Guest post! Food diary for Yummyfoto

Have you ever wondered just exactly what I'm eating over here? My lovely friend Linda blogs about food over at Yummyfoto, and she asked me awhile back whether I would be willing to write a five-day food diary for her in the style popularized by New York magazine's Grub Street blog.

Well, I finally found time to keep the diary and write it up this past month-- it was fun to do! I timed the whole shebang to coincide with an American friend's visit. We ate well, as you will see... very, very well.

Click here to enjoy five days of deliciousness!

REWIND: Japan

Continuing my recent blogging vein with a tantalizing taste of my Japan adventures.... Some highlights:

Osaka
*I was lucky enough to have a university friend, JJ, to stay with during my time in Japan. JJ even trekked out from Tottori (a small city where he was teaching English) to Osaka to meet me at the airport and spend the weekend in Osaka. That meant that instead of affording a sense of deep, overwhelming anxiety, jumping head first into Japanese society was exciting, fascinating, and generally great.

The Osaka skyline
*To start with, we had a fantastic night out, trying all sorts of delicious Osakan foods, wandering the streets of the city's ultra-trendy neighborhoods, stopping in a British-themed bar where I had my first umeshu (totally delicious plum wine), admiring the crazy out-there Japanese fashions at a particularly notorious intersection, and capping the evening with--what else--karaoke

*JJ convinced me that I had to experience a "capsule hotel," a unique Japanese experience where in a hotel-goer stays in what is essentially an enclosed train berth (but much more high-tech and futuristic feeling) in a huge hall full of said berths. The hotel had an extraordinary otherworldly feel to it (more on this in my later post on Osaka), replete with super-high tech gadgets (don't get me started on Japanese toilets...). In the women's bath I met Violetta, a Romanian mathematician with a Japanese husband who invited me to come see her in Matsue, a small city near Tottori

An awkward photo of my capsule* JJ and I splashed out on tickets for the semi-annual sumo wrestling tournament (which is held only once a year in southern Japan.) It was spectacular, a complete cultural immersion, an event which in many ways felt like it could have been taking place centuries in the past. Completely worth the money.

At the sumo tournament
Nara

*JJ and I took a day trip to Nara, where there are some temples and lots of tame deer walking around. The temples include both the oldest and largest standing wooden structures in the world. They are soberly gorgeous examples of Buddhist architecture (and, thanks to a course on the topic, JJ was able to regale me with the wonders of that architecture)

The largest wooden structure in the world (the dots are people)

JJ feeding a deer
The one on the left is the oldest standing wooden structure in the world

Tottori

*Tottori is a little city about 2.5 hours northwest of Osaka. To say it doesn't get much in the way of tourism is an understatement. In fact, I met a Tottori-ite in Australia and told him I was planning to visit in March. He looked at me and said, "Why?!" Nevertheless, I spent more than a week with JJ just soaking in everyday Japanese life. I met his fellow teachers, tried lots of delicious Japanese food (including sushi, for the first time!), went to a local onsen (Japanese bath), explored the fabulous local toy museum, and relished the feeling of being in one place for awhile.

Going to "kaiten sushi" ("conveyor belt" sushi)
Octopus at a fish market in Tottori
At the fantastic toy museum in Tottori
*When JJ wasn't working, we went sightseeing together. He showed me his favorite tea house/garden, and we went together to the 'famous' Tottori dunes and on a lovely boat ride on the coast. I also got to see his taiko (traditional Japanese drumming) troupe preparing for a big performance.

The coast near Tottori
JJ practices with his taiko troupe
Matsue

*JJ had long-standing plans to go to South Korea for a long weekend, so I made good on Violetta's invitation and took the train to Matsue, a city a few hours from Tottori. I stayed in a ryokan, or old-fashioned Japanese inn, and during the days Violetta showed me around her favorite Matsue sights. We took a walk around the lake, visited the castle (one of the largest in Japan), went to a beautiful temple complex/tea garden, ate at an incredibly charming 9-seat restaurant and splurged on a pre-set menu with all the delicacies from the lake, and went for a drive with her husband to the stunning Sakaiminato coast.

