PapaWasabi

Yes, that's peking.com.

But it's hyphenated. Other Chinese cities, such as Xian, Dalian, and Qingdao have been picked up. I even have T-A-I-W-A-N. Why? Follow this space for more info.

A friend, about 10 years older than I am, sent me a couple of long flashes with awful doo-wop music and the following quotes that were, I suppose, mean to elicit a geriatric shiver vaguely reminiscent of...what did we used to call that?...oh, yeah, orgasm.

How many of these do you remember?
Candy cigarettes
Wax Coke-shaped bottles with colored sugar water inside
Soda pop machines that dispensed glass bottles
Coffee shops with tableside jukeboxes
Black Jack, Clove, and Beemans chewing gum
Home milk delivery in glass bottles with cardboard stoppers
Newsreels before the movie

P.F. Flyers
Telephone numbers with a word prefix...(Raymond 4-601).
Party lines

Peashooters
Howdy Doody
45 RPM records/78 RPM, too
Green Stamps
Hi-Fi's

Metal ice cubes trays with levers
Mimeograph paper
Beanie and Cecil
Roller-skate keys
Cork pop guns
Drive ins
Studebakers

Washtub wringers
The Fuller Brush Man
Reel-To-Reel tape recorders
Tinkertoys
Erector Sets
The Fort Apache Play Set
Lincoln Logs
15 cent McDonald hamburgers

I remember most of these personally, all of them if I include second hand stuff like Howdy Doody which was already nostalgia when I first heard of it. The thing is, while it's nice to be reminded of that stuff sometimes, putting all together so we can coo over it is a bit creepy. "They were simpler days," someone might say. Of course they were simpler - we were children!

The world is what it is, and there are plenty of things I'm busy looking ahead towards. All this nostalgia sounds like it's time to roll over and die. Not a good thing at all.

My former life, the one where I jumped around the world from place to place trying to make the next big agriculture deal, the one where I had a wife and kid somewhere who I would see from time to time, the life that was filled with potential but ended up with disaster, is gone.

I make my living doing the little things now. Tech writing, odds and ends that somehow end up bringing in more money than my former hotshot life. Life is quite. I added a second girl to the family. I stayed home a lot. I haven't been on a plane for well over a year. Just wondering what's next, if there is a next.

In the meantime, I get to know my kids, and begin to worry less about myself. Hell, if my kids grow up into happy adults, and I live to see that, I'm good. You can lay me on the tracks and let me die there if we get that far.

I took my 4 year old upstairs to bed. She was busy all evening making various scenes out of cut paper on which she drew pictures. She doesn't need toys. Just paper, scissors and pens or such.
Our conversation was simple.

"Good night, Sheena."
"Good night.... Papa"
"I love you Sheena."
"I love you, Papa."
"Happy Dreams, Sheena."
"Happy Dreams, Papa."
"Sheena"
"Papa"

Then we laughed and she drifted to sleep.

Is it true that a gentleman always wears a t-shirt?

Funny that. I hate wearing two shirts at the same time, unless the outer shirt is made of a particularly itchy Scottish wool (do they mix in wild boar hairs up there?) I mean, that's what sweaters are for.

It wasn't until I spent a couple summers in Japan that I finally went against intuition and put on a second shirt on in 100 degree heat and 99% humidity. It works. And, with new fabrics coming out (available at Uniqlo), the shirts evaporate the sweat off you much more quickly.

Whether this makes you a gentleman is a question I can't answer. But, there is nothing that will reduce your chances of impressing people quite so much as a dress shirt soaked in sweat.

I actually sat and watched CNN for the first time in ages. Larry King is still walking around, proving that the living dead do in fact exist, but that they are very polite and mostly harmless, if a little annoying.

I am glad that I spent my morning watching CNN, as I am now fully informed about the most important event of the week - the mysterious death of Anna Nicole Smith. A group of very serious looking people in nice suits were talking very seriously about the 2 dozen men who are all claiming to be father of her child. Imagine getting paid as well as these CNN anchors do to sit around and discuss the latest gossip with a straight face. No wonder they fall apart when there is real news.

I am bedridden today. It is boring. So boring, in fact, that I have decided to return to blogging We'll see if this lasts past today.

