Tag Archives: viking.meibutsu

Myanmar Stream of Consciousness: Week 3 ミャンマーの旅の意識の流れ・第三周

26 Jan

Oh and now you’ve had your fun
Under an air-conditioned sun
It’s burned into your eyes,
Left you plain and left behind
I see them rise and fall
Into the jaws of a pestilent love

Beck, “Tropicalia”

pindayapaper1

This trip had a way of oscillating between utterly, desperately, I-want-to-go-home awful and breathtakingly, deliriously, I-never-want-to-leave wonderful; for every boring-ass Buddha there is a mercilessly flavorful curry; for every mountain of monkey poo there is a ride in a beautiful balloon. On rare occasions, these lows and highs happened simultaneously.

We touched down in Heho around four in the afternoon. It was a joy to get out of Kyaing Tong, especially since I was in the early stages of what would prove to be an ugly bout of Montezuma’s revenge (Thibaw‘s revenge?). I was feeling alright at the moment – the view  of the surrounding area was lovely, and when we got to the car, a pack of strange men hustled towards us, and began massaging us. It was unsolicited, and weird, but damn did it feel good. At least, it did at the time – but soon I would come to feel nothing but remorse and anger for paying them 7000 kyats.

The drive to Pindaya was beautiful, in an unexpected way – the landscape would not have looked at all out of place in southwestern England, or central Wisconsin. Rolling hills, a quilt of crops – yellow and ochre, green and red. Cotton candy clouds. I wish I had asked the driver to pull over, like the van full of Japanese tourists ahead of us had done, so that I could take photos.

But I just wanted to get to the hotel as fast as possible. My tract was buckling and convulsing as we drove on; a war was being waged as savage microbes fought to colonize my insides. The typically bumpy Burmese road (not something one gets used to quickly, as it turns out) didn’t help the situation, and neither did that massage. That massage – I don’t know what those people did to me, those horrible little con men, but my muscles have never felt worse. It started as an ache, a patch of discomfort somewhere between my shoulders, and then it expanded into an encompassing, disquieting, pulsing pain throughout my upper back that caused me to sweat, glare at our guide, and curse this rotten trip, curse this vulnerable body, curse this insufferable country.

It was dark when we got to the hotel. I took six Pepto Bismols and three paracetamols, ate a plate of plain white rice, drank a glass of rice whiskey and went to bed. Tomorrow, I decided, would be much better.

pindayaparasols

At least until the night I spent vomiting and defecating into a toilet that wouldn’t flush in a millipede-infested treehouse in the middle of a jungle in southern Thailand, that drive to Pindaya was the nadir of my trip. I was in pain from that regrettable massage for a while longer, but otherwise the rest of the week was just lovely:

pindayapaper2pindayapaper3

A cave of eight thousand Buddhas, a stunning demonstration of traditional paper and parasol making, and a trek through the mountains near Kalaw on a clear day.

inlehotel1

Next stop, Inle Lake: calm, glassy water filling a wide-open valley, surrounded on all sides by mountains, many capped with the distinctive brown patchwork and green terraces of hill tribe agriculture. But down here, the people live on the water – literally. Houses, shops, restaurants, markets, and resorts built on stilts hover just above the water. Transportation is by boat. Schoolkids row their way home at the end of the day, as fishermen pull in their final catches; there are no lights on the water, so it’s important to be home by sundown.

inle1inle3

It’s amazing, the resources the people here have found in this lake – obviously there is seaweed, and seafood (lakeweed, and lakefood?); but also lotuses, prized not only for their blossoms but for their stems, which contain a bundle of strong, thin fibers that are woven into beautiful and durable (and expensive) fabrics.

inledyesinlespinning

And then there are the tomatoes – possibly the best tomatoes I’ve ever tasted, and grown in an ingenious way. Hedges of buoyant seaweed are lined up neatly atop the water, then soil and compost is layered on top of the seaweed, then tomatoes are sown in the soil. Little floating farms, bringing forth the sweetest, savoriest, sauciest tomatoes. There must be something in the water.

inletomatosoupinletomatofish

And then it was onto Ngapali: this was the much-awaited “vacation” portion of the trip. In the four and half weeks since I started my trip in Taiwan, I hadn’t had a single day off – in fact, I had barely had an afternoon off. The trip had been non-stop sightseeing, non-stop hotel inspections, and non-stop yammering from our guides until our two days in Ngapali. No guides. No temples. No Buddhas. No bumpy drives. And we only had to see five hotels and we could do that whenever we wanted to – so it was time to relax.

