Ito Yokado

I am staying in my mother's apartment close to Tokyo. She lives in Abiko City in Chiba prefecture, about an hour away from Tokyo.

My mother moved here a few days ago, and I am spending time helping her unpack. She lives alone, and she wants to unload 200 boxes in a 3 bedroom apartment. I want to tell her she is crazy, and occasionally do so.

I presume Abiko city has the essence of a suburban Japanese town. There is nothing in the near vicinity save the occasional convenience store, a local train station, and a mega-market called Ito Yokado.

There is nothing like Ito Yokado in America. It is similar to Wal-Mart and Target, except for one major difference: the supermarket is their main trip driver, whereas nobody would buy chicken from Wal-Mart because it tastes good. At least I hope not.

However, the fundamental idea is similar -- plant a huge shopping area in a residential district, and everyone will go there. Some will work there, and others will go there to buy daily necessities.

The Ito Yokado near my mother's house is a 5 minute-walk. The first story comprises a supermarket, a Starbucks cafe, a food court, and a sit-down restaurant to accomodate patrons with larger wallets.

The above pasta is from the said sit-down restaurant. The sauce was rather oily, but at least the noodles were cooked al dente. This, some foccacia bread, and an espresso set me back 1030 yen, or approximately $12 dollars.

The second story is dedicated to Ito Yokado's clothing and sundry goods. The third floor comprises third party vendor stores. Most Ito Yokado locations have a bookstore, a store dedicated to children's goods, and a store that sells eyeglasses.

Anyways, my only reason for this post was to show the above photo. So there you have it, a photo of some pasta with a long-winded explanation for where it came from.

Last Supper

This is my last dinner as a grad student. A super quesadilla from Ocean View Terrace for $5.50. I ate this in the IRPS computer lab while reading some instructions on "printing onto these printers from your computer" that were taped onto the wall.

People order different things at the "Mexican food" line at Ocean View Terrace this year. It was an interesting experiment in determining the demand elasticity among UCSD students. Until this year, the burrito, priced at $4.50, was considered to be the best bang for your buck in the dorms.

Nothing else could fill you up for $4.50 like an Ocean View Terrace burrito could. In fact, it was more than filling for the average student. Its less popular sibling, the super quesadilla, could be had for the same price, but was not nearly as filling.

Before, I envisioned myself enjoying a $4.50 burrito for my last meal at UCSD. I ate many burritos during my time here, and they were not bad. But as the above photo shows, this was clearly not how my dining experience at UCSD ended.

So what happened between the 2007 and 2008 academic years? Commodity prices went up. And then the burrito price suddenly jumped up from $4.50 to $6.50, a 44.4% price increase. You had one less option to fill yourself up for under $5.00.

At this point the UCSD student could make a choice. Either fork out two extra dollars and take the damage for the burrito, or look for cheaper options.

The UCSD student's eyes will then travel down the menu to find the second item listed: the super quesadilla. At a bargain price of $5.50, the prospect of having something less filling as a burrito for a smaller price suddnenly seemed to make sense.

Until this year, most students would line up at the Mexican food booth for the burrito. We are all poor, and thus need the most bang for our buck. It was the logical thing to do.

Strangely enough, the $6.50 burrito has become a luxury good, and students demand less of it; economists would say that the UCSD student's demand for the $6.50 burrito is quite elastic.

Today my last day of class as a student. I will graduate in a few weeks, and then cross off items on my to do list before I depart in March. I may learn to play more Bach pieces on the piano or learn to hit a fast tennis serve. I will not, however, eat a $6.50 Ocean View Terrace burrito, unless someone buys me one.

Black Friday Eve

I think Thanksgiving is one of the worst holidays in America. It should be grouped with Valentine's Day and just get chucked out of the calendar. It's another holiday that's there to remind you of how lonely you might be if you don't have a family in America.

However, I like Thanksgiving because of the food. A Thanksgiving meal is like a team effort at work or school, really; if people pitch in to the best of their abilities, the resulting Thanksgiving dinner is fantastic. I've been to some wonderfully executed Thanksgiving dinners, and they are some of my fondest memories of my time in America. I hope my contribution to the overall effort justified my attendance.

