Things to do in Japan:
1. Eat Sushi - check
2. Go to a Giants game - check
3. Go to the Tokyo Tower - check
4. Eat some odd unidentifiable animal - check
5. Get "Russian roulette" dinner - check
6. Eat Tempura - check
7. Make it Sontory Time - check
8. Climb Mount Fuji - nope
9. Eat at Iron Chef Sakai's restaurant - check
10. Eat at Iron Chef Chen's restaurant - check
11. Eat at Iron Chef Kobe's restaurant - check
12. Take part in Bukkake (extra credit if you are the bowl) - nope
13. ...
Ok, I'm stopping that now, I really just wanted to throw in some bukkake reference while I was here.. :D
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Today I went with some co-workers to lunch and I had a tempura platter.. It was good, it had some white fish, shrimp and various vegetables. The view from the restaurant was amazing, you could see a lot of the city from the restaurant, Kato said in the winter you can see as far as Mount Fuji. After lunch I played with my facebook page for a long time, I uploaded a bunch of pictures over there in my 2008 photo album. I also in general cleaned up the page so go check it out..
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Got out of work and headed over to Restorante Massa. I was a bit concerned tonight after last nights showing by Nakamura, then I started to remember that Iron Chef Masahiko Kobe never lost two consecutive battles and he also never lost a battle after another Iron Chef lost, I guess you could call him the stopper.
The short review of tonight, he restored my faith in the title of Iron Chef. Obviously Nakamura was a fluke. The restaurant was really hard to find, I had 18:00 reservations so I arrived at 17:30 to make sure I could find it with no problems. Good thing I did too because it is really out of the way and hidden in a back alley. I think the Iron Chefs (or the good ones anyway) are playing a game to see who can hide their restaurant better. Sakai's restaurant is on the 32nd floor of an office building, but he does have a sign at the entrance of the building and one at the elevator doors. Chen's is on the 3rd floor of a hotel stuck in the back behind the conference rooms but again he has a sign at the hotel entrance and it even has his picture. Nakamura's restaurant is in a mall attached to a food court, he has no sign anywhere and the mall directory is in Kanji only. He does have a sign at his door with his picture. Kobe won this battle, his restaurant has no sign and you have to know to turn down the back alley, check out the pic I took once I finally realized it was the place. There is actually a blue shield that says MASSA on it as you can see in the picture.
Go in and sit down, the waitress brings me the drink menu and the menu of choices. Basically it's a fixed menu, but each course has 2 choices so you can customize your meal a little bit. I put my order in and about a minute later Kobe comes out to make sure I understood what the squid/oyster dish was, I told him I was and it sounded wonderful (I'll get there later). He thanked me and asked if I wanted to take a picture, of course I did! He really looks young, I know he is the youngest of the Iron Chefs but still, I guess I didn't expect him to look that young.
Course 1 - Pickled Onions with Parmesan Cheese. This was really a nice clean crisp starting dish , it made my mouth feel all clean.
Course 2 - Chilled Foie Gras with Apples and a Blackberry sauce. Oh yummm, chilled foie gras is so good! It was served raw and chilled, apparently you need to eat this kinda quick because if it warms up to much it gets real mushy so you need to eat it while it's still kinda firm. The nice thing is that when you put it in your mouth it warms up and gets all nice and mushy! Worked really well with the blackberry sauce, dipped the apples in it too. I knew at the first bite of this dish that Kobe was not going to make me leave Japan on a down chapter in the book of Iron Chefs.
Course 3 - Oyster and Squid Saute. So, imagine if you will.. Take a squid and cut off the head, inside that head put a raw oyster, not a little one mind you but a big one, big enough to fill the squid head. Now take the squid and steam it over pasta sauce! Oh, the rest of the squid, you should cut that up and saute it in some garlic and pasta sauce! This is Italian food at it's finest, two knock out dishes in a row! The rest of the food probably could have sucked and I would have been happy enough with just these two!
Course 4 - Abalone Pasta. This was slices of Abalone tossed in spaghetti in a clam sauce. The abalone adds a nice layer to the clam sauce. I am actually thinking of trying this one back home if I can get some good abalone.
Course 5 - Pumpkin Tortellini - Kobe's speciality was always making pasta out of odd ingredients so I could not try pumpkin pasta? It was very good but the pumpkin flavor was over powered most of the time by the cheese in the tortellini. If you ate a piece of the pasta with no cheese you could really taste the pumpkin and it was amazing, but overall it was too cheesy.
Course 6 - Abalone Steak with some veggies and Sauteed Foie Gras! I figured I would push my limits with abalone, having an entire steak was probably not the greatest idea, it was great if I cut it up into small slices, but trying to eat it like I would eat a steak it was too chewy. I know your going to say that I shouldn't eat my food in big bites anyway, but so's your face. Oh, burn... bet you didn't see that coming.. You were reading along just having a good old time and BAM there went a "so's your face".. The Sauteed Foie Gras does not even need a review, I am running out words for holy jesus that was amazing!
Course 7 - Chocolate Tartlett, a Rice Dumpling and assorted fruits. The Rice Dumpling is apparently a traditional Japanese dessert? I never had it till tonight, I've never had Natto but I think this is what natto would taste and feel like.. Good thing there was a chocolate tartlett and it was very good. Fruits are good, they helped cleanse the palette and left my mouth feeling very clean again.
When I got up to leave Kobe came out of the kitchen and said goodnight and bowed, he even opened the door for me as I was leaving and bowed again..
I would certainly go back. Sakai, Kobe, Chen and Michiba are all truly Iron Chefs! - Don't feel that I am poo-pooing Morimoto, his restaurant in Philly was amazing and I would certainly love to go there again. I would put him in a class with these guys, but I would not put him in the same cuisine as Michiba. They probably should have been:
Chen - Chinese
Sakai - French
Kobe - Italian
Michiba - Japanese
Morimoto - Neo-Japanese
These 5 men are the masters of their art and it's no wonder why Kitchen Stadium was always in shock whenever one of these men lost a battle.
Can the new breed of Iron Chef compete with these guys? I think so.. Ok, well maybe not Wolfgang Puck, but he is not around anymore.. He would probably beat up Nakamura, but none of the others. Michael Symon is a true master of mediterranean cuisine and I would have no problem listing him in the ranks of the true Iron Chefs. I have not tried Bobby Flay or Mario Batali, after having Kobe's food tonight Mario Batali is going to have to do something pretty amazing to live up to the name Iron Chef Italian.
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Heading to bed everyone. I leave tomorrow at 4:45pm so chances are the next time I blog I will be back on US soil.
Thursday, October 30, 2008
He's ok, but not Iron
Koumei Nakamura is an Iron Chef in title only. This was the first of the Iron Chef restaurants to disappoint. Don't get me wrong, the food was good, just not Iron Chef quality. If I were walking down a random street and happened to walk into Koumei Ariake I probably would have been happy with the food but I would not go back nor would I recommend it to anyone. They spent so much time on presentation they forgot that you need more than just a pretty plate, and not to sound like an American or anything but the portion sizes were so small I was still sorta hungry after eating eight courses!
Even though the food was not great I did end up having a really good night.. Got out of work and took the Yamanote Line from Shinjuku to Osaki and caught the Rinkai Line over to Kokusai-Tenjijo station. The Rinkai Line is a monorail and the cars are very different from the normal JR trains, it was the first time I had seen a "women only" car but people at work tell me most trains have one. The problem is that during rush hour guys will grope women on the trains because everyone is so crowded in that there is no way to stop them.
Got out of the train and was on Tokyo Bay which is a beautiful area. The restaurant is about 2 blocks away from the water, unfortunately there was no view of the water from the restaurant.
Nakamura was there, I saw him in the kitchen but he didn't come out. So, what did I have you ask?
Course 1 - Scallop in a spicy duck sauce with ginko beans. This was the first course and I was very happy with it. The sauce was very nice and the mix of scallop and duck really went well together. This dish had one small scallop an two ginko beans. You can see from the picture how big the scallop based on the size of the ginko beans.
Course 2 - Abalone sushi with lime, roe flavored with orange, deep fried bean patty with hot peppers, passion fruit, and some unidentified meat (they don't have an English name for it?) wrapped in pork fat. The presentation on this dish was awesome, they put a bunch of twigs and tied them together to make sort of a screen to cover the dish. Each thing was in it's own little plate on the bigger plate. I don't think there is ever a reason to mess with roe, I don't like the fact that the roe was sitting in an orange juice like sauce. It totally killed the roe for me. The Abalone sushi was what I would call a mini-sushi. It was probably about 1/3 the size of a normal sushi roll, the piece of mint between the abalone and the rice was a surprise and totally over powered the taste of the abalone. Cup of passion fruit is just that. The deep fried bean patty was really good, certainly the best thing on this plate, it was deep fried in a corn meal batter and the peppers made it have a nice spice. The unidentified meat will continue to be so, I could not tell what it was when I ate it, because it was wrapped in pork fat it tasted like pork fat. If you're looking at the picture the meat is that thing on the toothpick and no, that's not a giant tooth pick.
Course 3 - Crab and Potato Soup. This soup was good, it had two small pieces of crab meat in it and 1 potato. The broth tasted like pea soup so that was an interesting and good combo of crab meat in pea soup. I should have put my hand next to it so you could see the size of that bowl.
Course 4 - Sashimi, 3 pieces of tuna, 2 pieces of eel, 2 pieces of mackerel and 2 pieces of apple served with a Soy stomach mixed with the stomach of an Eel. When they brought this out I said, a bowl of ice? After looking closer and past the garnish I saw the fish, see the apple slices? Now look at how big the fish pieces are next to it. It's also the first and only place I've ever seen leave the skin on tuna sashimi. The eel stomach soy sauce was very good but this is the point where I was really getting upset at the portion sizes. If you took all 3 pieces of tuna and put them together they would not be as big as 1 piece of tuna sashimi at a normal restaurant.
Course 5 - Boiled Turnip. Take a turnip, cut into 6 pieces and then boil it in sugary water. Now take 2 pieces and put it in a bowl and call it a course. It was seriously 1/3 of a turnip in some sugary water. At this point I was getting a bit upset with the food but I knew that Kobe Beef was coming up..
Course 6 - Kobe Beef with a carmelized tomato, zucchini, turnip, broccoli, potato and mushroom. The Kobe beef was awesome as expected, it was cooked in a thick tomato/soy sauce. The caramelized tomato on the top might have been the best thing in the entire dinner (aside from the kobe beef). On the side it had 1 mushroom cap, 1/6 of a small potato (the kind I use in my chili), 1 twig head of broccoli, a slice of turnip and a piece of zucchini that was just as big as the piece of potato.
Course 7 - Mushroom rice and Miso soup. The mushroom rice was nice but the miso soup in my hotel is better than their miso soup. This also came with some pickled stuffs..
Course 8 - Walnut Ice Cream and some dry yellow cake. Umm, I seriously have no idea what that cake was, it was so dry.. The Ice Cream was great.
When I got out of dinner I saw that there was also a small La Rochelle Bistro in the same building, I almost went in for a snack but decided against it. After dinner I walked along the ocean and past 'Tokyo Big View" which is a really cool looking building that you can go up into a see the Tokyo skyline and ocean, unfortunately it was closed so I just got to take cool pictures of the outside of the building. I have to tell you how odd it is to have the pacific ocean on your east. Anyway, I walked along the ocean to the big ferris wheel that is in my pictures. Next to the ferris wheel Toyota had a 2 story show room. I went in and looked around in their new hybrid section, they have 5-6 hybrids out right now in Japan. I took a picture of the Mark X which is a hatchback with three rows of seats.
Went back over to Shinjuku and met up with some co-workers for a few drinks. I ended up having some tuna sashimi and two beers. We hung out for a few hours and chatted, it was a very good time.
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Going to lunch with some of my co-workers again today and tonight is Kobe's restaurant. I am hoping that finishing off my Japan Iron Chef tour with Iron Chef Italian is a good idea. I do love Italian food and he supposed to be one of the best Italian chefs in the world so I am hopeful that tonight will be a solid rebound after yesterday.
Even though the food was not great I did end up having a really good night.. Got out of work and took the Yamanote Line from Shinjuku to Osaki and caught the Rinkai Line over to Kokusai-Tenjijo station. The Rinkai Line is a monorail and the cars are very different from the normal JR trains, it was the first time I had seen a "women only" car but people at work tell me most trains have one. The problem is that during rush hour guys will grope women on the trains because everyone is so crowded in that there is no way to stop them.
Got out of the train and was on Tokyo Bay which is a beautiful area. The restaurant is about 2 blocks away from the water, unfortunately there was no view of the water from the restaurant.
Nakamura was there, I saw him in the kitchen but he didn't come out. So, what did I have you ask?
Course 1 - Scallop in a spicy duck sauce with ginko beans. This was the first course and I was very happy with it. The sauce was very nice and the mix of scallop and duck really went well together. This dish had one small scallop an two ginko beans. You can see from the picture how big the scallop based on the size of the ginko beans.
