As I write this at the end of July, I’m in for a new experience. Usually at this point we are finishing our last day of work before our summer trip, but this year we’ll be staying home for the next two weeks due to the ongoing coronavirus situation.

The days before our big trip are always exciting. We are doing last minute research into sightseeing spots, good restaurants to try, and how we might get from point A to point B. We would know the next day we’d be on planes and walking through airports, dealing with immigration and customs and overpriced airport bars and all the enjoyment we get out of all those experiences. Finding and checking in to our hotels, slow breakfasts in cafes and dining al fresco in the cooler evenings. Good cheap wine. Local cheese on every menu.

This year is different, but although missing out on travel means a great deal to myself and Kuniko, it is a small sacrifice compared to what millions of people are dealing with around the world, and especially in the United States.

We are lucky to have stable jobs and be able to get through this pandemic in very good shape. So we’ll miss out on travel this summer, but I’m looking forward to our next opportunity and we’ll enjoy it that much more, whenever it is.

We just finished up another excellent Golden Week here in Japan, this time under the shadow of the coronavirus. Fortunately for us, the situation was pretty much the same as usual, since we make it a policy not to travel during Golden Week. This time everyone else had to follow the same policy, and other than a few more people in the supermarkets things went smoothly.

Of course we focused on cooking delicious foods during the long holidays, but there was more than just cooking and eating. Of my twelve days off, eleven were sunny and clear, and the temperature was perfect for outside activities. We spent a lot of time on our back porch grilling, sipping cocktails, or just reading books. I weeded and replanted our herb garden out front, this time adding some French tarragon to see how it works out. In a usual Golden Week we’d have a party with the neighbors, but instead we maintained a social distance and just waved at them across the way as we passed.

The real joy of the long holiday is to wake up whenever you like, stroll to the store to buy fresh vegetables and ingredients, and then cooking them up and enjoying a leisurely meal of exactly what you wanted to eat – usually while discussing what you should try to make the next day. You can attempt making things that take a little longer or require more effort, and if it doesn’t work out it is no problem at all – you just have a chance to learn from the experience.

Besides making meals each day I also tried out a recipe for peanut butter cookies spiced with Chinese five spice. As a kid I never had much interest in spiced cookies, but the more adult and Asian taste really hit the spot this time. I don’t think I can go back to regular peanut butter cookies again.

We also exchanged gifts with Yoshi and Mamiko. Since we couldn’t get together we had sent over a nice bottle of sake for them, and they responded with a porch delivery of homemade masks, homemade bacon (!) and homemade bamboo shoot rice. Hopefully we’ll have a chance to get together soon.

So here’s a (long) list of meals we ate during the long holiday, for posterity’s sake:

4/24: Yakitori skewers – This one was the only time we ate food from outside. We wanted to support the local yakitori place that we like so I put in a big order for take out and picked it up on the way home from work. The “shiotsukune” sticks are always the best!

4/25: Caveman steak with green salad and mushrooms – Earlier in the week we had bought this big chunk of beef on the rib bone in a French cut. I salted it up three days in advance and left it to dry out exposed in the fridge before grilling it up. We got two meals out of it and it was a great cut of meat.

4/26: Leftover steaks with roasted veggies – We still had two big strips of steak leftover so Kuniko roasted a bunch of veggies (tomatoes, heads of garlic, broccoli and onions) and everything fit together nicely.

4/27: White jambalaya and cornbread – This was Kuniko’s request. We had some high quality rice in the pantry, so I made up a sofrito, added homemade stock, some fresh shrimp, chicken and sausages, and Kuniko baked the cornbread. The jambalaya came out a slightly saltier than I would have liked so I’ll try to be more careful next time. We still went back for seconds and thirds so it passed the test, I guess!

4/28: Grilled veggie sandwich with cilantro and onion quinoa salad – Kuniko had to go to work this day and she wanted vegetables when she got home for dinner, so I grilled some big shiitakes, pan seared two sweet red peppers and them combined them with tiny sprouts, melted Okinawan cheese and brown mustard on bread from the local bakery. They turned out great!

4/29: Whole roasted Akashi snapper – We did a wine tasting of five different wines from the Italian region of Le Marche, and since the coastline there has a lot of whitefish, we roasted this one up. We found a whole snapper at the local supermarket already cleaned out, so I stuffed it full of fennel, garlic, Italian parsley, olive oil and salt, then we roasted it whole until the skin got crispy. I want to do this more often – so good!

4/30: Cajun shrimp skewers, grilled corn, mushrooms and paprika peppers – Still on a Cajun kick, so we bought some extra big shrimp and grilled them outside slowly while drinking cold beers on the back porch. The great weather this holiday contributed to a lot of grilling decisions.

5/1: Grilled cumin-marinated pork shoulder and green salad – More time out back grilling. This was a last minute decision but the roasted cumin made a pretty good quick marinade. The cut of pork from Costco was a little fatty, but finally the flavors came together at the end. I’d marinate it longer if I had to do it again.

5/2: Mixed vegetable soup and steamed veggie salad – This was the answer to the heavy dishes we’d been eating. Kuniko made everything here, as kind of a detox meal and more like what we regularly eat during the work week. All the veggies were fresh from the market so the final soup tasted naturally sweet. It was a refreshing break, and I think our bodies appreciated it!

5/3: Korean kimpa, gangjeong chicken, homemade kimchi served with makkori – Although April was Korean cooking month for us, in early May we still had some ingredients and motivation to take another swing at these dishes. Kuniko has really masted the kimpa, and her version of gangjeong chicken is getting better and better. We also killed off the last batch of kimchi so we’ll need to make another!

5/4: Homemade bacon, waffles and eggs with tangelo mimosas – Yoshi and Mamiko had dropped off some homemade bacon on our doorstep the day before, and Yuki had given us a waffle maker for Christmas, so we decided to have a big breakfast for a change. Kuniko made up the waffles, I fried up the bacon and eggs and we enjoyed everything with mimosas made from the juice of the American tangelo oranges we’ve been able to get recently. Dinner was very light – just a broccoli salad – we were operating on the “one big meal a day” policy.

5/5: Grilled chicken tacos with Patron margaritas – We celebrate cinco de mayo every year with Mexican food, and the tacos (burritos?) that we made this time were excellent. I haven’t found better Mexican food in Japan than what we make in our own kitchen (but from the state of Mexican food in Japan this isn’t saying very much).

5/6: Cubano sandwiches (a la Chef) – The last day of the long holiday and so we made these sandwiches. The pork shoulder is brined for 24 hours, marinated afterwards for several hours, and then roasted for nearly three. We went to Akashi to buy raclette cheese, and Kuniko baked fresh bread to stand in for “pan cubano”. It is a lot of work but these were delicious and made for a nice capstone to the long holiday.

So that wraps up another great Golden Week menu. For the month of May we are planning to try to cook some different dishes from Spain. We’ve got a big Costco-sized bottle of olive oil ready to go. I know we’ll have more delicious meals coming up – hopefully they’ll be a bit more spread out!

