Shinkansen Standards

It's been a long time since I rode Japan's bullet train, the Shinkansen. But some things never change.





Eating an ekiben (station lunch box) is a given. This one from Tokyo station and has a bunch of old timey foods. Just like the samurai would eat!



I've never ridden the bullet train sober. I'm not alone in this. As soon as the train's doors close, you can hear the pop! hiss! of numerous cans being cracked.



Mt. Fuji. For many people, this is the only view of the majestic mountain they will ever see. Framed by concrete and factories.



Although not as beautiful as... any other view of Fuji, it's most likely the most photographed.



On the way back, a Nagoya ekiben. Not as awesome as the Tokyo one, but good nonetheless. Kind of mirroring Nagoya in general.



In my next post I'll talk shit about Nagoya. Get ready!

85 Yen to the Dollar

Wow! The yen to dollar ratio is at a low. I don't really care. But more exiting is how I found out.



On a TV show called こどもニュース - Kid News. It's a show for kids, by kids. By the way this show is rad for language studying. Anyways...



They illustrated the value of different things. A pair of jeans, a bowl of instant ramen, and.... a 4 pack of happoshu. The low malt beer loved by penny pinching salarymen.

On a TV show called "Kid's News".

Turkey Day in Japan

I've celebrated the Thanksgiving holiday in the past in Japan... sort of. Usually a bunch of us foreigners get together and pretend like we are a big happy family. It gets lamer each year. This year it wasn't in the cards. But, on my way to buy my 250 yen bento lunch, I said, "Fuck it! I need to splurge on something resembling turkey!"



Fried chicken curry from CoCo Ichiban. If I pretend the sauce is gravy mixed with spicy cranberry jelly, it sort of works. And chicken is just a tiny turkey, so it's all good.

Cheese Fantasy Quatro Course Pizza

Pizza time! What's new this month?



Let's start with the toppings. This ain't your average, everyday quad-style pizza. No sir, each quadrant is blessed with one of four "courses". They look to be inspired by French cuisine. It's a god damned Michelin Star on a crust.



First up (not pictured) is the pancetta and tomato appetizer course. Follow that with "Rlobster Americainee Souce". Following the appetizer and fish course, logically a meat course. Chicken with artichoke sauce (souce).



Finally, Whip & Berry. On the pizza. Right next to the lobster.



And don't overlook the fact that it's all on some sort of "fantasy" cheese crust.

By the way, it's about $50, but one would assume that includes delivery.

Recent Bowls of Ramen

Some of the recent stellar bowls of noodles slurped. View more at my ramen blog:

www.ramenadventures.com








*this 1500g bowl of noodles was not mine. I did just fine with the 500g version.

A Short Bicycle Ride

A recent conversation went something like this:

"Yeah, you can totally ride out to the construction site of the new Tokyo Sky Tree."

"Sounds cool I guess."

"And there is a bridge with like 20 construction otaku at any given time taking hundreds of photos."

"Tight!"

"If you keep riding, about 15 minutes later is a playground."

"O... kay."

"That looks like the Eye of Rah if viewed from space."

"Awesome!"

"And a bit further there are a ton of housing projects, then a giant windmill, then a factory where they cremate hella people from Tokyo every day. And you won't see a single tree the whole time!"

"Rad!"

If the endless expanse of concrete makes you sick, you shouldn't live in Tokyo. Actually, if you don't love this sort of thing, you shouldn't live in Tokyo. Japan has some truly beautiful natural locales, but they aren't around these parts!

Working at a Tsukemen Noodle Festival

I was sitting in Ivan Ramen, one of my favorite ramen shops out in West Tokyo, chatting with Ivan Orkin, the owner. This was a couple months ago. He was in the beginning stages of working out his involvement in an upcoming tsukemen festival. Tsukemen is like ramen, but the noodles are cold, and served outside of the soup. Tsukemen is delicious and you should eat it. Here are some posts from my Ramen Adevnetures site that show the wonderful world of tsukemen:

TESTU
Yondaime Keisuke
Tasube

Hungry yet?



Ivan asked if I wanted to help him out at the Tsukemen Festival. Hell yeah I do. It's a win-win. I get to spend a weekend doing something totally rad, working in a ramen shop, and Ivan gets 20 hours of free slave labor. Hmmm...



Yeah, it was cool. But for real, it was non-stop labor from 10am until 10pm. With a 15 minute break around 3pm to eat.



And the lines were hella crazy. Here's the ticket line, 2 hours before the festival opened. Why the hell would you wait so long?



