Los Angeles Downtown - Smalltown, USA?

At around 3PM the Starbucks in California Plaza is overrun.

It seemed like there were a lot of Deloitte and Touche folks, but there were plenty of folks who were not so tagged. Regardless, the members of this prodigious line of people were individually addressed by name by the baristas, who go on to inquire if they would like their regular beverage. Granted, these people probably come every single day. But now it's an hour after I first got here and the line has maintained a constant length, which potentially says interesting things about the average random distribution of coffee breakers throughout the afternoon, but is also a testament to Starbucks' processing power.

I felt like I was mucking up the gears of a well-oiled machine, a solitary, silent outsider, adding a longer seek time to the process in order to acquire my name and order.

At the corner of 2nd and Main,

The Burrata Pie: Arugula, hazelnuts, tomato sauce, burrata cheese.

Eating outside at Pitfire Pizza (something I have had the infinite pleasure of doing twice), I felt like I was at the corner of 2nd and Main in a town one ten-thousandth the size.

People walking by on the sidewalk called out to friends passing by in cars, who waved back.

People enjoying their meals greeted passerby, exchanging a few words before they moved on to their destination, whether lunch or post-lunch.

Police officers strolled by chatting with civilians.

And there were so many more bicycles than I had expected for the center of one of the most famously sprawling urban areas in the world.

I'm singin' on the bus

A final anecdote.

Driving through downtown one morning, as my host was preparing to drop me off at a café where I would work that day, a singular noise penetrated the car as a bus pulled up just behind us.

"Huh. He's singing."

I: "What?"

"The bus driver's singing."

"What?"

"Roll down your window."

I rolled. We listened, speechless, waiting for the light to turn.

Finally, I asked, "Is his window open?"

"No, he's using the loudspeaker."

The light turned, and so did we. I watched the bus go past us, and sure enough, there he was, a rotund fellow, cradling the mike in his left hand, piloting with his right, joyfully belting out some tune. I wish I knew what he had been singing.

Not possessing a good ear for these things, I have no way of reporting on the quality of his performance. But it is enough for me that there was one in the first place.


Maybe my casual-interaction-with-strangers muscle 
(medical term: 'anterior smalltalkoids') has atrophied.  

Perhaps this post is more revelatory of how garbled my image of what a small town is. Or of the groove my mind has worn itself into living in Tokyo. Singing and dancing in the streets - have I been watching  musicals? Still, my expectations of downtown were of people corralled into office buildings and shopping malls, exclusively car traffic, no social interactions or kindness, exhausted and destitute bodies curled up in doorways. Not that there aren't homeless, but they somehow coexist (though not without friction) with a multitude of other groups out and about on sidewalks, public places, and outdoor cafés.

The Emperor says...

Go home and die.* "Happy new year."

For those unfamiliar with Imperial Custom, the Palace opens to the plebs on Dec. 23 (Emperor's birthday) and Jan. 2. Or you could avoid the crowds and take a free tour that you can sign up for online, though you don't get to see Their Imperialnesses.

I did not wave a flag because I was carrying a kid on my back. Not being Japanese, there's no particular reason for me to be patriotic. Nor am I particularly inclined towards patriotism - the idea of being a flag-waver in a crowd of flag-wavers makes me a little bit uncomfortable, so I was happy to have an excuse not to.

I don't think that this distance is evidence of cynicism or a lack of sincerity. I can respect the occasion and the Emperor's message of hope for 2012** without needing to conform.

Always a good time to be had in the Heart of the Empire.


*http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hn5E6wYZWWM ~ 3:05

**Too bad the apocalypse is this year. Thanks a lot, Mayans.

2012

Totally gorged on new year food.

After the barrage of year-end parties, I just chilled out for the new year itself.

I'm largely satisfied with how things are going, productivity-wise. I should be releasing my first iPhone app pretty soon, really excited about that. I could write for here more often. I have 3 or 4 drafts sitting around that I should push out soon.

I think the one thing I want to work on this year - my new year's resolution, if I have to call it that - is to express what I feel and what I want more clearly. Or at all.

Seen on a hat

...worn by an elderly fellow reading a sports newspaper, dressed for light hiking:

Joe is aiming at

being a Professonal with

active and nice savor

Technically, it's off by a syllable, but I'm going to chalk that up to the difficulties of English pronunciation and call it a haiku anyway.

O, the evanescence of things.

Went to the drugstore a while back to buy some soap. (Which reminds me: I should pick up some shampoo soon.)

