Spaghetti

Comfort foods is one of those topics that breaks down cultural barriers. I’ve used it in ESL lessons. It is perfect for language learners because it connect ingredients, culture, family, location, and a host of other elements of life that are essential to a well rounded conversation. I really should use it more often as a warm up when I am in a teaching rut. Similar to another kind of rut: the rut of not writing. Don’t call it writer’s block. Can’t be a block when I haven’t even put pen to paper in several months. So here we go again. A ten minute pre-meditation writing experiment.

My comfort food is spaghetti. More specifically spageddy. It is a Northeastern American food consisting long straight pasta (the cheap stuff, sometimes an “angel hair” variation can be used, but let’s not get crazy), a big block of ground meat (beef, pork, or turkey/chicken if you’re lame), and some kinda of Ragu. Bought red sauce in a jar. Maybe you chop up an onion but let’s be honest: prep work sucks. We want our spageddy quick and easy. Just cook the meat in a deep pan, then dump the whole jar of that red sauce on top. Keep the heat on a bit longer, maybe another minute – and done! Also, boil a big old pot of water, then snap a huge handful of pasta in half (no need to measure how much) and throw it in. Keep the heat cranked on the burner, stir the pasta occasionally and after about 15 minutes remove and pour it into a large colander. Everything is done, so let’s eat.

Not sure what this fresh grated cheese is or why there is a some weird green plant on top of this spageddy. Just ignore those details.

I prefer to place by pasta on my plate first, then liberally dump my meat sauce on top. Add a ton of pre-grated Parmesan cheese from a green cylindrical container (Kraft, off-brand – doesn’t matter). I like to chop it up with knife. That’s not blasphemy!  This serves 1, 2, or 10 people.

That’s my recipe! It has served me well across national borders. All ingredients can be found in supermarkets worldwide with very little fuss. Spageddy has served me well throughout my time in Asia. I used to make this exact recipe living out of a pension in rural Jeju Island, South Korea. Cooking on a one-burner portable canister gas stove (called a ボンベ / “bon-bey”stove in Japan), I’d churn out this meal twice weekly. This is when I had the metabolism of a gazelle, but never mind the calorie counts. I am sure this spageddy recipe has all the nutrients you need.

My wife once tried to do something with pasta, tuna, and zero red sauce. I was appalled to say the least. Nope…that’s not my spageddy. My spageddy is red with meat in it. You can cut it up with a knife. Don’t overthink it!

Tokyo Jazz Joints (Review)

Many cafes and coffee shops in Japan, although nice, try too hard in curating an aesthetic. Like pre-ripped jeans you pay a premium for, their interiors are filled with intentional randomness that seems a bit off. My wife and I sometimes go to a coffee shop down the road that features chairs from Denmark, Finland, and Norway, and a random backseat of a minivan as a couch. A recycled exercise bike serves as a coat rack. There’s a map of Europe with country names written in Dutch. They’ll also sell you knickknacks from their latest American garage sale haul: mason jars, “I Like Ike” pins, trucker caps. All dramatically overpriced. It’s difficult to discern what is for sale and what is not. Everything seems to have a price tag.

Places like this are exhausting and all too common these days. The vibe is manufactured. That same coffee shop features a playlist of jam-band music that the clientele most certainly has no connection with. Most customers are in the narrow band of 20-23 years old. I watched one couple arrange their coffee mugs on the windowsill for 15 minutes in order to get the best Instagram shot. Most of the time I sit and sip my coffee overly afraid that if I stand up too quick I might break something.

So finding a space that seems authentic has been a quest for me. That’s how I came to the jazz kissa (jazz cafe, ジャス喫茶) scene. I had read about them before. Cafes/bars with huge jazz record collections, excellent audio systems, and rigid rules about listening behavior for the clientele. You come, you sit, you order a drink, and listen. I was intrigued. I found a Sapporo jazz kissa called Bossa that I have adopted as my own once a month haunt. I come on a random free weekday afternoon, nurse a Sapporo Black Label in a frosted glass for over an hour, and just listen. Smartphone off. It’s a meditation of sorts. The walls are littered with memorabilia. The owner is irascible, or at least I like to pretend he is.