We were lucky enough to have a three day weekend, thanks to the new Emperor’s birthday. I’m not sure what he did on his birthday, but we ate a lot of great food.

Starting with Friday night, we went out to eat to celebrate Kuniko’s birthday at Tajima-ya, a yakiniku place that we hadn’t visited in a long time. It is a very busy place and it is always tough the get reservations. They give you a short time limit too, so we had to eat the meat and hit the street.

There are a lot of yakiniku places in Japan that focus on quantity, but at Tajima-ya they serve some great cuts of beef. The Korean noodles and kimchi also help to set the mood, and we really enjoyed cooking up the beautifully marbled Japanese beef grilled over white coals.

On Saturday I put together a wine tasting of Umbrian wines, two whites (Orvieto Classico and a Grechetto), a monster red (Sagratino di Montefalco), an odd duck – a passito red also from Montefalco. Truffles are a big deal in Umbria, so I kneaded out and made my own noodles and then cooked them in a black truffle sauce. Kuniko’s contribution was a broccoli, bacon and mushroom salad, and that was how we got a little taste of Italy on Saturday.

We got an early start on Sunday by walking along the beach towards Akashi. This route we’ve been walking for years, and if the weather is nice it is very refreshing to take in the ocean views while walking briskly for a couple of hours. The last time we did the walk we were surprised to find that one of the old warehouses had been converted into a very modern beach-facing burger restaurant, and so we decided that today was the day to try it out.

The place is called “The Fantastic Burger” and while I’m not sure I’d call them fantastic, they certainly were delicious. We sat facing big glass windows looking out over the inland sea, and sipped on Yona Yona Ale while we waited. Burgers and beer at 10 am? It must be a holiday weekend! They had several kinds of burgers, and the ones we chose were well-made. The owner/cook was a young guy and he said that the location was a bit risky – while it is easy to get attention from people walking it is much more difficult to find by car. But it seems business is doing OK, and I hope that we can drop by again sometime soon. It does threaten to cancel out the calories that we should be burning by walking on the weekends… temptation at the halfway point.

Once we reached Akashi we walked down the fish market street and picked out some big hunks of freshly caught snapper, and that turned out to be our dinner. We are continuing to work on building seafood skillets similar to what we enjoyed in Reykjavik Iceland, and this time was one step closer. I worked on the sauce in two stages, which seemed to make for a more cohesive taste later on. Delicious with the leftover Italian white wines, too!

Then on Monday, we drove out to our new favorite local vegetable shop and stocked up on things for the week. Kuniko spent the day in the kitchen, making up ginger chicken soup, baking two kinds of bread for sandwiches, making cornbread, and also baking banana bread. Since the weather was beautiful I grilled up some big cuts of pork with plenty of BBQ sauce, and also some skewered fat erengi mushrooms. Kuniko threw together an Asian salad with cilantro, lettuce, avocado, tomato and sweet chili sauce, and it felt like summer again.

These holiday weekends are great chances to eat plenty of good food. Happy Birthday Mr. Emperor!

Fun fact – Japanese people don’t have middle names. This ends up having a surprisingly large effect on people that do.

Recently I’ve been working on getting what is called “permanent residency” in Japan. Until this year I have been living in Japan on a spouse visa, which is quite nice and has no restrictions on my economic behavior. The only downside is that I need to re-apply every five years, and my staying in Japan depends entirely on the continuing existence of my Japanese wife. The permanent residency visa is for ten years, and also carries no restrictions on what I do or how I make a living.

I was perfectly willing to continue getting my spouse visa every five years, but my company recently volunteered (without prompting) to support my application for permanent residency. They assigned someone to help me dig up all the papers, they let me leave work (on the clock!) to go to the various government offices and get official documents, and they even said they’ll pay all the fees on top of it. It was unexpectedly kind of them – and has done more to earn my loyalty than the quarterly bonuses that they dutifully pay out.

The official government documents have been a real challenge, too. It is quite simple for Japanese people, as they have just a family name and a given name, and it is effortless to match up their official identification and government records. But thanks to avarious factors it can be tough for me.

There are lots of ways to write my name in Japan. Here’s a few:

Bryan Fredricks, Bryan David Fredricks, Fredricks Bryan, Fredricks Bryan David, ＢＲＹＡＮ　ＦＲＥＤＲＩＣＫＳ, ＦＲＥＤＲＩＣＫＳ　ＢＲＹＡＮ, ＦＲＥＤＲＩＣＫＳ　ＢＲＹＡＮ　ＤＡＶＩＤ, ブライアン　フレドリックス, フレドリックス　ブライアン, フレドリックス　ブライアン　ディビッド

So I just listed about ten different possible combinations of my name, using various letter sets,word orders and languages. If I apply for a document with the wrong set then it means rejection, delays, and more time off needed to go back to the government office for another attempt.

One office had online access to the documents I needed – Great! However their website didn’t have a field for middle names, and so I would try one of the combinations above and receive a message saying that I would receive a postcard (in the mail) after five working days with the login/password for the site. After waiting anxiously for five days I receive a message in Japanese saying, “Your name doesn’t match our records. Please try again.” It is a bit like playing the lottery.

Another hiccup occurred back when I first joined my company. They told me that they couldn’t pay me (which got my attention rather quickly as you could imagine) because my bank account name didn’t match my passport name (see all the combinations listed above) and so in the end it turned out to be easier to go open a new bank account with the version of my name that matched my passport. I am happy to report that I could receive my salary in a timely fashion thereafter.

Actually I am simplifying a lot of things and these processes are quite a bit more complex than the way I am describing them here. But I am short-cutting in order to briefly illustrate the fact that having three names is burden here in Japan. I can’t imagine what it must be like for people with four or more names! But hopefully, in the next six months or so I’ll be classed as a “permanent resident”. I guess that means that I’ll be permanently stuck dealing with this maddening system.

Another morning, another run to the Lot10 food court. Most food courts have just 10-20 shops, but this one had 40-50 different places, all close together for easy access. One shop we noticed yesterday had a huge line of Chinese people waiting, so this morning I went there first and got a good position at the front of the line. The dish was worth it, too – Duck Egg Fried Kuey Tow – flat noodles mixed with duck egg and vegetables and cooked up in a big iron wok with plenty of hot sauce. Kuniko picked up some beef noodles, which were also awesome. And we also got a few more custard buns. 

We did a little more poking around the area of the park and Kuala Lumpur Convention Center, checked out the twin towers gift shop to see if they had any stupendous ornaments for our tree, and then ended up at a shopping center restaurant called Madame Kwan’s for a traditional Malaysian lunch.  This time we had fruit rojack topped with soft shell crab, a fairly good beef rending, and a steamed fish cake wrapped in a banana leaf called otak otak. We weren’t a big fan of the fruit rojack, but the crab on the top was great! We also really enjoyed the fish cake – I think it would see well in Japan. For dessert we ordered a shaved ice sort of dish with beans, tea jelly and a big dollop of durian on top. I liked everything but the durian – but Kuniko had no trouble and ate it all. 

