Japan: Ginza

While on holiday in Japan, I kept a detailed series of notes in honour of Nanowrimo.  All posts about Japan comprise excerpts from my journals. 

 8th November 2013

"7:17pm

It's early but I'm just about ready for bed, so it's going to be a short, quick list tonight.

1) We find ourselves in Ginza for the last couple of days of the trip.  Ginza is bright and sophisticated - fancy brands and big roads and a rather gentrified clientele.  The malls are shiny and spanking and large, light green gingko trees line the sidewalks, shedding their leaves all over bikes.

2)  We pull up into a 24-hour sushi joint and have some of the best salmon sashimi I've ever had in my life.  It's sinuous but not unpleasantly slimy; this is the taste and texture of a beautiful, healthy, fatty fish.

3)  Of course, the other priority is the 12-storey Uniqlo, the flagship to beat all flagships, which proudly advertises itself as the best Uniqlo in the world.  We are inclined to agree.  There are about six floors for women's clothing, three floors devoted to men, one for kids, one floor for new innovations and fancy collaborations (with 10 Swedish designers that have made amazing prints), and one entire floor for Heattech alone, the mannequins all wearing outsized moon boots.

I think of Wei-Yuen the whole time I finger silk dresses and wintertime corduroy.  Between my mother and I, we only buy about four things, which I think shows admirable restraint.

4) We find a charming little cafe in a side street on a corner, all red light and warm, smoke-scented tables and fairy lights.  We try one of the next sweets on the list: MontBlanc.  I've had a MontBlanc a couple of times in my life and I just haven't loved it that much.  It's sweet and bland and nothing, really, to write home about.

But this one.  This MontBlanc is covered in a chestnut paste that is pure chestnut and barely any cream.  It's slightly sandy in a good way, with tiny chestnut pieces, and is not too sweet.  Against the clean, fresh cream in the centre and the light meringue on the bottom, it's a hit even with my mother, who doesn't like sweets.  I spend a very cosy hour sipping coffee from a delicate floral cup and slowly cleaning up my portion of the MontBlanc.

And now, to bed because..."

To be continued...

OOTD #2

This was the day the barrista gave me a cup that said "Book Power" on it.  (My name is Shuli and as a joke, he wrote it in very similar-sounding Chinese characters that mean something completely different.)

As if I weren't already nerdy enough.

Projects

So far, it's been a pretty quiet month and now that the weather is getting increasingly rainy, I've been really enjoying my quiet days off at home.  I love hanging out with friends, but sometimes, I'd rather be knitting and watching old episodes of Buffy.  Can you believe I've never watched the season where Spike falls in love with her?  Yeah, neither can I.  (Thanks, Gail!)

This is the longest scarf I've made to date.  My brother, Shen, decided to dress up like a hipster to model it.  He took it to Sapporo during the winter season so that he could use it when he was out and about for work.  He's a lot taller than me and I made it long enough to go round his neck twice and still hang at a decent length.

I made it using a truly beautiful 8mm yarn that I got from Spotlight.  The yarn has a tiny bit of wool in it for warmth, but otherwise is made of a material that's almost silky to touch.  It's already woven in a braid so that even with a simple 3-by-3 rib pattern, it had a great deal of texture.  I loved that the yarn felt complex and high quality when I was working with it and it knit up pretty quickly.

A couple of inches from the ends, I knit the rib pattern in reverse to create a bit of a border and interest.  Because the rib stitch folds like an accordion, I'm quickly learning that it is always a lot more narrow off the needles than on, and that I have to cast on a lot more widely than I think.

In between, I had time to celebrate Melodie's and Sid's birthdays!  (There may or may not have been drinks.) 

After an evening of hysterical laughter, I stayed over at S's house and woke up to the beautiful light in her room.  Every time I spend the night, I have to take a photo in the morning because it looks so interior design catalogue worthy.

Now, I'm working on a straightforward garter stitch scarf with colour blocks so that I can practice joining new colours.

I'm using three different 4mm yarns and even though two are made of wool and one is acrylic, I'm happy to report that I can't feel the difference so far.  The blocks aren't any particular number of rows; I'm just knitting by feel and it's lots of fun to just let the colours run until I feel like it's time for a new one. 

Oh, and I'm on the last package of my favourite cookie - the one that you can't get anywhere else except once or twice a year when a certain fair rolls round into Isetan and they make it on the spot.  It's sad, but they've been such a treat to look forward to.  

Goodbye, delumpshious Hokkaido biscuit!  See you next year!

That is all.

Japan: Cup Noodle Museum

While on holiday in Japan, I kept a detailed series of notes in honour of Nanowrimo.  All posts about Japan comprise excerpts from my journals. 

7th November 2013

"This morning, we head to the Cup Noodle Museum which I'm thoroughly confused by.  What does one display in a Cup Noodle Museum?  We already know what cup noodles look like.  So, there are displays of cup noodles, walls and walls of them in fact, but the entire museum is really a monument to the man who invented them, Momofuku Ando.

