Sapporo Food: Yakumo Goma-soba

I try to avoid writing about chains of restaurants here. I figure that you hardly need me to tell you that there are a bunch of McDonald's or Starbucks or Tully's Coffees in Sapporo. But then I'm never sure whether or not to put up some stuff about the local Sapporo and Hokkaido chains like the yaki-tori chain Kushidori or (and this one I'll never bother with) the hamburg steak chain Bikkuri Donkey. If you live here then these places are so common that it'll seem pointless detailing them, but if you're only visiting then knowing about places you can eat pretty well for not much money could be really useful. AND SO - I decided to do a post about the soba restaurant chain Yakumo.

There are Yakumo's all over the place in Sapporo and they're all a little different but they all do very nice soba. Soba has always been one of my favourite Japanese foods - buckwheat noodles that can be served cold or hot and eaten in a few different ways. I'd guess the most common way that soba is eaten though, is cold. You get a tray of soba noodles, some soba sauce to dip the noodles in and often some tempura to go with them. It's great, and healthy and I love it.

I sometimes go to the Yakumo in the basement of 4chome Plaza next to Odori station, because it's conveniently on my way home sometimes, and I sometimes go to the one in the PASEO section of Sapporo station for the same reason, but mostly I go to the pretty fancy one on the top floor of the department store PARCO. So let's talk about that one, huh?

What sets Yakumo apart from other soba places is that they serve goma-soba, that is they use sesame in their noodles. What does this look like? Little black bits in the grey noodles. What does it mean for the taste? Ehhh, I'm not sure. It's subtle. They're a little harder? Anyway they're delicious. Every now and then they've told me that they're serving 'Shin-soba' that day, which means not goma-soba, but the noodles are still great. They're also a Hokkaido company which means lot's of Hokkaido sourced ingredients and Hokkaido big-upping in their menu.

Here's what my girlfriend got the day I took these snaps. I think it was torori soba? The bowl at the top right has a raw egg and a bowl of grated mountain potato - very sticky. That's not really standard, but the noodles here are presented in a really standard way. The bottle has the soba sauce and in this case she added that to the egg bowl, then added the spring onion and wasabi (to taste, as they say) and picked up the noodles and dipped them in the mixture. I think. Man, I don't want to sound patronizing about this, but God knows I've been a bit baffled by the bowls and bottles presented to me at soba restaurants.

And here's what I get most of the time when I go there: ebi oroshi soba. This particular Yakumo has a great evening meal deal where you can choose one of six main dishes to go with a few side dishes for 980yen, and you can add a beer for 380yen more.

So, let me explain what's going on here. The soup from the bottle in the middle goes into the bowl and you mix in as much wasabi and spring onion as you want. Then you add the various things on top of the soba and mix those in as well, and when you can see enough of the noodles to get at them, you dip them in the soup! The tempura shrimp there also get dipped in the soup - IF YOU WANT! And there at the back, the salad and the baked rice-ball are part of the meal set. The yaki-onigiri (rice-ball) has cheese inside and is awesome.

The beer, you drink.

Oh! And last but by no means least you'll always get a pot of soba-yuu at soba restaurants. That square red pot in shadow at the back is the soba-yuu - that's the water that they cooked the noodles in. At the end of the meal, when you've finished everything else, you'll probably still have some of the soba sauce left, so you pour some of the soba-yuu into the sauce bowl to make a soup you can drink.

Isn't soba wonderful? Shhh, no need to answer. I like Yakumo, so if you're in Sapporo looking to have some soba and you see one around, it's probably not going to be a bad meal. This PARCO branch I'd say is good, especially for that evening meal deal so I'll mark it on the map.

Sapporo Food: Donabe Hamburg Hokutosei

Donabe Hamburg Hokutosei (土鍋ハンバーグ 北斗星) has a couple of location in downtown Sapporo, and judging by how crowded it seems to get every night I'd say they're probably doing pretty well. They serve hamburg steak served in an earthenware pot (the 'Donabe' part of the name) in a rich soupy sauce and when I went a while back it was really very good.

I can't guarantee those dudes with the amazing hair will be their on your visit, but this branch is pretty near Club Counteraction so they might be!

The shop is pretty small with only counter seating, so it's fun to watch the whole cooking process including the massive gouts of flame they unleash while they're cooking the hamburg.

