Food Is Culture

Food. It's why we manage to keep going as the day progresses. It's a spicy touch to our day, a bit of pleasantness if we're lucky. It reflects the culture of those around us and they way we eat it broadcasts our own personalities to those same people.

This is why, I believe, one of the most important things you can do when you travel is to eat. Of course, if you're traveling, you have to eat. If you're alive you have to eat. Unless you want to stop being alive, that is.

But we should pay attention to what we eat, why we eat it, where we eat it, who we eat it with, etc. Why? Because it's of the utmost important, especially when we're traveling. Food is one of the best ways to experience a culture. If you traveled to Italy and ended up just eating McDonald's hamburgers the entire time you were there, that would be the epitome of a travesty.

A little anecdote:

About seven or eight years ago I was in Paris with my mother. We were on vacation for a few days after a long work trip to England. As tourists in Paris, we of course did all the typical things. Eiffel Tower, Arc de Triomphe, Notre Dame. And, of course, we sampled the culinary delights of Paris. As I'm sure you know, France is known for it's amazing food. And nowhere is that more evident than in Paris' Latin Quarter. To this day, I still dream about the food there.

One day, after an exhausting afternoon spent wandering the streets, we ducked into a small cafe. Recuperation was, at that point, an absolute necessity. So we ordered a couple of drinks and reclined into our chairs. As we sat there, sinking into a wonderful bliss, we heard someone approaching. Someone who spoke English.

In through the door walked a family of five white Americans, each one fatter than the next. Two children, a mother, a father, and a grandmother. In a city of slim Europeans, this alone would be worthy of comment. If nothing else, we would laugh at the stereotype. But alas, the stereotype went even deeper than we thought. Apparently, this family had been in Paris for three days and hadn't managed to find a single good thing to eat. Apparently, even McDonald's had let them down. I'm fairly certain that I nearly choked on my drink at this point. Laughter always seems to sneak up on me at the most inopportune moments.

My mum and I were so shocked that we may have actually burst out laughing. To be honest, I don't quite remember. I do remember how pathetic we thought that family was, though. Perhaps we're being elitist, judgmental snobs. Or perhaps the way people interact with food is revealing of both themselves and the culture they're in.

So I have adopted the stance that, when I travel, I am an open book. At least as far as food is concerned. When I was a kid, I was the pickiest eater you can imagine. For a long time, breakfast, lunch and dinner all consisted of one staple: honey sandwiches.

Thankfully, I have since improved my diet. I still have a lot of problems with foods that have disagreeable textures (mostly mushy stuff that looks like it's supposed to be solid, which tends to provoke a reaction of "ew, it's rotten isn't it?"). But I make daily strides and am constantly increasing the number of things that I can not only eat, but also enjoy.

Since coming to Japan, as you might imagine, I have had several encounters with food that I would not normally choose to eat. Every Monday and Friday, for example, I eat lunch with the elementary school kids. Lunch is made by a central "authority" and distributed to all the schools in my town, so everyone eats the same thing (including me). And what Japanese school kids eat is definitely not what I would normally eat. Hell, I don't even know what I'm eating half the time. But eat it I do. And sometimes I even like it.

Sometimes I'm surprised. There are two examples off the top of my head.

First, I have eaten live squid sashimi (cut into strips and eaten raw). That may make no sense, but let me explain. The squid is spread out on a long rectangular dish. It is alive, but its nerves have been deadened. For the most part, it can't actually do anything, but every once in a while a tentacle flops around pathetically. If I were a more empathetic person, I might pity the creature. But no, I eat it. The shell that encases its head is cut up into strips beforehand and served on top of the creature as sashimi. With a pair of chopsticks, you pull the desired strip off, dip it in your soy sauce/wasabi mix, and eat it.

When I first learned about it, I had a hard time deciding whether or not to eat the meal. I may not be the most empathetic person around, but eating something while it is still alive is taking things to a new level. But then I reminded myself, I am here to experience Japan at its best. And if this is what they tell me is a good thing about Japan, I'm sure as hell going to try it. And damn them if they weren't right. That is the best squid sashimi that I have ever eaten. Even better, once you've finished the sashimi they take the rest of the squid away and cook it up for you. Nothing goes to waste and it's quite literally as fresh as it gets.

The second example that comes to mind is more recent. Last weekend I was in Osaka, as I mentioned in my last blog post. On my second night, the family I was staying with took me to a small restaurant that specialized in Okinawan cuisine. Awesome, I thought. I'd never had Okinawan cuisine. We ended up ordering a buffet of food on small dishes that the three of us picked at as we pleased.

