RE: Dispatches from Akune

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Richard Jernigan

Posts: 3430
Joined: Jan. 20 2004
From: Austin, Texas USA

RE: Dispatches from Akune (in reply to estebanana)

quote:

ORIGINAL: estebanana

The only Japanese food I don't like is natto, and I'll eat it if I have to. Natto is fermented soy beans, yuck.

When my Japanese girlfriend and I ate at Sachio Kojima's "Kabuto" in San Francisco, she alway finished off with natto-maki. She said her mother made it when she was a little girl in Tokyo.

As you said, natto is fermented soybean paste. It has a gelatinous texture like the goo that boiled okra produces.

Natto-maki begins with a cone of nori, the dried seaweed leaf used in sushi rolls. You make a cone about the size of a small ice cream cone. Sushi rice is added to the cone as a base. Then natto is added, and a sprinkling of grated dried and salted fish. All is topped off with a leaf of a fresh herb, whose name in English I have never been able to learn.

At the beginning, natto was a serious challenge to me. It tasted bitter and oily, the texture was vile. But for a year I manfully downed a natto-maki with my girl about once a week. Sachio-san would tap his chest with a fist, grin, and say, "Strong heart."

After about a year there was a sudden mysterious transformation. The bitter oily taste went away. In its place there appeared a delicious nutty flavor. I grew to love natto.

Very few sushi places in the USA have natto. I have just about stopped asking. But persist, Stephen. You may be rewarded with the mysterious transformation.

RNJ

REPORT THIS POST AS INAPPROPRIATE | Date Aug. 25 2013 19:38:30

El Burdo

Posts: 632
Joined: Sep. 8 2011

RE: Dispatches from Akune (in reply to Richard Jernigan)

Yeah, natto. I'm not there yet, but my (Japanese) wife is at blue cheese which she says constitutes the same cultural and culinary hurdle.

Bananasan, may I suggest the Berlitz 'Japanese in 30 Yeah Right Days'? After years of adding kyotsuketes and omatases to my random word list and standing in embarrassment as I guess between a desu-ne, a desu-ka and a masen-ka, that book is finally allowing me to say things along the lines of 'My Father also reads his books and his magazines in Japanese in the family room'. True, at the moment, its use is limited but conversations are a damn sight closer than they were before I discovered it. It's the best book I have found and teaches in Romaji, building up hiragana and katakana as you go though you don't seem to be tested on it from memory.

REPORT THIS POST AS INAPPROPRIATE | Date Aug. 25 2013 23:14:08

estebanana

Posts: 9351
Joined: Oct. 16 2009

RE: Dispatches from Akune (in reply to Richard Jernigan)

I'm tired, but I wanted to show you this beautiful hamachi I caught at the fish market the other day.

When Hamachi get big they name changes to Buri. We can't seem to find anyone who knows exactly how big a hamachi has to get before it becomes a buri...but buri are arm length and hamachi are forearm length...I guess that is it!

Yes Richard, I will make an effort to cultivate a taste for natto.
Thanks for the tip on the language learning system Burdo.

Here is the sashimi from my hamachi; that plate of sashimi cost about 5 bucks.

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REPORT THIS POST AS INAPPROPRIATE | Date Aug. 30 2013 12:41:26

estebanana

Posts: 9351
Joined: Oct. 16 2009

RE: Dispatches from Akune (in reply to Richard Jernigan)

This is a gorgeous fresh fish. Caught in the morning, plated that night. Clear eyes, bright color. Five bucks.

I guess we are on the threshold of a full blown food talk now.

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REPORT THIS POST AS INAPPROPRIATE | Date Aug. 30 2013 12:48:49

El Burdo

Posts: 632
Joined: Sep. 8 2011

RE: Dispatches from Akune (in reply to estebanana)

That is a Magritte painting, not a fish. And yet, a fish, Beautiful!

My wife says it's called the Lucky Fish as it has several identities from birth to er...plate.

REPORT THIS POST AS INAPPROPRIATE | Date Sep. 1 2013 22:37:06

estebanana

Posts: 9351
Joined: Oct. 16 2009

RE: Dispatches from Akune (in reply to Richard Jernigan)

Burdo,
Do you get mentaiko in British Japanese stores? I've been making pasta with mentaiko and it's pretty good. I also made some deviled eggs stuffed with mentaiko mixed with homemade sweet pickles and Kupie mayo.

It's been a nice mix of western casual summer food with some Japanese ingredients.