Course 2 - Abalone sushi with lime, roe flavored with orange, deep fried bean patty with hot peppers, passion fruit, and some unidentified meat (they don't have an English name for it?) wrapped in pork fat. The presentation on this dish was awesome, they put a bunch of twigs and tied them together to make sort of a screen to cover the dish. Each thing was in it's own little plate on the bigger plate. I don't think there is ever a reason to mess with roe, I don't like the fact that the roe was sitting in an orange juice like sauce. It totally killed the roe for me. The Abalone sushi was what I would call a mini-sushi. It was probably about 1/3 the size of a normal sushi roll, the piece of mint between the abalone and the rice was a surprise and totally over powered the taste of the abalone. Cup of passion fruit is just that. The deep fried bean patty was really good, certainly the best thing on this plate, it was deep fried in a corn meal batter and the peppers made it have a nice spice. The unidentified meat will continue to be so, I could not tell what it was when I ate it, because it was wrapped in pork fat it tasted like pork fat. If you're looking at the picture the meat is that thing on the toothpick and no, that's not a giant tooth pick.
Course 3 - Crab and Potato Soup. This soup was good, it had two small pieces of crab meat in it and 1 potato. The broth tasted like pea soup so that was an interesting and good combo of crab meat in pea soup. I should have put my hand next to it so you could see the size of that bowl.
Course 4 - Sashimi, 3 pieces of tuna, 2 pieces of eel, 2 pieces of mackerel and 2 pieces of apple served with a Soy stomach mixed with the stomach of an Eel. When they brought this out I said, a bowl of ice? After looking closer and past the garnish I saw the fish, see the apple slices? Now look at how big the fish pieces are next to it. It's also the first and only place I've ever seen leave the skin on tuna sashimi. The eel stomach soy sauce was very good but this is the point where I was really getting upset at the portion sizes. If you took all 3 pieces of tuna and put them together they would not be as big as 1 piece of tuna sashimi at a normal restaurant.
Course 5 - Boiled Turnip. Take a turnip, cut into 6 pieces and then boil it in sugary water. Now take 2 pieces and put it in a bowl and call it a course. It was seriously 1/3 of a turnip in some sugary water. At this point I was getting a bit upset with the food but I knew that Kobe Beef was coming up..
Course 6 - Kobe Beef with a carmelized tomato, zucchini, turnip, broccoli, potato and mushroom. The Kobe beef was awesome as expected, it was cooked in a thick tomato/soy sauce. The caramelized tomato on the top might have been the best thing in the entire dinner (aside from the kobe beef). On the side it had 1 mushroom cap, 1/6 of a small potato (the kind I use in my chili), 1 twig head of broccoli, a slice of turnip and a piece of zucchini that was just as big as the piece of potato.
Course 7 - Mushroom rice and Miso soup. The mushroom rice was nice but the miso soup in my hotel is better than their miso soup. This also came with some pickled stuffs..
Course 8 - Walnut Ice Cream and some dry yellow cake. Umm, I seriously have no idea what that cake was, it was so dry.. The Ice Cream was great.
When I got out of dinner I saw that there was also a small La Rochelle Bistro in the same building, I almost went in for a snack but decided against it. After dinner I walked along the ocean and past 'Tokyo Big View" which is a really cool looking building that you can go up into a see the Tokyo skyline and ocean, unfortunately it was closed so I just got to take cool pictures of the outside of the building. I have to tell you how odd it is to have the pacific ocean on your east. Anyway, I walked along the ocean to the big ferris wheel that is in my pictures. Next to the ferris wheel Toyota had a 2 story show room. I went in and looked around in their new hybrid section, they have 5-6 hybrids out right now in Japan. I took a picture of the Mark X which is a hatchback with three rows of seats.
Went back over to Shinjuku and met up with some co-workers for a few drinks. I ended up having some tuna sashimi and two beers. We hung out for a few hours and chatted, it was a very good time.
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Going to lunch with some of my co-workers again today and tonight is Kobe's restaurant. I am hoping that finishing off my Japan Iron Chef tour with Iron Chef Italian is a good idea. I do love Italian food and he supposed to be one of the best Italian chefs in the world so I am hopeful that tonight will be a solid rebound after yesterday.
Wednesday, October 29, 2008
Diversion Blog
I am really bored at work so I caught up on a bunch of emails from my Metrocast. Here a few things I wanted to share..
1 - Adventuring Party Politics: The Campaign is Getting Ugly
2 -
1 - Adventuring Party Politics: The Campaign is Getting Ugly
2 -
News from the US
I was reading in the newspaper today that GM and Chrysler both are going bankrupt. Apparently George Bush wants them to merge into one company and is going to have the US government lend them 25 million dollars so they can merge the companies and get out of bankruptcy! I think it's amazing that our government is now pushing business towards monopolies!
In other news - Game 5 of the World Series was suspended due to rain the other night which means that they will replay the game from the point it is on Wednesday they are saying. Games get suspended all the time so why is this news? It is the first game in the history of the World Series to be rained out, cancelled or suspended. I find it hard to believe that no World Series game was ever rained out.
In other news - The Mets posted new pics of Citi-Field. Here is a really good shot of what the stadium will look like..
Tonight is Iron Chef Koumei Nakamura's restaurant.
In other news - Game 5 of the World Series was suspended due to rain the other night which means that they will replay the game from the point it is on Wednesday they are saying. Games get suspended all the time so why is this news? It is the first game in the history of the World Series to be rained out, cancelled or suspended. I find it hard to believe that no World Series game was ever rained out.
In other news - The Mets posted new pics of Citi-Field. Here is a really good shot of what the stadium will look like..
Tonight is Iron Chef Koumei Nakamura's restaurant.
10-28 Pictures posted..
I was thinking how lame it would be to read tonight's blog and not be able to see the dishes as I talked about them.. So, I posted them..
Heading to bed.. Goodnight all..
Heading to bed.. Goodnight all..
King of Iron Chef, in-deed!
Hiroyuki Sakai won the Iron Chef tournament and was named King of Iron Chefs. I was very upset when that happened because he beat my favorite Iron Chef Chen Kenichi, now I think I know why... Both Chen-san and Sakai-san are masters of their cuisine, I would say Chen's food is the best Chinese food I've ever had and Sakai's food is the best French food I've ever had. I think the difference is that French food has more depth to the flavors then Chinese food.
In Japanese you would put "-san" on the family name to show a sign of respect. One thing I find interesting is that Chen Kenichi is the only Iron Chef to use the Japanese writing of his name. Japanese (and Chinese) names are always listed last name first so on the paperwork here it is Sakai Hiroyuki but in American it is reversed with first name first. Chen Kenichi is listed that way everywhere...
Anyway, back to the point.. I got to La Rochelle wearing my Mets jacket and the head waiter say it and asked if I was from NY. When I said yes he told me that Sakai's son just graduated from Cornell University and was expected back tonight. He then told me to come with him into the bar for a minute before going into the dinning area, once in the bar he told me he was going to get Sakai so he could come talk to me. :D
The bar area was beautiful, the restaurant is on the 32nd floor of an office building and the view of the city was amazing. The bar was red and had glowing lights shining on it making it look almost neon. Behind the bar they had a glass bar with the bottles on it, that bar had blue neon lights under it. Ordered a glass of wine and they brought me some olives and pastry puffs while they went to get Sakai from the kitchen! He came out with an interpreter but we didn't use him, Sakai speaks English but I guess the interpreter was there in case people couldn't understand his accent. We talked for a few minutes about NY and why I was in Japan, I mentioned how I travel for work and that I was going to Australia in Feb. He and Chen are going to Australia to hold a cooking seminar soon, that would be awesome to go to but it's sooner than Feb. After we talked I got my picture with him, he really is an awesome person and is as friendly as he appears to be.
So, onto the dinning area. The dinning floor manager (Vahid Pishkar) is from Iran and has lived in Tokyo for 20 years, as part of his job at La Rochelle he went to Paris for one year and had to learn basic French. He also speaks fluent Japanese, Iranian and English although he didn't know the English for that blue stuff that grows in Blue Cheese, I told him mold and showed how to spell it..
He came and chatted with me between the first few courses, we talked about George Bush, Barak Obama, 9/11, my job, my travels, his travels, our communal dinners, the Mets, American Baseball, Japanese ballplayers and other various topics.. After a few courses he told me that Sakai's son had just arrived and would like to come to talk to me.. Sakai Shingo graduated from Cornell University in the summer and was planning to stay in America and open a restaurant there but his dad asked him to come home so like any Japanese person would do he came home. We talked about NYC, Upstate NY and cold snowy winters. Apparently it does snow in Japan but nothing like in Upstate NY, he had many days where he ended up sleeping in the library because he didn't want to walk back to his dorm.
So, now in between each course I had either Shingo or Vahid coming over and chatting with me. It was awesome, everyone there was amazing. Shingo actually gave me a few pointers on how to cook foie gras and told me that I really should get ahold of some burdock for cooking for one of our communal dinners, he even told me how to cook it so it is not too tough. Speaking of foie gras, we know it's liver but what I didn't know is there are two kinds. The most common and easier to cook is duck liver, the better but much harder to cook is wild goose. Here is the bad thing about it.. There are "farms" that grow ducks for foie gras, those "farms" lock the duck in a very small cage ala Veal and feed it nothing but corn, ducks can't digest corn correctly so it causes the liver to grow to unusual size and they end up dying of liver failure. The liver that it produces is a tough foie gras which means you can over cook it with no fear of screwing it up. Wild goose as the name suggests are not caged animals, they are fed corn but not enough to cause liver failure which means that when the animals are killed the liver is still healthy. The healthy liver is very hard to cook, the trick is to only pan fry each side for a very short amount of time and then put it in the oven covered with some kind of sauce (he recommends something sweet like black truffle sauce) so that the liver almost steams from the sauce. Again, you have to only cook it for a very short amount of time or else it will get overcooked and be very chewy.
What else did I learn tonight? Japanese written language is a bastardization of Chinese and Latin. There are three different Japanese written character sets. The oldest is Kanji which was based on ancient Chinese. Kanji can't be pronounced, they are symbols to project meaning and based on the placement and arrangement they mean something different. You can't just take a Kanji symbol and translate it to a word or words, you need to translate the whole sentence in order to gain it's meaning. The second written character set is Katakana which was also based on Chinese. Katakana came into being when new things were introduced into the Japanese culture such as tomatoes, forks and spoons. The Katakana is usually a one symbol for one word association, for example there is a katakana symbol that literally means tomato. The third and final is Romaji, Romaji a bastardization of latin letters and is pronounceable. They have letters for sounds so Shinjuku would be three romaji letters, one for shin one for ju and one for ku. With the advent of phones and text messages Japanese people are going away from all three of these methods and instead using western spelling of their words which is why in the last 5 years alot of signs have been changing over to english letters. Six years ago Japan was very much the Japan from Lost in Translation with no understandable signs. Because cell phones cant text Kanji, Katakana or Romaji they needed to put road signs and such in a written character set that people could text.
The concern amongst traditionalists is that Kanji, Katakana and Romaji are all going to be a thing of the past in another 10 years or so and that everything in Japanese will be written out with English characters. Iron Chef Michiba is one of these people which is why everything in his restaurant is written only in Kanji, he apparently won't even use Katakana or Romji because he feels they are the first step in Japan losing it's culture.
Anyway, enough lessons.. Back to dinner.. How good is Sakai's food? When Iron Chef Masahiko Kobe got married they had their wedding and reception at La Rochelle.
Without further ado I bring to you a course by course description. :) The names in " " are the way they are listed on the menu.
Course 1 - "Fruit tomale inside crab with 3 kinds of fresh clams" This dish had a shrimp sitting atop of a tomato, inside the tomato was crab and a sauce made of three different types of clams. The sauce on the outside was a clam/pesto which was amazing!
Course 2 - "Foiegras saute with truffle sauce" Do I really need to say anything about this? Holy shit was it good! It was a large piece of wild goose foie gras over a crispy potato with white asparagus and black truffle sauce!
Course 3 - "Organic vegetable salad with consomme jelle" This was a salad of very fresh vegetables, it included zucchini, corn, asparagus and a few others, it was all wrapped in a cucumber and was on top of a honey sauce. Very nice fresh course to balance out the richness of the foie gras.
Course 4 - "Hokkaido Ezo abalone with hard clam sauce gratin" OK, I'm over my abalone hating officially! There are three different types of abalone, there is Japanese, Australian and American. The Japanese is soft yet firm, it has a little bit of a "crunch" when you bite it but not much of one. The Australian one has no "crunch" and is the softest of them. The American one tends to be "crunchier" and a little harder. There is no definitive answer as to which one is the best, Sakai will only use the Japanese one. Morimoto disagrees and prefers to use the American one because he likes the crunch.. Huh, learn something new every day.. Or in this case lots of things. Oh, my opinion of this? Amazing, the gratin was to die for, I ended up putting the rest of it on my bread! The abalone;s texture was like eating squid, but had more taste than squid does.
Course 5 - "soup" This was a soup made of burdock and some bullion. It was very good and supposedly helps alot with digestion. It tasted alot like Hikama, very earthy.
Course 6 - "Fresh fish from south of Japan" This was a langosteen wrapped in sole cooked in an lobster and crab sauce. It came with a few veggies. This was probably the most disappointing dish, it was great but not as good as the others. I think the lobster and crab sauce reminded me to much of a lobster bisque and that didn't fit right with langosteen and sole.
Course 7 - This was not listed on the menu. After your meal and before dessert they brought a cheese cart by, anything you got off this cart was extra. I got some Sheep Milk Blue Cheese, some beer soaked cheese and some hard cheddar. The cheddar was very good as you would expect, the beer soaked cheese was amazing but the blue cheese stole the show. The blue cheese was so fresh that if you cut a piece and left it on a plate for a few hours the mold would be grown onto the plate! Vahid recommended I eat some with honey and black pepper and holy crap it was so good, I would have never thought of cheese with honey and black pepper but trust me it's worth trying.