The most adorable restaurant
Mother and daughter who work at the restaurant
Sunset on the Sakaiminato coast
Matsue castle by night, complete with cherry blossoms and people having celebratory drinking parties (called "hanami") underneath them
Mochigase
*I was lucky enough to have a few chances to visit Mochigase, a picture-perfect where JJ taught part of the time. The first time I visited the school to watch JJ teach, the second time for the Mochigase doll festival, and the third time to give back to the school and help JJ make a giant English-language poster including several of my travel photos from the trip thus far.

*Visiting JJ's school was great fun. In each class he introduced me and had me tell the students a little bit about my trip. Then I helped them play a game of English grammar battle ship. During free periods we chatted with the other teachers and sat in on a music lesson.

Walking back from school through the adorable streets of Mochigase
*Happily, the annual Mochigase doll festival, a spring fertility festival which celebrates women's strength, took place about half way through my time in Japan. During the festival, all the houses in town put out beautiful displays of traditional dolls, people float similar dolls down the river to pray for their daughters' growth, and those daughters dress up in their best kimono for the same purpose. The day itself was beautiful and warm, and I was maybe the only Westerner in all of the proceedings. I wandered through the scene taking pictures, ate some delicious homemade mochi (pounded potato-flour candy), and set my own doll off down the river to pray for strength for me and any daughters to come.

A beautiful example of the traditional doll displays


Everywhere I looked there were little Japanese girls wearing kimono and having a cute-off contest. (They all won.)

Floating the dolls down the river
Kyoto

*I spent my last long weekend in Japan exploring the wonders of Kyoto. First I met up with a fellow Boston couchsurfer, Mike, and we explored the fantastic Shinto shrine-filled mountain of Fushimi Inari and walking the geisha district in awe of the beautiful tea houses.

Shinto gates at Fushimi Inari
The stunning beauty of Gion geisha district tea houses in cherry blossom season
*For a couple of days after that I stayed with Mami, the Japanese girlfriend of one of JJ's co-teachers, and we spent an exhausting and amazing 11-hour day walking all over the city exploring temples, a Zen garden, and the Temple; celebrating the sakura (cherry blossom festival) with harp music and traditional food; and capping the evening off with a mountain temple complex, the Kyoto castle, and an exquisite (if expensive) meal in the Pontocho bar district.

The golden temple

A shinto shrine complex with its sakura in full bloom and its festival booths up to celebrate
The mountain-top temple by night
*Finally, JJ arrived in Kyoto, and we spent a couple of days exploring his former home (he had studied in the city for a year during University), going to a traditional fan dance performance, having our own hanami with some other Wesleyan students on the same program, and splurging on tickets for the miyako odori, the semi-annual dance performance put on by competing geisha houses in the city to showcase the talent of their new students.

The fan dance performance

Our very own hanami
A scene from the miyako odori
A geisha spotted on the street near Gion

Lean on Me

Resuming my recounting of strange, strange times in Tonghai:

Our second day in Tonghai was just as mind-blowing as the first. After another traditional Chinese breakfast we walked up a hill to an English school owned by a friend of the program, whose English name is Albert. We did some more orientation discussion and took an oral test to place ourselves in language classes-- I found out today I will be sharing a class with Lisa, who goes to Wellesley and has red dreadlocks (brave in China.) We actually had to struggle to choose our textbooks because Lisa was in Beijing studying language last semester and I haven't studied for a whole year, so I'm rusty and she's still very fresh. But I think we came to a good compromise. We will have two teachers (that's a 1:1 ratio, jeez) for grammar and speaking. They are not much older than we are.

Anyway, back to Tonghai-- after the placement test we were allowed 5 or 6 hours to wander in Xiushan Mountain park, which is home to an entire complex of Buddhist and Daoist temples anywhere from 200-900 years old. It also has a sacred spring (which the complex is built around) and saw a lot of people carrying jugs of water on sticks a la oxen yokes, going to get water. The park was incredibly beautiful-- most of the temples are still working, and there were people praying and flowering trees everywhere. I spent my afternoon mostly with Tania, who seems very sweet and thoughtful but with an alternative side-- she's studying gender at Hampshire and this morning I noticed she has a tattoo of a mountain on her back. We spent all of our time on the mountain, although some people opted to go back to Albert's to play with the kids there. The temples and gardens were just breathtaking. At one point, an old man playing an er hu (Chinese violin with two strings, yes Marianna, like the guy in Harvard Square) and we stopped to listen. Before I knew it he had sat me down and was molding my hands to bow correctly. It took a lot of effort, but after 15 minutes I was able to play a scale. Another thing I never thought I would get to do, learning er hu from an old Chinese man who didn't speak a word of English.