With our shopping pretty much out of the way, we retreated to our hotel room to relax. The fridge was stocked with a couple bottles of sparkling wine, we had snacks, and so it was just time to wait for midnight. We spent most of the time napping, using the big bathtub, and snacking, until finally it got close to twelve o’clock. The park underneath the tower had some sort of concert going on, and even from where we were we could hear the music. More people gathered under the Petronas Towers and when midnight hit they let loose with some serious fireworks. The fireworks mainly exploded at about our height, between our hotel and the towers beyond the park. It made for some dramatic viewing, and it was a big payoff to the end of 2019. 

We slept in the next day and then headed off to the airport, catching a flight out of Kuala Lumpur in the early afternoon and arriving around 9:30 pm in Japan. We barely caught the bus from the airport to Kobe, and ended up arriving at home a little after 11 pm. The colder weather was a shock – back to electric blankets and long underwear. It was another great trip – we were never bored and ate so much good food. I don’t think we’ll forget this winter holiday for a long time. 

The next morning we followed through on our promise and went straight away to the Lot10 food court, and enjoyed wandering the relatively uncrowded area looking at all the food options on display. We decided on a steamed Chinese rice crepe, rice and braised pork wrapped in a banana leaf, and some more salted egg custard buns because we just couldn’t get enough. 

We checked out of our hotel, and caught a Grab to our last hotel of the trip, the Traders Hotel. Kuniko had booked this hotel back in Christmas 2018 while we were staying with Mark and Susan in Tampa, and she did a great job. The room was large, luxurious, and from the 14th floor had a dramatic facing view of the Petronas Towers and KLCC Park below them. This was our first time to get a look at the landmark towers since being in Malaysia, and they are pretty dramatic. 

For fun we went up to the top floor (floor 33) to check out the swimming pool and sky bar. The pool was an indoor pool and quite small – but unfortunately it was not available for guests due to some sort of technical problem. We settled for cocktails from the sky bar and sat next to the pool enjoying a slightly higher view of downtown KL. The pool area and bar were remarkably empty – it was just us, the pool maintenance staff, and a group of women posing for their Instagram next to the windows. There were advertisements for a countdown party the next day, with “platinum” tables available for big money (5 bottles of champagne and 5 bottles of whisky included!) and interesting celebrities and DJs. We’ll stick to our own room, thanks. 

Later in the afternoon we went out by train to Kampun Baru, a kind of local’s street food area. We walked through what seemed like a regular neighborhood street, but the front yard of each house had been converted into open air food stands and restaurants. Things were kind of quiet when we walked through, so we kept going, finding lots of backstreets and several fruit markets and even a big butcher’s market area where they were busy cutting up chickens and fish. Eventually we found our way to Kuniko’s target restaurant, called Limapulo. It was a stylish place with both indoor and outdoor seating, and it was easy to take a table outside under an arbor and order up some good food. We started with juices – I had lychee and Kuniko had carrot – and then an appetizer which was like a flat egg omelet, called telur cincaluk. We followed it up with a bowl of nyona-style Malaysian noodles, this time with a thick soup broth that reminded me of Japanese miso ramen. We also had a plate full of tiny thin noodles – with egg, cabbage and spices. These noodles had a coconut spice flavor that I couldn’t get enough of. 

On our way back we passed through a big Aeon market – a Japanese company that is looking to make inroads into Southeast Asia. The mall was pretty empty though, and I don’t think it has a good long term outlook. Back in Kampun Baru Kuniko bought a mango susu – blended frozen mango, with a little juice and then big chunks of fresh mango on top – it was outstanding. 

Finally, we returned to the area of our hotel and did some shopping at a nearby market (called “Cold Storage”) that was really busy. Tomorrow is New Year’s Eve, and it seemed like people were getting ready to party. 

Using Uber we ordered a (very) early pickup at our hotel to take us to the airport for our flight back to Kuala Lumpur. The drive was smooth and as we passed the bus terminal we saw that the stands and markets around it were absolutely hopping with people at 4 am in the morning. Apparently it is a good idea to stock up on supplies before riding a long distance bus out of town. The airport had three security checks before we even arrived (we handed our passports through the window to the armed soldiers) and then we had to go through the rest of normal security inside the airport. The airport itself was pretty quiet, although not well-organized – one security guy told me to go, at the same time another one told me to stop. Surrounded by salespeople sleeping in their shops, we had a breakfast of quiche Lorraine and some coffee to wake up. After a long wait for the final security check we finished boarding, and enjoyed another great meal on Sri Lankan airlines. 

It seemed like a very short three hours and we arrived back at the same Kuala Lumpur terminal that we had left a couple of days ago. We still had great memories of those salted egg custard buns from Din Tai Fung and so we made a special trip back up to the departures area to have some more. 

We chose a bowl of spicy noodles with wonton from the menu, and then two orders (8 buns!) of salted egg custard buns. The way the ordering system works in the restaurant is that you check off what you want from a paper list, and then the staff comes and gets the list and later returns with your food. We were really excited to eat more custard buns – really, really excited. The noodles arrived first and they were really good – served as dry noodles but with plenty of spice and heat to make it interesting. The staff arrived and stacked up two baskets full of buns, and when we took the cover off the basket a cloud of steam escaped, and there they were – eight little buns of joy. I happily took the first one and bit into it and- what the hell? I got a mouthful of yam paste. 

Oh, no! It turns out we marked the wrong spot on the sheet, and now we had eight buns of sweet yam paste instead of what we really wanted to eat. Yam paste is not bad – but it isn’t something that will shake your soul like salted egg custard. So after the tears of laughter/shock/grief ended, we got to work eating eight yam paste buns. And then we ordered (correctly, this time) 8 salted egg custard buns and ate those too. Sometimes it takes a little extra work to get what you want, and we paid the price. What was supposed to be a snack became a big meal, and I think the staff understood what happened and were giggling to themselves as we dug deep to finish those yam paste buns. 

After the meal we were able to catch a Grab to our hotel for that night. Grab is a useful application in Malaysia for ride hailing, and it seemed hugely popular. It was cheaper than taking the train, although you are paying a less obvious cost in CO2 impact and pollution. The prices were unbelievably cheap (unsustainably cheap, I thought), so it makes a good system for a tourist to get around. When Kuniko set up the application on our first day in Malaysia, she had to look into the camera of her smartphone and slowly nod her head so they could take a clear picture for the driver to identify her for pickup. So it was an odd situation to be standing in the hotel lobby nodding sagely at your smartphone in the hopes of catching a ride. 

We stayed at a different hotel on our return – just for one night – with a comfortable (king-size?) bed and a great location right next to the street food market area of Bukit Bintang. In the early evening we walked over to the Jalan Alor area, a place that we had visited before in the morning. Last time we visited things were closed up but in the evening it was a completely different feeling. All the food stands were opened up, with plenty of tables available for diners to sit on the street and enjoy the atmosphere. We started with 10 satay skewers – a mixture of lamb, chicken and beef skewers with the critical peanut sauce on the side. Beer here was very expensive – almost the same price as in Japan, but I guess that is to be expected in a street food market in a Muslim country. We were lucky to get alcohol at all. 