Course 8 - "Grand dessert" This was a caramelized peach in a peach and honey sauce with a scoop of vanilla ice cream. Yummm..
Course 9 - "cafe" They brought out the coffee with a small plate, the plate had two pieces of home made chocolate, two pieces of sugar candy and one piece of marshmallow. The chocolate was still warm and gooey inside so when they say they made it fresh they meant they JUST made it fresh!
Shall we play the guessing game? I will tell you this one was more than yesterday's meal, but since nobody guessed at that one you don't really have a frame of reference do you.. Come on, I want some guesses.. :)
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Two other things I wanted to share.. One - There was an opera singer in the lobby of my job today during lunch.. She was good, I listened to one song. Two - I went into a Head Shop on the way to La Rochelle today, everything in there was in English. It was like walking into a normal American Head Shop.
Crap it's late.. I am going to get dressed for bed and then start resizing pics. I might not get them up tonight. If not I will get them first thing in the morning..
In Japanese you would put "-san" on the family name to show a sign of respect. One thing I find interesting is that Chen Kenichi is the only Iron Chef to use the Japanese writing of his name. Japanese (and Chinese) names are always listed last name first so on the paperwork here it is Sakai Hiroyuki but in American it is reversed with first name first. Chen Kenichi is listed that way everywhere...
Anyway, back to the point.. I got to La Rochelle wearing my Mets jacket and the head waiter say it and asked if I was from NY. When I said yes he told me that Sakai's son just graduated from Cornell University and was expected back tonight. He then told me to come with him into the bar for a minute before going into the dinning area, once in the bar he told me he was going to get Sakai so he could come talk to me. :D
The bar area was beautiful, the restaurant is on the 32nd floor of an office building and the view of the city was amazing. The bar was red and had glowing lights shining on it making it look almost neon. Behind the bar they had a glass bar with the bottles on it, that bar had blue neon lights under it. Ordered a glass of wine and they brought me some olives and pastry puffs while they went to get Sakai from the kitchen! He came out with an interpreter but we didn't use him, Sakai speaks English but I guess the interpreter was there in case people couldn't understand his accent. We talked for a few minutes about NY and why I was in Japan, I mentioned how I travel for work and that I was going to Australia in Feb. He and Chen are going to Australia to hold a cooking seminar soon, that would be awesome to go to but it's sooner than Feb. After we talked I got my picture with him, he really is an awesome person and is as friendly as he appears to be.
So, onto the dinning area. The dinning floor manager (Vahid Pishkar) is from Iran and has lived in Tokyo for 20 years, as part of his job at La Rochelle he went to Paris for one year and had to learn basic French. He also speaks fluent Japanese, Iranian and English although he didn't know the English for that blue stuff that grows in Blue Cheese, I told him mold and showed how to spell it..
He came and chatted with me between the first few courses, we talked about George Bush, Barak Obama, 9/11, my job, my travels, his travels, our communal dinners, the Mets, American Baseball, Japanese ballplayers and other various topics.. After a few courses he told me that Sakai's son had just arrived and would like to come to talk to me.. Sakai Shingo graduated from Cornell University in the summer and was planning to stay in America and open a restaurant there but his dad asked him to come home so like any Japanese person would do he came home. We talked about NYC, Upstate NY and cold snowy winters. Apparently it does snow in Japan but nothing like in Upstate NY, he had many days where he ended up sleeping in the library because he didn't want to walk back to his dorm.
So, now in between each course I had either Shingo or Vahid coming over and chatting with me. It was awesome, everyone there was amazing. Shingo actually gave me a few pointers on how to cook foie gras and told me that I really should get ahold of some burdock for cooking for one of our communal dinners, he even told me how to cook it so it is not too tough. Speaking of foie gras, we know it's liver but what I didn't know is there are two kinds. The most common and easier to cook is duck liver, the better but much harder to cook is wild goose. Here is the bad thing about it.. There are "farms" that grow ducks for foie gras, those "farms" lock the duck in a very small cage ala Veal and feed it nothing but corn, ducks can't digest corn correctly so it causes the liver to grow to unusual size and they end up dying of liver failure. The liver that it produces is a tough foie gras which means you can over cook it with no fear of screwing it up. Wild goose as the name suggests are not caged animals, they are fed corn but not enough to cause liver failure which means that when the animals are killed the liver is still healthy. The healthy liver is very hard to cook, the trick is to only pan fry each side for a very short amount of time and then put it in the oven covered with some kind of sauce (he recommends something sweet like black truffle sauce) so that the liver almost steams from the sauce. Again, you have to only cook it for a very short amount of time or else it will get overcooked and be very chewy.
What else did I learn tonight? Japanese written language is a bastardization of Chinese and Latin. There are three different Japanese written character sets. The oldest is Kanji which was based on ancient Chinese. Kanji can't be pronounced, they are symbols to project meaning and based on the placement and arrangement they mean something different. You can't just take a Kanji symbol and translate it to a word or words, you need to translate the whole sentence in order to gain it's meaning. The second written character set is Katakana which was also based on Chinese. Katakana came into being when new things were introduced into the Japanese culture such as tomatoes, forks and spoons. The Katakana is usually a one symbol for one word association, for example there is a katakana symbol that literally means tomato. The third and final is Romaji, Romaji a bastardization of latin letters and is pronounceable. They have letters for sounds so Shinjuku would be three romaji letters, one for shin one for ju and one for ku. With the advent of phones and text messages Japanese people are going away from all three of these methods and instead using western spelling of their words which is why in the last 5 years alot of signs have been changing over to english letters. Six years ago Japan was very much the Japan from Lost in Translation with no understandable signs. Because cell phones cant text Kanji, Katakana or Romaji they needed to put road signs and such in a written character set that people could text.
The concern amongst traditionalists is that Kanji, Katakana and Romaji are all going to be a thing of the past in another 10 years or so and that everything in Japanese will be written out with English characters. Iron Chef Michiba is one of these people which is why everything in his restaurant is written only in Kanji, he apparently won't even use Katakana or Romji because he feels they are the first step in Japan losing it's culture.
Anyway, enough lessons.. Back to dinner.. How good is Sakai's food? When Iron Chef Masahiko Kobe got married they had their wedding and reception at La Rochelle.
Without further ado I bring to you a course by course description. :) The names in " " are the way they are listed on the menu.
Course 1 - "Fruit tomale inside crab with 3 kinds of fresh clams" This dish had a shrimp sitting atop of a tomato, inside the tomato was crab and a sauce made of three different types of clams. The sauce on the outside was a clam/pesto which was amazing!
Course 2 - "Foiegras saute with truffle sauce" Do I really need to say anything about this? Holy shit was it good! It was a large piece of wild goose foie gras over a crispy potato with white asparagus and black truffle sauce!
Course 3 - "Organic vegetable salad with consomme jelle" This was a salad of very fresh vegetables, it included zucchini, corn, asparagus and a few others, it was all wrapped in a cucumber and was on top of a honey sauce. Very nice fresh course to balance out the richness of the foie gras.
Course 4 - "Hokkaido Ezo abalone with hard clam sauce gratin" OK, I'm over my abalone hating officially! There are three different types of abalone, there is Japanese, Australian and American. The Japanese is soft yet firm, it has a little bit of a "crunch" when you bite it but not much of one. The Australian one has no "crunch" and is the softest of them. The American one tends to be "crunchier" and a little harder. There is no definitive answer as to which one is the best, Sakai will only use the Japanese one. Morimoto disagrees and prefers to use the American one because he likes the crunch.. Huh, learn something new every day.. Or in this case lots of things. Oh, my opinion of this? Amazing, the gratin was to die for, I ended up putting the rest of it on my bread! The abalone;s texture was like eating squid, but had more taste than squid does.
Course 5 - "soup" This was a soup made of burdock and some bullion. It was very good and supposedly helps alot with digestion. It tasted alot like Hikama, very earthy.
Course 6 - "Fresh fish from south of Japan" This was a langosteen wrapped in sole cooked in an lobster and crab sauce. It came with a few veggies. This was probably the most disappointing dish, it was great but not as good as the others. I think the lobster and crab sauce reminded me to much of a lobster bisque and that didn't fit right with langosteen and sole.
Course 7 - This was not listed on the menu. After your meal and before dessert they brought a cheese cart by, anything you got off this cart was extra. I got some Sheep Milk Blue Cheese, some beer soaked cheese and some hard cheddar. The cheddar was very good as you would expect, the beer soaked cheese was amazing but the blue cheese stole the show. The blue cheese was so fresh that if you cut a piece and left it on a plate for a few hours the mold would be grown onto the plate! Vahid recommended I eat some with honey and black pepper and holy crap it was so good, I would have never thought of cheese with honey and black pepper but trust me it's worth trying.
Course 8 - "Grand dessert" This was a caramelized peach in a peach and honey sauce with a scoop of vanilla ice cream. Yummm..
Course 9 - "cafe" They brought out the coffee with a small plate, the plate had two pieces of home made chocolate, two pieces of sugar candy and one piece of marshmallow. The chocolate was still warm and gooey inside so when they say they made it fresh they meant they JUST made it fresh!
Shall we play the guessing game? I will tell you this one was more than yesterday's meal, but since nobody guessed at that one you don't really have a frame of reference do you.. Come on, I want some guesses.. :)
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Two other things I wanted to share.. One - There was an opera singer in the lobby of my job today during lunch.. She was good, I listened to one song. Two - I went into a Head Shop on the way to La Rochelle today, everything in there was in English. It was like walking into a normal American Head Shop.
Crap it's late.. I am going to get dressed for bed and then start resizing pics. I might not get them up tonight. If not I will get them first thing in the morning..
Tuesday, October 28, 2008
Return of the Breakfast
I got up really early this morning and went down to breakfast.. Today's breakfast was a bit different because I am getting sick of this whole fish thing.. Oh, wait.. Who's blog is this? But seriously today the salmon was a little under cooked so the skin was a bit less crunchy than I like but the mackerel was good. I also had noodles, a tofu & veggie dumpling, egg, pickled "green vegetable" (forgot what that was, but it was tasty), brown seaweed with mushrooms, salt pollack, chili rubbed berries and miso soup.
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I keep meaning to post the list of Yen coins/bills.
Coins are:
1 Yen
5 Yen
10 Yen
20 Yen
50 Yen
100 Yen
500 Yen
Bills are:
1000 Yen
5000 Yen
10000 Yen
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I saw a really neat statue today, it was of a naked man holding up a baby to the sky. There are plenty of statues of women with babies, but I can't think of any statues with men holding babies.. I took a picture of it and will post it later tonight..
---Diversion of the Day
---Thought of the Day
I was walking to work today (across the street) and I started to think about how people in cities almost never get direct sunlight. Sure, the sun is shining in the sky but it's always blocked by some building so you never get that direct sunshine.
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I keep meaning to post the list of Yen coins/bills.
Coins are:
1 Yen
5 Yen
10 Yen
20 Yen
50 Yen
100 Yen
500 Yen
Bills are:
1000 Yen
5000 Yen
10000 Yen
----
I saw a really neat statue today, it was of a naked man holding up a baby to the sky. There are plenty of statues of women with babies, but I can't think of any statues with men holding babies.. I took a picture of it and will post it later tonight..
---Diversion of the Day
---Thought of the Day
I was walking to work today (across the street) and I started to think about how people in cities almost never get direct sunlight. Sure, the sun is shining in the sky but it's always blocked by some building so you never get that direct sunshine.
Monday, October 27, 2008
Rokusaburo Michiba - The 1st Iron Chef Japanese
Tonight I went to Michiba's restaurant Rokusan-Tei. First of all I have to thank Rob and Toni for asking me why I wasn't going to the other Iron Chef's restaurants. I'm also glad I decided to do the tour.. This was the most expensive of the restaurants, after I list what I ate you should guess how much you think it is.. Whoever gets closest gets a prize, extra points if you can guess in Yen.. :D
I arrived at the restaurant and had the manager ask me if there was anything I wouldn't eat. I said no. I was sat and the waitress asked me the same thing, when I said no she added "you know this is real traditional style Japanese food", yes I did thank you.. :D
There is NO menu here, well no ala carte menu anyway. They have one set menu that has two choices, that set menu changes every month. Think of the balls a restaurant has to have to have one menu for the entire month! Choices were (Noodles or Rice) and (Kobe Beef or Fish dish), that's it, nothing else, seriously! By the way Ginza is apparently why people from America freak out about Japan, there was not a single English sign on any buildings, the only non Kanji signs were the road signs.. Not a problem because I had a google map with Kanji written on it so I was able to find the street and restaurant.
So, back to the balls.. This restaurant deserves those balls.. I have never had Japanese food of such quality, sorry Morimoto you having nothing on Michiba. I'm having a hard time believing the reviews that say Nakamura's restaurant is better, but I will see...
So, onto dinner..
Course one - In the middle of the plate is a tomato in jello, going clockwise starting above the tomato is: Fried Okra, Squid Sashimi in a sweet sauce, fried cheese, boiled okra, mackerel in a soy teriyaki sauce, mushroom sushi. The highlight on this dish had to be the tomato with the cheese a close second.
