The Japan Foundation Toronto Library is Digital

Huge news for Torontonians looking to stay connected to Japan!

Kobo and Libby
working in harmony to help me devour books

The Japan Foundation, Toronto launched a brand-new digital library last month via Overdrive, the popular library-lending app.

Since the pandemic has closed their physical JFT location, this is huge news for library lovers. It goes without saying that without regular borrowers, the library could find itself in a serious dilemma, and pivoting to a digital platform in the meantime is a great move. (Unfortunately for me as an author, Edokko is a Kindle exclusive, so you won't find it in the JFT catalogue - but maybe they'll pick up Meet You By Hachiko at some point, who knows!?)

Considering that they started from zero, I'm impressed at the collection that's been put together so far - as of this writing, just shy of 500 books, with a good mix of fiction and non-fiction, manga, and Japanese-language materials. Kudos to the library staff for their hard work, here!

JFT library card holders can borrow instantly by visiting JFT OverDrive and logging in with their library card number and PIN (last four-digits of phone number). If you're new to the Japan Foundation Toronto or haven't been in in a while, the staff will need to help you renew your card first, but it's easy and quick, and so worth it.

For me, the timing of the Overdrive launch couldn't be better, as we've almost fully packed up for a move, and all my books are currently in boxes. My Kobo Libre has been saving me with access to tons of ebooks via the Toronto Public Library, and the minute I saw the JFT had gone live with theirs, I immediately headed over on the Android app Libby to get hooked up and browse the selection. My only regret is that I can only borrow five books at a time, and I'm continually running up against that 5-book limit and having to return things I didn't actually get to read yet in favour of the holds I wanted more. 😂 What to read next!?⁠

⁠I still prefer the real-paper feel, but pandemic + moving has finally gotten me aboard the ebook train. How many of you read ebooks as well as physical...?⁠

That Old JLPT Feeling

I will never be an N1 Master

I have quite a few unfinished drafts hanging around in my posting queue...whoops! Things have been very very busy for me lately. I've been working a lot of overtime, ended a relationship, taken up long-distance running, gotten a cat, bought Professor Layton vs. Phoenix Wright. I'm pretty tired most days, so when I come home, I just want to sit at my kotatsu and space out while reading blogs. Except that a lot of the blogs I used to read daily have tapered off in post frequency or, like one of my favourites has, stopped posting entirely. While being frustrated that my daily reading content seems to be vanishing, I failed to consider that perhaps somebody out there actually likes reading my blog and was disappointed to see my posts dwindling. Well!

With that in mind, I decided today was the day for a quick post, though I suppose the topic is rather same old, same old. Last year I took a beating when I walked into the room, sat down, wrote the first section of the test, and then turned around to say to an acquaintance behind me, "Did we come to the N2 room by mistake??" It was a disaster.

This year, I tried to crack the books way back in July, with the intent to study relentlessly until October 31, and then leisurely review during November on days when I didn't have the energy for novel writing. (I don't think it's a coincidence that I have passed the JLPT and won the National Novel Writing Month challenge, but never in the same year.) Suffice to say that it's October 22 now and I'm still on Week 4 of the So-matome grammar book, with two weeks of grammar and six weeks of reading comprehension to go. I did read Chi's Sweet Home, volume 11, on the subway yesterday. That counts as study, right?

What I have been doing is kanji study, thanks to being frequently trapped on buses and trains with nothing to read and no cellphone games installed on my phone. (I was able to safely end my addiction to Hot Springs Story after beating the game for the third time.) Though there are a few apps that I've tried out before to help get daily study in, I think I've finally found "the" app for Android, and it's called KanjiSenpai. I had to turn off the drawing component pretty quickly, but otherwise I'm finding it to be really good. It uses the usual spaced repetition system (SRS) but it seems to be much better at coming back later and making sure I really know the answers to ones I guessed. Plus, it rotates between offering the meanings and the readings of compounds, as well as making you choose between several cards that are very similar, which is great for me. You can also remove cards that you're 100% certain you know - I took out number kanji, for example, and the cardinal directions, days of the week, and other kanji I use in everyday life - but the app is still going to check in with you 500 cards later and make sure you know them. If you've been looking for a good study app that will teach you the kanji rather just quizzing you on what you already learned from a textbook, this is it.

Another good one I had been using before finding KanjiSenpai was TenguGo, which cost me a dollar-something and had an interface I liked well enough. The quizzes came in small, easily-devourable packets (harder to put off studying when you can say "Meh, I'll just do one quiz,") and the tengu threw me a little on-screen party when I finished a certain number. However, it assumed you already knew all the kanji in the quiz. You can opt to "review" items (see the screenshot) but it packs just a bit too much info into its screen, and by the time I got to item #10 I had already forgotten #1. The SRS method is much better for me.

One other app I had been using before I switched to studying grammar via textbook is one called "N3 JLPT PREPARE" (yes, very descriptive) by V-Next software that does kanji, vocab and grammar quizzes. You can choose a quiz with 30 words, 50 words, 70 words, 90 words, 100 words or - not for the faint of heart - 200 words. The search function also seems good at a glance, though I never actually remember to use it. (Google Translate is always too close at hand.) My intent was to come back and use this app to quiz myself once I'd learned enough items to actually pass a quiz. Maybe it's time for a quiz right now!? I'm not getting any younger - and December 7 just gets closer and closer!

Anyone want to share their own recommendations for JLPT study apps?