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REPORT THIS POST AS INAPPROPRIATE | Date Sep. 2 2013 5:16:50

El Burdo

Posts: 632
Joined: Sep. 8 2011

RE: Dispatches from Akune (in reply to estebanana)

Yes we do, but it's none too fresh unfortunately, at least from the 'local' Japanese fish shop. Obviously that means older than 3 hours :-)

It's pasta with cod roe that tells me how uptight I am, cross culturally! Work to be done for me though the eggs sound good.

REPORT THIS POST AS INAPPROPRIATE | Date Sep. 2 2013 11:40:02

estebanana

Posts: 9351
Joined: Oct. 16 2009

RE: Dispatches from Akune (in reply to Richard Jernigan)

I finally caught Ika.

Been too tired to write a dispatch, I'll post some pictures.

These cephalopods are a species of Japanese Cuttlefish. I caught them with an artificial squid jig. It was kind of wild. They followed the jog in as i reeled it in and then I noticed them looking at it just before I pulled it from the water to make another cast.

They were just waiting for it to stop, as I watched them one of them darted forward and grabbed the lure. I snagged him but he unhooked himself. It thought they would flee for their lives. But no, they got more aggressive. I dipped the lure i the water in front of me and the same ika rushed it. Again I did not hook him and I tried a third time putting the lure a few feet from him. He slammed into it and I hooked him that time.

I worked him up on the jetty without losing him. I put the jig back in the water in the same place where the other one was waiting. That one was more aggressive than the first one and he chased it and wrapped the tentacles and body around it. It was just two small ika, but it was pretty exciting.

As I walked home I passed an old guy from my block named Masaru. He's known as kind of a character. I see him from my shop window standing in the street outside his house shaving his head with a fishing knife. Masaru is quite a good fisherman. He asked me if I caught anything. "Hai." I said "Ni mongo ika." And I marched down the street to put my fishing pole in the shop. Masaru stood there nodding his head in approval. Those kind of cuttlefish are called Mongo Ika. We ate them for dinner as sashimi.

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REPORT THIS POST AS INAPPROPRIATE | Date Oct. 1 2013 14:09:41

Morante

Posts: 2178
Joined: Nov. 21 2010

RE: Dispatches from Akune (in reply to estebanana)

In Cádiz,choco con papas

REPORT THIS POST AS INAPPROPRIATE | Date Oct. 1 2013 15:36:10

estebanana

Posts: 9351
Joined: Oct. 16 2009

RE: Dispatches from Akune (in reply to Richard Jernigan)

quote:

In Cádiz,choco con papas

My friend in Portugal said the same thing. They grill them here too. I think I like them grilled the best.

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REPORT THIS POST AS INAPPROPRIATE | Date Oct. 2 2013 0:23:44

estebanana

Posts: 9351
Joined: Oct. 16 2009

RE: Dispatches from Akune (in reply to Richard Jernigan)

Here's one for road. Gerhard Richter working.

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REPORT THIS POST AS INAPPROPRIATE | Date Oct. 28 2013 14:56:53

Ricardo

Posts: 14797
Joined: Dec. 14 2004
From: Washington DC

RE: Dispatches from Akune (in reply to estebanana)

quote:

ORIGINAL: estebanana

Here's one for road. Gerhard Richter working.

Nice. I really enjoy the touches of "conde orange" in that piece.

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REPORT THIS POST AS INAPPROPRIATE | Date Oct. 28 2013 15:44:08

estebanana

Posts: 9351
Joined: Oct. 16 2009

RE: Dispatches from Akune (in reply to Richard Jernigan)

And we're back online------------

I've had enough politics. Back to this exegesis on another crappy day in paradise.

First I want to express my anger at myself for painting over this drawing. That was dumb.

I'll explain why in a minute. Or a few days, when I can stop kicking myself in the ass.

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REPORT THIS POST AS INAPPROPRIATE | Date Feb. 5 2017 0:18:46

estebanana

Posts: 9351
Joined: Oct. 16 2009

RE: Dispatches from Akune (in reply to Richard Jernigan)

Akumaki is a rice based food. In Southern Japan akumaki was a food that travelers and samurai would tuck into a bag and walk with. I worry that as it is now, mostly the old ladies are the ones who know how to make akumaki. Kids, they know about Kentucky Fried Chicken. I was shopping in a town 25 minutes North of Akune on Friday afternoon, the city of Izumi. It's known for the crane migration, Izumi is the winter terminal point for tsuru which summer in Mongolia, the gangley birds fly East to escape the cold Mongol winter. I shopped in Izumi and observed the statues and sculptures around town that depict the tsuru bird, but the red and white logo of KFC next to the Nishimuta Super Grocery Outlet was more strident visually. KFC might be the arch enemy of Akumaki, at least in my mind it is.

