Ittekimasu!!!!

When you shout, "ittekimasu!" it means, "I'm OUT, muthafuckaaaaas!" But also implies you'll be back again soon. So don't fret muthafuckas, in other words.

In a few hours I hop a ferry for OOOOOsaka, and from there to Malaysia, and parts unknown. In the meantime, here are a bunch of pics from Al's and my adventure to THAILAND, though still hightly non-annotated. Sorry. In time, perhaps, we hope. But I got new adventures to be getting on to, so for now ittekimasu, muthafu.............!

Also, a big PS: Thank You! to the good folks at Blogger, who have finally ungraded me to the new version of their software. Blogger Beta has gone the way of the slide rule, and we're high tekkin' it from here on home. Woo!

Proxima Estacion

Next stop....Malaysia!
Malaysia here we come!
Allison and I are leaving on the 26th of April, which is, looking at my calendar, one week and one day from now.
A full-stop, Keanu-like Whoa would not be inappropriate at this juncture.

Whoa.

I better hurry up and get these Thailand pictures off my camera!

And unpack my backpack! The middle compartment is still stuffed full with assorted chazzurai from the trip, including, if memory serves: one recipe book from our cooking class in Chiang Ma; one jar of Tiger Balm; one street-bought copy of this Argentinian guy's journal of his hitch-hiking odyssey through, of all places, Iraq and Iran; several cheap yet totally freaking awesome T-shirts bought at the best street vendor stall on Khao San Road, all the way at the top and tucked around the corner off the main strip; one whole crapload of these lovely little colored straw christmas-light kind of things that I bought far too many of (what, they were like next to free, and all pretty) but haven't figured out where to hang up yet. And my place is, typically, a wreck, and I have all kinds of job stuff to worry about (believe me, I've got the worrying down; it's the doing something about it to STOP worrying that is difficult), and I need to do some laundry and clean up and bring the trash out, and go to aikido!!! Aaaaah! Train to aikido leaves in an hour and 45 minutes, and which of these things can I do by then?!? Braaaaaaah!

The Power of Green

Has everybody read this article yet?

THAILAND!

Take a look at Allison's blog for some pictures of us in THAILAND! We had an amazing time.
A snachet of memory for you from the Muay Thai gym in Chiang Mai where we were getting taught some basics of Thai kickboxing (ie, getting pummelled). Our guy Lek (yes, I know a man named Lek) had taught me how to knee Muay Thai style, and was giving me commands and commentary as he stood there with a pad on his body and I tried to knee him in the solar plexus for about twenty minutes. And the commentary went like this: "Right knee...THUMP...good! OK, right knee--THUMP...good! OK, right knee--THUMP...good! OK, right knee--THUMP...good! OK, left knee--WHACK...bad! Man, come on! Balaance! Riilack! Powaa!" Oh Lek. He seriously was a big sweetheart, and really warm towards us from the very start when he came to pick us up at our guest house on his motorcycle.

On the way to the gym he craned his head around to half face me and asked, "How long you come to Chaing Mai," and I told him it was our first day, which was true enough. We'd arrived from Bangkok two days earlier, but had spent our time in the jungle, and not in the city at all yet. The morning we arrived and found our guest house, which we'd sort of made a reservation for from Bangkok, we waited till the office opened and first thing set ourselves up for a trek out to the jungle, departing about twenty minutes later. The office guy, a wiry-tall skinny guy named Coco with SUZUKI NAOKO tattooed across one shoulder in Sans Serif and cigarette burns across the other, spoke fluid English with the winy and not entirely trustworthy accent of Chinese dry cleaner's female shopkeeper, and tried to warn us off. Coco said, "yeah, you guys both really sure you want to go now? Sometimes people they come overnight and they think they don't need more sleep, but they been partying in Bankok and then they're out in the jungle in the hot and on the elephants and they're so too tired, so you need sleep, we give you room now, you tired, you sleep now today you go tomorrow is also ok, ok?" But bah! Time enough for sleep in the grave! So with only the time to stash our bags and grab a cup of coffee, off we went to the jungle.

