Category: Japan

Furikake (Japanese Condiment): Attention Crazy Spicers!

Seth Roberts4 Comments

From a trip to Japan a friend gave me a mystery jar of some sort of flavoring. It turned out to be wasabi-flavored furikake. Furikake is used to season rice, I learned. It vaguely resembles salt and pepper but is far more complex and powerful. A version I bought has 25 ingredients, including sesame, wheat flour, lactose, salt, MSG, salmon, fish bone powder, and soybean protein. I use it many ways: on roast beef, eggs, and yogurt, for example. It is the easiest way I know to make hamburgers taste good.

The nearest Japanese market (in Berkeley) has 25 different types, I discovered. They cost about $4 each. I bought four. I’m going to buy ten more, to use for crazy spicing (randomly varying the smell of food to prevent strong smell-calorie associations from forming).

Assorted Links

Seth Roberts8 Comments

 

Assorted Links

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Japanese Discouragement of Foreign Visitors

Seth Roberts2 Comments

In a post about Tokyo, I said it was a tragedy that there were so few foreigners there. You might think that someone in power in Japan would figure out that America’s biggest strength is that foreigners want to move there (for example), but apparently not. A Tokyo University student told me today that at her school, the dormitory for foreign students is one hour away from the campus.

Where to Buy Miso in Tokyo

Seth Roberts5 Comments

In Tokyo I went to a shop that specialized in miso. It sold about thirty varieties, several of which I liked very much. There is a choice of packaging: hard or soft. The hard packages could be used for gifts. The phone number of the shop is 03(3841)7116, which you can use to google it. It is in the Hanakawado district, between Kototoi Dori and Edo Dori, near the Senso-ji Temple and the Amuse Museum. It is open 9 am to 6 pm. Maybe closed Sunday.

Address: 2 – 8 2-chome, Taito-ku, Tokyo Hanakawado 〒 111-0033, which 0.23 km from the Asakusa Station.

Incidentally, nowadays I tend to eat miso with a poached egg. Boil 0.8 cup water, add egg, cook until poached, add the miso which has been mixed with 0.1 cup water.

The Beauty and Tragedy of Tokyo

Seth Roberts17 Comments

I told a Chinese friend I would stop in Tokyo on my way home. “Tokyo is a beautiful city,” she said. “Sort of,” I said. After a day in Tokyo, I realized she was right. Tokyo is beautiful, not sort of beautiful. Tokyo business signs and outdoor advertising aren’t beautiful but they are swamped by many things that are:

  1. Small irregular streets. On foot, the weird address system works fine.
  2. Plenty of parks and greenery.
  3. Many small neat attractive shops selling a huge variety of goods. A miso store, for example. Many parts of Tokyo are like Greenwich Village, in other words.
  4. Clean convenient free public restrooms. Unlike other cities, as I’ve said.
  5. Excellent service in shops. Unlike Paris and Amsterdam.
  6. Excellent map and direction signage. In subways, for example, way-finding signs tell the distance, not just the direction, of the destination. This is so basic (distance and direction are orthogonal) yet other places, such as New York, don’t do it. Such creative attention to detail, such improvement on something so old (wayfinding signs) isn’t just helpful, it’s inspiring. I came across a construction site sign that appeared to say how loud the work would be. Again, serious improvement on tradition.
  7. Everyone I asked for directions was helpful, although many were surprisingly ignorant (e.g., didn’t know which direction to Roppongi).
  8. So very walkable. Partly because the streets are curvy, partly there are so many little interesting things everywhere I went but also because when I got tired of random wandering, I could simply go to the nearest subway station and get to my ultimate destination.
  9. The proportions of buildings. Slightly thin, slightly tall.
  10. The repeated exterior details of apartment buildings. They are not smooth slabs. They have visible balconies, stairs, etc.
  11. The food shops in the basements of department stores. There are dozens of small booths. One sells miso, another sells pickles, a third sells salads, a fourth sells eel, and so on. Not only is the food itself often beautiful — Japanese food packaging is supremely lovely — but it is beautifully arranged. You could learn a lot about aesthetics (the hidden laws of beauty) by comparing these displays with similar (less attractive) displays in other countries.
  12. Clean air, clean streets. In spite of heavy use.
  13. Well-maintained neat small houses.
  14. Temples scattered throughout the city.
  15. Healthy-looking people, especially old people. I think it’s all the fermented food they eat (e.g., miso, pickles), not the health-care system.