Course two - Michiba's famous soup with a scalloped scallop.. :) They brought the ball over and the waitress started to walk away and turned to ask if I needed a spoon... NO, what kind of self respecting Japanese person would eat soup with a spoon.. Oh, wait.. I'm not Japanese.. :P No spoon here, soup is to be eaten with chopsticks, trust me it is..
Course three - Squid, White Fish and Yellow Tail sashimi (3 pieces each) with real wasabi. Nice thick cuts, very good.
Course four - Eggplant with Bacon cooked in a caper sauce. Yes Jessie I know.. I ate it and you know what, it was great! Next time you cook eggplant with bacon and capers I will be more than happy to try it.. Seriously though, it was amazing, the capers really balanced well with the bacon and the eggplant added a certain something that really kicked it over the top.
Course Five - Shrimp soup with lotus flower pancakes and other herbs. This dish was a nice seafood broth and the lotus flower pancakes had a real interesting texture to them. They brought over some spicy sauce to add to it if I felt the flavor was not strong enough. I didn't add any because I really liked the seafood broth.
Course Six - Steamed potatoes with a Tofu Sesame sauce. The tofu sauce was frikkin great, I would have eaten anything in that sauce. Seriously I wish I knew how they made it because I would make it all the time..
Course Seven - This was the first choice course, I could have gotten either Kobe Beef or another fish course. I chose the Kobe Beef. It came on a little grill with some veggies. The two sauces are ginger sauce and mustard sauce. The ginger sauce is for the meat and the mustard sauce is for the veggies. I don't really think I need to say how much I loved this course right? I mean Kobe Beef in Japan, does life get any better?
Course Eight - Miso Soup. Nothing really special about it, it was tasty and had lots of onions and mushrooms in it. I was actually waiting for it to cool down when course nine finished cooking.
Course Nine - Steamed Rice and Mushrooms with pickles, dicon radish and some other pickled thing (forgot what it was now, if I remember I will edit this). The Rice was brought over in a bowl a few courses ago and left on the table to steam. When the fire went out it was done so they uncovered it and served it while I was waiting on my Miso Soup to cool. The Rice was normal rice but the mushrooms were very nice.
Course Ten - Dessert.. Finally.. The dish on the left is a chocolate cake with Tapioca on it. It was amazing, such rich cake and thankfully it was small. If it was big it would have been overload. The dish on the right is a custard with fruits, very cold and very refreshing to end the meal.
Drinks - I had two glasses of wine and a glass of green tea.
After the meal the manager gave me a wall hanging off Michiba's saying "I am a fish and cooking is my water", a Michiba post card and a hankerchief.
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After dinner I walked to the Tokyo Tower and took some really nice pictures, it really was pretty. They had a few spots you could stand on glass and look down at the street, it was neat to see everything below you but the pics of that came out like crap. They had a bar at the top of the tower as well if you wanted to have a drink. I just looked around a bunch, took pics and headed out. Didn't feel like having a drink because I was still pretty full.
Heading to bed.. Send me your price guesses.. To give you some reference, the meal at Chen's was $85.00
I arrived at the restaurant and had the manager ask me if there was anything I wouldn't eat. I said no. I was sat and the waitress asked me the same thing, when I said no she added "you know this is real traditional style Japanese food", yes I did thank you.. :D
There is NO menu here, well no ala carte menu anyway. They have one set menu that has two choices, that set menu changes every month. Think of the balls a restaurant has to have to have one menu for the entire month! Choices were (Noodles or Rice) and (Kobe Beef or Fish dish), that's it, nothing else, seriously! By the way Ginza is apparently why people from America freak out about Japan, there was not a single English sign on any buildings, the only non Kanji signs were the road signs.. Not a problem because I had a google map with Kanji written on it so I was able to find the street and restaurant.
So, back to the balls.. This restaurant deserves those balls.. I have never had Japanese food of such quality, sorry Morimoto you having nothing on Michiba. I'm having a hard time believing the reviews that say Nakamura's restaurant is better, but I will see...
So, onto dinner..
Course one - In the middle of the plate is a tomato in jello, going clockwise starting above the tomato is: Fried Okra, Squid Sashimi in a sweet sauce, fried cheese, boiled okra, mackerel in a soy teriyaki sauce, mushroom sushi. The highlight on this dish had to be the tomato with the cheese a close second.
Course two - Michiba's famous soup with a scalloped scallop.. :) They brought the ball over and the waitress started to walk away and turned to ask if I needed a spoon... NO, what kind of self respecting Japanese person would eat soup with a spoon.. Oh, wait.. I'm not Japanese.. :P No spoon here, soup is to be eaten with chopsticks, trust me it is..
Course three - Squid, White Fish and Yellow Tail sashimi (3 pieces each) with real wasabi. Nice thick cuts, very good.
Course four - Eggplant with Bacon cooked in a caper sauce. Yes Jessie I know.. I ate it and you know what, it was great! Next time you cook eggplant with bacon and capers I will be more than happy to try it.. Seriously though, it was amazing, the capers really balanced well with the bacon and the eggplant added a certain something that really kicked it over the top.
Course Five - Shrimp soup with lotus flower pancakes and other herbs. This dish was a nice seafood broth and the lotus flower pancakes had a real interesting texture to them. They brought over some spicy sauce to add to it if I felt the flavor was not strong enough. I didn't add any because I really liked the seafood broth.
Course Six - Steamed potatoes with a Tofu Sesame sauce. The tofu sauce was frikkin great, I would have eaten anything in that sauce. Seriously I wish I knew how they made it because I would make it all the time..
Course Seven - This was the first choice course, I could have gotten either Kobe Beef or another fish course. I chose the Kobe Beef. It came on a little grill with some veggies. The two sauces are ginger sauce and mustard sauce. The ginger sauce is for the meat and the mustard sauce is for the veggies. I don't really think I need to say how much I loved this course right? I mean Kobe Beef in Japan, does life get any better?
Course Eight - Miso Soup. Nothing really special about it, it was tasty and had lots of onions and mushrooms in it. I was actually waiting for it to cool down when course nine finished cooking.
Course Nine - Steamed Rice and Mushrooms with pickles, dicon radish and some other pickled thing (forgot what it was now, if I remember I will edit this). The Rice was brought over in a bowl a few courses ago and left on the table to steam. When the fire went out it was done so they uncovered it and served it while I was waiting on my Miso Soup to cool. The Rice was normal rice but the mushrooms were very nice.
Course Ten - Dessert.. Finally.. The dish on the left is a chocolate cake with Tapioca on it. It was amazing, such rich cake and thankfully it was small. If it was big it would have been overload. The dish on the right is a custard with fruits, very cold and very refreshing to end the meal.
Drinks - I had two glasses of wine and a glass of green tea.
After the meal the manager gave me a wall hanging off Michiba's saying "I am a fish and cooking is my water", a Michiba post card and a hankerchief.
----
After dinner I walked to the Tokyo Tower and took some really nice pictures, it really was pretty. They had a few spots you could stand on glass and look down at the street, it was neat to see everything below you but the pics of that came out like crap. They had a bar at the top of the tower as well if you wanted to have a drink. I just looked around a bunch, took pics and headed out. Didn't feel like having a drink because I was still pretty full.
Heading to bed.. Send me your price guesses.. To give you some reference, the meal at Chen's was $85.00
Why are Iron Chefs like Pokémon?
Gotta catch 'em all of course!
I am either really insane or really awesome depending on how you want to look at it..
Tonight I am going to Rokusan-Tei which is Rokusaburo Michiba's restaurant. Michiba was the original Iron Chef Japanese, he had the best percentage of any Iron Chef. He had 32 wins, 5 losses and 1 tie for a 86.5% win ratio. He was also in the most battles of any Iron Chef Japanese with 38 battles over his three years as Iron Chef Japanese.
Tomorrow I am going to La Rochelle which is Hiroyuki Sakai's restaurant. Sakai had the most wins in Iron Chef history with 70 wins, he had 15 losses and 1 tie for a 82.4% winning percentage. As Jessie would like to point out his 70 wins are 3 more than Chen Kenichi, and he was named "King of Iron Chefs" when he beat Chen Kenichi in the final tournament. To end the show they had a final tournament, round 1 was Sakai v. Morimoto and Chen v. Kobe, Chen and Sakai each won round 1 and met in the championship battle. He joined Iron Chef in the second season when original Iron Chef French (Yutaka Ishinabe) left the show.
Wednesday night I go back to Japanese and this time to Koumei Ariake which is Koumei Nakamura's restaurant. Most people, including myself, think of Nakamura as the short lived Iron Chef Japanese gap between Michiba and Morimoto. Nakamura had 24 wins, 11 losses and 1 tie in his 2 years on the show, his 11 losses are the most of any Japanese Iron Chef and he had the lowest winning percentage out of any Iron Chef. Ironically all the reviews I have read online are saying his restaurant is better than Michiba's, which I will be able to have an opinion on now.
Thursday night I finish off my trip with the "the Prince of Pasta", Iron Chef Masahiko Kobe. Kobe was the only Iron Chef Italian, he joined the show for the last two years and saw 23 battles. He lost his first battle which ironically had pasta as the secret ingredient! That loss must have made him try harder because he is the only Iron Chef to never lose consecutive battles and he never lost another battle against an Italian Chef. His final record was 15 wins, 7 losses and 1 tie.
Iron Chef checklist: (Original Iron Chefs in black, ICA Chefs in blue)
-Iron Chef Japanese
--Rokusaburo Michiba - check
--Koumei Nakamura - check
--Masaharu Morimoto - check
--Masaharu Morimoto - check
-Iron Chef Chinese
--Chen Kenichi - check
-Iron Chef French
--Yutaka Ishinabe - no (*)
--Hiroyuki Sakai - check
-Iron Chef Italian
--Masahiko Kobe - check
--Mario Batali - no (Babbo Ristorante and Lupa in NYC)
-Iron Chef Southwestern
--Bobby Flay - no (Mesa Grill and Bolo Bar in NYC)
-Iron Chef Hellasian
--Cat Cora - no (**)
-Iron Chef Mediterranean
--Michael Symon - check
-Iron Chef Austrian/German?
--Wolfgang Puck - check (***)
* - He only had 8 battles and left the show because of the "stressful nature of the program", he could not deal with the time limit and hated to be judged on National TV. Does that sound like an Iron Chef to you?
** - She has no restaurants! Oh, and she is apparently the first and only homosexual Iron Chef. She lives in Santa Barbara CA with her partner and two children. Hellasian is her term of her cooking, it's apparently a merging of Greek and Asian.
*** - He was Iron Chef for four episodes and had one battle which he won.
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I am also planning on going over to the Tokyo Tower tonight after dinner. It's about a mile walk from Rokusan-Tei.
---Diversion of the Day
The mother of a 17-year-old girl was concerned that her daughter was having sex. Worried the girl might become pregnant and adversely impact the family's status, she consulted the family doctor. The doctor told her that teenagers today were very willful and any attempt to stop the girl would probably result in rebellion. He then told her to arrange for her daughter to be put on birth control and until then, talk to her and give her a box of condoms. Later that evening, as her daughter was preparing for a date, the woman told her about the situation and handed her a box of condoms. The girl burst out laughing and reached over to hug her mother saying: 'Oh Mom! You don't have to worry about that! I'm dating Susan!'
---Thought of the Day (yes, it's back)
If someone adds you as a friend on a site like Facebook or Myspace and you ignore/reject their friend request why would they friend request again two days later?
I am either really insane or really awesome depending on how you want to look at it..
Tonight I am going to Rokusan-Tei which is Rokusaburo Michiba's restaurant. Michiba was the original Iron Chef Japanese, he had the best percentage of any Iron Chef. He had 32 wins, 5 losses and 1 tie for a 86.5% win ratio. He was also in the most battles of any Iron Chef Japanese with 38 battles over his three years as Iron Chef Japanese.
Tomorrow I am going to La Rochelle which is Hiroyuki Sakai's restaurant. Sakai had the most wins in Iron Chef history with 70 wins, he had 15 losses and 1 tie for a 82.4% winning percentage. As Jessie would like to point out his 70 wins are 3 more than Chen Kenichi, and he was named "King of Iron Chefs" when he beat Chen Kenichi in the final tournament. To end the show they had a final tournament, round 1 was Sakai v. Morimoto and Chen v. Kobe, Chen and Sakai each won round 1 and met in the championship battle. He joined Iron Chef in the second season when original Iron Chef French (Yutaka Ishinabe) left the show.
Wednesday night I go back to Japanese and this time to Koumei Ariake which is Koumei Nakamura's restaurant. Most people, including myself, think of Nakamura as the short lived Iron Chef Japanese gap between Michiba and Morimoto. Nakamura had 24 wins, 11 losses and 1 tie in his 2 years on the show, his 11 losses are the most of any Japanese Iron Chef and he had the lowest winning percentage out of any Iron Chef. Ironically all the reviews I have read online are saying his restaurant is better than Michiba's, which I will be able to have an opinion on now.
Thursday night I finish off my trip with the "the Prince of Pasta", Iron Chef Masahiko Kobe. Kobe was the only Iron Chef Italian, he joined the show for the last two years and saw 23 battles. He lost his first battle which ironically had pasta as the secret ingredient! That loss must have made him try harder because he is the only Iron Chef to never lose consecutive battles and he never lost another battle against an Italian Chef. His final record was 15 wins, 7 losses and 1 tie.