But back to Lek and I on the bike. I told him it was our first day, and then I asked him how long he'd been boxing. He said, what? I said, "How long you been boxing? Long time?" And he looks back over his right shoulder at me with a little grin and puts out his left hand, holds it above the road with his palm down as we whiz along through the traffic, showing me the size of the little boy he must have been when he first started. Actually, I later found out that Lek means little, and that it's his Thai nickname; when Thai children are born they get given a nickname in about the same moment they get slapped on the tuchus, so as to beguile the evil spirits who would seek to take their fresh, vulnerable souls. And their nicknames seem to be fairly household words, which comes off as really sweet when you translate it. You get people named Apple, or Shrimp, or Peanut (thanks to Robin for all this culture stuff), or in our friend Lek's case, Small. Which, looking at the man, comes off as one of the better jokes anyone's ever pulled off. Cuz little, he ain't. He's a big dude. Not dopey big, not like Ohio born, corn-fed Grade A American football playing beef big; Lek's big like big pumas and tigers are big. It helps me feel safe while we're riding the motorcyle...which is good, because not only do we have no mirrors, but we're by far the fastest thing on the road (a theme for Al and my week there) in an unregulated melee of cars, trucks, pickups, buses, bikes, charis, tuk-tuks and pedestrians; and Lek keeps trying to talk to me while we're riding, which thanks to the noise of the bike and the difficulty of language and accents, involves him using a lot of hand signals. So here we are, our first day fresh out of the jungle, and at 9:00 in the morning I find myself on the back of a motorcycle--my first time ever on a motorcycle--bursting Kessel Run style through Chiang Mai's rush-hour traffic and holding down a conversation with a massively built and terrifically friendly lifetime Thai kickboxer, who is driving me with no hands on the wheel or handles or whatever it is we've got to steer with, on a bike with no apparent means of braking and no mirrors, which shouldn't really matter anyway since the dude's looking over his shoulder at me the whole time. This, let me tell you, this was a great way to start the day.

Hooray for amazing THAILAND. What an adventure.

Recipe Review

New Recipes:

-Thai-inspired Soup, a la Japanese Ingredios
-Banana-Cornflake Sammy Supreme
-Soy Cream Soup #1: Sweet Potatoes, Chili pepper, Onions, Garlic, Toasted Sesame Seeds
-Soy Cream Soup #2: S. Potatoes and Pumpkin, Onions, Ginger, Toasted Sesame Seeds

Soy Cream Soup Serving Suggestions: #1 is best as a sandwhich on toast. I don't know why this is, but it's absolutely true. #1 is more savory and #2 is sweeter, though still very meal-feeling and substancy. One of the most enjoyable ways to eat #2 is hot in a bowl with plain yogurt, cold like it should be. Freaking divine, I'm telling you.

Yay! Life!

I'm having my first sleepover in Japan!

I'm at my friend Yasu's house in Onishi cho and he's just gone to bed and told me to stay up as long as I like playing on the HDTV-Internet hookup because he'll wake me up in the morning before he sets off to the towel factory. He's set me up with a futon and a cozy room in his place for the night after inviting me along to a drinking party with the organizers of his town's sacred annual spring festival, which I will apparently be a key member of this year as we "transform into gods" and try to break each other's shrines and stand in five-man-high pillars on each other's heads wearing lion masks. Don't ask, man, I couldn't answer. Anyway though, I've got a really good friend and a "transform into a god" date, so tonight tunred out pretty well. This is even though I got stood up for a date and shit (to be fair, it got rescheduled to coffee in the afternoon tomorrow). Yasu is super cool; I think he's the most real person I've met since comig here, and I7m thrilled that he likes me too.

Mysteries of Food

Peanut butter and jelly--not as good as eggs for breakfast.
Eggs--not as good as peanut butter and jelly for lunch.

Ooo.

Bachelor Sandwhich Recipe #1

Because they were cheaper than all the other bananas is why, and you got a whole bunch to boot!  Never mind about them being six kinds of hog ugly purplish brown and all trailerpark husband showing how much he really loves me bruised to high heaven.  But now you have a bunch of hella bruised up bananas and in the first day or two you’ll pick off and eat the ones that don’t look as bad as the others and then just avoid the rest of gang like the neighbor’s black-eyed foster kids, letting them go to waste on the table until one day, poof! like magic, you’ve got fruit flies, and then it’s time to just toss ‘em and curse the day you were fool enough to buy them as if they were gonna get any less mangy looking and haggy by sitting on your kitchen table not being eaten.  Damn, you say!  Yes: the curse of buying the too-far-gone bananas.  Gets us all, gets us all.  Hence, the midnight creation of Josh’s Bachelor Sandwich #1

Josh’s Bachelor Sammy #1.  Simple instructions:
Mash together corn flakes and banana in a mug with a mashy thing.  Spread onto a slice of bread and pop it into a toaster oven to heat to perfection; hit it with another slice of toast on top, and then EAT!  This sandwhich is fucking awesome.  It needs a good name, like a Banana DeFib or a Bananas Ruxley or an Ike Idewild Deluxe or something.  But try it, because this sandwhich is fucking awesome.  
Ingredos, for the lame/thorough/nitpicky:
One too far gone banana.  Maybe two.
Corn flakes.  Not Frosted Flakes, Corn flakes.
Bread.
A toaster oven.  
A mug.
A thing appropriate for the mashing of other things with, since you don’t own or really know what a mortar and pestle is or which part is which; you just need something that approximates the mashy part, whichever it might be.  The mortar?  Think “spoon” or “handle of a different cooking thing.”
Tip: bananas and cornflakes easier to mash up a little at a time.  
Enjoy!!!!