ngapalidusk

(I’m afraid I may have used too many superlatives in these posts about Burma, so this is the last one, I promise:) Ngapali is the most amazing beach I’ve ever seen. Now, I haven’t even been to that many beaches, so I suppose that isn’t that great of an endorsement, but I should mention that I don’t even like beaches very much – too much sand, and you never know what’s gonna brush up against you in the water (jellyfish, kelp, fast food containers, children… ugh). But I liked Ngapali. I reeeally liked it. The sand – fine, flaky, and ivory in color. The water – crystal in your hand, and so delightfully warm. Perfect weather. Gorgeous sunsets. And the best part? No people.

ngapaliday

I actually feel a bit conflicted just telling people about Ngapali. One one hand, I feel like people need to know about this beach; on the other hand, I don’t want anybody to go there. But if you do go, you have to get out onto the main road and head to one of the local restaurants for a dinner of fresh, tender grilled squid with an electric sauce of lime, chili, and ginger. (You can thank me later.)

ngapalisquid

Finally, we flew back to the dusty haze of Yangon, relaxed, tan, and more than a little annoyed that our short break was over. Of course, we didn’t know that we would be stuck in Yangon for the next week with nothing to do while we waited for Thai protesters to leave the airport. In the end, I left Myanmar satisfied, but knowing that I will return.

Hokkaido: Taiwan’s Dairyland 北海道：台湾のデアリーランド

8 Nov

hichewmilkchocolatepoteto

Since I first arrived in Taiwan I have been amazed at the amount of snack foods bearing the name of Hokkaido, Japan’s northernmost island. It seems that certain Hokkaido meibutsu – especially milk, potatoes, and cantaloupe – are almost as well known in Taiwan as they are in Japan.

softcream

I have always been fond of the “Wisconsin of Japan” analogy to describe Hokkaido, but perhaps it is even fair to describe it as the Wisconsin of East Asia?

milkbread

That’s probably pushing it, but still; at least in Taiwan, Hokkaido means dairy!

cantaloupeicecream

Taipei the Primitive Culture Way プリミティヴ・カルチャーの台北

8 Nov

shilinscene

When I went to Thailand last year, I stayed with my friend Alexander and his surprisingly non-French boyfriend Bordeaux. The pair showed me a wonderful time in and around Bangkok, and it was fitting that I experienced Thailand for the first time with their guidance because it was their blogs that made me want to go there in the first place.

Bordeaux’s Marita Says and Alexander’s Primitive Culture are not just enviable; I actually do envy them. Their tantalizing photography, decadent recipes, lucid yet succinct writing, and rapidity of posting are all things that make me feel very inadequate as a fellow food and travel blogger. It’s a good thing I don’t visit the same places they do or I’d probably just give up.

Now, I am in Taiwan, and I find myself in the frustrating/wonderful position of being somewhere that Bordeaux and Alexander have already been. It’s frustrating because I feel like I can’t really add much to their already excellent posts about the island; it’s wonderful because I can use those posts as a very unique travel guide.

Or at least I can to a certain extent. Since I’m visiting Taiwan (and Burma and Thailand) as a field agent for my company, I have annoyingly little control over what I get to see, do, and eat. That’s not to say the trip hasn’t been awesome so far and I haven’t seen, done, and eaten some pretty amazing things. But it’s weird being more or less told where to go on your vacation. Then again, this isn’t a vacation.

breakfast1snakesoup

Luckily, I did have a bit of free time in Taipei. Taipei is an interesting city that reminded me a bit of Pusan, and although it boasts a vibrant food scene and a variety of intriguing local specialties, I found the culinary landscape a bit difficult to take in with only a few free hours to spare in two short days. The breakfast at my hotel was, of course, worthless, as was the dinner provided on one of the coach tours I was forced to take. The tour itself was actually fairly interesting, and it brought me to Huaxi Market where I tried snake soup… but the meal they gave us? Tasty enough, but completely safe and generic: all-you-can-eat Mongolian barbecue and Cantonese hotpot. Yawn.

