It's Rhaaaw!!! (A Continuation Of The Japan Experience)

What's in a sushi? What's in eating raw food? Is it about texture? taste? the fear factor?

I remember the first time I tried raw fish. Sashimi. Tuna.  Zambales. 1992.

It was the wedding of my cousin's cousin from the father side. I was then living in the house of my father's sister in Marikina, my aunt. They invited me to come with them to Zambales.

Being Ilonggo, it was my first time to attend a traditional Tagalog wedding so I went. It's not as if I had a choice. If I didn't go, I would have been left all alone in Marikina and I dreaded the idea of being alone for a night.

I don't really know how we ended up in Zambales. I have no such memory. The only recollection I have of that day was the nighttime. We were in an open field near the house of the bride and there was a small hut in the middle. Incandescent, warm lights scatter on different areas. Just a few to light the pathways and the structures around the place. Everything else was in pitch black. Music was playing and the bride and groom were dancing in the middle of the hut and the older relatives would pin some cash on their clothes as they move in circles as everyone crowd around them.

I was having beer while watching the dance all by myself. I didn't know anyone there except the cousins I went with. But, of course, as soon as my cousins got there, they all went with their other cousins whom I didn't know at all.  So, practically, I was all alone having my beer, feigning enjoyment.

Believe it or not but I used to be a shy, insecure kid unlike my older brother Kenneth who can go to our family reunion and get to know everyone from the distant Uncles and Aunties to the new born grandson. Being a country boy, I'm not one to approach someone I just met and start talking about anything.

That's why I marvel at my kids now how comfortable they are in gatherings. You bring them to a gathering, leave them around children their age and suddenly they can play and have fun without any awkward moment whatsoever.

Everyone seemed to be enjoying the "kipkip" dance of the bride and groom except me. I emptied my beer in no time. Thinking that it was my chance to actually do something, I left to go to the house to get a bottle of beer.

On the way to the house, trying to kill as much time, my cousin of the same age, Obet, called me to join them. I decided to join them knowing fully that anywhere in that place would have resulted in that same lonely, out of place feeling.

As I slowly approached them, in the warm chiaroscuro light hitting them, they all looked like a bunch of bloodthirsty aswangs.  Lit only by the spill of light from the pathways, they were drinking in a circle with their other cousins and I can hear a rhythmic sound of chopping. From behind the circle I can see a suggestion of a knife being raised chopping something on the table in front of them. As I got closer, I saw a tuna fish around 4-feet long with it's head chopped off. There was a pool of blood on the table and the guy chopping was already filleting the loin of the fish. Small slices of raw tuna meat were placed on a plate and everyone was picking a slice and dipping it on a soy sauce bowl. Looking at the faces of everyone laughing and grabbing the slices and shoving it in their mouths with just this warm spill of faint light on their faces really made them look like ravenous cannibals. It was my first time to see raw fish being eaten. And I was grossed out.

The first time I felt the slithering texture of tuna sashimi sliding in my mouth, I thought I was going to throw up. I don't really mind fencing my tongue against a woman's tongue but even if the tuna is similar in texture, the thought of a raw piece of meat for the first time in your mouth with blood and all, is not my idea of good food. Sashimi is really an acquired taste.

Shibuya, Tokyo.  

Fast forward to 2011.  Japan. I promised myself that this time around, I will have a sushi odyssey.

The first thing you see coming out of Ikebukuro station.

A street in Ikebukuro

 We arrived in Ikebukuro, Tokyo, where our hotel was, on November 4 around 3pm. After checking in and dropping our bags off, we went around the area to see what's there.

The lousy kaiten sushi bar.

 For dinner, we passed by a kaiten sushi bar, one of those regular sushi places where the customer can pick and choose their sushi on a conveyor belt. I was so excited to try my sushi experience first thing as soon as I hit Tokyo. I know that kaiten sushis are the fast food version of good sushi.  But this is Japan! Certainly, sushi everywhere should be good. I was mistaken. Not every Japanese food in Japan is good. Not all the adobo in Manila is good. This one failed big time. The sushi was fishy. Too many fancy combinations.

The picture says it all.

Left-overs

I should have seen it coming. It was Bourdain who warned me about never trusting a restaurant that complicates a simple dish. Smoked salmon with mayo and leek sushi. Rubbery octopus meat with teriyaki sauce. It was bad. Lesson was: be patient, don't rush. For every pain, for every wrong choice, it just makes you a bit more careful the next time. That kaiten sushi experience, according to Miyagi-san, was a necessary mistake. "One needs to fall down on their knees in order to see the world from another perspective." 

