Japanese Bagels

The first bagel was baked by a Jewish baker in Vienna, Austria in 1683, and since then bagels have become a popular bread product in the United States, Canada and the United Kingdom – especially in cities with large Jewish populations.  As each country has different ways of making bagels, Japan also.

A “Bagel” is dense, hard bread which is boiled then baked in hot oven.  Japan follows this method too, but they add something extra.  Although most normal bakeries sell only standard bagels such as plain, cinnamon raisin etc, but bagel speciality shops sell varieties of bagels in different flavours.  Some shops twist the dough to add more tough texture (so it’s not a ring-shape), some shops cover the bagel with mochi (mochi bagel), and some shops don’t shape the dough (it looks like a bun).

Of course there are normal-looking bagels too.

Please try Japanese bagels if you have a chance to go to Japan!  

By the way, I heard that Malaysian bagels are deep-fried..   Is it true?  I think it’s a donut, not a bagel :p

(photos from http://sysouer.exblog.jp/ and google search)

Japan’s Robotics Invention

Using technology originally developed for ASIMO the robot, Honda produced a personal mobility device U3-X.  Housed within the large wheel are a series of smaller wheels that can rotate independently, allowing the awkwardly perched user to go forward, backward, side-to-side or diagonally.

I always get overwhelmed by Japanese technology…  I mean, there are similar products such as Segway and Winglet, but Honda keens to point out that this U3-X is portable (less than 10 kg) and easy to use, with fold away footrests and seat cushions.

Segway

Honda U3-X

Maybe we will see elderlies using this compact U3-X around the house in near future 🙂

(Youtube)

Pom Poko – Ghibli

It sounds like I’ve been watching Japanese cartoon at home almost everyday, as I’ve just wrote about Tales of Earthsea, but I do enjoy watching cartoon quite often.  I rented this Ghibli film “Pom Poko” (1994) just recently and I must say I did enjoyed the whole story.

Well, I’ve already watched this film few times in the past, but watching it again here in Perth reminded me of all the feelings about Japan and made me to rethink about the cohabitation of humans and animals.

The story is about tanuki, Japanese raccoon dogs, trying to survive the late 1960s.  A gigantic and ongoing suburban development near Tokyo, Japan, threatens a group of wild tanuki.  As the development is cutting into their forest habitat, tanuki had to think what they should do to protect their land from humans.

In this film, you can enjoy listening to lots of old Japanese songs including antagata-dokosa (a traditional warabe uta of Kumamoto prefecture) , and the appearance of famous Japanese monsters and mythological creatures.  In Japanese folklore tanuki has supernatural shape-shifting powers to trick humans. In this film tanuki transform themselves into Japanese monsters and mythological creatures to scare people: such as rokurokubi, noppera-bo and fujin raijin.

The film ends on something of a bittersweet note for the tanuki.  Throughout the film there is a lot of comedy as well as ecological messages.  The film reminds me of old Japan, especially the time I was a kid.  Japan has changed a lot, I think.  No one would believe that I was climbing on trees, catching zarigani (crawfish), fighting with wild monkeys and playing with beautiful medaka (killifish) just 10 years ago near my house!

(Pom Poko Characters )

Tales of Earthsea

The other day I rented a DVD of Tales of Earthsea (Japanese name ”ゲド戦記” Ged’s War Chronicles) from one of the video shop, and I quite enjoyed it.  It is a Japanese anime film which was first released in Japan by Studio Ghibli on July 29, 2006 and is set to be released on August 13, 2010 in the US by Walt Disney Pictures.

This film is loosely based on a combination of plots and characters from the books written by JRR Tolkien (who also is an author of famous books such as Lord of the Ring) (wiki) and is directed by Goro Miyazaki, the eldest son of Hayao Miyazaki.

I love the drawing of the film: colors, images etc.  I love all Ghibli anime.  And I enjoyed watching this Tales of Earthsea by knowing that this film is directed by a son of Hayako Miyazaki as his first work as a film director. (and he also drew this poster shown above)

“Nausicca”, “LAPUTA”, “Grave of the Fireflies“,  “Totoro”, “Kiki’s Delivery Service”, “Porco Posso”, “Only Yesterday”, “Pom Poko”, “Whisper of the Heart”, “Princess Mononoke”, “Spirited Away”, “The Cat Returns”, “Howl’s Moving Castle” etc…

Which one is your favorite? 🙂

New Life in Hakodate

I received a letter from a former student of mine whom I used to teach English in 2005.  I was in Japan that time to stay with my family after graduating cookery school in Perth.  I wanted to work while I was in Japan to yearn some money as well as to gain experience in cooking.  I got a job at a hotel as a cook in the bakery department and it was pretty busy (and super strict environment), but I also wanted to do something related to English.  I started a kids English teacher job shortly after starting the job in the kitchen.  I wasn’t planning to be such a busy person as it was supposed to be my home-coming holiday and was going to stay in Japan for only up to 8 months.  My husband (boyfriend that time) was in Perth and I felt guilty leaving him, but I really wanted to be in Japan as I couldn’t go back to Japan often while I was a student at TAFE.  