Iron Chef checklist: (Original Iron Chefs in black, ICA Chefs in blue)
-Iron Chef Japanese
--Rokusaburo Michiba - check
--Koumei Nakamura - check
--Masaharu Morimoto - check
--Masaharu Morimoto - check
-Iron Chef Chinese
--Chen Kenichi - check
-Iron Chef French
--Yutaka Ishinabe - no (*)
--Hiroyuki Sakai - check
-Iron Chef Italian
--Masahiko Kobe - check
--Mario Batali - no (Babbo Ristorante and Lupa in NYC)
-Iron Chef Southwestern
--Bobby Flay - no (Mesa Grill and Bolo Bar in NYC)
-Iron Chef Hellasian
--Cat Cora - no (**)
-Iron Chef Mediterranean
--Michael Symon - check
-Iron Chef Austrian/German?
--Wolfgang Puck - check (***)
* - He only had 8 battles and left the show because of the "stressful nature of the program", he could not deal with the time limit and hated to be judged on National TV. Does that sound like an Iron Chef to you?
** - She has no restaurants! Oh, and she is apparently the first and only homosexual Iron Chef. She lives in Santa Barbara CA with her partner and two children. Hellasian is her term of her cooking, it's apparently a merging of Greek and Asian.
*** - He was Iron Chef for four episodes and had one battle which he won.
----
I am also planning on going over to the Tokyo Tower tonight after dinner. It's about a mile walk from Rokusan-Tei.
---Diversion of the Day
The mother of a 17-year-old girl was concerned that her daughter was having sex. Worried the girl might become pregnant and adversely impact the family's status, she consulted the family doctor. The doctor told her that teenagers today were very willful and any attempt to stop the girl would probably result in rebellion. He then told her to arrange for her daughter to be put on birth control and until then, talk to her and give her a box of condoms. Later that evening, as her daughter was preparing for a date, the woman told her about the situation and handed her a box of condoms. The girl burst out laughing and reached over to hug her mother saying: 'Oh Mom! You don't have to worry about that! I'm dating Susan!'
---Thought of the Day (yes, it's back)
If someone adds you as a friend on a site like Facebook or Myspace and you ignore/reject their friend request why would they friend request again two days later?
Sunday, October 26, 2008
Giants v. Lions in Japan Series
The Giants won so they advance to the Japan Series against the Lions.. That series starts on Nov 1st at 6pm Japan Time. That would be 5am Eastern Time..
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Oh, and I posted new pics from the last three days. Enjoy.. :D
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Oh, and I posted new pics from the last three days. Enjoy.. :D
14 floor mall!?!
I called La Rochelle and have a reservation for Tuesday night which was the only night this week they had a table! I thought about it more and decided I really should go to Michiba's restaurant if I can get reservations. I am in Japan having wonderful food everyday (except in Disney), but I really should have a top notch traditional Japanese meal. I thought about that tonight as I sat and ate sashimi in a dive next to the mall I went to.
Yes, the mall was 14 floors!! One whole floor was HMV, I looked in there for way too long and got frustrated not knowing what I should be and not be buying.. They re-released the entire Queen library again last month when Cosmos Rocks came out over here. They also had all the Blind Guardian re-releases and lots and lots of other stuff. Most CDs were about $20. I looked at DVDs and really wished we had a region free DVD player, there are so many great looking movies over here and they are pretty cheap.. $10-$20 per movie.
I also went into a game store and was floored by the amount of Wii games, I was also floored at the price.. $70-$80 per game! Wii Fit is $280!!! Speaking of price, holy crap clothes are expensive here!!! I was really planning to buy a new pair of dress pants and maybe even a jeans/cargo pant since they all fit over here. The Jeans are $300!!! The cheapest cargos are $150, the cheapest dress pants are also in the $150 range. Any good dress pants are $280+!!! I will not be buying clothes here.. Oh, well.. I guess people here are better off ordering clothes from Singapore, I gotta think even with a plane ticket it would be cheaper if you were buying back to school clothes or something.
I also checked out Tokyo's Central Park tonight, it was neat in the fact that it was on the 2nd story, there was actually a street under it with stores, etc.. Very odd..
----
One thing I forgot to mention, today I was wearing my Totoro shirt and when I was at the museum people kept asking me where I got it.. :) If memory serves it was a gift from one of my loving friends so I have no idea where it came from..
----
OK, it's 8:30 and I'm going to start looking at today's pictures. I will try to get some posted tonight.. :)
Yes, the mall was 14 floors!! One whole floor was HMV, I looked in there for way too long and got frustrated not knowing what I should be and not be buying.. They re-released the entire Queen library again last month when Cosmos Rocks came out over here. They also had all the Blind Guardian re-releases and lots and lots of other stuff. Most CDs were about $20. I looked at DVDs and really wished we had a region free DVD player, there are so many great looking movies over here and they are pretty cheap.. $10-$20 per movie.
I also went into a game store and was floored by the amount of Wii games, I was also floored at the price.. $70-$80 per game! Wii Fit is $280!!! Speaking of price, holy crap clothes are expensive here!!! I was really planning to buy a new pair of dress pants and maybe even a jeans/cargo pant since they all fit over here. The Jeans are $300!!! The cheapest cargos are $150, the cheapest dress pants are also in the $150 range. Any good dress pants are $280+!!! I will not be buying clothes here.. Oh, well.. I guess people here are better off ordering clothes from Singapore, I gotta think even with a plane ticket it would be cheaper if you were buying back to school clothes or something.
I also checked out Tokyo's Central Park tonight, it was neat in the fact that it was on the 2nd story, there was actually a street under it with stores, etc.. Very odd..
----
One thing I forgot to mention, today I was wearing my Totoro shirt and when I was at the museum people kept asking me where I got it.. :) If memory serves it was a gift from one of my loving friends so I have no idea where it came from..
----
OK, it's 8:30 and I'm going to start looking at today's pictures. I will try to get some posted tonight.. :)
Studio Ghibli
This morning started out pretty frustrating.. I went to the train station and could not put more money on my card because they only take cash. I went to the Japanese ATM but my card does not work there so I had to walk to the Citibank which is about 6 blocks from the train station. As I was walking to Citibank I stopped at 7-11 and got a surprise rice ball, I went with red this time and was pleasantly surprised by spicy shrimp and onion. I got back just in time to miss the "Ghibli Express" so I had to take a regular JR Chou line. I actually arrived at the museum about 5 mins after they opened so it all worked out in the end.. :)
I guess the best word to sum up the museum is WOW! I understand why they don't want people taking pictures, if you can't take pictures you have to bring your friends back in order to show them awesomeness! It was 3 floors, the roof walk, a movie theater and a restaurant. You are allowed to take pictures outside including on the roof walk so I have a picture of me with the robot from Lupata.
The bottom floor had this amazing room that had figures on wheels that spun, when the wheel spun a strobe light would light and you would see the figures running, it might have been the best thing in terms of sheer impressiveness. They had one of Totoro and one of Laputa. They also had a short film that ran on loop that was the creation/desctuction of the earth, it was pretty neat how it showed the cycle of the earth being created and destroyed just to be created again.. The movie theater was also on the 2nd floor, but I'll come back to that..
The 2nd floor had a mock up of the animation studio and a partner exhibit which changes each year. This year it was Petit Louvre which had paintings from some of the famous French artists. The animation studio had lots of preliminary drawings of characters from all of his movies. It was interesting to see Porco Rosso as more of a pig, less of a pig etc. They also had original artwork of what Totoro might have looked like, I'm glad they didn't use them because he was more ghost like and not so real. They also had books of storyboards from the new movie that just came out in Japan in July of 2008 called Ponyo on the Cliff by the Sea and storyboards of Porco Rosso. Between the exhibits on this floor they had cells and a preview of Ponyo on the Cliff by the Sea which is a movie about Mer-people. A boy finds a baby mer-person and saves it in a cup of water and the adventure begins.. Looks good, can't wait for it to come to America.
The 4th floor had two stores, one of toys, shirts, cups, mugs, dvds, nick nacks and such. The other had books and original manga. Between the two stores they had the giant plush cat bus that kids got to go on and in. It was pretty cool. From this floor there were two exits, one to a spiral staircase that led to the roof and the giant robot. The other exit led to the restaurant where I had mushroom pasta in a creme sauce and a home made ginger ale. The pasta was served on a Totoro plate that they sell in the gift shop.
I spent too much money.. ;) I will just leave that statement right there for now.. :D
So, back to the movie theater. Miyazaki made 4 new films to be shown exclusively at the museum and they rotate them every month. This month's movie started with a boy getting dropped off at school, he drops his bag off and heads into the classroom to find that seven older boys had taken it over and were making a big ship out of the things you would find in a classroom. The little boy tried to help but they told him he was not able to because he couldn't swim and they didn't want him to drown so he went and watched with the younger kids while they finished building it. After they were done building it they went "to shore" to get supplies, while they were gone he hiked up his pants and walked "through the water" to the ship. When he touched the ship which was not fully formed a chair fell off the side and the whole ship looked like school items again. The older boy came back over and "repaired" the damage as water had begun filling up the ship. Anyway, they loaded the ship up and went out exploring the sea. I'm not going to write up the whole story line here but it was very cute and very fun.
Next month's movie is a new story involving May and the Cat Bus.. I did get a little picture book that they made based on that one so at least we can see the story and pics from it.
----
After the museum I came back and went to the Subaru show room by the hotel. They had a new Exiga there which was kinda cool, but they did not have the electric cars on display. Everyone they made is out on the streets..
Plan for the rest of the night? I would bet you would love for me to say put up pictures.. I'm actually going to the office to call La Rochelle to see if they will let me in tonight. If they do I am going there, if not maybe I'll put up pics..
I guess the best word to sum up the museum is WOW! I understand why they don't want people taking pictures, if you can't take pictures you have to bring your friends back in order to show them awesomeness! It was 3 floors, the roof walk, a movie theater and a restaurant. You are allowed to take pictures outside including on the roof walk so I have a picture of me with the robot from Lupata.
The bottom floor had this amazing room that had figures on wheels that spun, when the wheel spun a strobe light would light and you would see the figures running, it might have been the best thing in terms of sheer impressiveness. They had one of Totoro and one of Laputa. They also had a short film that ran on loop that was the creation/desctuction of the earth, it was pretty neat how it showed the cycle of the earth being created and destroyed just to be created again.. The movie theater was also on the 2nd floor, but I'll come back to that..
The 2nd floor had a mock up of the animation studio and a partner exhibit which changes each year. This year it was Petit Louvre which had paintings from some of the famous French artists. The animation studio had lots of preliminary drawings of characters from all of his movies. It was interesting to see Porco Rosso as more of a pig, less of a pig etc. They also had original artwork of what Totoro might have looked like, I'm glad they didn't use them because he was more ghost like and not so real. They also had books of storyboards from the new movie that just came out in Japan in July of 2008 called Ponyo on the Cliff by the Sea and storyboards of Porco Rosso. Between the exhibits on this floor they had cells and a preview of Ponyo on the Cliff by the Sea which is a movie about Mer-people. A boy finds a baby mer-person and saves it in a cup of water and the adventure begins.. Looks good, can't wait for it to come to America.
The 4th floor had two stores, one of toys, shirts, cups, mugs, dvds, nick nacks and such. The other had books and original manga. Between the two stores they had the giant plush cat bus that kids got to go on and in. It was pretty cool. From this floor there were two exits, one to a spiral staircase that led to the roof and the giant robot. The other exit led to the restaurant where I had mushroom pasta in a creme sauce and a home made ginger ale. The pasta was served on a Totoro plate that they sell in the gift shop.
I spent too much money.. ;) I will just leave that statement right there for now.. :D
So, back to the movie theater. Miyazaki made 4 new films to be shown exclusively at the museum and they rotate them every month. This month's movie started with a boy getting dropped off at school, he drops his bag off and heads into the classroom to find that seven older boys had taken it over and were making a big ship out of the things you would find in a classroom. The little boy tried to help but they told him he was not able to because he couldn't swim and they didn't want him to drown so he went and watched with the younger kids while they finished building it. After they were done building it they went "to shore" to get supplies, while they were gone he hiked up his pants and walked "through the water" to the ship. When he touched the ship which was not fully formed a chair fell off the side and the whole ship looked like school items again. The older boy came back over and "repaired" the damage as water had begun filling up the ship. Anyway, they loaded the ship up and went out exploring the sea. I'm not going to write up the whole story line here but it was very cute and very fun.
Next month's movie is a new story involving May and the Cat Bus.. I did get a little picture book that they made based on that one so at least we can see the story and pics from it.
----
After the museum I came back and went to the Subaru show room by the hotel. They had a new Exiga there which was kinda cool, but they did not have the electric cars on display. Everyone they made is out on the streets..
Plan for the rest of the night? I would bet you would love for me to say put up pictures.. I'm actually going to the office to call La Rochelle to see if they will let me in tonight. If they do I am going there, if not maybe I'll put up pics..
Disney Sea..