Akumaki is made by taking a few handfuls of wood ash and putting them in a big pot of water. The pot is brought to boil. A bamboo leaf is filled with half cooked rice and then folded around the rice in way not unlike the fabulous burritos the San Francisco Mission District is famous for. Big fat burros of rice wrapped in wide dark green bamboo leaves, and like the sweet corn tamales I ate in Guatemala that were housed in soft banana leaf exoskeletons. Thus wrapped the akumaki is cooked in the ash water for about five hours. The ash water is a preservative and the akumaki was useful to samurai on the go because it lasted for a few days without refrigeration. Globalism had not delivered KFC to the Satsuma region of Japan in ancient samurai times, the good Southern Colonel had not been born yet.

Akumaki smells of sulfur, it's mild, but the effluvia of an onsen water from deep within our stinky volcanic Earth is distinctly present in akumaki. It's subtle, and to an akumaki lover like myself the learning curve of eating an enjoying akumaki brings the same kind of joy that lovers of certain stinky cheeses experience. Akumaki is is eaten with sugar and yeast, one dips the chunk of akumaki in a bowl of sugar and kinako yeast, buen provecho.

I left my camera at the shop or I would show a picture of this rare delicacy and ancient food. Akumaki is as old as Roman garum, fish sauce, and I get a thrill out of eating the ancient foods of any culture. Garum is probably best experienced by moderns by buying a bottle of Vietnamese fish sauce at the grocery. I love some new Roman fish sauce and spring onions in my omelet. And I hope the akumaki is still being made in fifty years, a hundred years; If KFC were to sink into a bottomless marsh of garum and crane poo, I for one would not be offended.

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REPORT THIS POST AS INAPPROPRIATE | Date Mar. 18 2018 13:09:32

estebanana

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Joined: Oct. 16 2009

RE: Dispatches from Akune (in reply to Richard Jernigan)

Does anyone want to hear any small town stories of jealousy, murder, political intrigue and centuries of social turmoil?

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REPORT THIS POST AS INAPPROPRIATE | Date May 20 2021 3:22:24

estebanana

Posts: 9351
Joined: Oct. 16 2009

RE: Dispatches from Akune (in reply to Richard Jernigan)

I’ve been photographing Akune, thought I’d share.

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REPORT THIS POST AS INAPPROPRIATE | Date May 20 2021 3:25:01

estebanana

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Joined: Oct. 16 2009

RE: Dispatches from Akune (in reply to Richard Jernigan)

The harbor at night

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REPORT THIS POST AS INAPPROPRIATE | Date May 20 2021 3:26:48

estebanana

Posts: 9351
Joined: Oct. 16 2009

RE: Dispatches from Akune (in reply to Richard Jernigan)

A giant crab, if you were 3” tall

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REPORT THIS POST AS INAPPROPRIATE | Date May 20 2021 3:28:15

estebanana

Posts: 9351
Joined: Oct. 16 2009

RE: Dispatches from Akune (in reply to Richard Jernigan)

Today’s history of Akune post ~ Pirates and contraband!

This is Kuratsu Port, it’s a deep natural harbor. It’s an inlet that’s been recorded as a port for at least 400 years. Today it’s fishing port and a boat maintenance company keeps shop here. You want your inboard diesel worked on?

During the Edo period, that’s about 400 years ago to the mid 19th century give or take a few decades, this port was a secret trading post. Japan was divided into small kingdoms and the big kingdom up north told the smaller kingdoms to shut down to international trade and only allow it to flow through Nagasaki. Well the Satsuma king says Hold my Beer, I’m allowing a secret trading base to exist in Akune and the bafuku in Edo can kiss my southern ass.

If you see the google earth photos one shows a satellite view of Kuratsu Port, the other shows two offshore islands and in the bottom again Kuratsu Port. I’ve drawn two red circles connected by a red line. That’s leading from the port to the offshore side of the smaller island. That’s called Kuashima.