Tokyo Jazz Joints is that experience condensed into a photograph/coffee table book. Philip Arneill captures images of each jazz kissa that reveal the clutter, the dust, and organic development of these unique passion projects. Each shot investigates a different aspect of the jazz kissa experience. Backstreet entrances, toilet graffiti, worn out signage. These joints are about one thing: the love of jazz. They aren’t about the food, or the cocktail menus but rather low lighting and real ambiance built upon decades of record collecting.

The introductory notes by James Catchpole are excellent as well and help to set the reader off with the right mindset before exploring the pages. No table of contents. No real order. Experience each kissa just as you should, with a kind of randomness that encourages you to really stop for a moment and take it all in.

You can find more of Philip Arneill’s photos of jazz kissa throughout Japan by visiting the Tokyo Jazz Joints website or deep dive into the overall jazz scene at Tokyo Jazz Site. I also highly recommend you listen to James Catchpole’s OK Jazz Podcast for an eclectic mix of music old and new. You can also listen to Philip and James talk about their jazz kissa explorations on the Tokyo Jazz Joints Podcast. Enjoy…

 

Birding in the Interregnum

Birds have consumed my daytime hours as the slush flows down the mountains and no footwear matches. Snow spikes, crampons, snowshoes, studded strap-ons, duck boots… all are ineffectual in this climate. Sure you can walk around town just fine these days. The snow is almost completely melted on the city streets. But get into any of the parks where birds might be glassed (sighted with binoculars) and your in a pickle. Just the other day I traversed a route up to the Peace Pagoda on Mt. Moiwa that had quite a few soft snow danger points. But spring is definitely upon us now. Temperatures recently spiked at 19° C. My search for an elusive Eurasian Bullfinch continues.

This transitional period can be the toughest, especially in the parks outside the city. And these last few weeks leading up to this thaw are a bit frustrating for birders. How to stay engaged with birding while trapped indoors? I worked out some new tangentially related hobbies during some of our late winter snowfalls that I plan on carrying forward in the coming birding season when inclement weather ruins a expected day out.

Sketching birds always seemed beyond my artistic level, but I figured I could at least give it a decent shot. With the help of some guidebooks, while dutifully copying basic bird shapes very slowly, I think I am making decent progress. My current text, Drawing Birds by Raymond Sheppard, is simple and has gotten me to put some lead to paper.

Though I am just at the mimicking stage and  have yet to sketch anything in the wild, I may get there soon enough. It will prove satisfying on those days where all you see are Japanese tits (that’s my last raunchy bird name joke, I promise).

Another way I have been nerd leveling-up from the comfort of my apartment is though the board game Wingspan and its most recent Asia expansion. Wingspan Asia has a solitaire play mode which has allowed me to geek out on birds for an ungodly amount of hours. So as the snow piled up on my balcony this winter I was often in an intense bird board game session, playing against my ultimate rival… myself. Good times were had and I like to think I have learned a little more about birds of this region. Soon I will put these distractions away and buckle down for some intense (real-life) migratory birding sessions. All in good time.

 

County Cricket Meditation

Five hours out from first ball of the 2024 County Championship, nerveless yet anticipatory, more a state of mind than anything fanatical. My Philly teams make my stomach churn and I still follow them as obsessively as ever. But that is “jump of the bridge” fandom. This evening (Japan Standard Time), as Yorkshire CCC takes on Leicestershire CCC from Headingley, I enter a warm cocoon of sports nerdom completely different. And although I ostensibly have adopted Yorkshire as my county of support, their performance on the ground will never make we wince, cry, or yelp with a Tourette syndrome-esque spasm of disgust should things not go well in the match.