Harajuku street on a weekend.

The next sushi experience was a bit thought out. Although still an accident, since the restaurant we went to was not sought out, I was more careful before entering the doors. This one now is in Omotesando Hills, the pricey mall strip in Harajuku.

A sushi bar in a high-end district, check! The sign says, "Since 1924.", check! A restaurant lasting for almost 90 years must be doing good food to last this long.

The sushi man.

We actually didn't decide to enter the place immediately. There was something that made me think twice about getting in. I was looking at the people sitting inside and I noticed that most of the customers were Caucasian foreigners. I always go with the foodie tip to go to restaurants where a lot of locals frequent and not on places that could be tourist traps. But what made me decide to go for it were the sushi makers on the bar. Every time I see old Japanese cooks and sushi makers in a restaurant, it always makes me feel that I'll be in good hands. There is that zen-wisdom, Yoda-esque feel to having an old guy take care of your food.

I am no sushi connoisseur but it was in this Omotesando sushi place that I realized that the Ikebukuro kaiten sushi bar sucked.

The handsome salmon and scallop with the toro tuna at the end.

That sushi stop was supposed to be dessert. We just finished eating a late lunch in a Japanese pasta place and was looking for coffee and dessert. It was a good thing we stumbled upon this place. For such a sleek looking restaurant, I was surprised that it was family-owned. And family-owned restaurants in Asia usually turn out to be really good eating places. Better than those high-end, factory-type, corporation-owned eateries.

The waiter was a revelation. He was a Japanese guy who was not wearing a waiter's uniform. He was vocal about the best choices for sushi volunteering the fish that he wants us to try. And since his choices weren't the pricey ones, we figured that this guy must be genuinely giving us some really good suggestions. As it turns out, he was the son of the sushi masters that own the place.  The yellow fin tuna with fresh yuzu sushi he recommended was memorable.

TO BE CONTINUED...

A Few Things Made Better Than So Many Things Made Badly

Osaka Station, Osaka.  November 3, 2011.  Almost 10 p.m.

We have just arrived from Kansai where we landed from Manila.  Just like last year's trip, Michiko and I didn't make any plans for this first night when we get to Osaka.  The next day we will be off to Tokyo for a 6-night stay before we go back to Osaka again for another 5 nights.

We always assign this arrival night as the adventure time.  As someone who is not really too adventurous with any sort of extreme sport or leisure, a night without hotel and itinerary is already my idea of a great adventure.

Upon exiting Osaka station, we just walked straight crossing whatever street that's ahead of us.  We are looking for a good dining place.  That's first.  Sleeping place is second.  But for now, filling up the tummy is top of mind.

On the first cross, we already passed a commercial building.  How do I know?  Because there's a Starbucks Coffeeshop in the corner.

Like most commercial buildings in Japan, there is always a restaurant floor in there somewhere.  Either on the top floor or in the basement.  With this one, it was in the basement.  So off we went down the escalator.  Everything's closed.  Lots of pictures and plastic food "sculptures" on the shop windows but everything is closed.  We went up again.

We continued our walk towards the inner part of the streets.  One key rule in looking for restaurants in Japan is to go for the side streets.  I don't know why but most of the restaurants, if they're not inside a building, are most probably behind the main streets.  They line up one after the other.  And mind you, they're quite aware of competition.  Every restaurant or izakaya does not sell the same kind of Japanese food when they're beside each other.  One place serves tempura or tonkatsu, next one all sushi, the next soba, after that is a grill place and then some ramen house, and then the next set of stalls will repeat the cycle of types of food being served.

We found the nearest side street and walked around.  It was a quiet night.  The street is almost empty.  This is unlike the Dotonbori district in the heart of Osaka where it is just bustling with people.  That was a lazy night by Osaka standards.  

We found this quaint little place towards the end of the street.  We didn't know anything about it except that we kinda liked the pictures outside and decided to give it a try.  The pictures showed a ramen, a bowl of rice with EEEGGG and a tray of Gyoza.