Yeah, I'm still here. So what the hell are you looking at?

Food is not sex. It can be pretty good, but it is still not sex.

So let's avoid the cliches.

This article demonstrates everything that is wrong with American cuisine...well, not actually everything, there's a lot more, but this is a good place to start. Having read a bit more of the author's stuff, I can see he knows his food, which makes it all worse. What is with this self-abasement every time Westerners come up against Japanese food?

"Sometimes the simple things, a 50-cent bowl of pho in Saigon or a properly made bagel in New York, can be more satisfying than the ultraexpensive stuff,..."

This is the height of pretense. Pho in Saigon is a simple dish if you are a Saigon cyclo driver. If you are the reader of this sneakily pretentious prose in New York or Cleveland, a dish of pho in Saigon is an extravagance. Start with the airfare, at around a grand, and go from there. How may readers have sampled pho in Saigon? Few, I would guess. Maybe he is thinking that this is an easy way to play the working man and the international foody in the same phrase .

"Masa is The Deal of the Century. It's a completely over-the-top fantasy in pure self-indulgence—like having sex with a pair of $5,000-a-night escorts while driving an Aston Martin."

Self-indulgence? What?? Good food is good. Where does indulgence come in to the picture? He is picking up on the guilt associated with enjoying anything, much less anything with empty calories - which there is very little of in sushi. So far as having sex with 2 people (he doesn't specify) while driving a moving vehicle...well, that is one of the more obscure fetishes out there, and after 15 years in Japan, I know my fetishes. Maybe the fatality rate keeps it from spreading.

He goes on to describe his sexual desire towards the wood counter and the various dead fish. I know, I know, he is trying to bring in the reader. We all like to fuck. But there is a time and a place, and a partner, and it is not during dinner on a wood counter with a slab of tuna. Food is not sex, except in freshman cliché-land.

“…and in the hushed, reverential silence, it began.”.

From sex to religion. Food is not something deserving of reverence. It is to be appreciated and enjoyed. Silence is what happens when you have nothing to talk about. The best sushi bars I have been in have never been silent, only the worst


"flown in this morning from Tokyo"...yeah, what did they do, yank it out of Shibuya Club at 5am? There are no fresh fish in Tokyo, Fresh fish are in the sea.

“Finally, there was Kobe beef that, with each bite, squirted its pampered, oft-massaged fat between the teeth.”

I wonder if that was the same cow that stuck his tongue in my business partner’s ass while he was selling his Vitamin E to a cattle farmer? Pamper the cows, and they think they have conjugal rights.

“Eating well, on the other hand, is about submission. It's about giving up all vestiges of control and entrusting your fate entirely to someone else.”

Well, a bit over the top and well into S&M territory (or SM, as it is know in Japan). I would say it’s simply about trust, and not all that much of that either. After all, worst case is an unsatisfactory meal, hardly a great leap of faith. What is good about Japan is that in most any restaurant that is not a chain, the omakase course is no big deal. It saves the customer the trouble of trying to appear clever in ordering, and one would presume that the owner knows what is best that day anyway.

What is a shame is that the concept is so alien to America. American restaurants go for volume, and they make heaps of money. What is lost though is intimacy, and the personal care of the chef. The restaurant described here gets around that by charging a fortune per diner. Sorry, but this sort of experience should not be confined to those willing to drop $300 a head on dinner. It is done all over Japan for much, much less. The only thing that stops Americans from doing the same is….I don’t know.

No bread, nor rice? How about a lettuce wrap burger? 

Shrimp asparagus, all kinds of good stuff between two toasted rice buns. 

Mustard chicken sandwich, topped with a spicy daikon radish salad. McDonald's, move that tired fat posterior over, MosBurger brings nouvelle cuisine to fast food. Mos, which is a name only the Japanese could love, stands for mountains, ocean, sun. Why? Don't ask. Japanese corporations are big on this mushy stuff - it takes people's minds off the bottom line, I guess.

