Tokyo Drifter: Day Trip to Kamakura

Today's post is finishing up the last leg of last month's visit of my friends from Chicago. Unfortunately due to work responsibilities, my friend Valery needed to return to Chicago before the Phonaut, but I wanted to be sure and make the last day of Phonaut's journey a memorable one. I decided to show him around Kamakura (鎌倉)! I went to Kamakura for the first time 10 years ago on my second visit to Japan, and I had such a wonderful time that I wanted to share the experience with my good friend as well.

We got up early and headed off to Kamakura via the Yokosuka Line (横須賀線) from Shinbashi Station (新橋駅) and on to the Enoshima Electric Railway, a.k.a. "Enoden" (江ノ電). The weather was perfect and we enjoyed some fun sightseeing starting with, of course, the Great Buddha (大仏) in Hase (長谷).

Feeling refreshed by the centuries-long meditative peace and tranquillity of Buddha, we headed off to Hase Temple (長谷寺).

After hanging around in Hase for a while longer, it was back to Kamakura city for some shopping and a visit to the Tsurugaoka Hachiman Shrine (鶴岡八幡宮).

Up until now I never had a home to go back to that was not thousands of miles away, so I took advantage of the opportunity to finally buy some of the famous Kamakura Ham. It was every bit a delicious as I'd always imagined! This seems sort of crazy, actually, because predictable answers to the question, "where is the most delicious ham you've ever eaten?" might be Germany, Poland, etc, but no-- Kamakura, Japan is the answer! 

Tired from a long day of exploration, we rode the Green Car (first class) back to Tokyo, enjoying a cold Kamakura Pale Ale while  making the return trip to Tokyo. A relaxing evening was all that was in store for us that night, and I'd have to say it was a great day!!

The rest of the photo's from the trip can be viewed here.

Nezu Shrine Annual Festival 2014 / 根津神社例大祭 平成２６年

神輿　弥生町内会　｜　Yayoi Neighborhood Association's Mikoshi

Apologies in advance to my readers. Here I am writing about something that happened over a month ago already. It's pretty bad, I know, but believe me it's not because I'm lazy; it's just been a really hectic month! Anyway, getting on to the fun! On 9/21-22, Nezu Jinja held their annual shrine festival, and again this year our entire town was in a fun festival mood!

Check out this next photo -- this was me at last year's festival. Words can barely describe how much fun I had and what a wonderful sense of community I felt as I carried the Mikoshi (神輿) along with the other members of my local neighborhood association.

Nezu Shrine Festival 2013
I'm guessing I don't need to point out which
one is me (hint- look for the white dude)

This year, however, my friend was in town from Chicago so I enjoyed this year's festival as a spectator rather than as a participant. Because of this, I was not as busy as I was last year and had the opportunity to enjoy the festival in a totally different light. I also had the pleasure of enjoying pride in my town while showing my friend around his first shrine festival! Nezu Shrine looks so much different than usual when it's all decked out for the party! If this doesn't put a person in the celebration mood, then I guess nothing will! The air was definitely charged with excitement (which I'm sure was helped along by all the booze. LOL)!

There would be no festival without music of course.

There was a traditional performance of Kyōgen (狂言) theatre, too! The performance was mesmerizing and also quite comical as well. We all laughed quite a few times, and with no dialogue it's a laugh for everyone there, regardless of which language someone speaks.

There was also a special performance by the Nezu Elementary School Performing Arts Group. I can't say that I understood much about the performance, but they were excellent and they obviously practiced very hard for this!

One thing I definitely did not know about was that as the main part of the festival is ending, there's an "after party," one might say, held down the street from the shrine that continues later into the night! The after party was alive with music, dancing and revelry! The dances being performed were fantastic, mostly because they were local dances specific to Tokyo's Bunkyō City and even more local ones known only in Nezu! Wow! To be honest, up until this point I was not even aware of these dances and the very local culture that's part of my neighborhood traditions so I'm extremely glad I made it to the afterparty this year! It was even more incredible to see how many people of all ages know these dances very well and perform them with expertise and confidence. There were, of course, quite a few people who were basically learning as they go, watching the "village elders'" moves carefully and mimicking them. I wish I possessed the confidence to do the same, but when I was invited to join in I was too chicken. Heh! Maybe next year.