The satay stimulated our appetite so we went down the street trying other things – gyoza, dried glazed salami, roast pork, and at one restaurant we had two big plates of vegetable stir fries to get a little green into us. Our seat at the last restaurant was out on the edge of the street, so it was perfect for people-watching. There were a lot of foreigners like us, a grievously burned man begging for change, an armless man was singing songs from a microphone he had set up on the street, and a tiny lady in a wheelchair had a karaoke speaker mounted and she crooned as she slowly rolled down the busy lane. Next to us a group of three teenagers grabbed a table and proceeded to bask in the attention they were getting by smoking and drinking mysterious beverages in clear plastic cups. The staff of our restaurant clearly didn’t like them being there, but the teenagers didn’t mind – they stayed glued to their smartphones trying to look cool. 

On our way back from the bustling market we stopped in at the basement of the Lot10 shopping mall. The food court was huge – all focused on Malaysian and other Asian dishes. We decided right then that we’d definitely come back once we had space in our stomachs. Kuniko bought some melting peanut candy from a Chinese shop on the way out, and with that we called it a day and headed back to our hotel. 

The next morning we got out of bed a little later than usual, still sleepy from the nightclub noise above us. We got ready and went out to catch an elevator to the ground floor. We pushed the elevator call button and the door opened right away, and there was a guy just standing in there alone. It caught everyone by surprise, and the guy just nodded at us and said he didn’t mind going down. He got off in the lobby with us and started talking to the staff so we weren’t sure if he worked there or not – but it was a weird situation. 

Our plan for the morning was to take advantage of the lack of direct sunlight and try to walk out to see the Red Mosque. It wasn’t far from our hotel, and with the sun still not quite rising it was a very comfortable walk for us. We passed a dingier side of the city, with dogs sleeping alone on the streets, some shops opened but most closed and locked down. After a wrong turn we passed by a fish market that looked industrial, run-down, and not the least bit sanitary. At last we reached the area of the mosque, and found it surrounded on all sides by buildings making it very difficult to take a picture of the very striking colors and architecture. The streets were almost empty, so it was easy to walk around, and we noticed that the opening time of the mosque for visitors was 9:30 am, so we had some time to kill before being allowed in. 

For breakfast we went to a nearby restaurant that we had researched the day before, open at 6:00 am and serving locals lots of traditional Sri Lankan foods. When we arrived they were slapping around the roti in the front of the shop, which was a very good sign for us. The back of the restaurant was a seat yourself system, and nobody spoke English. Luckily there was a big menu on the wall with pictures and the names of the dishes written in English, so we managed to order some food in this way. Our waiter had no idea what we were talking about but he did know one English word, “egg”. Thankfully some customers helped us out by translating, and we ended up with a breakfast of egg hoppers, and plate of egg kottu, and a bottle of Coke for me with a straw that was too short, making me really do some creative moves with my tongue to get any product out of the bottle. The food here was excellent, so good that we wanted to take some to go. This turned out to be a real fiasco, though, as we tried to order things based on the name and the picture, having no idea of the scale of the photo. We ask for two of something and he says no – you have to order ten. We order two of something and he says that is way too much for two people. Total confusion, but we finally left with a big bag of food and took it back to the hotel to eat. There we discovered two huge loaves of pittu (coconut rolls) which was one and a half too much for us. Also we got 10 string hoppers which was the perfect amount, and two small bowls of curry with an egg in each one. All that food, including what we ate back at the restaurant, for the price of about $3 USD. 

After a little break in the hotel room we went back out, hoping to catch a tuk-tuk to see a couple of nearby Hindu temples that are popular sightseeing spots in the area. There was a tuk-tuk waiting right outside our hotel, but he tried hard to get us to book a city tour with him for the whole day. When we asked how much to go just to the temple, he quoted a price that was triple what longer rides had cost the day before. We smiled and said no thanks, then left to find a tuk-tuk farther away from the hotel. The next price was half of what the other guy had said, so it pays to shop around. Actually, I don’t mind paying the higher price – it was still cheap – but the principle of ripping people off because you can just rubbed me the wrong way. 

We arrived at the temple in just a few minutes. The Gangaramaya Temple is an odd collection of buildings housing a wide variety of religious artifacts, Buddha statues, and texts. It is sort of a collection of things more than one organized temple but it was definitely worth the visit. On the grounds we found a mystical tree looking like something out of a comic book, a collection of old cars donated by wealthy patrons (including a Rolls Royce), a hand operated elevator, and a mysterious spaceship-like shrine flanked by Buddha statues. It was fun to poke around. 

Just a short walk away was Beira Lake and on the water connected by a bridge you could visit the Seema Malaka Temple and enjoy views of the modern city architecture and the ancient religious statues. We also made the walk over to “Gallery Island” which was less impressive and seemed to be a refuge for couples looking to enjoy a little privacy while courting. As we walked around the lake we saw two guys sitting and talking, with a tiny monkey sitting next to them – I guess monkeys are no big deal around here but it certainly would have made me uncomfortable. 

Our next plan was to take a tuk-tuk back to the Red Mosque – it had been closed in the morning when we walked there and we were hoping to get a look inside. After flagging down another tuk-tuk we had to repeatedly refuse his offers for a city tour, or to go to a jewelry shop. Our driver asked about Kuniko’s country, and then said, “Ah, Japanese ladies have an open heart,” – whatever that meant. 

The second time we arrived at the Red Mosque, the neighborhood was very lively. Cars, people, wild dogs and total chaos. It felt like walking through Bangalore when we were in India – too many people doing too many things all at the same time. Unfortunately the gate of the Red Mosque was still locked up despite being past the opening time. A guy nearby said that maybe soon somebody would come open the gates, but it was too hot and crowded to wait in front. We found some refuge at a corner store, eating a few fried snacks with two tiny Sprites, and chatting with the staff. I think for some people they were eager to practice using English, or else eager to be seen by others chatting with foreigners. Anyway, after an awkward conversation or two we left but the mosque was still locked up. We decided to give up on our plan to visit, and had to be satisfied with some photos from outside. 

We went back to the hotel area to get away from all the people for a bit, and drank some beer to clear our dry throats. Riding around in tuk-tuks is a good way to inhale a lot of fumes in a short time. While drinking beers we watched a guy with his four girlfriends (?) sitting across from us, taking endless selfies and chatting. Cute! We did some shopping at a local grocery store, and discovered that one of the drinks we had purchased – it seemed to be a strawberry tropical drink – was actually the concentrated syrup of a strawberry tropical drink. No wonder the price was ten times higher than the other drinks we bought! 

For a late lunch/early dinner we headed back to Galle Street to try to find a chain restaurant that was recommended for traditional Sri Lankan food. Unfortunately they closed their kitchen after lunch, and it was too early to open the kitchen for dinner. We were pretty hungry, though, so we caught another tuk-tuk, and asked the driver to take us to one other restaurant I wanted to try. The driver knew the place right away, and while taking us there he tried to talk us into going to a jewelry store after we eat dinner. We politely declined, but he explained that by taking us there he would receive a coupon for 5 liters of fuel for his tuk-tuk, which was worth about 1000 Sri Lankan rupees (about $6 USD). These kind of kickback schemes are pretty common on tourist routes, and we again declined – I’d rather use my time to enjoy our stay. The guy whined a bit, and kept mentioning the 1000 rupees – making it seem like we were the ones taking 1000 rupees out of his pocket. Again, this is the wrong approach if you want to get extra money (at least for us) and we paid the regular fare only and he left us at the restaurant with a very disappointed look on his face. 