During the period, I bought a car (you will need a car to live in Shiga) and worked everyday.  Plus, I had to – … well, I wanted to – cook dinner for my family everyday as my parents were divorced just a while ago and there’re only my dad, bro and grandma at my house.  It was busy, but I felt good being with my family 🙂  The job as an English teacher for kids was totally new thing to me.  I never thought I would be a teacher!  But there was an opportunity and I thought I would try.  I’m not a “kids” type of person and I didn’t really know how to be with kids, but I tried and I had such wonderful experience. 

My students were between 3 and 7 years old, and 3 years old boy couldn’t even talk Japanese much :p  But amazingly 5 years old boy could speak English very well!  I think his English pronunciation was much better than mine :p  

… anyway, I stayed in Japan for 7 months, and then came back to Perth.  When I was leaving the teacher job, my students and their mothers were saying things such as ” we’ll miss you” and “please keep in touch” .  I started the job just for curiosity, and I didn’t think that it’d be such emotional good-bye when I quit.  Since then I’ve been in touch with them and they still call me “sensei” (teacher) 🙂

The letter I received was from Kiryu, who was 6 years old back then.  The letter was saying that they no longer live in Shiga, are now living in Hakodate city in Hokkaido.  His mother and I were pretty close too, and they sent me some photos.  Oh my gosh, Hokkaido is such a nice place –  I’ve been to Sapporo city (the capital city of Hokkaido) with my family once, and I loved everything… the atmosphere, food and the climate.  

According to the mother, the food in Hakodate is amazing (especially seafood) and Hakodate is famous for shio ramen (ramen noodle in salt broth) (Sapporo is famous for miso ramen (ramen noodle in miso broth).  Their new house is at the foot of Mt. Hakodate-yama, and is surrounded by famous tourist attraction places.  I am definitely visiting them!  😀

(photos from the mother)

My Favorite Japanese Music Video This Month

Monkey Majik is a Japanese band composed of two Canadian brothers, Maynard and Blaise Plant, who both perform vocals and guitar, drummer Tax and bassist DICK. The band is sometimes referred to as a “hybrid-band”, as half of the members are foreigners and the lyrics are sung in both English and Japanese.  (I wrote a little about them on here)

I like their songs, and some of them are rated within monthly top 10 of J-pop songs in Japan.  Their latest single, the first song released after their 10th anniversary, is “sakura”.  This song was rated #1 in iTune in J-pop category.

Why I decided to write about this song is not only because the song is nice, but also the music video!  In the music video, the vocal Canadian wear kimono and samurai wig, and the whole story is referring to one of the most famous TV series in Japan. I grew up watching the series.

Glorious Edo-style music video!  If you knew this tv series ( called tooyama no Kin-san ), you’d be excited to see this video…  so funny!  Well, not supposed to be funny, the video is well-performed.  I just had to laugh when I saw a little OOO at the right bottom of the music video.  It says ” aoi me no Kin-san (青い目の金さん) = Kin-san with blue eyes” instead of ” tooyama no Kin-san (遠山の金さん)”.  😀

Aoi-me no Kin-san

TV Series Toyama no Kin-san

Current Trend in Japan Mobiles – Smart Phones-

Current technology is amazing….  Think about it.  The Mobile phones we were using about 10 years ago are so much different from our current mobiles.  The looks, facility, data capacity and technology on the current mobiles are amazing…

In Japan, despite the decrease of sales on the normal mobile phones, the sales for so called “smart phones” are increasing every month.  A smart phone is a mobile phone offering advanced capabilities beyond a typical mobile phone, often with personal computer like functionality. The most well-known smart phone is iPhone.  It connects to internet, and has lots of apps to do so many things.  A touch panel mobiles are also considered as ” smart phone” in Japan.

NTT docomo Japan‘s Xperia is one of those smart phones that is getting attentions. It connects to internet (WiFi), has GPS system, high quality movie display etc, and also a face recognition system.  Which means, you can browse photos on the screen, touch the face of the person and go to the person’s page.  There, you can browse all the history (phone call, emails etc) between you and the person as well as her/his photo gallery.  At the photo gallery, the screen can show the each person’s name on the photo.  Touching on the name takes you to another person’s page, or chose to make a phone call.

Fujitsu sells “style free mobile phone”.  When the phone is in the basic style, you can use it as a touch-panel mobile phone.  Once you slide it to open, you can use the keyboards.  And, you can actually separate the phone into two pieces.  This phone can be connected to a projector too.  Separating the phone into two pieces makes things easy.  You can talk while looking at the display unit, you can take a photos from a distance, you can type the keyboard away from the screen (easy use), etc.

Furthermore, this phones has 12200000 pixel camera, free touching writing facility (you can write or draw directly on the screen and it automatically translates to a letter or an icon.

Sometimes I can’t catch up with current technology…  As we can’t use Japanese mobiles in other countries （Ｇalapagos Syndrom）I will probably continue using iPhone in Perth, but I sometimes get overwhelmed by the current apps.  You can do so many things on a piece of machine.  As the world says, ” the future is here”.

Hinamatsuri