Japan Blog Carnival: Samurai Sushi

Blog Carnival!

What is it? It's where different bloggers get together and write about a similar topic. Thanks to Sophelia at http://sopheliajapan.blogspot.com who organized all of this , a few of us gaijin here in Japan got together and wrote about food in Japan. Check the links below for some interesting stories  from some very cool blogs.

Then at the bottom you can find mine ... SAMURAI SUSHI!


(NOTICE: AT THE TIME OF POSTING THIS, THE OTHER BLOGS MAY NOT HAVE POSTED YET, PLEASE CHECK BACK IN A DAY TO SEE THEM ALL)


http://sopheliajapan.blogspot.com/2013/04/being-vegetarian-at-japanese-work.html">Being Vegetarian at Japanese Work Parties
by http://sopheliajapan.blogspot.jp/">Sophelia's Adventures in Japan. Sophelia regularly blogs about teaching, adoption, dogs, vegetarianism and general geekiness.

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http://squggly-inkblots.blogspot.jp/2013/04/eating-my-way-around-island.html">Eating My Way Around an Island by http://squggly-inkblots.blogspot.jp/">Big Red Dots and Squggly Inkblots. Furiida blogs about her experiences as a JET Programme participant in the rural prefecture of Oita.

< br />
http://angrygaijin.wordpress.com/2013/04/27/history-of-yakiniku/">The History of Yakiniku by http://angrygaijin.wordpress.com/">Angry Gaijin. Cameron Ohara is a Gaikokujin (foriegner) living in Japan. But get this - he was actually Japanese in a previous life! Now it's all he can do to get his Japanese comrades to look beyond his red hair and tall nose and see the Japanese human that exists within!

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...

Samurai Sushi

“Eat, drink, cook” she said … what a great topic! I’m not sure if the genius was intended, but there is no way gaijin living in Japan could not write on such a topic. That is unless you have your moms send you more than just coffee and oatmeal in the mail. I for one, rate cooking　way down on the list of “things about me”, and yet I have one Japanese-master-secret -technique to tell you about.

 

But before I talk about the process directly involved in filling yourself with Japanese food, I’ll instruct you on the proper scenario required for such a feast. As is with many things in Japan, you can’t just get started putting things together and call it … well, something to be talked about.

 

First of all, this meal is best to on your day-off. This meal is a gold nugget amid a day of doing only exactly what you want. Any hindrance on this purity will only degrade the experience. Ask yourself what your favorite thing to do on your day off is, and do just that.

 

Secondly, this meal comes best after some kind of expended effort. This kind of meal is  something to be earned, not expected. Though the effort expended should be the best you can give, that doesn’t mean the hardest necessarily, but that kind best aligned with your interest. Surely you are interested in something you can expend effort for! I recommend something physical. Personally, I take this meal after a long bike ride into the mountains. This is very important.

 

Thirdly, this is a meal to be enjoyed alone. I hesitate a bit with this very crucial step, but it has less to do with any anti-social behaviors of mine, and more to the fact of enjoying this meal without unnecessary chatter or judgments. … OK, well maybe you can eat it with someone else, but only if they’re really cool.

 

So on with the ingredients; what are we going to eat!? And drink!?

 

Sushi!

 

Or more specifically, sashimi, that which is bought from your local supermarket. You’ll often find different packs of various pre-sliced sashimi, but I don’t mess with that. I go for the long solid slabs of salmon. They usually have tuna available as well, but I happen to like salmon better, so that’s what I do. In my experience, there are two price ranges which aren’t so far apart, but make a huge difference. If I find a one-person-size piece of my favorite sushi and it’s less than 200 yen, it’ll be the bad kind and ruin the whole meal. But, if I go for the 300-400 yen range, it’ll be the best sushi I’ve ever bought at the supermarket. I’m sure there are more ways of figuring out what makes such a huge difference, but translating the label in my head while I’m being swarmed by obaachans in the fish aisle seems like a lot of work.

 

So, you get the fish, and all the rest is super-easy. Make white rice in your rice cooker. Boil hot water to add to the miso soup packets you got at the supermarket with your fish. Then buy lots of Asahi in the large glass bottles, 2 works good for me, and one small-medium sized bottle of sake, I go for Tateyama, largely because it’s from my prefecture and really good. In fact, that’s important too. You should get local sake, or Tateyama because it’s just really good.

 

Now there is one last step and it’s not dessert. The last step is watching a period-film by the famous director, Akira Kurosawa along with the meal. I’d give some recommendations, but the list is far too long. Just rent/buy/download a Kurosawa film involving samurai and you’ll be good to go. This step really adds the right mood to the meal. It doesn’t have to be like preparing for seppuku or anything, but the black and white of it all makes it feel important. Somehow, the stereotypes of samurai and sushi really do go well together.

