Yesterday I was taking my son, Kazu, home from school on the bus. While we sat there, it was raining outside and the window had steamed up. Kazu drew smiley faces with his finger in the steam.
"In Japan when I drew on the window my teacher told me never to do it again," he said. He knew that in New York, the rules are different than in Japan, so he kept writing. He wrote his name in English, and then he wrote it in Kanji, the characters in Japanese.
"You can write Chinese?" A boy standing next to us asked. He looked to be about ten years old and Chinese American. "It's Chinese characters, but he's writing in Japanese," I explained. Much of the Japanese writing system was taken from China.
The boy wrote the Chinese character for "tree" on the window, and Kazu said, "Tree!" Then Kazu wrote the character for water and the boy named it. For the next few stops, Kazu and the other boy compared calligraphy on the window while the moving scenes of the New York streets showed through their brushstrokes. People on the bus watched and chatted with each other in Spanish and English.
The boy said goodbye at his stop and waved to us as the bus pulled away. It was a nice New York moment.
One of our hobbies at I'd Rather Be is food, particularly Japanese food. For the three years we lived in Japan, we spent a lot of time researching local ingredients, finding old recipes, and sampling delicious meals wherever we could.
On our occasional trips to Tokyo, Noriko began scouring websites and guidebooks in Japanese for the tastiest ramen and soba shops she could find. There is a subculture of soba and ramen otakus who are avid fans of the noodle, and we relied on their research, followed up with our own trips to the top rated shops, to find what we consider to be the best ramen and soba restaurants in Tokyo.
Once we had them, we realized how difficult it is for non-Japanese speakers to find these places, let alone know what or how to order once they get there. So we created the Tokyo Noodle Guide to help people out.
The Tokyo Noodle Guide is not like the typical guide which lists dozens of places and give you a tiny bit of information. Instead, we narrowed the field to just our favorites, and then we gave in-depth information, how the noodles are made, some nutritional information, maps, directions, subway stops, the works.
Then we added photos of the dishes we recommend, along with a handy ordering guide. You literally just have to point at what you want and you can order. We also explained how to eat, especially with the soba, which sauce is for dipping noodles, where the wasabi goes, what to do with that pitcher they bring you after your meal. This guide is for anyone who really wants the full ramen or soba experience, who needs to know what every single item on the tray is, and who loves to have experiences that aren't available to the usual tourist. We put it all in there, and for only $6.99 you can have a pdf of the guide right now. Click the button below and get your noodle on!
September 20, 2011
We are back from living three years in Gujo Hachiman, Gifu Prefecture. It was an amazing three years. We met some great people, made good friends, and learned about Japanese culture, cooking, and language.
Now we live in New York City, and I will use this blog to continue posting about life in New York.
I also plan to post weekly topics about the English language for people back in Japan, or anywhere, who study English and want to know some fun or interesting things about the language.
To start us off, I was listening to a news broadcast recently, and I heard the sentence, "Customer Omar Khalifa says food prices have almost trebled in the past few weeks."
My wife, Noriko, looked at me and asked, "Trebled?" And I realized this would be a great word to explain. Treble simply means to increase by three times. I don't know why the reporter used treble instead of triple, which is much more common.
We have a bunch of counting words like that in English:
double=twice
triple/treble = thrice
quadruple = 4 times
quintuple = 5 times
sextuple = 6 times
I've seen all those examples in writing, but they are rarely used. Anyway, I hope someone studying English finds this interesting. If you want more posts like this, please let me know in the comments.
After five years of hard work, our documentary on classical Japanese dance grandmaster Iemoto Yoshie Tachibana, The Heron and the Geisha, will have its world premier at the Rhode Island International Film Festival. We're very excited to see it on the big screen, and will keep you posted on how it goes.
“Every night I have conversations with artists and art
lovers from around the world.” My friend Max made a perfect pancake and slid it
onto a plate. Max and his wife are both Japanese, but we met in Brooklyn years
ago when I lived in New York City.
Max was telling me about the people he meets in his strange
new job. He was working for television news in New York, but when the economy
crashed two years ago, a lot of people lost their jobs. Max was a freelancer,
but his work also vanished.
To make matters worse, his parent’s passed away, leaving him
the family home in the port city of Uno in okayama prefecture. “I tried to sell
the house, but nobody is interested in buying in the countryside these days. I
kept thinking about Naoshima and the people who want to go there, and so I
decided to try a bed and breakfast.”
Max now opens his family home to tourists mostly from the US
and Europe. He even practiced making pancake breakfasts. I love a good pancake,
so Noriko, Kazu, and I drove seven hours to see him during Golden Week.
We shared Max’s kitchen with a French man who lives in
Kyoto, his Japanese girlfriend, and two Taiwanese women who live in the US. It
was just like Max said it would be. In the morning, everyone takes the ferry to
Naoshima. We spent the day exploring old farmhouses that had been made into art
installations.
The Bennesse Museum is on the island, along with the Chichu
Museum, both designed by the Japanese architect, Tadeo Ando. There are
fantastic sculptures on the beach as well. It was great to see the contemporary
art set against the natural beauty of the Seto Inland Sea.