buffethotpot2

This is where Alexander and Bordeaux came to the rescue; Primitive Culture in particular had some fantastic posts on food in Taipei. I didn’t really plan to follow Alexander’s lead so precisely, but, completely by chance, I kept finding things that he and Bordeaux had eaten. The first “Taiwan treat” I found was a slice of chocolate Swiss roll decorated like a log cabin, at a cafe near Longshan Temple. The little cake struck me as very Japanese – I was reminded of one of Kitakyushu’s more dubious meibutsu, the roll cake.

cake

Initially I was very surprised at how deeply Japanese food and culture in general is ingrained into modern Taiwanese culture. Of course, this makes a lot of sense, considering that Taiwan was a colony of Japan for half a century and today remains on the receiving end of a constant stream of Japanese pop culture and Japanese tourists. So the little log cabin roll cake and a number of similarly kawaii confections sold in Taiwan may be derived from Japan’s adoration of delicate pseudo-European sweets; or it may be purely coincidental that the Taiwanese have developed a similar fetish independently of Japanese influence. At any rate, it was as soft and delicious as it was adorable.

The next night I was mine to enjoy “at leisure,” as we say in the biz. So I hightailed it to Shilin Night Market, by all accounts the best night market in Taipei; here I was delighted to find and taste a number of things highlighted in Primitive Culture. First off was shaved ice, which is a sort of no-brainer when it comes to eating in Taipei, but I was certainly more determined to have some after reading Alexander’s post about it. I decided to forego the typical fruit toppings in favor of something more uniquely Taiwanese: peanut jam, almond jelly, and condensed milk. The mountainous dessert was like powdery snow, melting evenly and smoothly with the gooey sweetness of the peanut jam and milk. The almond jelly was tasteless, overwhelmed by the cold ice and the rich, nutty topping, but it did add a pleasantly weird texture to the whole delicious mess.

ice1

Then there was the sausage, one of Alexander’s first tastes of Taipei, and a specialty, I later learned, of Shilin. I can’t really read Chinese, although occasionally I can figure stuff out based on their Japanese equivalents. In this case my weird obsession with obscure fish, insect, and plant kanji paid off. I could read the character 蒜 that forms part of 大蒜, more commonly written as the hiragana にんにく (ninniku): garlic, as I correctly guessed. The sweet, succulent, sausage was drunk with the stuff – a mellow, musky flavor perfectly tuned to the low frequency of fatty pork.

sausage1sausage21

To wash it all down, I chose… wow!! Frog’s eggs: boba and lemon jelly in a refreshing, lightly sweetened iced tea. As bubble tea goes, it was pretty standard, but like Alexander, I was unable to resist the charmingly bizarre graphics on the cup.

frogseggscoffin

I also saw coffin bread, a specialty of Tainan, but alas, I was too full to partake even though it looked really good, especially in the photos on Primitive Culture. Too full, after only a sausage, a dessert, and a cup of tea? Some viking you are. Ah, but I’ve not mentioned the other things I ate that night at Shilin, the things in which Alexander and Bordeaux didn’t partake. First was pig’s brain soup. This, unlike frog’s eggs, is not just a cute name; in fact, there was little that could be called cute about this simple dish. In a thin, nondescript broth bobbed hunks of porcine cerebral cortex, unadorned but for a few shreds of lettuce and ginger. The brain, which was of course the most interesting thing going on here, had a lovely flavor like cream cheese blended with liver, and yet it just didn’t work in the soup. There was nothing to offset it; the ginger helped a bit, but in the end it was just a bowlful of brain. Though I didn’t like it, I’d definitely try brain again; the mild, funky flavor and supple texture was just too intriguing. I’d like to have it seared, maybe with a passion fruit sauce, or in a pate with fennel and sage.

brain

Finally, I tried the Taipei-only da bing bao xiao bing, literally “small pastry wrapped in little pastry,” which is more or less exactly what they are. The way they are made amused me: a perfectly fine, deep fried and flaky pastry filled with black sesame seeds is smashed to pieces with a hammer, then indelicately dressed with your choice of sweet or savory toppings and sheathed in a chewy round of dough like a burrito. The end result is so much more than the sum of its parts: a chewy mess of a dessert (I got mine with sweet coconut) with a terrifically satiating crunch.

biglittle

Though I was only in Taipei for two days, I feel pretty satisfied with what I ate there, thanks in part to my comrades Alexander and Bordeaux. Eating can be frustrating when you’re in an entirely new place and you don’t read or speak the language and you don’t know east from west, but as Primitive Culture, Marita Says, and hopefully I am a viking have shown, you’ve just got to find a decent night market, and the good food will find you.