Upali’s restaurant turned out to be a big hit. First, they had air conditioning, which felt great after zooming around the city in heat all day. The restaurant was laid out like a family restaurant, with foreigners like us seated in one area and locals in another – it took me a while to realize that probably only some waiters spoke English so the English-speaking ones were assigned to our area. They had a huge menu of Sri Lankan dishes, and I wished I had taken a picture of it. The dishes were laid out with a few short sentences in English explaining each one, and we wanted to try everything. We narrowed it down to a few, and the cheerful waiter took our order with a friendly Indian-style headshake to indicate that everything was A-OK. 

While sipping fruit juices through paper straws we waited for our food and saw that our poor waiter was covering a lot of tables. People seemed to be waiting a long time, asking him detailed questions about dishes on the menu and the ingredients, making the waiter sign their phone into the restaurant’s WiFi – the poor guy had to do everything for a busy room of customers. But for some reason our food came promptly while others were still waiting, and the waiter gave us a big smile that made me think that maybe he had expedited our order somehow. 

The food was excellent – a rich mutton curry (we paid extra for no bones), two paratha (toasted golden brown with melted cheese and onions inside, Upali’s chicken kottu, and a dish of Sri Lankan noodles (which were cut short – almost like a long pilaf, and had a delicious red chilli sauce and peppers in oil). It was a lot of food for two people, and even sitting in the air conditioned restaurant I built up a lot of sweat as my body was processing all these spicy peppers. So delicious! 

After “lunch/dinner” we took a tuk-tuk back to the beach area, and found that it was quite crowded. Perhaps our timing wasn’t right the night before, but this time we found many families out at the beach enjoying the cool breeze, flying kites, and eating food from little temporary convenience stores set up along the pathway. As we walked a guy paced us from behind and then started talking to us. Immediately I wonder what he is selling, and as it turned out he knew of a special festival happening tonight where we could see an elephant covered in jewels, and by the way did we know there was a famous jewelry store nearby? It was hard to lose him since we were on foot, but eventually we escaped. 

Along with the big crowds of people we saw big crowds of police and soldiers, heavily armed. Every time we walked by police or soldiers they always smiled and nodded at us, and I could tell the government was very concerned about the effect of terror attacks on tourism. If we asked the soldiers to give us a lift to our hotel I’m sure they’d have been happy to do it. As we walked back north toward our hotel it was nice moment with the sun starting to go down on our left over the ocean, and we thought it might be nice to find a hotel with a view of the beach and sunset to sit and have a cocktail. As it turned out, the nearest hotel that fit the bill was the Shangri-La – one of the hotels that was targeted during the Easter terror attacks. Apparently a suicide bomber had lined up for Easter breakfast with the other guests and managed to kill quite a few people. 

Other than the security checkpoint in front of the hotel (cameras built into the ground to check under cars, and a bomb sniffing dog who didn’t mind posing for photos with local children) the Shangri-La shows no signs of any kind of attack. We walked into the lavish reception area, and it was easy to get a couple of seats outside, despite our casual attire. The staff served me a smoked whiskey sour and Kuniko and I sat and watched the sun slowly descend through the clouds towards the ocean. We didn’t make a dent in the bowl of cashews as our stomachs were still full. We had a nice quiet moment on the patio not far from where terrorists had committed their horrors. Things there aren’t completely back to normal – but they are close. If they can continue to prevent extremism, recovery will not be so far away. 

On Friday, December 27th we checked out early from our hotel to catch a ride on the shuttlebus to KL Sentral station in order to catch the train back to the airport. The shuttle went ahead and took us to the station directly, apparently the driver didn’t expect anyone else crazy enough to check out at 4:30 in the morning. We used a different terminal at Kuala Lumpur International Airport this time, and discovered there was a Din Tai Fung restaurant just outside of security. Taiwan’s most famous restaurant chain (according to me), we went for the no-pork xiao long bao (in Malaysia only they are made with chicken instead of the usual pork). They also had mini salted egg custard buns, so we ordered four of those. They were the best custard buns ever – I’ve tried them wherever I find them and these were so good. We couldn’t forget how good they were and later it led to an interesting story on our return to Malaysia. 

Our flight was on Sri Lankan airlines, and it was only three and a half hours to Colombo. Even so they served an in-flight meal that was quite good – satay and rice. The Sri Lankan airline meals were some of the best we’ve ever had on a plane… certainly not boring and sometimes quite spicy and exotic. 

Once we arrived at Colombo airport we lined up to get our free (for a limited time only) visa on arrival, and then lined up again for immigration. The lines were not very organized, and some people were pushing to get a better position – patience was wearing a little thin at Colombo airport. Once we cleared immigration and customs I changed some money, ordered up an Uber using the free airport WiFi, and followed the application’s instructions to meet our driver out front. However, once we left the airport and arrived at the front of the arrivals area the free WiFi was out of range. Our driver didn’t show up, and unfortunately armed soldiers were posted to make sure that nobody went back inside the airport. One nice soldier let me walk a little ways into the airport garden to catch the edge of the WiFi envelope, and with that connection I could follow up with the driver and expedite his arrival. He arrived in a tiny Suzuki Alto, and the little car barely made it into town carrying the three of us plus our suitcase. 

It was a little far to get into the center of Colombo, and we could tell immediately that the driving and traffic was much closer to India than Malaysia. It was everyone for themselves out there, driving in the center of two lanes, squeezing into tight spaces and the almost constant use of the horn. I’m glad I wasn’t driving! Eventually the driver found our hotel, and Uber turned out to be a very cost effective way to get from the airport to the city. We stayed at the Fairway Colombo hotel, and it was a smaller hotel in a great location right near a restaurant that we wanted to try in the Old Dutch Hospital area. The hotel was clean, although it did have a fresh paint kind of chemical smell on our floor. The area around the hotel was sort of a tourist zone, so the prices were higher and the touts were kept away (somehow) at a certain distance. Once we left the invisible envelope we were targeted as fair game by taxi and tuk-tuk drivers. 

Eager to explore, we started walking around the hotel area and soon discovered that it was way too hot in the sun to do any real walking. We always prefer walking but the scale of the city and the distances were just too great to manage in the middle of the hot, humid weather. So we took the first of many tuk-tuks to get from the hotel area to the south along the very busy Galle Street. We picked a shopping mall as a destination, and the driver offered to stay and wait for us free of charge. We said we didn’t need him and went inside to do some shopping. 