I am told that MosBurgers founders went on a hamburger eating tour of the States to find the perfect hamburger for Japan. In the end, they agreed it was a stupid place to look, and instead went about making a Japanese burger. The burgers are good enough, but what really sets this place apart is the innovation. They combie Indian with Tex-mex with Chinese. And the food is as often as not quite healthy. Mos is always a treat. Contrast this with staid McDonald's (Makudo, as it's known here) who precede every rare menu change with a decade of market research, only to come up with something that tastes a lot like everything else on their menu.

Now, if only the staff were as creative as the menus. In a rather showy attempt to demonstrate their inflexibility to a newcomer here, I requested a fish sandwhich with jalepenos. No can do, they say. It's not on the menu. I'll pay for the jalapenos, and put them on myself. Again, no. Finally they agreed to sell me a chili dog, hold the bread, hold the chili, hold the sausage, hold everything except the japapeno peppers. Deal. I paid three bucks for a few jalapeno peppers just to make a point. This is why I never get ahead in life.

How about a nice, dry stick for lunch? Or would you prefer it on a bun? 

Monkey brains? Certainly!

Dog stew? Why not?

Bugs? Chow down!

Burdock root?

Are you out of your Japanese Imperialist Dog mind? We don't eat sticks!

However.......if you really like the stuff, we'll be happy to grow it and sell it to you.

And so the Chinese grow a crop they don't eat. Though, if history is any indication, they eventually will. Remember that great stringy Chinese broccoli that used to come with any Chinese dinner? Gone. The Chinese are big exporters of Western broccoli these days. That means the stringy stuff doesn't get planted. The Western broccoli that doesn't get exported, because of quality or flat markets, is foisted off on the locals, who have long since grown used to it. No farmer is interested in growing the old stuff anymore.

Burdock, though, is one of the more unusual foods on this planet. It is a root, but when it's cleaned up a bit it looks completely different. Like a stick! I am sure you are rushing out to the local Safeway at this moment demanding that they stock it next to the Chinese garlic.

Burdock (know as "gobo" in Japan) actually does have a following in America, among the kind of people who skulk about "health food" stores that stock up on eggless mayonnaise, wheatless bread, creamless ice cream, and various crunchy grains that even pigeons won't touch. Oh, the joys of life.

And even these culinary masochists don't eat burdock. They make an awful, bitter tea with it. Healthworld Online tells me:
"Burdock is a most valuable remedy for the treatment of skin conditions which result in dry and scaly skin. It may be most effective for psoriasis...."

Like I said, you are probably rushing out to try the stuff.
And, in my opinion.....well, you should.

Though the Japanese take a perverse delight in burdock, even prefering roots that are covered with dirt to those that have been cleaned (contrary to their usually finicky cleanliness). In fact, "gobo" sometimes needs to be scruffed up a bit and rolled in dirt before it can be displayed in the local supermarket.

Once taken home, though, and cleaned and boiled, a whole lot of stuff can be done with it. Gobo-mayo sandwiches, for example. Fried gobo sticks. Gobo salad. The possibilities are endless. And it will still cure your psoriasis, even in a hamburger bun.

Gobo salad? Hey...this isn't bad. 

Fried Gobo? Pass the ketchup! 

How'ja like to gnaw on this root, Tanaka-san? Please help yourself, otherwise we use it as roofing. 

Pickles, Anyone? 

Into the sugared vinegar (with wakame strips) 

Cleaned and cut 

Cutting and cleaning in a Japanese-sized sink 

Rakkyou in the rough 

Rakkyou is a member of the lily family, as are onion and garlic. The dictionary translates it as shallots, but they are a particular kind of very pungent shallot that the Japanese like to pickle. They are lovely with beer.

Pickling is a bit involved, but the worst part of it all is actually cleaning and peeling the outer skin off the shallots. As I said, they are pungent, and it would be a good time to sed sensitive members of the family (ie. those with a sense of smell) out of the kitchen. Both ends of the shallots needed snipping off, leaving only the bulb, which I covered generously with salt (about 10% by weight) and allowed to brine overnight.

The following day, I shook off the excess salt and cover the shallots with a mix of boiling rice vinegar and sugar (about equal parts: 300ml vinegar to 300 grams sugar). I added wakame and a few red peppers for flavor. The point of boiling was to thoroughly dissolve the sugar, and to give the shallots an extra crunchiness. After it cooled, I stuck it in the fridge and waited a week.