I took a video of some of the festivities here. This is one of our local dances / songs called Nezu Ondo ("Nezu Worker's Song"). It's hard for me to communicate just how much fun I was having during the moments of this recording. Please enjoy!

After the party broke up, my friend The Phonaut and I walked back to my place on a high note and settled in for the night. What a wonderful time! I sure hope Phonaut enjoyed the party as well. I'm already looking forward to next year!

As usual, there are more photos from this event in this Picasa Photo Album. Enjoy!

Can o' Bread for Breakfast! ｜ パンの缶詰の朝食！

"What's for breakfast?" This is a very common question throughout all parts of the modern world. I think, however, that one of the most uncommon answers must be, "A can of bread from the vending machine." This is exactly what I had for breakfast yesterday, though! Here is a vending machine I found in Inokashira Park (井の頭恩賜公園) in Kichijōji (吉祥寺). The products in this machine are called "Pan no Kanzume" (パンの缶詰), literally, "Bread Canned Goods" from a company called Okaneya. So I found this machine; what's the first thing I do? Buy one of course, what else? (^_^) There are four kinds of bread along the bottom for ¥480 (currently about $4.50 USD) each, and along the top, bread "sticks" (which appear to be more like crackers) for ¥250 each.

I chose the Chocolate Chip Bread (チョコチップパン), which is on the bottom left in the title photo; the other three options being Strawberry Bread, Milk Bread and Caramel Bread. All of these are apparently from from Okaneya's "Bonne Chance" product line. The can opens with a pull-tab and there was a loud pop-hiss sound when the can opened which seemed pretty promising, at least I knew it wasn't likely to be dry.

Here's what the product looks like inside the can-- the bread sits upside down in the can so what we're seeing here is the underside, and its standard bakery parchment paper wrapping.

 

Unfortunately I was not able to get the bread out of the can in on piece. I got the bread about halfway out, and I couldn't manage to free it from the can without getting it stuck in the rim where the pop-top lid used to be. Here's the bottom half of the bread with the parchment paper removed. Not bad eh?

So moving on to the eating part. I was not expecting much. After all, I just bought canned bread from a vending machine. How good could it be, right? Well, very surprisingly good, to be honest! The bread is soft, tender and moist but not at all mushy or overly "spongy." The texture is very similar to Italian Panettone. There is cocoa marbled throughout the bread and mini chocolate chips mixed in. I kinda figured this part might be overwhelming to the point where this experienced moved away from being breakfast and into the dessert category, but that was not the case at all. The only perceivable down-side is that people who really love their bread to have a nice crust would be disappointed, but luckily I am not too picky about that, and such a person would probably know better than to expect that from a canned good anyway. I have had a few experiences in which I purchased "fresh" bakery goods from a coffee shop that were not as good as this!

All this aside, this stuff can't be good for you, right? Well, I suspected as much and so I read the ingredients. Again I was really surprised! The ingredients included several different kinds of flour (including panettone flour which would explain the texture), milk powder, yeast, niacin, chocolate and cocoa! Then the last two in the list; not preferable, but expected, I would say, in a canned good like this-- Sorbitol and some kind of sodium-based preservative (I couldn't read the kanji for this one-- sorry about that). I thought it was probably sodium benzoate, but later I looked up the kanji for sodium benzoate and it wasn't that. I guess I should have photographed the list. That's pretty good I think! The product needs some kind of preservative after all-- the expiration date on the bottom was July 2017.

The verdict-- I would totally eat this again!I would love to try the other flavours. "In fact, what other kinds are available," I wondered. I looked up the company's homepage and found a large selection of bread AND also wine! They also make (not surprisingly) emergency food store items and supplies. Here's a link to their product line-up; pretty damned impressive! I also discovered that Okaneya has been in business since 1936 (昭和11年)! I guess they know what they're doing by now.

After yesterday's experience, I'm now thinking about trying an experiment-- see if it's possible to subsist solely on items purchased from a vending machine for a full day. Stay on the lookout for that in an upcoming post; I'm pretty sure I'm going to do it at some point.

OWLS! / 梟！

As I've been mentioning in recent posts, my good friends were visiting from Chicago last month. These two folks happen to really love owls, and so needless to say they were really interested in going to see them up-close-and-personal at one of Tokyo's many bird cafes. We chose the Tori no Iru Cafe (鳥のいるカフェ) in Asakusa (浅草) since we had spotted it while strolling around the previous day.