I always have trouble finding stuff at drugstores. Not just because I'm in Japan. One set of plastic bottles looks identical to another set of plastic bottles, despite them being wildly different products.

This particular time, I had wandered down several likely-seeming aisles - bath products; cleaning products - with no luck. Before mild frustration turned into nuclear rage, I flagged down a passing store dude (the appropriate word does not spring to mind) who was moving some merchandise around and asked where the soap was at.

He looked down at his laden arms,

I looked down at his laden arms.

His arms were laden with many packages of packages of soap.

"Great! I'll take one of those!"

"Really?" he asked, disbelieving. I do have some theories to explain this reaction, but none of them seem adequate. Ultimately, I remain puzzled.

Anyway, I replied, "Sure, why not?" carefully extracting, Jenga-like, a plastic-wrapped three-pack of of soap. Triumphant, I proudly carried my new trophy to the cashier, paid, and departed.

I frequently gaze upon my prize lovingly - and increasingly fretfully - as my the three-pack becomes two, and then dwindles to one. Will I find it again at the store? Or do I value it more highly because of the poignance of its potential to pass from my life forever, like a drifting cherry blossom?*

My prize:

They're quite serious about their branding.

On the off chance that it was not already abundantly clear to you what the picture was supposed to represent:

Is my memory just bad, or are personal hygiene products just not branded like this in the US?

And best of all, it was totally cheap.

*Blame for anything vaguely resembling philosophical musings in this post can probably be laid at the feet of two semesters of classical Japanese literature.

Eating The East Bay

Soundtrack: eels - Saturday Morning

There was a project.

This project was to consume three delicious east bay meals: breakfast at Ole's, lunch at Chez Panisse, dinner at the Blue Nile. Inevitably, things did not go according to plan.

Instead, we ended up eating pretty much anything and everything we could cram into our greedy little gullets.

We woke early to depart for our first stop: Ole's in Alameda.

Delicious waffles topped with fresh strawberries and chopped nuts.
Eggs, hash browns, linguiça.

We had time before our next appointment, which was at Chez Panisse. Getting a reservation there on short notice was nothing short of miraculous.

Serendipitously, there was a vintage car show, ranging from the venerable Model T to the 60s.

Serious doubts were expressed about the concept of a $100 prix fixe meal, but we enjoyed the Chez Panisse café. D had rigatoni, R had calamari and mussels, and I had lamb. All of which were great, but I think what really set Chez P apart was the fantastic sauces. Don't eat your bread right away when it comes - wait for your food, then soak up some sauce.

What phallic tower?

Then we strolled around Berkeley, tossing a frisbee around in old haunts: Memorial Glade, Willard Park, People's Park. The exercise made us feel justified in picking up a picnic snack of salami, cheese, and hot pumpkin soup in the middle of the afternoon.

Once it got dark, we headed back up Northside to pick up some delicious pizzas for the next day's pizza party. Which was a good time. Friends old and new shared in the yum, and they were introduced to the joy of ultimate frisbee.

Roasted potato and onion with Gruyere and
mozzarella cheese topped with fresh mixed herbs
and garlic olive oil.

When I look at Pizza Hut's 'Idaho Special' in Japan I shudder in horror, but if Cheeseboard decides it wants to put potatoes on its pizza today, well, In Cheeseboard We Trust. And since it is Cheeseboard, they gave us bonus slices to go with our half- baked pizzas. Maybe we could have just tucked those fresh, steaming, tantalizingly odoriferous slices into the boxes to eat the next day. And maybe pigs can really have torrid affairs with frogs - while flying.

It is possible that cheese and bread and garlic and potatoes may have spoiled our appetite a tad. This brought us up to a grand total of four meals, and we still had to meet my friend T for dinner.

We had time before dinner, so we drove through the Solano tunnel. I thought it would be nice to get a night view of the bay, so we picked a road which happened to literally be straight up the hill, because switchbacks are for weaklings. After nearly killing Dunk's car, we made it up to the top, to a place where there was no view whatsoever.

There was a decent view and venison (did not eat - sad) on the way down, at least.

Finally, dinner. Dinner was to be Ethiopian food, but the Blue Nile has apparently closed. I think they had been around for a long time, too. Fortunately, there was another Ethiopian restaurant - Finfine - right across the street. It was in a small alcove where we usually went for Korean barbecue and fantasized about going to fondue (though we always ended up getting distracted by KBBQ).

Ten years later, perhaps our willpower was greater, because we resisted the magnetic pull of our old favorite and had a light meal at the Ethiopian place. Salmon and lamb. The proprietor was kind of annoyed because we ordered two portions for four people, but after all we had eaten so far, we were well satisfied.