The result, as you can see, and I can taste, was great! Now, back to to the breath mints.

In a pinch, you can use it to seal envelopes. 

I cannot get enough of Japanese mints. While they may have slowed a bit in the high-tech race, they are lightyears ahead of us in culinary arts, particularly breathmints. This is no surprise, giving Japanese sensitivities to smell. The picture shows Cool Shock mint film, already being copied by Listerine (wait a minute, I thought it was the Yanks who innovate ad the Japanese who copy??). It gives a good jolt of mint, and helps one to avoid the guilt felt when they chew a mint rather than let it dissolve in their mouths.

There are probably millions of villages in China, all wanting to somehow escape their poverty. Some of these villages are quite big. I recall hearing that there are over 800 towns in China with greater than 1 million population. Having been in many of these, it is no wonder that they are not considered cities. They are simply dusty small towns that go on, and on, and on. Beyond that are the villages, and very few in Northern China have any charm that is normally associated with village life. They are generally cold, dirty and desperate. My hosts often tell me that teenage girls in the village can be had very cheaply, even by Chinese standards. Life can be had cheaply as well, joke the drivers of newly imported German cars. The haze in most places is constant, and on even the sunniest of days the sky remains unseen behind a brownish-grey blanket of gauze. The sun is obviously up there, and somewhere the sky must be blue. But, though there is not a cloud to be seen, the sky remains smokey, and creates, at least for me, a constant feeling of oppression.

Still, enough sun comes through to grow some very nice tomatoes, as this picture shows. This village was greatly hoping that their tomatoes would fetch a good price, and allow them to increase their yield next year. The crowd in the background of 50 or so people simply stopped whatever it was they were doing (or possibly stopped doing nothing) to come out and have a gander at us.

Please buy our tomatoes, yankee dog 

We live in a bad part of the city for parking. And since any part of the city is bad for parking, that makes my neighborhood real bad. We have a small beach and a small fishing/yacht port on one side, no parking at all there. There's a forested hill park to the other side, no parking there. If my house were in the center of a pie graph, the actually slice of the pie with residences and, more importantly, parking spaces, would be about 25%. And those spaces, being rare, are as expensive as spaces in the busiest commercial districts in town.

What to do? Luckily, after some inquiries, I discovered that the elevated expressway that runs along the beach (the bureaucrats must have thought that beach was in need of a little concrete facelift), had cheap parking in the space under the road. Not a cheery location to be sure. There's no view of the beach, as it's blocked by a walkway on the seaward side. It's desolate, dark, and musty, with pigeons roosting under the roadway and depositing their crap on the car every few days. All accompanied by the sound of urban expressway traffic overhead. But cheap. My wife is afraid to go there at night alone, and fair enough - it's that sort of place. So I make the trek across the road and under the expressway to get the car each day.

What has this got to do with food, you say? Nothing. I haven't felt like eating much this past week, let alone writing about eating. It has to do with sex, the thing I said I wouldn't write about way back in...er....in my last post. Nature and bloggers abhor a vacuum...

So, as I said, sex. And plenty of it. None of it mine. Most of it in the desolate wasteland under the elevated roadway. If there's one thing that can make you pine for the days before getting married....on second thought, scratch that. Any number of things can make me pine for those days. I might see a dead squirrel on the road, and it would remind me of the last dead squirrel I saw, before we jumped out of the car like mad rabbits and indulged in epic debauchery just behind a "Welcome to Des Moines" roadsign. Let's just say that one of the MANY things that can make one pine for bachelorhood is seeing a happy young couple having sex in their car. (Even an old couple is OK. I once saw a middle aged tryst being consumed on the street on top of a pile of garbage, in the clear non-burnable garbage bags that the city government requires. It was disgusting, pathetic and wonderful, all at the same time. The only thing that could have improved on the spectacle was if one of their spouses had stumbled across them while emptying the last of the trash.)

Despite the ascent into a leading economy, Japanese houses haven't gotten much less crowded as a result. Now, with everyone looking to save a bit of money, the lustre is off of love hotels as well.