If the team effort fails, well, there's always Boston Market, or at least you get some amusing stories to talk about for the rest of your life, as I do.

Unfortunately, my distaste for Thanksgiving outweighs my affinity for it. It's like sprinkling some bitter medicine over some honey yogurt; you enjoy the yogurt, but the bitter medicine stays on your tongue longer than the sweetness from the yogurt.

Three reasons why I dislike Thanksgiving

1) If you don't have a ton of cash and have family far away, you can't go home for Thanksgiving and Christmas. You have to start talking to people in hopes of getting invited to Thanksgiving dinner, lest you be stranded eating a microwaveable dinner in front of a TV.

Or you can try to host a dinner / potluck yourself, if you are lucky enough to have the physical space. But then you have to worry about unwanted guests inviting themselves to your party whenever you talk to them, and your November conversations can get awkward at times.

2) If you go to school, you have Thanksgiving before Christmas break. It ruins the momentum you had going in, and it's difficult to study under a tryptophan-induced coma.

What would schoolkids say if they had to take a few days off before summer vacation, and then come back to school for one last week?

3) What is Thanksgiving supposed to mean? Now, people just think about Black Friday. They might as well rename it "Black Friday Eve."

I'm not going raise the point about Pilgrims, since Thanksgiving is just a bogus holiday fabricated by Abraham Lincoln. Maybe the turkey lobby had some kind of political clout in the 1860s.

Two Deadly Sins

Thanksgiving represents the paradox of American culture today. For a country that is founded on Christian principles, I still cannot reconcile the Seven Deadly Sins with how the average person acts during Thanksgiving weekend: gluttony and greed. And virtue is another idea that is worth discussing as well.

Gluttony - put a ton of food on your plate, waste the food on your plate you end up not eating, and then complain about all the leftovers that didn't get put on anyone's plate.

I make it a point to cook a whole bird whenever I can; if I had the option, I would like to buy a live chicken, slaughter and gut it, remove its feathers, prepare it, and then throw it in the oven. Unfortunately the most feasible option for me is to buy a whole kosher "organic" chicken at Trader Joe's and look at the lifeless corpse in the baking pan as I prepare it for its roasting.

I do this because it makes me appreciate the fact that an animal got killed so I could eat. It motivates me to do a good job as a cook, and makes me appreciate that I am lucky enough to have food on my plate for another meal. And it makes sure I don't waste any food.

Greed - buy a ton of shit and tell yourself that you are 'stimulating the economy,' and use that as an excuse to buy even more shit.

I am guilty of this. I bought a supposedly $250 suitcase for $80, because I needed a new carry-on. Oh, and I spent $50 on other things I don't really need.

I refuse to go to a store and partake in any of the mayhem we are all familiar with, though. I have eBags and Amazon to thank for my 20-minute shopping spree.

Let's do something nice

Some of us spend a part of Thanksgiving something nice to people who are less fortunate than you for some extra credit. I do not.

The variance in this extra credit activity seems to grow every year; either that, or I am noticing more of it. For instance, some people travel to Mexico to build houses, while others their local Wal-Mart, and complain when they have to leave the store because an employe died.

Aside from the periodic donation I give to a certain relief group (based on a % of my annual net income, which right now is around $1,000 a year), I have come to realize that I don't have it in me to go to a soup kitchen and donate a few hours of my time on a constant basis to help distribute food to the homeless.

At present the contribution I could make is low, both financially and having a network of well-known video game players does little to convince someone to point his wallet at your cause. There are charitable causes, for or not for profit, that can, and are, undertaken by people well into their careers. And that is something I hope to do someday.

...

Thanksgiving is another holiday whose meanings are obfuscated by shortsightedness and mediocrity displayed by the general public. While I contribute to this mediocrity in my own way, one may be justified in telling me to go back to Japan if I had such a huge problem with Thanksgiving.

And I am leaving America soon, but not because I dislike Thanksgiving more than I like it.

Le Jack in the Box?

@ the Jack In The Box on Convoy & Balboa

A test market, or a precursor for permanent change?