Impressed by the triumph of willpower and wisdom for meal number five? Don't be. In explaining to T (a recent arrival to Berkistan) the local hot spots, Fenton's Creamery was mentioned.

Then there was nothing for it but to go to Fenton's.

At Fenton's, you might imagine that we would continue the trend of small portions and sharing.

You would be grossly wrong.

There were two of these.

On Saturday, the Eighth of October, 2011, the three of us ate breakfast, lunch, an afternoon snack, a pre-dinner slice of pizza, dinner, and then the alpha and the omega of desserts.

Good thing we got a lot of exercise that day and the next.

On the Evisceration and Subsequent Consumption of Cephalopods

So one day in the supermarket they had whole squid for sale, super cheap. And I had a hankering for some pasta con calamari.

So I took them home. They were so cute! How could I possibly resist?

I named the one on the left 'Lunch,' and the one on the right 'Tomorrow's Lunch.'

When I started washing one, some goop started coming out. I figured there would only be a little goop, so I kept trying to rinse it out. Several minutes of goopy futility later, it occurred to me that there was probably stuff inside my future calamari rings.

Even though I'm reasonably familiar with the processes of removing the inside bits of fish and chicken, it took a while to realize that squid is not all calamari rings and waggling tentacles. But what was in there? And how would I get it out?

Fortunately for the advancement of human knowledge, we have the Internet. So I thought I'd share with you - quite graphically - what I've learned.

What you do is this: you grasp the head, and you grasp the body. Then, gently but firmly, you twist and pull.

Got that? Twist and pull.

Which leaves you with your future calamari rings...

...and everything else.

In an ideal world, the connection between the viscera and the head is stronger than the connection between bits and body. This actually worked just fine for the first one, despite the fact that I had caused the goopy thing (liver equivalent?) to spring a leak in trying to wash out the squid. But for the second one, I had to tease it out, working my fingers in and gently separating it from the body. I probably could have just torn it out, since I wasn't planning on using that bit, but it would have been a good deal messier.

Next comes the removal of the head and beak, by hacking, and then by prodding and tugging, respectively.

Then slicing, then flash frying, then yum!

But all this reminded me of Ikacenter, a fantastic restaurant in Shinjuku that I went to last year.

It's a seafood restaurant, with a particular emphasis on squid. 'Ika' means squid, so that came as no surprise.

When you walk in, there are squids in huge tanks that run for about half the length of the restaurant. They jet around placidly, vividly reminding me of the Bloopers in Super Mario. Now, I don't think you can pick which one you want, but at any rate they scoop one out for you and hack off the tentacles, serving them still wriggling in a small bowl. Grab it (some skill with chopsticks is necessary) and dip it in ponzu sauce with grated ginger. Wriggleicious!
Despite my initial surprise, vigorous chewing subdued the thrashing in my mouth.

This is generally a good time to remember that your momma told you to chew 30 times first before swallowing.

Then they served a sashimi course, laid out in the artfully arranged corpse of a red snapper. This included a couple of types of fish I had never eaten sashimi of before, and it was delicious.

Alas, the only photographic evidence is of the sashimi course.

Next came the body of the squid, laid out flat and sliced finely. The dipping sauce was the goop-generator from inside the squid, which we ground into a paste. Again, totally freaky - but yum! I don't even know what to call it. Pâté de foie squid? Pâté de squid gras? French mystifies me.

Now, I figured that was it for Blooper-San. What more could he possibly have to give?

So we moved on to the next course, which was a fish called enzara. This is a fairly uncommon fish - I've only had it the once. It was simmered in a sweet, dark sauce, and, like everything else, obscenely delicious. And I mean it when I say obscene, because this is a fish that looked like it would have been totally at home bursting out of someone's stomach in a froth of blood and guts in Alien. Bulbous, pupil-less yellow eyes and dagger-like teeth make for a critter you don't really want to meet in an dark underwater cave. The pictures I've found of it on the internet don't really do justice to the horror.

Then, unexpectedly, came the squid's coup de grâce.

The head had been cut into four pieces and grilled (or maybe baked, I don't recall). Lightly salted, crunchy. Yum.

And that, finally, was that, for Mister Squid and dinner.

I didn't do anything exotic with mine - the parts that usually get thrown out were thrown out. I don't know if I would even try it if I bought them still-blooping from the fish market. But the unexotic, standard, flash-fried calamari still was pretty darn tasty.

The above + cheddar cheese = comfort food.

Still, you should try Ikacenter sometime. I'd be happy to go again.