In order describe the experience, I feel like I need to break the whole experience into parts. Getting right to the point-- OWLS! Yeah, going to see owls up-close and being able to handle them is a pretty amazing experience! At a bird cafe, customers can pet, pick up and fully interact with owls! First off, they are adorable! Their big eyes and round bodies give them the impression of having come straight out of a fairy tale. I was really surprised by how soft and fluffy they are, and also by how accurately their feather patterns and colorations mimic the surrounding scenery of their native habitats. Something else I didn't expect is how calm and tame they were. I know they have certainly been trained by their handlers to live in the cafe and to be handled by customers, but being birds of prey I never thought they would be so interactive with humans. My friend Valery was especially good with them. One of the owls totally fell in love with her and was extremely overjoyed to let her pet him for quite a long time! Check this out!

Thanks to Valery Shuman for sending this precious video!

On the flip-side, the owls can, at times, be intimidating as well. I say this primarily because many of them are very large, and knowing that owls have astoundingly strong jaws, and could certainly break a human finger if provoked is enough to make customers feel a little bit wary of them when they appear to giving signals that they would rather we not touch them. None of the owls there were at all aggressive, though, so in the end it may have been my own apprehension that made me cautious.

Aside from the owls, there is another room in the cafe with many species of smaller birds, especially conures. There are also cockatiels, love birds and other species of parrots and beautiful rare and exotic birds with which I'm less familiar. I think it would be good for customers to know what they're in for before entering this room! It was fun at first, but to be honest, it quickly became a little bit overwhelming. The birds in that room are extremely friendly and very curious. Since they have free reign in that room and are eager to meet guests, visitors will find themselves literally covered in birds within minutes! I did have fun with this for a little while, but then I realized that for each bird you put back on its perch, two more take its place. I had to work swiftly to make myself bird-free and quickly make my way out of the room. It's not that I wouldn't go in again, but it's best in shorter time spans I think.

Moving on to other aspects of the experience-- the cafe. I have to admit that the cafe itself was not necessarily bad, but was not exactly what I expected. The interior is very small and although it's called a cafe, there are almost no places to sit and it would be almost impossible to enjoy refreshments of any kind. When the place is at full capacity, it feels extremely crowded and it's a little difficult to get close to the owls. They're definitely the main attraction and the owl room has an extremely small capacity. Going to Tori no Iru Cafe also differed a bit from my visit to Cat Cafe JaLaLa in that the staff was very hands-off and a little bit on the inattentive side.

Here's another video for you; one that I created

All in all, the experience was pretty awesome and has made me interested in visiting other bird cafes. I somehow get the feeling, however, that I most likely wouldn't pick Tori no Iru Cafe as my first choice of places. Don't get me wrong, the owls were totally kool and made for a very fun time! Probably the best part of my visit was seeing my friends get this unique chance to interact with these beautiful birds.

There are still a few more photos to be seen. Interested readers can follow this link to see more!

Tokyo Drifter: Asakusa

Sensōji Temple roof

The recent visit of my two long-time friends, Chicago-based DJ and producer Phonaut and Chicago-based Art Therapist Valery, offered a great opportunity to introduce some friends to my favourite city in the world. Since a visit Tokyo without seeing Asakusa (浅草) is, in my opinion, a visit that's incomplete, I made certain to take them there at the first opportunity. For this post, hopefully my readers won't mind if I keep my wordiness to minimum and instead let the images speak for themselves.

Sensōji Temple grounds

Sensōji Temple

Asakusa flavour

Sensōji Temple

Sensōji Temple grounds

View from the top of the Asakusa Culture and Tourism Center

Tokyo Sky Tree

Want to see more? Click here for the full album. Thanks for visiting!

[Photo of the Day] Almond Feuillantine KitKat!

via Instagram http://ift.tt/1vZdc6q

Wow! These are sooooo delicious! The chocolate has a rich cocoa flavour, and there's a lovely, subtle hint of almond. The chocolate also contains a tiny bit of liqueur to enhance the taste. Instead of the standard KitKat cookie, there's a light, airy, crispy crepe in the middle! Superb!