If you’d like to download a full PDF copy of this month’s Japanzine for free, please click on this link: http://www.seekjapan.jp/article/jz/2444/DOWNLOAD+Japanzine+November+2009+Issue+HERE!

Here’s a PDF version of the article. To download the full magazine for free please follow this link: http://www.seekjapan.jp/article/jz/2444/DOWNLOAD+Japanzine+November+2009+Issue+HERE!

Perhaps more than other cities, recommendations are essential when dining out in Kyoto. When faced with an infinity of anonymous, pictureless wooden frontages most travelers have no idea where to start and therefore resort to Pizza Hut. Tiny, nondescript restaurants on Kyoto’s are so numerous and so forbidding that for most foreign guests the good places are hidden in plain sight.

This is particularly true of Sakuragawa which you could easily walk past without having any idea of its pedigree. It would be a vulgar display of power for the establishment to advertise its Michelin star, so from outside there are no clues as to what may lay within besides the wooden frontage and the restaurant’s name in indecipherably stylised kanji.

In reality though any trepidation is unwarranted because once you’re seated at the counter no Japanese should be necessary. The head chef is a rather famous and kakkoii (”good looking”) chap named Maeda Yujiro. He will be your culinary safari guide leading you on the trail of taste-bud tickling treats, shooting you down some of the rarest gastronomic big game and depositing you safely back at camp with the lion’s head trophy of a bulging belly to hang on your metaphorical wall.

One of the most elegant touches of Sakuragawa and other great Japanese restaurants is the ingredients, dishware and atmosphere are supposed to change to reflect and amplify the season.  If there’s something you specifically want to try you could call ahead to check its availability. If not you place yourself in the capable hands of the chef and he makes your life richer by tinkling your taste buds like a virtuoso pianist.

In cherry blossom season chef Maeda-san uses sakura petals in his dishes. In fresh October cherry blossom isn’t available in great quantities but the chef makes liberal and spectacular use of chrysanthemum petals. Our course included chrysanthemum and mushroom dishes with a memorable sour bite behind the smooth, creamy mushrooms.

There was mullet sashimi with wasabi of such quality it added to the flavour but barely had any heat to it at all. The smoky, umami flavour was provided by the seared barracuda and sea bream skin crisps.  The latter in particular had a deep, smoky flavour that repeatedly shot me into Proustian involuntary flashbacks to my childhood without me being able to place my finger on what exactly it was reminiscent of. If anyone can tell me what English childhood snack these crispy skins are reminiscent of I would be eternally grateful.

There were daring eggplant dishes, opulent abalone dishes and mysterious horse-head fish dishes. Most of the dishes contained ingredients I had never heard of in Japanese OR English. It was a mystifying and bewildering array of flavors and textures I never knew existed. It was a meal that stretches you. It is more of an experience than just a meal, emotional and memorable.

One of the most surprising dishes of the evening was the dessert which the chef introduced as harumaki anko (sweet red bean paste spring rolls) with kuri aisu (Japanese chestnut ice-cream). You may think you’re full way before this beguiling mix of savoury and sweet arrives, but it’s moreish enough to overcome any misgivings you may have.

Perhaps the best way to describe Sakuragawa is with a simile. Good food, like good art is supposed to challenge us. It shouldn’t be expected to stoop to please us. We should be prepared to better ourselves and to take up the challenge of understanding why Eisenstein, Hegel or Bach are worth the effort. That’s the kind of restaurant you should expect from Sakuragawa.

Payment Since a service charge is included in the bill, you don’t need to leave a gratuity. At authentic, high-end restaurants, payment is accepted at each table. At more casual places you’re expected to take the bill to a register near the entrance. Sakuragawa (Kiyamachi-dori Oike-agaru, Nakagyo-ku, Kyoto; 075-255-4477; open 11:30 A.M. to 2 P.M. and 5 to 9 P.M., closed Sunday).  Dinner: around ￥２００００ each.

In Omihachiman, Shiga, drive to Nakaki Honda dealership on Route 8 and turn right at the next traffic lights. Follow the road until you hear the bikes and here you’ll find a motocross track open to the public.

For ¥2000 a day you make use of the track for practice and when you think your skills are good enough you can make a team and enter yourself in the biannual races.

A team of three in an endurance race for three hours twice drives a half hour stretch each and those who place in the top three teams are awarded a trophy at the end.

If you’re a motörhead in need of your adrenaline fix in Kansai get yourself to Route 8 in Omihachiman and take a deep breath of two-strokes in the morning.

These events have dwindled in popularity in recent years so your attendance and support is sure to be appreciated. See you at the track.

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Nowadays that rule is strictly upheld in the name of history. Except for when it isn’t. Which is usually in the name of big business. Today’s shock headline: money holds more clout than history. Kyoto’s local government is still resisting the worst excesses of late capitalism because it knows Kyoto’s cachet relies on it keeping some of its quaintness. If it becomes a concrete jungle like a mini-Osaka it ceases to have a unique selling point. Kyoto city authorities dish out “get out of height restriction free” cards to the highest bidder as a special reward, like a political panda for the leisure and hospitality industry.