This guy. The "Soup Nazi" of ramen land. The "Ramen Nazi" if you will. Not that dude on the right side, he's just some random getting his slurp on before heading to a love hotel with his girl.

Sano-san is this evil ramen guy who shoots down ramen that isn't perfect in his opinion, all on national TV. But it he says your stuff is good, you are in like Flynn.



This guy's job is to hold a sign that says, "This isn't the end of the line, even though it looks like it. Go waaaaayyyyy baaaaaack theeeeeeere!"



Then this dude let's you know that you're gonna be here about 3 hours. For this:



Our line was about 20 minutes at most. We could get it down to 0 with some efficient noodle making, but if your line is too short, people don't want to get in it. At one point, we saw a few people turn away. "Fuck, stop making 5 at a time and only make 3". 20 minutes later, with a healthy line built up, we were back in business.



Here's what went into ours:







Hells yeah those are roasted tomatoes.



The process was simple.

1. Cook and cool the noodles and place them on the plate
2. Put the salad on the noodles
3. Put a bowl of hot soup on the plate
4. Toppings
5. Serve

When we were on point, it worked great. When we fucked up, I'd be sitting there with like 10 things in front of me trying to figure out which get an egg, which get roasted garlic, and how much time do I have until a break (the answer to the last one is "long").



But whatever. Some of the staff was stressing, or acting stressed, but people got their food in the end.



My buddies Nate and Keizo gettin' shit done.



Ivan headed things up....



... when he wasn't talking on the phone. Dude talked for like 3 hours on the phone each day. I guess it's good to be the boss.



The lines grew...



and grew.

Our finished product looked like this:



The soup was a white chicken cream soup with 20 ingredients. This was something I could drink straight (and did a few times).



Radical!



After lunch, walking back to Ivan's, I thought I'd take some pictures of other workers.



In the back of Keisuke's , I snapped this shot, then the big guy yelled, "You want some?" I had two options with my reply. Option 1, "No sir, I just ate and couldn't possibly have another bowl. I know it's no charge, but I just can't. Take care!". Option 2, "Hell yeah I want a bowl of your crab and shrimp soup!"



The hook up.



Back at Ivan, things died down a bit in the evening, and we were at a steady pace of 3 bowls at a time. A few of my friends showed up to say hi. Thanks a ton P, Y, M, C, K, S, L, M, M, and K.



In the end, we did about 1200 each day. That's a lot of noodles. And a lot of happy people. Even though food at an outdoor festival isn't going to be as good as at a shop, the atmosphere was live and fresh.



Check out this other shop. Can you read kanji?



It says Ganja.

They had some interesting toppings. Can you read katakana?



Free ganja... but they ran out.



Is this foreshadowing of my future*? Who knows!

*The ramen... not the ganja

Haikyo! Konomai Gold Mine in Hokkaido

Like a year ago, I took an interest in Haikyo, Japanese urban decay. Products of modern civilization, usually modern overzealous spending, that have gone to the wayside. I bought a book, subscribed to a bunch of blogs, and got my tripod ready to go building hunting.





But apparently my interest went to the wayside too. A recent article from VICE says that urban decay is for lazy journalists. I'm no journalist, but I am lazy, and I can say that it takes a lot to get up and drive hours out of town to see this stuff.





I adopted a new philosophy about this stuff. I'll be an accidental Haikyo finder. If I'm out and about, and run into something random, I'll try my best to check it out. That's just what happened in Hokkaido.





The farmer I was working with took me for a few hours to a nice countryside onsen. On the way back, he pointed at a crumbling chimney in the distance, and in his broken English told me about a gold mine in the area that closed back in the 70s. I noted the spot, and headed out there the next day.





Konomai was the site of the biggest gold mine in Asia in the 40s. A town was built around it, housing some 13,000 people. But then it dried up, and the ground was basically leveled. I walked around for a couple hours looking for anything of interest.



One appeal of Haikyo for me is the ghost factor. The more fucked up the situation was, the more fucked up the spirits are gonna be, right? A love hotel might have some crazy Shining type thing going on. A school? Maybe ghosts of kids murdered by the night janitor. A gold mine though. Think about what might have gone down. Like B.I.G. said, "The chedda breeds jealousy". Dude dies in the mine while his wife is having an affair with the foreman or something. Vengeful ghost enacts his wrath upon all.



I searched and searched for anything freaky.



Then I heard a crash.



My motorcycle had mysteriously fallen over. The back end caught the guard rail, but if it hadn't, I would have been down in a ditch without a clue.





Took that as a clue, and headed back to finish milking cows.