The offshore side of Kuwashima is deep and there is a small natural inlet that was used by traders to unload goods going into Akune without docking in town port and being seen. It was an outlaw trade site that the Satsuma court protected because South Kyushu or Satsuma was a strong kingdom which was isolated geographically by difficult mountains, tough samurai families on the border and a local dialect. Spies could be detected because Satsuma dialect is distinct from the northern court speak. The Satsuma kings and regents just basically said “we know you know we are trading illegallly, but since you can’t come and stop us without a civil war, tough tacos trying to stop us.”

So international ships passing up the west coast of Kyushu could go into Kagoshima Bay 60 miles south and trade, or they could slip into the back side of Kuwashima in Akune and trade undetected. The advantage of stopping in Akune was that spies couldn’t observe Portuguese or Dutch ships and then tattle to the Edo court on the captains of those vessels and get them barred from entering Nagasaki.

Even today the Satsuma (Kagoshima) people take pride in their piratey past and carry a healthy stride of Satsuma attitude.

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REPORT THIS POST AS INAPPROPRIATE | Date May 27 2021 9:47:02

estebanana

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Joined: Oct. 16 2009

RE: Dispatches from Akune (in reply to Richard Jernigan)

The photo of sea looking out from Kuratsu port to Kuwashima- Kuwashima is the small island sticking out

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REPORT THIS POST AS INAPPROPRIATE | Date May 27 2021 9:50:24

ernandez R

Posts: 737
Joined: Mar. 25 2019
From: Alaska USA

RE: Dispatches from Akune (in reply to Richard Jernigan)

I see some big breakwaters in what apear to be relatively protected seas? Sunami barriers?

HR

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REPORT THIS POST AS INAPPROPRIATE | Date May 28 2021 8:26:08

estebanana

Posts: 9351
Joined: Oct. 16 2009

RE: Dispatches from Akune (in reply to ernandez R)

The break water walls are just regular features to dissipate swell action and create harbor entrances that are easy to transit.
They help in the typhoon season to keep large swells out of the harbor, but offer no protection from a tsunami. The western coast of Japan isn’t the tsunami risk, it’s the east coast where the plate subduction zone runs north / south off the coast. A tsunami could happen by a wave wrapping around the south tip of Kyushu, but it would lose a lot of power in the process. It’s possible an earthquake could generate a tsunami in the East China Sea or Sea Of Japan, but it far less likely because it’s not a subduction zone, it’s fairly stable.

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REPORT THIS POST AS INAPPROPRIATE | Date May 29 2021 2:38:12

Richard Jernigan

Posts: 3430
Joined: Jan. 20 2004
From: Austin, Texas USA

RE: Dispatches from Akune (in reply to El Burdo)

quote:

ORIGINAL: El Burdo

Yeah, natto. I'm not there yet, but my (Japanese) wife is at blue cheese which she says constitutes the same cultural and culinary hurdle.

Some time in the 1980's returning to Austin from a West Coast business trip, I was seated next to a young Chinese woman. Turned out she was the first Chinese graduate student admitted to study at the University of Texas Astronomy Department. She was traveling straight through from China to Austin on her first visit to the USA. As we say in Texas, she looked like she had been rode hard and put up wet.

But she seemed eager to converse. When I asked for her first impressions of the USA, she said she was very tired, but the food was terrible. The most revolting thing she had been served was some "rotten milk." Took me at least a minute to figure out she was talking about cheese.

Makes me wish for some decent Stilton, another cheese that is destroyed by U.S. food rules.

RNJ

REPORT THIS POST AS INAPPROPRIATE | Date Jun. 1 2021 5:15:57

Richard Jernigan

Posts: 3430
Joined: Jan. 20 2004
From: Austin, Texas USA

RE: Dispatches from Akune (in reply to estebanana)

quote:

ORIGINAL: estebanana

quote:

In Cádiz,choco con papas

My friend in Portugal said the same thing. They grill them here too. I think I like them grilled the best.

I've never been to Greece, but there's a Greek restaurant in the Inner Harbor at Baltimore where I used to eat sometimes during a period of regular visits to Fort Meade.

It's the only place I ever had smoked and pickled octopus. I liked it. I was assured by an MIT colleague, born on an island just off the Turkish coast, raised in Greece, that it was the real thing. He also introduced me to varieties of ouzo.

I had known my colleague for years, but was surprised to learn of his background. He spoke note perfect Boston academic English, took me to dinner at the Harvard Faculty Club, and shared my enthusiasm for the Symphony...but his manners were just a shade smoother than average and he dressed a little better.

