Pumpkin Art and Scones

My wife often does a dog themed Jack-O-Lantern.

Halloween takes on a rather morphed representation here in Japan. It seems to be generally restricted to kindergarten parties and early 20’s costume clubbing. Aside from completely missing the elementary school-aged demographic, Japan’s patisseries often sell a variety of halloween themed cakes for the enjoyment of the random Halloween loving customer. Candy and chocolate isn’t sold in the kind of bulk packaging commonly found in American supermarkets, and since trick or treating is pretty much non-existant, the event basically becomes a nationwide Harajuku cosplay for the college kids.

That might be overstating it a bit. I only saw a few twenty somethings dressed as anime characters in the Sapporo underground shopping area on Halloween weekend. So, to put it simply, Halloween is barely a blip on the Japanese social calendar.

But that doesn’t stop Halloween from creeping its way into shops, ateliers and and the ubiquitous Starbucks. This year I saw orange and black themed nick nacks for sale as early as mid September. Kind of ridiculous.

For me and my wife, Halloween consists of buying a slightly overpriced orange pumpkin at a michi no eki, gutting it, roasting the seeds, and carving a very non-traditional Jack-O-Lantern (usually dog themed). This year we upped the ante with homemade pumpkin spiced scones with maple syrup icing. Well, homemade from mix!

Just add water and bake!

New Beer: Umami

Fancy name – rather standard taste

Oh, Japanese beer can marketing ploy! I’ve fallen for your trickery again.

After a steady diet of Happoshu, I was ready to pick up a real beer after a long week at work. I opted for Suntory’s new offering –  The Malt’s: Umami.  It’s the malt’s umami, theirs for all enernity. They own the umami.It is theirs.

Not really sure what Suntory is doing with the name of this beverage, but its bright copper can color forced me to give it a chance, and stole about ¥500 from my wallet.

The can design did it, as always. Very little differentiates these beers from the big brewers. So a flashy can color and some inventive ungrammatical naming are all they have to seduce us. This time it worked Suntory! But I’m on to you.

Review: Just Enough: Lessons in Living Green from Traditional Japan

Just Enough: Lessons in Living Green from Traditional Japan

Just Enough: Lessons in Living Green from Traditional Japan by Azby Brown

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

An absolutely lovely read that is infused with history while looking disapprovingly at our current consumption driven culture. The author uses the unique device of placing Edo era travelers in distinct locales, partaking in a kind of historical design survey of peasant homes, city dwelling merchant residences, and samurai estates. Using homely illustations and hand written notes alongside the main text, the book reads much like a handmade field guide. This makes it much more enjoyable than using photography of preserved architecture or rigid schematics of floor plans. The entire design contruction process in analysed, from source materials (tree conservation is an overarching theme) to transportation infrastructure. The Japanese enduring motto of “mottai nai”, a waste-not-want-not approach to daily life, is looked at in Edo life and how it can continue to play a role in modern design and contemporary life.

While Brown offers examples of Edo era urban design concepts grandfathered into our modern world and critiques where we have failed to make use of Japan’s traditional design heritage; his writing is somewhat divorced from the social-cultural dynamics of present day Japan. This one minor criticism aside, being clearly a design oriented work, “Just Enough” should leave the reader with plently of ideas for improving our cities, towns, and homes to make the most of the increasingly scarce resources we can no longer afford to take for granted.

View all my reviews

Mmmm…beer foam slushy!

frozen foam looks like a great idea…

Every year around this time I go Animal House crazy and order a single beer at the Sapporo Beer Garden in Odori Park. And for the third year in a row that beer has been the Kirin Ichiban Shibori “Frozen” draft. This year I opted for the stout version. 

I am not privy to the science behind this concoction, but essentially what happens here is the beer’s foam is seperately frozen into a light slushy topping and then added after pouring. What does beer foam slushy taste like? Exactly what you think. But each year I am somehow brainwashed into thinking this would be a refreshing hot summer day brew. And each year I want my ¥800 back. See you next year Kirin beer garden!

Tenkara Flies

 

20160609_073934.jpg

Been trying to get into a fly tying groove. Working on my basic skills, especially doing my whip finishes by hand. Using a whip finishing tool seems to make things more difficult. So I keep it simple, minimalist and quick. 100 Yen sewing thread, some simple hackles, and that’s it! A little peacock herl for flash. All size 12 dry fly hooks, some done on non-traditional klinkhammer hooks just to be different. No rhyme or reason, just experimenting and getting a bunch of flies ready for the summer as the waters start to recede on the mountain streams.