It’s a vibe thing. It’s the background noise of my evenings until October. Free streams on YouTube of a days play become the perfect ASMR as I read Ben Bloom’s Batting for Time: The Fight to Keep English Cricket Alive. It seems cricket is at a crossroads, so I hope I am not too late to the party.

Photo by JohnSeb, Creative Commons

Here in Sapporo it’s often a party of one. A student of mine laughed out loud when I told him that I read two cricket magazines a month (Wisden Cricket Monthly, The Cricketer). Like a sneering, mocking laugh. This from a 45 year old man. I was put off and felt the need to defend the sport. But language barriers got the better of me and I let it rest. Needless to say the sport is given relatively little recognition here. Maybe that’s what draws me to it. Up here in Hokkaido there’s still snow on the ground and local news is more concerned with the cherry blossom viewing forecast. Discussions about the four rounds of Kookaburra ball or if Lancashire will play two spinners in early April rarely make the list of approved discussion topics at the company’s weekly required after-work izakaya extravaganza. Their loss…

My cricket podcasts are queued-up as I prepare for the lead-in. Dog on the lap. Spring is slowly beginning to make my balcony bearable for a late afternoon pint of Yebisu Premium Black. Now, if only I could control the English weather.

Holiday Hygge

There’s a Danish / Norwegian concept called hygge that runs strong in my tiny Sapporo apartment, especially throughout the winter. It essentially means “cozyness”, which can be evoked through a variety of aesthetic means. So, as the snow made it first real solid downfall the other night, and snowshoeing season officially began (for me anyway), I decided to re-hyggefy my home through the power of LED lighting. Sometimes it’s the little things that make all the difference.

It all starts with our Christmas tree, which has slowly morphed into the “winter” tree being that it pretty much stays up until spring. See my past post on why we can get away with this without scornful looks from wider society.

The tree is definitely the brightest lighting element in our 2LDK. If I had my druthers, it would stay up all year.

But I’ve been adding, year after year, several new pieces that bring a healthy glow in more subtle ways.

First up is the bookshelf which through the years has transitioned into a mico man-cave with nick knacks and book nooks competing for space.

With a flat glass reading light for illumination, my handmade Nanoblock sakura viewing scene really comes alive at night.

An oldie but a goodie… This DIY library from ROBOTIME makes me yearn for all the books I haven’t read sitting in my own library.

The old coffee shop (again from ROBOTIME) is in need of some super glue repair on the yawning at the moment, but still looks good with the help of a snake-style book light.

I also lit up the camping car kit in my upper man-cave. Every little bit helps…

The real gem of this year holiday hygge celebration is a new ROBOTIME creation, a Christmas snow house. This one even features a built-in music box that play “Jingle Bells” (Maybe I will feature that in a follow up post).

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I’ve added some Mario Paint imagery on the background monitor as an experiment. It really ties the room together, especially at night. The frustration that goes into assembling these miniatures can assault the nerves. But through the years I have sped up the process and completed this last model in only a couple weeks.

Christmas has a vibe to it that can very easily be shattered in Japan. When you roll out of bed on the 25th, ready to enjoy opening presents and enjoying some Bailey’s and coffee, but look out the window to see kids walking to school – that is a vibe killer. When your Japanese in-laws come over for Christmas dinner, only to eat stuffing and mashed potatoes with chopsticks while asking if it is “Korean food”…that is also a vibe destroyer. Lighting, music, and an unending commitment to holiday cheer are my only defenses. And a little Bailey’s.

What do you do to combat the vibe killers this time of year? Merry Christmas and Happy New Year to all. The next year promises to be interesting for all. That is for sure.

Maya Lin and the Wise Old Man

Juniata College (my alma mater) in Huntingdon, PA has a unique environmental art installation called the Peace Chapel. Maya Lin is famous for designing the Vietnam War Memorial in Washington, but this piece, far off the beaten path, is fairly low key. A college alumni-philanthropist commissioned the work and had it placed in the Baker-Henry Nature Preserve. Rarely was the Peace Chapel discussed on campus, but occasional events were hosted there. Most students didn’t even know where it was. It has a very eerie, Stonehenge-esque vibe to it. Spartan, stripped down, a stone pathway leads you to a large inlaid ring of granite.