Santouka Ramen Comes To Toronto

Santouka is doing ramen right in Toronto. Yes!

Things have been busy with NaNoWriMo going on - I apologize for the lack of blog posts this month! I did, however, want to say a few words about Santouka Ramen, the new shop that soft-opened last week on Dundas East. A friend of mine works here and she recommended it very highly, so I made an effort to check the place out before word had gotten around too much. I wasn't even thinking about writing a review on it, so I never stopped to take any photos, but after we walked out of the shop, I began jotting down notes -ah, blogging life! It looks like I was just in time, too - in the week since I visited, at least a dozen food bloggers have gotten to Santouka and the lines are apparently around the block. Their grand opening is today, and I can guarantee that it's going to be quite a lot harder to get in there without a wait after this.

The shop is just a little east of Yonge-Dundas Square, and initially I imagined that it would be competing with Kenzo and possibly Kinton for the customers in the area, but it looks like that isn't the end - buzz is starting to get around for a new shop on Gerrard called Raijin (also specializing in tonkotsu ramen) and of course Sansotei (which I haven't been to yet) is doing quite well for itself. A far cry from when I first moved to Toronto and only had Kenzo and Ajisen to choose between - and that was barely a year and a half ago!

Santouka looks to be a fierce competitor, though - they are a branch of a chain that has been operating in Hokkaido since 1988, whose owner was apparently inspired by the famous ramen film Tampopo. Apparently, there was a branch right in my town in Japan, at a shopping centre I visited often, but I wasn't nearly as much of a ramen fiend then as when I returned to Canada and started missing Japanese food! The fact that Santouka is Japanese-run is really encouraging (not knocking you, Ajisen, but those Chinese chopsticks are awful to eat noodles with) because I know Toronto is inching more and more toward authentic Japanese food. They have the same menu in all their overseas shops - the first Canadian branch was in Vancouver.  

Toronto's version of Santouka appears to be very close to the original as well, of course. My shio ramen (salt-broth) came topped with menma (bamboo shoots), kikurage (jelly ear mushrooms), char-siu pork, naruto, and a single umeboshi - pickled plum. The umeboshi came as a bit of a surprise to me, as I'd never seen one topping off a bowl of ramen before. Many of the "usual" toppings you'll find at local ramen places (corn, egg, etc) should be ordered separately at Santouka, as each type of ramen has its own set toppings. The shio is the only broth that comes with an umeboshi.

According to Santouka's website, they simmer
their broth for 20 hours!

Notably, Hakodate is famous for its shio ramen (conversely, Hokkaido ramen is usually known for miso-based soups topped with sweetcorn), and usually shio is a clear, light soup that is chicken or vegetable-based, so this is what I originally expected, having not done my research on Santouka before turning up there! However, Santouka's broth most definitely was pork-flavoured, and when I asked, my server told me that all of their broths were actually tonkotsu. Their specialty is a blend of tonkotsu with the other three traditional types - not quite representative of Hakodate ramen, nor Hokkaido ramen, but their own experimentation. The four types of broths available at the Toronto location were shio, shoyu (soy sauce), miso and kara (spicy), which covers all the traditional types of ramen available. (Sadly, tomato ramen doesn't look to be going mainstream anytime soon!)

I found my bowl very hearty, but a tad too salty in comparison to other broths I've enjoyed - even for salt-broth ramen, it was a bit overwhelming for me. I hoped it was an isolated incident, but other reviews seem to indicate that this is characteristic of their recipes. My companion, enjoying the kara miso version, did not have the same complaint. That is not to say that I didn't enjoy it - it was excellent, and the size of the meal was pretty much perfect, but I might go for a different type of broth next time. And definitely their specialty, tokusen toroniku - wish I'd given this a shot the first time!

I also ordered as part of the set menu, which meant that I also received a rice bowl, pickles and egg on the side. The egg is my favourite part of a ramen meal, so this was an obvious choice for me, and I went with the char-siu donburi; succulent char-siu and greens atop a bed of rice. The egg was more hard-boiled than soft - it was even a little bit cold, but after spending a few minutes in my soup, it was delicious. The taste was perfect. Somehow I even ended up with two eggs - I think I have one of the kind serving staff to thank for that!

It's a real relief to see the ramen competition increasing in Toronto, and Santouka is doing it absolutely right. The atmosphere of the shop is perfect - I loved the wooden bench seats. The food was excellent and the staff friendly and prompt. I had a nice conversation with our server, who was from Kyushu - now there's some quality ramen! My only issues were the price (a little steep, but that's my complaint about just about every Japanese restaurant in this city except Okonomi House) and the amount of seating. The capacity is definitely going to be an issue for this shop, as there weren't nearly enough seats, and even though we walked in without a wait at 4:30 on a day before the opening had really been made public, by the time we left the line was out the door. It's going to be awhile before you have any hope of slipping into any downtown core ramen restaurant without a wait, though - be patient, because when that bowl of steaming noodles is set in front of you, it's all going to be worth it!

Bota Bota, spa-sur-l'eau

Some of Bota-Bota's water spa facilities

I was in Montreal a few weeks ago for the International Travel and Tourism Show, and in my downtime I took a few hours to do what is probably now my favourite Montreal activity - visiting water spas. Finnish baths are very popular in Quebec, unlike Ontario, and they're a natural choice for a hot springs fan like me.