That's only one chef, but the mirror really helped to dispel any feelings of claustrophobia in there! I'd describe the cuisine at Hokutosei as rich. Very rich. I went with the stuff that was recommended on the wall, a tomato and cheese thing with extra bacon topping, and Yuki had something else. I forget what that was but... something to do with vegetables.

The sauce is thick, the hamburg steak is juicy and delicious and that crazy, crazy thick bacon (I do not think that would be classed as bacon in England, that's like a level up - gammon or something) was amazing. Allow me to talk a moment more about the bacon - it was so thick, and so salty - man, it was like ur-bacon or something. The archetype of bacon. And eating it was such a challenge that it came with a pair of scissors to cut it into edible chunks.

Look at how thick that is! I've had thinner pork chops! If you're into strong flavours and big, hearty, meaty dishes I'd recommend the place. I'll stick the one I went to on the map, but the other one is in Tanuki Koji, on the other side of eki-mae dori. It's easy enough to find and there's always the internet, which I'm assuming is how you found me.

Sapporo Food: Maruyama Mushroom

Out near Nishi 18 Chome station on the Tozai line, Maruyama Mushroom offers (according to the English slogan) hamburg steak and casual French food and despite the fact that I can't stand mushrooms I thought I'd check it out!

It's a nice, small restaurant and they're clearly very serious about their food. It's one of those places where as much of the menu is devoted to describing the ingredients and their origins, as is devoted to actually laying out the food. Most of their dishes are based around Japanese style hamburg steak, and although it's not very expensive, you can tell that you're in for something of a quality meal because it's certainly not as cheap as your bog-standard hamburg chain. The cheapest set thing is a little over a thousand yen:

And it looked very nice. I pushed the boat out a little more and had the hamburg with Parmesan risotto which was really good. Mushrooms, actually, weren't all that obvious in the dishes. Since I really don't like them I did ask - um, does this have lots of mushrooms in it? And the waitress said it did, but very quickly said that they could leave them out if I wanted. And I wanted, so they did, but I'm a little curious as to what they left them out of. The hamburg? The risotto? The salad? And for that matter I was feeling guilty because the chef is clearly very serious about his food, has called the place Mushroom and I was asking him not to include them? Well, I enjoyed it in the end, and he didn't look too put out so I hope it was ok.

If you're in the Maruyama-ish area this place is worth checking out, and it's on my map. I'm glad I got over my distaste for the name to try it!

Sapporo Food: Soup Curry Samurai

I knew that there were a bunch of branches of Soup Curry Samurai around, but I didn't know until recently that one of my friends rates it as the best place in Sapporo. Since in actuality I needed no incentive to go and check the place out, that was all the incentive I needed to finally go to the one I spotted in Susukino and see if it was any good.

It's very good.

Soup curry for beginners - curry in the form of a soup that's served with lots of meat and vegetables in the soup and with rice on the side that you can do with what you wish. It originated in Sapporo and as yet there's no massive nationwide chain, or in fact much similarity at all between the different shops. Some shops use vaguely Indian spices, while a lot of them have a hint of Indonesian or Thai flavour to them. But it's always grounded in a uniquely soup-curry taste. I can probably stop doing this spiel whenever I talk about soup curry can't I? There are some small chains with multiple shops in Sapporo and a few have even opened in Tokyo I think, but I find that sometimes flavour can vary between different branches of the same chain so I'm reluctant to review all of one company's restaurants on the basis of visiting one. Anyway, this was the Odori/Susukino Samurai I went to, accessed via street level but spread over the second and third floors of the small building it's in.

The place was nice and cozy and the soup curry was excellent. The soup was nice and thick in comparison to many other places, and it had a very full, rich flavour. Yuki had the monthly special which was this chicken pumpkin thing, pumpkin soup too!

Her comments afterwards were that she was blown away by the first six mouthfuls, but that after that it was maybe a bit too rich and there was too much chicken. I hardly need say that this won't be a problem for others. I went for the buta kakuni (slow cooked pork) which is something I really like trying everywhere. There's a choice of six curries but I had the regular and it was pretty wonderful. In fact the soup was so good, and so flavoursome that I regretted getting the mozzarella cheese topping for it since it really ended up confusing the otherwise wonderful taste. Then, choosing spice levels and toppings are part of the fun of soup curry. Next time I'll keep it simple.

