Sichuan Awesomeness

With the Olympics officially underway, Japan seems to suddenly have a strong interest in everything Chinese.

Japan has a long and complicated history with China, but beyond the politics, Japan does owe a lot to China culturally, and the emerging Chinese youth culture seems to reciprocate to some degree, involving a large amount of anime, manga, video game systems and the odd C-pop singer adopting a Japanese stage name.

But, back to the sudden interest in the Sinosphere! (Note: doesn't "sinosphere" sound like an invention, possibly a space craft, that an evil genius might have in the not-too-distant future? "Put him in--- the SINOSPHERE!")

Mundanely, and yet very tellingly, just today they started some takeaway hamburger patties in the bento section of the Max Value proudly proclaiming "中華ハンバーグ", in that colouring, which would translate to "CHINESE HAMBURGER STEAK". I don't know what constitutes a Chinese hamburger, but it is interesting that this dish was conveniently invented to coincide with the start of the Olympics. I also casually watched some Mandarin lessons on local TV, distractingly food related. They showed this cho genki chef cooking up a storm and chatting away in this really animated Mandarin and effortlessly cooking some amazing-looking food. I made up my mind about dinner.

I went for "Sichuan-style braised shrimp", from a big Chinese cookbook/massive coffee table book that I found in my apartment when I moved in (note: and haven't opened once). I happened to buy shrimp earlier today, so I just browsed through the 300 some-odd pages looking for a recipe where I could use that and the tofu, and that wouldn't require me going to the grocery store again (note: the grocery store is directly across the street).

Maybe Sichuan cuisine is a bit of a strange choice for spontaneous cooking, seeing as how I've never cooked anything resembling Chinese food (note: that didn't come in a box) before and that I'm suddenly learning to cook Chinese food in Japan

Being the bastardizing bastard that I am, I read over the ingredients a couple of times, instructions once, and mixed and matched a bit, threw in some tofu, and finally served it over rice noodles. For the record, the most important part of the recipe was a paste made of soy sauce, rice wine, toban jiang and a pinch of sugar, and I stuck to the recipe for that as closely as I could. I actually already had a bottle of toban jiang -- a mix of hot chilies and miso paste -- in my fridge, which is a bit strange. It was right beside the mayonnaise and can of Guinness.

Anyway, here's the money shot:


Yay! It looks terrible with the camera flash, but it was really good! I promise!

Anyway, try googling "chili shrimp" or "Sichuan shrimp" if you get the chance. It was easy to make, and even to improvise with the recipe a bit, and even if mine wasn't exactly authentic, it tasted great and was easy to cook.

I'm No Sciencetician, But...

I've been told Japanese people get sick all the time in winter. I've heard this relaying my own experience of getting sick once every two weeks -- one persistent virus, actually -- and have seen it. Japanese people tend to wear what appear to be white surgical masks when they're sick. I've heard that they help you get better, which I won't comment on here, but they are in the very least a clear stay-away warning. Also, an easy way to tally up who's who of the virally/bacterially infested. Upwards of 50% of the staff at my school!

Average Toronto temperature for February is -4.5℃ -- indoor temperature, at least in whatever apartment I'm living in, is 25℃. Median temperature, of course, is 20.5℃ and skin-peelingly dry.

Meanwhile in Japan -- the average temperature for neighbouring Fukuoka is about 6.5℃. A generous (it's not supposed to steam up when you pee) estimate for the average indoor temperature is around 10℃. Median being 8.25℃ and humid.

Scientists, I've heard, don't blame winter colds on their namesake -- the frigid terrible godless cold -- but, rather because people stay huddled together inside. This makes sense, but the truth is your immune system is significantly effected by your mental state. Comfort and happiness and relaxation and exercise and other things can make or break you no matter what season it is, and in Japan it's difficult to feel comfortable and relaxed in the winter. There's a whole industry surrounding this fact (insulation or central heating companies need not apply) that sell heated coffee tables called kotatsu or heated drinks in vending machines (including corn soup!) and all sorts of blankets and jackets and weird puffy elasticy bits of sweater that you put around your arms or torso. As a foreigner, I also have to deal with immunoglobulins which are apparently not well suited for this environment, and I have classes full of literally snot-nosed kids (ha-hah). Of course, traffic between East Asia and Southern Ontario is constant and diseases tend to pass both ways too (remember SARS?) and before standing in front of classes of 40 students, I was sitting in lecture halls of sometimes ten times that and I got sick once or twice a year at most. I'd get more sick, but it wasn't a chronic thing. Not only that, but I don't remember international students from Japan getting sick with Canadian germs every two weeks. So what's the deal?

