Hello, I am back within reach of Interweb technologies.

As it turned out, a silly software glitch made my parting promise of auto-posted goodness a complete lie. Actually, all for the best, since honestly, they weren’t the most mesmerizing pieces of writing…

After a short stop at an undisclosed south-east Asia location where I was to acquire some new secret power after undergoing mysterious ritual ceremonies, I am now in Tokyo. Currently working as a visiting researcher for a government-funded organization until late September, devising new and better ways to enslave the human race and take over the world.

I am not quite sure what’s in store for this blog over the Summer, seeing how I resumed my Japanese blog (no point clicking if you do not read Japanese, also even less point clicking if you are learning Japanese, given the appalling level of grammar on display there). Keeping one blog updated is hard enough as it is, let alone two of these things. I might keep this one at a casual pace for the Summer, with mostly photographic updates (as soon as I’ll have set the keitai blog back up again).

If you happen to live in Tokyo and feel like getting together for a glass of shochu or twenty, by all mean get in touch: anything that’ll give me an excuse to slack on my work duties these days…

This morning before work, I had to put my bank in Paris on the phone through to my bank in Tokyo.

I seriously don’t know which one of the two spoke the least English.

Today was the 6th of August, a special day for the Japanese people (I blogged about it a year ago).

Threading on this very tenuous connection, here are a few links of interest to japan-curious readers:

• Japan Pop socio-czar and unconsolable mourner of yesterdays, Marxy offers an insightful dissection of Fujiwara Masahiko’s Dignity of a Nation: ‘a book that openly calls for the end of democracy and the return of “warrior ethics.”‘ (yea, that’s what the Japanese write about when they are not busy building flying cars or giant cat-eared robots).
• Moresukine is a small webcomic documenting its author’s life in Tokyo from January to June of 2006 through a series of “assignments” submitted by his readers. It’s pretty entertaining and only ever so slightly orientalist. I found it via this guy, who used to maintain a most delightfully fucked-up repository of all things pleonastically weird and Japanese.
• Of course, the Links section above, holds even more Japanese goodness for you to peruse (both colourful words and insightful photographs).

In case you are wondering (you probably aren’t) about this sudden surge in Japan-related material: it’s not [just] me getting all mushy on a Sunday evening and missing people and places 10,000 miles away…

You see, August is also the month where one has to send in their application to take the JLPT in December. Being a glutton for punishment, and despite standing absolutely no chance whatsoever, I have decided to go for Level 2 this year. Well, I think I have. I still have three weeks of studious browsing of the Japanese web to convince myself that this money would be much better spent on cheap imported shochu.

• Tired of wearing a tie at the office?
• Want to dress more comfortably, yet remain appropriately formal for a work environment?
• Love traditional Japanese clothing?

Say no more!

We have what you need:

Behold, the necktie fundoshi!

Wear one at the office and get envious looks from all your coworkers (possibly a few sexual harassment lawsuits too).

Yesterday, I had convincingly authentic Japanese food for the first time in Paris and felt it deserved a mention here.

Issé restaurant (”tempuras & tapas”) has a soberly stylish decoration and seemingly caters to a large japanese-speaking clientele, both reassuring points when compared to the flurry of Chinese-speaking sushi chefs and horrifyingly cheesy pseudo-oriental kanji signs, customary of most other places that claim to offer Japanese cuisine in this city.

The menu there is classic, yet not stereotypical, which means a lot of small dishes, no ramen, and only a few makis on offer. Somewhere between a typical Tokyo restaurant and a high-end izakaya (lots of the same food, but less greasy): we had loads of tempuras (shiso, seafood, a bunch of other veggies… even mozzarella…), seaweed salad, agedashi tofu, and a couple other dishes. All great and tasty (ok: I reckon my agedashi tofu is better, but I may be biased) and infinitely more reminiscent of the whole Tokyo experience than many a j-food joints on rue Saint Anne.

Prices were about average to high, but very reasonable for the quality of food (around 20-30 euros/person for dinner and a drink).

And for those who ever lived in Japan: sit there, sipping an iced ohlong-cha with schochu and nibbling on edamame, and I swear you won’t be able to shake the natsukashiness away.

A while back, I posted about finding some specific ingredients in Paris (mainly Japanese but also Thai and generally all sorts of non-French food) without having to pay for overseas shipping each time.