Fiddler's Green Restaurant

Fiddler's Green Restaurant
2760 Shelter Island Drive
San Diego, CA 92106
(619) 222-2216
www.fiddlersgreensandiego.com

The best part about Fiddler's Green Restaurant is the service, with the decor coming in at a close second.

The food, while it's the third best part of the restaurant, doesn't fall short of any expectations one would have over spending $20 on a prime rib dinner that includes two sides and an appetizer.

The clam chowder in a cup, which was actually a tad greasy and not to my liking.

The prime sirloin steak, which was available for the same price as the prime rib.

The Fiddler's Cut prime rib, which is around an inch and a half thick. I ordered it medium rare but the meat was slightly less cooked through than I would have preferred. That being said, it was still pretty good, and the mashed potatoes tasted like they were made from potatoes and not some kind of powder reconstituted with water and milk.

The server (who turned out to be one of the restaurant owners) was keen enough to observe how we were dressed, and offered to have us wait a few minutes for a nice table to open up in the back. The booth seats themselves are lined with the sailing decor that can be enjoyed throughout the restaurant.

Dinner will set you back around $25 per person, but I will definitely come back here again. While the food is not to die for, it is still pretty decent, and the warm service makes the dining experience improve by leaps and bounds.

Restaurant - Lolita's Taco Shop

Lolita's Taco Shop
7305 Clairemont Mesa Blvd
San Diego, CA 92111
(858) 874-7983
www.lolitasmexicanfood.com

Lolita's is a great taco shop with a funny name. It's one of the first places I ate at after coming to San Diego, and still remains a favorite of mine after two and a half years here.

Shrimp taco
It's really hard to go wrong with anything here; the have artery-clogging carne asada fries, deliciously succulent pollo asado, and a slew of other meats such as adobada and carnitas to fill in their many dishes.

Aside from their signature carne asada fries (enough to serve 3 people), I personally would recommend their pollo asado, carne asada, and adobado; their carnitas is a tad salty fo my tastes, and as any good pork meat does, it has a lot of oil that will drip down your fingers.

Super rolled taco
Also I wouldn't recommend any vegetable dishes, as that area is certainly not what they excel in (or spend too much time working on).

Their salsa bar goes easy on the salsa and instead gives you the option to munch on green onions, turnips, or pickled jalapeño peppers. And they have a "non-American" drink fountain with horchata beverages, among others.


Carne asada taco, chicken taco, and a carnitas burrito.The only caveat is that their food can take a while to prepare at times; as they so advertise, patience is apparently the essence of quality Mexican food. Other than that it's pretty standard as far as a sit-in Mexican fast food eatery goes.

Two people can expect to be reasonably full for around 11 to 15 dollars.

Cicadas are quite similar to shrimps in texture

An interesting read in today's Japan Times for the less squeamish...

"I think a food shortage will emerge as a global problem in the near future. Insects will play a big role in solving that problem."

I think so too, but that doesn't mean I'm going to start eating bugs on my curry -- never mind the fact that apparently, crabs are not all that different from spiders in terms of their anatomical structure.

Maybe people will eat more bugs as time passes by, but if I had any kids, I wouldn't want them to eat fried insects for dinner.

"While the idea of eating insects may seem unusual or even unappetizing to some, human consumption of insects is actually very common in most parts of the world," the U.N. body said.

I've heard of snacking on fried ants or locusts, but a giant bug on a bowl of curry is a bit extreme; it looks downright disgusting, and there's no way I would even go near that.

Source: The Japan Times Online

News - Assault With An 8-Inch Sausage

(Fresno, CA) A man reportedly broke into the home of two farmworkers, stole cash, rubbed one of the men with spices and hit the other with a sausage before fleeing.

The weapon of choice for a burglar -- an 8-inch sausage which he used to attack his victims after waking them up with some Pappy's spice seasoning.

Some information from the police report:

Before fleeing the residence, Vasquez, for some reason, removed his shorts, which contained his driver's license, credit cards, school IDs, and cell phone... Cops were unable to recover Vasquez's principal weapon. "I asked Santiago where the sausage was," Deputy George Ozburn wrote, "he advised his dog ate it."

I would have liked to see him claim that he saw someone do it in a video game.