For this particular visit, my spa of choice was Bota Bota, spa-sur-l'eau; a classy water spa built in a refurbished ferry moored in the Old Port area of Montreal. It was a smidge more expensive than Spa Scandinave, which I visited in May, but to do the three-hour "layover" option on a weekday put the price at $45 (as opposed to the $65 for an all-day pass on a weekend).

The price includes the bathrobe and towel, but not sandals, which are mandatory, so you must bring your own. This seems to be a trend for water spas, or at least ones located in North America. In Japan, nobody wore sandals from bath to bath - why bother? These places do have many other services that the visitor may want to make use of that aren't located in the bathing area - massages, manicures, facial treatments, etc - so sandals are certainly of use to them, but for visitors just on the water circuit, having to buy a pair of flip-flops at the gift shop to get from the changing room to the bath doesn't make a lot of sense to me. Fortunately, I read a review on Yelp mentioning the sandals this time, and dug my summer shoes back out of storage. Body Blitz in Toronto supplied us with sandals, as did Spa Scandinave, so water spa fans should be aware that the rules do change from spa to spa. I recently visited a water spa in Ottawa that didn't even supply their bathrobes with the entry fee - more on that in another post!

Deck 4 sauna, looking out onto Vieux-Montréal

The water circuit at Bota Bota is located almost entirely outdoors, which was a pleasant surprise. There are multiple decks, and the baths are on Decks 3 and 4, on opposite ends of the ship. The open-air bath on Deck 3 is expansive and colourful, with an almost-view of Vieux-Montréal (the sides are a bit too tall to see out comfortably from inside the tub) and a relaxing feeling. There's a cold-water barrel tub located just inside, as well, to submerge in and open the pores. A steam sauna and Finnish sauna round out the circuit on this floor, and bean bag chairs are scattered around inside and out to help make guests comfortable. Deck chairs are also available outside.

Deck 4 has a smaller bath which is more like a hot tub, with water jets. It faces the St. Lawrence River and offers a view of mostly-industrial buildings on the other side. At night, however, this view is very pleasant. An outdoor cold-water barrel bath is located just around the corner, by the deck chairs, and there are spaces here to hang up your robe and towel. This floor also has a Finnish sauna and relaxing space inside.

Reviews I read mentioned that Bota Bota's facilities are a bit cramped, and given that it's located on a refurbished ferry, space is certainly limited. I didn't find it cramped, however, not even in the dressing room. The changing facilities are not the best I've seen, but not bad. I prefer some sort of sterilization when I use public hair items, and Bota Bota did not keep barbicide or a UV sterilization cabinet for its combs, so I was relieved that I remembered to bring my own hair items. I've gotten too used to Japanese super-sento, where you often can take a clean brush from the UV unit, use it for yourself and toss it into a bin to be cleaned and sterilized before it gets re-used. The shampoo and conditioner here were okay, but not great. I did appreciate the presence of a hair straightener, though there weren't many dryers.

Bota-Bota's main draws were the atmosphere and the outdoor baths. You haven't lived until you've relaxed in an outdoor bath in winter! For the price I paid it was a very nice evening, but with Spa Scandinave right down the street and offering free tea and cucumber water as well as sandals, I'm not sure their peak prices are good value. Still, for me, the outdoor bath made it completely worth it, and I hope to go back someday, after I've covered a few more of the spas Montreal offers. Magnifique!

All images courtesy of the Bota Bota website.

TV Japan

We're just getting things set up to move into our new apartment (in what I consider to be "midtown," but to seems native Torontonians would say "uptown") and I came across an ad I had picked up at Bon Odori last year for TV Japan:

• 24 hour broadcasting available everywhere, to bring you the latest news about Japan and the world
• Broadcasting schedule adjusted for each time zone
• Regular live news broadcasts to bring you the latest news available
• Continuous content expansion for information programming, entertainment programming, and cultural / educational programming, plus sports coverage including Grand Sumo Tournaments
• High-quality cultural programming to enhance mutual understanding and foster increased friendly exchange between Japan and the United States / Canada
• Providing “TV JAPAN” to hotels in key cities and resorts, including Hawaii, to better serve travelers on business trips or on vacation.

Well! That's very interesting, indeed. We haven't decided on a cable provider for the new place yet, if we have cable at all, so my question to you Tadaimatte readers - have you tried TV Japan, and if so, how is it? I  may have to go down to the Japan Foundation Library one of these days and check out the programming - I seem to remember you can watch it at the library for free. Hmm!

Book Review - My Year of Meats

My Year of Meats
by Ruth Ozeki
[Amazon U.S. / Amazon Canada]

Have you ever bought a book just because it had a really intriguing title? That was how My Year of Meats by Ruth Ozeki ended up on my Amazon wishlist. Touted as a documentary-style work of fiction, it is both a story of relationships and a critique of the meat industry (which I freely admit I am a consumer of, so reading this book gave me the heebie-jeebies on occasion). The dynamics of the two main characters seemed, I imagined from the synopsis, very interesting indeed, and they did not disappoint. The narration is primarily from the point of view of a Japanese-American woman named Jane, who is hired to work for a Japanese studio producing a television show called "My American Wife." The show explores the lives of American families and is sponsored by BEEF-EX, promoting the use of American beef in Japan. (I only ever remember buying Australian beef in Japan, but what do I know!) The rigid rules imposed on her direction - only "perfect" Caucasian wives cooking with real American beef - cause Jane to stretch further and further in trying to show not just storybook people, but real families of different races, orientations and religions.