I hiked this area quite a bit in my school days and rarely encountered a soul. I especially didn’t see anyone when I went at my favorite time: weekdays, late at night. Usually as a way to decompress, I would drive to the trailhead, often past midnight, and wander in the dark up to the site. No flashlight. No smartphone (those didn’t exist). I did this too many time to remember. Each time I treated it like a kind of quest. Not sure what for exactly. At some point, after maybe the third or fourth visit, I had the notion that some encounter would occur there. Maybe my psychology classes where influencing me. Carl Jung’s theories of the collective unconscious I found intriguing. His archetype of the Wise Old Man I was particularly drawn to. I would purposely put myself through a slightly frightful, chilly, dark walk in the woods to a possible modern druid site of worship (there were rumors) in order to chance an encounter with this white-bearded figure.

Philosopher in Meditation by Rembrandt

Nothing ever came of these quests. No white bearded man sprung out of the woods. Just silence and anticipation. Maybe that was the quest. Just to be with the silence. But it hasn’t deterred me. I still enjoy solitary walks in the woods at peculiar times. One of my favorite pursuits is an evening snowshoe hikes up nearby Asahi Mountain. Rarely do I see anyone, which is a blessing in population dense Japan. I’ve gone in the pitch dark of 4:30 AM as well. Not always searching for the old man. It could be aliens I’m on the hunt for. Or silence. Which is becoming increasingly rare. First, I need to remove my earbuds…

 

Denis Johnson’s Rules

I’ve been in a rut. Maybe you have been too. All ruts are different and occur in different times in our lives. Mine is employment related. Or lack of employment. It’s a pressure that builds. A fear of missing out in the job search realm. Take my eyes away from Indeed or LinkedIn job searches for any portion of time and forego the (rather small) chance of that dream remote job that aligns perfectly with my background. The window seems small.

But all that is illusion. The negative energy I bring to it is noticeable, probably effecting the positive outcome I desire. So I’ve come back to writing. Denis Johnson was a great writer. His novella Train Dreams is a wonderful gateway to his work and I highly recommend. Johnson had one of the best rule sets for writing. Simple, direct, and easy to remember:

Three Rules To Write By

Write naked. That means to write what you would never say.

Write in blood. As if ink is so precious you can’t waste it.

Write in exile, as if you are never going to get home again, and you have to call back every detail.  (The New Yorker, 26 May 2017)

It’s a reminder to cut the fluff and bare your soul. Make the words matter, but don’t fear putting them down. That’s what this blog is for. So after a very long break, I will be putting words out there into the universe again. Read them, don’t read them, don’t care. I won’t publish everything…that’s a bit much. But random walks in the nearby park, birds I see, remembrances, weather updates, aches and pains… all are on the table.

Asahiyama Park
Asahiyama Park – November 28th, 2023

A day after this photo it snowed for much of the day, washing away the bed of golden pine needles and turning the roads into an ice rink. Fall has been barely discernible and yesterday caught it for a moment in freeze frame. It will snow for a few days, then possibly warm up, melt it down, and do it all over again. Or option two: This is the beginning of one of the largest snowfalls this region has seen in decades. That’s the rumor based on our oppressively hot summer. The snowshoes are ready.

 

 

Eating Cake with Chopsticks

There is a major faux pas in Japan about leaving your chopsticks stabbed upright in a bowl of rice. If you’ve read any guidebook on local etiquette, you’ll know that this is a pretty serious offense. Basically, it relates to the visual similarity this chopstick posture has to incense sticks commonly seen during Buddhist funeral rights. Things that relate to death tend to be taboo in this neck of the woods. (see East Asia’s avoidance of the number “4”) In case you’re wondering if this is some arcane superstition that few people in the modern world care about, I assure it is not. They teach this in the schools. In fact, just to prove my own point I tested this out on my wife the other day by inserting my chopsticks standing antenna style in my white sticky rice right in front of her. She became visible distraught and demanded I remedy the situation. It didn’t help that she had attended a funeral earlier that day, so timing could have been better on my part. I quickly removed them and apologized.