I had spice level 4, the highest you can go before they start dropping chillis in and charging more, and it was nicely spicy. Nothing to worry about if you like spicy food. The vegetables here were crisper and less cooked than a lot of the places I've been too recently, and to be honest I prefer them softer than this with soup curry. But the pork was cooked to perfection, so I assume that's the way they do their veg here and some people will love it. There was certainly a nice selection as you can see.

I don't know that this is the best place in Sapporo, but to be honest considering the number of Soup Curry places out there I doubt I'll ever find that holy, curry-filled grail. It was great though, and I'd love to go back. There are four branches scattered around Sapporo that you can find from their website that I've linked to at the top, and I'll put this city centre one on my map. Ahhhh, I love soup curry.

Elite Japanese Cuisine

Oh! Did I say 'Elite Japanese Cuisine'? I meant stuff I found in convenience stores and vending machines! I... suppose there is a difference?

This first one isn't all that interesting. I think it's a Family Mart exclusive Sapporo soft drink, but I mostly took a picture because it's melon... cola? That and I never get tired of drinking curiously-hued beverages. In Japan of course, green melon soda is commonplace, but melon cola? To be frank I couldn't really tell the difference. It was good though!

McVitie's Sweet Mint Digestive Biscuits! Aw, now you're talking! These are one of those products that, although it's a Western company, I doubt you'll find these available in the West. That happens a lot (see for example whole blogs dedicated to the baffling array of Kit-Kat flavours they have here) and not just with food, but with clothing brands and other things too. Eastern and Western tastes vary, y'know.

But in this case, my tastes don't vary that much at all. I adore chocolate and mint flavoured stuff, but when I first came to Japan I never saw anything around, and when I told people I liked that taste they looked at me funny. Well, y'know, funnier than usual. But in the few years I've been here chocolate-mint flavoured items have been popping up more and more, and this summer was a veritable choco-minty feast for me, with all sorts of limited edition snacks and ice-creams on offer. I mean, when I saw this latest one I almost thought they'd designed it just for me. Until I turned over the packet...

I mean, she doesn't look like me at all. Oh well. Also, I'm pretty sure that the Japanese companies are treating choc-mint flavour as a summer thing, so now it's cooling down I won't find it anywhere, but it was good while it lasted.

Next up, vending machine awesomeness:

Walking through Sapporo Station I saw a DyDo vending machine selling pancake drink. I mean, pancake-flavoured milk drink, but... I mean that is either going to turn your stomach or turn your head. I think you can guess which it did for me:

Mmmmm, look at that melting butter. And there's definitely a hint of butter in the taste too, but it really wasn't too gross at all. From what's written on the can, it actually looks like this is more of a retro, nostalgia exercise than a bold new experiment in flavour. This pancake milkshake mix used to be available from the chocolate company Morinaga as a Nesquik-style stir-in powder. You'd add it to milk and - voila - drinkable pancakes. Morinaga are collaborating with DyDo on this... perhaps to get it back out there? Anyway it was pretty nice, probably too sweet for most people but I didn't have a problem with it. And yes, it did taste like pancakes. And in the end, isn't that what's important?

Sapporo Food - Medicineman Soup Curry

Inconvenience leads to discovery! Cafe Zill, where I used to go pretty regularly for lunch has closed for a refurb until later this year, so I've been forced to wander the streets of Yamahana looking for something else to eat. Luckily one rainy day I found a well known soup-curry shop called Medicineman!

It's great, and I'll recommend it right here at the start as a great, and rightly popular Soup Curry 'shack'. It's not really a shack, don't worry. The curry is delicious, and their slogan "A Good Medicine Tastes Hot!" is very apt. As with most soup curry places you have to select a spice level when you order. The first time I went I had 'HOT1' which was great, but their menu says that 'HOT2' is apparently the best match for Medicineman's soup flavour, so next time I tried that. It was pretty hot, but it was eff-ing great soup curry.

As with all soup curry shops (perhaps all small restaurants in general) the decor is a little eclectic. A lot of places go for a weird mish-mash of Jamaican, Indonesian and Indian art and objects, but Medicineman goes for a bit of Americana and a lot of early Hanna-Barbera looking native American characters.

Here's a snap of their pork curry, which has big chunks of 'kakuni' style pork in it. The pork, also, is excellent.