Besides, during peak hours it can be daunting to even find an available room in a love hotel district. All those expensive cocktails you bought your date, so she could squeal: "Ah, look. He's got a grapefruit tree behind the bar, and he's freshly picking and squeezing each fruit as we order! And did you see the women's toilet? Each stall has a Japanese garden and a hot spring." (All of which leaves just enough space in the men's room to combine the urinal and the sink into one multi-purpose unit where you can wash your hands and piss at the same time. But guys don't go there for the toilet. They go there to make their date want to have sex with them).

All of that goes to waste when you have to spend two hours trying to maintain the mood while trudging from hotel to hotel only to find no vacancy signs. The alcohol wears off, her feet start to hurt, she gets sleepy, tired and cranky, and even starts to forget about Alhambra-in-the-toilet-stall and the freshly squeezed Salty Dog.

Why risk it when you have an available bit of privacy under the highway? You will have all the privacy you need. Hardly anybody wanders down there at night. Except, occasionally, me.

Which brings me back to my problem. When I wander into the most desolate and decrepit urban wasteland in the city and find it teeming with steamy sexual encounters, I feel a bit left out. I am married, and I am faithful. I could almost forget what it was like to be otherwise if I didn't have to park my car every night and navigate my way home through feet pressed against steamed windows , bouncing cars, and the occasional stunningly beautiful young woman looking up from between those feet to give me a guilty smile as I walk past. (All unavailable women in steamy cars are stunning). What is she doing down there? I know, but I still wonder. Usually they are nice enough to slow the full-on action until I am well passed. I still can't help looking back when I am far enough away, sad bastard that I am. I come home, and am the proud father once again. But a part of me is still back there wishing it were my feet against the window.

And so, we need to move to a place with more parking. With lights and no privacy.

Strawberry 

Friends of the TasteGuru have asked, why don't I write about sex? Everybody, they say, wants to read about sex. For food, they can turn anywhere. So, I will concede just a little. I will write about why I don't write about sex.

I am too old.

Haha! Just kidding. Nobody is too old to think about sex. It is one of the cruelties of the ageing process that our ability fades as our ardour remains pretty much the same. This is why old men with heart conditions will happily risk their lives to ingest Viagra.
The thing is, while sex is wonderful in practice, and even better as a subject of daydreams, it makes for lousy conversation and worse writing, unless it is comedic (which means it is no longer sexy). This explains why almost every cynically sex-drenched drama Hollywood ever produced is a bore. Sex is far to personal to be shared widely in discussion. It's that personal appeal that makes it so great, er...in person. Whatever that little switch is we all have inside, good sex will trip it like nothing else. The same experience, though, shared with someone who has different switches, will be tawdry, boring, or even pathetic. We all know this, and yet most of us still cannot resist sharing. Unless the other party shares the same kinks, discussion is pointless and circular. ("Uh...you mean you actually LIKE when that happens?")
I am no exception, and I will slip from time to time, but for the most part I prefer to focus on the second most powerful human compulsion. Food. Unlike sex, there is always a good chance of converting someone to your tastes, and unusual experiences will draw in, rather than repel, listers. Besides, my wife is unlikely to divorce me over something I write about food, no matter how weird.

Morning at the market in Shandong 

Do we eat well in Beijing? Yes, we do. Even when slumming it. 

Before this blogs grows into some amorphous creature that belongs in an unattended vegetable drawer deep in the bowels of a forgotten fridge, I will start with a mission statement. To wit:
FOOD SHOULD BE FUN

It should go without saying that I include alcohol and any other ingestible item that doesn't kill you. In fact, I will include a few that do kill, as long as the trip was worth it. A whole category called "Food to Die For." Again, it should go without saying...but, it doesn't. Years in Asia have taught me, food in the West is no longer fun. A brief list of the main killjoys of Western cuisine:

1- Politics

I'm really sorry about this whale on my plate, but I didn't kill it, it's already dead, and it would be a shame to die for nothing, and...hey, wait a second...it tastes like steak! Let's kill another!
If not whales, who some people consider to be smarter than humans, and certainly cuter (might explain the obesity trend), then it will be another food that is politically BAD. Tuna is BAD, because it kills dolphins, which are GOOD, and also smarter and cuter than humans. Beef is BAD because each hamburger you eat destroys 55 square feet of irreplaceable rain forest, even if you skip the cheese. I don't know, but this is what I am told by vegetarians. Maybe the hamburgers you don't eat are out planting rubber trees. And forget about switching to hot dogs, they are almost as BAD. And don't forget, rain forests are smarter and cuter than humans, too. Which brings me to the fauna lovers....