Source: The Smoking Gun

Beverage - Starbucks Sorbetto

2.95 for what, you say?
No, my hands are not abnormally large nor small. You only have one option as the size of this Sorbetto drink, and it's pretty freaking small. In a bizarre twist of events though, Starbucks is actually using the Pinkberry brand to sell a product, and not the other way around!

I'm not sure why they think Starbucks patrons would want a drink that is super light, free of caffeine or cream, and costs almost $0.25 per ounce. It tastes okay, but I don't see anyone telling their friends to buy this, too.

Quick, go for this now before Starbucks takes it off their menu!

Restaurant - Spoon House

Spoon House Bakery & Restaurant
1601 W Redondo Beach Blvd
Gardena, CA 90247
(310) 538-0376

I have never had an unpleasant experience at Spoon House. A local favorite of mine since my elementary school days as an Asian kid with a bowl cut, it's a convenient place to stop by if you are interested in Japanese style pasta. Best of all, the understand what al dente means - a source of relief in a city where most Italian places will serve you a plate of crunchy spaghetti if you utter those two words.

Bacon, shiitake mushroom, shrimp, and spinach pasta
Their bread isn't bad either, but you are better off only eating a couple of bites if you want to avoid baguettes that are loaded with butter even before you take your butter knife to them.

Spaghetti bolognese with meatballs
I would personally recommend their spaghetti bolognese with sausage and egg, or if you prefer a creamy (but not buttery) sauce, their chicken cream sauce spaghetti. For the adventurous, their cold California pasta (avocados, vegetables, and canned crab meat in a light cream sauce) or spaghetti neapolitan (ketchup instead of tomato paste) may be to your liking.

As long as you don't go during a time they are super busy, you will get relatively fast and efficient service, and don't forget to pay at the cash register at the front of the store. You can buy some of their bread to take home, if you are so inclined.

Restaurant - Pizza Port

Pizza Port
135 N Hwy 101
Solana Beach, CA 92075
(858) 481-7332
http://www.pizzaport.com

If you are looking for the kind of pizza shop that you went to as a kid to get your ass kicked in Street Fighter II (or because of Street Fighter II), Pizza Port may provide an answer.

Their menu boasts a variety that, while not boring, is not too exotic in their toppings. Most of their pizza seems to be topped with garlic and basil, and you are probably going to enjoy your pizza a whole lot more if you get a pitcher of beer on the side, as they have over a dozen brews on tap.

The Solana Pizza - shrimp, fish, and shellfish?

If you want to take someone here and enjoy a small pizza and a salad, it'll set you back around $15. I doubt you will feel ripped off here.

The service is pretty standard fare; you order your pizza, take a number, and then pick up your pizza when your number is called. A few rows of long benches fill up the interior, so you'll have to sit next to some strangers if the place is crowded.

Sadly they do not have any Street Fighter machines, but they have a few arcade games that you can indulge in if the atmosphere is a bit boring for you.

And if you still want to get your ass kicked, they have an online jukebox that gives you the liberty to, I assume, put in some really shitty music that will rip through the entire establishment before. There's even a dark, unused booth towards the back of the restaurant that doubles as storage for unused pizza boxes - the perfect stage for a round of some real street fighting action.

Restaurant - Ryo Zan Paku

Ryo Zan Paku
2589 Pacific Coast Hwy
Torrance, CA 90505
(310) 530-8720

A recent visit to the Torrance area a dozen or so miles south of Los Angeles put me face to face with some of the newer Japanese Izakaya establishments set up in the area. Longtime establishments such as Iccho and Musha, it seems, no longer enjoy their oligopoly over the izakaya-starved Japanese businesspeople that wade through the South Bay.

One such location is Ryo Zan Paku, a retro-style izakaya that boasts a decor similar to the kind of Japanese bar that Japanese businessmen would escape to for a few beers after a long day at work. As it turns out, it's a US location of an izakaya chain that originates from Japan.

The food was probably a hair below the standard as far as what Japanese businessmen would find acceptable. Not that anything was particularly bad; the place boasts a menu with a wide variety of assorted sushi rolls, yakitori sticks, rice dishes and fried dishes. Then again, everything was sort of not good. If a Japanese businessman were to eat these dishes and you asked him how he felt, he wouldn't say it was bad, but he would look at you apologetically, narrow his eyes a little bit and subtly shake his head.