Today I went to Tokyo Disney Sea.. I woke up early because I wanted to get there for when the gates opened at 9am. Grabbed the JR Chuo line over to the Tokyo station to connect to the JR Keiyo Line (not to be confused with the Keio trains)... The Tokyo train station is enormous, it's a good ten minute walk from the JR Chuo line to the JR Keiyo line. Got over to Disney around 8:30ish, Disney Tokyo is two parks (Disneyland Tokyo and Disney Sea), Disneyland is pretty much the same as the Magic Kingdom or Disneyland California so I had not intended on going there. They actually do not have a single ride in Disneyland Tokyo that I have not already been on in either CA or FL. In order to get from the JR line to either park you have to take the Monorail. First stop was Disneyland, when I saw the line waiting to get in I nearly crapped myself. Unfortunately the Disneyland line was not as big as the Disney Sea line!! I got off at Disney Sea and went to buy my ticket, Disneyland was sold out today and tomorrow! Disney Sea apparently holds more people because they still had tickets, thankfully..
Disney Sea is broken into multiple "lands" just like other Disney Parks. In each land they have 2 to 4 "Attractions" and there are 7 "lands". Some of the attractions are "DisneySea Electric Railway" and "DisneySea Transit Steamer Line" which bring you from land to land. All in all there are 19 actual attractions and a good number of those only for kids. The lines were amazingly bad! The shortest line I waited in was 70 minutes and that was because I had a "fastpass" for that ride, yes it was 70 minutes after the fastpass spot! The longest one was 3 hours which was for Stormrider. The lines for food were out of fucking control too, I don't know who the hell would wait in a 80 minute line for a fucking sausage sandwich. I walked by the line the first time at noon and saw the sign with the wait time and laughed, I walked back around 1:30 and the line was still 80 minutes. The had "X min wait from here" signs on the fucking drink carts which were normally 20-30 minutes. 20-30 minutes to get a drink! I drank water out of the water fountains. I ended up eating a pork pita and a churro from the Arabian area, I only waited 45 minutes in line. I went back to the sausage line at 3:45 and it was still over an hour wait! If that park was built in Rollercoaster Tycoon (a game for the PC if you didn't know) it would fail due to lines. The crazy thing was that everyone was waiting. I guess the Japanese know how to wait in line! By the way, before I get off the food topic, trying to be wheat free in Disney Sea is impossible. The food here was just like the food in Disney World, it was totally American sandwich style for everything. And yes I am a bit gassy now.. :(
In general I would say that Disney didn't really pay much attention to Japan with this park, once you walked into the park you might as well have been in Florida. All the signs were in English (with Japanese under the English in smaller print). The staff all spoke Japanese but the rides (with the exception of two) all had English narration. When I got back to the JR train I felt like I had returned to Japan. One more food thing I forgot to mention, they had "Mets Grape Soda"! No, I didn't try it.
So the lands were as follows: This is in the order I visited them..
Mediterranean Harbor
Fortress Explorations was the big thing here, plus this is where all the big shows ran. Fortress Explorations was a castle they built that you could walk around, they had rooms from different explorers like Leonardo DiVinci and Michaelangelo. It was pretty cool, plus it had the highest view point so you could see a good view of the park.
Mysterious Island
20,000 Leagues Under the Sea and Journey to the Center of the Earth were here. They are both amazing rides. 20,000 Leagues is not the same as the old crappy one in Disney World, this was one of their story book rides, but it was done real well. Journey to the Center of the Earth was a indoor/outdoor roller coaster which had a pretty nasty drop at the end. The drop was made worse by the fact that you came out into the sun shine as you crested the hill so it blinded you as you went over.
Mermaid Lagoon
This was pretty to look at but everything here was for kiddies.
Arabian Coast
Again, mostly for small kids, but they did have the Sinbad's Storybook Voyage ride which was another story book style ride that used the same boats as It's a Small World. Nice puppets and catchy Japanese song.
Lost River Delta
This was the adult area, it had Indiana Jones Adventure and Raging Spirits. Raging Spirits is the one I had the 70 minute wait on after the fast pass. What happened was I got the fast pass, went to the Sinbad ride and then came back and got in with my fast pass. I was pissed that the fast pass only cut off some of the line. Raging Spirits was a fast rollercoaster that did a loop, it was good but it was no California Screaming. I did not go on Indiana Jones, the line was never under 2 hours when I walked by and I had seen it in Disneyland so I figure no need to waste the 2 hours on that.
Port Discovery
This had two of the coolest, most unique rides, Stormrider and Aquotopia. Stormrider was the 3 hour wait and I have to say it was probably worth it. It was one of those movie rides and the premise was that you were flying these new type weather sensor machines, during the flight your partner ship crashed into you breaking a hole in your roof. Because it was raining they actually rained on you, not a little either. I walked out wishing I had a towel. Another cool thing is that they had windows on the sides and actually had the side view movie playing there too so it really felt like you were in the plane. Very nicely done. In Aquotopia you got in these boats and it ran around a little body of water, the boats however didn't just go straight, they would go straight, turn quickly, spin, go backwards, spin again, turn quickly. Basically they just threw you around for a few minutes and you got wet in a few spots, but not as wet as I did in Stormrider.
American Waterfront
Yeah, seriously.. They had this whole section that was supposed to be Cape Cod which had rocks along the sea which reminded me of the rocks in RI. The only ride here was Tower of Terror which I didn't go on because I had been on it enough in Disneyland and Disney World.
I also took the Electric Railway from Port Discovery to American Waterfront at night. Once I finished riding everything (6pm) I walked around the park again to see it in the dark. The park is very pretty at night and unfortunately my camera stinks in the dark.
I saw the two big shows (Legend of Mythica and BraviSEAmo). Legend of Mythica was cute, it was basically a bunch of floats riding in a circle with Mickey up on a platform in the middle controlling everything. BraviSEAmo was amazing! They had water jets doing cool waves and such, then a boat came out with a female made up of water and she sang in an Anonymous 4 style. She went across the lake and left and then the lake caught on fire and the volcano erupted water and fireworks as a big dragon came out of the water singing a very dark deep song. Once he made his entrance the water lady came back and they appeared to have a battle, everytime he would sing the water would catch on fire and fireworks would explode everywhere. When she sang the water waves would dance and spray water into the air. In the end she won and they two just stood there looking at each other. Neither of their songs were in English or Japanese, they were basically chant type stuff.
All in all I would say Disney Sea was worth it. I probably would not go on a Saturday if you could help it. I bet it would have been MUCH slower during the week, but alas I have to actually work while I'm here..
----
Two cool things... One - I ended up singing the Totoro end credits song with a father and son while waiting in line at Aquatopia. Two - I was able to understand the conversations from time to time and I was able to understand StormRider which was all in Japanese. I would say if I were here for like 3-6 months I would probably say I would be able to speak Japanese with some level of quality.. :)
I did copy pics of my phone.. I am planning to post 39 from today and 31 from yesterday but those will have to wait because it's 12:30 and I have to get up early again to go to Studio Ghibli.. Depending on what time I get back tomorrow I might have time to resize/post them. If not you will have to wait till Monday when I'm bored at work..
---Diversion of the Day
Disney Sea is broken into multiple "lands" just like other Disney Parks. In each land they have 2 to 4 "Attractions" and there are 7 "lands". Some of the attractions are "DisneySea Electric Railway" and "DisneySea Transit Steamer Line" which bring you from land to land. All in all there are 19 actual attractions and a good number of those only for kids. The lines were amazingly bad! The shortest line I waited in was 70 minutes and that was because I had a "fastpass" for that ride, yes it was 70 minutes after the fastpass spot! The longest one was 3 hours which was for Stormrider. The lines for food were out of fucking control too, I don't know who the hell would wait in a 80 minute line for a fucking sausage sandwich. I walked by the line the first time at noon and saw the sign with the wait time and laughed, I walked back around 1:30 and the line was still 80 minutes. The had "X min wait from here" signs on the fucking drink carts which were normally 20-30 minutes. 20-30 minutes to get a drink! I drank water out of the water fountains. I ended up eating a pork pita and a churro from the Arabian area, I only waited 45 minutes in line. I went back to the sausage line at 3:45 and it was still over an hour wait! If that park was built in Rollercoaster Tycoon (a game for the PC if you didn't know) it would fail due to lines. The crazy thing was that everyone was waiting. I guess the Japanese know how to wait in line! By the way, before I get off the food topic, trying to be wheat free in Disney Sea is impossible. The food here was just like the food in Disney World, it was totally American sandwich style for everything. And yes I am a bit gassy now.. :(
In general I would say that Disney didn't really pay much attention to Japan with this park, once you walked into the park you might as well have been in Florida. All the signs were in English (with Japanese under the English in smaller print). The staff all spoke Japanese but the rides (with the exception of two) all had English narration. When I got back to the JR train I felt like I had returned to Japan. One more food thing I forgot to mention, they had "Mets Grape Soda"! No, I didn't try it.
So the lands were as follows: This is in the order I visited them..
Mediterranean Harbor
Fortress Explorations was the big thing here, plus this is where all the big shows ran. Fortress Explorations was a castle they built that you could walk around, they had rooms from different explorers like Leonardo DiVinci and Michaelangelo. It was pretty cool, plus it had the highest view point so you could see a good view of the park.
Mysterious Island
20,000 Leagues Under the Sea and Journey to the Center of the Earth were here. They are both amazing rides. 20,000 Leagues is not the same as the old crappy one in Disney World, this was one of their story book rides, but it was done real well. Journey to the Center of the Earth was a indoor/outdoor roller coaster which had a pretty nasty drop at the end. The drop was made worse by the fact that you came out into the sun shine as you crested the hill so it blinded you as you went over.
Mermaid Lagoon
This was pretty to look at but everything here was for kiddies.
Arabian Coast
Again, mostly for small kids, but they did have the Sinbad's Storybook Voyage ride which was another story book style ride that used the same boats as It's a Small World. Nice puppets and catchy Japanese song.
Lost River Delta
This was the adult area, it had Indiana Jones Adventure and Raging Spirits. Raging Spirits is the one I had the 70 minute wait on after the fast pass. What happened was I got the fast pass, went to the Sinbad ride and then came back and got in with my fast pass. I was pissed that the fast pass only cut off some of the line. Raging Spirits was a fast rollercoaster that did a loop, it was good but it was no California Screaming. I did not go on Indiana Jones, the line was never under 2 hours when I walked by and I had seen it in Disneyland so I figure no need to waste the 2 hours on that.
Port Discovery
This had two of the coolest, most unique rides, Stormrider and Aquotopia. Stormrider was the 3 hour wait and I have to say it was probably worth it. It was one of those movie rides and the premise was that you were flying these new type weather sensor machines, during the flight your partner ship crashed into you breaking a hole in your roof. Because it was raining they actually rained on you, not a little either. I walked out wishing I had a towel. Another cool thing is that they had windows on the sides and actually had the side view movie playing there too so it really felt like you were in the plane. Very nicely done. In Aquotopia you got in these boats and it ran around a little body of water, the boats however didn't just go straight, they would go straight, turn quickly, spin, go backwards, spin again, turn quickly. Basically they just threw you around for a few minutes and you got wet in a few spots, but not as wet as I did in Stormrider.
American Waterfront
Yeah, seriously.. They had this whole section that was supposed to be Cape Cod which had rocks along the sea which reminded me of the rocks in RI. The only ride here was Tower of Terror which I didn't go on because I had been on it enough in Disneyland and Disney World.
I also took the Electric Railway from Port Discovery to American Waterfront at night. Once I finished riding everything (6pm) I walked around the park again to see it in the dark. The park is very pretty at night and unfortunately my camera stinks in the dark.
I saw the two big shows (Legend of Mythica and BraviSEAmo). Legend of Mythica was cute, it was basically a bunch of floats riding in a circle with Mickey up on a platform in the middle controlling everything. BraviSEAmo was amazing! They had water jets doing cool waves and such, then a boat came out with a female made up of water and she sang in an Anonymous 4 style. She went across the lake and left and then the lake caught on fire and the volcano erupted water and fireworks as a big dragon came out of the water singing a very dark deep song. Once he made his entrance the water lady came back and they appeared to have a battle, everytime he would sing the water would catch on fire and fireworks would explode everywhere. When she sang the water waves would dance and spray water into the air. In the end she won and they two just stood there looking at each other. Neither of their songs were in English or Japanese, they were basically chant type stuff.
All in all I would say Disney Sea was worth it. I probably would not go on a Saturday if you could help it. I bet it would have been MUCH slower during the week, but alas I have to actually work while I'm here..
----
Two cool things... One - I ended up singing the Totoro end credits song with a father and son while waiting in line at Aquatopia. Two - I was able to understand the conversations from time to time and I was able to understand StormRider which was all in Japanese. I would say if I were here for like 3-6 months I would probably say I would be able to speak Japanese with some level of quality.. :)
I did copy pics of my phone.. I am planning to post 39 from today and 31 from yesterday but those will have to wait because it's 12:30 and I have to get up early again to go to Studio Ghibli.. Depending on what time I get back tomorrow I might have time to resize/post them. If not you will have to wait till Monday when I'm bored at work..
---Diversion of the Day
See more Sarah Silverman videos at Funny or Die
Saturday, October 25, 2008
They played hard, give 'em both a win!
I just got back from the game.. When I was done teaching I headed over to the Tokyo Dome and went to the Japanese Baseball Hall of Fame. It was very small but had some cool stuff in it, the lady gave me an English guide so I could read about all the exhibits. They had uniforms from all the current teams and a history of Japanese Baseball, the other day I said the Japanese league was formed in 1950, it was reformed in 1950.. They did have baseball before WWII but that ended for obvious reasons. The new league formed in 1950.. When I went to the Lions - Fighters game they used the DH so I assumed all Japanese ball did, I was wrong.. The Pacific League uses the DH and the Central League does not. So tonight I got to see real "National League" style baseball. The HoF also had the World Cup trophy on display as well as the different Japan uniforms for all of their historical national teams.