Inside, except for the man cook and a lady waitress (sort of), we were the only ones inside.  When we sat down, the waitress gave us a menu that looks exactly like the placard outside the resto except that it's smaller.  We asked for an English menu and she said there's none.  Not knowing what else is written in that one-page menu, we decided it would be easier to just order the pictures.  So we ordered all that was pictured in the menu: the ramen, the bowl of EEEGGG rice and the gyoza.  No Coke.  Just tea.  Off the waitress went and handed the order to the cook.  She then brought out a tray and a container and started making gyoza, fresh.  Woooot!  The lady waitress doubles as a gyoza maker too.

The ramen was good.  It had the basic boiled pork belly on it and the classic leeks.  But this one had a soft-boiled egg in it.  Shit!  Egg!  Perfect!

The bowl of egg rice was simple and heavenly.  The eggs were wet and mushy laid on top of fried rice.  The fried rice was mixed with shoyu, burnt spring onions and a bit of garlic.  Oishii!

Finally, the gyoza made by that lady waitress.  Hmmmm, it was just OK.  The meat filling was a mush although the casing had a nice texture.  But I've tasted better gyozas before.

As our food were served, two groups of black suited working Japanese men entered and took the two tables of this 4-table hole-in-the-wall.  We wanted to find out what they ordered so we waited a bit to see what they had.  They all ordered the same ramen we did.  That's it!  Ramen only.  Plus a glass of beer each.

This is what I love about Japan.  They have these small stalls that only serve one kind of food; the food that they're good at.  They don't venture for any other types of food just to give their customers choices.  They only serve what they know how to do best and that's it.  Nothing more.

In this small place, they only serve three things in there and those types of food are not even the most complicated to do.  With ramen, they just have a stock that's boiling the whole time.  A portioned noodles in plastic containers.  Pre-cooked super tender pork belly and freshly cut leeks.  For the egg dish, it was just the egg and the fried rice.  The gyoza was the most complicated there.  But the meat filling is already prepared earlier.  It's the wrapping it by hand that makes it a bit more complicated than the other two dishes they serve.

Those three dishes plus 4 tables and they have a restaurant already.

Akihabara station.  November 7, 2011.  10:20 p.m.

After a long day at Yodobashi building going from one floor to the next looking at all the electronic stuff in there, it was time to go back to our hotel in Ikebukuro.  Akihabara is around 14 stops to Ikeburo.  That's quite a trip.  So before going into the train, I made a quick nicotine break just outside the station.

Right beside where I was smoking, there was a small van parked on the corner with quite a line of people waiting.  Michiko and I were curious to see what it was so we took a closer look.

Inside the van was a guy making crepes.  The kind of crepes that's very Japanese.  The one with the fruits, a bit of chocolate and an ice cream on top of it.  The crepe is not even really a crepe.  It's more like a softer barquillos (this tubular sweet, flaky delight from my hometown).

Anyway, this guy was going at the crepe-making all by himself.  Lay down the crepe mixture on the round, flat pan to cook it.  Place the whipped cream from the piping bag, smother it with chocolate sauce, put a few banana slices, top it with a scoop of ice cream, wrap the crepe around the filling, cover it with a paper napkin and serve it.  One after the next they were being served the same way with the same precise movement of the crepe maker.  It helps a lot that he's playing loud music in his van.  He makes the crepes almost to the beat of the music playing.

We were thinking, this guy could have been here the whole day serving the same thing to a line of people, listening to music to keep him going.  And when he's done, he'll just hop into the front seat and drive away.

I've tried one of these crepes in Osaka last year.  It wasn't really my kind of thing.  I'd still go for Cafe Breton's basic sugar and butter crepe over this.  But the Japanese sure loves it.

This guy only makes crepes and yet he manages to make a living out of it.  And he has a line of people to prove it.  A van, some music and just loads of crepes all day long is enough.

TO BE CONTINUED...

The Columbus In All Of Us

Near Gallery Uffizi in Florence 

They discovered continents.  They explored worlds.  They colonized civilizations.

My first trip abroad was around 1995.  Hongkong.   It was my first taste of congee with my favorite fritters to go with it(you know, that loofah-looking dough?).  We stayed in Kowloon side and I remembered our days there being filled mostly by Laserdisc and music cd buying from one store to the next.

That first travel was the start of a string of travels I will have in this lifetime.  It somehow brought out the Columbus in me.

Every travel, to me, is a discovery.  An exploration.  Sometimes a conquest.  You conquer the fear of being in a strange and new place.  You conquer the fear of being alone in the midst of aliens.

Travelling makes you know more.  Makes you see the world from another perspective.  It makes you see how other people live their lives different from how you live yours.