Hiyayakko (cold tofu)
Did they try to dress it up too much? I personally am not a fan of tofu on ice.

Tamago yaki (eggs cooked like a layered omelette)
The big slices are usually how izakaya showcase their tamago when they make it themselves; it is actually difficult to cook well, and the strangely lukewarm nature of the tamago made it clear to me that they don't make their own. And it really doesn't taste as good when you have to eat a huge chunk of it, like in this picture.

Calamari salad
No, those aren't chicken strips. They have small pieces of squid inside, surrounded by lots of fried batter. Lots and lots of it.

By the way, if you notice that the food is decorated by either parsley or sprouts, that's because all of their dishes come out like so. Except for their crab cream croquettes, I suppose (which were actually somewhat decent).

The waitress at our table was energetic and was helpful in helping us select our order. I would imagine service would get rather sparse during busy hours, but fortunately Sunday night did not seem to be one of their busier nights. I was not too sure why she recommended we get some American-style sushi rolls when we said we wanted to order a rice dish or two. At $2.00 to $2.50 per pop, one of their onigiri (rice balls) would have sufficed, but we paid three to four times that amount for a salty clump of rice and assorted vegetables. And there was very little rice in those sushi rolls.

Unfortunately the retro music playlist is analogous to an entourage of some of the sadder oldies tunes that our grandmothers probably cried to, such as "Nature Boy" by Nat King Cole or "In The Ghetto" by Elvis Presley. There were few songs that were similar in mood to Frank Sinatra's livelier tunes, making the dark, lonesome stool at the edge of the bar counter an appealing place to drown one's sorrows in.

The tab came out to $26 per person, which seemed a bit pricey considering we didn't have a single drop of alcohol between the five of us. If I was a Japanese businessman, I would only come here if my wife had left me for the young college student next door, since the dim lighting, depressing music, and dishes that will leave you wanting something just a little better forms a solid foundation for any depressed Japanese businessman's Shangri-La.

It's the kind of place you would go to with a crestfallen sigh, when your options really have run dry and want to go to a place that you know won't be crowded. It looks nice, the service is friendly, but the food isn't that great.

Restaurant - Tofu House

Tofu House
4646 Convoy St., Ste 116
San Diego, CA 92111
(858) 576-6433
http://www.tofuhaus.com

Tofu -- it's what's for dinner. Or so it seems when the spicy bowl of soon doo bu whacks you on the side of the head, and you have no choice but to give in to your desires. Fortunately, San Diegans have a plethora of options to choose from, and Tofu House north of Balboa is one such establishment.

Notice anything strange with the menu?
With a name as enlightening as BOILED MYSTERY TOFU, I couldn't help but give in to my curiosity and order the pot of soon doo bu which promised to give me some ???. Because that's what it says on the menu.

The mystery tofu.
The mystery tofu does not disappoint! At first glance I had no freaking clue what I was getting myself into. I'm almost positive that they just throw in the leftovers from last night, and I got to feel like a big man for chomping through the mystery dish. Not that it's any scarier than the secret sauce that gets squirted on to the Big Mac sandwich at McDonald's everywhere.

Honestly the food is kind of mediocre here. The soup stock used in the soon doo bu is rather bland, and the rice is not very tasty (pictured below). Considering the high level of competition on Convoy St., they had better step it up a notch if they want to stay in business. Right now the only thing that Tofu House has going for it is its location between a bar and Yogurt World; food-wise Convoy Tofu House a few blocks away does better for around the same price.

The not-so-tasty rice.
I was pretty happy that I got to play with a little bit of danger for $9 plus tax. It's probably just as unhealthy as the other soon doo bu offerings at Tofu House, but the added excitement clearly makes it a better deal than everything else there, even the soon doo bu with intestines.

