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Alrighty I wrote about the experience of going to the movies in Japan so I guess I should write about the movie itself. No spoilers because I’m a peach. Continue reading
So unless you’ve been living under a rock with no connection to the outside world aside from this blog for the past two years (in which case, thank you and get a life), you may well know that this week saw the release of perhaps the most anticipated film of perhaps the last decade, Alvin and the Chipmunks, Part 4.
Since this is Japan, most new Western film releases generally show up in theaters after a several year delay (only a slight exaggeration), meaning that the new addition to the apparently lucrative Alvin and the Chipmunks franchise will show up in your nearest Tokyo theater around the time that I am married with several children. So rather than watching everyone’s third favorite bunch of talking tree rodents, I had to settle for some movie called Star Wars instead.
Apparently, though I’m not quite sure, this movie was a sequel of some sort and just another cog in the Disney hype machine if I may say so myself. Talking robots, spaceships, and laser swords, this movie will probably never catch on. A box office bomb, I’m certain.
Anyways, even though I’ve been living in Japan for the past two years plus now, I broke my solemn vow of curmudgeonism and ventured for the first time ever to a movie theater in the hustling and bustling heart of Tokyo.
Now, if you’re ever planning on going to the movies, there are probably a couple of things you should know…
It is December 14th and I am sitting in a so-called “family restaurant” by myself typing this on my increasingly finicky laptop while lamenting the fact that I tore off a chunk of skin on my ass in the name of Japanese late-night television.
Pretty glamorous right?
My transition from faceless Japanese teacher to “entertainment talent” under the umbrella of the largest, most powerful entertainment agency in Japan has had its bumps and derailments but has certainly been, well, “something”.
One of the highlights of my foray into Japanese showbiz? Guest appearing on a Dragonball-themed TV show. Yes. That’s a thing. And it’s fun.
Hey there, it’s been a while.
Sorry for the lack of updates but I’ve moved back in with my grandparents and they don’t really have a working internet connection. Besides, at this point, I’m pretty much contractually barred from saying anything interesting anyways.
Yes, I signed a contract and, as of last week, am now going to Yoshimoto Kogyo’s comedy “school” in Tokyo and will be doing so for the full year. And the company doesn’t exactly want us giving away trade secrets or talking about how hard they ride people (or not*wink*) in class and all that sort of stuff.
In other words, aside from the occasional food post, don’t expect much content up here. Sorry.
Peace out.
STEPHEN
PS You can keep up with my exploits (and all the times I get yelled at) on Twitter.
With my belly (temporarily) full, I still had a full hour-and-a-half to kill before my seating at Tomita, the tsukemen haven that had brought me to the city of Matsudo in Chiba Prefecture.
Japanese stairs are not for the faint of heart.
Matsudo is a bedroom community located in the greater vicinity of the Tokyo metropolitan area, funneling tens of thousands of salarymen and students to and from the capital city everyday. This, of course, means that there’s not particularly much to do in the city of Matsudo proper that you can’t really do anywhere else in Japan. So I pretty much just wandered the streets for a few hours, no doubt freaking out dozens of pensioners on the street with my hulking foreign presence and having to climb lots and lots of stairs.
Finally, 4:30 came around and I meandered back over to the relatively humble storefront. Finding myself immediately instructed to wait by one of the nice dudes working at the shop, I sat down at the head of a long row of chairs jammed unceremoniously between the wall and some space heaters. I only lasted about two minutes before it felt like my legs were about to melt, mostly because the heater was approximately five millimeters away from my calves and was apparently cranked up to roast.
Second degree burns are no way to start a meal.
Thankfully, I didn’t have to wait long, as the rest of my seating group (in order to ensure the maximum amount of quality control per bowl, Tomita seats its customers in waves, filling the cramped shop with customers, serving each and every one of them, wiping down and cleaning up, and then starting the process all over again) had all arrived right on cue, no doubt having been anticipating their meal for the past several hours.
I got seated in a relatively unexciting wall seat, pretty much coming face-to-face with a portrait of the (recently deceased) originator of tsukemen, which in terms of dining companions ranks somewhere between an actual person and a bare concrete wall in terms of being entertaining.
My dining companion.
With my dining buddy for the meal being completely unresponsive (faded framed pictures generally don’t say much), I settled in and braced myself for an experience I’d assumed would be somewhere between face-meltingly amazing and alien ghosts implanting happy emotions into your brain good (that one was for all you Scientologists out there). It was a relatively short wait until my food was placed before me.