The er hu player had a friend who came over to talk to us for awhile, too, and he offered to take us up the mountain, which was an adventure. It was really good Chinese practice, he kept up a constant patter of conversation and was always asking "Do you know the name of that tree? Do you know the name of that flower?" After awhile when we would stop to look at things and he would wait, we were afraid that he wanted money but ultimately he left us just saying it was wonderful to meet us. I wish I had thought to give him some American change-- I've been giving out dimes and nickels to people and they always are fascinated and excited by "mei guo qian" (American money.) On the way down from the mountain we came upon a family munching on raw sugarcane, and they insisted on giving some to us. It was delicious-- you eat it by ripping off the outside of the big stalk with your teeth, biting in, sucking out the sweet juice, and spitting out the remains. As spitting is almost a national pastime here, I felt very Chinese eating the sugarcane.

We were supposed to meet the group at 6 for dinner with more officials, but Tania and I got lost on the way to the hotel. We had been enduring curious stares and yells of "Hello!" all day, but when we stopped to ask a man for directions to our hotel we legitimately drew a crowd. People stopped and pretended to look at things around us, but it was clear they were watching us. The man we were asking didn't speak Mandarin, so he had to write down the question "What is the name of your hotel?" so we could tell him (although Chinese dialects sound different, they are all written the same.) All the while, more people with inquisitive faces squatted or stood nearby, looking in pure curiosity. I never knew I could be such an attraction.

We finally got back to the hotel in time for Crazy Official Dinner Number 2. We knew what to expect this time-- more drinking, more eating, more crazy Chinese drinking songs. This time, though, the officials also did some Peking Opera dances for us-- I've never heard a man with such a high falsetto. In return, we all got together and sang "Lean on Me" for them. Those of you who have heard the story of my New Years in Hangzhou will remember that I have experience singing to Chinese officials. The rest of the night was spent at a bar Albert owns.

We left the hotel bright and early the next day, and it wasn't until we were on the bus that I realized I had left the necklace I bought in Ireland at the hotel. The odd thing is that I couldn't remember taking it off. I went back with Chen Laoshi and the driver to look and get a ring Tania left, but no luck. I'm very sad about this loss. Maybe someone still in the area can pick me up a replacement... We spent the afternoon looking at a Daoist temple in an area where there used to be an enormous lake. The lake has shrunk over the years, but there are still ancient boat docks everywhere, including inside one of the temples. Very interesting.

More interesting, though, was our trip to the only Mongolian village in Yunnan province. The Yuan dynasty was a Mongolian one (that's Kublai Khan, etc) and when they came to fight the tribal kings in Yunnan for control of China, a lot of Mongolian soldiers were injured, and when the Mongolians ultimately pulled out they left a lot of the injured behind to start this one village. The interesting thing is that it's now been 750 years, and the language and culture have both changed to be different than people who live in Mongolia today. It's a strange mix with local customs and language. As an Anthropology geek, I find that fascinating. I don't know if it's fascinating enough to do my Independent Study Project on it, but we'll see. Anyway, we happened to come to the village, which is picturesquely poor (like most places outside the city here) on a festival day, so everyone was wearing their traditional clothes, very colorfol and sparkly and interesting-looking. I bought a handmade apron and we listened to some performances and then got asked to sing as well. We sang "Lean on Me" again (everyone knows it) and "Jingle Bells." The audience loved it.

The past few days other than that have been mostly preparation for classes, which start Monday. Charles, a Chinese english student who is a program assistant, showed us around Kunming last night, pointing out some coffee shops, an English bookstore, this internet cafe (where internet is Y1 or 12 cents per hour), a movie theater, and Green Lake park, which is beautifully lit at night. There were huge groups of people dancing for fun in the park. Not something you'd ever see in the states. We got a talk about health today and chose our textbooks, and this afternoon we will see an introductory video about Yunnan. Things are slowly grinding into gear.