Following some kind readers’ suggestions and with a bit additional exploration, I have since resolved all my culinary woes. I figured I’d post a quick recap and a few extra advice for the sake of past and future seekers of exotic food in Paris:

First off: the bestest, cheaperest, fresh tofu, along with countless other goodies (can you believe they even had konnyaku!?!) was found at Supermarket Paris Store on Avenue d’Ivry (about 10 minutes from Place d’Italie, on the left side), thanks to Chrys, whom we shall dearly miss now that she has relocated…

Unlike most other Asian stores in the area (Tang Frères etc.), this one stocks up a fairly consequent aisle of typically Japanese products.
Of course they also carry the usual south-east asian fare, though their curry paste didn’t turn out all that convincing to my humble curry-loving tastebuds (their coconut paste: not at all). But these are much easier to find anywhere else in the neighbourhood… I still want to find some of this mucho combiniente cononut powder (same taste, much lighter to carry around), but the canned stuff is available everywhere… On my next trip, I might even try some of their kimchee (kimchee ramen… yay!).

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A new minor Japanese deity is born and she specializes in keitais (Japanese cellphones)…

You may remember Tracey from her previous moblogging contributions to this blog. She is now flying her own colors and has started blogging about her cosmopolitan life in Tokyo and around, at keitaigoddess.com (on a theme beautifully designed by MJ)…

Go check it out now!

• In Paris, Tokyo Lamen (40, rue Ste Anne, near Opera) looks and tastes considerably more like the real thing than the somewhat overrated Higuma (a block up in the same street).
• Ramen and gyozas get two thumbs up, yakisoba wasn’t that convincing… but then again: who orders yakisoba in a ramen-ya? (an idiot, that’s who).
• When experimenting with a new ramen place, always order the miso ramen: less chances for anything to go wrong than shoyu or other more delicate ramens (says Saeko).

I just got a brand new handheld Japanese dictionary. It’s very complete, using one of the best database out there, smaller than a few credit cards stacked together and I paid 20,000 yens for it.

Oh, it also plays mp3s.

And movies.

In fact, it does a whole lot of things, pretty much anything I want it to do, provided I have time to write a program for it.

It’s an iPod Nano, running µClinux, thanks to the brilliant work of the iPod Linux team.

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To file under: News that you should only care about if you are my mom…

I was just communicated by my Man in Japan, the results of the JLPT test Level 3 (yea, not feeling that ambitious at the time)… The one I took back in December of last year…

And it would appear I do indeed speak some Japanese. At least just enough to fool the government officials who passed me.

And to quote some hopelessly optimistic piece of j-pop fluff:

Yatta!!!

I soooo 0wN0rz N1h0|\|Gø!!!11!1

Recent dearth of posts had more to do with lack of time than lack of inspiration. Nonetheless, I figured I would end the Tokyo-based era of this blog with a special series dedicated to the many differences between the place I’m leaving and the place I’m moving to.

For one: angry people in Japan do not burn cars or people.

Oops, I did it again.

Alright, let me backtrack on that and establish the outline of that new series…

Of course, it would be all too easy to spend the next four-something-weeks ranting about all the crappy aspects of Japanese life I am happy to leave behind. Then switch over to my numerous objects of dislikes with the Parisians and Parisian life.

But I won’t.

Instead, we are gonna focus on the positive: things I will be dearly missing once departed and until a possible return in some distant future. Some you may identify with if you live in Japan, others probably more personal or mundane but still relevant to what makes life in a foreign country enjoyable. All presented in no particular order, time and mood permitting.

For our first installment, let me tell you about:

My Bike

Absolute ignoramus of Japanese culture that I was until the day I landed in Narita, I had always thought of those crazy bike-infested cities as being a staple of China and perhaps a few other South-East Asian countries. Japan sounded way too modern and busy riding magnetic levitation trains, to bother with such lo-tech means of transportation.

As it turns out, Japan loves bikes.

Of course, Japan also loves trains and subways, and for the most part: I do too (outside of peak hours).

To own a car in Tokyo, you not only have to be seriously wealthy and dedicated, you also have to be quite stupid: free street parking is practically unheard of, private monthly parking will set you back roughly the price of a second apartment (not counting daily parking, wherever you go) and apart from the many expensive toll-highways that circle major neighbourhoods, driving around Tokyo is as frustrating and pointless as any other metropolis. With the added bonus of a labyrinthine layout of streets that commonly narrows down to the point where a single pedestrian couldn’t walk arms outstretched. Trains are a far better choice for long distances, bicycles for short ones.