I'm not sure if there are other Medicineman shops around, usually for these established places there are two or three stores, but the one I went to was probably most easily accessed by streetcar from Odori or Susukino. It's clearly very popular too, since I've been there at lunch time and after work and it's always busy. They have a board at the entrance where you can put your name down if they don't have any seats free too. I have placed it on my map, and it comes with two thumbs up and a smiley face saying "Good Soup Curry!"

Japanese Beverages with Alex - Pepsi and more!

Me, I'm all about the traditional stuff - you know that. Those tastes that speak of Japan's rich cultural heritage, and demonstrate the gulf in philosophies that separates this proud island nation from the proud island nation of which I am...

No, wait. I'm not interested in that stuff at all.

Here's a couple of gimmicky summer soft drinks that I picked up recently:

After the- let's say utter failure of Pepsi Dry to be either palatable or interesting, Pepsi Caribbean Gold is a massive improvement in the field of Pepsi Limited Time Flavours. The description says that it's a "Refreshing cola with the feel of a high class Caribbean resort." That is fucking aspirational, but unsurprisingly it doesn't really taste like that. It also says it's 'White Sapote' flavour. Now, I, like I expect most people, had no idea what white sapote is so I look it up on Wikipedia. Apparently it's a Central American tree whose fruit is thought to have narcotic properties, especially inducing drowsiness.

I mean, of COURSE Pepsi Japan would choose to make a White Sapote flavour drink. Because they're insane.

Sadly, no narcotic effects were in evidence, but Pepsi Caribbean Gold is actually a really nice, unidentifiably fruity cola. There's a little pineapple maybe, a little coconut - I guess it is a little tropical after all - but overall it's really pretty good. And properly the most normal tasting Pepsi variant that's come out over the last few years.

The other drink I just picked up because the name sounded disgusting, only for it to be surprisingly delicious is Kirin's "Sekai no Kitchen kara: Salt and Litchi", based on a desert made by mums in Thailand.

This one really does taste of lychee (I'll spell it my way, though I think almost anyway is fine). I couldn't get any sense of saltiness, but perhaps it's a counter-balance, in that the concept of lychee juice is a little odd, and this just tasted great. I know some people don't like lychee, so don't bother if that includes you, but this was no where near as odd as it first sounded. Two good summer drinks, what are the chances?

Oh, and if you've noticed Coca-Cola's Mello Yello around, don't bother. It's pretty bad.

Japanese Junk Food Times - Pepsi Dry and Kit-Kat Zunda

Oh! I didn't see you there! Let me just put my gourmet hat on, and then tell you about my journeys in the realm of... flavour.

I don't need to go into how the Japanese snack food market retains its vim and vigour by trying out new flavours of existing products all the time, do I? I've read about a zillion other blog posts explaining the concept recently, so let's just say that I am thoroughly down with the concept. It reminds me of Grant Morrison's Seaguy a little, and also makes me think of white suited cowboys of the lab - pouring bubbling test-tubes into each other in search of the essence of... pistachio nut shells or something.

Above you will see Dry Pepsi. What is Dry Pepsi? It is non-sweet Pepsi. It makes no claims about being especially healthy on the bottle (though you would assume the lack of sugar is a good thing) and instead talks about being light and refreshing or something. I don't like Pepsi really, weirdly it is a little to sweet for me. So I figured that non-sweet Pepsi might be something worth checking out.

It was not.

It is not less sweet, as I was foolishly imagining, it is not sweet at all. In fact, it doesn't taste like Pepsi, it tastes like soda water, and I soon found myself wondering why it existed. If you like the bitter tang of soda, try it, or better yet JUST BUY SODA. After Shiso Pepsi, Azuki Pepsi and Montblanc Pepsi... this was a let down.

Better, but not incredible was, Kit-Kat Zunda - Zunda-Mochi being soy-bean rice cakes from Sendai. A quick google reveals that Pocky Watch - based in Sendai - reviewed this back in 2009. Tohoku was devastated by the tsunami in March of course, and now it looks like they're rolling out this flavour nationwide and giving 10yen from every bar to support the rebuilding effort. Good stuff.

The bar itself was nice, faintly bean-y, faintly rice-cake-y, but nothing to write home about. Wait, what am I doing here? Is this more effort or less than writing home? I'm lost. Anyway it was ok, but as usual they nail the scent a lot more than the actual taste - which comes out a little bit like funny white chocolate.

Anyway, that's my traditional Japanese food post. You're welcome.