And, of course, this buffet of food included sashimi'd pig ear. That's right, raw pig ear, cut up into small strips. It looks just like bacon, but the white streaks weren't fat. They were cartilage. Still, keeping in mind my maxim to try everything, I gleefully (okay, somewhat apprehensively) indulged. And surprise of surprises, it was actually delicious.

It had been sliced extremely thin, as thin as a slip of paper, so the strange texture of it was nearly negligible and I could really appreciate the taste. As well, it had been prepared in a peanut sauce. I love peanut sauce. I am of the opinion that almost anything prepared in peanut sauce will be delicious. So did I like the pig ear? Hell yes I did. And much to the shock of my gracious host, I ended up eating more of the dish than anyone else.

Would I order it again? Maybe not. But that's only because I would want to try something new.

So next time you find yourself in a new place, do yourself a favor and don't eat the same thing as you always eat. Why live in the same old shell all the time when there's so much outside of your shell that's interesting? Even if you don't like it, you'll have gained a unique experience. And what's the point in life if not gaining experiences? It's like pokemon, you know; gotta catch 'em all.

~Jeffles

Definitely the Electric Toilet

Hi again everyone. I'm a bit late this week, my apologies. But better late than never, right?

In fact, if you've been following my youtube channel, you may have noticed that I have a new video up! This one has seriously been a long time coming and for that I really am sorry. If you want to know what has really held me up, it's the video editing.

First, there's the fact that the video editing software seriously eats up my system resources, thus meaning that using the program to do finnicky things (like editing video) is really difficult. Fine control is virtually impossible. Second there's the fact that it simply takes a lot of time to edit video. You have to keep going over and over the same bit again to find the exact spot you want to cut/add in/fade/whatever and the time adds up. These reasons plus the fact that I'm usually already quite tired by the time I get home means that video editing often gets put on the back burner.

So yeah, video editing is really quite tiresome in many ways. It's rather rewarding in the sense that you could end up creating something really cool, but it kind of takes some work. This is, I strongly suspect, why so many people just upload their videos without any editing. I can't do that. My videos would look like complete and utter crap and no one would want to watch them. Hell, the editing I do isn't even that complicated. It's basically just cutting and trimming here and there.

Anyway, that's the reason why I've been slow at putting up videos. And with NaNoWriMo coming up, I'm probably going to continue to be slow at videos. Most of my energy is going to be going into my novel and I make no apologies for that. Blog entries will also probably get shorter. Alas, that's just the way it is.

Speaking of NaNo, I've been diving headfirst into that. Haven't started writing yet, of course (it's not yet November), but I've been doing lots of planning and practice. Need a lot more of both than I'm managing to do, but I'm doing my best. Almost done with some characterization questionaires for my two main characters and I've gotten a lot of ideas from that. Also, I have a much better grasp on my characters, which makes me happy. Yay.

It's interesting how much I've dived into this. At work, between classes, eating lunch, I'm always thinking about it or trying to get some planning and/or practice done. Even standing around in class sometimes, if I've been relegated to being a tape recorder, I often find my thoughts wandering off. What would Enos order for his last meal? Is Rachel one-dimensional? Where exactly should the novel start off?

Then I hear a "...Jeffu-sensei..." and suddenly it's back to reality and work. But strangely, it feels almost as if I've been ripped out of reality and into some strange place that I don't understand. Well, to be fair, this is Japan. It is a strange place that I don't completely understand. But that's beside the point. I'd have the same feeling if I were in the US or Canada.

Anyway, I expect things are only going to get worse over the next month and a half. Once I start actually writing the novel... well, it'll be interesting to see what happens, anyway.

*coughjoinmeinmynanocrazinesscough*

This weekend I'm heading back to Osaka for a couple days. I've been invited into a Japanese family's home for dinner and such and there's no way in hell I can decline an invitation like that. Really, it's not that common of a thing to happen. Hell, my host took a day off work to spend the day cooking dinner for when I arrive tonight. So we'll see how that goes. We were supposed to go to Kyoto for the Jidai Matsuri this weekend, but it's going to rain. My host said that, as a result, we probably won't go. Sad times.

Anyway, that's all I got for now. Talk to you next week.

~Jeffles

P.S. I feel like passing along a question asked by one of my younger students. Mostly because it's too strange not to. What's your favorite electric appliance in Japan?

Kyoto Days and Kyoto Nights

Last weekend was yet another long weekend and, as I mentioned, I went to Kyoto. As a result, I have decided to blog about it. Unfortunately, I have no idea where to begin.

