Higo Blog

I miss really good Japanese food, the kind you can’t get in the states. I miss the doteyaki and kushi katsu found in the seedier parts of Osaka, the fresh tsukuri, sushi, agemono, okonomi and monjayaki, dagojiru and butajiru, assorted nabe, goya champuru, yakiniku, kushiyaki, takoyaki, katsudon and katsukare, basashi, soba, udon, and the wild combinations found at tabehodai/nomihodai joints. But most of all, I miss the tonkotsu. Good ramen is hard to find over here, and good tonkotsu is all of unheard of.
Some of the recipes found at The Official Ramen Homepage are actually starting to make me a bit hungry. Here’s my contributions to instant ramen recipes of the same vein:
Korean-American Style Instant Ramen
Ingredients
1 package of ramen
1/2 cup of the kimchee of your choice
2 hot dogs, chopped
1 egg, scrambled
korean beansprouts
korean seaweed
green onions
Directions
Cook the noodles for a few minutes while boiling some hot water for the broth in another vessel. Discard the nasty oily water. Add the hot dogs, kimchee, and egg to the new water, and then the noodles. Serve in a bowl and top with korean beansprouts, seaweed, and green onions. Serve with a tall glass of Jinro (for real men) or an ice cold bottle of Hite.
Instant Chow RaMen
Ingredients
1 package of ramen
chopped onion
chopped garlic
chopped red or yellow bell pepper
chopped mushrooms
sesame oil
oyster sauce
shoyu
salt and pepper.
chopped beef or chicken
oyster sauce
chicken broth (or use the soup base from the packet to keep it ghetto)
corn starch
Directions
Marinate the meat in shoyu and oyster sauce for a half an hour. Cook the noodles for a few minutes, discard the nasty oily water, and set aside. Stir fry all of the ingredients, then add a bit of chicken stock and corn starch to thicken. Add salt and pepper to taste. Fry the noodles in sesame oil until they crisp. Top the noodles with the finished sauce, and serve with a nice, cold Tsingtao.
Ah, the joys of low income cooking.
But they do nothing to ease my Tonkotsu Blues. This website kind of helps.

One day, after a long, hard couple of weeks in the office, Huw and I went to have a few pints at an English pub. Our contracts were almost up and we were ready to move with our lives. Adding salt to the earth, many of our co-workers were discontent to the point of staging their own little mutiny and making the working atmosphere uncomfortable to put it mildly.
It was between pints that we happened upon a poem, that was hung in front of the urinals. It read:

IF
If you can keep your head when all about you
Are losing theirs and blaming it on you,
If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you
But make allowance for their doubting too,
If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,
Or being lied about, don’t deal in lies,
Or being hated, don’t give way to hating,
And yet don’t look too good, nor talk too wise:
If you can dream- and not make dreams your master,
If you can think- and not make thoughts your aim;
If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster
And treat those two impostors just the same;
If you can bear to hear the truth you’ve spoken
Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,
Or watch the things you gave your life to, broken,
And stoop and build ’em up with worn-out tools:
If you can make one heap of all your winnings
And risk it all on one turn of pitch-and-toss,
And lose, and start again at your beginnings
And never breath a word about your loss;
If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew
To serve your turn long after they are gone,
And so hold on when there is nothing in you
Except the Will which says to them: “Hold on!”
If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,
Or walk with kings- nor lose the common touch,
If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you;
If all men count with you, but none too much,
If you can fill the unforgiving minute
With sixty seconds’ worth of distance run,
Yours is the Earth and everything that’s in it,
And- which is more- you’ll be a Man, my son!
-Rudyard Kipling

It put everything in perspective. Work no longer seemed so stressful anymore, just another common chore not to be given any more thought than necessary to get the job done. The poem gave me a swift kick in the ass, yet again reminding me that I can always do better, or be more mindful of people, things, and events occuring around me.
It seems that time passed quickly after this night. Our contracts expired, the mutiny resolved itself, and we were off- Huw to travel across China, Mongolia, and Russia by planes, trains, and automobiles, and I on my Kyushu road trip. After that, it was time for us to return to our points of origin and slip into the lives waiting for us.

