Wine News (53)

Sayonara ! Once again, I was happy to experience by myself that Japan has a solid drinking culture (so to say), and in a very permissive, socially-admitted way. It doesn't seem to translate into booze-soaked bums screaming in the street. That's for the one-sided positive view of this drinking culture to which I clutch unrepentently. If you want to have another, more pessimistic view on the issue, please read Eryk's essay, he aknowledges a certain Japanese restraint for the lack of violent excesses but still points to what he considers being the deep social and work problems behind the heavy drinking spotted here and there. Look at the poster on the top, it is found in the subway and it admonishes the inebriated salarymen to better do it at home...
I still think that, generally speaking, this country handles the relationship with alcohol quite well, in spite of a few visible excesses, and that's why attending these bars and venues was so enjoyable.

Menu "Ivrogne" (drunkard) You probably know about the Japlish issue, these English words misused or misspelled that you see on T shirts or shop signs. There is the same thing with the French words that the Japanese love so much to use but as they don't grasp the language, it gives sometimes very funny misspels or misuse. In French, we call these spelling errors Franponais, and recently a couple of books about them have been published about the phenomenon, each with dozens of pictures of the funniest Franponais examples. You can also find the books on Amazon.

I shot this picture in Nezu, at the door of the Maison du Chataigne (another Franponais case, if a minor one : you should read "Maison de la Chataigne" or "Maison du Chataignier"). One of the menus has been named "Ivrogne", which means drunkard. I guess the person who designed the menu names wanted to choose a word highlighting the love of wine and he/she used a translator which gave back "ivrogne"... I wonder if a menu Ivrogne or a menu Drunkard would have many takers in our respective countries; who knows, maybe it would start a buzz and bring crowds, but I'm afraid you'd need to have unlimited wine for that....
This said, this restaurant seems to have a few nice wines on its wine list. Melted bottles This was near Asakusa if I remember, we stumbled upon this unusual recycling of various bottles, including bottles of wine. There was this gallery with lots of glassware, and these flattened bottles were exposed on a table in front of the shop. There were more of them inside, that's where I shot this picture. The flat bottles can be used like trays for pickles, olives and appetizers, and you can use the bottle neck like a handle.
Here is a web page about this Fun & New eco Glassware. More info on this Pdf file.
Funew is part of the Kimoto Glassware co. Ltd, a Tokyo-based company Sake cups on a grave This was in the cemetery of Yanaka, one of the remaining shitamashi of Tokyo, there were a few cups obviousmy filled with sake although I didn't check. I asked my friend in Tokyo and he told me that sake was indeed often left at the graves, and according to this page about funerals in Japan, Offerings left at graves include flowers, incense and sake as well as the favorite foods, drinks and even brand of cigarettes of the deceased. The sake is often poured in a glass and cigarettes are removed from the packs and lit so they can be consumed at that moment.
This is very similar to what we see routinely in Russia and its cultural hemisphere, like here in Donetsk, where glasses are left on the graves. Yaki-Imo truck in Akihabara Just to show that the age-old Japanese traditions never die : we saw this Yaki-imo truck selling its sweet potatoes baked the old way in a wood-fired oven. Around, this was Akihabara in its picturesque excesses, lots of noisy advertising for shops and a swirling crowd of school girls handing flyers for different maid cafés or anime-related businesses... Gender-specific colors for toilets Like usual now, I post a picture of these gender-coded toilets which you find everywhere in Japan, as an innocent provocation intended to tease our European politically-correct egalitarians.
While many in the West are busy trying to reverse gender color codes they view as retrograde and reactionary, nothing of the sort happens in Japan where like in much of Asia pragmatism and tradition prevail over do-gooder ideology. We have more than we need in terms of thought-police-fighting-sterotypes in France, especially with the Greens, but we may have reached new heights of absurdity recently with the proposition of an MP, Sandrine Mazetier, who wants to change the name of the "écoles maternelles" ("maternal schools" or nursery schools) in order to correct what she views as a gender-specific anomaly bent on giving our young ones the improper differentiating between the respective aptitudes of mother and father. In France, a kindergarten is called école maternelle, a name which according to this bright mind, carries a heavy load of prejudice and will endanger a politically-correct understanding of the society and inoculate sexist views...

The French concept of the école maternelle was created in Alsace, in Waldersbach at the end of the 18th century. The pastor Jean-Frédéric Oberlin and his maid Sara Banzet opened the first such école maternelle (kindergarten) for very young children after witnessing the dire situation in which many of these children were in the backcountry, left by themselves as their mother were gone to work.
Jean-Frédéric Oberlin studied in the famed institution Gymnasium Jean Sturm in Strasbourg where his father was also a teacher (I'm proud to have myself spent time there until graduating with the Baccalauréat).