Killing time in the park

A Park in Florence

The sun rays in Tuscany feels a lot healthier than our sun rays here.  The smell of flowers in the streets of Switzerland is not the same as the smell of fried daing in the streets of Cubao.

Travelling is sensorial.  You feel, see, hear, taste and smell a new environment.

Being in another country, makes you see what you wish you could change or miss about your country.

The food is no exception.  Discovering the foods of other countries is a paradigm shift.  Tomatoes never tasted so good in Italy.  I eat more vegetables abroad than I do here.

Of the countries I've been to, there are some that speak to you and there are others that do not.

Last minute picture with the Eifel Tower

I remember being in Paris and not loving it, at all.  It was touristy, it's hard to move around the city, people are kinda snooty.  Being there is like being in a package tour everywhere you go.  Like in Louvre, the throng of people inside the museum was just crazy.  I rarely go to museums but with this one, I wanted to see all the masterpieces in their gallery.  But I want time alone to, sort of, relish being in the presence of a masterpiece.  But with that huge crowd snaking around each room, bumping into some senior citizen in retirement mode trying to catch a glimpse of a masterpiece before her last breath, shit, by the time I got to the Mona Lisa, I was so sweaty that I felt I was not worthy to have my picture taken side by side with the ethereal Mona.

Chanced upon this when I got lost in Venice

I love Italy.  I belong there.  I'm not saying that just because I might be coming from an Italian lineage (Matti in Italian means "the crazy one").  Wink, wink.  I'm just saying that the Italians are people I can be friends with.  They all exude an appetite for life.  Their warmth is contagious.

One of my lousy days in Neuchatel, Switzerland

I can't say that about Switzerland.  When I was there, it felt really cold, emotionally.  Day or night, the streets were empty.  Except for the chocolates of Switzerland and the beautiful high-tech, lakeside hotel I stayed in, I didn't really enjoy my stay there.  They close all restaurants and shops from 2-6pm.  And since I'm not really an early riser, I'd always end up eating lunch in this Persian sandwich place right at the heart of Neuchatel's downtown.  Persian food in Switzerland, great!

Dario Argento on the right

This was the fatal day I was late for a car ride with Roger Corman

But Switzerland was memorable.  I sat side by side with Dario Argento for dinner.  He talked about his fear of riding a plane and had the festival fetch him by car to travel from Italy to Switzerland.  Got Roger Corman pissed for being late because we had to share a ride to lunch.

The sun deck in Hotel Palafitte

I stayed in Hotel Palafitte, a 5-star hotel by the lake.  I was booked in one of their villas, the ones standing in the middle of the lake.  It has its own sun deck facing the expanse of the river.

The then hi-tech remote control in my hotel room

This was in 2002 and everything in the room then was already remote controlled.  Turn on the TV by remote.  Close the windows, by remote.  Put up the sun deck, by remote.  Even when internet in hotels were hard to come by then, they had free wifi, 24-hours a day in the room.

When I discovered this remote gadget, about the size of an old betacam deck, I started tinkering with it.  I even discovered that it turns on the shower in the bathroom.

Anyway, after being tired from a long plane trip I slept to get ready for the big day at the festival the next day.  The next day, I woke up terrified.  Literally, the whole room was covered by a million little black thing scattered all over the place.  My comforter was riddled entirely with these black things.  I immediately stood up in panic.  Checked it closely.  Good thing they were already dead.  I called reception to help me sort it out.  When they got there, they reprimanded me for not reading the instructions beside my bed.  "Always close the windows at night.", was how it read.  The black things were mosquitos from the lake.  I tinkered with the gadget and forgot to close the windows in the sun deck and they all attacked me while I was sleeping.  Good thing I was covered entirely while asleep that I didn't get a single bite from those bloody mosquitos.  Phew!

A view of Neuchatel

Switzerland means something to me because of the memories it gave me.  The minute I landed, my newly bought luggage came out tattered in the luggage belt.  My clothes were scattered and the bag was covered in grease.  I had to buy a new set of luggage (this time, a hard case) from my own measly pocket money because Lufthansa would only pay me when I get back to Manila.