RNJ

REPORT THIS POST AS INAPPROPRIATE | Date Jun. 1 2021 5:43:41

Escribano

Posts: 6415
Joined: Jul. 6 2003
From: England, living in Italy

RE: Dispatches from Akune (in reply to Richard Jernigan)

quote:

t's the only place I ever had smoked and pickled octopus

In Greece, they just throw on the BBQ in the street. Smells awful.

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REPORT THIS POST AS INAPPROPRIATE | Date Jun. 1 2021 11:29:16

Richard Jernigan

Posts: 3430
Joined: Jan. 20 2004
From: Austin, Texas USA

RE: Dispatches from Akune (in reply to Escribano)

quote:

ORIGINAL: Escribano
Smells awful.

Before Acapulco was reduced to a ghost town by gangster extortion and violence, there used to be a restaurant on a small square a block or so back from the beach where they made ceviche out of doors. During the day the sea breeze carried the mixed aromas of garlic and fish inland for blocks and blocks. Some people complained. To me it was inviting. You could find the restaurant by encountering the current of aroma, then following it upwind for quite a ways to the square.

When my friend Pat H. and I rode our motorcycles from Austin to Acapulco we would park our bikes in front of the restaurant, and tell people they could find us by following their noses.

A similar case happened in Jerez years ago. We never became confident in the maze of one-way streets in mid-town. But if we encountered the aroma from the Sandeman bodega we just followed it upwind. Our hotel was across the street. I don't think the hotel survived the 2008 financial crisis.

RNJ

REPORT THIS POST AS INAPPROPRIATE | Date Jun. 2 2021 9:26:22

estebanana

Posts: 9351
Joined: Oct. 16 2009

RE: Dispatches from Akune (in reply to Richard Jernigan)

This is real wasabi, story to follow….

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REPORT THIS POST AS INAPPROPRIATE | Date Oct. 27 2022 1:14:56

Estevan

Posts: 1936
Joined: Dec. 20 2006
From: Torontolucía

RE: Dispatches from Akune (in reply to estebanana)

Akune-kara disupachu-o nani-nani arigato gozaimashita!
Allright, I give up; EAS 100 was very many years ago.
Thanks for reviving the 'Dispatches from Akune' pages!

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REPORT THIS POST AS INAPPROPRIATE | Date Oct. 27 2022 4:33:49

estebanana

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Joined: Oct. 16 2009

RE: Dispatches from Akune (in reply to Richard Jernigan)

During the beginning of the pandemic tourism slowed in Japan, soon the country was closed, but we never went on lockdown inside. We had travel restrictions but never really stopped moving around our own towns and didn’t have the shortages in toilet paper or food.

The government, which wrong and goofed up in many ways, managed to get a few things right, and due to the Japanese peoples self discipline mask wearing and social distance within reason were adopted quickly. We stopped public school on Feb. 27 2020 for six weeks, then opened the schools after that. Restaurants were to remain open, but you had to order the last drink at 7pm and leave at 8pm. This kept drunk people from singing karaoke in each other’s faces for five or six hours every night and I think it cut down on transmission of covid.

The restaurants received a subsidy payment from the government that kept the doors open and for a certain months closed, but the government paid the rent and employees. Fewer restaurants got closed down during the pandemic than in other countries and we go to the same ones we went to in 2019.

Travel restrictions between prefectures were difficult for some people, but yet again the usually backward government did another smart thing. They issued a travel coupon currency that you could use in your own area of about 100 miles radius to go on overnight trips to other towns and visit county inns and such. It kept the tourist industry from crumbling and many businesses used the time to upgrade with fewer visitors. Lots of country inns did renovations during the pandemic and look great now.

We have taken advantage of the two day trips as soon as it began in early 2021 and continued to grow after the first vaccinations were happening here. The prefectural governments are still doing promotional deals and issuing travel vouchers for inner prefectural travel.

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REPORT THIS POST AS INAPPROPRIATE | Date Oct. 27 2022 5:35:53

estebanana

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Joined: Oct. 16 2009

RE: Dispatches from Akune (in reply to Richard Jernigan)

Wednesday Oct. 26 we took a one night trip to a town about 50 minutes up the coast to stay in a Ryokan for dinner and onsen. This is where I probably have to eat my words about Japan being a food desert.

At Mizutsuru ryokan in Minamata…

We checked at 4:30 pm, like good tourists- we took Yuko’s dad and his cousin for his 88th birthday.