Gasoline for car trip: $1.50
Boiled mystery tofu: $9.00
Injecting some culinary danger into my life: priceless

Restaurant - Curry House

Curry House
123 S Onizuka St. # 204
Los Angeles, CA 90012
(213) 620-0855
Genre: Japanese

Curry House is the El Pollo Loco of Japanese style curry. It's been there forever, you rarely go there, and when curiosity gets the better of you and you sit down at one of their locations, you do you notice that prices have gone up, some curious seasonal items have invaded the menu list, and you end up leaving without any real desire to return at any time in the near future.

My last such trip to a Curry House location produced the following dish above. I think it was a spicy ginger chicken curry. I had never seen it before, but the 11.00+ price tag didn't seem so expensive compared to the price of their regular curries, which had inflated to 9.50 and up.

It seemed like a better choice than getting a curry wrap, but I'm not sure. Like marinara sauce without any garlic, you're left with a distant feeling of something missing from your tastebuds, searching for a taste that isn't going to hit you any time soon.

At least the service wasn't bad; not to say that it was great, but it's what I expected from having paid $11.00 plus tax and tip for a plate of spicy ginger chicken curry.

Restaurant - Ocean Star Seafood Restaurant

Ocean Star Seafood Restaurant
145 N Atlantic Blvd
Monterey Park, CA 91754
(626) 308-2128
Genre: Chinese

A co-worker once told me that weddings come in two waves. The first hits you right after college, when lovestruck twenty-somethings wrapped up in ideas of what love should be, or those actually lucky enough to find someone who is worthy of a lifelong fit, end up tying the knot and reveling in the swirl of gossip that surrounds their newfound happiness.

The second, which hits before you and your peers turn thirty, is the kind that happens when people mature and are lucky enough to meet the person who is truly right for them, or, after attending plenty of friends' weddings, get tired of being the drunk single friend who ends up left alone by his peers.

Luckily enough I had the chance to celebrate two friends who decided to tie the knot in the legitimate version of the second way, which makes it okay for me to talk about it here. Meanwhile I dutifully played the role of the drunk friend in a sea of 500 people, downing more than a standard amount of cognac. Thankfully, nobody left me alone though.

I had never been to a Chinese wedding before; not only was I surprised by the number of female attendees donning white dresses to such a joyous occasion, but the entertainment was quite something else, sans the distant male relative who, as the MC, made cruder and cruder jokes as his blood alcohol level rose.

Special Roasted Suckling Pig Platter
Until the very end I wasn't sure if the gelatinous matter in the center of the plate was really some part of the suckling pig, or some random jellyfish pieces that was called in as some kind of magical filler material. It was quite good, actually, and it was nice to enjoy the meat cooked in four different styles.

Stir Fried Scallop Double Style
I'm not sure what to say about this dish, other than the fact that scallops were both stir fried and deep fried for this "double style" dish. It was tasty, and it made me smack my lips, wanting more. But there was none left.

Minced Shrimp Stuffed Crab Claws
Talk about strange bedfellows. Imagine being caught (or probably farmed), killed off, have your body minced up and then ending up in the shell of a completely different creature. I'm not sure what that would feel like, the shrimp that gave up their livelihood to be in this dish would know. If I could, I would tell them that they were quite succulent, and their friend the crab claw made them easy to enjoy.

Braised Shark's Fin Soup with Crab Meat
Most, if not all, of the shark's fin meat in the soup was legitimate. Or at least it tasted that way to me. Although the prohibitively high price tag for this delicacy keeps it out of the range of hapless graduate students like me. Perhaps if I was able to attend another Chinese wedding of this scale, I would be able to enjoy shark's fin soup in the same guilt-free, unconscionable air of ignorance that helps us live with ourselves when we eat other foods such as foie gras and baby back ribs. Let's face it -- dickery tastes good, and that's why it lives on; people like us are able to live with guilty pleasure. We all do it.

Sliced Abalone with Mushroom and Vegetable
Much to my dismay and delight, the others at the table did not seem to enjoy the Chinese-style abalone so much. My dismay, because I fail to understand how anyone could not make a run for their fare share of the shellfish, but delight, because I got to finish all the abalone that nobody else wanted.

Deep Fried Squab
None of us knew what the heck we were putting into our mouths when this dish was placed in front of us. The entire squab was deep fried, and the chefs were kind enough to leave the heads on the plate for us to think about as we tried to extract as much meat as we could. The meat tasted rather tender but in a healthy way; one could tell that these birds were far more fit than the fat, well-fed pigeons seen waddling around any public area in the world. No, they do not taste like chicken.

