Salvation Army

Ever wondered what the Japanese might donate to the Salvation Army in Tokyo?

Just like in the States: books and old magazines and dishes and clothing and weird knick-knacks and toys and trading cards and stuffed animals and purses and coats and VHS tapes and housecoats. 

Too bad I'm illiterate here and can't read the books.  Really shortens a visit to places like this when there is no point in browsing through the books.  Someone had an extensive collection of a certain magazine that featured 80s music in the US: Madonna, U2, David Bowie, Mick Jagger, and Prince on these covers. Dishes dishes and more dishes.  I did my dance of indecision (usually seen at outlets and flea markets and auctions, where you have to make a decision right NOW and can't come back later and find it still waiting) and finally got some that are probably too fancy for me to really use much, but they are so, so pretty.  With your fancy dishes you can get a full kimono and obi outfit, plus the toe socks and sandals to wear with them.  Also a guy riding a donkey, which isn't as cool as a Guy on a Buffalo.  Hello Kitty and more Hello Kitty.  Two huge tubs full of Pokemon and other cards, including Japanese baseball cards.  We sorted through and picked out 50 Japanese Pokemon in less than 10 minutes, and for 5 yen apiece.  The kids are really too old to care anymore, but still.  Disney's Stitch is strangely popular here (I surmise it's because he is vaguely Asian looking), but he still gets donated, along with another Hello Kitty. A zillion purses, as always at these sorts of places, but also real fur coats.  Surprising.  Surprising that they are still worn here (which they are; you see them all the time), and surprising that something so valuable would end up at Salvation Army.  You can get all sorts of VHS and DVDs, including these Disney ones and Men in Black and Independence Day and The Sixth Sense.  Abba was playing on the sound system overhead.  The last square is of house jackets people here wear in the winter, as they do not have central heating and the houses get quite chilly.  Look at those amazing fabrics!  

There was some furniture, but none of it of any real value, and only one thing we momentarily thought about buying (a traditional low dining table).  Everything was carefully sorted, and each section had someone in charge of that area to help you and check you out.  When we bought the dishes, (I say "we," but it was really the one of us who could comfortably ask "How much?" and then understand the answer.) the woman asked us to come back in 5 minutes so she could wrap everything for us to carry.  So very nice.  

Ramen Museum

Maybe it shouldn't be surprising there is a museum dedicated to ramen.  The Japanese love and are proud of ramen, and it has quite a cult following: enthusiasts scour the country looking for unique and exceptional bowls of noodly goodness.  In a Japanese poll in 2000, instant ramen was voted the #1 invention of the 20th century.  So why not a museum?  And really, Americans shouldn't be laughing--I know for a fact there is a Jello-O museum in New York, and a Spam museum in Wisconsin.  Glass houses, people.  Glass houses.

So we went to Yokohama to see this ramen museum, for some reason called "Raumen Museum."  I can't find out why, just that is was misspelled on purpose, according the the website.

This ticket-taker was much friendlier than the picture shows.
 

Ground floor: all signs and displays written in Japanese, and I'm sure the tale of ramen is quite gripping, but we didn't get to read it.  We did see some old ramen tools:

And a cross-section of ramen bowls, which apparently was very pivotal in the development of current ramen:

And a diagram of some of the good stuff that can go in a bowl of ramen:

Notice I didn't stress too much about cutting off part of the words.  Who was going to read them?

But, oh, the basement.  This part in itself might be worth the trip:  two-story, full-scale recreation of 1958 Tokyo.  In 1958, Momofuku Ando invented instant noodles, which made ramen easy for people to make at home (although, really, that dry brick of super-saltiness is so lousy and one-dimensional by comparison), so they have built the rest of the museum to look like Tokyo from that year, and filled it with nine restaurants serving 26 kinds of ramen from different regions in Japan, and a candy store and an ice cream parlor.  So cool!

Heading down to the first level of basement, which runs around the outside of the second story of these buildings.




You buy tickets for what you want at the vending machine outside each restaurant.  Guessing that's not authentic to the time period, but it is common at many places today.  Give the ticket to the waitress, and after you eat you can just leave.  No tipping in Japan. 




The first place we went to eat.  Pretty yummy.

Mini bowl of shoyu ramen (soy sauce) with pork, green onion and square of nori.

Close-up of the ticket machine.

Down the "alley" to the next place.

Clever way to disguise the elevator: make it look like an onsen (public bath), complete with lockers.  We even heard splashing water sounds playing in the background. 

Candy store.  

  

Bummer of an outfit to have to wear to work.  Not sure if he's supposed to be a clown or just raggedy.

And I'm REALLY not sure what the heck these scary doll trading cards are, but no way would I buy them.  I'd be having creepy Asian-Chucky-doll nightmares.

 This is where I get busted taking a sneaky picture of strangers. 

Cool old Vespa and mailbox. Lots of details to make it seem authentic, including overhead propeller airplane noises.  

Oh yes, and this was playing in the background at one shop:

So, after the first level, you can head down to the bottom, which is the street level of the city.

And I so wish I could read these signs!  Being illiterate is really a pain.

The second restaurant we tried.  Big line waiting outside looked promising.

Our tickets.  The two "words" at the top, like three diagonal lines and two horizontal lines, say "mee-nee" for mini bowls.  

 

You can get a year's pass to this place, and it was obvious many people were there on their lunch break from work. 

Sometimes you dunk the plain noodles into the broth.  I have no idea why.  The noodles got cold.

This one had a smoky fish broth that I didn't really care for.  The white disk with the pink swirl is a fish cake and tastes like nothing. 