I began to wonder if Western dining utensils have any similar customs, but aside from the general place settings and civility of not poking your sister’s eye out with a fork, I couldn’t really think of anything in the “don’t put your butter knife in this direction because it reminds us of death” vain. But that doesn’t mean that we are heathens and that we just use knives, forks, spoons, and sporks in any way we see fit. No sir.

I remember reading (probably in Lonely Planet, is that still a thing?) that in today’s post-modern mixed-up world , separating between Western cuisine and traditional Japanese food, has become distilled down to a simple question: Can you eat it with chopsticks? It sounds silly but many foods of dubious import are considered Japanese. Take for instance tonkatsu (deep-fried pork cutlet). A European import in the late 1800’s, but one that has been adopted wholly into the Japanese menu.

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Do they eat this with a knife and fork? Nope. And notice the surgical precision of the vertical cuts. Each chunk is just small enough (barely) to be gripped by chopsticks. Therefore…it’s Japanese food. You’ll see this with many fried foods over here.

But if the Japanese get to delineate their culinary world with chopsticks, I feel that westerners should at least protect some of our food from this arbitrary gastronomical hijacking. For years I have witnessed some of the most egregious chopstick use on every manner of Western food import. It needs to end. Consider this: Your in-laws, after over-spending on a strawberry shortcake barely the size of a Twinkie, bust out their unique version of “Happy Birthday” and present it in front of you candles blazing. You make your wish, the cake is sliced, and are given first choice on a small plate. Yay! The joys of the simple life. Ruined by the site of your wife,  using chopsticks to tweezer her way through the vanilla icing. Despicable. Eating cake with chopsticks. I recommend you move to Japan and become a long-term resident just to witness this absurdity.

But it doesn’t end there. We don’t eat cake that often, so thankfully I am spared the insult. However, we do eat salad. And chopsticks seem to be the preferred implement. And not just your standard green side salad (with the old Japanese standby dressing… mayonnaise), all kinds of salad concoctions are eaten sans-fork. Macaroni, potato. Fruit! All expected to be navigated in this ridiculous manner. Have you ever tried to pick up a mini-tomato with a chopstick? Good lord.

So have all these foods become Japanese as well? I guess so. Some foods need to be left chopstick-free. We need protections on sliced watermelon, apple pie, and mashed potatoes. I mean, the Japanese already own downtown Waikiki; don’t let them claim our chicken pot pie. Call them out on their behavior.

 

Lake Utonai Bird Sanctuary

Several times this past week I ventured outside my normal Sapporo city birding hot-spots and headed south by southeast to one of the better Ramsar wetlands maintained by the Wild Bird Society of Japan. For my fellow non-car possessing Hokkaido-ites, here’s a walk through of my trip(s) to the Lake Utonai Sanctuary:

After a 5:00 AM late winter snowfall walk to JR Sapporo Station, I hopped on the first Airport Rapid Express at 5:50 for the 40 minute ride to Shin Chitose Airport.(￥1,150) Always be sure to avoid the local train.

At the airport at 6:30 AM, I had time to wander a bit. This early in the morning makes the domestic arrival lounge seem actually bearable. Look for bus stop 29 outside, and use the pristine airport bathrooms while you wait for the 7:17 arrival of Donan (道南) bus #30 for Tomakomai (苫小牧). Bus #30 is you lifeline for the Lake Utonai Sanctuary. Here is the timetable link:(weekday / weekend). Get on the nearly empty bus, grab a ticket stub from the machine after you enter, and take the 20 minute ride which weaves off the highway through farms and side villages until you arrive at ネイチャーセンター入口 (Nature Center Entrance). Drop your ticket and exact change in the slot as you depart. The fee is ¥410 (as of March 2023). Be sure to check the return times and plan your birding accordingly.