20160601_153252.jpg
a sakasa kebari tied on a #12 klinkhammer style hook with black sewing thread (100 Yen) and partridge soft hackle

 

German Style Pretzels from Pennsylvania in Japan

Another one of those foody surprises crept up on me today here in Sapporo. Snyder’s of Hanover apparently sees Japan as such a lucrative market that it is making a wasabi flavored version of its hard pretzel snacks, sold only in Nippon!

image

The taste was as advertised, a bit strong, but interesting. The power of the wasabi kind of ruins this snack’s suitability as a beer pretzel, but eaten by itself makes for a unique taste. Bravo Snyder’s of Hanover and your quest to merge Pennsylvania Dutch heritage with traditional Japanese condiments.

Cold Water of Lake Shikotsu

A couple weeks ago I partook in some early season fly fishing on the never freezing, but always chilly waters of Lake Shikotsu, about an hour and a half from Sapporo. This being my second time fishing on this caldera created lake, once again me and my friend found ourselves skunked after more than six hours of hypothermia inducing wading.

shikotsu3

Not without putting in a stern effort. This time I made a conscious decision to keep my fly in the water as much as possible, with ultra slow retrieves and enormous patience. Of course, casting the distance necessary to get my nymphs to the drop of forty feet from shore can be tough, especially if the wind picked up. I became more jealous of the spey casters nearby, as my arm nearly fell off heaving my single-handed five weight.  But nothing was biting, and the same opinion was felt by the half dozen other anglers stalking the water near the Bifue River inlet.

shikotsu1

Despite the lack of fish, the weather was fine, clear and sunny. The view of the mountains across the lake was like something out of a postcard.

Funny story – after only seeing maybe one rise throughout the day, changing flies maybe 10 times, and zero strikes…I saw four decent sized trout pass right under my rod maybe six feet away.

 

Central Hokkaido Tour

Took the classic, three day, Golden “Week” family vacation in a minivan towards central Hokkaido. Through Asahikawa,  then on to a night at Sounkyo hot springs resort, then finally spending another night in Minami Furano – with many stops along the way. It was good to see the change in topography as we entered the Daisetsuzan Volcanic Group.

1462576206266.jpg
Obako’s rocky crags

There was plenty of sites along our meandering three day drive, one of which, the Aoiike (blue pond) near Shirogane put us right in the midst of a MacOS wallpaper.

1462576315936.jpg

Of course there was plenty of food. Our first nights meals was a full on kaiseki affair with everything from fresh uni to baked onion bowl gratin. It took us several hours just to get through it all.

1462576276014.jpg

Did I Drink That?

I thought it wouldn’t come to this. Maybe things would have gone differently with some different life decisions. But unfortunately life has a way of rearing it’s ugly head when one least expects it. This past week I tasted the Devil’s Elixir.

image

Alcohol Free, Sugar Free, Calorie Free – a non-alcohol beer so devoid of earthly delights that it makes me question what the purpose of life really is. Why drink beer if not for the intoxication? That was always my feeling. And after partaking in Suntory’s “All Free” variety the other day, my opinion hasn’t really changed.

That being said, this particular funless imbibement wasn’t awful. The taste was surprisingly bearable, and with a side of kaki no tane  I managed to get through the experience.

Here in Japan, the near beer market is huge. There are entire supermarket sections devoted to it, and it seems to be trending upward. You can easily order non-alcohol brews in izakaya and bars. This might be do to the ubiquitous drinking parties that are obligatory in corporate Japan. So non-drinkers, who often have to slog through long drinking sessions, can at least look the part.

image
Another one? Sure! Beer flavored water never tasted so good!

One Final Snowshoe

A few weeks back we had a bit of an Indian winter in the midst of a rather balmy March.  It allowed me to strap on my Tubbs Wilderness snowshoes one last time to frolic in the environs of Asahiyama Park.  The snow was fresh, the wind was strong, and the backcountry was mostly untouched.  My favorite route is to walk the trails of along the back of the park and then just head up the mountain, off trail, away from any living soul.

wp-1459740663952.jpg
Climbing through the powder – Asahiyama’s backside

It was a rather mild winter in Sapporo, but I still managed to get out snowshoeing maybe 15 times. Pretty good for my first season. Hopefully next year will see a return to non El Nino /Global Warming temperatures and I can try out some ever more extreme snowshoeing locations.

20160324_082233.jpg