I know you guys have come to expect a lot of words and sardonic turns of phrases from me but for this one, I’m just going to let the pictures do most of the talking. Continue reading
Some times on my weekend, I get bored. And when I get bored, I like to eat. I know, not necessarily the healthiest of time-killers, but I like food, dammit.
This Thursday (my Saturday), I decided to take a bit of trip to a veritable tsukemen Mecca located but an hour and a half by train from my current home base of Mito. Ranked number one by just about everyone as having the best tsukemen in Japan (and thus, barring unforeseen circumstances, the world), Tomita, a small-ish restaurant located in the Tokyo “suburb” of Matsudo in Chiba prefecture routinely draws hour long waits thanks to a constant stream of revelers aching to take in the glory of a good bowl of noodles and soup.
I’m not lying when I say that 50% of the “hub” train stations in Japan look EXACTLY the same.
I arrived in Matsudo at around 2:30 in the afternoon and head for Tomita（とみ田）, but a short five minute walk away from the main train station in town. Since I was arriving after the lunch rush and on a weekday to boot, there had to be a good chance that I could get in and eat my bowl in a reasonable amount of time, right?
Last week I found myself making a fortuitous trip to Tokyo for a quick business meeting and with time to spare over the weekend (At least, my weekend). As anyone who has ever seen me can tell you, I enjoy eating and, while in Japan, enjoy eating ramen in particular. And eat ramen, I did.
Since I was staying with my grandparents on the southside of Tokyo, I hit up Tabelog (the Japanese equivalent of Yelp, except on Tabelog, people don’t give one star reviews because the bus boy looked like their ex-boyfriend or five star reviews because the baby at the next table was really cute) and searched for the best ramen in the neighborhood. This is what I found. On Tabelog, anything above a 3.5 rating is usually pretty darn good and anything above four stars as a destination meal. So imagine my surprise when I came across Takano, a ramen shop but a mere several kilometer walk from my grandparents’ hovel with a sterling 4.05 star rating. My gastronomical target now in my sights, I laced up my new too-big-for-my-feet Clarks and left for an early lunch.
So after a fifteen minute walk from my grandparent’s house, I arrived at the place twenty minutes before opening and still found a decently sizable (that’s what she said) line awaiting me. As it turns out, waiting in line is customary here (as with any other great ramen joint in Tokyo- or the rest of Japan, for that matter).
From the outside looking in
Once I actually got inside, I found myself at one of those classic stereo-typical L-shaped counter-only Showa-poi shops with one of those maneki-neko’s waving at me from a shelf over the stove (along with a plaque noting its place in the Micheline guide). Not exactly stunning decor but the place was clean enough and gave the impression of a place people would actually be semi-comfortable in in a sober state. I mean, I’m not taking a chick here on a date probably ever but I’d come here with food friends on a weekend.
After another ten minutes of waiting (this time seated), my bowl arrived. And what did I get for my 970 yen?
In case the sodium-laden broth or pork didn’t raise your cholesterol, the egg’ll do you in.
Quintessential Tokyo-style noodles and broth (fishy and salty but not overpowering) topped with melt in your mouth slices of char siu pork and a perfectly cooked agitama flavored egg. Worth the wait (though I still think waiting two hours is a bit much during peak hours). I just wish I wasn’t fighting a cold when I went. Guess I’ll have to come back again.
Rating: 4 and a half Stephens (out of five Stephens)
Well, it’s been a while. I’ve certainly been neglecting this website/blog thing for a while and, for that, I apologize. It hasn’t been a matter of me being too busy to write or really not having a lot to write about but rather a matter of me being absolutely dreadful at managing my time and my creative energies being focused elsewhere (We’ll get back to that particular point in a quick moment).
Anyways, in order to prove that I’m still alive and still care, I decided to write something, anything really, and put it up in this neglected corner of my life (another hundred bucks down the drain). So here we are, almost a month through the new year (no matter how much I keep accidentally writing 2014 on all my documents at work) and I’ve yet to publicly disclose my resolutions for the new year, something that, as we all well know, should be shouted from the internet rooftops or at the very least screamed in a drunken haze at your drinking establishment of choice, to mean anything.