Sri Lanka’s economy depends a lot on tourism, and they certainly took a hit after the terror attacks on Easter. There were far fewer tourists in town and that meant that extra attention was paid to us and people quoted exorbitant rates to try to rip us off. In the stores and restaurants prices were clearly posted, but each tuk-tuk ride was another negotiation, and only later did we discover that the Uber application lets you hail tuk-tuks as well as cars (thereby avoiding price haggling). Still, each tuk-tuk ride was extremely cheap, and even the most outlandish price quoted worked out to about a $5 ride. 

At the shopping mall we found a good supermarket with plenty of unique things. For example, I bought a bottle of woodapple (a local fruit that has a very mysterious taste) nectar. We stocked up on other goods – local teas, snacks and candies that we wanted to try. Downstairs was a food court, looking like a scene from the seventies with the brown and yellow color scheme. 

Eventually we wrapped up our shopping and caught a tuk-tuk back towards our hotel. The driver had a hard time understanding my pronunciation of our hotel area name, and quoted a price that was about half what we paid to get to the shopping center. It turned out that he had thought we’d go somewhere closer but was so nice he was ready to eat the difference in cost. I paid him the full amount, though – why haggle over a price that amounts to a bottle of soda back in Japan? 

We had a couple of Lion beers (not Tiger) at a bar near our hotel, and a small snack to tide us over until our dinner reservation. Purposely we were trying to build up our appetite for our restaurant reservation at Ministry of Crab. I had heard that they served great chilli crab and since we both love crab we thought it would be interesting to get Sri Lanka’s take on it. They were just steps away from our hotel so we were really looking forward to it. 

When we arrived in the evening they led us to our table inside the stylish restaurant, and we ordered some drinks, a giant shrimp and a large crab. You order the shellfish by size, and you can also choose the sauce. We had garlic chilli sauce for the shrimp and then the traditional chilli sauce only for the crab. I had some coconut water to drink, Kuniko had lime juice served with two test tubes of sugar on the side to adjust the flavor. Our appetizers weren’t so special – the avocado crab salad was just a half an avocado with some crab salad spooned into it – but the crab itself was worth the visit. Although it was a bit overpriced, we enjoyed cracking open the pieces and sucking out all the meat, and we used a plate of bread chunks to soak up the spicy chilli sauce and oil – it was a messy good time. 

After dinner the sun was safely down, so we walked to the beach to see what that area was like. Even though it was dark it was still hot and humid. The beach was pretty quiet and fairly dark, so we decided to play it safe and head back to the hotel. We were pretty tired from the early wake up that morning, so we crashed out but were soon awoken by the floor above us, which was the hotel night club. Every chair scraping on the floor was right above our heads, and the thumping dance music kept us from dropping deeply into sleep. They didn’t stop until around 3 am (which I think is pretty standard for nightclubs, after all) and then we could finally get some rest. 

Since last winter in Florida when Kuniko made a one-year-in-advance reservation for a special room in a special place, our winter travel had been determined. We knew we’d be in Kuala Lumpur during the New Year’s Eve countdown, and then we kind of built out our plan from there. We wanted to focus on eating great food, especially street food, and learn a lot more about Malaysian food culture. But ten days in Malaysia seemed like a little too long, so we looked at other destinations and wavered between Myanmar and Sri Lanka. Sri Lanka experienced a terror attack on Easter 2019, so for a while we switched to Myanmar, but in the end the safety situation improved enough that we felt comfortable switching back to Sri Lanka at the last minute. We focused on relaxing and eating during this trip, so sightseeing became an optional activity. That worked out for the best as the tropical weather was pretty hot unless you were in the shade. 

As usual, things were pretty busy at home leading up to the trip. Shipping off Christmas packages, wrapping up work projects, attending year-end parties with friends and coworkers, and on top of that we were just worn out from the last four solid months of hard work since our last vacation. As it worked out we finished up everything and had a couple of days to spare before our flight left Japan, so we took some slow time – cleaning up the house, organizing and packing, and even met some stormtroopers at a screening of the new Star Wars movie on the morning of our flight out. 

We caught an overnight flight on Air Asia X, and the timing worked out well as we just planned on sleeping the whole time anyway. The plane arrived at about 4:30 am at Kuala Lumpur International Airport Terminal 2 – a fairly new terminal built just for Air Asia. After smooth immigration and customs procedures we carted our suitcase down a floor to pick up a SIM card for my phone. Now that we’re using unlocked iPhones it was surprisingly cheap to rent a SIM card and have internet access in Kuala Lumpur. It cost only about $12 USD for 15 days of internet, so that made the rest of the trip that much easier. 

From the train station we used the convenient (although slightly expensive) high speed train link to the center of town. It took about 25 minutes to KL Sentral station, and then we walked right outside to find a hotel shuttle pickup location. Apparently we had just missed our shuttlebus, so we had to wait about 20 minutes for it to arrive. The area around KL Sentral is packed with tall buildings, most of them hotels, and in the distant dark morning sky we could see several towers illuminated. Near the shuttle stop there were lots of taxi cabs and drivers, but they weren’t very aggressive with us when they learned that we were using the shuttle. We sat on a bench in the comfortably warm weather and enjoyed the calm of waiting. Down the way there were people sleeping on the sidewalk, and during the trip we saw some homeless people now and then in Kuala Lumpur – just lying on the ground to conserve energy in the hot weather of the afternoons. 

When our shuttle arrived and took us the 5 minutes or so to our hotel, the Hotel Majestic, we were arriving much too early for a check-in. The staff did the paperwork for us in advance, took our suitcase, and so we decided to go out exploring in the early morning, and possibly find some breakfast. 

Walking around Kuala Lumpur turned out to be more difficult than we expected. It is a big, growing city, and it has grown dependent on motor vehicles, with some diverse rail services available as well. The city was not designed for pedestrians, and even though places we wanted to visit were close by, the heavy traffic, lack of walkways and sidewalks, and the fact that cars often just ignored stop lights when the drivers felt that it was safe enough. 

On the first morning we took some wrong turns in order to figure out the lay of the land, and so it was an indirect journey to get to Chinatown, where we thought we could get some breakfast. The path from our hotel to Chinatown went through a dangerous intersection with cars that hopefully stopped at red lights, over a river, through an area under construction, and then through a pedestrian walkway that had been converted into a homeless hangout. This was the quickest way to get to where we wanted to go on foot, and despite the occasional bad smell around the homeless area it was perfectly safe and easy to use, once discovered. 

Chinatown was just opening up for the day, so we walked around until we found a small area where a food cart appeared to be evolving into a permanent restaurant. In the back there was a guy selling fresh fruit juices, and we had our first delicious taste of Chinese Malaysian food. We ordered most of our noodles dry, and watched the guy throwing together the meal into chipped plastic dishes that looked like they’d been in use since the 70’s. The atmosphere was a perfect start to our eating adventure. 

We made our way slowly back to the hotel, starting to get a feel for the amount of caution necessary to walk around the backstreets as tourists, and keeping our eyes open to all the strange, interesting and occasionally shocking sights of a developing country. Kuala Lumpur was in an odd phase – growing fast but still full of old areas and showing some growing pains. There were many mysterious moments – one day we found an unexplained line of people waiting for something (I’d guess more than 500 people) near the bus terminal. Another day we were surprised by a solar eclipse that we weren’t aware of. The day became dark and everyone started looking up. There was a lot to wonder at during our stay in “KL”. 