Here is a funny list of toilet signs examples, nice resource for inspiration.
The pic on right is another obvious gender-neutrality infringement, with face masks packagings in different colors, the pink ones being apparently for women sizes and the blue men sizes. Oh my goodness...
Pic on left : restroom sign in Tsukiji, Tokyo (with small fish) A hearty meal in Tsukiji Here is a good tip for fellow travellers or even expats who are looking for a local restaurant at a very affordable price in Tsukiji, near the famous fish market. It's not easy to find a restaurant offering a menu under 2000 Y (15,6 € or 20,5 USD) in this area, a price you're not always eager to spend for lunch. We found this restaurant after looking hard in the narrow lanes between the boulevard and the market. Many restaurant have staff on the street trying to lure the strolling visitors inside, but this looked a very tourist-trap way of filling the restaurant, so we turned around and ended finding this discreet restaurant with among other deals, had a hearty lunch bowl at 950 Y (7,4 € - 9,7 USD), coming with miso and tea.
To reach the restaurant you climb a flight of stairs to a terrace (pic on right) which is nice when the weather is fine, and from there you walk inside the restaurant. The long bar counter is very convenient and they also have more private rooms with low tables. Raw fish is of course also their speciality.

Hamashige
4-9-5 Tsukiji Chuo-ku Tokyo
phone 03 3541 9206
Google street view of the lane
Map location (approximative). 76 Vin Here is a recently-opened (july 2012) restaurant with both a nice list of natural wines and a quality cuisine to go with. The room is clear and modern and there's an appeal here for young couples and women, who as you know lead in this country for the demand for additives-free wines.
The restaurant is located in Nezu at a walking distance from Ueno and Nippori. I walked there with T. in the evening the first day I arrived there but didn't walk in, thinking that I'd do it later. You can sip nice wines and eat chicken skewers or other things to go with. There's always a motorbike parked along the venue, it must belong to one of the staff.

The names of the vintners are written with a white chalk on the window (picture on left) : Vincent Tricot, Alice & Olivier De Moor, Marc Pesnot, Vincent Gaudry, Noella Morantin, Agnès & René Mosse, Jean Foillard, Pascal Simonutti, Frédéric Cossard, Domaine Ramonet, L'Arlot, Robert Sirugue, François Feuillet, Dard & Ribo, Marcel Lapierre, Thierry Puzelat, Christian Chaussard, Nicolas Maillard, Michel Arnould, Françoise Bedel, Julien Meyer, Nikolaihof, Marc Tempe, Sylvie Spielmann, Biner, Klur, Marcel Deiss (spelled Dice...), Giglinger, Gerard Schueller, Rietsch. Indeed a nice list of wines, they have a few wines by the glass at around 1000 Y if I remember.

76 Vin
2-13-8 Nezu Chiyoda-ku Tokyo
phone 03 5834 7684
Open 6pm-11:30pm
76Vin on Facebook
Elle-Japan page about 76Vin
Page with pictures of the food at 76Vin
Another review (in Japanese) of 76 Vin Live fugu A light, tourist-style picture now : I watched several live fugu fish in an aquarium in a side street near of Asakusa. Of course you can se such live fugu at Tsukiji too, but it was weird to see them eye in eye in a Tokyo street.
Fugu is part of the popular imagery when we think about Japan, there's an intriguing mystery about the fact that the Japanese go around the lethal threat of the poisonous nature of certain parts of the fish, to prepare a reputedly exquise fish meat. As you may know, chefs need a special license to be allowed to prepare and serve fugu, this, of course, because of the danger of the poison. Guide with tourists in Asakusa I didn't see many tourists during this Tokyo sojourn, except in Asakusa where Japanese, Chinese and Western tourists were all over the place (by the way there is a youth hostel near there). There were quite a number of izakayas with terraces and lots of Westerners (expats or visitors) sitting there, which didn't encourage me to sit along. I felt like I was on Place du Tertre in Montmartre, this may be a prejudice from my part but I don't feel like having a good time sitting at Place du Tertre.

About coming across other Westerners when you're in Japan and hesitating to nod at them or ignore them, you should read again the interesting piece written by Eryk on the issue. Like he says, there seems to be a reluctance from some of the Westerners who know very well Japan to socialize with the Westerners they suspect of being occasional visitors or tourists. Eryk's page linked to an interesting page which is not online anymore but which I salvaged here, and where W. David Marx writes :