The building is, itself, architecturally pleasing with a clean red, white and wood aesthetic.  Because cup noodles are so mundane and kitschy, the spacious, airy design concept makes a lot of sense.  Of all the museums we've been to, this is the most popular one.  Children come out excitedly clutching sealed bags of cup noodles that they've flavoured and designed themselves.  It's one big noodle party.

We see all the different iterations of instant and cup noodles over the years and watch an animated documentary about Ando.  Perhaps the most interesting thing about him was that he only invented instant noodles after a string of failed businesses at 48, after sitting in a shed for nights and wondering how to preserve the noodles and cook them quickly.  Years later, at 61, he realised that in America, the workers would break the noodles into cups and pour hot water over them for a more convenient dish, and cup noodles were born.

Outside, we walk around a replica of the shed that Ando used for inventing, complete with a massive vat of oil so that he could fry up batches of noodles at any time.  I am impressed by how neat it was, and yet how self-sustaining.  There was even a coop of chickens outside just in case an egg was needed on the spot.

I am most excited by Ando's six rules of innovation and business.  It's cheesy but they are fairly inspiring.  It is inspiring to think of people finding their groove so late in life when I have not particularly found mine.

According to him:

1) Discover something completely new

2) Find hints in all sorts of places

3) Nurture ideas.

4) Look at things from every angle

5) Don't just go with the status quo

6) Never give up

Upstairs, the ramen making workshops are in full swing.  Children are frenetically colouring on the styrofoam cups after putting in the flavouring of their choice and in then blowing up the plastic packs and vacuum sealing their cups inside.  Behind a glass screen, women in snakeskin heels and Nissin bandanas lead their kids in the act of kneading ramen dough.

We don't make or buy any ramen, but it's a quirky experience just the same, and I'm stupidly happy to see that someone with such an inane claim to fame is being remembered.

We walk to the pier afterwards, hoping to take a short cruise around the bay, but the only available ones are far too long.  Instead, we sit on a softly bobbing platform watching the boats come and go.  The water is a deep slate blue-grey and so impossibly briny that it's making my mouth water.

We take a slow walk along the boardwalk and talk to some of the old men fishing there.  One of them shows us a tupperware of gloppy, pink shrimp and the tiny netted box that he spoons them into before hooking it on the end of his fishing line, which is also strung with three tiny neon hooks  They don't seem to be having any luck, but they don't seem to mind either, chatting and leaning comfortably as they wait for non-existent bites.

Further out in the water,we can just about see the splashes of fish leaping about in the waves and the seagulls taking full advantage, swooping and mantling low over the water before sinking their claws in.  When the wind starts picking up and we can feel rain drip through the leaves, we retire to the nearest cafe for coffee and cake.

The rest of the evening is leisurely... we're leaving tomorrow.  I've really enjoyed being in this little town with "nothing to do".  Life feels good slow and easy, although I guess right now it can't be like that for always.  Tomorrow, we're back in Ginza for a couple of days before it's  back home, back to work, back to reality (oh, there goes gravity, oh, there goes rabbit...).  I'm grateful for the extra chances to rest, but I also think that Yokohama in itself has been pretty reviving.

I would love (love!) to come back to Japan, but I don't know if I'll ever see Yokohama again.

Tonight, I'll lie in bed and watch the rainbow lights blink and swirl on the ferris wheel and feel grateful and glad that I got a chance to be right here, but also, to envy (just a little) the lucky person who gets to be right here after me."

Rascals

For privacy reasons, I don't talk very much about work here but it is one of the few things that makes me happy these days.  Today, I came in to my most energetic and noisy class to see the fourteen 12-year-old students sitting morosely in complete silence.

"What's up?" I asked, worriedly.

"We're upset," the most outspoken girl said.  "We can't think of any trick to play on you for April Fool's."

I laughed out loud, oddly touched that they'd thought of doing something and grateful that they wouldn't.  

"Doesn't anyone in class have anything fun, at least?" one of the boys at the back yelled.

"Actually," my littlest boy said to me, rather solemnly, "I brought you two fake cockroaches today.  I got them for fifty cents each."  My classes know about my cockroach aversion well and we have a little discussion about Blattodea every week. 

"Well, then, we must have them!  They can sit up front and be the class mascots."

He produced two awful-looking critters from his pencil case and poured them into my palm.  They even felt sort of real and bristly.  With a shudder, I brought them to the front of the class and we spent a very cheerful five minutes arranging them realistically over the projector and poking at them squeamishly.

"What are they called?" I asked their owner.

Without missing a beat, he said, "Charles and Carrie."

And for the rest of the period, the kids silently passed Charles and Carrie around, making them sit on shoulders, pencil cases and worksheets in a ghoulish-yet-friendly sort of sharing that gave the class a decidedly festive air.

At one point, something occurred to me and I turned to the boy who had produced the bugs saying, "You know what a really horrible prank would have been?  If you had told me you brought me two fake roaches and then..."

His eyes gleamed with sudden understanding as he caught on, "... and then when I put them on your hand one of them started crawling?"

Oh, dear god.  I love my students very much.