I did not find Tokyo expensive, even with the dollar way down against the yen. I never took a cab (and never wanted to — in Beijing I always want to). Equated for quality, I think Tokyo is cheaper than New York.

The tragedy of Tokyo is the lack of human diversity: few foreigners. Such a great city should draw people from all over the world, but it doesn’t. It has a a lot to teach the rest of us about how to live in cities (for example, where does Japanese perfectionism come from?) but somehow this sharing hasn’t happened. Like a cure for cancer in a journal no one reads.

Tokyo Restaurant Recommendations — and Why They Might Be A Bad Idea

Seth Roberts9 Comments

An earlier post asked for Tokyo recommendations. A kind reader (Andrew Clarke) provided the following recommendations of off-beat restaurants:

One place I always recommend is Andy’s Shinhinomoto, in Yurakucho: https://www.frommers.com/destinations/tokyo/D61101.html. I have never seen a travel show that has covered the place, but it’s a best kept secret within the ex-pat community. Its menu is a standard Japanese Izakaya (pub) menu with some of the freshest sashimi (and fish in general) in Tokyo, and the strangest thing – it’s ran by a long-term British ex-pat, who is so renowned for his ability to pick good ingredients that he selects and delivers fish for several local sushi shops. Upstairs seating is best for atmosphere, but the food is the same downstairs. They have an English menu, and I’d also recommend the fish head and tempura. It’s also not super expensive, somehow I never manage to spend more than 7000Y with alcohol.

Teyandei is another one that I would generally recommend: https://www.bento.com/rev/2133.html. You’ll be lucky if you manage to find this one, most taxi drivers I have ever asked couldn’t find it even with GPS, it’s located in a residential area of the back of Roppongi. Great atmosphere, and again Izakaya style but not fish oriented, and not strictly traditional. The most memorable dish I had was a french baguette, vanilla ice cream and maple syrup slider – which was very good, but to be enjoyed occasionally. Outside of that they have many great dishes, with more of a meaty or stuff on sticks vibe.

Last general recommendation is for sushi: https://tokyofood.blog128.fc2.com/blog-entry-52.html. I used to live in Tsukiji town and this place is a friendly joint that attracts many locals in the evening. Probably because it’s not super-expensive, but great quality and I particularly recommend the Uni if that is your thing. Their ‘aburi (blow torched)’ dishes are great too, and the Aji (mackerel) and the tsuki maguro (marinated tuna).

[follow-up:] The Moroccan place, I’m not sure why I didn’t include this the first time, as it is possibly the most strange and off-the-beaten-path: https://www.dalia58.com/d_map.html. Google Maps. The owner is a Japanese lady who spent 1 year in Morocco on a home stay. She loved the home cooked food and fastidiously learned to replicate them the way only Japanese people can. I learned about from a Moroccan co-worker who swears it’s the most authentic Moroccan food he has had out side his homeland. You definitely need to book ahead, there are only maybe 12 seats in the place and only 4 of those are not on the ground. The menu is fairly small and changes every once in a while as the owner travels back to Morocco regularly, but usually I have the meatball tagine (best), fish tagine, freshly baked wheat bread and vegetable couscous. I have never been there alone, you’d need at least two people to eat all that.

Alexandra Harney, author of The China Price, who has spent years in Tokyo, recommended:

My favorite watering hole: Asahi Shokudo in Nogizaka, near Tokyo Midtown. Unless you speak Japanese, the best thing to do is probably to have someone call ahead, make a reservation (a very good idea) and fax you a map. Their tel: 03-3402-6797. GREAT food, very good atmosphere, sake good too. It’s not fancy, but authentic and creative.

Tyler Cowen’s forthcoming book (An Economist Gets Lunch: New Rules For Everyday Foodies) says a lot about Japanese food and restaurants. In an email he said “Pierre Gagnaire Tokyo was the best meal I’ve ever had…that is expensive, though.”

I am in Tokyo now. Last night I took a long walk around my hotel (Hotel Changtee), which is in Ikebukuro. I have stayed here three times before. On my walk, for the first time, I noticed a Spanish restaurant (Agalito) a few blocks from my hotel. In Beijing, I often have Japanese food, so I decided to try it. The menu (mostly tapas) looked good. It wasn’t expensive (Ikebukuro is full of relatively cheap restaurants).

