Merry Christmas, and 100 Days Left in Japan!

We're celebrating 100 days left in Japan (maybe give or take one or two, we don't have plane tickets yet!) and also Christmas tonight before heading out to Okinawa to spend calendar-Christmas on the beach! See you in two weeks!

Bonenkai 2011

Our fourth and final bonenkai was not particularly epic (#1, #2, #3), but we did get a lot of good pictures of the overall happenings and the food, to show you the kinds of things the Japanese eat when they really want to spend a lot of money and enjoy themselves.  We're knew what we were getting into and I rather enjoyed most of the food - perhaps sense has been slowly driven from me over the years here. You'll have to judge for yourselves, perhaps by looking at the full set of pictures and videos on Flickr.

For those who may not remember the Bonenkai posts of previous years, this is an event where the staff of the school all goes off to a ryokan, or hotel with hot spring baths.

The front entrance to the ryokan - as usual, the building was a maze and I definitely got lost in it a number of times.  First everybody hangs out in their assigned bedroom for a bit and eats mikan (Clementine oranges, basically), then dresses in the traditional yukata (robe) before heading down to the baths. 

  After that, it was time to wait in line for dinner - you want to sit with your friends, and it's usually a mad rush to get tables. We completely filled the main hall of the hotel - I think our crowd was a little big much for the facility, so some things were a bit strained, especially the baths.

 As usual for this kind of thing, dinner is served on a little table about six inches off the tatami mats.  This year they didn't cover dinner with a piece of paper so we had to look longingly at it (or some parts of it) until we were allowed to begin.

 I was not alone in my photographic endeavors.  The gaps between the tables were for easy access by the serving staff, but also made conversation more difficult by putting everybody a lot further apart.

 The speeches were riveting, as you can see by the demeanor of some of the other foreign staff.  There were three speakers before the actual toast, so we had to stare at dinner for about half an hour before being allowed to eat.

 Finally they got to the toast and it was time to begin.

 Crab is good, but I've had better than what was served here.  The guy next to me was giving his away on the thought that he's visiting the Philippines next week and would prefer his crab fresh and on the beach there, so I got an extra claw, which was welcome.

 I wasn't sure what most of this was, ate it anyway to get rid of the plate.  The back center was definitely sushi, and I think the white/orange thing on the right was smoked salmon between two milder fish cakes.  The black things are large beans, and I really don't know at all about the other two.

 Pickled radishes

 Well, I figured out what some of this was.  There is a glutinous rice cake flower, some greenery, and a cooked daikon slice on top.  The brown is pretty much gravy and this whole thing was cold.  I don't know what the bottom cake was.

 I have a feeling it involves internal organs, possibly of seafood.  Didn't taste like much.

 Nice block of tofu with some toppings

 This kind of event will always have a sashimi plate

 This pork, various mushrooms, and vegetables are just on the plate for show.

 They need to be cooked in the soy milk before they can be eaten, which means the diner waits on the pleasure of the staff, who won't light the Sterno under the main course until much later.

 During the first 30-45 minutes of dinner (before everybody is drunk enough to be social) we were entertained by alleged professionals.  There were a few minutes of taiko drumming, which was not very good, and some "professional" Japanese singers did a few numbers.  Definitely the weakest Bonenkai entertainment line up of the four we've seen.  I have heard they're trying to bring the price of the event down (rumored to be more than $150,000 one year, and largely out of our paychecks) and this may have been one place they skimped.

Not outstanding.

 Clear broth with dumplings, unmemorable.

 Consensus has this as a potato.  Seeing the interior, I wonder if they hid something non-potato inside of it.

 Not convincingly all potato.

All new dishes that are officially part of the menu are brought by the army of servers, but it is not uncommon for there to be "extra" dishes available from tables to the side of the room.  This time, they were serving waygu beef tartare as an extra dish.  I asked some people from my table who were heading that way to bring me one, and before they got back a waitress wandering around with some gave me one, and Ana brought me one because she knew I would want one and was not sure I knew about the table.  Thus, I had three and it was good, though I could have used a knife for the thick one.

After the "professional" entertainers, they opened the stage for karaoke.  Matters in the entertainment department did not improve.

Conversation > Bad karaoke

 Unspectacular roast fish - I enjoyed the bell peppers though

 Standard issue Japanese things in egg custard/pana cotta, and I guess I forgot to take pictures of dessert, which was a sweet custard with strawberries unfortunately swimming in tea.

The worst in karaoke was yet to come though, as a group of foreigners including Ana took the stage to show the drunk Japanese folks how to really torture a song.  Please don't watch all four minutes of this, it is clinically unsafe.

 I was more than happy to be done with everything karaoke related at this point, and went and enjoyably talked mostly about history with a new KIT English teacher who I had not met yet, but Ana went with the bulk of the foreigners for more karaoke, featuring this Saturday Night Fever floor/ceiling combination.  I suspect she did  not get much sleep. I got the better part of a full night's sleep, which was exactly how I wanted it.