It Rhymes with Adventure (Sort of) アドベンチャーと韻を踏む（みたい）

12 Oct

Before I came to England, I wrote that I hoped to see more than just London; I wanted to see the British countryside, I wanted to see outlying cities and sample their meibutsu. I am pleased to announce that in just three weeks, I have been to seven British counties outside London and passed through several more.

A week after I got here, I went with Laura to visit some of her friends in Exeter, which I believe is affectionately named after a small town in Wisconsin. Exeter is in the county of Devonshire, a name I knew from listening to Laura rave about the clotted cream produced there. To my American ears, the term “clotted cream” sounded disgusting when I first heard it, as my mind conjured images of curdled milk and clogged arteries.

The clogged arteries actually may not be that inappropriate an association, as clotted cream is very rich. But the flavor is divine: it tastes pretty much just like heavy cream, with a supple, almost custardy consistency. It is so good on scones with jam; accompanied by a pot of tea, it becomes the classic “cream tea,” a most decadent mid-afternoon snack that made me feel vaguely guilty in a Victorian sort of way.

We walked off the cream tea – or at least some of it – with a stroll along a pretty, bramble-flanked river in the town of Totnes. The British countryside, by the way, is beautiful. I didn’t get any good pictures of it because I saw it mostly through train and car windows, but trust me, it’s gorgeous. In Devonshire hills roll over and tuck under one another, covered with a patchwork of farmland hemmed in by rows of stately shrubs. The landscape is dotted with sheep and spotted with cows and in the sunset, the whole country glows with warm greens and reds.

A word about the cows: I have never seen so many cows. I suppose in Wisconsin, many of the dairy and beef farms are simply too off the beaten track for me to have ever seen the bulk of them (though I did see a bison farm once on the way up to Minneapolis – very cool). Still, it made me think, with Jamie Oliver and Michael Pollan in the back of my mind, that maybe in Britain industrial farming is far more widely frowned upon and practiced far less. By the way, Devon is renowned for dairy in general, and if you ever encounter any Devon Cheddar or Stilton I encourage you to purchase as much of it as you can carry.

For dinner, we went to a pub. I love pubs. I will write more about them later, but for the moment I’ll just say that their real ales, their classic food, and their old-timey architecture and decor are all quite beguiling to me. This particular pub, in the middle of nowhere as far as I could tell, had a homey, familial feel and some very winsome local ales. The strong, dark one was especially nice, particularly as a pair to my hearty, delicious steak and ale pie; the malty, caramelized beer fit the crunchy, crackery crust, the tender hunks of beef, and the light bitterness of the ale-based gravy like a key in a lock.

The next morning we awoke to a delicious breakfast of sausage and bacon sandwiches, and then we spent the bulk of our sunny day canoeing down a canal. Upon return I was introduced to British pizza. Some of it was a bit weird – I’m still not totally sold on crispy duck pizza – but it wasn’t quite Japanese-weird, and it was actually pretty damn good.

I had eaten well, but so far I still hadn’t tried one of the region’s most celebrated specialties: pasties. The pasty (which unfortunately rhymes with nasty, not tasty) is a simple thing, but an ingenious thing: meat and a bit of veg stuffed into a stodgy, bready shell and baked until hard, brown, and piping hot. I think pasties fulfill some very primal gustatory urge, which is why there are so many analogous foods all over the world. In England there seems to be some debate as to whether they originated in Devon or in bordering Cornwall, and in fact there is a CAMRA-like organization that certifies and registers pasties as authentically Cornish. The pasties I had were certified, and pretty good, but I must say they struck me as very bland. Even so, as I write this with a mild hangover from a night out in London, I think a pasty would really hit the spot right now. I imagine they would be especially lovely on cold, drizzly days, as well.

The trip to Devonshire was a glorious success, and I have to thank Anna, Andy, and Alex for having us. While I am a city boy at heart, it was delightful to spend a long weekend taking in the country air and the country cuisine.

