Effective Signage

Sometimes, signage can be very effective by including a subtle message in the art work.

Take, for example, a simple "Keep Out" message. I suppose you could include something really frightening. Depending on who you wanted to keep out, you could include a monster, or a picture of someone being electrocuted, 43 pairs of K-mart Polyesther pants or whatever.

I spotted one a little while ago that had a really nice subtle touch.




See it?

Yeah... I wouldn't go in there either.... no matter how much fun they say "milking the prostate" is.

Japan Strikes Back!

Apparently, it's time for a sketch-off. A battle of wits, weirdness and well intentioned but less-than-successful language is about to commence. This is a battle the likes of which the world has only seen played out 10858739 times in the world of internet blogging. Well, lady, gentleman and the rest of you crazy kids... I'm about to be number 10858740.

Although I'd been planning to compare and contrast the charms and insanity of Tokyo with those of Seoul, it was a friend of mine who threw the gauntlet and started this battle - without even realizing it, in fact.



Fundamental conflict: Tokyo and Seoul are both very, very crazy. But...which is crazier ???

For example, Tokyo has long dominated the field of crazyness with its neon addiction, cultish devotion to customer service, and "Let's Noun-ing!". They threw out the ringer of serving whale, horse and still breathing fish in the same meal! What city could field culinary insanity to that degree?

Seoul could and did, coming from nowhere with "Hey! How would you like to eat live octopus!?! It'll stick to your tongue and try not to die in your mouth!"


Well, shit.


Don't count Tokyo down yet. Clearly, short of food that tries to argue you out of eating it(coming, I'm sure), there isn't much do to to beat the octopus dish in the freshness department. So... a new tactic.

Changing the Genus.

Genius!

And so, we present the Tokyo-culinary-insanity-answer to live octopus...


Snake Ice Cream!

Trust me, this makes me extra bitter that I'm lactose intolerant. When they get around to making a snake based sherbert, I'll be first in line.


/Special thanks to Vash for sending this my way.

Tentacles are lower on the food chain than you are

During my recent trip to Korea, I had the pleasure to sample some delicious Korean food...

- Korean Barbeque (which might just be called "Barbeque" here),

- The best Bi-bimba I've ever had. A Bi-bimba is a rice dish made with vegetables, meat and a raw egg. It comes served in a stone bowl that's been heated in the oven, which lets you finish the final bit of cooking (ie the raw egg) in the bowl at the table. It's YUMMY, and looks like this:




- A boat load of kimchi, which is super tasty. The Japanese aren't big fans of spicy food, so I don't get to eat a lot of it. (When they say "EXTREMELY SPICY, VERY DANGEROUS" one can expect "has flavour and a detectable hint of pepper")

- This:



That's right. This is a tentacle from a very recently alive Octopus. So recently alive, in fact, that the tentacles haven't gotten the memo about it. So, they squirm, crawl off the plate and stick to things. For example, your tongue and the roof of your mouth. Very odd.... but very delicous.


/another vid, this one with my running commentary/peer pressuring of another teacher.





Oh, and finally, from the "Things I didn't eat because I had nowhere to cook them, but totally would have eaten if I had been given the chance...." department...



Huge two centimetre long insects! These Grubs looked rather strange, but ... I'll eat just about anything.

In fact... there's something about asserting your place at the top of the food chain that validates all of the hard work done by our distant ancestors. So, I'd like to dedicate this post to Thag, Urg, Kills-with-arrows-and-cooks-with-big-freaking-fire, and all of the good folk that paved the way for our culinary dominance. Way to keep killin'!

If you'll excuse me, I'm going to go beat my chest, then pee on my apartment so no one else claims it.

The Dangerous World of "I'll have that!"

I'd like to start out this little adventure by relating my inspiration for this blog.

Food.

The food is amazing, and the beer (while OVERLY FOAMY - two inches is standard) is pretty tasty too.

Unfortunately, as a westerner, my knowledge of kanji (one of the three Japanese alphabets) is limited. And by limited, I mean that I can’t write my own name, and I need to dance like a monkey to order up a pint of beer.

Thus, my usual plot when in a restaurant is to find a tasty picture and point to it. I’ve upgraded to adding in an are-oh-kudesai (~Please give me that) or Kore oh onigaishimas (~I’ll have this, please) while pointing at said picture.

I ran into trouble when I went into a little sushi shop before work one day. I start work at noon, really, so I think very little of eating lunch-type food as my first meal of the day. See, I went into this little sushi shop near my office for lunch. All went according to plan until I realized that they didn’t have any pictures. Still, I figured I’d be adventurous and just order something at random. I picked something in the mid to high range for the place (1200 yen, or $12 Canadian) thinking that I couldn’t go wrong by upgrading. So I pointed, and used about 15% of my Japanese vocabulary to say that yes, I did want the thing that I was pointing to, and we were off on another culinary adventure.

I was pretty excited as I watched some nice bowls of sashimi (Yes, Grandma, that's raw fish, which I dearly love.) and some tempura lunches come out. I was in good spirits until the chef emerged--grinning ear to ear--and plopped in front of me…

A huge bowl of fish eggs. I mean huge. Like a half pound. Salmon Roe, Lobster Roe, and four or five other kinds of fish embryos tossed in on a bed of rice. Pickled vegetables and some miso completed the party.

Now, I am an adventurous man, I like these on sushi rolls, and most of all, I try to sleep in the beds I happen to make. With fierce determination, I dove in.

Thirty minutes later, I tapped out, unable to squish down a single more little ball of almost-fish. Still, in this case, I firmly and positively maintain that glass was half empty.


Today’s Score:

Brent 1, Culture Shock 0. (OT)

Bring it on, Baby.