Bikes (the motorized kind, including scooters, as will always be implied when you use the word in Japan) are also a very cool way to go around easily without most of the downsides of cars: during my years here, Atsushi’s faithful scooter has taken us everywhere and back… But they are also not a great idea when most of your outings end up at 4 in the morning somewhere far from home with more alcohol than blood running through your veins…

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Sorry for the sparse blogging as of late (I know: piccies don’t count). I’ll just leave it up to you to pull the appropriate form RFC-3563 (a.k.a. “I’m sorry I did’t blog for so long. Here are the reasons why…”) and fill it with whatever you fancy.

In order to break the silence, I am not gonna rant about spitefully incompetent French university personnel, nor am I gonna express any sort of opinion about the current bouts of suburban pyromania taking place one hour north of the city I’m moving to next month (oh no, we aren’t talking about that. keep walking. keep walking. just a bit more… yep, good).

Instead, I’m gonna give you the detailed recipe for the most amazing Japanese dish you’ve ever had. And not only is it yumtastic, but it’s also dirt-easy to make and vegetarian. If you’ve lived in Japan any, you probably know about the difficulties of following a vegetarian diet in this beautiful country. In fact, if you meet somebody here who tells you he is a die-hard vegetarian, he is most likely either a liar, an imbecile or eating the vast majority of his meals at home (I know a couple of the latter). Oddly enough for a somewhat buddhist country, the concept of vegetarianism is about as foreign to Japan as it is to your average midwest eatery (where asking for a vegetarian meal means you want a side order of fries with your 3-pound rib-eye steak). No matter how hard you try, and even after you’d eventually manage to convey the idea that neither chicken skin nor seafood could reasonably be considered “vegetables”, the ubiquitous fish-sauce that’s added to about any edible dish in Japan will get you in the end.

Luckily, I was never the religious veggie type: I did not eat meat or fish during my last few years living in SF, but it was mostly by choice of a health-conscious diet, not the deep-seated conviction that I would be snacking on the reincarnation of my grandpa. While not a deciding factor, the fact that my dearly beloved was a veggie herself helped a lot… Not that she would impose it on me or anything, but it just makes things infinitely easier when you don’t have to cook two of each meals you take together…
And overall, SF might be one of, if not the, most herbivore friendly cities in the world, where opening a restaurant without at least a few decent vegetarian dishes on the menu is akin to commercial suicide.

Yet, I was never hardcore and had no qualms about ever so occasionally partaking in some delicious late-night cheeseburger goodness. What can I say: In-N-Out burgers are like the choir boys of vegetarian priesthood… It’s just impossible to resist.

So upon moving to Tokyo, I quickly decided to spare many an awkward encounters with flustered Japanese restaurant employees by accommodating whatever was on the menu and keeping my vegetarian tendencies for home-cooking. Though even this isn’t quite as easy here as in sunny California, considering the substantial difference in availability and pricing for fresh groceries that do not contain tentacles or miscellaneous animal parts.

A man needs his calories, especially in Japan, and there are only so many ways you can cook tofu before getting seriously tired of it. Let’s face it, tofu is quite bland, edible at best (granted there is a world of difference between what you’ll get in a supermarket and what I can buy at the Tofu-ya just down the road), hardly anywhere as exciting as, say, a crispy strip of bacon. Unless… Unless…

Unless you make:

Agedashi Tofu (揚げ出し豆腐)

This amazing recipe will single-handedly revert any misguided aversion you may have toward eating coagulated rotten soy beans, or as we like to call it around here: tofu. It draws its powers from an ancient and revered cooking technique, one that holds the magical property of turning any semi-edible piece of junk into sin-inducing candy goodness: deep frying.

Some of our readers are no doubt familiar with this staple of fair food in the UK: deep-fried Snickers chocolate bars (or its Kentucky’s US equivalent: deep-fried squirrel balls) and its much improved yummy-factor as a result. Well, tofu works the same: the technique will turn an overall unappetizing lump of healthy proteins into a much-less-healthy, but infinitely more sexy, golden tofu beignet, whose creamy inside will melt on your tongue. Add to it our patented Magical All-purpose Japanese Sauce™ (sold separately, see details on top), and you have yourself a strong contender for best Japanese food, on a tight spot with Shoyū Ramen.

Convinced now?