 Breakfast was quite Japanese.  On the bottom left, shredded uncooked cabbage with mayo for dressing, along with some ham, a tomato, and a cucumber.  Above that, a tofu chunk, some broth to dip it in, and some green onions and shredded dried fish to top it.  That was actually pretty good.  The white dish in the front left is more pickles.  I skipped the almost raw egg in broth - you're supposed to put it on the rice, I think. Above that is sliced raw squid with soy sauce and I regret to say I ate that with gusto - like I said, probably going bonkers.  Above that a small piece of cold roasted salmon and some various small dishes of mostly fermented things that I tasted and generally did not decide to finish.  At the top right is a small fish for roasting on a grill, and I don't actually remember what was in the colorful dish with a cover (Ana - it was vegetables, a kabocha (squash) cut to look like a leaf, a single green bean, and a pressed fish cake of some sort).  The strange three-petaled gray-green dish held shredded pickled vegetables that were not to my taste, and the covered bowl is miso soup.  There was, of course, rice.

After breakfast, we were straight away to the buses and home.  This year's ryokan was considerably closer than the previous year's, which was nice because you get a much longer Sunday after getting back - a Sunday used in part to write this blog entry.  I suspect the next entry will be two plus weeks away, after we visit Okinawa and Tokyo and do a lot more things to write about.  See you in January?

Nik's Travels in Japan

Some good friends from college (yes, more) came to visit us in the last few weeks.  One of them also had the chance to travel around Japan for a week or so.  I might not have blogged this particular visit, as not too much that was too special went down in Kanazawa, but he also got some pretty cool pictures of his travels around the country and I thought some people would want to have a look.  For one, he took some pictures of just regular Japan, which we generally don't, since regular Japan looks regular to us.  Two, he got some cool pictures of things we haven't seen yet and some very nice ones of some things we have. There are more pictures on Flickr, as well.

 Our friends (they're brothers) met up in Tokyo and took the train to Kanazawa, where we met them at the station.

 It was about lunchtime so we went to the fish market for some sushi.  Here he wants to buy a stick of something unidentified, which turned out to be eel.

 Probably the little end bits they trimmed off fillets or something - tastes like eel, which tastes good.

 Sea snails however, generally do not taste good in my experience.  This is from just walking through the market.

 In front of the sushi place.

 I believe the menu called it arkfish...I think it was maybe some kind of large clam.  Tasty but expensive.

 Ana having a roe roll.

 One of the brothers especially wanted to eat the things foreigners usually take a pass on.

 Half crab, half crab guts.  Edible, but just the crab would be better.

 He likes it all anyway. 

 They both do.  Bastards.

 After lunch we went to Kenroku-en, which we haven't been to that often with the big camera.  The light was tricky but we got some interesting pictures.  The ropes to hold the branches against the snow were already up.

 Fall foliage was somewhat in evidence.

 After Kenroku'en they checked out some of the nearby shops and then we stopped for green tea and bean paste sweets. 

 Ana explained that one of the earlier steps in matcha drinking is appreciating the mug it comes in.

 After the first Saturday, one of the brothers needed to be at a conference halfway across the country, so the two of them headed out that way to see Hiroshima and Miyajima.  One went on to the conference, and the other slept at our place and adventured in Japan for a while.  He usually came back for dinner time, so we went out for grilled meat on a stick one night and ramen another night, as here.

 He took some pictures of ordinary Japan stuff.  This is the highway up behind our apartment.

 We probably wouldn't have taken a picture of a post box either

 The river between us and downtown Kanazawa

 One of the bigger intersections downtown

 After being stalled by a derailed train (he wasn't on it) one day, the next he made it down to Osaka where he took this awesome picture on the Osaka Castle ground.

 Osaka Castle from across one of the moats

 View of Osaka from the top of the castle

 Closer view of the castle

 He also visited Kyoto, site of the Golden Pavilion

 For one dinner when we were here, we gathered up some more Japanese language and food friends of ours to guide us and went out to a restaurant specializing in local delicacies.  Here is another rendition of crab on crab guts.  Apparently, some crab guts have a more delicate flavor than others because these weren't bad.

 These are pressed and fermented fish and radish cakes, which should be awful but were actually quite good.

 Fried buckwheat noodle balls - tasted fried, not like noodles

 For the end of his trip, our friend headed out to Hakone, where he stayed at an extremely old and old-fashioned hot springs resort, which was the style he asked for.  Apparently the old ones have good views, as this is the view from his room.

 The Hakone ropeway has views of Fuji in clear weather but he had a more mysterious, closed in vibe going on

 The pictures look pretty cool, and we are planning to actually go to Hakone ourselves in a few weeks, so maybe we'll be able to get Fuji pictures then.

 After the ropeway, they have "pirate ships" to take you across a lake.

 The clouds coming off the mountains definitely gave this a creepy, mysterious look

 He specifically wanted fish for breakfast, so I'm glad my selection of hotel came through in that respect

 He wrapped it up with some more time in Tokyo, including a stop at our favorite whiskey bar.  He failed to get lost, in defiance of my instructions to have carefully planned directions.  I have no idea how he actually managed this.

Hope you enjoyed looking at the pictures, and we'll have more stuff that we ourselves actually did soon.  Have to make the most of the remaining time here.