Make a right after leaving the bus, walk to the first traffic signal and turn left. You might be a bit bewildered being at first surrounded by an industrial wasteland. Rest assured you are on the correct path. After turning on this country road, walk past several factories and a Buddhist temple facility until you reach the sanctuary grounds (10-15 min). Take the trail next to the sanctuary sign, avoid the road, and walk the short way towards the nature center (open only on weekends and holidays).

The WBSJ maintains an excellent network of trails that take you along the lake’s shoreline and its adjacent wetlands. Trails are well manicured and most feature elevated wooden walkways to keep you out of the marshland slop. Trailheads also feature disinfectant mats upon entry to avoid alien microorganism transfer. I hiked these trails for several hours (on both a weekday and a recent holiday in late March), and came across surprisingly little foot traffic. 

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One of the best features of the sanctuary are its two bird towers/blinds. On quiet days you can often have one of these all to yourself and both offer excellent elevated views of the lake and associated scrub-land. Set up your scopes, enjoy an onigiri, and take a moment to listen for White-fronted geese or the slightly less common Taiga bean goose. Or if you are like me, neither… as I missed the window on their migration! (hint: these migrating birds often alight on the water very early in the morning, March-April, pre-bus arrival time 🙁 ).

Keep in mind that on weekdays and non-holidays, the only bathroom will be at the Lake Utonai Wildlife Conservation Center or the 道の駅, which are a 25 min directly west of the WBSJ Nature Center. This walk along the shoreline offers the best chance of seeing the most migrating water birds. Be prepared for crowds once you reach the end of the course, but the 道の駅 does give you a chance to buy local products and features an unnecessary amount of products featuring the shima-enaga / シマエナガ/ Long-tail tit. This bird is all the rage in Hokkaido these days and seems to be becoming the official wildlife mascot of the island. It isn’t even that rare a bird or the most remarkable in color. But fads will be fads. I for one enjoyed some locally produced beet cider and was ready to roll back to the sanctuary.

 

The Wild Bird Society of Japan’s Nature Center (open on weekends and public holidays) is where you want to spend your hard earned birding yen. Their facility is two floors, with a tatami room viewing area up above and a tidy gift shop on the ground floor with tons of birding information available to interested parties. Yes, their products are pricey. But they are a worthy cause and they need your support. Get yourself a playing card set featuring 54 Japanese wild birds, a pair of form fitting gloves, or a bird bookmark (featuring the ubiquitous Long-tailed tit).

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As spring birding season gets into full swing, it’s good to have options slightly outside the city that let you see more species and at a decent cost utilizing public transport. Transit time from Sapporo to the sanctuary (without layover time at the airport) is just around one hour, is punctual, and pretty straightforward. I look forward to heading back a few more times this year.

The Big Melt

And so it comes.

Asahiyama Park, Sapporo

Earlier this week the winter vomited out its last blast of snow. For one glorious morning, after another 5:00 AM parking lot shoveling, my snowshoes were strapped on for what might have been the last time this season. I left for my trailhead at -6(ish)℃, and returned mid-morning in +10 ℃ sunshine. Wild swings of temperature that are all too common in recent years. It was a good romp in deep snow. Birds were abundant, especially Japanese pygmy woodpeckers. Eurasian siskins have been spotted in the treetops in recent days (but have since departed).

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By the time I returned, and now by the time of this posting, the sidewalks have turned into an impenetrable slop. It’s much harder to walk around. It will freeze each night, becoming an ice rink by morning, and melt all over again. Months of salt, gravel, un-disposed dog poop, masks (remember COVID, it’s still happening here apparently), and assorted detritus all regurgitate their way out of meters of ice pack and turn Sapporo into one of the least desirable cities in Japan for several months.

There will be some backslide. A few Indian winters, false snows, that play with your senses and wreak havoc on your wardrobe. A long underwear morning but a short sleeve afternoon. Hail, sleet, all that good stuff. Enjoy it!