Can U Taste the Waste?

My advice to travelers in HK

Mon, 26 Jan 2009 18:01:25 -0800

So here’s some tips for first time travelers to Hong Kong.

1) Buy a few packs of “Tempo”. They are thick little tissues. Since a lot of small, local restaurants don’t give you napkins it’s good to carry your own.
2) Hot tea is great for sterilizing just about anything. If you go to a restaurant and they bring you a pot of tea (or two) and a large bowl, that means they expect you to use the tea to re-wash your chopsticks and dinnerware. This is good to keep in mind if you go to a little hole in the wall and their chopsticks seems a little sticky, just give them a quick dunk and ask for another cup of tea (or order a different drink).
3) Don’t drink the water they give you unless it’s from a bottle. It might seem enticing but, trust me, go for the hot tea.
4) Don’t drink anything with ice. They use the same water as they give you at the table.
5) Avoid uncooked fruits and vegetables because they use the same water as they give you at the table to wash them. Of course, you can eat oranges or anything with the outer skin removed.
6) Learn to drink cognac or whiskey. If you are worried about ingesting some bad bacteria having a stiff one is a great antiseptic.
7) Sea Cucumber intestines are much tastier than you would ever expect, especially if you don’t know that’s what you’re eating.

Of course if you are acclimated to the local bacteria you can probably ignore most of these tips. Happy Feasting.

What do you do?

Sat, 24 Jan 2009 07:08:22 -0800

What do you do when you arrive in Hong Kong at 7am and you’ve been pretending to sleep on a plane for the last 13 hours? Drink lots of coffee, eat meals at regular hours, and try not to sit down until about 9pm. I think the only way to get over jet lag is just go cold turkey. The year of the Ox is coming, no matter what time zone I am in.

In our case, we decided to walk from our hotel to the Hong Kong Museum of History. I think the tour of the Story of Hong Kong is supposed to take about 2.5 hours, but it took us about 7 hours, walking around in a sleep-deprived, dream-like state. Now I feel like an expert on everything HK until about 1950, which is when we heard the announcement that the museum was closing. I guess I’ll have to learn about the “reunification” of China next time I am there.

Why is it that the further in the past and the closer to the present is when history is at its fuzziest? Maybe it’s all fuzzy but people tend to agree on the middle ground a bit more often. Speaking of fuzzy, time for me to fully embrace my dream-like state and go to bed.

Afterthoughts

Thu, 3 Jan 2008 21:14:34 -0800

So, we’ve been back from Tokyo for about about 3 weeks now. Away from the hustle and bustle of the crazy metropolis. It has been nice to be back in the California lifestyle.

Actually, before we left Tokyo we had a chance to head to what you might call the suburbs. We took a train and bus to the Studio Ghibli museum. You might say their movies are the Disney of anime. It was great fun for a nice little museum. If you are under 3 feel tall, I highly recommend allowing enough time to play on the Catbus. Really! If they only had a shrink ray I would have been there.

After the museum, we walked through a nice park and then found a café that we thought served “fusion” food. It was there that it struck me. In the park, at the café, it was almost all women. Some with kids; some without. We really were in the suburbs of the Tokyo culture, where all the stay “at home” wives and mommies hang out while their husbands are at work.

See, we learned a little about the culture in Tokyo (and maybe most of Japan). There is a glass ceiling in Japan for women’s careers, and most women are left with the ambition of finding a good, well paid husband. The surprising part is that once the couple is married, the women takes control of the money and gives her husband an allowance. Ouch!

Now, I am not saying that after marriage it’s all gravy for the women, although the ladies in the café did seem to be enjoying life. There is the pressure of making Bento lunch boxes for the family, keeping a clean house, not knowing if your husband will be home for dinner, doing the chores, etc. And lets be honest, the men are on a tight financial leash so that they don’t spend their money on other women. And although that might be a segue into how many young women manage to own ¥150,000 LV bags, I must get back to the main topic of our vacation.

Soon after our jaunt through the ‘burbs. The sisters announced that we must visit the drum museum. They had a nice collection of drums from around the world. Including a drum made from human skin. Wow! We were too busy playing with the drums to bother with pictures, but it was nice to have a jam with the Chan Clan.

For our last night in Tokyo, we went to Shabuzen with Kenichi, Judith, and Mr. Harada. Shabuzen specializes in shabu shabu and happened to be in the movie Lost in Translation. Yes, it was the meal that provoked Bill Murray’s character to comment, "Who goes to a restaurant where you have to cook your own food.” Hey, if he had gone with our gracious hosts, they would have insisted in cooking for him. The food was excellent. If you like lots and lots of beef then Shabuzen is the place to go.

Finally, we followed Mr. Harada to meet his clients at the local watering hole. It was a tiny tiny bar that served strange bar food. I was drinking Shōchū, but it still did not instill enough confidence to try the mystery pickled items. It turns out many of Mr. Harada’s friends are musicians. So, quickly the conversation headed down the path that only musicians could travel. We had a great time talking about what musicians are good, overrated, and past their prime. By the end it was agreed that next time I am in Tokyo, we’ll do a gig together.

I can’t wait to go back.