Aside from its height, Orrizonte also has a privileged outlook in that it is situated on the east side and thus overlooks the Higashiyama/Gion side of town. It’s the same view you can enjoy from Ace Cafe but as its almost twice as high up and a little closer you can see a vast swathe of Kyoto’s highlights laid out before you like a scale model, from Keage’s Nanzen-ji to Higashiyama’s Chion-in. If you’re new in town, want to get your bearings and have a nice glass of wine to unwind after a long day of exploration Orrizonte comes highly recommended.

The wine is also worth a mention. The fine selection of reds starts at around 1000 yen a glass and the champagne 1600 yen. You may have heard that good reds are hard to come by in Japan. The price is usually double what you’re used to back home so only the poorer specimens make it across the border. As such the average person in Japan finds it to be a cloying and unpleasant drink. Far from letting the wine stand to bring out its full range of flavours reds in Japanese homes tend to be placed straight in the fridge and are often drunk from chilled glasses. Orrizonte’s wine, on the other hand, is the real deal. Crisp, clear and complex. It’s worth every penny if you want to introduce a sake fan to what red wine should taste like when it doesn’t come from a conbini cooler.

http://www.kyotohotel.co.jp/khokura/english/restaurant/orizzonte/index.html

京都府
京都市
中京区
河原町
二条南
入ル一之船入町
53 京都ホテルオークラ　１７Ｆ

Kyoto-fu
Kyoto-shi
Kyochu-ku
Kawahara-chou
Nijo-Minami
Ichinofunairi-chou
53 Kyoto Hotel Okura 17F

日本は急に寒くなって来たね。富裕が嫌いのでもう夏がこいしいいです。 早く新しいアパートに引越ししたいな。

Omihachiman’s mountains have snow on them. Snow BEFORE red autumn leaves. Smashing. There’s only one thing for it – a Sleeveket. You know, for kids!
A blanket with sleeves? I’d imagine this is one of those “only in Japan” moments but I haven’t left Japan for a while so you tell me.

海外で日本はこういう可笑しいグヅで有名です。絶対買わないけどこう言 うのを写真を撮ることは楽しい。

Dear Santa: this Krissmass I wud lyK dis Drabonball coschoom pleeze fankoo
Dear Andy: you’re beyond fully grown. You can have nasal hair trimmers. Platonic affection, Santa.

「何でアンディーは女の子と絵がないのか？」とよく言われる。こう言う コスチュームが好きだからかもしれないな。たのむよ、サンタさん。

You may have heard that Japanese people are reserved in public and are not sexually gregarious. As ever, claiming that one race of people are different from other humans almost always turns out to be orientalism (in the Edward Said sense of the word) and nonsense. With that said, prepare to have your perceptions of Japanese people shaken to their foundations.

I poop you not, these two people moved from another table to this one in a capacity Starbucks in Kyoto, Yamashina tonight. To my horror the guy then straddled the girl’s chair and nudged his crotch closer and closer to her. She then slid her hand into his and he repeatedly pulled his blazer around himself like a shield. She then buried her hand deeper and deeper into his crotch, took hold of his penis and start jerking him off. Wanking him. Tossing him off. Choking his chicken. Spanking his monkey. Bashing his bishop. Slapping his salami. Icing his cake. Making an animal out of his balloon. Hoisting his mainsail. Jump-starting his hadron collider. In a crowded cafe.

One suspects they are a new or illicit couple. Unless it was simply a joke that went wrong:

Horny Girl:
How do you take your coffee?

Sarcastic man:
Oh, the usual way. Rubbed into my erect penis in a crowded cafe while being photographed from behind by a sneaky gaijin holding his iPhone behind his Powerbook until the caffeine enters my bloodtream through osmosis.

Horny girl:
Right you are squire. Have at thee!

They nuzzled, they kissed and they looked around suspiciously. Her arm would stop its jackhammering when the staff walked past and the couple would share another deep kiss, as if to congratulate themselves on having not yet been busted. Somehow they failed to notice that they had inadvertently given me front row seats to the most stomach-turning PDE (public display of erection) imaginable.

A comrade of Of Rice and Zen sat with his back to the couple the whole time, no doubt oblivious, holding a private lesson. As my good friend Scott Casperson said when I told him what I’d seen, the lovebirds gave a whole new meaning to the common English teacher’s expression “holding a private in Starbucks”.

In three years of seeing the most f.u.b.a.r things I’ve ever seen in my life, this has to take the red-bean flavoured cake. It takes that confectionary and rubs it vigorously until the cream squirts out and gets all over the seat.

To my great annoyance, none of the other customers had noticed what was going on. That was until two new female customers arrived. Thankfully one of them noticed what the pair were doing as she approached the table next to me and told her friend. That sat down beside me and I overheard them discussing what was happening under their breath. I nodded that the girl was correct and that I too had noticed.