Greetings from the Land of Higashikokubaru 東国原の国へようこそ

17 Aug

Since he was elected in January 2007, the governor of Miyazaki has unleashed a marketing blitzkrieg to inform the rest of Japan (especially the rest of Kyushu) about the southern prefecture’s gorgeous coastline, delicious chicken, and mysterious connection to Easter Island. His unwieldly name is Hideo Higashikokubaru, but most Japanese know him better as former comedian Sonomanma Higashi. Like most Japanese prefectures, Mr. Higashikokubaru employed a charming little mascot to promote tourism in Miyazaki; the twist is that he employed himself as that character, cleverly cashing in on his own celebrity.

So far, it has worked brilliantly. Mr. Higashikokubaru’s toothy grin is everywhere: on onigiri wrappers, adorning mangoes in supermarkets, on JR and JTB posters, in conbini windows, on bottles of shochu, and on countless bags of limited-edution junk food made in flavors of Miyazaki meibutsu. In Tokyo a couple weeks ago, his likeness was flying on a flag outside a curry shop – I’m not sure why. Just by sheer ubiquity of this weird little man’s infectiously happy countenance, my interest was piqued.

Of course, there were a few other factors that played into my decision to take a trip down there – and I went during my frenzied ramen-binging, apartment-cleaning, guidebook-designing, perfectly-useful-kitchenware-discarding final week in Japan, no less. In March, a close friend of mine rode his bike there to visit his family and participate in the Miyazaki Marathon – in which he ran next to Mr. Higashikokubaru himself! He had a fine time and made Miyazaki sound pretty sweet. So naturally I was excited to go to the Miyazaki JET beach party held in late May; but that fell through due to rain. And finally, I dipped into Oita for the first weekend in July, so by that time I had been to every prefecture in Kyushu – except Miyazaki. I felt that it just would have been such a shame not to go.

And I felt that way even more so after actually going there. But before I get into the awesomeness of Miyazaki itself, I want to talk about the awesomeness of the bus I took down there. It was an overnight bus called the Phoenix, operated by Miyazaki Kōtsū from Fukuoka to Miyazaki. I expected it to be a typical coach: bumpy, loud, uncomfortable, and cramped. But I was wrong. There were only three seats in each row, with an aisle between each seat; the seats themselves were quite wide, and they unfolded and reclined in a variety of delightfully sleep-inducing ways. Thick curtains blocked out any trace of light, and the ride was so smooth and quiet that when I awoke, I thought the bus had come to a stop. And not only was it awesome, it was a bargain! I reserved my tickets with the SunQ Pass, which cost only ¥10,000 and allowed me to ride any bus in Kyushu for three days! So that’s my osusume if you’re day-tripping to Miyazaki from Fukuoka.

I got in at about 7:00 in the morning, so I had lots of time to enjoy myself before my return bus left at 11:00 that night. After picking up a dry, chewy breakfast of famous Miyazaki smoked chicken (again, with Mr. Higashikokubaru’s face on them), I hopped on a bus to Aoshima, site of the Miyazaki JET beach party and the Devil’s Washboard 鬼の洗濯板, a bizarre, visually striking formation of volcanic rocks lined up into neat parallel rows by the movement of the waves.

The beach was beautiful, but shortly after I got there, it started to rain. I took cover under a palm tree and watched cute little crabs scuttle by, clicking across a confetti of sand, stone, and crushed shells. It reminded me of Thailand.


Soon I had had enough of the rain, and took refuge in an omiyage stand. Just as I was about to board the bus again, the rain stopped – a good thing, because my next destination was outdoors, as well. In the now-sunny skies, I took in beautiful views of the Pacific Ocean, puncuated by fishing boats, rock formations like that of the Devil’s Washboard, and inns advertising lobster dinners. After about 30 minutes, I had arrived at Sun Messe Nichinan サンメッセ日南, home to the famous Miyazaki Moai.

It was cool to see the Moai. It was ridiculous, yes, but it was also cool. If the informational placards told the truth, then they are the only life-size Moai replicas that the government of Easter Island has allowed to be built outside the island itself. And it will be quite a while before I make it to Easter Island, so I just basked in the uniqueness of it all and gleefully took photos like any good tourist would. It was a beautiful day.