Walking into our hotel was a little like going back in time. The theme of the hotel was a throwback to the days of British Malaya in the 1800’s. The doormen wore pith helmets and white uniforms featuring shorts and long white socks. The bar menu featured authentic (?) historical cocktails of the era (sometimes strong, sometimes watery, but always accompanied by addictive peanuts) and there was high tea in the orchid room, a marble bar, a “secret bar”, a gentlemen’s smoking room (smoking jackets provided), and an overall sort of strange historical/previously oppressed vibe. The oddest thing was that the hotel had mostly foreigners staying, mostly British (I think) and they could be found in the smoking rooms and bars swapping stories of the old days in Eton and Cambridge. 

Once you mentally wrapped your head around that, the hotel was clean, luxurious, and extremely well-staffed with polite people who did whatever they could to make you more comfortable. We returned from Chinatown with plenty of time to kill before check-in, but the staff offered us a table and served us coffee and orange juice (which I don’t think we actually had to pay for) until they opened up a room for us early. The room was spacious with a big bed and overhead frame (for the mosquito nets?) and a central bathtub in the restroom with a TV built into the wall so you could really relax during your soak. We made use of the facilities, including the large swimming pool, and it turned out to be a good place to decompress from our working life and switch into vacation mode. 

So we settled into a nice routine – sleep as much as we like, eat as much as we like, then repeat. I did manage a visit to the Islamic Art Museum, near our hotel, and Kuniko and I both enjoyed visiting the National Mosque, also nearby. We took a train ride out of town (a sign prohibited eating, drinking, and mysteriously titled “indecent behavior”) to visit the Batu Caves, which was high on my list of things to do in Malaysia. The colorful Hindu shrines and steps leading up to the caves really draw the eye. There were 272 steps to the top, and Kuniko did a great job overcoming her fear of falling and making it to the top and back with me. There was a loud concert of Hindi music being played at full volume inside the huge cave, with chickens walking between water drops here and there. 

During the first third of our trip we spent most of our time eating, looking for things to eat, and thinking about what to eat next. Before coming to Malaysia my only experience with Malaysian food was a dish bought at Kuala Lumpur airport years ago that contained a metal shaving – not the best of first impressions. But this time we delved deeper into the food culture, and it was diverse, very affordable and some of the best food we’ve had in Asia. 

Food in Malaysia often comes from one of three backgrounds – Malay traditional, Chinese Malay and Indian Malay. We were able to get a good sampling of all three, but there are also influences from Indonesia (satay, for example) and western and Thai as well. For the most part the Malay and Indian foods were oriented around rice or roti, and the Chinese around noodles. 

We ate a lot of Chinese Malay food – beef noodles, fried duck egg with flat noodles, steamed dim sum, and plenty of vegetable stir fries. Chinatown was built on these kinds of dishes and you could spend a lot of time trying different varieties. They also used pork without any restrictions in Chinese Malay food, so that further widened the options available to us. In Bukit Bintang we ate at Dragon View restaurant – but they forgot our order because they were so busy. The food there was good but not great, the main attraction was the cold beer served on a hot day. There were lots of food options in Chinatown but sometimes they were hard to find, because in the afternoon everyone set up shops selling cheap clothes and trinkets. It takes a little courage to walk down a dark and dirty alley, but occasionally you’ll be rewarded with good food – one stall had too old men serving up food and joking with each customer. We had a bowl of braised pork and some great tofu and fish cake there. We walked down a back street and found people selling electronic parts and junk stripped from equipment and felt pretty foreign as we passed  people sitting on blankets struggling to get by selling this stuff. So sometimes you had to get past the junk shops to find the food, but for the most part, Chinese Malay food was the easiest kind of food to find around Kuala Lumpur. 

For Indian Malay food we went into the Little India neighborhood near KL Sentral station, and we weren’t disappointed. The vibe of the area felt just like a big city in India, with beat-heavy Indian music pumping out of shops and bright colorful fabrics on display everywhere, and big elephant fountain as a centerpiece of the neighborhood. We tried a buffet-style Indian restaurant there, serving up our own plate and selecting foods and curries. The selection was vast and nothing had names on it – you just had to take a chance. We ordered a lassi to drink, and really enjoyed the food (they even gave us a fork to eat with). The downside was when it was time to pay, and the guy asked us, “What did you eat?” Hmm – this and that, and two spoonfuls of this sauce kind of thing… He just charged us 10 ringgit (about $2) and let us go. Another great Indian place was Mansion Tea Stall – a little hole in the wall place serving great roti. We had some communication issues ordering but the roti was so good. The cook was working the roti over the stove, whirling it around his wrists to slap it against the hot steel plate, over and over, then fluffing it into a pile before chopping it up. In most of the restaurants we visited we were the only tourists, so we got a lot of attention. 

For Malay traditional food we found a couple of restaurants that fit the bill. At a slightly touristy place called Old China Café we had some great beef rending and also nasi lemak complete with rice tinged blue with ground pea flowers. Our waiter joked that Tiger beer was actually “Lion”, but later we found actual Lion beer in Sri Lanka. Next door we ate at a restaurant catering to locals with menu items that sort of combined the three food cultures, and had a very unique roti jala – a kind of net looking cake that is dipped into spicy curries by hand. We also had assam laksa there, but it was a little fishier tasting than I had expected. Later during our return to Malaysia at the New Year we were able to try even more traditional Malaysian dishes. 

The culinary high point was getting a ride to a night market in the south part of town to eat more street food. The market was once a week, and stretched out over two kilometers. We arrived early but it quickly got crowded and nearly out of hand. The space for walking was tight, there were no trash cans to dispose of your wrappers and cups, and the sheer volume and variety of foods was overwhelming. We tried some great foods here – dim sum (black pepper shumai was a highlight), a neon colored citrus jelly drink that was tasty and had a very natural taste despite the color, stir fried lamb chunks (still on the bone), satay sticks (mind-blowingly delicious with the peanut sauce), and a pancake wrapped up like a burrito with spicy sauce, cabbage, fried crisps and egg inside. One guy was grilling giant penis-like mushrooms, and leering at the cute girls walking by as he worked. Great food here – our only problem was that we couldn’t get rid of the paper and sticks remaining from the food, and we weren’t willing to litter. Next time we’ll bring our own plastic bag for trash. The traffic and crowds soon became too much for even the two kilometer stretch, and we managed to find a Grab (a ride hailing service) and we left. Not five minutes later a huge rainstorm let loose over the city, and I hate the think what had happened to all those people back at the open air night market. 

After several days of eating, relaxing and exploring, we decided to go through with our plan to visit Sri Lanka for a few days. There was no terror attack during Christmas (the last one was on Easter so we were a little concerned), so we packed up our stuff and headed back to the airport for a three and half hour flight to Colombo, Sri Lanka. 

We had a diverse range of good food this weekend, mainly homemade. Every weekend we eat well, but for some reason this past weekend stood out as especially good.