Alongside Jane's narrative is the story of Akiko, wife of Jane's boss and a very delicate woman struggling with abuse, infertility and an eating disorder. Her husband forces her to watch "My American Wife" and rate it as well as preparing all the recipes to help her increase her weight. His actions, however, cause her only to grow further away from him, and she becomes emotionally invested in the families Jane selects from the show. She grows out of her complacency and begins to really think about what she wants for her life.

Toward the end of the novel, the documentary side of the story becomes quite harsh as Jane exposes the truth behind the chemicals, hormones and terrible conditions the animals are living in. Soon, it becomes her personal mission not just to hint at the dark side of the industry, but to expose it fully to the public.

I enjoyed My Year of Meats, though at times I felt it focused too much on the anti-industry theme and not as much on the characters as I wished. Still, it was an interesting way of presenting a topic that the average person might not be likely to pick up a book about. For the most part, I liked the characters - Akiko was sympathetic and well-written; Jane's perspective was much harder to identify with, but interesting nonetheless. I enjoyed the minor characters like Miss Helen, whom we saw very briefly but received a very realistic impression of. Others, like Mr. Ueno, seemed to fall a bit flatter.

All in all, it was a good read and a good length for this type of story. Toward the end, I was growing slightly weary of Jane's point of view, but the Akiko scenes eased this considerably. Of course, once I had finished the book, I was also immediately considering veganism! Perhaps it's just a weak will, but Jane's narrative had me wanting to start myself on a shojin ryori diet right away. I think I eat too much red meat...

Check out Ruth Ozeki's My Year of Meats on Amazon.com or Amazon.ca!

Game Center CX

Cover of the Retro Game Master/Game Centre
CX DVD collection

I am so, so excited for the English-subtitled DVD release of Game Center CX (Retro Game Master), which ships out to pre-orderers on Amazon tomorrow! (Or, if you're in Canada, Amazon.ca is actually carrying it for $10 cheaper, to my surprise!)

This amazing television show was a big thing for me during my last year in Japan. It's been running for almost ten years, but I actually didn't hear about it until it was in its eleventh season! Comedian Arino Shinya, one-half of the famous Osakan team Yoiko, is the host and star of Arino's Challenge, what was once a small segment but quickly grew into a one-hour television show about retro video games. Arino, a fan of games of all types, looks like your typical middle-aged salaryman and while he struggles often to get through even easy games, is incredibly tenacious - this man somehow beat Ninja Gaiden, but took hundreds of lives while playing Super Mario 3. 

I originally caught wind of this show on YouTube and though I didn't have the channel that it aired on, I rented the DVDs, one by one. It's a very popular show - our nearest Tsutaya had gaps in its library every time I went. (I had to bike 35 minutes away that first time just to get Volume 1!) And when I was sure that I was going to watch regularly, I went ahead and got FujiTV One, FujiTV Two and FujiTV NEXT on my beloved SkyPerfect satellite dish. 

It's funny to look at it that way now, but leaving behind the brand-new episodes of Game Center CX was a heartbreaker when I left Japan! There are ways to see some of these, of course, thanks to the Internet, but there was something special about sitting down on Thursday nights to see a brand-new episode right when it aired. My friends and I would watch the raw episodes over Skype as a group, with me providing scant real-time translations while Arino provided the laughs. Many times I would come home from work and head straight to Skype to pick out an episode with the others to watch that day. This was three years ago - well before GCCX was known by many English-speakers.

Luckily for me, since coming home, the series has gained a little more popularity in the west. The Nintendo DS game didn't make much of a splash when it was localized, unfortunately, but I feel that was the timing - if the show had come out in North America first, maybe it would have been different. Gaming website Kotaku even aired 12 episodes on their website in 2011 under the title of “Retro Game Master,” though for me these were a massive disappointment - the episodes had everything except the main game challenge taken out, and the dubbing was terrible. The translations were dubious at best and many details left out. 

However...what Kotaku did do was bring a lot of attention to the show, and that's why we're now getting those episodes, overhauled, on DVD by Discotek Media and translated with subtitles by a fan with genuine passion for the series!

Sadly, the show still can't be released intact - it doesn't contain many segments due to licensing issues, though the Japanese DVD releases omitted these as well. Still, even if it can't be perfect, I am so ready to support this release, just to bring more Game Center CX fans to the world and encourage more DVDs down the line. GCCX will always be a nostalgic reminder of my hobbies in Japan!

So get out there and buy it! If you're a fan of video games at all, you don't want to live even another week without seeing this show!

More on the Zojirushi Sale

I know I've already tweeted about this today, but I'm so pleased to actually see Amazon Canada promoting a rice cooker sale!

I bought my own rice cooker from Amazon U.S. because the price difference was quite severe at the time, but it's much closer with this sale. Finding one locally just wasn't going to happen - after coming back from Japan and going a few months with a $35 Dominion rice cooker, I resolved to buy a proper rice cooker the next time I was in the U.S., and have not been disappointed. My rice cooker sings to me and bakes cakes.

You can also buy electric pots during the sale, which, if you remember my article on tea, I can no longer live more than five minutes without. Electric pots are so expensive to buy no matter whether you're looking local or online, and here in Toronto they're more often than not programmed in Korean or Chinese rather than English/Japanese. If you've been thinking about picking one up, you're probably not going to find one in English for less than $100, and Zojirushi is the best of the best, so why not?

...and now I think I could go for some tea, myself!

B-Side Label

Which way!?