Any Way Laugh

Thu, 13 Dec 2007 06:59:43 -0800

Tokyo is undoubtedly the heart of modern Japanese culture. High fashion shopping, thousands of “salary men” in black suits and white shirts, talented street musicians, great food in great restaurants, trains that run on time, great food in 7-11, uniformed school girls with makeup and rolled up skirts, polite store clerks, cars that methodically stroll through rush hour traffic without honking, being cheerfully greeted at restaurants by the entire staff. There is something unique and special about the blend of such a polite culture with a fast paced consumer society. Amazingly, Tokyo seems to have found a perfect balance between the two.

On Monday, we had our first and only chance to get out of the city. Judith arranged a trip to one of the natural hot springs. She and Kenichi rented a Toyota van and we all stuffed ourselves inside for the long trip into the mountains. The group consisted of Judith and Kenichi, Amy (Judith’s friend), Kevin (Amy’s fiancé), Isabella’s parents, and of course Isabella and I.

The hot springs resort is nearly 100 years old and has the old style Japanese rooms. Everyone wears Japanese robes and slippers (when not in the hot springs). The rooms had tatami mat floors, fusuma and shoji doors and windows. It was truly old school Japan. The ground had a light sprinkling of ice and it made for a nice contrast to the natural hot spring baths. After a nice long soak, we feasted on Grilled fish and chicken, shabu-shabu beef, sashimi, mushrooms, soup, rice, bear stew, beer, sake, and more. We certainly felt like Japanese royalty.

The next day (Tuesday), we drove back to the hustle and bustle of Tokyo. We managed to pack ate lunch at an amazing sidewalk sashimi place where we had toro (fatty-tuna) and rice for $8. It was definitely equal to the $40 toro I’ve had in SF. We did some shopping for snacks near by. Then we went to the top of Tokyo Tower, the tallest structure in all of Tokyo. We really got to see just how massive this megacity is. Tokyo is a consists of 23 different cities. Combined, they take up 844 square miles. To put it in perspective, San Francisco is only 47 square miles.

For a change, we decided to have a simple dinner. We went to one of the local ramen joints in Shinjuku. It was one of the most interesting and efficient meals so far. First off, you go inside and pay a machine for the meal you want. The machine spits out a ticket. You find a seat at the bar and had a woman you ticket. Behind the counter is the “kitchen” with three people. The first person puts the broth in the bowl. The second person adds the noodles, the third adds the bean sprouts, then back to the first who puts in the extras (pork and egg for me). Then the eating begins. It’s faster than microwaving a pack to Top Ramen at home.

We decided to finish off the night with a little Karaoke. We found a little, 7 story, place nearby and spent a couple hours drinking and crooning until our voices hurt and we ran out of Chinese songs.

Wednesday was a shopping day. We hit the stores in Harajuku and Shibuya, where the girls snached up the latest Japanese fashion. The we went to Akihabara (electric Town). This is the home for the “A-boys” of Tokyo (aka Nerds and Geeks). This 4 block or so area has tons of electronic and compuer stores, manga and anime shops, costume stores, and best of all Maid Cafés. The Maid Cafés are deserving of their own post that I’ll do later.

For dinner we went to a famous crab place where we had two different types of Crab served about 8 different styles: boiled, sashimied, deep fried, deep fried tempura-style, sushied, and grilled. It was the last feast for our large group, for the next day we helped Isabella’s parents, Amy, and Kevin get their things to the train station as they were heading back to Hong Kong.

After the last good byes were said and everyone was safely on the train, I proclaimed the rest of the day to be “Sisters Day”. Turns out that meant that I carried the shopping bags all around Harajuku and Shibuya. But as the bags increased in number and as our feet grew more sore, the sisters’ smiles grew wider and they seemed to have a great time together. Since they do not get to see each other very often, I was happy to let them just do whatever they wanted.

We finished off the night with some amazing, amazing sushi in Shibuya. The Toro looked like Kobe beef and melted in your mouth like butter. The best I’ve ever had.

Tokyo is an unbelievable place. My memories are a mishmash of cultural oddities. People so polite that they wear surgical masks when they are sick, to not pass their germs on to you. The Toyota GPS seemingly apologized for the long trip and championed what a good job our driver did. Coffee maids that made us do a chant to our food to increase the love and make the food taste better. And of course the somewhat nonsense use of english. Dress shirts that claiming to be “Severely Selected”, a beer bill board proclaiming “Tasting!” or the accidentally zen-like t-shirt I saw today, “Any Way Laugh”.

I’ll post pix when I get back.

Crusin' Tokyo

Sun, 9 Dec 2007 06:16:23 -0800

Today we spent most of the time hiking around the Harajuku area of Tokyo. Since Isabella and I were on our own for most of the day we decided to navigate on foot with only the use of some bad travel book maps, where many of the streets are unnamed. Personally my favorite way to explore a city.

We walked through a residential area and eventually found the Meiji Shrine, which was erected a tribute to one of the Emperors of Japan. It appears to be a popular area to get married.

Next we saw the Harajuku girls (and boys) and then wandered through the shopping district there. We found a very popular restaurant that specializes in Ton Katsu (deep fried, breaded pork). Mmm, Mmm, good.

After a little more window shopping we found our way back to the apartment to get ready for dinner.

Kenichi’s family and Judith invited us for a traditional Japanese style meal that was very delicious and for a California boy like me, a little more adventurous than wandering around Tokyo.

See some pix: Harajuku Pix

I’m sure Isabella will blog in detail about the food.
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