Ramen

Tea ceremony

Honorable noodles

A picture of my delicious delicious lunch at O-men today. I might have to go back tomorrow...

Ornithology

Gross generalisation exception to prove the rule:

Japanese cranes stand on two legs! And their "knees" bend backwards too. I've been watching them in various rivers in most of the cities that I've visited, and the crane behaviour is consistent. I don't know if it's to deal with the water flowing constantly in one way rather than the still lakes or wavy oceans I see them in in Canada. Or if they are just of biologically different descendence, since both the smaller white cranes and the larger blue/grey ones do this, even though the latter look much like the one-leg-standing cranes of Canada.

I suppose I could look it up, but supper calls louded than my thirst for knowledge...

Travel Essentials

I've had a few grumpy days lately - well, not all grumpy - but lacking the sort of 24-hour-a-day wideeyed wonder that I can usually sustain while travelling. This isn't that surprising I guess. I've now passed the limits of any vacation I've taken before, having been on the road for almost four weeks. (This isn't counting my time in Berlin and in NYC where I had an apartment - just living out of a suitcase travel). I'll have to learn the rhythms of travelling for a longer period, which probably include both more downtime each day, and also crafting a sense of purpose to my trip beyond just seeing the sights.

It's all making me think of travel essentials. First of all there are the basic necessities you need to carry with you. As you all know, travelling light is exactly what I am incapable of doing. But I'm hoping that these six months will teach me a lot about what is and isn't necessary and maybe I'll shed certain inessentials as I go. We are still talking about me here, and I like having a knitting project and book or two on hand, so I'll never be the true pilgrim pioneer, but doubtless there is a more streamlined way to be me and I'm looking forward to finding it.

Then there is the travel checklist, when things start to go minorly awry. This would be different for each person of course, but I have a little list of rules I remind myself of, which begins:

1. When you realise you are grumpy, sit down and eat something.
2. A shower is nearly as good as a night's sleep.
3. You can't see everything, so don't try.
4. Duck.

The last, of course, pertains particularly to me and particularly to Asia. I'm staying in a beautiful old wooden house in Kyoto right now and I am victim to its loveliness. For the umpteenth time just now I cracked my head into the solid wooden doorframe, raising quite the bump on my forehead...but then, having flipped through the guestbook I see I am not the only person who just can't learn that she is taller than her surroundings intended her to be! It's surprisingly easy to just drive yourself on and on, and get progressively more disgruntled and discontented. I suppose because we are so unused to having as much free time as one has when on vacation, it's tempting to create such a busy schedule that one hasn't got time to think about what one's doing at all.

But the whole point about this trip is to think carefully about what I'm doing, so that's the puzzle I'm working on now.

I've been thinking about essentials in a different way, too. Despite my declared intention to see the world with my child mind, glancing over these posts and even thinking about ideas for posts that I haven't got around to writing yet, I see how much I am reacting to preconceived notions - or more convolutedly, to my imagined idea of what people's preconceived notions of Japan are. Too many layers! Also, I keep thinking that I can try to "explain" Japan to people, to try and show what life is like here.

This is crazy for a bunch of reasons. First of all, I don't know what I'm talking about, and half the people reading this blog know a lot more about Japan than I ever will. Plus, the internet is full of Westerners writing about their experiences in Japan, and the basic rules of life in Japan like how to use an onsen, or what slippers to wear when, are all described over and over again. So I don't need to do it here.

I've been thinking a lot about essentialism, the colonialist's instinct to label, package, and as a result, limit and silence a conquered people. It's so funny to think about the many things that have been written about Japan, since people tend to be quite opinionated on the topic. It's amusing to read on one hand that, say, Japan lacks creativity and innovation, and then on the other hand to read the fawning awe the West has for Japanese craft and design. There are so many such contradictions, and in the end gross generalisations will always be refuted by individuals who will not be so contained.

In writing about Japan, I've been wanting to overthrow some of the preconceptions Westerners have received about Japanese people, but in the end whenever you try to describe you generalise and you leave things out. And I know so little to begin with. It's nearly impossible not to compare things, or to generalise from observations, and of course you are always working on a basis of your own experience. But I want to try and avoid sweeping statements and explanations altogether, and just put together tiny fragments of experiences here, some kind of word collage of all the wonderful things I am seeing, hearing, smelling, touching, tasting.

Enough musing - I'm going out to respire l'air de Kyoto...

Desho!!

Today is Japanese linguistics post day, apparently. Anyway, something else I have noticed a lot since I've been in Japan, is the way that many people, especially women (at least that is what I have observed) have of giving themselves a little muttered encouragement. Everywhere I go, I hear people talking to themselves in a quiet undertone, saying "desho!"