In Japan, I often spent a lot of time wandering big department stores like LOFT and Tokyu Hands, just looking at all the things for sale. While we have plenty of department stores here in Canada, none of them had the sort of novelty value of Tokyu Hands!

One thing that regularly caught my eye when shopping was the display of "B-Side Label" stickers at both of the above stores. B-Side is a brand of pop art stickers with a wide range of artists. Their stickers are often music-oriented, but I loved in particular the designs that took familiar things (like the Japanese highway sign above) and changed them. The "Warning" labels are also quite funny. This was a type of art humour that was much harder to find in Japan (I suppose since it was considered punkish or underground), and I loved looking through the racks of stickers whenever I visited LOFT or Tokyu Hands.

Many of B-Side Label's designs are written in English, so you can check out most of their designs at their online shop, right here.

My Darling is a Foreigner

The first two volumes of My Darling is a Foreigner

I have a tough time with reading in Japanese. It's unfortunate, but I've never been a patient person - this is primarily why I fail at baking, drawing, and other hobbies that require the simple skill of waiting. I have a tendency to rush - and it makes language-learning particularly hard.

For a time, I tried reading manga in Japanese to help encourage my reading skills. I tend to like the kind of manga that comes chock-full of big, complicated words and no furigana at all, though (Tezuka Osamu, I'm looking at you!) so this quickly became a failed effort. The amount of dictionary lookups it took to get through a chapter of Detective Conan made the pace mind-numbingly slow. At some point, I found Chi's Sweet Home, an adorable cat manga targeted at a younger age group, but found that not quite challenging enough. I was enjoying, but not really learning anything new when I read.

Recently, though, I've found a happy medium in「ダーリンは外国人」; My Darling is a Foreigner. I bought the two first volumes of My Darling is a Foreigner from Honto back in June, as my 'test' purchase from them to gauge the shipping costs. (Came to ¥800 - fantastic!) It's the story of a mixed married couple; she Japanese, he American with Italian-Hungarian heritage. It is a very nice departure from the usual "Japanese girl meets foreign man" plot, as the leading man, Tony, is a linguist who's very interested in wordplay and the leading lady and artist of the story, Saori, is a manga artist. They are not, by any stretch, your typical mixed couple living in Japan! There was even a comedy movie a few years back based on the franchise (it wasn't bad at all, though it also wasn't quite in line with the books) and I used to see animations based on Tony on the Yamanote Line media monitors. Natsukashii, ne!

The main draw of My Darling is a Foreigner for me, right now, is the level and pace of the comics as a study tool. The short illustrated stories in the books are usually just long enough to get in some good reading practice, and often address things that are funny to me as a linguist and student of Japanese, which makes it a perfect choice for aspiring JLPT test-takers.

The first volume, I had actually already read in the form of a translation - a bilingual version of the book was published while I was in Japan. The alternate title of one of the English prints, which was offered for a time on Amazon, was "Is He Turning Japanese?" It's still in print in the bilingual format in Japan, but much tougher to find on Amazon, so I'd recommend using the Honto.jp link I provided above if you'd like to pick it up.

Reading it in its native Japanese has been much more of a challenge than reading the bilingual version, and I can stop myself more easily from peeking at the English now, though that would certainly be a help when I'm stuck! It's good that you can enjoy these books on either level, in any case - with the English text, or without. When I finish this set, I'm definitely going to pick up the next one!

Reverse Culture Shock In Comic

Today I ran across the webcomic of a girl who'd just come back from studying in Japan for five weeks and uploaded some of her reverse culture shock impressions to her website. Reverse culture shock is the entire reason I decided to start this blog, so I thought I'd share her site with you!

Check it out at I think in comics! Her comics and photos about Japan during her stay are also really great - I think I see where my afternoon's going...

Automatic Takoyaki Maker

I cannot believe this is a real thing!

Perfectly cooked!

If you remember my post from a few weeks ago about my undying love for takoyaki, you'll likely remember that I mentioned making it from scratch can be a little tedious, unless you have the patience to sit and watch the grill and turn each takoyaki on time. (This is likely why most people have takoyaki parties, so that they can enjoy themselves  together and divide up the work!) 

However, a website called JapanTrendShop apparently sells automatically rotating grills to help you with the difficult parts! The Takoyaki Factory Ton Ton has a motor that flips the takoyaki over as it cooks to make perfectly-shaped balls at home. A little expensive, but the kit even includes a long-stemmed pot for easy batter pouring, the special brush to oil the grill, and the skewers. If I did not already have the electric takoyaki grill I brought home from Japan, I would be all over this!

Nikkei View

Little Tokyo Los Angeles

Whenever I'm at the computer looking for some light essay-reading on Japan, I often head straight to Gil Asakawa's Nikkei View archives. Mr. Asakawa does run a blog for NV now, but I find myself really interested in the things posted on Nikkei View back in the late 90s and early 2000s. Life has certainly changed since then!

Mr. Asakawa is a third-generation Japanese American who started Nikkei View as a weekly online column to write about pop culture and politics from a Japanese American perspective. There are a lot of good themes in his writing and plenty of information about Japanese culture presented in a way Westerners can really understand well. 

If you're looking for some good reading from a nikkei perspective, I really recommend checking out the column archive or following Mr. Asakawa's current blog!

Honto.jp

Mail call!