Gourmet Delicacies of the Far East: Pepsi Mont Blanc

Y'know in some ways I think Japan has turned me into a real foodie, a gourmand, an aesthete of the palate - a connoisseur of farcial flavours. I mean, you get Kit-Kats coming out in everything from "tea" to "glitter cherry-blossom" and how can I possibly resist when I see shit like that? When they go dipping random corn and potato snacks in chilli and then in chocolate - I mean, I think it'll tast foul but there's just a chance that they'll blow my mind!

I'm always delighted to see what the lunatics of Pepsi come up with too. This season we have:

Pepsi Mont Blanc! Mont Blanc, for those poor, ingnorant heathens who are still just tearing open paper sticks of sugar and pouring them down their throats in search of sugar, is a French dessert which has a wikipedia page that I just linked to. It is, as they say on wikipedia, very famous and popular in Japan, which makes this somewhat less bizarre than it might first seem to Western readers.

Review: it really does taste kinda like Mont Blanc - i.e. a kind of sugary chestnut confection. Mixed with the bitter acid burn of a soft drink of course. I don't find it as refreshingly strange as Pepsi Shiso, but it's probably better than the Pepsi Azuki that came out after that. In fact, I'd say this is a perfectly servicable soft drink that, if I bought more soft drinks, I'd probably try out from time to time.

As it is, I still derive childish satisfaction from drinking melon soda and feeling like I'm drinking radioactive goop that's gonna give me super-powers. Still, thanks for brightening up my shopping trip, Pepsi!

Moments from Bad Santa

Actually, according to the DVD case I was watching "Badder Santa: The Unrated Version". Having never seen the original I guess the difference was lost on me - I guess it was a highly profane piece of cinema, maybe there were even more F-words in this one? There certainly were a lot! Fuck!





It was good, if not great then certainly unique and entertaining enough to get a big thumbs up from me. And when Sheriff John Bunnell there turned up - that added a whole extra star on for me.

Moments from Southland Tales

Man, I'm not afraid to tell you that I was waiting to see Southland Tales for a lo-o-ong time. As one of the many people who fell head over heels in love with Donnie Darko, when I heard that Richard Kelly's second movie was going to be a crazy ensemble piece about the end of the world, starring The Rock, Sean William Scott and Sarah Michelle Gellar, that would be prefaced by three graphic novels I was 100%-no-refunds sold.

Then it got mauled at Cannes, scaled back, recieved what might charitably be called "mixed reviews" and most people seem to think that Kelly pretty much blew it. The only review I've read of his latest one has been bad too.

Well, y'know. I finally picked up the DVD for cheap when I was back in England and finally sat down with it this week. And of course it's awesome.

I mean, it's a mess, but it's awesome.





I've read two of the three prologue graphic novels (could never seem to track down the last one, and wasn't even sure that it came out, but now I see that it has) so the insanely rushed synopsis at the start actually jogged some memories for me and then I could pick it up pretty well, but I can understand why a lot of people might not. He just tries to pack so much stuff in there, and yes, the story is told in an confusing way, but Jesus there are two strikingly different cuts of Donnie Darko and this was easier to follow than both of them. It's just that Donnie Darko was hung around a 1980s coming of age movie, it was an underdog movie, and people were lured in by that a lot I think. Southland Tales is an apocalyptic sci-fi farce (and there was far more straight comedy than I expected) starring an ex pro-wrestler, an actor known for peurile comedy, a pulp TV actress and a pop star. Unless you like the willfully eclectic (like me, and probably a lot of other people too) it's a pretty hard sell. Worth noting that I thought all the performances - and yes, a lot of the time it seemed like people were acting in entirely different movies - were perfectly pitched for this movie.

I really did love it. I kept thinking it was going to take a nose dive into the unwatchable, but it never did. The weakest point was that terrible opening, where a whole other movie was summarised in voice over and via faux news reels. In the end that stuff played out and was essential to the story, but even I've gotta admit you're asking a lot of your audience to follow that and then jump right into part four. But once it got going the way the story played out, tricky as it was, became a real strength. Kelly wasn't sloppy in telling the story, he was just asking the viewer to keep up, and that's never a bad thing.