For me, the art was only half the fun. Watching all the
Japanese tourists was also a joy. Japanese fashion is so diverse that I felt
like I was seeing works of art stroll past. Orange shoes with purple pants,
straw hats, flowing skirts of various colors, and women in high heels
struggling to stay upright on winding streets.
The roads between the museums wound along lush hillsides
overlooking the ocean. We stopped to admire a still pond with statues on the
shore.
I paused and listened to the insects buzzing and the birds
chirping. I learned statues were an art piece by Tsuyoshi Ozawa called, “Slag
Buddha 88”. The statues were made from slag, which is industrial waste, taken
from a nearby factory. The waste, reincarnated as a Buddha, the product of
industry in a natural setting, there was so much in there to think about.
There are many beautiful temples and shrines in Japan, and I
will never tire of visiting them. But to see art made in the age in which I
live was a delight. I felt as if I were part of the conversation, not just the
audience. As I watched tourists from all over enjoy the art, I realized that,
in a way, the art is spiritual. Art lovers travel from far and wide to view the
work like pilgrims come to see holy relics. The museums themselves have the
same quiet, thoughtful atmosphere of the cathedrals of Europe and the temples
of Asia.
At the end of the day, we returned to Max’s house. We sat in
his kitchen with his other guests and talked about what we’d seen. It was a
little bit of New York, and the entire world, in his parent’s old kitchen. “I
think my parents would be happy that so many people are able to enjoy their
home,” Max said. We sat quietly and thanked them in our silence.
What is it about the Ayu that makes fisherman act so
strange? The first time I heard about the little fish was when a friend pointed
out some fisherman in the Nagara River. The men stood waist-deep in the water,
with long fishing poles.
A fisherman uses a bird and fire to catch Ayu.
"They
make the fish fight," my friend told me. I had no idea what he was talking
about. Only after several people explained it to me did I understand the
interesting ways of the Ayu fisherman.
In
the US, I always fished by putting a worm on a hook and casting into the water.
Not the Ayu fisherman. They use a hook, but they don't put any bait on it.
Instead, they tie a living Ayu onto their line above the hook. Then they dangle
the fish into the water and wait for another Ayu to attack it. The new Ayu will
get hooked while the two fish fight.
According
to fisherman, Ayu like to hang out next to big rocks and nibble on moss. They
are very territorial, so when another Ayu comes along, they fight over their
little patch of moss. This isn't the only way to catch an Ayu, though.
For
the last 1,000 years, some fisherman have used birds to catch fish. The ukai,
or cormorants, are big birds that love to eat anything that swims. The
fisherman tie ropes around the necks of the hungry birds and turn them lose on
the Ayu at night when they're sleeping.
"We
must be careful about how tight we tie the rope," an Ayu fisherman told
me. "If the rope is too tight, the birds can't eat anything, so we have to
leave room for them to swallow the smaller fish."
The
Ukai fisherman keep the birds in their garden all year. During fishing season,
they bring out the birds at night. They go out in a boat and light a fire in a
metal basket that hangs over the water. The fire burns hot, so the fisherman
wears a skirt made of grass to protect himself.
A
couple of men row the boat over the river while the birds dive underwater and
bring back whatever they catch. I sat in a boat next to them and watched. It
was a fascinating sight. The dancing orange flames were reflected in the birds'
black eyes and the smooth dark water. Now and then a bird appeared with an Ayu
in its mouth, like a dog bringing back a toy ball. Everyone cheered.
Seeing
these men fish in the same way that people have fished the Nagara for centuries
was incredible. It was like visiting a museum, but instead of imagining what
life was like, I was bearing witness to the living heritage of Ayu fishing.
That kind of experience, with the fire and the fish, felt more than just
interesting. It was a historical and spiritual trip down the river.
Now, whenever I eat Ayu at a barbeque, I can imagine the
human history that swims alongside these little silver fish. The white meat is
very delicate. If you ever have a chance to taste Ayu, think about that little
fish in the river, next to a rock. You can almost taste the moss in the sweet
meat. No wonder we do such strange things to catch those fish, they're
delicious.
Check out some video footage of the cormorant fishing!
I've been getting more and more interested in the ways that media is evolving, especially as technology continues to change.
I have a background in print, and so I'm very curious about how print will change with new technologies like print-on-demand, and the ipad. I'm working on my own series of very targeted guides to Japan for niche audiences, and I plan to use POD to publish those guides.
As I've poked around online, I've discovered some really interesting people and projects that use old and media in combined ways that really fascinate me.
One such project is a POD business that uses the tabloid newspaper format. The project is called The Newspaper Club http://blog.newspaperclub.co.uk/
That's the product of RIG, the Really Interesting Group.
Here's the story of the newspaper club, on this happened:
Really Interesting Group from This Happened - London on Vimeo.
One thing I really like about the Newspaper Club is that you can use them to print your own content, or you can actually hire them to produce a newspaper for you. If I were rich, I'd love to hire them to write and design custom tabloid newspapers about the battle of Antioch in the First Crusade, the History of the Shakuhachi, and all the other nerdy stuff that gets me excited.
Another sort of post digital/post print project is the Institute for the Future of the Book.