I don't have an answer. The entire reason I'm writing this, is I've been at home for two days with some sort of stomach virus, and I'm still on medication for another illness. All I can think of is George Carlin talking about his own immune system saying, "You know when I wash my hands? When I get shit on them!"

The Boy and His Koto

I've had -- let's say -- a healthy interest in the koto (琴), a thirteen stringed Japanese instrument for nearly three years now. Picture this if you may, a string instrument, not terribly different from your standard guitar, only the size and shape of a surf board. This thing, it wouldn't fit in my living room. I know that for sure, because I was at the Seikatsukan, a local junk store full of strange Japanese things. Katanas, tea ware, electronics, pornography, furniture, and other odds and ends. I bought a lot of my dishes there and my friend Daisuke asked if I could show him where the store was, so he, Andy and I perused the store and out of the corner of my eye I saw this giant thing leaning against the wall. Just an hour before I was looking at these third-sized mini kotos at a music store for about $400 Canadian. But this koto in the store was full sized and ¥8000, and I got a discount, so I paid exactly $58.75. INCREDIBLE.

But, I first heard from traditional Japanese music a few years ago working on a Multimedia project with my friend and former housemate Alana, and happened upon some traditional songs. A couple of tracks struck out, because as an amateur guitarist, my ears perk up when I hear something ridiculously good placed on a vaguely familiar sounding instrument. I learned a little about the koto in the year to come, and tracked down some songs here and there and found my guitar and piano playing to be somewhat influenced by Japanese styles.

Then, just last Spring I went to a Chinese-Japanese cultural night and (long, frustrating) discussion at McMaster University. At the end of the lengthy discussions, there was a performance of guzheng (古箏), a Chinese instrument with similar roots to the koto. This was my first time seeing this kind of instrument performed, and after I talked to the musician, Feihong. She agreed to play some guzheng parts for some musical pieces I was writing for my Multimedia thesis, and we quickly became friends. If you're interested in hearing what a master of this instrument sounds like, try downloading "Chun-xue", which is a collaboration we worked on.

Anyway, tuning the instrument was a bit of an experience. None of the pegs that guitars have. Playing it is rather interesting too, but not easy. I'll hopefully learn enough to record a little bit too.

Just Another Day at The Office

Well I suppose I should write something. After all, I've been in Japan for three days shy of two months, and I haven't made so much of a peep other than a rather depressive rant about spontaneously developed allergies and newly worsened asthma. With this being said, things are generally really good. I've been a little sick for about 10 days now and have become a bit of a shut-in. Not so sick that I'm sick, but just enough so that I feel like I'm gonna get a cold sometime in the near future. Second week in a row. So, in other words, my immune system is not great, not bad. Just mediocre.

It's a pretty good excuse to sit at the computer listening to some old school NYC hip-hop and drink a glass of white.

Today, which here in the archipelago known to some as Japan is a Wednesday, is a day where I have one hour of teaching. One hour! Add a half-hour of tutoring, and another half hour of lesson planning, and you have a two hour work day, which is not exactly slave labour. Except of course I desperately had to pee all class, so it felt more like five hours, so that's a bit more respectable.

My base school, which shall be known as Ichikoko for the purposes of professional anonymity, is an incredible school to work at in a number of ways. The kids are fantastic and the other teachers really shattered my karoshi-inspired preconception of working in Japan. They work hard, no doubt, but are pretty relaxed otherwise. Lots of joking -- or so I'm guessing based on the combination of often incomprehensible Japanese followed by laughter. But I have no idea what to do with my time between classes. In today's case, a couple of three-hour blocks. I studied Japanese a bit, which I really need to get back into, being in freaking JAPAN. But I mostly just read... which perhaps I should not admit in public, but I got through a rather big chunk of Mr. Douglas Coupland's Generation X, which happens to have a chapter on the intricities of Japanese sociology in the workplace! So productive!