Moments from Crows: Zero II

Crows: Zero II - the sequel to the hit movie prequel to the popular manga series about high school boys hitting each other, was pretty good fun as far as movies about twenty-something men playing high-school boys hitting each other go. If you're a fan of cute Japanese boys I would say that the thing is a veritable jamboree, and for me as a fan of punching in the movies, it was heartily enjoyable. It was too long, and spent too much time revelling in some of the 'character traits' and rivalries that it set up in the first film, but still - fun.

Of course when there is approximately one female character in the movie (who does even less than she did in the first film) it's gonna be impossible to avoid some kind of homoeroticism:


Although that guy, front and centre, was a nice addition to the cast that allowed them to play around with that whole - men liking manly men thing. Though sadly:


And the bromance between the two leads finally blossomed too:


Yeah, bromance, I used it without blinking. Get over yourselves. The movie was basically an extension of the first, a cartoonish coming of age piece where delinquent youths try to come to terms with what it is to be a 'man.' And it was about cute boys punching each other.

That of course, less of a draw for me than it might be for some, but I am seriously considering renaming this blog "Gay For Yamada Takayuki" because seriously, that guy may be short, but he's just insanely cool:


Or maybe a "Fuck Yeah, Yamada Takayuki" tumblr? God, he's amazing. Swoon etc. Last week I was in an office where they called for a guy with the same name. Seriously, I heard "Yamada Takayuki" and almost fainted. Must suck to be that guy at the moment though.

Product Review: Kit Kat Ginger Ale

Jesus wept, Nestle Japan! Can you slow down for just one second?! No sooner am I over the delights of Royal Milk Tea Kit Kat and the shock of seeing Sports Drink Kit Kat back in the shops than:


Ginger Ale Kit Kat! Do I need to review it? It smells a little like Canada Dry and it tastes like tangy white chocolate. There is a faint ginger aftertaste that's quite impressive, but really if you served me this and the Apple Vinegar Kit Kat I saw a while ago on a silver platter, I don't know that I could accurately identify which was which.

Christ. I love their... verve.

Moments from The Ten

So. Bunny, Ben and I were galavanting around Brighton and some turn of events prompted Ben to compare the situation to "The Ten, where Liev Schreiber is buying all those CAT scan machines to keep up with his neighbour." He dropped it into the converstation so smoothly, as if this was a movie that everyone knew, so it would be an easy shared reference point - but neither of us had ever heard of the movie. In fact as he continued to outline it - the bit where Adam Brody falls out of a plane and gets embedded in the ground, the bit where Winona Ryder runs away with a ventriloquist's dummy - we just flat out started calling shenanigans. There was no way this movie could have been released without us clocking it.

Well, turns out since it was something of a flop with about half of the feedback I saw starting "this movie sucks" I guess it might have been buried a little bit. In fact when Bunny finally saw it she warned me off, saying she didn't understand how Ben could like the movie. However having now watched it twice (Yuki was intrigued, so I agreed to watch it again with her) I can reveal that... it ain't as bad as all that.




I laughed out loud about five times, which is pretty good going, but I also physically winced at some of the jokes. I liked the running gags, but often the more free associating jokes fell flat, and the musical number at the end was atrocious. That said it was a bizarrely unique piece of goofy Hollywood comedy and I would... cautiously recommend it, if you don't mind checking out something that sucks in an interesting way.

Cautiously mind you.

Japan Food: Kit Kat Watch!

While back in Mother Engerland one of the things that tickled people was hearing about the crazy-balls flavours of Kit Kat they have here (Sports Drink, Apple Vinegar, Sweet Potato etc.) While many products go out of their way to try variant packaging and limited time flavours (someone once told me that it's a commercial fact that Japanese consumers will always buy more of a new, limited flavour, something that I've often seen for myself), I really feel that Nestle Japan are constantly striving to evolve the Kit Kat into some kind of future-space-food where any meal can be created with four sticks of chocolate and wafer.

And I come back to Japan to find that they've paid tribute to my trip home!


My review - again, smell is probably the easy bit, so it certainly smells like Royal Milk Tea. Strange to say that I've eaten sweets and breaded products with a Royal Milk Tea flavour before in Japan too, so the flavour wasn't really that much of a surprise for me, and it wasn't that nice either. Like white chocolate with a faint aftertaste of tea... I won't be picking up another pack.

Moments from Tokyo!

Tokyo! was a movie released last year that was actually three short movies all set in, and one would assume inspired by, Tokyo. The three directors, it should also be noted, are foreign. To Japan that is.




