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Post by caucasoididiot on Mar 29, 2010 14:26:00 GMT -5
Heh heh . . . next I'm gonna post the Moon Zero-Two song!
My best buddy in Japan insists that he'd literally rather eat poop than natto, and I think he means that literally literally rather than figuratively literally. It does have quite a smell. One time my wife met some of her friends at a wafu spaghetti restaurant (that is, spaghetti with Japanese rather than Western sauces) and one friend ordered the natto spaghetti. My wife was saying that even for her hot natto was a little much.
Wafu spaghetti is quite good, by the way. I especially like the tarako fish egg varieties.
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Post by afriendlychicken on Mar 29, 2010 19:41:43 GMT -5
I had a Korean housemate who brought home homemade kimchi from his mom which I loved My dad loves kimchi. Even though I tend to like Korean food, that's one I can't handle. Too strong for me. Better The Green Slime than the haunting Torgo theme. Ijon, I was watching a travel show on PBS that was hosted by a man and a woman. They visited strange eating establishments in Tokyo. There was one that was like a horror film set and had dead arms and legs hanging all over the place. Another place they visited was a restaurant that treated you as a convict, and they put them in a cell too eat. Did you ever eat at a place like this?
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Post by spackle on Mar 29, 2010 20:34:03 GMT -5
Heh heh . . . next I'm gonna post the Moon Zero-Two song! You don't have to post it, just the mere suggestion... D'oh! Just the mere suggestion of the Green Slime song, too, was all I needed. I'm familiar with the song.... D'oh!
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Post by caucasoididiot on Mar 29, 2010 22:15:51 GMT -5
Heh heh . . . next I'm gonna post the Moon Zero-Two song! You don't have to post it, just the mere suggestion... D'oh! Just the mere suggestion of the Green Slime song, too, was all I needed. I'm familiar with the song.... D'oh! See, I told you you'd be bowing down before me. We'll make it to Sanrio Puroland yet! Another place they visited was a restaurant that treated you as a convict, and they put them in a cell too eat. Did you ever eat at a place like this? That sounds like "The Lockup." The waitresses were in miniskirt police outfits? It was a very trendy place when I was working in Ikebukuro, but I never managed to get there. My wife did twice though, and each time the party ordered "Heaven and Hell Sushi." Now, a little backfill. My wife is fine on natto but generally doesn't like anything spicy. Returning from Korea she brought some kimchi home to her family, but when they told her it was delicious and she should try it she did, but only after washing it in tap water. Disliking chili pepper isn't so unusual among Japanese, but she also dislikes uni and . . . wasabi. She's a little embarrassed to order sushi because ordering it wasabi free is sort of like ordering the child's plate. The Lockup's "Heaven and Hell sushi" is based on Russian roulette. There are six delicious maguro roll pieces on the plate, but one of them only has tiny end caps of tuna hiding a massive dose of wasabi inside. It's a good thing she doesn't play Russian roulette . . . she got that one both times.
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Post by afriendlychicken on Mar 30, 2010 0:14:30 GMT -5
That's the place! The Police miniskirts and Heaven and Hell sushi, they showed it all. The woman on the show also grabbed the wasabi sushi.
I guess I like the child's plate of sushi, too. Your wife shouldn't feel so bad. I'm Portuguese, and I hate Portuguese bean soup. Blah! My family threatens to rescind my rights to be one.
Now, I have The Green Slime, Journey To The Seventh Planet and the Moon Zero Two themes stuck in my head....and I feel the Catalina Caper one creeping up on me. ;D
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Post by ilmatto on Mar 30, 2010 0:57:22 GMT -5
There is a picture here, but only visit the page if you don't mind lots of poopie pics. You warned me but I visited the page anyway. Unfortunately for me, that which has been seen cannot be unseen.
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Post by spackle on Mar 30, 2010 8:31:41 GMT -5
There is a picture here, but only visit the page if you don't mind lots of poopie pics. You warned me but I visited the page anyway. Unfortunately for me, that which has been seen cannot be unseen. The still picture doesn't do it justice. I wish youtube had a clip of it actually talking, it's a unique experience. That whole movie is pretty unique. The live-action human story is just the backdrop to a complex and mystical cockroach story. Luckily the roaches are animated looking a bit human-ish, otherwise it might be as difficult to watch as a talking turd. Twilight of the Cockroaches. Has anyone else seen it?
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Post by caucasoididiot on Mar 30, 2010 8:54:16 GMT -5
Long ago I posted a scan of instructions I was given at my physical on how to catch a stool sample. A pair of cheerful little poop creatures explained all. I'll have to hunt through my backup discs and see if I still have it.
On wasabi, my first girlfriend once said she'd give me a photo I was asking for if I'd eat the blob of wasabi on my plate. She was joking, but wasn't quick enough to stop me before I ate a good, heaping teaspoon-full. Gamera should try it if he can't get flame.
Finally got my Matsue pics scanned. It's another workday today, but I hope to get them posted before too long.
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Post by spackle on Mar 30, 2010 10:37:44 GMT -5
I'll have to hunt through my backup discs and see if I still have it. Please don't.