All foreigners with interest in Japan hate all the other foreigners with interest in Japan. The Colonialists all like their ex-pat buddies and pubs, but the Japanese-speaking foreigner contingent is in constant battle with themselves, vying to prove linguistic abilities, obscure knowledge, and depth of societal penetration. I call this the "gaijin complex," and I'm only finally finding my way out of it now after a long period of affliction and convalescence..
I got to watch myself and never turn like one of those... Water bottles against cats Using water bottles to scare off cats seems to be a Japanese tradition although I don't know how old it is. The mysterious trend landed in France too and I met people in France without japanese connection who used this medium to keep stray cats away, apparently with success. Anyway you'll come across many bottles of water in Tokyo, especially in the quiet residential neighborhoods, but the inflation in the number of bottles seems to imply that the success rate of the trick is not so good...
Look at these pictures shot along Japanese streets. You have more of there on this page. I can testify with my picture that some people indeed use lots of bottles to keep the cats away... Ippodo : Iconic tea shop in Tokyo Good news for the Japanese-tea lovers : Ippodo has opened a shop in Tokyo, in the Marunouchi area not far from ginza.
B. had asked me to go buy some specific types of tea and she directed my to the tea section of the department stores (depato), as Ippodo has retail shops there, but T. found out that there was actually an independant Ippodo shop in Tokyo too (opened in 2010), the first Ippodo shop outside Kyoto. The Kyoto shop has been selling high-quality green tea for 3 centuries, a unique reference in the trade.
If like me, you're not particularly into tea, visiting this shop is a good way to make a first step toward fine-tea drinking. You can find on this page the list of retail counters in the depatos (department stores), the ones in green being staffed with Ippodo salesclerk (and from what I saw when I bought the tea, they do an incredible service in terms of refinement and politeness). A large bento box for 300 Y I posted this picture just in case you still beleive that Tokyo is an expensive city to eat. These big-size bento lunch boxes at 300 Y (2,3 € or 3 USD) were not exceptional, and you even find such lunch boxes at 250 Y here and there. Inside, you have rice with vegetables plus meat or fish, and you would have a hard time finding such deals in Paris or London. The picture was shot in the Tokyo district of Yanaka. A 126-Yen supermarket You may know about the 100 Y shops, these dollar shops where everything costs 100 Y (0,77 € or 1 USD) or 105 Y with tax. The most famous being the one from the Daiso chain located at Takeshita dori in Harajuku, a 4 story 100-Y palace (a must-visit even for a regular visitor).
I discovered another sort of 100-Y supermarket dealing groceries and food, including fruits, vegetables , meat and fish. This was during a stroll I made in Otsuka along the Yamanote line in Tokyo, and my attention was aroused by the unusual crowd in this grocery store, for a nondescript street in a quiet neighborhood. So I just walked in and looked around and soon realized that many of the prices including for packaged fruits, vegetables, meat and fish were at 126 Y each (1 € or 1,3 USD). I had obviously stumbled upon one of those new business ventures specialized in cut-throat price war. I was amazed for example to see so many different fish or sea products at 126 Y, sometimes a single fish, but sometimes several in the same package.
Shimadaya
Minami Otsuka 3-47 - 8
〒170-0005 Tokyo Toshima
Location on map
Google street view of Shimadaya The adventures of a Japanese in Paris This is about a manga written by Taku Nishimura, a Japanese expat living in Paris, and dealing with the many complex issues faced by Japanese newcomers in the alien French culture and ways. The young Japanese took time to look at the French and tried to adapt, he worked in a famous Japanese grocery store (Kioko) near Opéra to make a living, gathering material for an original book on the French/Japanese divide.. The manga was first published in Japan under the title "I love Paris" if I'm right, and it was recently translated in French (titled "A nous Deux Paris"). It is selling well here from what I understand, as the many French who are interested in the Japanese culture want to learn about the sometimes-disturbing experiences of a Japanese landing in Paris and settling for a long time.

This humoristic book reviews many situations, some of them representing a real challenge for a Japanese being raised in a civilized and pacified society, but he always keep a self-deprecating humor all along. There is the episode where he is caught up in riots (scene on left), the pages about the Japanese women living in Paris and what they're looking for, the noisy appartments, the French who always kiss casually each other (scene on right), and plenty of other issues...
After reading the manga, you begin to understand why a certain number of Japanese visitors get the Paris Syndrome...
Nââânde !? This is a book on the same vein, just that it's not a manga. Eriko Nakamura samely recounts in Nââânde her astonishment in the face of French things or behaviours which would be unthinkable in Japan. Nââânde is probably the closest Japanese expression you can find to compare with the French's Oh Là Là, but it means "Why ?!" with a touch of bewilderment on top of it.
Eriko Nakamura, who had been working for Fuji TV when in Japan, is a Japanese woman who has been living for 10 years here in France and is married to a Frenchman. She wrote here her first book in French, listing with humor and through mini-stories all these weird situations she found herself in. You'll love the chapter about the visit at the doctor where she tells her horror when the doctor asked her to undress. Each time, she explains how things unfold in Japan in the same circumstances. Worlds apart.... Flight attendant at Aeroflot A small disappintment on Aeroflot, on which I travelled through Moscow : if the service keeps improving, it seems that the cabin staff doesn't offer anymore beer or vodka, you got to pay for these drinks. You can still have white or red wine (poured from tetrapak) for dinner __usually crap wine not worth a try, but no more Russian beer or vodka like it used to be. But Russian women are still Russian women...