On to cooking then:

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When I last wrote that entry on the many shortcomings of Japanese mangas, my original intent truly was to follow it up shortly with my own recommendations, or at least observations, as a skeptical, yet sincere newcomer to the genre…

The fact that it took me three months to get to it, is a testament to the sad state of affairs of this industry (and my own sorry ass’ inability to get anything done when not threatened at gunpoint). Actually, the decision to start reading mangas is an old one, one that arose around the time I woke up one day and realized I could suddenly understand Japanese (すっげぇ〜！日本語を喋れるよ！さああ、僕は貝が好きなの・・・). Well, alright: understand might be pushing it a bit, but I’ve been known to conduct reasonably flawless weather-related conversations with my neighbours: a major improvement from my arrival on Japanese soil, where my vocabulary was essentially limited to three Japanese words, one of which I cannot repeat on this site unless you can testify you are over 18 and click here.

Thing is: drunken conversation with Samurai friends did and still does wonders to my verbal skills, I can pull off a semi-decent everyday-Japanese provided it stays on the topic of whose turn it is to pay the next round, or monosyllabic expressions of my appreciation for miscellaneous types of music or other artistic works. Anything slightly off the beaten path usually gets me nodding complacently until I somehow manage to catch a few words that could clue me in on whatever it is we are talking about. Similarly, that whole level-of-speech issue has not been getting any better: you know things are bad when your friend – who has just chugged half a gallon of rum directly off the bottle – kindly worries about your use of excessively colloquial expressions.

Horizons have to be widened and grammar needs improving dramatically.

Hence: Mangas

First, because books are convenient: you can study them anytime, anywhere and by yourself; they do not require a language exchange partner who will be either convinced you are hitting on her, or actually hitting on you (and yea, the feminine form here has a purpose: just check the number of candidates for language exchange in English or French out there and their repartition by gender).

Also because, taking my cue on the local upcoming generations, I cannot read kanjis for shit. Which rules out most magazines and daily newspapers. Some magazines are not that hard – possibly even below my level – but there are only so many times you can read about the latest news on panty thieving activities, detailed voyeuristic recounts of schoolgirl groping-related arrests or nampa tips, straight from the pros (the gist of which can usually be found in all its quaint alliteration-riddled English translation glory on the Mainichi’s website).

As for regular books, real literature, eternal classics of the Japanese masters: try opening an original Mishima volume for laughs, just once. I swear, that guy uses kanjis even my dictionary has never heard of.

Mangas, on the other hand, rarely make use of overly elaborate kanjis, yet can cover a wide array of situations and lexical fields, all along offering saucerplate-eyed visual clues of the ongoing story. Additionally, most have furiganas for part or all of the kanjis used (depending on the target age for the series).

Let’s stop here for a slightly tedious digression that you may want to skip if you know anything about the Japanese language and the black magic art known as reading it:

As you may know, Japanese is written using both kanjis (roughly 1000 to 2000 different ones for basic books and newspapers) and two syllabaries known as kanas. A syllabary is similar to an alphabet, in that each character represents a sound, but unlike, say, the latin alphabet, Japanese kanas each match a full sound (”ma”, “mi”, “mu”, “mo”, “ra”, “ri”, “ro” etc). Each syllabary contains 80-some characters and is usually the first thing anybody will learn when studying Japanese.

In theory, every Japanese word could be spelled using only kanas (and thus easily readable by anybody with reading abilities above kindergarten level). This is quite convenient in cases like computer interfaces, where words are typed using kanas, before being turned into kanjis through some menu selection or such. In practice, though, most people (yours truly, included) will find it incredibly tedious to read a text written entirely using phonetic kanas (remember that Japanese doesn’t separate words either). For texts meant to be readable by kids or sufficiently important not to take a chance with the odd illiterate countryman, a compromise is found by writing both the kanji and its kana spelling alongside. These kanas are usually written in a smaller font above (when writing horizontally) or to the right (when writing vertically) of the kanjis they explain. They are called furiganas and will make the most arcane reading accessible to the casual reader.

One important reason to love furiganas, especially for foreigners, is that if you encounter a kanji you are unfamiliar with, you will probably want to look it up in a dictionary… Which is infinitely easier to do if you actually know how to pronounce it.

It is still possible to look up both meaning and reading of an unknown kanji by using a method known as “multiradical lookup”, relying on the number of strokes and a few recognizable components of the whole ideogram. Even if with a bit of habit and the right tools, multiradical searches can be done fairly fast, they are considerably more annoying to conduct than regular phonetic lookups.

End of digression

Finding readable materials…

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If you are looking for a heart-warming family-oriented feel-good movie to watch this week-end: 血と骨 is most definitely not it.