If I translate correctly, this means more or less, "let's do it!" (or maybe even "let it be so!") I have heard people saying it when rushing around frantically trying to get a lot of work done, or even just in the act of sitting down on a bus while wearing a kimono (which is probably quite hard work too). Whatever it takes to get through the day...

Ano...

Since arriving in Japan, I have received many compliments on my Japanese language skills, mostly totally undeserved. In fact I'm pretty disappointed with my poor ability, considering I did study quite a bit before I left; yet I continue to impress people by saying only a few words!

This is largely because Japanese people are generally very polite and kind, and also pleased to see foreigners taking an interest in their language and culture, I think. A little bit of effort goes a long way.

However, I do have one secret weapon, which I am happy to share. It's my opinion that the most rewarding word to learn in any language, the one that will help you the most with the least effort, is to learn the word for "ummmm..."

Hear me out. First of all, um is an excellent filler while you scramble frantically in your head for the word you need. It reassures your interlocutor that more will eventually come, and may even make it look like you are thinking deeply before choosing the appriopriate statement (a philosopher!) rather than flailing frantically and hoping to not come up with a random Spanish phrase instead.

Secondly, it's a very colloquial phrase, so it reassures people that you have spoken this language with actual humans before, and that you are not expecting them to speak in your language instead.

Lastly, it gives you confidence for both the above reasons, lending you the strength to go on! It will be short and easy to pronounce, too, since after all it's used for the same reasons by native speakers when they're not sure what's coming out of their mouths next.

In Japanese, it's "ano", with even accent on both syllables, though the ooooooooooooooo can be drawn out while you think. Especially for women, whose polite speech verges heavily on the self-deprecating, it's useful to begin an utterance with it as a sort of apology for interrupting or for requesting something.

It is important to try to get the right intonation. In Spanish, um is "o sea" (also fun to say!). There was one graduate student in Spanish Lit I remember who, though a native speaker of English, spoke very good Spanish. But while she spoke fluently and inserted o sea at regular intervals, it was always in this flat monotone which made it seemed pointless - if it's obvious your ums are scripted the whole effect falls away!

This is of course my foreigner's take on the whole matter. But whatever its true use in colloquial Japanese, my regular use of ano definitely helps me get up the courage to talk to people, and so I am grateful! Ano, arigatou gozaimashita!

Itadakimasu!

When I was staying on the farm in Fukushima, the kids would lead us in a little pre-eating chant that I hesitate to call grace, but anyway, a pre-meal chant.

o te te o pon!

oishii gohan

itadakimasu!

Which roughly means, "Hands together! Yummy rice, itadakimasu!"

Adults mostly just say the itadakimasu part. I'm not sure what the literal translation would be, but it's what you say before you eat and both has the connotations of bon appetit as well as thanking your host for the meal. You bring your hands together and bow slightly as you say it all together in unison. Then you can start!

When you're done eating, you do the same thing but instead you say gochisousamadeshita, thank you for the delicious food, more or less. Again there's both a sense of thanking the host or chef, and saying that the food was delicious, and maybe even thanking the food for being delicious. At a restaurant you say it to the staff as you're leaving.

Gochisousamadeshita, Japan!

Edited to fix the spelling mistake I persistently made. Thanks to Raph for pointing it out. He also points out that itadakimasu is usually translated as "I humbly receive".

Washoku & Yoshoku

The prefix wa- just means Japanese. So, wagyu = Japanese beef; washi = Japanese paper; washoku is Japanese cuisine. The food that I ate on the farm in Fukushima was a lot of traditional, homestyle cooking: bowls of rice and miso soup, pickles, boiled slices of vegetables, fresh and pickled salads. At the other ends of the spectrum are the highly refined, painstakingly sourced and beautifully presented dishes of kaiseki and other professional cuisine. Both rustic and cultivated traditions are highly dependent on the seasons and the particular foods available and traditional for each time of the year.

But yoshoku is also Japanese food, though the word means "Western cuisine". Western foods have been being assimilated into Japan for centuries and naturally in the process they are transformed. So while the origins are clear, the dishes become something other, unique, and just as Japanese if with less of a history here.

Bread was brought to Japan in the 1600s by the Portuguese, hence the word for it: pan. Because the earliest and most sustained Western influence in Japan was here in Kyuushu (Christianity was introduced into Japan here by St. Francis Xavier, and when most of Japan was closed to the rest of the world, the port of Nagasaki was open to Dutch trading ships), there are a particular set of specialties of the area. Nagasaki is famous for castella, a delicious light spongy cake that comes in various flavours including green tea. I assume soft ice cream is also a yoshoku borrowing but flavours like matcha, sweet potato, and even shiso could only come from Japan!