Baked Lobster with Ginger and Scallion
My only gripe with this dish was the lack of any efficient apparatus to get the lobster meat from the shell. The meat that I did manage to dig up justified the effort, though.

Steamed Live Fish
I thought my dismay / delight combination had peaked at the abalone, but it was trumped by what I experienced with the fish. Almost 3/4 of a fish was left virtually untouched after everyone had their pickings from the dish. And only a few seemed inclined for seconds. Steamed whole fish that had absorbed all kinds of flavors from the sauce that is typically poured over such dishes is definitely one of the best dishes one could enjoy at a Chinese seafood restaurant.

Four Treasure Special Fried Rice
Ordering fried rice at a Chinese restaurant is like ordering prime rib sandwiches at Lawry's. You know what you're getting into -- that is, a filler dish with bits and pieces of leftover meat; only this time around, the leftover meat was the unused portions of the suckling pig that came out at the beginning of the meal. Not that I have anything against this sort of deal; if anything, meats should be used to their full potential, much like the bento boxes you can find at any Japanese supermarket, which use meats that were left over from the meat section. It was just like any other fried rice you can make; hence the lack of a photograph here.

Dessert
Okay, maybe traditional Chinese weddings are supposed to have red bean soup at the very end, but this was handed to us after everyone had enjoyed a piece of the wedding cake. Needless to say only a few people had enough space to try more than a couple of bites of the red bean soup, and I was so full I even forgot to take the freaking picture.

Conclusion
It's quite a feat once one realizes that, in addition to its regular Saturday night business, the chefs at Ocean Star had to cook up enough food to feed around 500 hungry people. I'm curious to see how big a kitchen one needs to prepare such a huge meal, but overall they did an excellent job given the busy conditions.

Of course, the wedding itself was a pleasure to attend as well -- my gratitude congratulations goes out to my two friends whose wedding was a cause for celebration by so many people.

Restaurant - Santouka Ramen

Santouka Ramen
3760 S Centinela Ave
Los Angeles, CA 90066
(310) 391-1101
Genre: Japanese

I've heard a lot about this place, since it's a real Japanese ramen chain that made it to the states (and is a chain over here as well; there are at least three locations in the Southern California area).

If you're the kind of person who won't order ramen at a ramen place, then they have rice dishes for you, but seriously, the only place where you wouldn't want to order a restaurant's "specialty menu" is Curry House.

Zoom up and joy the view.
I guess if you've never had the chance to enjoy the frozen ramen you can buy at Japanese supermarkets, Santouka Ramen sounds like quite an interesting proposal. It sure beats the crap out of Top Ramen or whatever the heck most people think of when they hear the word "ramen," but their $6.95 ramen could easily be made for 1/3 of the price, sans the fatty piece of char-siu pork. And really, it only takes 5 or 6 minutes to prepare.

The soy sauce ramen.
Service-wise, you get what you expect out of a food court eatery. They call your number, and then you go get your food. Unless you stare down at the food you're eating, you're gonna be locked in a staring contest with someone else in the same situation you are.

So just stare down and enjoy your noodles. Because you won't be coming back again for a while, unless you want to slurp down enough sodium for 3 days and enough oil to last you the entire winter.

As a final note, "Santouka" literally means "mountain head fire." No, I have no idea why anyone would want to name his or her restaurant like that. They even make you go through the trouble of reading the restaurant name backwards. And it doesn't sound cool at all, even if we're surrounded by other mediocre-sounding ramen shop names like Orochon.

Windsor man caught with stolen meat in his pants

Source: The Windsor Star

We all know that food prices have been rising. Foregoing the fire-baked pizza and instead going to McDonald's for lunch is no longer a tactic reserved for the starving college intern, but at less than $5 for a meal, it's not a bad deal.

Other people have taken less kindly to these changes in food prices, as stuffing t-bone steaks in your pants has become a popular tactic for those addicted to bovine meat.

Of course, this man is certainly not the first to attempt such a crime, eh?