2- Vegetarians

If this is your moral code, fine, but keep it to yourself. It is more often a way to distinguish an indistinguishable life, and to provide a cheap sense of moral superiority over the working class. And it is terrifically annoying to go to any restaurant with these people. The owner, the chef, the waiter, in fact, the whole world must stop and take notice that a superior vegetarian person has arrived and demands to be catered to like an MTV diva on holiday. They cannot come to terms with the awareness that other things must die so that we may live (and live well). That they kill thousands of bacteria every time they brush their teeth bother them not a bit. Bacteria are not, in their book, smarter and cuter than humans. The fact that a population of them equivalent to that of China can live on your tongue without even drawing attention to themselves might argue otherwise.

3- Diets

Nothing quite so graceless as a bovine-sized restaurant customer demanding low fat milk for their coffee - this after finishing a 5lb lobster with a tub of drawn butter, and a healthy salad buried under a creamy dressing. Rather than simply enjoying good food, the Dieter tortures himself with creamless ice-cream, unfried french fries, and 100% lean (read: shoe sole) meats. Since none of these taste quite like they should, and since they are "low calorie," the dieter compensates by eating more. A lot more. They will look at their dinner companion, enjoying a scoop of double chocolate ice cream, and wonder how that person can keep so trim. The answer, should one be so bold as to say, is that a quart of low-fat ice cream is still a quart of ice cream. Eat well, eat less.

4- New Health Studies

Hardly a day goes by that a new food isn't demonized by a new study at some university. Since most of us haven't a clue what was involved in the study, or what the resulting statistics actually siginify, we just take the word of the reporter, who is also clueless but writes for a newspaper and is thus reliable. This crosses over into diet territory, and explains why someone would order a decaf cafe latte with low fat milk and artificial sweetener, which is like kissing through cellophane wrap.

5- Snobs

Those who disguise their discomfort with food, or themselves, by pretending to be worldy. Just dare to say that you are enjoying a rose wine, that you prefer your fish cooked, or that you want your sake chilled, and they will be ready to pounce. They will also be wrong. Mediocre restaurateurs have made great names and great fortunes for themselves by catering to just this crowd. They have also caused less pretentious people to shy away from trying foods they might enjoy to avoid embarrassment.

6- Super-sizers

It should be obvious, but more does not mean better. There is nothing appealling about a heap of food on ones plate in any country where starvation is unheard of. The only way one can have a balanced diet with a 1 pound burger is by eating a full head of broccoli along with it. The excess means that there are fewer foods to be enjoyed. It is also the reason why we need low-fat versions of food that would be just fine if eaten in moderation.

Canned Aussie wine a hit in Japan


"By Michelle Hespe
SYDNEY — Suggest buying wine in a can to most people and they will baulk at the crudity of such an idea. However, talk to Barokes, the Australian winemakers responsible for launching and patenting wine in a can, and they will tell you change is in the air.
They will also tell you that it is the Japanese, rather than Australians with their "anything goes" attitude, who are bypassing the wine bottle to crack open the can."

It's natural enough since Japan already is a major consumer of canned coffee. What's ironic is that Japanese are also one of the leading nations in the break away from the can. Americans, and Australians, buy far more canned foods. Part of this is the preference for fresh food, but a bigger part is simply that Japanese love new things in new packages. Prepared meals, fruits, vegetables and meats, not to mention drinks are already widely available in high tech vacuum packed plastic bags. In just about every aspect, these are superior to cans. They have fewer associated costs, and are lighter, cheaper, more attractive, easier to open and easier to dispose of. And they don't corrode. The problem is, Americans just don't trust food in plastic, even though they can actually see it. They prefer cans, where the food is hidden and an opener is required. It's one of the frustrations of selling to America. They see themselves as willing to try anything, but they are in fact deeply conservative about food and food packages.