I had seven dishes. Every one surprised me and tasted great. I had pickles, a vegetable terrine, deep-fried shrimp and avocado (the avocado was also deep-fried), mackerel, a dish of large mushrooms and bacon, marinated cherry tomatoes (skins removed), and baked/grilled cheese and tomatoes. Far better than the tapas I had in Barcelona (or anywhere else). Far better than the tapas at a Berkeley restaurant (Cesar) next to Chez Panisse owned by Alice Waters’ ex-husband. The pickles were a small dish of carrots, cucumber, cabbage, and red pepper. The best pickles I’ve ever had, and I’ve had pickles hundreds of times, as anyone who knows my passion for fermented food will understand. They are a staple of Japanese and Szechuan cuisine. I’ve had Japanese pickles at dozens of places. The carrot pickles were so good, such a great blend of sweet and sour, so perfectly crunchy, that I want to start trying to recreate them. I didn’t know carrot pickles could be that good.The tomato and cheese dish also opened my eyes. I never knew that cheese and tomatoes could go so well together. I want to get special equipment (the baking pan) just to make this one dish. I want to try many different cheeses and tomatoes to find the best pairing. No meal at Chez Panisse or anywhere else has pushed me to do two new things. A tiny number (five?) have pushed me to do one new thing.

This restaurant is a few blocks from my hotel. No one recommended it. The meal, with drink, cost $60. I’m told that if you ask a Tokyo resident what are your favorite restaurants? they look at you blankly. Now I see why. There are so many great restaurants it doesn’t matter. This meal also taught me that recommendations may be counter-productive. Recommended restaurants are often expensive. Expensive food is likely to require lots of labor, special tools, and expensive ingredients. Making it harder to copy and thus less inspiring. Whereas this “plain” meal, with cheap ingredients and relatively little labor, will continue to influence and teach me whenever I do stuff it has inspired me to do.

Tokyo Visit

Seth Roberts8 Comments

I will be in Tokyo from Friday (January 6) through Tuesday (January 10). If you — my one Tokyo reader — would like to get together, let me know.

If you — my other readers — have suggestions about what to do in Tokyo, let me know those, too.

My overall view of Japan is simple: They understand fermented food. Better than anywhere else (France is second).

A Unified Theory of Japanese Food

Seth Roberts3 Comments

I used to like Japanese food because it was less fattening than other foods — I lost weight eating sushi. Now I like it because the Japanese eat so much fermented food: miso, pickles, yogurt, Yakult, umeboshi (pickled plums), natto, vinegar drinks, and alcoholic beverages. A Tokyo food court might have 20 types of pickles, 15 types of miso, and 10 types of umeboshi.

Abundance of fermented food isn’t the only way Japanese food is unusual. I see Japanese food as an outlier on three dimensions:

  • Use of fish. More fish-centered than any other major cuisine.
  • Beauty. More beautiful than any other cuisine.
  • Fermented food. More fermented food than any other cuisine.

As I’ve said, lightning doesn’t strike twice in one place for different reasons. If two rare events could have a common explanation, they probably do. I’ve discussed before why a fish-centered cuisine could lead to better visual design: Because cooks can’t use complex flavorings to show how much they care (it would make all fish taste the same), they take pains with appearance to convey this.

What about fermented foods? Here’s an idea: In the development of Japanese cooking, lack of complex flavoring of main dishes increased desire that other parts of the meal provide complexity, which is what fermented foods do so well. For example, Japanese meals often include pickles. We want a certain amount of complexity in our food, in other words. Most cuisines provide complexity via complex spice mixtures (mole sauce, harissa, curry powder); Japanese cuisine provides it with fermented foods. (I love Japanese curry, but it isn’t common.)

This explanation predicts that desire for complexity is like thirst: It grows over time and can be satisfied. Prediction 1: Eating one complex food will make a second one will taste less pleasant, just as drinking one bottle of water will make a second bottle of water taste less pleasant. Prediction 2: Over time, the pleasure provided by complexity grows. The same complex-flavored food will taste better at Time 2 than Time 1 if you haven’t eaten anything with a complex flavor between the two times.

My Theory of Human Evolution (baseball park collector)

Seth Roberts7 Comments

Waiting in line at Tokyo immigration control, I met a woman from North Carolina who’d come to Japan for an organized tour of Japanese baseball parks (17 of them). She learned about the tour from a friend. In America, she’s visited 117.

I told her I was a psychology professor and had a theory of evolution in which connoisseurship played a big role. She was a baseball-park connoisseur, I said.

The evolutionary role of connoisseurs and collectors was to provide demand for finely-made stuff — things made by state-of-their-art artisans. Connoisseurs and collectors would pay more for features that had no clear value otherwise. By trading for these things, the connoisseurs and collectors helped the artisans make a living and thereby push their technology further.