Yoshoku also got support from the American Occupation of Japan after WWII, which was naturally used as an excuse to create a market for US wheat and other goods. When staying in Kagoshima, I ate "shi-chikkin" or canned tuna (from "chicken of the sea")! Clearly it was regarded as a different animal from the native maguro and bonito. The extensive use of mayonnaise might date from this time, though again it's changed in the translation. Recently I shared a mall food court with approximately all of the young teenagers from Kagoshima, many of them, like me, eating omu-raisu or omelette rice, one of my favourite yoshoku dishes. Fried rice is wrapped with a thin layer of omelette, which is then topped with a sauce. This can just be ketchup, or Japanese curry or demi-glace, but I had the typical okonomiyaki topping of brown sauce, mayonnaise, bonito flakes and pickled ginger.

Fast food chains abound in Japan, serving a much wider range of foods than do North American chains. There are rice bowl chains, udon chains, and Mos Burger, which serves its burgers on a bun made of molded rice rather than bread! Pasta restaurants are very popular and serve many options from creamy ham or mushroom dishes a Westerner would find familiar, to spaghetti with cod roe, green onions and poached egg.

And the recent influence hasn't only been American. French-style bakeries are everywhere, but again the food is transformed. All the breads are much softer, and while there are croissants and baguettes, there are also anpan (small buns stuffed with red bean paste), karepan (buns stuffed with curry and coated in panko or fried breadcrumbs), breads with little hot dogs baked into them, and seasonal treats like the breads studded with sesame and sweet potato or pumpkin that I've been enjoying.

All this to say that far from Japan being a culturally isolated place, various influences have been added over the centuries, gradually being made anew. Itadakimasu!

Something Problematic About Japan

is that everywhere I go, I realise I will need to go back again later because it is so awesome.

Also, it is very difficult to pay your own way, as people are always snatching the bill away and not letting you have it. It's surprisingly hard to do anything about this when you can't talk to the staff and they can. And then even when you do succeed, it's a Pyrrhic victory because your host will probably add on something else more expensive that you didn't know about and sneakily pay for it when you are not looking.

These are the kinds of problems that I am having currently.

In other words, I am having an amazing time.

(though I am thinking of implementing a policy, once I'm back in Canada, of randoming paying for things for Japanese tourists I've never met before just to even the scales a bit!)

Ine, Kome, Gohan

Rice, of course, is the staple food of Japan and as such has great cultural importance. So much so, that there are different words for it in its various stages. I went north to Fukushima prefecture to stay on an organic rice farm and among many amazing experiences, learned a few new words.

Ine is the rice plant. I arrived in the last days of the rice harvest on the farm, so I was able to work with bundles of ine that had already been cut. The host farmer built a frame of wood and bamboo and then we twisted the rice stalks and hung them over it to cure for a few weeks before they can be threshed. I went crazy taking photos of the gorgeous green and gold bundles! The wild pigs who come out at night also go crazy for the ine, so one of my tasks was to help raise the electrified fence to preserve the carefully placed rice stalks.

Kome is the uncooked rice grain. While it was too early to sample this year's crop, there were huge bags of the farm's rice still remaining from last year. The small farm, which is totally organic and largely tended by one person, with sporadic volunteer labour coming and going (much of it, like me, totally unskilled), produces about 1200kg of rice per year. Most of the farmers in the area have their own threshing machines, but they tend to store the grains whole (as brown rice). Vending machines are of course practically a symbol of Japan in their omnipresence, but rice-producing areas have their own particular kind. There are apparently small machines dotted over the country roads that, for a 100 yen coin, will polish a bag of rice from brown to white! Sadly I didn't actually get to do this myself as I really loved the idea of it.

Gohan is the word for the cooked rice, as well as basically meaning meal or food, as it does in many Asian languages. And we ate gohan every day, sometimes three times a day.

Coming as I do from Canada, I've never before been able to eat rice where it was grown. Here, I could look out the kitchen windows and see the fields that it came from. I can't possibly express what it was like to eat this rice. I could have happily eaten it on its own with no seasoning at all, and needed no more to my meal. It was so full of flavour, so bright and shiny, each grain soft and sticky yet retaining a subtle chewiness, a feeling of being alive. We ate it polished white, we ate it brown, we ate it cooked with a few grains of black rice, so that there was a scattered purplish colouring through it. We ate it in the mornings with miso soup, and at lunch patted into little onigiri and flavoured with tsukemono (pickled vegetables).

Rice.

Street Proportions/Ebbing and Flowing.