It was a hot day, too, so I ducked into the air-conditioned Moai museum, then had some hyūganatsu kakigōri, and then left a bit earlier than I planned because I wanted to get away from the weird guy from Hiroshima who kept following me around. On the way out, I snapped a photo of a Higashikokubaru Moai on my keitai and sent it to a friend, who replied that it was “kimoi” (creepy).

As I was waiting for the bus back to Miyazaki City, a woman pulled over and offered me a ride. I wasn’t even hitchhiking! I was reminded of the hospitality I received on my first visits to Tokyo and Kumamoto. I declined, however, because I was looking forward to listening to my special Miyazaki playlist on the hour-long bus ride back. When I got in, I grabbed a quick lunch of chicken nanban チキン南蛮 – a local specialty of fried chicken topped with a vinegar-based dressing and tartar sauce. The name literally means “barbarian chicken,” and I wonder if the prototype for it was originally introduced by European missionaries and traders, who were originally called barbarians and were known for eating a lot of fried food and vinegar. Anyway, it was delicious – fresh from the fryer with a tempura crunch, juicy with vinegar to counteract the oil, and slathered with tartar sauce to counteract the vinegar. Certainly several notches above the sodden mess I was used to from Hokka Hokka Tei (though I like theirs, too).

After that I settled in for another sixty-minute bus excursion to Shusen no Mori 酒泉の杜 (literally “forest of liquor springs”) – a glorious tourist complex near Miyazaki’s border with Kagoshima in a rural town called Aya. Shusen no Mori was built by the adjacent Unkai buckwheat shochu distillery, but the fun does not stop there; on the multi-acre land there is a hotel, an onsen, a winery, a brewery, a one-stop shop for Miyazaki omiyage, and a shochu gallery, where customers are given free reign to sample any number of dozens of varieties of shochu – plus sake, liqueur, and truly awful attempts at wine.

The onsen was fantastic, offering a smörgåsbord of different kinds of baths; my favorites were the sake bath, which really had a nice smell of booze, and the electric bath, which delivered the somewhat disconcerting and somewhat wonderful sensation of a low-voltage electric current passing through your body.

After rehydrating myself and cutting my foot on the corner of a step, I moseyed over to the shochu gallery, where I tried four kinds of wine (all of them undrinkable or borderline-undrinkable), a few tasty sakes and liqueurs (including one made from hyūganatsu!), and fifteen or so different shochu. I got to sample one variety that had always intrigued me: Mayan no Tsubuyaki, or “Mumblings of an Old Man.” I didn’t like it very much – it was a bit too rough, I thought, like something a mumbliing old man might drink – but I’m glad I got to try it.

I then stumbled across to the omiyage center, where I picked up some hyūganatsu sweets and Miyazaki chicken chips for my taiko group. After that I had a few beers from the on-site brewery – much better than the wine – and then went back to Miyazaki City, hungry for dinner.

I ate at a place called Dogenka Sentoi-kan どげんせんとい館, which I chose more or less because they offered a free pint of Hideji lager if you mention their website. The name of the place means something in Miyazaki dialect that I don’t understand, befitting their dedication to local food and culture. I ordered the Miyazaki jidokko omakase course, which, among many other things, included famous Miyazaki grilled chicken. The method of preparation was as inscrutable to me as the name of the restaurant, but I understand that Miyazaki chicken is grilled in a basket, and the texture is meant to be springy – or even crunchy. Springy it was – but it was also ebulliently juicy and tender at the same time. Its flavor was thick with charcoal smoke, and I was sad when I discovered I had eaten it all.

By this time I was pretty drunk on shochu and Miyazaki craft beer, and pretty sated with chicken (I just realized now that I had chicken for all three meals that day). So I walked around what appeared to be the remnants of a festival downtown, then headed back to the bus center. Inevitably, I got lost on the way there; the cabbie who eventually picked me up was friendly, though he insisted that I have a piece of gum after I initially declined his offer. “I offer it to everybody,” he explained, as if aware that I was worried that I had bad breath.

Then It was back on the Phoenix for another restful trip. Back in Kurosaki, I stopped at a conbini for something to drink, and I spotted Mr. Higashikokubaru’s balding, jovial face yet again on a packet of candy. This time, I smiled knowingly back at him.

← Older Entries
Newer Entries →

Follow

Get every new post delivered to your Inbox.

Join 59 other followers