My friend told me to begin at the beginning. Fair enough, I said, but where does the beginning begin? Is it when I arrived in Kyoto? Is it when I boarded the Shinkansen in Fukuyama? Is it when I rushed out the office door in hopes that I would make it to my train on time? Or perhaps it begins with my blog post last Thursday, when I expressed my hopes for momiji in Kyoto?

For that matter, where does it end? I did far, far too much over the course of my weekend to divulge information on every single occurrence. And besides that, this is a public blog, you know. Some things are probably better left unsaid. Perhaps you're thinking "He must be exaggerating. How much can you do in just a few days?" If so, you've probably never been to Kyoto.

Okay, I've decided. I'm going to take the path of the wanderer, probably the one most apt for me. That is, I'm just going to say whatever comes to me as it comes to me. Let me begin with my last blog post, because that's where I last left you off and I'm not cruel enough to simply leave you hanging around like some lost little kitten.

There was no momiji in Kyoto. I had been misled. Not by anyone else, of course; no, I'd been misled by myself and my own experiences. That's the one thing you have to remember when you go to a new country and it's the one thing that I, of course, forgot. When you're halfway across the world, you cannot expect things to work in the same way. By now, back in Canada and the Northern US, leaves are probably changing colors. By halfway through November, the trees will be nearly bare. At that time, the first cold breaths of winter will be yawning after a long summer's nap. Not in Japan.

Here in Japan, the rice may be ripe and the humidity may have left us far behind, but the trees are not yet ready to change. True, a few select trees are now clad in a glorious red like the setting sun, but they are the exception, not the rule. While in Kyoto, I was told by my friend that momiji will be in its fullest splendor sometime in mid-November. Given the previous paragraph, you are probably not surprised that this was not what I expected. So, no momiji for me.

But that was probably the only disappointment of the trip. Well, that and the fact that I didn't see any geisha. But that doesn't really count, because Geisha are not a once-a-year occurrence and I will almost certainly be going back.

In truth, I may have seen a pair of Geisha and simply not remembered it. You see, my friend and I, along with a group of other foreigners that we met up with, decided to indulge in a little karaoke. But the price of nomihoudai (all you can drink) plus karaoke was a bit high, so we decided to bring our own drinks in with us. And I think you can see where this is going, so I will stop there. This is a public blog, after all. Who knows who could be reading it. Hell, my mother could be reading it... Hi Mum.

Anyway, the point is, I didn't see any Geisha. But I did get to sing Sum41, Beastie Boys, and Queen, so it all balances out in the end.

But let me talk a little bit about the cultural aspect of Kyoto, because it really is quite something. It is, after all, the city of a thousand temples. And I do mean that literally. In fact, it is so amazing that the president of the United States during WWII ensured that Kyoto was taking off the list of bombing targets. Neither regular nor atomic bomb touched the city at any point in the war. Military importance be damned, Kyoto would not be harmed.

Of all the temples that I saw, I would have to say that Sanjusangendo was probably my favorite. (It translates roughly to 33-length-hall, but I'd say it's something more like The Hall of 33 Spaces In-Between... not that that makes much more sense unless you've seen it.) Anyway, Sanjusangendo is famous due to its 1001 Buddha statues. But just saying it like that fails to paint much of a picture, so let me describe my experience.

First, I walked into the hall and looked to my right. I saw something like a set of wooden bleachers, upon which stood several shiny statues. As I came around to the front, I realized that these statues, each one of which was life size, had been lacquered in gold. And more over, every one of them was different in little ways. The angle of their hand, the slant of their eye, and often something major like what they held in their hand would be different from every other statue. You could practically taste the effort the original artisans had put into creating these statues.

So there I was, walking along, looking at these gorgeous creations. In front of them were 28 guardian dieties, the two most prominent of which are Fujin and Raijin. The inner nerd in me rejoiced to see those two dieties in particular. You see, I am a fan of the Final Fantasy games and Final Fantasy 8 features two characters named Fujin and Raijin. And now I have first-hand experience of the inspiration for these characters, who are far and away two of my favorite characters in the game. Anyway, enough of that.

I could go on and on about the deities represented in this hall. Fujin and Raijin, for example, are the gods of wind and thunder respectively and some of the oldest gods in the Shinto pantheon. They are feared and respected and almost always seem to come together. The statues in the Sanjusangendo are particularly important statues of them, as they date back very far and are some of the most detailed, unique, and well crafted versions of them. In fact, a great many subsequent statues of the gods were little more than copies of these two originals.

But it's probably better if you just research it yourself. There's far too much to say. It is important to mention, though, that the 1001 statues are all statues of Kannon, a very, very important god in Buddhism.