The stereotypical image of a Tokyo street is something from Shinjuku or Shibuya, lined with tall buildings flashing with neon lights, and mobbed with people filling the intersections at each walk light (but not jaywalking - that's not really done here).

And that definitely exists. But what makes Tokyo so much more interesting to me is the huge contrasts available in the city, and not necessarily ranging over a large area. In fact one of the things I found amazing on my first visit here was that you can take a turn off one of the huge high-tech boulevards of Shinjuku and turn into a little narrow street filled with old-fashioned wooden buildings, traditional lanterns hanging to advertise the kind of food served inside. Or turn between two skyscrapers into a small Shinto shrine sandwiched at ground level and looking quite ageless.

While the main thoroughfares have raised sidewalks, the smaller streets can get quite narrow, and are paved all flat, sometimes with a line painted to divide a small side lane, though I think that's supposed to be for bikes. They're not closed to cars or motorbikes, but pedestrians are free to roam widely, and cars will yield to them, usually quite patiently. It makes the city feel like it belongs much more to pedestrians and cyclists...

While most of the buildings are new thanks to the various disasters of the 20th century (earthquake, fire, bombing), the streets have retained their old-city feel in their variable width. Maybe for a wide-streets North American it's especially impressive, but I always love little tiny alleys that give the feeling they've been occupied for centuries...here they range from the smaller streets still wide enough for a car to the narrower ones barely wide enough for a motorbike (not that that deters anyone) to the little tiny ones not wide enough for two people to pass side by side.

And everyone seems to cultivate a little garden along the outside of their house (so that the tiny streets appear to be long lines of spiky and exuberant green with narrow bands of sunlight separating them) Another example of Tokyoites' trust in their neighbours' good behaviour. Sometimes flowers or ornamental plants, often little pots of edamame or eggplant, even huge fruit trees, growing in pots right on the street. So far I've seen mikan (Japanese mandarins), several different oranges, and persimmons. Everything is so beautifully tended. Yesterday, stepping off Omotesando, one of the fancy Champs-Elysees-esque shopping boulevards, I found this adorable cafe called Motoya Espresso Express, which was indeed an espresso bar operated out of a little VW van, parked in a little parking lot of the type that has a car stacking-elevator to fit more in. It was quite cosy - chairs, ash trays, art books and newspapers to look at, and all presumably tidied up every night when the owner had to park the van! Despite this, the owner had carefully placed tiny plants in a neat row all along the front and side of the van. Of course I had to have a latte - it was delicious.

The ebbing and flowing thing is a more general observation from travelling in places like Venice or Prague, which seem to be mobbed with tourists all the time. My experience there has been that stepping one or two blocks away will take you to places that are completely deserted. We seem to flock together in huge congregations, or not at all.

And it's that way here. In a city of so many people you might think it would be crowded all the time, but actually I keep wandering through places that are almost empty and silent. It's not just that I have been getting up early - you can go from the hurly-burly of Ameyoko, former black market and good place for cheap shopping and meals (on which more later), on a Sunday afternoon to pleasantly quiet pretty backstreets where you could hear crickets chirping if it weren't for the fact that they don't chirp until evening.

Monday was a holiday, which affected my plans a little (I showed up at the fish market at 6:30 to find it was closed!) but ended up turning out well as I ended up wandering around the nearby neighbourhood (and island) Tsukishima and finding the most beautiful, peaceful shinto shrine I've yet seen, all green and stone in the morning light, and with incredible wooden carvings of waves tucked into the upper corners of the buildings. Hardly anyone was up early on a day off, so I seemed to have the city to myself for hours and hours. Eventually I was so hungry I headed for Shinjuku to have breakfast (the part of the city that never sleeps is a good bet even on a holiday!) and was almost disappointed that the famously busy station was almost sleepy at what should have been rush hour! A few hours later though, the holiday crowd made up for it.

Crowded or deserted, narrow or wide, this city is fascinating.

Wrapping your mind around Tokyo and Japan.

Well, it can't be done. Too immense! But just to give some kind of idea...

Imagine that every single Canadian moved to Toronto (or maybe Vancouver, it's coastal), and invited an extra two million people to join them. That's a city the size of greater Tokyo. (We'll imagine that the infrastructure suddenly and magically adjusts to cope).

Now imagine that millions of people ride bicycles. Since naturally 35 million people can't all drive cars, public transit is used a lot, but bikes are a great option for getting TO the subway station or just getting around for short distances. Subway stops, schools, etc, have huge lots to leave bikes in, and they are also everywhere just hanging out on sidewalks.

The thing is, PEOPLE DON'T LOCK THEIR BIKES. Sure, a few do, but nearly all the bikes I have seen are just peacefully resting on their kickstands, waiting for their owners to reclaim them a few minutes or many hours later.