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Post by caucasoididiot on Mar 30, 2010 10:46:16 GMT -5
I'll have to hunt through my backup discs and see if I still have it. Please don't. Heh heh, they're actually cuter than you'd expect. OK, I had just enough time to pull together the Matsue post: One of my more interesting trips in Japan was to visit my girlfriend's grandmother, who lived in a farming village out in Shimane prefecture, near Matsue. The pictures below give you some idea of just how beautiful a spot it was. It had those terraced rice paddies which are so evocative of the Far East, and as it was summer they were a lush green at which the camera can only hint. Here's a shot of the family. I hope they wouldn't mind my posting it, because I really like the multi-generational portrait. Heh heh, can you guess which one is me? A few words about Japanese regionalism may be in order here. Shimane, as well as Osaka where my girlfriend lived, are considered Western "Kansai" Japanese. Tokyo is "Kanto" or Eastern Japanese. Kanto people think of Kansai people as sort of boisterous and forward (with the exception of Kyoto) and Kansai people think of Kanto people as aloof and stuck up. Heh heh, it's not totally negative, but watch for really forward characters in movies to be Kansai-jin. The speech of the two sides is also different. Comedians and Yakuza notably tend to speak Kansai-ben. From the outside we tend to see Japan as pretty uniform, but between its history and rough topography its regionalism is still quite strong. Shimane-ben is actually still noticeably different from Osaka-ben, and at one point my girlfriend's sister got laughed at because she had gone through an extended conversation about a cow which she had misunderstood to be about her aunt. My Japanese was not good enough to phrase really interesting questions then, so to talk to the grandmother I would ask my girlfriend in English, she'd translate to her mom in Osaka-ben and in turn she'd translate to the grandmother in Shimane-ben. Our visit was well-timed, as it was just before the Tanabata summer festival and the village's kids and old folks were in the common building making the decorations. One thing you can see from this picture is the melancholy situation of there only being three kids in the village compared to such a goodly number of elders. I guess this is common to pretty much the whole developed world. Economic opportunity lies in and around the cities, so that's where the young adults go, and they take the children with them. The second pic also illustrates a weird thing about Japanese group portraits. The session had been a lot of fun, but as often happens there was sort of a "quick! look dour!" reaction to the camera. I'm afraid I can no longer remember which, but it was one of the ladies in this shot who kept excitedly calling me "Amerika-san." The little girl in yellow was funny. At first she was so shy she wouldn't even look in my direction, but would nevertheless move directly away if I started her way (sort of the way some cats do). Later though, she started sneaking up behind me, poking me and then running away. After maybe the fourth time I was quick enough to catch her, and for some reason I hoisted her up. Her reaction was to shout: "Titanic!" and stick her arms out Kate Winslet style. From that moment on she was like glue, and indeed as I was leaving she hung out the window calling, "Don't go, baby!" I had intended to also post my pictures of Ogawa's Tanabata festival, but maybe it's just as well to save that until next time. Oh, I might as well post a few Matsue pics as well. If I remember rightly, the donjon of Matsue castle is the oldest one still standing. They're actually wooden and tend to burn down, so most of the ones you see are actually reconstructions. The moat and subsidiary canals have been maintained and landscaped, and we took a really beautiful ride through them in a boat like that pictured. Lafcadio Hearn's residence is also there.
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Post by spackle on Mar 30, 2010 18:20:19 GMT -5
Beautiful! Great pics and great stories. Yeah, I noticed the "quick look dour" effect in the first family photo. The countryside is lovely, too bad everyone's moving to the cities. The country houses look a bit more... spacious... than the other ones you've shown. Interesting about the regional language differences. Comedians and Yakuza... are they often grouped like that?
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Post by caucasoididiot on Mar 30, 2010 18:59:33 GMT -5
Thanks! Yeah, houses in the countryside are definitely roomier. In that extension to the right of the house they even had a sort of rumpus room with a karaoke machine.
Osaka sometimes gets called "The Chicago of Japan" due to being famous for both comedians and gangsters. I'm not sure how universal that linkage is. Anyone ever run The Brains' rap sheets?
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Post by spackle on Mar 30, 2010 20:46:10 GMT -5
Trace would make a great gangster. I'd be his moll any day.
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Post by afriendlychicken on Mar 30, 2010 21:22:08 GMT -5
I agree with spackle. That was nice. So, that's where Lafcadio Hearn wrote his ghost stories. In the group portrait, the three who are standing are smiling, while only the people kneeling or sitting look sour. I wonder if that's the reason? My guess would be you're the one in the middle of the back row? There's something in the house photo you don't see much anymore, an aerial antennae on the roof. I've always wondered about the brains. Paul Chaplin always looked kind of gangsta to me.
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Post by caucasoididiot on Mar 30, 2010 22:10:57 GMT -5
My guess would be you're the one in the middle of the back row? Heh heh . . . one day, one day . . . I have a couple of pictures of Hearn's house, but somehow none of them looked that special. I have some pictures of Kyoto and Nara that might be good, though. That's an interesting point about the antenna. That was some ten years ago now, but there were real differences in how technologies came online in the two countries. Cell phones were much more advanced in Japan at that time, and broadcasting was already HD, but cable and satellite TV only really tool off there in the last few years. I was noticing the same thing about who's smiling in that pic. My girlfriend (who graduated from a US college) and her mom (whose sister was married to an American) were. That might be a factor, whether just being used to the idea or trying to conform to my expectations I don't really know. I was noticing that the little girl in yellow seems to be sitting full seiza. Not all Japanese can do it really properly anymore, especially city folk. By the way, the eating is incredible on a Japanese farm. Homemade pickles and homemade plum wine! I'm not sure why, but Hearn's grave is near Ikebukuro in Tokyo, where I later worked. It's quite a ways from Matsue. I always meant to get over there but just never did. Hmm . . . Trace Beaulieu did do that evil genius role pretty convincingly, didn't he?
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