Now, I’m not normally a huge proponent of these sorts of things because (a) I’m very bad at keeping promises and (b) I feel like crap at the end of the year when I review my goals and realize I fell well short of them. That all said, this year I have a couple of things that I really want to do and, for the sake of my sanity and well-being, probably should do.
Been a while as I was busy at work and all that good stuff. Also I’ve been eating a lot of food and getting fat and all jazz. One of the chief culprits? Furukawa, a new-ish ramen shop that opened up down the street from my apartment this summer and has subsequently garnered a lot of buzz online, considering the area in which it’s based.
With my days off currently being Thursday and Friday, there’s pretty much nothing stopping me from hitting up the place once a week and polishing a 1000 yen worth of noodles and the works in a thirty minute whirlwind of gluttony and stress eating.
Not an empty seat in the house.
Whilst in America, we generally refer to ramen as either the kind that comes in a styrofoam cup and will give you a heart attack or the kind you get at a Japanese place, ramen in Japan is itself a discipline with many different schools and styles of preparation and flavor. (It’s a long story, one that you can at least start to grasp by looking at this link.)
The ramen in Furukawa comes mainly in assari-style salt or soy sauce based bowls with occassional specialities coming in with the changing of the seasons.
My usual go-to is the assari soy sauce ramen (pictured below), silky smooth but still with enough flavor to let you know that you’ve just shortened your life by half a decade. The noodles are thin and firm, actually not entire unlike the noodles in Instant Ramen… except they don’t taste like cardboard and cigarette butts. A typical bowl comes with a piece of chicken and an almost rare piece of thin chashuu, a slightly more finesse take on what is at times considered a man’s meal. (No sexism intended.) The price for a normal bowl of filling noodles and broth? 700 yen (or only 60 yen more expensive than a Big Mac set).
Shoyu Ramen. 700 yen
But since I’m a fat person, I don’t just stop there. Nope, I also have to get my daily serving of rice in a bowl, here topped with a nice portion of sliced chashuu, soy glaze, and mayonnaise.
Chashu-don. 300 yen
Were I a health conscious individual, this would probably be enough for an entire meal. But I’m not. Eating the chashu this way is a good way to sample the efforts of a ramen shop when it comes to one of the most crucial aspects of the ramen experience. And Furukawa, of course, passes with flying colors. The price of this bowl of goodness? 300 yen. In other words, an economic success.
Recently, with the advent of Autumn, Furukawa has been offering a hearty special: Butasoba. Thick noodles in a thick, fatty broth served under a heaping pile of bean sprouts, cabbage, pork and shame. The price once again? 700 yen. It’s almost like they want me to eat at their shop at every possible opportunity.
Butasoba. 700 yen. 200 arteries clogged.
The only downside of eating an infant-sized portion of this stuff? The sensation that your stomach may burst open Alien-style immediate upon devouring it in a primal frenzy.
Overall, Furukawa is one of my favorite places to eat in Mito (probably top three, if not number one). While ramen will never be a healthy food, the bowls crafted here are generally done with enough care and attention to detail that you could probably trick yourself into thinking you’re eating somewhere good for you. If you find yourself in my neck of the woods, definitely do try to sneak in for a bowl (also, call me). You won’t be disappointed. (Unless you hate good things, in which case, screw you.)
Old, torn slacks, new web address
Hey there and welcome to the first post of the post-new domain name era of my crappy blog/website. In case you didn’t notice or were otherwise unaware, incrediblylongblogtitle.wordpress.com is no more. In its place is the much more streamlined, sexy, and exciting stephentetsu.com. Welcome.
Is it a little conceited of me to name my website after myself? Of course.
Is it a better potential representation of me and my person brand (don’t laugh)? Yes.
Does it cost me a bit of money? Yup.
Is it going to go on my business cards? Yessir-ee.
So what’s going to change now that I’m paying for a website that literally has my name on it? Not a whole lot. I’m still the social miscreant that I’ve always been and I’m still the lazy bastard that started this blog. In other words, expect posts to be as infrequent and as consistently underwhelming as they’ve been from the start. After all, I’m an adult.
Anyways, feel free to gossip about me and my inability to not spend my money on stupid things like websites or just pass my stuff along to your friends. Or just ignore me. Yeah, that’s probably the best option.
StephenTetsu.com, where the author hates himself more than you do.
Stephen Tetsu 