That to me says so much about Tokyo the city, and Japanese culture as well. Imagine doing that in Montreal - your bike would be gone in about 5 minutes, in a city less than a tenth of the size. Amazing.

Familiarity.

A lot of posts today as the computer is unexpectedly free, and I don't expect to have much access, if at all, after this for another week or so...

Very little about Japan should feel familiar to me. One glance marks me as a permanent outsider, not to mention my highly imperfect grasp of the language, my lack of knowledge about the culture, etc, etc. But what's funny about travelling is that way that familiarity quickly becomes a very relative concept.

Arriving in Narita Airport after the long flight felt a lot more like coming home than it really should have, at the start of such a long trip and in a country that I know so little about. But it did - the way the arrivals area is laid out, which ATM I could take money out of, where the convenience store was on the way to the train station...I knew them all, and so felt comfortable and relaxed. Just having been through the airport before made such a difference even if it was already a year ago.

And it's been the same thing over the last few days. Seeing things that I have seen before, revisiting Senso-ji Temple in Asakusa or getting a pon de ringu at Mister Donut (ah, Mister Donut!) gave me these strong feelings of nostalgia, however little sense that makes.

Not that I'm complaining. While I've had my moments of feeling incredibly foreign and hopelessly unable to blend in or even function, I appreciate very much having at least some small sense of belonging to this wonderful city. Riding the Tokyo Metro, usually the only blonde(ish) head in the car, I realised how much I take for granted being able to move around this city already! It's a good feeling.

Child mind.

One thing I realised, sitting on the plane, is that I still actually have no idea what it means to be travelling for six months. I can't really wrap my mind around it at all. I can tell this in several ways - how giggly I feel when I think of how long I have, joyful yet incomprehending; also how I feel nearly panicked in my huge desire to rush around and experience EVERYTHING RIGHT NOW before it's too late. (Note to self: not really the best strategy when jet-lagged.) I try to tell myself, relax, you have a whole month in Japan, you don't need to eat everything all in one day. Although, given the variety of amazing things to eat, I still can't afford to slack off!

The thing about travelling, besides the exciting travel seeing-new-places part, is that it's a way of being so open to the world all the time. I really admire the way babies are so single-minded about everything they experience, but as an adult it's hard to sustain that kind of attention (and also, it's tiring). But travelling and seeing new things all the time, you are forced to pay attention. You need to learn new ways to behave, read new signals, hopefully speak new languages and meet new people. Everything new! All your senses are alive all the time. What an opportunity, to get to be like a baby for six months! The trick will be to balance all that newness with enough rest time to take it all in.

Another reason I'm happy to have all this time to reflect is the anniversary this trip coincides with. Ten years ago, almost to the day, I stopped dancing, something which made me feel like my life was over. Obviously it wasn't, but at the same time I never fully reconciled with myself over that decision. Remembering that, it seems all the more important to be conscious, careful about the implications of what we do. In a way, this trip for me is a very long meditation on that.

Plus all the tasty food.

Sunny with a chance of scattered thoughts.

I've been in Tokyo for about 24 hours now, but it feels like so much has happened since I left home that I can't quite believe it hasn't been longer...as I sit here trying to sum up the day, all these images keep flashing past my eyes. I've been having all these great ideas for posts all day, but jet-lag leaves me with only the ability to string together streams-of-consciousness for now.

Saying goodbye to the condo for good...riding the Skytrain to the airport with Maman...the moment when the plane started taxiing and the full joy of the trip hit me so that I was craning over to see the ground falling away from the window, grinning like an idiot...

...and more of that same grin as we crossed the international date line, hovered along the coast of Honshu, and finally landed at Narita...as I bit into my first onigiri of the trip...as the narrow backstreets of Tokyo started showing up from the trainline...

My enthusiasm was checked a little bit by lugging bags about and having to relearn how to use the ticket machines for the train and subway, but getting lost on the way to the hotel was par for the course (I'm planning on writing a whole post on Japanese addresses) - it gave me a chance to wander around the narrow residential streets with their container gardens (fruit trees! edamame!)

Today was a brilliant blue warm sunny cool-breezy autumn day, which I needed to spend on foot, starting from the hotel and just wandering around. Tomorrow I've decided instead to get a public transit pass and ride around covering as much of the city as I can...and then Tuesday will have to be a combination of them both. Wednesday I head north!

J'voudrais respirer l'air de Kyoto

J'aimerais bien savoir à quoi sers-je?
J'aimerais voir une forêt vierge
J’voudrais comprendre pourquoi Tout?
Et ne plus rien vouloir du tout

If there's anything more appropriate to kick off a transcontinental adventure than a Québec francophone klezmer song about the perils and joys of globalisation, I don't know what it is.