PS: This assumes that you, like me, can’t make banana bread for lack of either an oven or a knowledge of such things.

Get out of my house if you don't CUT THAT HAIR

I have begun cutting my own hair. It makes me happy. It’s fun to do and it’s cheap and a cool use of time, and it’s fraught with never really looking your best．This is probably the best part about it. Imperfection is not the new Saturday here in Japan, and a DIY appearance is not in step with this lock-step culture. Surprisingly, it can really throw people off when you let yourself out of the house looking not perfect. And that’s why I enjoy it so much. It’s just one more little way I have to say, “up yours, Japan,” and since it hurts nothing besides my career and dating options and still throws lots of people off their game and endears me to even more children (who instinctually gravitate towards the slightly messy), then boy, it just tickles me pink. It really does throw some people off to see you looking scruffy and out-of-the-shower messy-headed, and hooray! Hell with ‘em! And hell with you, System! I’m chopshopping my way out!

Now what’s that I hear you say? “But Josh, hair? What a dumb kind of rebellion! That shit’s played out, nigga!” (Or were you saying, “Josh, are you trying to call yourself punk rock? You can’t call yourself punk rock! You’re not! That’s so dumb!”) Yes yes, I know, you’re right about it all (though not about the can’t-call-yourself-punk-rock—to HELL with you people on that one! HELL!). You’re absolutely right: hair and beard counterculture must have peaked in like 1971 and died soon after along with every other good at the birth of disco; and excepting its phoenix-like reincarnation in the punk rock mid-eighties, hair was a played out tune long before John Conner ever floppy-bangsed his way through the early 90’s Hollywood of my childhood. And nowadays hairstyles that are fun for you without being obviously unhygienic are a pretty normalized part of the more sane, more fun norma-culture we seem to be crafting in the cradle of civilization, New York, and across its cousins like Boston, Philly, San Fran, Oberlin, Europe and anywhere else where cool people live (remove any suburbs from your mental picture of what I’m talking about; refer to sane and fun preceding culture, above). The thing is, I don’t live in civilization anymore. Here on Planet Japan it’s, well, a different world. The culture here worships Image so hard it’s like they never saw the end of the Wizard of Oz. And one thing Japan is over-the-top fixated on is Perfect Hair. When it comes to perfect hair Japan is crazy like a crate full of gibbons on a paint mixer. Japan seems to generally operate from two basic MOs (M’sO?): first you’ve got your jawdroppingly-behind-the-times thing, and then you’ve also got your just-inscrutable-and-insane stuff, the connection between them being a bucolic, which is to say, “alike to a cow,” and utter innocence of reasoning or logic with which to approach questions about real world situations. This all comes to something of a Twilight Zone New Year’s Special level of insanity when it comes to the juncture between hair (oh holy retardely insane fixation on perfect hair) and counterculture (which has never, never happened here, and thus has as much shock-value in innocence as it did 50 years ago in America). I am in a land where punk rock never happened. Rock never happened. Imagine our country with no rock? We’d all be glassy eyed robot-people with skinny neckties, 8-8 desk jobs and no rhythm…wait, that sounds eerily familiar. This is where Rod Serling comes in and reveals the truth: That’s the country Josh lives in now! AAAAAHHHHHHHHH! It’s like the America from a future where Rock and Roll never existed! AAAAAHHHHHHHHH! AAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHH!

So I’m going to rock out a little, like my fathers and mothers before me. I know, how not punk rock does that sound, right? But you know what is punk rock? Not investing everything in your appearance, and getting a kick out of shaking people’s lives up by doing something innocent, creative, off-beat and in-your-face. You know what’s not punk rock? Spending $50 at hair salons every week, sometimes more, to keep up that appearance. Also not on the punk-rock list? Going to work with nothing to do. I seem to have to do that one this week, but I can hate it, and I can protest with a wrankle-the-bosses mohawk and a beard that should be tidied up or shaved off completely, with mustachios out to here. I can protest by looking aggressively not in line and by being really friendly and fuck-the-rules all at the same time: I’m not doing anything wrong here, I only look like it to you people, and shame on you for that. “To hell with everybody” isn’t a great life plan, I know, especially since I do like a lot of people here and want to keep developing my relationships with them, but heck, a rebellious haircut shouldn’t get anyone’s goat, and since it does, and since I find the fact that it does to be contemptible and worth provoking, then, well, to hell with everybody, I’m cutting my hair.