What's missing here?  NAPKINS.  Seriously, the war is over.  You can get paper now.  Please supply paper napkins. 



Ramen is serious business.  Just ask this guy.  No idea why his picture was in the museum, but safe to bet he was important to ramen.

Ramen may be serious, but chopsticks can be fun.


 

So, after all that ramen, we still ate at our favorite place the next day, and it was DELICIOUS.  Seriously, come try it.

The September Issue

My husband recently spent several weeks traveling for work, and I have insomnia when he's gone.  Not sure why.  I'm not scared to be home without him, and while I do miss him terribly, it normally takes more than pining to keep me from a good night's sleep.  But for whatever reason, I'm awake nights when he travels.  What a pain. 

I wish I could say I use all that time not sleeping to get to all the projects I have brewing, or organize the last of the moving boxes we have, or contemplate my relationship with the divine, but I admit I only dabbled in any of those things.  Mostly I shopped online and watched Netflix.  Lots of sales going on right now, in case you live under a rock and don't get email ads.  A new winter coat?  Yep, in red, please.  Pretty table linens on sale? Why, yes, thank you. And it comes in a second cute color? Send that too.  A bocce set?  In January?  Sign me up. 

It's ridiculous. 

The Netflix portion of my insomnia I did use to catch up on some of those documentaries you've never seen that win all the big awards, so that was sort of cultural.  One of these was The September Issue (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1331025/), about editor-in-chief Anna Wintour (the devil in The Devil Wears Prada) and the hoopla surrounding Vogue's huge fall issue--the one that dictates the styles for the coming year.  Fas-cin-ating.  Self-important people, big bucks, relatively unrelatable clothing, and photography.  Oh, some of the photography is spectacular.  One of the major players at Vogue is Grace Coddington, 70+ year old creative director, and the mastermind behind the really beautiful editorial spreads in the magazine, like this:



and this:




Love the rich detail.  Love the the story she tells with each image.  Love that she just rolls her eyes at Anna's demands and keeps doing what she does best and knows is beautiful.  At the end of the film when they're asking Anna questions, her self-proclaimed biggest asset is her decisiveness. Except all of Grace's shoots she dismissively lopped out over the course of assembling the issue ended up back in by the end. I guess you can decisively and repeatedly change your mind.

And as a petty side-note, it was fascinating to see how homely and bad-skinned and disheveled some of these fashion experts are in person. Besides the ones that are just plain old, which you have to forgive because good on ya for making it in that industry so long.

Tim Tam Slam

Letting you in on something we've been introduced to while here in Tokyo.  Not Japanese, certainly, but part of our Japan experience:  the Tim Tam Slam.  I've heard it called other things, Tim Tam Challenge and the like, but really, rhyming always wins.  (Big Mac Attack, anyone?)

Take a delicious Tim Tam cookie, straight from our Aussie friends down under, and bite off opposite corners. Use the cookie as a sort of straw to suck up a warm drink of your choice--tea, coffee-like beverage, hot chocolate, whatever.  Just as the liquid reaches your mouth, quickly toss the cookie in too, as it's about to lose all structural integrity and drop into your lap.  SO DELICIOUS. Really, the whole is greater than the sum of the parts, and the parts themselves are pretty darn tasty.  Hoping you can find these little gems at your local grocery store. 

Refuge

Living in our pretty apartment is such a joy.  Big city, lots of people, lots of smells.  So nice to come home to our little refuge!

Tsukiji Fish Market

Not one to ever volunteer for early-morning activities, I was excited to learn you can still have a fascinating experience at this world-famous market AFTER the 4 a.m. arrival needed to see the tuna auction.  Really, 4 a.m. to be able to see guys haggling over tuna?  No thanks.  But this was so worth a 9 a.m. showtime to get to see the later arrivals buying the day's catch, fishmongers cutting up huge fish (okay, that part was a little creepy), and generally seeing the working side of all the fish that gets eaten in this city. 

Tsukiji is known as the world's largest fish market, and I can easily believe it.  It covered whole city blocks, and was a maze of row upon row of stalls.  There are little motorized trucks zooming up and down the aisles, and men pulling long wooden carts loaded with whatever it is they sell.


Really, watch out.  These guys are flying.

Slicing off a section of tuna.

 I saw more fish here than ever in my life, even including trips to several aquariums.  I found myself wandering around (while keeping an eye out for those little trucks) thinking, "The ocean must be HUGE."  Yeah, landlubber here.

Can you hear them? "Please don't eat us!"

These were being scooped out of a pan FULL of squid ink.

Grabbing a little breakfast after his early start to the day.

The crabs are kept on ice, so they are very fresh and very slow-moving, and I watched this guy grab one after the other, tuck the slowly flailing legs into this shape, and then wrap it in a big rubber band before tossing it back in the brine.

You pay at these tiny little booths inside the warehouse, where the clerks are struggling to keep warm.

Saw many a bucket of water dumped on the stone floor.

 So, you may be thinking, "Doesn't this place stink to high heavens?"  but it's surprisingly clean-smelling.  If anything, you got a whiff of salty ocean, and very occasionally a faint smell of bleach.  Not bad at all.  I went in thinking I might have to throw my shoes away afterward, but it was fine.



Scrubbing, scrubbing, scrubbing.

Caring for his knives.

After you're done investigating all the nooks and crannies, the stalls outside the market sell some pretty great sushi and lots of wares.  Giant fish hook, anyone?  It was also really enjoyable to see people working and laughing and eating breakfast.  I don't know why.  Just believe me. 

Waiting in line for sushi breakfast.

Free samples of who-knows-what.  Really.  Fish?  Seaweed?  COULD NOT TELL.