 

That’s it! So go now to your calendar, mark one of your next days off as “your own sacred day”, go have an adventure during the day, and then treat yourself to this meal of at-home-samurai-sashimi.

the "Art" in "Martial Arts": Part One of Many

 

I think in images. They are followed by feelings. This is largely how I make decisions in my life.

As a young boy, I was a drawer. Of all the childhood activities that were scattered through my time, it was putting a pencil to blank white paper where I practiced with the most enthusiasm. I remember it well: the complete freedom of a blank page, that one simple instrument. I didn't erase much. If I did, the previous line would be replaced by a better one, and I would move on. I would draw a picture for maybe thirty minutes to an hour, then put it somewhere never to be seen or thought of again.

 

I don't draw anymore. Since then I've attempted several returns to that age, but they just don't work. So, I don't try it often. The great change came with puberty. A maturation of muscles and development of desire in a social world ushered in an age of physical activity: namely organized sports and skateboarding. A creature of activity, satiated only by physical motion. But not just physical motion itself, physical motion with a goal. I'll get back to that in a second.

I am still like that, I think. My life is largely determined by physical motion. The difference is that it started in organized team sports and has evolved into practicing Japanese martial arts; namely aikido and kyudo. (One interesting constant though has been board sports, skateboarding when I was in middle and high school, and snowboarding now in Japan). I said "Japanese martial arts", because it's a very specific practice within the umbrella of "martial arts" as a whole: its differences greatly affect my experience of martial arts. One of the most intelligible differences can be found in the suffix "dou" (karate-do, aiki-do, kyu-do, etc). But that is a topic worthy of another post to come. What is relevant to this discussion is the image of Japanese martial arts, and the feelings produced from those images and its practice. I express my tendency to images by being interested in the image of Japanese martial arts, and by most of all being the image by participating. By participating in the art, I am using my physical body in motion, and the combination of my imagination working with the images and my body with the physical world, a certain feeling arises and exists. Kind of like the kokyu that arises from correct form in aikido, or a clean hanare (release) built from proper form in kyudo. Everything together is the picture of art that I make, each segment playing its respective part, yet totally inseperable from each other as the whole. This is my art. I practice for a couple hours at a time, consciously making corrections by the guidance of my peers, and forget the experience after I'm finished.

 

So there's my current practice of martial arts which I consider to be a legitimate medium of creativity. There's the little boy who used to love drawing pictures. There's sitting zazen. These are like islands of definite something rising above nebulous mists. I don't often try to draw anymore because I just don't know what to do. I sit there for an extended period of time, draw a few lines I'm disgusted with, erase, try again, and give up. I have such a strong desire to "create", but it doesn't come through. When I was a boy, I had a strong image my hand just seemed to create with purpose. Now all of those pieces are hopelessely disparate. I like writing. Actually I love writing on this blog. I always carry a pen and paper with my and on average scribble about 2 to 10 pages a day of varying levels of nonsense. Sometimes I write uncontrollably. Sometimes only a few words a day. This tendency is very important, but its focus also belongs in another post. What's important is that sometimes I want to write something poetic. Then ... blank whiteness. I'll have some kind of image, and the intense desire to create something of worth in writing, but all else is lost. I'm sure other writers must find this strange desert in the imagination as well. On the contrary, writing on this blog is where I feel best, and within all of my range of blogs, it is the ones of very specific detail that I am most fond of. Usually either communicating specific realizations found from training sessions in aikido or long stories of bike rides in the mountains. (Funny thing is that I haven't done that much in the last year) What is the difference between my desire to write poetry and the documentation of my blog?

Purpose.

My personal expression of art needs this kind of purpose. If any of my writing could be called art, or skilled in a kind of art, that is other than just relaying facts, it is not of conscious design but merely an effect of the overall mission to write. If there is beauty or art in my movement of martial arts, it is not for that purpose, but merely an effect of that specific technique. This truth is not built by thought, but an effect from my life. This is very important, and it finds its way snaking deep down in the depths towards some kind of core from which the roots of other arts blossom.

 

The other day I visited an ikebana (the art of flower arranging) exhibition and was absolutley blown away. First of all it was just beauiful; and there were so many different kinds. This is a kind of art that is designed for beauty. It's different from my arts. But it is all art. I don't know ...

I don't really know what it is like to create art for the sake of beauty; I wonder how much I can relate to painters or practitioners of ikebana. I think of music as well, an art designed for creating sounds. That is very different as well. That is very interesting to me. That is all.

The "art" in martial "arts"; it's real.