The world has gotten smaller, but it certainly hasn't gotten any easier for Canadians trying to buy Japanese books. Since coming home, I've spent considerably more money on shipping reading material to me than I am on the reading material itself...and the selection is very hit-or-miss when I do find an online business (usually American) that will send me my books affordably. On a few occasions, I've bought from Bookweb, the online version of Kinokuniya U.S.; as well as Amazon.jp, to great expense. However, I may have found a great solution this time with Honto, a Japanese site that offers at-cost shipping abroad. The two books I purchased from them cost me ¥800 in shipping; pretty much exactly what I would have spent had I walked down to the Japan Post office in Osaka myself, and I paid the cover price on the books rather than the import markup. Great deal! Kinokuniya U.S. is fast and has plenty in stock, but paying double the cover price AND their pricey shipping to Canada is rough, so I'm thrilled to find Honto. Just click on the tab for International Shipping when it asks you to input your address, and away you go!

Any other readers have suggestions for Japanese online bookshops? I'd love to hear them!

Okonomi House

Osaka-style okonomiyaki at Okonomi House in Toronto!

I briefly mentioned Okonomi House last week in my post about Tokyo Grill's hiyashi chuka, but I didn't imagine I'd have a chance to get out there and take photographs for a proper review anytime soon. Somehow, though, whenever I get within three blocks of Bay and Charles, the craving for okonomiyaki grows too strong to resist!

Entrance - the sign to the left, of
course, reads okonomiyaki!

Okonomiyaki, for those unfamiliar, is a speciality dish that both Osaka and Hiroshima lay claim to. Okonomi House serves the Osakan version - a savoury pancake filled with shredded cabbage; grilled and topped with a Worcestershire-like sauce and a dot of mayonnaise. In Japan, the mayo - Kewpie mayo, of course - is often laid out in stripes and then topped with shaved bonito and aonori, seaweed flakes. 

This may sound like a lot to handle for those inexperienced with the Japanese palette (says my roommate: "I hate cabbage!" yet she loves okonomiyaki!), but I've actually found this dish to be a fabulous gateway to the land of non-sushi Japanese food. It's most often described as a "Japanese pancake" or "Japanese pizza" - neither of these are even close to accurate - and is one of the two 'safe' foods I've introduced to friends and family that everyone has liked. (The other being tonkatsu.) Even though it contains cabbage and has fish flakes and mayonnaise on top, which are all warning signs, the combination always works out - many times, I depended on that little mom and pop shop next to my apartment to start off someone's visit to Osaka with some real okonomiyaki or takoyaki.

Okonomi House - Fine Japanese Cuisine

Toronto's Okonomi House is not exactly next door, and it isn't quite that same fluffy, airy style that I came to expect in Osaka, but it's the closest one could ever hope to get without actually hopping on a flight to KIX. The restaurant has been a fixture at Bay and Charles since 1978, and it's not hard to see why - every time I go there, day or night, the place always has customers. I love the 70s decor, and the fact that even though you don't cook the okonomiyaki yourself (a popular choice at Osaka restaurants), you can still watch it being made through the glass wall by sitting at the bar. The interior of this place is not so different from the izakayas I used to visit with JET friends, and the iconic chochin lanterns are very like the ones that hang outside of restaurants in Japan.

The food, of course, is fabulous. While the other dishes as all right, if a little on the Westernized side (teriyaki and yakisoba, and I still haven't found anyplace in Toronto to get the perfect yakisoba), it's the okonomiyaki that is the superstar here. I've tried a few versions, but I keep coming back to the pork okonomiyaki, which is considered the 'standard' type in Japan. I cannot say I recommend the chicken - the texture and way it is cut just doesn't lend itself well to this style of dish. Thin strips of pork or beef, though, nice and browned on the edges, are perfect. The scallop version is supposed to be very popular as well. 

Okonomi House's cute chochin, paper lanterns

You can tell that Okonomi House has adapted its own style over the years, whether to better suit the clientele of Toronto or the owner's preference, so it's sometimes a not quite what former expats or Japanese nationals living in Canada would expect. The first time I ordered, I was shocked to see that the bonito and aonori were extras that you had to request, but Canadian diners might have initially shied away from them. The size of the portions are also smaller than standard, and it's almost certain that I will leave a little bit hungry - or eat half of my dining companion's entrée. An exchange student friend was aghast to see the heavy irons used to press the pancakes into dense discs - in the town where she grew up, she had never eaten an okonomiyaki that wasn't fuwa-fuwa; 'fluffy,' and the outside of Okonomi House's okonomiyaki are also softer and less crunchy than she was used to. I heard somewhere that this technique is more common in southwestern Japan, as well as the placement of the mayo in a dollop in the centre of the pancake, unlike the usual striping you'd find in Osaka. Chicken wasn't something either of us ever saw in Japan, either, but the whole design is supposed to be 'as you like it'! If Canadians like chicken in their okonomiyaki and would prefer to skip the extras, so be it. It may not be 100% perfect and authentic, but I'd wager a guess that the cook probably knows his clientele better than I do.

Myself, I'd be thrilled to see a mochi-and-cheese option, and maybe a modan-yaki; a popular variant made with yakisoba noodles on the bottom - but I doubt the menu here is changing anytime soon, and we certainly don't want to risk the prices going up! Okonomi House is the best deal in town when it comes to Japanese food; my usual lunch of a pork okonomiyaki with aonori and bonito, with a cup of green tea (sadly, the teabag version), is well under $10. It's also a place I don't feel uncomfortable coming to alone when I need to, which is always a plus for a downtown core restaurant, and they offer their food to-go.