So there I was, in the midst of an intellectual amazement. I looked down the hall a bit and saw that the block of statues had an ending point soon. But as I walked a bit farther, I realized that this was not the end. No, not at all. In fact, the hallway went down even further than I thought. I reached the end of that first block of Kannon statues - it must have been about 500 - and was gobsmacked by a gigantic statue of Buddha. It was probably the size of 100 of the other statues. Its eyes were gigantic crystals, its cheeks were jolly, and yes, it too was lacquered entirely in gold. More importantly, I was only halfway through the hall.

Eventually, I reached the real end of the hallway. At that point I learned that in the Edo era (1600 - 1868), the hallway behind all the statues (which was just as long, I assure you) was used for a famous archery competition. The archer would sit down at one end of the hall and, for 24 hours, fire as many shots as possible at the far end of the hall. Mind. Officially. Blown.

After a short recovery period, we headed off for Kiyomizu temple to watch the sunset and meet up with some foreigners who were coming up from Osaka. The night was just beginning.

I could give you the highlights for the rest of the trip, but highlights are boring. Highlights are vague, non-descriptive entities for the lazy. I could tell you I played with monkeys, but that would leave out any description of the view from the top of the mountain, or the fact that we initially didn't even climb the right mountain. It would leave out the koi fish pond and the children's playground beside the monkey haven. I could tell you that I saw the kinkaku-ji temple, also known as the Golden Pavilion. But that would leave out a description of the reflection pool in front of it. That wouldn't mention the historical importance of the temple, the fact that it was designed as a zen retreat, the fact that only the most splendid of the temples has survived to the current day, and that even that most splendid of temples was actually burnt down in 1950 by a crazy monk/student guy, then rebuilt in 1955.

So I'm going to leave it at that. If you're reading this and you have not seen Kyoto, believe me when I say that you are missing out. I don't say that a lot, because I think that people should be happy with the choices they've made. But seriously, you need to see Kyoto.

~Jeffles

The Daily Bread

Hey, been a while. How's things? Wife and kids doing alright? Good, good...

Good god. Let there never be a day when I actually say those things in earnest.

It's interesting that when I sit down to write these blog entries, I often find it difficult to actually think of things to write about. This is interesting because it's not as if I have nothing to write about. Quite literally, every single day is packed. I don't have one weekend to myself this month and I haven't had a weekend to myself since coming to Japan two months ago. Already, next month's weekends are getting taken up.

Yeah, that last one's gonna be a bit of a problem. You see, I've been planning for a while to take part in NaNoWriMo. For those of you too lazy to click though the link, NaNoWriMo is National Novel Writing Month. Frankly, the name is a bit of a misnomer; it's actually quite international.

At any rate, the goal is to write a 50,000 word novel in 30 days (that's November 1st to November 30th). Whip out your calculator, please. Yes, you are quite correct, those numbers mean that any bright-eyed NaNoWriMo Writer must churn out a paltry 1,667 words a day. Me being the busy bee that I am, I'm aiming for 2000 words a day. That should give me a buffer of 5 days to slack off-- I mean, 5 days in case of emergency.

Alternatively, I could just write an extra 10,000 words. But let's be serious here.

This word count means that time is of the essence. It's not easy to write 2000 words a day. And it's even more difficult to write 2000 good words a day. That takes time, which the prospective writer does not exactly have a lot of. When, further, weekends and weeknights are being snatched from the writer's grasp by hungry socialites, life suddenly becomes very difficult.

I don't really know where I'm going with this. Perhaps I just wish to illustrate the insanity involved in this task. Perhaps I'm indulging in a bit of that self-loathing that I keep hearing people like to sometimes do. Well! Enough of that. I will conquer this task and I will become the next Earnest Hemingway and Luke, I am your father.

Sorry, got a bit carried away there.

Recently, the temperature has dropped significantly. I'm talking 20 degrees, plus the sudden absence of humidity, and just within the last two weeks. Suddenly I'm wearing sweaters, long pants, and jackets to work. It feels like just yesterday I was sweating through both my undershirt and work shirt without even moving. As I am a staunch opponent of cold weather, this is frightening to me. But the bright side of this is momiji (the autumn change of the leaves' color).

This weekend is a long weekend due to that most sacrosanct of Japanese holidays: Health and Sports Day. As a result, I'm heading to Kyoto with a fellow ALT from my town. Kyoto, the cultural center of Japan, is particularly known for its momiji. Around here, the world is still largely a verdant green. But there are signs of change. The rice fields have turned into a thousand pools of sunny yellow. Scattered across the bike paths are dead, fallen leaves. Things are changing. My hope is that in Kyoto, momiji has begun.

I'll let you know later how it goes. 'Till then, take care. And don't forget to feed the children. They need their daily bread, you know.

~Jeffles