Recently, I have been lucky enough to be able to spend a lot of time in the great outdoors of California. This is a shot of a more placid section of the American River at dawn, right before the sun winked out below the horizon. I swear, I love the American countryside just as much as the undeveloped areas in Japan. The sweet, musky chapparal is as dry as the mossy forests are wet. As different as they are from each other, I feel equally at home in both of them.

Being outdoors is synonymous with having a bonfire. I’m no more of a pyromaniac than any other guy, but I really enjoy the process of building it, from gathering wood, making a nest of tinder under a teepee of twigs, branches, and logs, fanning a feeble flame into a full fledged blaze, and poking the logs to keep the fire going.
I enjoy reading survival books to see how others start their fires and then try the easier ones out. I’ve never tried to build or use a fire drill, but I have started a fire with flint and steel, a magnifying glass, and a nine volt battery along with some steel wool. Polishing the bottom concave part of a soda can looks cool, but a bit too labor intensive.
Once in a while, it’s fun to cheat.Teller, of Penn and Teller, got his fire building badge from the boyscouts by cheating. He buried a can of Sterno just under the soil, and when it was time, he returned with his scout leader, threw a bunch of sticks haphazardly onto the spot, and started the fire right away. Puzzled and frustruated by the success of this seemingly impossible feat, the scout leader had no choice but to award Teller his badge.
I haven’t resorted to Sterno, but recently I used laundry lint as tinder and it worked very well in starting our fire. Candles, wax mixed with sawdust, and accelerants (such as petroleum products or strong alcohol) are nice to have if you want to get the fire started quickly.
Ah, fire is cool. In the immortal words of Bevis, “Fire! Fire!”

When I cancelled our AOL service, it was a long and painful ordeal. The operator kept on asking me irrelevant questions, often the same ones over and over again. I had to state multiple times that I wanted to quit AOL, but only after 15 minutes of a steadfast unwillingness to reconsider staying with AOL did the representative finally get the cancellation process moving.
AOL is training their people to hassle people from dropping their services. Although I didn’t have nearly as hard of a time as this guy, the conversation bears an eerie resemblance my own personal experience.

It’s cool to see that the UFC, Pride, and K1 have gained such wide acceptance in the States. There was a time when UFC was struggling to do this, and when few others knew any but the most famous names in mixed martial arts.
But there is a downside to the popularity of MMA. If you don’t immediately watch the fights, there is a significant risk of having someone spoil them for you, as when a certain Mr. A. had to hint to the outcome last night:
A: Did you see Tito fight Shamrock?
B: No, we’re going to download and watch it later.
A. Dude, it was over in a second!
B. You a-hole, why did you have to say anything?
A. It was kind of predictab…
B. Shut up!
If you are one of these people, keep the outcome to yourself until everyone who wants to see it gets a chance to!
This isn’t a UFC fight, but you might enjoy it nonetheless. See how many references you can spot…
link

I sometimes enjoy going through the fridge when cleaning (as well as right before I’m leaving the house for an extended period and immediately proceeding yet another move from house to house) and mixing unlikely ingredients together. Sometimes it works brilliantly, resulting in an awesome combination. These recipes are almost always forgotton afterwards.
Other times it turns out interesting and edible. Occasionally, it is rendered inedible to the point where it induces a violent gag reflex. If you are feeling less daring than I, then I would highly recommend this resource. It would also be a good thing to use when you ask someone “what do you want to eat?” and they reply with “I’m OK with anything.”
Then again, I would be inclined to be more creative with strange ingredients when faced with such ambivalence.

Here is a new track from their album, Game Theory, which drops on August 29th.
Two good articles on The Roots:
here and here

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