minutes rather than committing to hours of it, I have to say, it's kind of magical.

During the following week one of my students told me they were going to the matsuri at our nearby train station, and asked if I was going to go.  I'd seen the lanterns hanging around Kikuna, and said I was planning to - since my training robbed me of the chance to go to the festival in Setagaya, it went a little ways toward filling the sumo-shaped hole in my heart.

Kikuna Jinja's matsuri was small by the standards of most of the festivals I've attended, and I was kind of alright with that.  I didn't need the mikoshi make its way down the street, or watch performances on the kagura-den - it was enough to pass them sitting idle.  The lane between the station and the shrine was packed with the usual games, foods, and drinks...and just about everyone in Tsurumi ward (or so it seemed - I didn't see my student, but I think she went on Sunday night instead). 

One thing that was completely different - I didn't see it at any of the festivals I went to last year - was the "drink in an IV bag."  Dean Winchester had given Benny a ride back from Purgatory that week and the first kid I saw sucking down a bag of red fluid hanging around their neck messed with my mind more than I want to admit.  Not that that stopped me from buying the next season of Supernatural as soon as my IB training was over, but it was definitely a surreal moment that had me wondering if I'd lost the ability to tell the difference between reality and television...

One thing I still hadn't tried at a festival was the goldfish game, and I decided when I came across it that this was both the time and the place!  For 300 yen, you got a paper net and the guarantee that you'd walk away with two goldfish (no matter how many you actually caught), which seemed like an excellent value for the money.  I waited for just about a hundred (rough estimate - I may have rounded up) small children to take their turn, and then finally, I paid my money and got my net.  I watched the fish, looking for the perfect catch, and decided to go for a white one.  The first time I put the net in the water I was sure it was going to break, but it didn't, and although I didn't manage to catch that one, I got the next one.  Then I decided to go for a black one - much cooler than a bunch of orange ones - and I caught one of them and another white one before my net broke.  The man running the game put one of the white ones back, then poured my fish into a drawstring plastic bag and handed them to me.  I decided to call them Kurosaki and Toshiro, which are character names from Bleach and since they have the words for black and white in them it seemed apropos.  I was stoked to have new pets - the goldfish game was saikou!

Why hadn't I tried this before?!?  Well, after I got home I remembered why I hadn't - because I wasn't prepared to be a pet owner.  I had nowhere to put them - for the first three days in my care Kurosaki and Toshiro lived in a plastic bowl I'd bought watermelon in.  I tried to find them fish food, but every "pet" store I went to only had supplies for furry friends; it seemed I was going to have to go to a fish store.  In the meantime I fed them bread crumbs - the fish in the park always seemed happy with that -  and finally after school on Tuesday I went to Shimachu and bought a bowl, a plant, and food.  Sadly, by then I guess it was too late.  Neither of them were interested in the food, and the next morning Toshiro was belly up.  The following evening Kurosaki joined him in that big fishbowl in the sky.  Ah well, easy come, easy go.

Kikuna matsuri had one more thing going for it - dalkgalbi.  There are Korean restaurants around, and maybe some of them actually sell my #1 Korean food; I wouldn't know, I've never actually been to a Korean restaurant in Japan.  However, the sight of that stall stopped me in my tracks.  If I hadn't been working my way through a ginormous shaved ice I would have joined the line right then - as it was, I forced myself to walk the length of the lane and grabbed it on my way back to the bus stop.  It could have used more gochujjang - honestly, it's a cold day in hell when I DON'T think you could you use more red chili paste - but considering I've only managed to have dalkgalbi about once a year, I wasn't complaining.  And it just served to illustrate that festivals with sumo are all well and good, but sometimes you just can't beat your local neighborhood matsuri.

*Not that I'm bitter or anything...
**I'm on a sewing kick again.  The answer is, "Something I've already seen."  Or Supernatural, but buying each season was getting expensive.  Stupid Japanese Netflix.