Saturday morning we went into Kobe to visit “The Cheese Guy” – John Davis, who came out from Okinawa to promote his cheeses at a weekend cheese exhibition along the Motomachi shopping street.

It was our first time to meet John face to face, after having ordered cheeses from him so many times over the years. We let us taste a few cheeses that we didn’t recognize, including a sort of fermented 2 year old cheese paste that was fruity and intense.

John was clearly passionate about cheese and it was nice to borrow him a little bit and peruse his wares. Apparently it was his first time to Kobe, and we hoped that he’d do well. Even early in the morning there were crowds in the shopping street so I’m guessing he’ll be busy. Although Kuniko pointed out that mostly people were lining up for samples rather than purchasing cheese.

Something else that Kuniko said was interesting – two years ago while traveling in Okinawa we sort of stumbled on John’s cheese being sold in a department store and we bought a chunk to take back to our hotel for immediate consumption. After that we got in touch with him and he’s been keeping us in cheese these past couple of years. Interesting to think how things would be different if we didn’t notice his cheese on the shelf of that department store that night.

After bothering John for a while and buying some cheeses to take home we went out to get some lunch. We were aiming for soup dumplings, but found a new Northern Chinese restaurant open in Motomachi that caught our eye. Inside we ordered some boiled dumplings, but unfortunately the pork buns listed on the menu weren’t ready yet. While we waited for the soup dumplings the owner was aggressively touting the quality of his food, speaking flawless Japanese and also Chinese to his wife, who was putting together the dumplings. He was a bit too talkative for us but the dumplings turned out to be tasty enough.

Next stop was Shorondayo – our current favorite soup dumpling place. We know exactly what we want when we go there, soup dumplings and beer. We ordered two baskets of dumplings and a bottle of beer to share. The dumplings there are homemade and really tasty – just the right amount of soup and great texture of the wrappers.

There was a group of three customers next to us eating through a whole course, and when they got to the end of their meal the wife running the place sent out three plates of free almond tofu for dessert. In the tiny restaurant of only three tables the older lady loudly proclaimed that she likes customers that spend money – she hates stingy people, and so the desserts were on the house. I wasn’t sure if she was referring to us with the “stingy” comment but it was a funny moment. Even a grouchy owner isn’t going to stop us from soup dumpling nirvana.

Back in Okubo we did a little grocery shopping, and I bought a freshly caught squid from the fish market. We were planning on doing a wine tasting of Italian wines from the Liguria region, which is known for the friggitorie that serve up fried seafood in shops under Cinque Terre. I was hoping to try to clean and cut up a squid for the first time, and then fry it up as calamari.

The process was a little tricky, but having done it once I think it’ll be easier to do in the future. One surprise for me was that I didn’t know squids have a backbone. It was strange to pull an oblong bone out of the back of the squid – for some reason I guess I was picturing jellyfish more than anything. There was also a virtually endless amount of squid ink which I was careful to keep off my clothes. Finally I chopped up the edible parts of the squid and then dredged them in corn grits and flour, and gave them a quick fry in olive oil and neutral sesame oil. They turned out pretty good, although it took far longer to process and cook the squid than it took to eat it. Combined with a tomato and basil salad it went perfectly with the three wines that we tasted, and I hope someday we have the chance to visit that area and eat and drink more.

On Sunday Kuniko was working, so I was in the kitchen making more Indian food. I marinated and grilled some chicken for my second attempt at tandoori chicken tikka, and then I converted some leftover mashed potatoes into a turmeric and onion laced filling for dosas. The dosa batter had taken a long time to grind up and ferment, and to be honest the batter was not very delicious before cooking, but once I heated it on a crepe pan and got it crispy it was really, really good. We had dosas for the first time at Vishnu Moola’s house in Bangalore, and this was a pretty close approximation. I have enough batter for an army, so we’ll give it another go tonight.

So lots of new experiences this weekend. Kuniko has no more days off until we fly out on December 23rd to Kuala Lumpur, so I think we’ll be slightly less ambitious in the kitchen for a while.

Now we are pretty deep into autumn, and that means some opportunities to try some new foods.

Of course we have been looking forward to oyster season, and last Sunday we took a one hour road trip to the coast to buy some. We ended up with 3 kilograms of oysters in the shell. The season is early so the oysters were a little smaller than usual, but the guy selling the oysters said that they’ll just get bigger from here on out.

For fun we’ve been trying different kinds of apples lately. I haven’t really paid much attention to the varieties of apples that I eat to be honest – red or green was as detailed as I ever really got. But I guess part of paying more attention to the food we cook and eat has been learning about different varieties.

In Japan, there are quite a few kinds of apples available, and we’ve discovered two kinds that we really like – Shinano, and Ourin. The Shinano apples we have had are a golden red color, large and perfectly formed with a nice balance of sweet and acidic. The texture is also crisp but not too crunchy, and I’ve never liked softer apples. In contrast the Ourin is a golden green color, with a crisp texture and a rich appley perfume that calls to mind apple pies and strudels. These apples aren’t too expensive, about 100 yen per apple, but they pack a lot of flavor for the money. Yum!

It has been some time since I’ve posted – we’ve been pretty busy!

The beginning of October means new courses and new students for me, and there is an initial busy period while new students focus on getting used to speaking English so much.

I’ve got a full plate of classes – a weekly class for new employees (six classes of four students each), a twice-a-month class for the new production workers (65 students in one class – wow!), twice weekly classes for thirteen individual students, a weekly business negotiation course for four students, and then an after work/before work special casual conversation session for however many students decide to show up twice a week.

So, very busy. That makes free time precious, and at work most of my extra time goes into lesson planning and preparing materials. It is busy now and will continue to be busy right up until we leave in December for our next trip.

Kuniko is also busy, and she often has to work one or two days on the weekends. Luckily she can get other days off in exchange, but we have odd schedules now and that makes the time that we can spend together more fun.

We have been continuing to hold wine tastings through the regions of Italy, and a few weeks ago we tasted one of the more famous (and expensive) regions – Piemonte. We found some really interesting wines this time and one in particular that we’ll remember the rest of our lives… so I can see why the region we were tasting gets so much attention. Next time we’ll move to the more affordable wine region of Liguria.

Also we’ve been cooking different culture’s dishes each month. In October we cooked Korean food and we certainly improved our skills making kimpa, chapche, chijimi, kimchi, namul, and bossam. This month we’ve switched to Indian food, and so far we made two chutneys (peanut cilantro, and coconut spice), a pumpkin masala, potato turmeric masala, toasted chanai dal, and a beautifully creamy split uraad dal that really made me understand Indian comfort food. We’ll see what dishes we can come up with next.

The cooking different culture thing has been good to push my skills a little, and also to learn more about the food cultures and techniques of different countries. We are only scratching the surface of each culture, but I think we can come back and hit beyond the highlights in the future.

So with all this going on, Christmas shopping in the background, and getting ready for some holiday parties with friends and neighbors, we have (literally) a lot on our plates.

Hope to have more time after the first of the year, but we’ll see if things settle down. Anything could happen!