In any case, that's what I'm doing. In a few days I'm setting out for a six month tour of Japan and South-East Asia, and while I'm currently in that stage of preparation known as "denial" where everything feels quite unreal, it probably really is going to happen.

My plan is to blog about the trip here, and since my Brooklyn blog languished fairly quickly, I've decided to give myself a bit of a focus. Another thing I did to help prepare for my trip (=procrastinate) was to make a travel playlist - about five hours of music that in my mind at least was connected with travelling. I'm still hoping to find a way to put it all up here for you to listen to, but that may not happen.

So my focus is to use the songs to structure posts about travelling itself, as well as the details of the places I visit. This is a risky project that might degenerate rapidly into pretentious rambling, in which case I will cut it off.

Today's song, "Kyoto" by Polémil Bazar, is my response to everyone who asked me, "Why Asia?" or even better, "Why travel at all?" It's not so much that I have a good answer, more that I have a worse answer to the question "Why not?" So in this case I think I'll let the song answer for me.

The photos in this post are all from my trip to Kyoto in summer 2008. I hope to be posting new ones soon...

Oh and yes, the little wombat will be coming with me. She wants to see South-East Asia too!

The full lyrics to the song are here:
http://www.hugofleury.com/polo/texte_chants_mines.htm#KYOTO

J'aimerais voler, quitter ma tête
Aller semer partout la fête
Visiter Bagdad à vélo
J'voudrais respirer l'air de Kyoto

--Polémil Bazar

Richmond Public Market

Hand-pulled noodles with tomato and egg from a Northern Chinese place in the Richmond Public Market food court.

Bright lights, cloudy night.

She only smiled and handed me a vegemite sandwich.

Simple shawl.

Woven silk texture.

Koolaid dyeing.

Ravelympics 2008!!

Proud member of Team Canada for the WIP wrestling event....

Japan: Buddha & Lotus

Knitting: Simple Shawl

The Red Hook IKEA

I don't know which is more impressive really - that the new Brooklyn IKEA has a Manhattan skyline built of cardboard boxes, from the Empire State Building down to the water towers.

Or that, despite the public city bus that actually changed its route to end up at IKEA, there are at least 4 different shuttles ferrying passengers from the nearby subway stops directly to and fro the new giant store. Manhattanites really can't handle the outer boroughs, can they?

Otherwise, it's just a normal IKEA inside. But now you can take a free shuttle bus to the 99c kids' meal!

Signs of New York: Fairway

Signs of New York: Ronnybrook Dairy

Knitting: Rangoli Hat

Crochet Market Bag

A Shrug & a Lime Tree

Montréal: Mile End

Montréal: Park by Night

Montréal: But who's Zato?

Montréal: Frénésie de la Main: "Lesbian Haircuts: they're for everyone!"

At least that's what the sign said.

Ottawa: Canadian Ketchup

Le Grand Tricothon

Gatineau: Sunset

Highway 417: Clouds

Nuit Blanche Sur Tableau Noir

The Algorithm Fails to Find Itself.

Gah.

Less "gah-" and more "wtf?-" worthy is the soccerball we found wedged in between the Wa and Mu portion of my bank's sign. This one found in Woodhaven, Queens, after an excessive yarn buying binge. Crazy sales, I tell ya!

There, he dreamt I was an architect...

I was supposed to be in Canada tonight but a "broken airplane" grounded me here, so I took the chance for a wee saunter to the East Village with a few of the other marsupials. It's unseasonably warm today - over 20C!! - and it was still pleasant and balmy by nighttime. We did a tour of 1st, 2nd and 3rd aves, visiting the lovely Otafuku, purveyor of takoyaki, and trying our new favourite again - Caracas, the areparía on 7th st. between 1st Av and Avenue A.

As on my first visit, the tiny space was crowded and warm, but we managed to snag the same corner table and from that cosy nook devour light and delicious treats. An arepa, for those who haven't yet experienced its delights, is a griddle-fried corn flatbread stuffed with delightful treats - most classically cheese. But the possibilities are endless. On the first visit I shared a plain white-cheese Paisa; and a Playera, a fabulous combination of fish, tomato, herbs and a bit of cheese into a moist and toothsome morsel vanishing far too fast. This time I tried la del Gato, which had guayanés cheese, fried plantains, and avocado slices. And it was delicious! Even more delicious was a sauce on the table which I tried to parse into its component parts. For now I'm guessing olive oil & vinegar (ciderish?), mustard, thyme/oregano, chile powder, and passionfruit juice... With all this I had a fantastic refresco of papaya, not too strong or sweet but with real pieces of fruit gently suspended in it, and a hit of citrus. Mmmmmmmmmmmmm....