The Tokyo Dome is wonderful from the outside, they had a roller coaster which was closed due to rain and a few other kid rides around the outside of the stadium.. They have the biggest Baseball Merchandise store in Tokyo attached to the store as well, they actually had hats and shirts from every team, well - almost every team.. They were sold out of Marines shirts.. I did get an Orix Buffaloes Mascot stuffed animal, the Buffaloes have the same mascot they did when they were the Blue Wave.
Inside the Tokyo Dome it just looks old, it was built in 1987 and reminds me of Stade de Olympique but with way smaller seats. My knees were touching the seat in front of me and my arms were up against the arms of the people next to me and all three of us were skinny people. We kinda took turns leaning forward and backward so that we could fit.. What a difference between this and the Seibu Dome.. It was however a real dome.. The field has a ton of foul territory so even though I was closer to the field than I was in Seibu I was further away from the action. They had the same thing where the players ran out through a cone of cheerleaders, the cheerleaders came out in the 5th again and danced on the dugouts. They did the YMCA during the 6th inning. The 7th inning was very short, the mascot came out and shot shirts into the audience. By the way I say the mascot, but there is apparently a family of them.. A mom, dad, son and daughter.. They are very cute mascots.. I just really wish the Giants did not take a name from American Baseball, I feel that they are trying to be like America instead of taking on a new name like the Dragons, Lions, Ham Fighters, Marines, etc...
The more I think about the more I really think American Baseball should take the 6pm start times, it makes the game much more kid friendly.. Especially on weekends..
Right, so the game.. The game was a really good pitchers duel for a little while, the Giants scored 1 in the first, the Dragons jumped out with 3 runs in the 4th, the Giants came back and went ahead 5-3 with a 4 run rally in the 6th. The Giants gave up one in the 8th and brought in their closer to start the 9th. He hit the first batter with the second pitch, the pitch hit the batter in the face and he went down hard, they had to carry him off the field. The pitcher was ejected from the game for the hit batter. The new pitcher allowed that run to score and that would be the final score.. The game went 12 innings and then just ended! Apparently in Japanese Baseball a game is a tie after 12 innings, but you can't have a tie in the Climax Series so both teams get credited with a win!! What kind of horse shit is that? I say keep playing the fucking game... The game ended up being 4 hours 45 minutes. I loved watching this game and was a bit bitter that it ended when it did. Even with the seats being uncomfortable I sat without getting from the 1st pitch all the way till the 11th inning. In the 11th I got some water and moved closer to the field because a bunch of people had left.
Best part of Giants stadium is the food, oh my god... :D Here let me put in another one.. :D I had a crab and roe sashimi box for dinner! For dessert I had a Crepe filled with Banana, Chocolate and Ice Cream.. I thought it was odd that they had both Pepsi and Coke at the game, in Japanese stadiums all the vendors who walk around with stuff are girls because guys want to be served by girls while watching sports.. Keith Hernandez would love that... The beer girls have kegs on their backs and pour your beer right when you order it. The soda girls had trays of cups of soda.
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I was talking to Toni and Rob today on IM and Toni mentioned that I should see if the original Iron Chef Japanese has a restaurant, he does.. It's about a 5 min walk from Sakai's restaurant.. Oh man, what do I do now for next week. I am certainly going to eat at Sakai's, but should I do the full circuit? I could even do the 2nd Iron Chef Japanese as his restaurant is over by Disneyland Tokyo.. Things to think about for sure... Problem is that work won't let me get away with that many expensive meals.
----
I just dropped off my laundry and should have it back tomorrow when I get back from Disney. I am not going to be putting up any pics tonight because I have to get to bed. I took a bunch and need to sort and resize and make the webpage for them. I might be able to do it tomorrow when I get back from Disney.. Disney opens at 8am and closes at 10pm so depending on what there is to do it might be a long day.
---Diversion of the Day
The Tokyo Dome is wonderful from the outside, they had a roller coaster which was closed due to rain and a few other kid rides around the outside of the stadium.. They have the biggest Baseball Merchandise store in Tokyo attached to the store as well, they actually had hats and shirts from every team, well - almost every team.. They were sold out of Marines shirts.. I did get an Orix Buffaloes Mascot stuffed animal, the Buffaloes have the same mascot they did when they were the Blue Wave.
Inside the Tokyo Dome it just looks old, it was built in 1987 and reminds me of Stade de Olympique but with way smaller seats. My knees were touching the seat in front of me and my arms were up against the arms of the people next to me and all three of us were skinny people. We kinda took turns leaning forward and backward so that we could fit.. What a difference between this and the Seibu Dome.. It was however a real dome.. The field has a ton of foul territory so even though I was closer to the field than I was in Seibu I was further away from the action. They had the same thing where the players ran out through a cone of cheerleaders, the cheerleaders came out in the 5th again and danced on the dugouts. They did the YMCA during the 6th inning. The 7th inning was very short, the mascot came out and shot shirts into the audience. By the way I say the mascot, but there is apparently a family of them.. A mom, dad, son and daughter.. They are very cute mascots.. I just really wish the Giants did not take a name from American Baseball, I feel that they are trying to be like America instead of taking on a new name like the Dragons, Lions, Ham Fighters, Marines, etc...
The more I think about the more I really think American Baseball should take the 6pm start times, it makes the game much more kid friendly.. Especially on weekends..
Right, so the game.. The game was a really good pitchers duel for a little while, the Giants scored 1 in the first, the Dragons jumped out with 3 runs in the 4th, the Giants came back and went ahead 5-3 with a 4 run rally in the 6th. The Giants gave up one in the 8th and brought in their closer to start the 9th. He hit the first batter with the second pitch, the pitch hit the batter in the face and he went down hard, they had to carry him off the field. The pitcher was ejected from the game for the hit batter. The new pitcher allowed that run to score and that would be the final score.. The game went 12 innings and then just ended! Apparently in Japanese Baseball a game is a tie after 12 innings, but you can't have a tie in the Climax Series so both teams get credited with a win!! What kind of horse shit is that? I say keep playing the fucking game... The game ended up being 4 hours 45 minutes. I loved watching this game and was a bit bitter that it ended when it did. Even with the seats being uncomfortable I sat without getting from the 1st pitch all the way till the 11th inning. In the 11th I got some water and moved closer to the field because a bunch of people had left.
Best part of Giants stadium is the food, oh my god... :D Here let me put in another one.. :D I had a crab and roe sashimi box for dinner! For dessert I had a Crepe filled with Banana, Chocolate and Ice Cream.. I thought it was odd that they had both Pepsi and Coke at the game, in Japanese stadiums all the vendors who walk around with stuff are girls because guys want to be served by girls while watching sports.. Keith Hernandez would love that... The beer girls have kegs on their backs and pour your beer right when you order it. The soda girls had trays of cups of soda.
----
I was talking to Toni and Rob today on IM and Toni mentioned that I should see if the original Iron Chef Japanese has a restaurant, he does.. It's about a 5 min walk from Sakai's restaurant.. Oh man, what do I do now for next week. I am certainly going to eat at Sakai's, but should I do the full circuit? I could even do the 2nd Iron Chef Japanese as his restaurant is over by Disneyland Tokyo.. Things to think about for sure... Problem is that work won't let me get away with that many expensive meals.
----
I just dropped off my laundry and should have it back tomorrow when I get back from Disney. I am not going to be putting up any pics tonight because I have to get to bed. I took a bunch and need to sort and resize and make the webpage for them. I might be able to do it tomorrow when I get back from Disney.. Disney opens at 8am and closes at 10pm so depending on what there is to do it might be a long day.
---Diversion of the Day
See more Ron Howard videos at Funny or Die
Friday, October 24, 2008
First of May by Jonathan Coulton
Breakfast today was back to the Japanese restaurant.. Today I had salmon, cucumber salad, salt pollock tartar, miso soup, mushrooms, spinach steamed over miso and soba noodles.
By the way - I posted the pictures from last night..
---Diversion of the Day
By the way - I posted the pictures from last night..
---Diversion of the Day
Thursday, October 23, 2008
The Sage of Sichuan Cuisine
Iron Chef Chen Kenichi was called the Sage of Sichuan Cuisine, his father Chen Kemmin is often referred to as the man who invented Sichuan Cuisine. Chen had 67 wins and 22 losses in his six years as Iron Chef Chinese and was the only Iron Chef to be on the show for its entire run. He had a winning streak of 14 straight battles. Chen was often called the Crazy Uncle on Iron Chef and I have to say that Uncle Chen does not disappoint..
Tonight I went to the Shibuya section of Tokyo which is three stops away on the JR Yamanote Line. As the run of Iron Chef was coming to close Hiroyuki Sakai (Iron Chef French) opened a restaurant called La Rochelle in Shibuya and convinced his friend Chen to open up a branch of his famous Szechwan Restaurant a few blocks away. These two restaurants helped to propel Shibuya into an upper class area of Tokyo. Tonight I had myself the pleasure of finally eating Chen's food, granted it was not cooked by him as he was up in his Akasaka location. All of the chefs in this restaurant are personally trained by Chen to make sure they cook up to his standards... They actually have a book at the front desk with all the chefs and their papers signed by Chen.. :) I tried to take a picture but the lady gave me a dirty look so I didn't...
They have four Grand Menus, the cheapest being $85.00 and the most expensive being $215. The difference between them was very small in my opinion. My meal had a Shark Fin soup with crab in it, the next one up replaced the crab with prawn, the next one up replaced it with abalone, the next one replaced it with roe. The only other difference was mine had a pork with red pepper dish, the next one up had chicken, the next one beef, the next one had beef and chicken. I don't think those additions qualified the price difference..
Anyway, enough with the pre-show.. Oh, wait.. I should probably tell you about the journey there.. Well.. It was raining when I got out of work so I grabbed my Mets jacket so I wouldn't get wet, by the time I left the hotel three people stopped me and asked how the Mets did this year.. It was very odd, they would look at me and point to their chest saying 'Mets'o'. I would nod and they would say 'How'd Bob Vay's team do this year?'. I answered 'did ok, they didn't make the playoffs but they finished in 2nd' to which they would reply 'better than his Marines this year'.. Apparently there are a lot of Mets fans here because Bobby Valentine used to be their manager and they all look up to him. I can understand them looking up to him since he is a big part of "fixing" Japanese baseball. This trend didn't stop by the way, people on the train and walking down the street all did the same thing.. :) Makes me glad I brought this jacket, good to hear people talking up about the Mets for a change, most people in America say 'You're a Mets fan, really?'... Where was I... oh Right...
So, Emiu (a girl from work) takes the train over to that section of Tokyo to grab a connecting train home so she asked to show me how to get there, since I had not used the JR lines I accepted her help and was glad for her company since she is pretty cool. We talked a bunch on the train and walk to the restaurant, she said that everyone in the office is so surprised that I have no fear about wandering around the city and that they are all surprised at what I will eat and do. She made a comment that I was not a typical American and that it was good to see someone come over here and enjoy themselves.. :D Funny cause I got a lot of the same comments in Singapore.. Why are Americans afraid of different cultures, don't they know that's what makes the world a great place? So not going to start on that rant...
One of the other things she told me was that La Rochelle has a regular sit down restaurant right around the corner from Szechwan, she is going to show me on the map tomorrow at work and get me it's phone number so I can try and get there next week.. So this means I will have eaten at Morimoto, Chen and Sakai's restaurants. Does this mean I should look up Kobe's restaurant? He always was the lame Iron Chef.. I guess I can figure that out next week, part of me wants to just so I can say I ate there, but part of me just does not care about him..
So, finally... The food revue.. :D The first course was "Chinese Appetizer" which was three small dishes, one was a wok fried fish, one was a spinach roll, and the third was a chicken in spicy peanut sauce. The spinach roll was not spicy at all, it was chopped up spinach wrapped in some dough. It was very tasty, sorta like a spinach and feta taste.. The fish was wok fried with a spicy sichuan sauce, very very good - I probably could have eaten a whole meal of just that. The last one was the Chicken in spicy peanut sauce served over a tomato, the spice came on strong and by the time I was done eating that small portion my lips were tingly.. I love peanut sauce so it was very good..
The next course was "Stir-fried shrimp and vegetables with Yuzu pepper sauce", this was slightly spicier than the chicken and remember that my lips were already a bit tingly. It had four big shrimp (tails removed) over mushrooms, scallions, onions, and some other unknown vegetables. It was great, the bad thing was I was already starting to get full but I couldn't stop myself from eating it all.. At this time I had no sinus problems. You know how some spicy foods kick you in the mouth when you first eat it and how some the spice grows as you eat it. Well this was the kind that kicked you and then grew..
Onto the third course.. "Shark fin soup with crab meat and Yuba".. Shark fin is one of those food items that I was a little intimidated by, I've never really eaten shark fin that was not massively deep fried and I was afraid of how it would taste and feel. Well, I should not have worried, it tastes just like a shark steak but it's got a jelly like consistency which works well in soup. When you see the picture (on the japanpics page) you will see that this soup looks like an egg drop soup, it does indeed look and have the feel of an egg drop soup, it even sort of tastes like one. Well one if you mixed it with the spiciest hot and sour soup you've ever had. I was sweating by the time I finished this one and was getting nervous because each dish was getting progressively spicier and I had two more to go...