My Second Soup

Cream of Sweet Potato Soup, with a few surprises

Soy Milk, maybe a third of a carton.
1 Packet of Dashi (powdered katsuo dashi)
½ Onion, chopped.
Garlic or toasted garlic powder.
1 Spicy Dried Red Pepper, with seeds, chopped up.
1 middle-to-big sized satsumaimo—that’s a Japanese sweet potato—sliced small and thin.
Black Sesame Seeds, a little pile, finely chopped.

Dashi is a fish or seaweed based bullion that’s in most dishes Japanese. It comes in little packets of powder or else you can make it yourself with dried seaweed in water. I use katsuo dashi powder for most things; it’s from the same fish, katsuo, that bonito flakes come from. Probably easy to get at an Asian grocer’s.

Stir dashi into soy milk and bring to a boil. Once you’re bubbling, add your onions, red pepper and garlic. Simmer for a good minute and add the potatoes. Then you’re gonna want to cook it for about seven-to-ten minutes. At some point when they’ve softened up a lot, start mashing up the potato pieces with your spoon or use an immersion blender if you don’t mind the messy hassle. Really, a spoon should do just fine. Keep the liquid bubbling; you’re going for a creamy consistency. Lastly stir in the sesame seeds; you should see a nice color to dark greenish depending on how much sesame you add. And that’s it: read to serve! This works really well as a soup, but I think it’s much better as a pasta sauce (I haven’t really figured out which is the best pasta for this yet) or on top of brown rice. It would probably also be fantastic as a sauce for fish. Ooo. That sounds good.

An easy improvement to this would be adding spinach, either chopped up real fine or blundered. And ginger…ooo. I can see this recipe being really superb if you were to take out the spicy pepper and the garlic and put in Thai ginger and coriander (cilantro) instead. Ooo, and serve it over a red pasta! That would be great! Like you know the sun-dried-tomato pastas they have, the reddish noodles? This would be phenomenal on a bed of that. Yes! YES!!

A New Soup!

My First Soup!  This is A New Recipe, inspired by the cooking course that Allison and I took in Thailand.  One thing we made was a terrific soup with a coconut milk base and fresh lemon grass and Thai ginger and cilantro, but I couldn’t get those things here in Japan so this recipe was reinvented with ingredients you can get in Japan without any hassle.  It’s simple and very tasty and healthy and filling, and should take no more than ten or fifteen minutes, cutting included.  Your ingredients and instructions are:

• Soy Milk.


• Garlic.


• Onion.


• One dried spicy red pepper, with seeds.


• Eggplant.


• Tofu.


• Green pepper.  


• Spinach, Romain Lettuce or some other leafy vegetable.  No seaweed.

1) Cut everything up.  Think “I will eat this in soup” size for the onion, eggplant, green pepper and tofu.  Cut the garlic like you like to cut garlic, and as-you-like-it on the pepper, but keep those seeds in.  They’re the spiciest part.  Soak the eggplant slices in a bowl of water until it’s time to add them.  

2) Bring the soy milk to a gentle boil, being careful not to let it puff up, and add the garlic, onion, and spicy pepper.  Stir for a minute or two, and add the tofu and eggplant (don’t add the eggplant water).  Keep it for a good minute or two at a gentle boil or, “simmer.”  This would be a good time to throw in some salt, if you want to.  Add your leafy veggies last (do add a bit more of the leafy veggie than you think you should at the time) and let it all cook together for another one of those good minute-or-twos.  Now EAT!  It seems like this dish would be best with a piece of dense, brown bread or that coarse, brownish rice that’s not brown rice, although that’s purely conjecture since I ate mine alongside two pieces of white bread to cut the spiciness from the two many hot peppers that I put in.  Curse you, crazy Thai hot peppers!!!  

Other good things to add could include ginger at the beginning, and pineapple chunks or some kind of squash—pumpkin or butternut would be amaaaaazing and add a lot of great color—after the tofu stage.  One trick I used to cut the spice (again, Curse You, Thai Chilis!) was leaving some tofu out and adding cold right into the soup bowl to steal some of the flavor concentration and heat of the rest of the dish.  This was a great and very easy soup, very vegetarian, very spicy and tres exotic.  Thank you, Thailand.

Enjoy!!!!