But the funniest thing that happened was, after we peered into the cute little ramen place we found recently on 3rd Av, and then sauntered bravely on, I heard a man's voice persistently calling, "Excuse me! Excuse me!" Confident that I hadn't dropped anything, and tired of street harassment, I carried on undaunted. But the unstoppable man persisted, finally running up and actually grabbing my arm to get my attention.

"Excuse me," he said, holding my arm just above the elbow. "Are you an architect?"

"No," I replied flatly. And he dropped my arm and faded away, back to the bar patio from whence he had so urgently sought me. We marched on, wondering. Did he mistake me for someone famous, whose name he couldn't quite remember? Did he urgently need a consultation on his bathroom fixtures? Did he and his tablemate bet each other they could pick an architect at 40 paces? I fear I shall never know.

And we walked into the night.

Pachinko & friends.

Today was a work day, with trains, Thai food at lunch, and many other things starting with "t", but most especially teatime. A coworker, Neko-chan, had brought in special green tea, so we sat around with an assortment of biscuits and had one of those conversations. It all started with a lovely CNN story title, "Gay Sex Immoral".

Well, duh, we already knew you thought that.

But really, ugh!

Anyway, our conversation fluttered from there to marriage rights in different countries, to Pachinko, the Japanese gambling game, to the Atomic Squid's glasses. As long as there was fresh water for the teapot you could not keep that conversation down!

And on the way home we stopped on the East Village and this time successfully had arepas, on which more later. I love the East Village.

Lost and not found.

Something else depressing: the Gowanus Canal.

Today I realised I had lost something important, and more than the frustration of the loss was the feeling of fearful inevitability - that if I could have let this happen, what other terrible things would I do? What I lost was blue, as was the day.

However as the sky darkened I went for a long walk in the neighbourhood and out to the Brooklyn Heights Promenade, and watching Manhattan sparkling in the not-very-distance, was soothing, as was eating leftover fish porridge and curling up in bed.

La Marqueta: An Afternoon in Williamsburg

The Atomic Squid, avid reader of the Brooklyn blogs, discovered a Hispanic market in Williamsburg that is sadly slated to close, so before it could, we wanted to sneak out there and sample the wares.

We hopped on a G and soon emerged into a bustling area where Spanish was being spoken everywhere. We wended our way along to a small closed market area, similar to the Essex St Market we stumbled into a week before, only quite a bit smaller. There were a lot of empty stalls; either Sunday is not a big day or people have already started to close down. Still it was interesting to see what supplies there were, and what was there was SO CHEAP! At one stall we got a big bag of garlic, a big bag of achiote, a bit container of homemade sofrito, and two gooey coconut sweets, for a total of $5!! From what I could tell the stalls were mostly Puerto Rican and Dominican owned.

Then we perused the snack counters considering having some fried yuca or other comida típica, but settled in the end on a batido, for it was sunny and who can resist a batido? We even learned a dialect word - parcha is apparently the same as maracuya, otherwise known as passionfruit. We shared a parcha batido and a papaya one, both delicious. The parcha was tangy and the papaya sweet and creamy and we both preferred it, though the parcha was also delicious. And I got to order them in Spanish!

After that we wandered north on Avenida de Puerto Rico to Grand St and considered late brunch options, despite being fairly full of batido at this point. I had to cower in fear in front of one place, which had a billboard out front declaiming: "Wombat! We want YOU for brunch!"

Of course, the place was called Wombat.

Anyway despite the excitement there, we decided to go to Bahía, a Salvadoran resto also on Grand St. So of course we had to have pupusas - a bean one, and this delicious one with Loroco, the flower of a salvadoran plant that tasted vaguely like broccoli. As usual this was served with pickled cabbage, and a delicious thin, mild tomato salsa. The texture of the pupusas was a little less crisp than some I had had but the flavours were nice. We also had a side of casamiento, or rice and beans, and a little condiment-salad called chirmol, with chopped tomatoes and radishes etc. And I finally tried a tamal de elote, or sweet corn tamale. It was perhaps a little sweet - not that different to a steamed cornbread - but it was nice to try it eventually.

By this time the Williamsburg adventure was winding down, but on the way to the subway we stopped at the landmark Gimme Coffee! which is supposed to be Brooklyn's best. Certainly the coffee was good and the descriptive labels on the (expensive!) beans amusingly hipsterish. But as with so many cafés in this country - only disposal cups! For shame.

