Nouveau Blog

En espérant être un peu plus prolifique, je me suis donné pour objectif de commencer un nouveau blog dont le thème serait plus spécialisé : la bouffe. Etant donné que je repars à Tokyo pour 3 semaines, je commencerais là-bas et vous ferait profiter de toutes mes découvertes de Ramen-ya ultra-secrètes, Izakaya magiques qui disparait au petit matin et autre restaurants ninja perdus. Evidemment, tout cela photos et adresses à l’appui…
Vous trouverez ce nouveau blog à l’adresse suivante :
http://tabemonogatari.wordpress.com

Bon appétit et salut.

How to do Cheese Fondue in Japan

Et aujourd’hui, après un long moment d’absence, un post en français. Et pas n’importe quel post, mais un post utile, un post incroyable, un manuel de survie qui dévoile des techniques longtemps gardées secrètes par un petit nombre d’initiés :

Comment faire une fondue au japon!!

1. Se procurer le matériel et les ingrédients
   • Du pain que vous pourrez acheter dans n’importe quel Convini (Convenience Store, ouvert 24/7),
   • Des baguettes que vous trouverez au supermarché ou n’importe ou en fait. Volez-en dans un restaurant en dernière extremité.
   • De la fondue à micro-onder, disponible dans la plupart des supermarchés.

   

2. Trouver un cobaye ami Et oui, la fondue est une activité sociale. En l’occurrence, le specimen s’appelle Daniel, est Suisse aussi, et constitue donc un excellent sujet d’expérimentations

   

3. S’assurer que la marchandise est de bonne qualité
   En effet, il n’est pas rare de s’apercevoir (trop tard) que la marchandise a été coupée au pneu afin de maximiser le bénéfice du supermarché. Et oui, ces grandes compagnies ne recule devant aucun stratagème afin de garantir leur marge de profit.

   

4. Inspecter de plus prêt…
   Hum… Sans commentaires…

   

5. Rompre le pain et tenter sa chance

   Hé oui, y a plus qu’à se jeter à l’eau maintenant…

   
   Tout le monde doit goûter, même Renani, le norvégien C’était sa première fois. Ce sera sûrement mieux la prochaine…

   

   

   

Donc, au final, c’était pas si mal que ça, mais ça avait vraiment pas le goût de fondue. Ca ressemblait plus au fromage recomposé qu’on utilise pour mettre dans les croques messieurs Mais si vous êtes vraiment dans la dêche au Japon, ça aide à la survie ha ha ha ha

A bientôt pour de nouvelles aventures culinaires…

Women in Computer Science…

For those who, like me, always wondered :

Why Are There So Few Female Computer Scientists?

Golden Week – Aizu

The Golden Week finally arrived. A hectic national holiday week in Japan. National holiday is in itself a bad idea. Now, do it in Japan and it will get even worse. Everybody is moving around japan, all the hotels and trains are full-booked. You better organize yourself.

On my side, I decided to visit Khue (a.k.a. Kukuli, cf blog links) in Aizu, a 3-hours bus + 1-hour car trip from Tokyo (including 2 hours bus just to leave Tokyo), up in the mountains, where spring just barely began. I was there warmly welcomed by the team of the Haryu Wood Studio (http://haganuma.exblog.jp/), the architect bureau in which Khue is doing her internship now.

It was really nice, we first went to Onsen, natural hot-spring bath. Hot, hot, hot… It is very nice as you can see, it is an outside bath with stones. Men and women sides are separated by a wooden fence.

Next day, we went to some place in the mountain where people used to hide if they where researched (as I understood) quiet a long way. We were supposed to have a walk with snowshoes, but finally we hadn’t time to do it… So we just wandered around a bit…

The day before yesterday, Sei-san took us on a tour of Tochigi. We stopped to see two museums built by Kuma Kengo, a famous japanese architect. This tour also included my first visit in an automatic sushi restaurant (with plates of sushis moving automatically around the bar, if you want one, you take it!). 8-plates. I couldn’t beat Sei-san (12-plates + dessert). Yumi!!!

Yesterday was bread day. I baked for my hosts bread. The typical swiss “Tresse” a sesame bread and did some experiment with a “Nori” (japanese seaweed) bread, quiet good.

Today is my last day in Aizu and I will try my first chair 3-D design this afternoon… Then, tonight, we take the car with Tanaka to go to Aomori. There we want to visit the Hirosaki castle which is supposed to be incredibly beautiful, especially at this time because the sakuras (cherry-tree) are in full blossom right now!!! More on this next time.

Mata ne!!!!

Tsukiji – Asakusa

After a night clubbing in Shibuya, our plan was to go to Tsukiji, the fish market. It is situated in Ginza district right in the center of Tokyo. It was amazing. We arrived there at maybe 7 o’clock in the morning. It was so busy. The fish was either very fresh, freshly dead or alive. And when I say fish, I mean all sort of creatures one can harvest from the sea. From the standard 1-ton tuna to the star-fish and including among others crabs, sea-spider, sea cucumber and all kind of terrifying creatures that populate your nightmares (wouaaahh). But fortunately, all of this is edible! So we got our chopsticks ready and went for the closest sushi bar!! Yumi!! It was a treat! Unagi (eel, anguille), Tako (octopus, pieuvre), Squid (w/ tentacles) (calmar), etc. Very delicious. A nice alternative to the traditionnal bakery back door (which is hard to find here).

Following the Tsukiji excursion, we went on a trip to Asakusa with the japanese lessons group. It was really nice. We went there by boat from Ginza. This is a trip from the center of Tokyo to the periphery, so we had time to see the city from the river. A disturbing view : all the homeless living under the bridges at the riverside…

This picture is completed by a walk in Ueno park which is a major homeless settlement in Tokyo. And those people seem pretty active and organized. They hang their laundry, you can often see some doing some manual activities and they don’t ask for money. This is not the traditional homeless stereotype. Makes you question our modern world…

Then, Asakusa was nice but crowded. Many small shops selling kitsch and crapy stuff (and less crapy stuff from time to time), many tourists, but a beautiful place

But then we were very sleepy and we slept a bit on the boat on the way back (we still hadn’t sleep if you recall). We stopped then in a beautiful park. There were many blossoming trees. I will put soon pictures in the photo stream, don’t worry. And finally went back home for some hours sleeping… Wouf. Very cool saturday!!!!

Weird hobbies in Tokyo…

So, here is my first real post on this blog. I will try not to be too boring.

By taking a walk in Harajuku and Yoyogi park, one can see many eccentric people. Interesting clothes, costumes, hobbies and so on. It seems that every single weird thing, sport, music, dance, etc, is someone’s hobby or passion. And when they get interested into something they go into it 100%. We could see young people doing tap dance (“claquette” in french). This is so not popular in Europe. I mean some people do it. But those guys were “cool”, and were doing it in a park… I like this street art spirit

We saw also this guy :

He is “Peace and Love” man. He is looking for a partner. Probably to do the “Peace” part of the duo… I have his card if anyone is interested…

Nice skiing day in Villars with Mum…

Weather was great, snow was okay….

Nice view on Leysin and the Tours d’Aï and Mayen.

It was my last day skiing this winter. A few days later, I was out in Tokyo!!! The world is crazy nowadays..

I perfectly know that this post might seem out of context on this blog, but come on, the picture is nice, isn’t it ?