The directors were, from the top image down - Michel Gondry, Leos Carax and Bong Joon-ho. I liked all of the movies, but Andy and Olivia weren't sold on the middle one, an unsettling piece about a somewhat demonic foreigner who lives in the sewers of Tokyo. As a movie made up of short pieces I'd expected it would be patchy, but it was actually really strong throughout, and so - I recommend it to you.

Face First In Music

Recently, I'm really enjoying cramming as much music into my ears as I can without just utterly scrambling my puny little brain.


That's the cover of the Kid Cudi album that just came out and that I "bought" with Tower Records points. The only point card I ever remember to carry around; imagine if I'd stored up points for the hundreds and hundreds of pounds I spent at the supermarkets near my house in the last two years! Then again, I often think that the money off I would have reaped would never have made up for the fact that I would have had to carry around a bunch of fucking points cards.

Anyway, the Kid Cudi album (cover painted by comic book legend Bill Sienkiewicz, fact fans!) is very good, although slightly absurd. Kudi is one of Kanye's current proteges, and the album is executive produced by Yeezy and bears something of a resemblance to 808's and Heartbreak, probably because Cudi helped Kanye make that little slice of Yeezy's world. There's a sticker with a quote from Kanye on the front of this record saying: "Cudi is a combination of constant inspiration, struggle, reality and dreams put to melody!" which makes me want to write Kanye-esque sandwich descriptions like "It's a combination of hard work, tuna, adversity and mayonaise put on rye bread!"

Everyone hates Kanye at the moment right? Eh, they'll get over it, he's a genius.

The biggest similarity would have to be the subtle-as-a-brick, heart-on-sleeve introspective soul searching aspect of the album. Man on the Moon: The End of Day (its... frankly terrible title) is a concept album and a half: divided into different parts, with narration guiding you between each suite of three songs and orchestral interludes. And like most concept albums it has epic sweep, and like most hip-hop albums it has unbelievable self convidence and bravado. But with Man on the Moon, this scale and drama is applied to the story of a guy that feels frustrated in his life one night, gets depressed, gets stoned, and in the morning feels much more positive about things.

It's not an amazing album, and not entirely successful in its aims, but it's incredibly interesting and its shortcomings add a lot to its charm. It's also surprisingly downbeat and minimal for a hyped hip-hop artist's debut, and a real grower - every time I listen to it I like it a little more, which is a great sign. I'm interested if this Kanye West-led macho, spill-your-guts kind of mainstream hip-hop can really take off, but I for one am enjoying the disconnect between a guy one minute saying "Why must it feel so wrong when I try to do right?" and the next coming out with "But man, ol' girl got a phat ol' ass / Yeah the type to make you tell a bitch just dance."

Hmmm, I was going to write about other music I've been listening too as well, but this'll do for now. Just know that I've been really impressed at how Kool Keith can make "You and me drinking tea by the fireplace," into the start of such a crude, filthy couplet.

Man's a genius. A very dirty genius.

Sapporo Food: Hiri Hiri (Firi Firi?) Soup Curry

In Japanese of course, Firi Firi and Hiri Hiri are pronounced in exactly the same way, so it makes very little difference really. Still I'm curious how I'm supposed to read this font:


Hiri Hiri has a couple of branches I think, and I went to the one in Odori. It's in the basement of some huge building, but is pretty easy to find - there being a big distinctive sign outside like the one above. I dig that Oh! Do-Ri thing by the way. Fun. Anyway it's right next to the Starbuck that's along from Central, if that makes any sens to you. If it doesn't - there's always a map.


It was delicious, and I wasn't disappointed at all. The thing about eating lots of soup curry and finding your favourite ones is that every now and then you go somewhere new and it winds up being a total let down. Hiri Hiri has a relatively thin soup, with a light, spicy flavour kind of like Voyage in Kita 24 Jyo. I had a good medium spice level, but I'd guess that if you want anything really invigorating you'd have to pay extra to amp it up, and the photo you're looking at is a vegetable curry with chicken-wing gyoza on top. Not quite sure what that was - possible a chicken-skin gyoza with bones attached to act as a handle? Delicious anyway.

Hiri Hiri doesn't get into my top five Soup Curry restaurants (none of which I've written about here for some baffling reason) but it's definitely worth going to if you're craving soup curry in the city centre.