Another great thing about Okonomi House is the service. Every time I've gone, the servers have been friendly and super-attentive, checking on you just the right amount. Once or twice, the servers have picked out something in my pronunciation of words and asked if I spoke Japanese, leading to a conversation, which is something I can safely say has never happened dining anywhere else in Toronto and always makes me happy. The friendly atmosphere is (well, besides the okonomiyaki!) is what keeps me coming back every time!

Yum!

Quest for Kochakaden: Kirin Healthy Milk Tea

I visited T&T Supermarket recently after I found myself up at Promenade Circle, a fair way's out of my usual neighbourhoods. Promenade is close enough to us, but it's past Steeles Avenue, so anyone in the Toronto area will know that it therefore costs twice as much each way to get there on the bus. If you're feeling energetic, though, you can walk from Steeles, and that's just what we did.

At T&T, I discovered something unexpected and amazing:

Healthy!?

!

!!

Admittedly, I've been burned by Kirin before. As I mentioned in in my previous post about milk tea, I find Kirin's traditional blend to be overly cloying. Other people frequently say it is the perfect sweetness level, but I can't handle it, and I didn't have any better luck with Kirin Afternoon Tea Milk Tea Special, the only other version sold here in Toronto. That one is made from Assam tea, but still no dice. The 1/2 calorie Kirin might work for me, but I haven't found it here.

So I wasn't getting my hopes too high for "Healthy Milk Tea, Yasuragu Earl Grey," but the promise on the bottle of lavender and earl grey (this was my favourite Starbucks latte flavour in Japan) wooed me. At $2.99, much cheaper than my imported Kochakaden, I took home a bottle and hoped for the best.

I took it home and kept it in the fridge for a few days, waiting for the right time. Per 100ml, this stuff is just 12 calories and no sugar - I supposed that would be why it's marketed as 'healthy.' Sweeteners abound! This Earl Grey/lavender variant is obviously based on the regular Kirin Healthy no-sugar version that I have yet to see around Toronto, and is imported by Uncle T Food in Richmond.

The ingredients list seemed standard enough. Milk, skim milk powder, black tea, whole milk powder, salt, artificial flavour (I suppose that'd be the lavender), lecithin, ascorbic acid, acesulfame K, sucralose, stevia. With that combination I was at a loss what to expect. After a good chilling, though, I opened it up and tried it...

Fantastic.

It is almost as good as Kochakaden and much better than Kirin's standard blend! I am very pleased. And given how ridiculously fattening standard milk tea is, I think this is a very acceptable substitute while I am hoarding my limited stash of Kocha. Sadly, with my luck, it's not going to stay on the shelves for long...special-flavour products fly off the shelves in Japan. Soon, I'm sure I'll be mourning Kirin Healthy Milk Tea Lavender Earl Grey alongside all those other wonderful seasonal flavours.

Until then...I think I need another trip to T&T.

Hot Springs Story

I am addicted to an onsen simulation game. There are pretty much no words for how pathetic this is.

HSS during the fall season

About a year ago I downloaded Kairosoft's Hot Springs Story, the English translation, for my smartphone. The premise of the game is simple: You are the owner of a brand-new hot spring resort, and you must construct and expand a spa good enough to draw thousands of visitors from all walks of life. You're given a budget and a small selection of rooms and services to start out with, then let loose on the property. The free version lets you play one in-game year, and I liked it enough to buy the full game after that.

Sim games have never been a particularly big passion of mine (though as of late I've developed an infatuation with Tiny Tower as well) but the idea of building my own onsen hooked me, as I'm sort of a hot spring nut. I was thrilled to see the tiny pixelated tatami rooms and baths. I got my resort started, and from then on I was playing day and night; in the car, at work, at home, in bed. Eventually I beat the game, but I could not complete the final challenge - earning the approval of Chimpan-Z to unlock the giant ofuro, as seen in the image above. I just could not get Chimpan-Z to like my resort enough, and after dozens of tries, I let the game sit unfinished.

HSS during the winter season

Recently, though, when I got the Amazon Kindle Fire for my birthday, I thought I'd see if Hot Springs Story would work on it. The idea of playing it on a larger screen was very enticing. Unfortunately, the full version of the game isn't available on the Amazon Marketplace yet, but I did end up starting a fresh game on my phone...and immediately falling into the exact same trap of playing it for hours and hours on end. I can't seem to get enough of this game! The spritework is just fantastic, and I love the changing of the seasons and the seemingly-infinite types of guests who show up at my resort. The concept is so uniquely Japanese - and playing Hot Springs Story slightly offsets how much I miss the real thing right now. It can be a slow-paced game and frustrating at times (you would not believe how much trouble I had getting a beautician to open up shop for me) but is actually even more fun on the second go-around. If you have an iPhone or Android, you definitely want to give this one a try!

Glancing at Kairosoft's page, it would seem they have a bunch of similar games as well - Pocket Academy and Oh! Edo Towns both look really interesting. There's a brand-new Kairosoft game in the Google Play Store for Android, as well, called The Sushi Spinnery. It looks so adorable that I cannot resist going to check it out immediately. ...Yeah, Kairosoft games are definitely a trap. Beware! But go check out Hot Springs Story, of course!

Book Review - Orchards

Orchards
by Holly Thompson
[Amazon US / Amazon Canada]

I've mentioned before that I am very fond of Holly Thompson's work - her novel Ash is my favourite title set in Japan and among my favourite books, period. When I saw that she had written another book, I picked it up with hardly a glance at the summary or even the reviews on Amazon.