I also made a side trip to Zurich to visit a friend from my hometown.  It was a nice day, sunny and all.  She brought me to a park with her Spanish husband.  Lying on the grass, her husband lighted a joint.  Thinking that Swiss weed does not come close to a Baguio gold strength meter-wise, I casually smoked it like a cigarette.  Time lapse:  an hour later, I woke up in the park, it's almost dark and my friends are waiting for me to have dinner.  They couldn't stop asking me if I was okay.  Fucking embarrassing!  Ended up in a fondue dinner and I didn't have one because I was slumped the whole time on the dinner table.  They finally brought me to the train station and, still disoriented from the roundhouse kick the Swiss weed gave me, I fell asleep on the train station and missed my train.  Ended up back in Neuchatel at 1am rather than 10.  Grrrr!

I love those little mishaps that make travelling memorable.

Lady crossing in Shibuya

A rainy day in Tokyo

Once in Japan, when I landed, I had both the soles of my shoes left behind while walking to Immigration.  A lady behind me stopped me and handed over one of the soles of my shoes.  I smiled nonchalantly trying to hide my shame.  A few feet later, my other shoe gave in.  I was lining up in Immigration with my socks walking on the carpet clutching the two soles of my shoes pretending everything's under control.  The worst part is, I landed at 6pm, travelled to Shibuya, checked in at 8pm and had to go straight to a dinner.  As I am not really your formal kind of a guy, that was my one and only formal shoes that I brought.  The next one, tucked in my luggage, is a yellow, bright colored Northface shoes.  A friend critic fetched me at the hotel and I told him about my dilemma.  He said, "Your an artist!  You wear yellow shoes with your formal suit!"  And that's what I did.

In a sea of black tie formal affair, with all the serious Japanese walking around, somewhere in the floor, there's this yellow Northface strutting around.  I met a lot of friends through that, though.

If I didn't travel, I could not imagine having seen all these things just staying here in Manila.  I'm no rich, globetrotting dude travelling at my heart's desire.  I had a lot of travels for free because of my movies going into film festivals abroad.

The view of Florence from our window

Forbidden City in Beijing

Still life in Udine, Italy

Sun bathing in the Big Apple

Riding the boat to Staten Island

Flowers by the window sill in Venice

A bad profiterole in Chianti, Florence

China town, New York

Tired lady in a Beijing Park

Through my travels, I have managed to get lost in Venice, sat quietly on a bench in a Lido street watching dusk turn to night, made a wish in a Japanese temple, eat in a molecular gastronomy Michelin-star, restaurant in Switzerland for free(beside Dario Argento to top it), accidentally discover the best ramen in a Kyoto side street, ride a bus full of, politically correctly speaking, not-so-pleasant-smelling Indians in Singapore with my children rudely putting on a mask in the midst of them, went around a horror house with Phil Tippet of "Jurassic Park", slept in a Florence hotel with Michiko overlooking the whole of Florence, eat foie gras in a picnic watching the lights of Eifel Tower, shake hands with Tony Soprano, Hope Davis, Marcia Gay Harden and Jeff Daniels, help a drunk Korean friend who puked all over a hotel lobby carpet, look for an olive tree not knowing we are already beside one, be dragged out of my hotel room for being dead drunk and had to catch a plane in Trieste, run around with all the big stars of "Mano Po" in the streets of Shanghai trying to shoot without permit(imagine Susan Roces, Lorna Tolentino, ZsaZsa Padilla, Christopher De Leon scurrying in Shanghai streets. Now that's Third World superstardom for you), seeing the Golden Gate bridge and not knowing what to feel because it still is just a bridge, lock myself out in my underwear at a Shibuya Hotel (yes, the hotel right in front of Hachiko) and had to go to reception to get another key, had a near-miss pickpocket in Rome with Michiko surrounded by 4 burly Italians, huff and puff with my two kids going up the Great Wall of China, ate in probably the worst Italian restaurant in Italy, get trapped at Troubadour station in Paris,  kissed in the middle of the rain, eat kare-kare in Montmartre.

Not bad for all the freebie travels.  Thanks to my movies!

My next adventure:  Japan.  One of my favorite countries in the world.  Okinomiyaki, sushi, Tsukiji, Kyoto, onsen, ramen, ryokan, bento boxes, takoyaki balls, Sapporo, Akihabara, Japanese pizza and pasta, Kuidaore, Dotonbori!

To Columbus, Napoleon, Magellan, Alexander and me!  Cheers!

With each travel, I can look at my home country with fresh eyes.  

A view of Pasig river from the Mandaluyong bridge

Shooting bystanders in Montalban

A solitary monoblock left during a Bataan shoot

Quiapo manghuhulas

  

Sleeping in Binondo outside a Chinese drugstore

Old lady in print.   Quiapo, Manila.