An off-duty cop and a grocery store manager chased down an alleged thief Monday after he tried to make his escape in a taxi cab, with six T-bone steaks crammed down his pants.

He put six T-bone steaks in the waist band of his pants, police said. The manager confronted him as he tried to leave the store.

The man with the meat jumped out of the cab and took off on foot, with the store manager on his heels.

An off-duty Windsor police officer saw the chase and witnessed the suspect dropping the steaks as he ran.

I'm curious what it is about t-bone steaks that makes people want to stuff them into their pants.

News - Japan’s Promised Rice Aid Fails to Emerge

Source: Financial Times

A professor of mine explained his view on the key difference between Japanese and Western business processes; Western firms will seal a deal in 1 month, procrastinate for 10 months and then get the actual work done on the twelfth month, but Japanese firms will procrastinate for 10 months, seal a deal in the eleventh month and then get the work of it done on the twelfth month.

In the end it’s all the same.

Or Japanese firms could just not get anything done. Ever.

Such is the case with the rice issue discussed in the article; the government was basically too lazy to make money from rice that it usually just gives away.

Of the 770,000 tons it imports annually, the government sells about 100,000 tons for general consumption, 300,000 tons for use in processed foods and a few hundred thousand tons as animal feed, according to the Ministry of Agriculture. About 100,000 to 200,000 tons is for foreign aid.

...Rex Estoperez, of the Philippine National Food Authority, attributed the lack of movement to bureaucratic procedures and early disagreement on price.

Not only did Japan not sell expensive rice for a premium when it had the chance; now they will probably have to give some of that away. And to top it off, they come off as a stingy country that clings on to its brown rice, unwilling to share any of it with its Asian neighbors.

Of course, the flip side to the argument is that, had commodity prices continued their steep climb during the early summer months, Japan might have been able to sell their rice for an even higher price. But I guess that’s not going to happen now, and they’ll have to sit around for another year before they decide what to do with their leftover rice.

Apple Spice Muffins (Vons)

People love to eat. Americans are people. Therefore, Americans love to eat. But nobody eats like the people of America do.

The office treat this morning was the ridiculously unhealthy pastry often referred to as a muffin. With enough salt / sugar / butter for it to last 10 days in the fridge, you could easily give yourself some chest discomfort with one of these things, as I am feeling right now.

A quick dive into The Google showed me that 941,127,600 dollars in muffins made it to store shelves in 2007. Assuming that each muffin cost an average of $1.50, and if we round up to estimate that there were 300 million Americans, one can come up with a rough calculation that Americans eat an average of two muffins per year.

Curiously enough, the muffin is not on the list of pastries that made it across the Pacific Ocean into Asia, with other items including Belgian waffles, pastries, and even Krispy Kreme bacon cheddar cheeseburgers.

Restaurant - Musha

Musha Restaurant
424 Wilshire Blvd.
Santa Monica, CA 90401
(310) 576-6330
Genre: Japanese

Musha is the kind of place you want to go to if you want to enjoy some alcohol and tasty food that comes in small proportions. I can see why some would classify Musha as a Japanese tapas bar.

Anyways, a picture is worth a thousand words, so several pictures therefore would be worth several thousand words. I will let the food do all the explaining, and interject as needed.

The Japanese-influenced cocktails are beautiful in taste and presentation. Just don't let the beer pitchers fool you; they hold a lot less beer than you would think at first glance.

You can order a seaweed salad at Nobu for 15 dollars, or something comprable for 6. Of course it's not going to be loaded with seaweed, but it does the trick.

Their signature dish is the MFC (Musha fried chicken), although I'm not 100% sure why. I mean, it's chicken, and it's fried -- perhaps the soft crust is what keeps many people coming back from more.

A much tastier fried dish is the pumpkin croquette, pictured above. Then again, with a few beers, the fried chicken COULD taste better...

And of course, you can't finish off a Japanese meal with some rice! Enjoying some salmon yaki-onigiri is indeed an excellent way to finish a meal.

Long story short, the food is indeed as tasty as it looks. The service is nothing to rave about, and while it can get a little dodgy during super busy times, they are never pretentious or condescending.

Expect to pay around $30 per person for dinner and a drink.