I was surprised, when I finally held it in my hands, to discover that Orchards is written entirely in free verse.

I'll admit that poetry isn't usually a lure for me. I was a little dismayed, especially since the synopsis given was very interesting - but after opening the cover, I never looked back. Orchards' style is entrancing and lyrical - when I realized it was poetry, I had briefly envisioned a novel in the style of Basho. Fortunately, I found this to be much lighter reading, in style if not subject matter.

Orchards is certainly aimed at a younger reading audience than Ash was, though I still felt it was mature enough to be appreciated by adults. The length is quite short in comparison to the book's thick appearance, however, as the poems are laid out stylistically. You can expect to finish this quickly, so the reader who prefers a longer story, or is leery of a teenage protagonist, should beware.

The main character is Kanako Goldberg, a half-American, half-Japanese girl born and raised in New York. After the suicide death of one of her classmates, Ruth, due to bullying, Kana is sent to Japan for the summer to live with her grandmother and work on the family's mikan farm. While she speaks Japanese fluently, she struggles with fitting in, missing her parents and sister, and living under the rule of her strict and traditional grandmother, who only recently has accepted the American branch of her family. Kana is very thoroughly American, despite her heritage, and feels their differences at every turn.

Her biggest hurdle is working through the death of her classmate. While she was not directly responsible for Ruth's death, she feels immense guilt and a definite sense that Ruth was not so different from her and her friends. The book reads like a letter to Ruth as Kana tries to come to terms with the loss - and ultimately, prepare herself for what might come next.

The pace and voice of Orchards are both fantastic, but the imagery is bar-none. The author did an immense amount of research into mikan farming and was able to paint a very realistic scene of Kana's life on the farm, in the backwoods of Shizuoka prefecture. I could almost smell the mikan as I read! Like in Ash, the setting is the strongest feature, though the plot and characters are hardly lacking. Kana is perfectly developed, and the supporting cast receives just enough care as to make them realistic. It is Kana that the reader comes to feel for - and while her issues may not be close to the reader's heart at the beginning, by the end, she becomes very real indeed.

Check out Holly Thompson's Orchards on Amazon or Amazon Canada!

Tokyo Grill's Hiyashi Chuka

Last week I was in downtown Toronto for some errand-ing and I thought I'd pop over to Tokyo Grill and grab something quick to eat. This homestyle restaurant is a great, authentic little spot, that I don't eat at often enough because it's just too close to my favourite Japanese restaurant, Okonomi House. (Should probably write up a review of them sometime!) But in the blistering heat, it really wasn't an okonomiyaki kind of day, so off to Tokyo Grill I went, in search of something lighter.

And I was not disappointed.

Hiyashi chuka! Yes!

I don't think I've mentioned before how indispensable hiyashi chuka was in getting me through those hot Osaka summers. When it was pushing 30 degrees Celsius for days on end, I had no motivation whatsoever to eat. Cooking in my tiny, un-air-conditioned kitchen was a nightmare and while I did occasionally put my poor bentou-making skills to use, lunches were very often forfeited on the worst days. Until I discovered hiyashi chuka, that is - a lovely Chinese-style cold noodle dish, with strips of ham or chicken, bean sprouts, slices of egg and julienned cucumber mixed together with a sweet vinegar-sesame dressing. There were times when I ate hiyashi chuka at lunch for days on end. I craved it.

And now, here it is, at Tokyo Grill in Toronto!

I'll admit, the price was a huge turnoff. $11.99 is on the expensive side when you've been kicking ¥400 Lawson lunches for as long as I had. When the dish came, I immediately knew why the price was so high - this plate of noodles was enormous. It was certainly more than I could finish myself, even after an afternoon yoga class and walking all the way to their location near Wellesley from Broadview Station. On top of that, it was too much food to be comfortable for a summer lunch - one of the things I loved this dish for. If it were up to me, a half-plate at half the price would have been perfect.

I'm told that Ajisen Ramen also does hiyashi chuka, though I haven't tried their version yet. I'll be sure to do that soon. As to whether I would recommend this, I would - the ingredients were great, the dressing tasted perfect, and the noodles (while I was surprised to find them white) were just the right consistency. My only advice to you would be to come with a very big appetite, or bring a friend!

JET in the 1990s

Showa Retro soft drinks

I'll admit that I'm a fan of all things retro, and I love learning about 1960s/70s/80s/90s culture even here at home. That's probably why I so enjoy comparing it to those decades in Japan. Max Danger is a favourite because it is so very bubble-economy 80s in its presentation, and I love that. I've also done my fair share of watching/reading about the 1964 Summer Olympics and the evolution of Tokyo street fashion.

Beppu, Oita

It's easy to find clinical, historical information about Japan in that time period, if you know the right places to look. Much more difficult to find  are realistic, personal accounts of those years, written not by businessmen or historians but by real people who lived and worked in the Japan outside of Tokyo. One such goldmine I have come across is nipponDAZE, the blog of two JETs living in Oita, Kyushu from 1989-1991. (The JET Programme officially began in 1987.) They worked at a local school and one brought her son to Japan - it's pretty rare for JETs to come with children nowadays, so I thought that was interesting and great. I found the blog by chance while looking for Oita information, as I had the good fortune to visit and fall in love with Beppu in 2010. The photos and stories of these JETs, who took the effort to upload their journals from that time, are a fantastic window into what it was like to be a JET in the earliest days of the programme.