There were more wonders to be revealed in this tour of Williamsburg, but for now this shall suffice. It's a nice place to visit, but I'm happy enough to return to my little corner of South Brooklyn. To do laundry...

Day 156: Sviata Vechera!

A new tradition, a new foray into food we don't really understand but want to eat anyway: Sviata Vechera 2007!

Or, in translation, our version of a traditional Ukrainian Christmas Eve Supper, where "we" are the Figtree denizens + the AS' brother, The Curator, and me. Held on Jan 6 because of calendar shifts, the meal traditionally has 12 dishes and is a solemn, mystical affair you can read more about here: http://www.theworldwidegourmet.com/holidays/christmas/ukraine.htm
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Twelve-dish_Christmas_Eve_supper

Our version had a few fewer dishes and a lot less solemnity, but was tasty and exciting nonetheless.

We started off with a joint Fairway expedition to stock up, plus some provisions I had brought specially from Canada, and the delightful bread dough The Curator had made in advance. Once back in the kitchen, we lost no time in shaping this fine dough, destined for kolach, or the traditional round braided bread gracing the table with a red candle atop it (see below).

Our fingers were busy throughout with many details, from the Atomic Squid's cabbage rolls lovingly tied together with chives, to the irregularly-but-lovingly-shaped pyrohy brought into being by the paws of one yours wombat truly.

The final menu consisted of the traditional first course of kutia, wheat berries cooked with honey and poppy seeds, heavy with symbolism I'm a little fuzzy on, but thankfully also rather delicious. We tried to keep the portions small out of initial skepticism and the many dishes to follow, but in fact everyone asked for seconds! *a decorous cheer*

Following the kutia we had a nice bowl of borscht, made vegetarian as is traditional for this meal, which should have fish but no meat or other animal fats (we did cheat and include butter in some dishes). There were several beetroot skeptics in the assembled audience, but the deeply pink soup was well received by all, especially with its garnishes of sour cream, fresh dill and chives. The photo doesn't show off how lovely the garnishes actually were, but hey, we were hungry!

After the borscht, the main courses together. First, there was a very Ukrainian, er, Southeast Asian style fish baked in a banana leaf. There were actually two fishes, one red snapper and one porgy, although in fact the poor porgy was passed over as our straining stomachs protested its unwrapping. These were stuffed with a mixture of the Atomic Squid's devising, involving lime, leek, tomato, lemongrass, and other exciting flavours - in fact it might have been the most exquisitely flavoured fish I have ever had.

The fish had plenty of company. For something a little more Eastern European there was some nice pickled herring, as well as the aforementioned cabbage rolls. They had a rice stuffing and were baked in a tomato-eggplant stew, to great tastiness. The traditional meal is accompanied by many vegetable sides, represented here by some sautéed mushrooms and some simply beautiful kale in garlic and a bit of veggie stock.

The (in my mind at least) essential element was the pyrohy or perogies - two flavours of them. One was a plain potato mash, but with roasted garlic for a full flavour, and the other was plain mash with a considerable quantity of orange cheddar grated into it - I confess these are my favourite. Vareniki are the boiled version, and then some of these were taken and pan-fried to a slight crispiness before being served with sour cream and fried onions.

All this inhaled in company with generous slices of the beautiful kolach. Kolach by itself would make a festive meal. It's similar to both challah and brioche but has a particular texture and rich flavour all its own.

After all this we had to take a break, wherein The Curator was initiated into the Revolutionary Knitters' Circle and also the Fanatical Watchers of Kath and Kim Club (an excellent Australian sitcom). Amid all the excitement we were able to worry down some dessert - a traditional dried fruit compote made with honey by the Grand Pademelon, and the utterly nontraditional key lime pie made by Steve (on which more later), before dispersing to our diverse locations and collapsing on our beds to relive Sviata Vechera in our dreams. It was quite a few hours of work and I felt a bit guilty for not having researched it more thoroughly, but however inauthentic it was a truly festive meal. And then there were the leftovers... :-)

Day 155: Distraction of the day.

I think we can all feel good about the fact that this week was a short work week and it's over now :P To celebrate we got pizza from Zaytoons and flaked out in front of the Figtree tv. I don't have photos of that, but here's lunch to celebrate with instead :-)

Day 154: Let's talk about something more pleasant.

Than my ongoing boring work and sick state. Let me distract you all with photos of tasty food, here some nice buckwheat soba with mushrooms and green onions. Mm. Noodles.

Day 153: I am ze crafty one now!

Still at work, still sick. But on the bright side, I finished knitting this fine hat!

Day 152: Back to work.

Back to work. Still sick. But on the bright side, I get to eat this noodle soup. And it has tentacles! Go, Atomic Squidlet!