At this point in time the girl in the photo, having accomplished her Mission Improbable was urging the man to put his hand up her skirt. He tried but couldn’t get his hand up far enough and maintain the thin veil of innocence they thought they’d created. She offered him a pen with reach to better reach her but he, being clearly the more conservative of the pair, declined. She, sensing defeat, gave up her pleading and returned to kneading.

Soon afterward she seemed to get the impression that they had been rumbled. Minutes later the couple stood up to leave. The two friends and I began to discuss what had just taken place. They too were in shock and hadn’t seen anything like it. One of the girls professed to having done something similar, but not in quite so public a setting. She declined to expand any further on that. I think my WTF-o-metre was pretty much maxed out, so I was happy to drop it there.

At this point a foreign girl came in and sat down at the table so we secretly told one of the staff girls what had happened. She apologised and agreed that it might be best the seat was wiped down. She came and eyed up the chair from a distance but the foreign customer didn’t understand why and became uncomfortable. I explained to her that we had just witnessed a “spillage” and that I’d asked the barrista to clean the chair. The girl obligingly removed her bags to allow us access.

The staff girl told me that the couple come in fairly regularly but she’d had no idea what they’d been doing and hadn’t noticed when she’d squeezed past to take the garbage out. We all agreed it was probably against health and safety regulation, especially with kids in the cafe.  Among our myriad questions were these.

1. When the staff walked past them to take the garbage out she was literally inches from this guy’s back. If we assume these two aren’t married, are probably coworkers and if we take into account that she was a lot more insistent that this happen than he was, can we also assume that these two young professionals probably possess the necessary funds to go to a Love Hotel but eschewed that option in favour of having sex in a very public place?

2. Have you ever seen anything like this in your life?

Niō literally means two kings and refer to the two large guardians either side of Buddhist temple gates. A holds a lightning bolt and Un wields a large sword. Iconographically the pair are thought to represent two sides of one deity name Misshaki Kongō, although there are competing views as to their original identities.

When facing temples gates, the (camera) right hand figure is known as “A” and the left figure is “Un”, which refers to the open mouthed “ah” and closed mouthed “mmm” facial expressions. The two figures, their facial expressions and by extension their names represent inhalation and exhalation, yin and yang, eternal balance, the beginning and end of all things.

A shot of the crowds bustling through Daigo-ji to see the sakura. Daigo-ji on the Tozai subway line in Kyoto is still incredibly popular with cherry blossom viewers and has been ever since Toyotomi Hideyoshi held a famous cherry blossom viewing party here in 1598.

So I saw three naked Japanese men before work today. The first was on his balcony opposite my gym. He’s throwing some shapes and admiring himself in his window. Perhaps he doesn’t realise there is a giant Racto department store and gym just across the road from his apartment. When he eventually notices the 30-odd people on the treadmills and cycling machines to whom he is offering a full frontal view he hurriedly closes the curtains. And much appreciated it is too. Perhaps he is new to the area, lets give him the benefit of the doubt.

This morning’s second exhibitionist is drying off as I come out of the shower. In the doorway, next to the towel shelf, there’s a guy looking in the mirror with his right leg high in the air like a sumo wrestler.

I thought I’d become inured to the abundance of FUBAR in Japan, but this one catches me a little off-guard.I guess he’s ill-advisedly acting out a pre-match sumo fantasy in a public place with no clothes on. Either that or he’d misplaced his towel and was trying to air out his undercarriage “the natural way”. He put his leg down pretty darn sharpish when he saw me emerge from the showers and I do the polite thing of looking around as if I hadn’t seen his shame. When I say “shame” I of course mean “gooch”. Why it would come as a surprise to him that someone should be using the shower is a mystery to me.

Then struck number three. I walk into the changing room and there’s a portly chap standing in front of a full-length mirror, next to an electric fan. I presume the fan/mirror setup is purportedly for the purposes of a post shower dry off. Sadly some people seem to treat it as a glamour shoot with a wind machine. This man is no exception and is facing his reflection while playing with his diminuitive equipment when I round the corner. To my chagrin I’m perfectly placed to have my eyes assaulted with the left and right profile views of his public fiddling sesh.

Perhaps he was trying to “image up” in case someone should walk in and catch a glimpse. Sadly I did walk in and it he seems he, like the others before him, did not expect to see any other customers in the gym that day. He dropped it immediately when he saw me (luckily it didn’t have very far to fall) and looked embarrassed. As well he should.

So a good morning for weird, naked Japanese guys, but not three memories I’d like to hold onto until my dying day. Ideally I’d like to toss them into the recycle bin to make room for more important/less stomach-turning recollections further down the road.All in all though, the morning got me thinking: I don’t appreciate being subjected to gag-inducing horror any more than the next guy but should we choose to see it as a positive thing that Japanese men are the highly-sexed, narcissistic bonobos of the world? Or is it worrying to think that a large number of guys you cross swor… I mean paths with is so weird that he does nothing to improve the international reputation of Japanese men as sex pests and hentai-anime-loving perverts?