Fourth course was "Stir-fried pork with red pepper". This dish should have been called slightly cooked hot fucking peppers with a little bit of pork to balance the heat.. You know those peppers I cut up and put in my chili? This had those kind of peppers but they were whole, when you bit into them it was an explosion of heat in your mouth. Maybe it was because the dishes were getting progressively spicier but I didn't mind the spice in this dish because the flavor was great and the pork was cooked perfectly.
So, the fifth course was a choice.. You could have either "tofu with minced meat & hot chili sauce" or "Chen's original famous spicy noodle".. I went with the noodle since it's one of his signature dishes.. Speaking of Chen's signature things... X-O Hot Bean Paste! I love that stuff and ever since Iron Chef I have added it when I cook Chinese Style dishes. Remember that dish I cooked for Sara's house? I put about one tablespoon of X-O Hot Bean Paste in that and that was for a bunch of tofu and veggies and rice which fed a small army. This noodle soup had a lump about that big in the middle of it which I got to stir around and watch dissolve into this little bowl of soup. What an amazing taste but what an amazing burn. My fear was right that every dish was going to get hotter and this dish was certainly hot, hot, hotter than hell... I don't like spice when there is no flavor behind it, but there is reason this is one of his signature dishes.. It was so good, the waitress brought over a new wet napkin for me to wipe my forehead with... Apparently they do that for most people who eat this dish.. Phew... I was looking for the waiver that I apparently forgot to sign...
Finally dessert... The last course was called "Chinese dessert", it was a chocolate pocky, scoop of blackberry ice cream and two pieces of fruit. The ice cream and fruit helped quell the spice rage.
During this meal I had one glass of wine, one bottle of water and one glass of chinese tea.
----
After dinner I walked around Shibuya and found a LUSH, I went in and took a picture of Tramp soap which has Kanji lettering on the bottle.. I also saw a sign for American Spirit cigarettes which I thought was totally bizarre so I took a picture of that too.
One thing I forgot to mention.. I got a "Suica" card which is their version of the Oyster card so now I'm armed with a real train ticket.. Going to get much use out of next week.. Actually I am going to use the JR line to get to the Tokyo Dome, Disney Sea and Studio Ghibli so I will be a pro come Monday morning..
I'm not going to get around to posting pics tonight.. I have to get to bed... I have a bunch I want to post and I will post them in the morning.. For tonight you just get a blog and I get some sleep..
Tonight I went to the Shibuya section of Tokyo which is three stops away on the JR Yamanote Line. As the run of Iron Chef was coming to close Hiroyuki Sakai (Iron Chef French) opened a restaurant called La Rochelle in Shibuya and convinced his friend Chen to open up a branch of his famous Szechwan Restaurant a few blocks away. These two restaurants helped to propel Shibuya into an upper class area of Tokyo. Tonight I had myself the pleasure of finally eating Chen's food, granted it was not cooked by him as he was up in his Akasaka location. All of the chefs in this restaurant are personally trained by Chen to make sure they cook up to his standards... They actually have a book at the front desk with all the chefs and their papers signed by Chen.. :) I tried to take a picture but the lady gave me a dirty look so I didn't...
They have four Grand Menus, the cheapest being $85.00 and the most expensive being $215. The difference between them was very small in my opinion. My meal had a Shark Fin soup with crab in it, the next one up replaced the crab with prawn, the next one up replaced it with abalone, the next one replaced it with roe. The only other difference was mine had a pork with red pepper dish, the next one up had chicken, the next one beef, the next one had beef and chicken. I don't think those additions qualified the price difference..
Anyway, enough with the pre-show.. Oh, wait.. I should probably tell you about the journey there.. Well.. It was raining when I got out of work so I grabbed my Mets jacket so I wouldn't get wet, by the time I left the hotel three people stopped me and asked how the Mets did this year.. It was very odd, they would look at me and point to their chest saying 'Mets'o'. I would nod and they would say 'How'd Bob Vay's team do this year?'. I answered 'did ok, they didn't make the playoffs but they finished in 2nd' to which they would reply 'better than his Marines this year'.. Apparently there are a lot of Mets fans here because Bobby Valentine used to be their manager and they all look up to him. I can understand them looking up to him since he is a big part of "fixing" Japanese baseball. This trend didn't stop by the way, people on the train and walking down the street all did the same thing.. :) Makes me glad I brought this jacket, good to hear people talking up about the Mets for a change, most people in America say 'You're a Mets fan, really?'... Where was I... oh Right...
So, Emiu (a girl from work) takes the train over to that section of Tokyo to grab a connecting train home so she asked to show me how to get there, since I had not used the JR lines I accepted her help and was glad for her company since she is pretty cool. We talked a bunch on the train and walk to the restaurant, she said that everyone in the office is so surprised that I have no fear about wandering around the city and that they are all surprised at what I will eat and do. She made a comment that I was not a typical American and that it was good to see someone come over here and enjoy themselves.. :D Funny cause I got a lot of the same comments in Singapore.. Why are Americans afraid of different cultures, don't they know that's what makes the world a great place? So not going to start on that rant...
One of the other things she told me was that La Rochelle has a regular sit down restaurant right around the corner from Szechwan, she is going to show me on the map tomorrow at work and get me it's phone number so I can try and get there next week.. So this means I will have eaten at Morimoto, Chen and Sakai's restaurants. Does this mean I should look up Kobe's restaurant? He always was the lame Iron Chef.. I guess I can figure that out next week, part of me wants to just so I can say I ate there, but part of me just does not care about him..
So, finally... The food revue.. :D The first course was "Chinese Appetizer" which was three small dishes, one was a wok fried fish, one was a spinach roll, and the third was a chicken in spicy peanut sauce. The spinach roll was not spicy at all, it was chopped up spinach wrapped in some dough. It was very tasty, sorta like a spinach and feta taste.. The fish was wok fried with a spicy sichuan sauce, very very good - I probably could have eaten a whole meal of just that. The last one was the Chicken in spicy peanut sauce served over a tomato, the spice came on strong and by the time I was done eating that small portion my lips were tingly.. I love peanut sauce so it was very good..
The next course was "Stir-fried shrimp and vegetables with Yuzu pepper sauce", this was slightly spicier than the chicken and remember that my lips were already a bit tingly. It had four big shrimp (tails removed) over mushrooms, scallions, onions, and some other unknown vegetables. It was great, the bad thing was I was already starting to get full but I couldn't stop myself from eating it all.. At this time I had no sinus problems. You know how some spicy foods kick you in the mouth when you first eat it and how some the spice grows as you eat it. Well this was the kind that kicked you and then grew..
Onto the third course.. "Shark fin soup with crab meat and Yuba".. Shark fin is one of those food items that I was a little intimidated by, I've never really eaten shark fin that was not massively deep fried and I was afraid of how it would taste and feel. Well, I should not have worried, it tastes just like a shark steak but it's got a jelly like consistency which works well in soup. When you see the picture (on the japanpics page) you will see that this soup looks like an egg drop soup, it does indeed look and have the feel of an egg drop soup, it even sort of tastes like one. Well one if you mixed it with the spiciest hot and sour soup you've ever had. I was sweating by the time I finished this one and was getting nervous because each dish was getting progressively spicier and I had two more to go...
Fourth course was "Stir-fried pork with red pepper". This dish should have been called slightly cooked hot fucking peppers with a little bit of pork to balance the heat.. You know those peppers I cut up and put in my chili? This had those kind of peppers but they were whole, when you bit into them it was an explosion of heat in your mouth. Maybe it was because the dishes were getting progressively spicier but I didn't mind the spice in this dish because the flavor was great and the pork was cooked perfectly.
So, the fifth course was a choice.. You could have either "tofu with minced meat & hot chili sauce" or "Chen's original famous spicy noodle".. I went with the noodle since it's one of his signature dishes.. Speaking of Chen's signature things... X-O Hot Bean Paste! I love that stuff and ever since Iron Chef I have added it when I cook Chinese Style dishes. Remember that dish I cooked for Sara's house? I put about one tablespoon of X-O Hot Bean Paste in that and that was for a bunch of tofu and veggies and rice which fed a small army. This noodle soup had a lump about that big in the middle of it which I got to stir around and watch dissolve into this little bowl of soup. What an amazing taste but what an amazing burn. My fear was right that every dish was going to get hotter and this dish was certainly hot, hot, hotter than hell... I don't like spice when there is no flavor behind it, but there is reason this is one of his signature dishes.. It was so good, the waitress brought over a new wet napkin for me to wipe my forehead with... Apparently they do that for most people who eat this dish.. Phew... I was looking for the waiver that I apparently forgot to sign...
Finally dessert... The last course was called "Chinese dessert", it was a chocolate pocky, scoop of blackberry ice cream and two pieces of fruit. The ice cream and fruit helped quell the spice rage.
During this meal I had one glass of wine, one bottle of water and one glass of chinese tea.
----
After dinner I walked around Shibuya and found a LUSH, I went in and took a picture of Tramp soap which has Kanji lettering on the bottle.. I also saw a sign for American Spirit cigarettes which I thought was totally bizarre so I took a picture of that too.
One thing I forgot to mention.. I got a "Suica" card which is their version of the Oyster card so now I'm armed with a real train ticket.. Going to get much use out of next week.. Actually I am going to use the JR line to get to the Tokyo Dome, Disney Sea and Studio Ghibli so I will be a pro come Monday morning..
I'm not going to get around to posting pics tonight.. I have to get to bed... I have a bunch I want to post and I will post them in the morning.. For tonight you just get a blog and I get some sleep..
Iron Chef Chinese Chen Kenichi
Chen Kenichi has three restaurants. His original restaurant (Szechwan Restaurant) is in Akasaka. A few years ago (when Iron Chef stopped filming) he opened up a Tokyo branch of Szechwan Restaurant. The Toyko restaurant serves the same food as his Akasaka restaurant, from what I read Chen spends most of his time at the Akasaka location but has been known to show up at the Tokyo one from time to time. He has a third restaurant that (Shisen Hanten) opened even more recently, Shisen Hanten is a very fancy restaurant that only accepts reservations for two or more people and they have a $60.00 minimum order per person at the table. Unless I can find someone to go with me I will not be going to Shisen Hanten.
I do have reservations at Szechwan tonight for 7:30pm. I had a co-worker print me out maps and information and she mentioned an easier way to get there.. I was going to take the Keio Line from Shinjuku to Meidai-mae and switch to another Keio Line from Meidai-mae to Shibuya. She mentioned the Yamanote Line which is a JR line, this line connects Shinjuku to Shibuya directly and is only two stops from one to the other!! This is the way she goes home so the plan is for her to leave with me and guide me over to the restaurant.
By the way, if you want to see a crazy train map check out the JR line map. Remember from the other day that the JR line is the commuter rail and the Keio lines are the subways. Oh yeah bitches, I just linked my own blog in my blog!!
----
I went to the sushi restaurant again today. I got the same thing I got yesterday but today it had TORO as one of the pieces of sushi!! I almost crapped myself... $14.00 for 10 pieces of nigri sushi, 1 maki roll and miso soup. For that $14.00 one of the 10 pieces was toro! Toro in American is more that $14.00 in itself! The ten pieces were salmon, tuna, abalone, egg, roe, squid, eel, toro, mackerel and shrimp. The Abalone was really good by the way, I think it was cut too thick at Nobu.
When I walked into the sushi restaurant today the three chefs and the waitress yelled "welcome" and one of the sushi chefs pointed to a chair for me to sit in. The first two times I went there the waitress met me at the door and walked me to a seat, it felt pretty good to be welcomed like that today.. :D Will be going back tomorrow.. Good sushi everyday for lunch makes me happy.. :D
I do have reservations at Szechwan tonight for 7:30pm. I had a co-worker print me out maps and information and she mentioned an easier way to get there.. I was going to take the Keio Line from Shinjuku to Meidai-mae and switch to another Keio Line from Meidai-mae to Shibuya. She mentioned the Yamanote Line which is a JR line, this line connects Shinjuku to Shibuya directly and is only two stops from one to the other!! This is the way she goes home so the plan is for her to leave with me and guide me over to the restaurant.
By the way, if you want to see a crazy train map check out the JR line map. Remember from the other day that the JR line is the commuter rail and the Keio lines are the subways. Oh yeah bitches, I just linked my own blog in my blog!!
----
I went to the sushi restaurant again today. I got the same thing I got yesterday but today it had TORO as one of the pieces of sushi!! I almost crapped myself... $14.00 for 10 pieces of nigri sushi, 1 maki roll and miso soup. For that $14.00 one of the 10 pieces was toro! Toro in American is more that $14.00 in itself! The ten pieces were salmon, tuna, abalone, egg, roe, squid, eel, toro, mackerel and shrimp. The Abalone was really good by the way, I think it was cut too thick at Nobu.
When I walked into the sushi restaurant today the three chefs and the waitress yelled "welcome" and one of the sushi chefs pointed to a chair for me to sit in. The first two times I went there the waitress met me at the door and walked me to a seat, it felt pretty good to be welcomed like that today.. :D Will be going back tomorrow.. Good sushi everyday for lunch makes me happy.. :D
News...
Colin Powell is endorsing Barack Obama!! I read that today in my Japanese newspaper!! Holy wow!!
The Dragons beat the Giants 4-3 last night which means that Friday will not be the clinching game..
The Dragons beat the Giants 4-3 last night which means that Friday will not be the clinching game..
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