Not far from my school there’s an area on a main sidewalk that everyone calls “the pigeon place.” There’s a guy there who sits behind a little table, selling cheap bird seed to pedestrians who want to feed the pigeons. I don’t think it’s a legal enterprise, but many of the interesting cultural aspects of Beijing are illegal.
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On a recent trip to Carrefour, I was startled to see (and hear!) a loud argument between the older man on the left and the younger woman on the right. The woman in the orange coat is a salesman.
I have no idea what they were fighting about but this is one of the rare occurrences of a presumably familial altercation in public. I have a short movie of it.
I thought things might come to blows, so I considered getting involved simply by walking over to the cart, but no one else passing by seemed to think much about it, though a few stopped for a couple moments, then moved on. I was the only one wondering if this might get serious.
After 10 minutes, I headed toward the exit. I headed past one of the numerous purse-and-shoe stores loaded with the typical colorful items.
It was closed, as this not-so-cryptic sign on the door indicated.
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Warning: This installment is not suitable for young readers.
I recently returned home for a week in Virginia. It was nice but short – only a week. Mostly I worked in the yard, pruning, weed whacking, all that manly stuff that women can’t do.
The flight to Virginia was uneventful. Not so the flight home.
While at home my wife told me about three in-flight events that had happened over the past week or two: three commercial airliners were forced to land prematurely to remove passengers who were arguing over a new device called a knee defender. This device can be attached to your food tray to prevent the seat in front of you from reclining, and it is prohibited on all major American airlines. You all probably know about this.
I must admit that I had a small amount of trepidation as I boarded my flight back to Beijing. I generally recline my seat during long flights (except during meals, when I straighten it again), and I wondered what I might do if the person behind me employed one of these devices. I’m not generally one to take these things lightly. Fortunately, it didn’t happen.
About ¾ of the way back to China I noticed a commotion off to my left. I was in the right aisle seat of the center section, and the commotion was coming directly from my left, from the 3 seats on the left side of the plane. Two seats to my left (left aisle seat of center section) was a young guy who was awake, so I asked him what was going on. He said some big, drunk guy came back from business class and deliberately urinated on the male passenger immediately to his left.
I was a little disbelieving and slow to find and start my cell phone, but here is a blurred picture of the three left-side seats after they cleared of the pee-ees. (I assume you all know that you can view a larger version of a picture by clicking it — not that this will be much help here.) Note the wrinkled (i.e., wet) magazine.
The pee-er returned to business class. The crew did a good job of quickly lowering the intensity of the situation, and they began cleaning up the three seats. Here’s a blurred shot of one of the seats before it was removed completely.
The crew removed all three seats and put them in red biohazard bags.
An hour or so later we landed, and I have no more information about this.
“Lips that touch wine shall never touch mine.”
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Japan 2014 – Day 1
My plane to Narita arrived on time, but Suzi’s plane was very late, so I waited at the airport for 6 hours. During that time I read a book and began to watch the movie “Inception,” which, for some reason, was already loaded on my cell phone when I bought it 5 years ago. Watching the movie a second time increased my understanding of it by about 5%, which puts my current total understanding at about 7%.
At about 9:30 p.m., after checking into the hotel, I went alone down to a little Italian restaurant in the same building to grab a bite. My good friend from Atsugi City (TO) surprised me at 10 by joining me, which means that instead of having my 4-cheese pizza and a glass of wine, I ended up having the pizza, half of TO’s antipasto plate, and 3 glasses of wine.
Japan 2014 – Day 2, Part 1
Today we went shopping in the Ginza, Tokyo’s version of 5th Avenue in NY, where we went to Tokyo’s oldest department store (Mitsokoshi) to see overpriced name-brand clothes, as well as smaller boutique stores that were more reasonable. I got bored instantly, so we arranged a meeting place and time so we could separate. While Suzi was shopping around Mitsokoshi (and searching for me so she could leave that store earlier than we planned), I took a walk down the neighboring side streets.
At the entrance to Mitsokoshi there was a bit of a commotion…
…because some American woman was interviewing people about something.
One of the stark differences between Beijing and Tokyo is the behavior of the pedestrians. In Tokyo, the pedestrians wait on the sidewalk until their light turns green,…
…then they go.
Note the interesting advertisement on the side of the van.
I walked past this unusual looking store, then backtracked to go inside.
This store was unique: it sells only fruit-flavored drinking vinegar. These are light and airy for sipping, not for cooking.
The flavor of the season, of course, was cherry blossom. You take a small amount of the stuff and cut it 4:1 with water, milk, or alcohol. With water, you end up with a gently flavored, slightly acidic beverage that is quite good. With milk you get something like flavored yogurt. They mixed a little blueberry vinegar with milk and the result was a fresh, liquidy blueberry “yogurt.” I bought a bottle of the cherry blossom vinegar for TO. I considered buying some of the blueberry vinegar to take back to China but it was more expensive than other flavors. (I am indeed a cheap @#$%&.)
I headed down a little side street…
…and as it was about lunch time, and it was fun to see all the little soba, udon, and sushi shops with a small counter or a few tables on the side streets.
What was surprising was that on almost every block there was a little Italian restaurant, clearly a cuisine that has taken a strong hold in Japan.
It seems to be the custom at these restaurants to display their wine selection on the sidewalk using a box full of empty bottles.
Decades ago the television show “Candid Camera” did an experiment with people in line. Whenever a stranger is passing a group of people in a queue, there is a great temptation to join that queue, even if you don’t know what it’s for. While I didn’t end up waiting at the end, I did take a bunch of pictures of this line…
…and its target, a hamburger shop.
A couple of teenagers began giggling at me so I asked them why people were waiting in line.
In very broken English they explained that it was a steak and hamburger place known for its good meat and low prices. Like China, these people demonstrated an extraordinary amount of patience: I was there about 15 minutes and I think only 1 person was let in during that time.
When people came out, they sprayed their clothes with something in bottles hanging outside the restaurant. Can you guess why they did this?
The answer is at the end of this post.
Young Japanese are really into shoes.
There was a small store that evidently sold only old cameras. The window had a selection of double-lens reflex cameras; I think I have one somewhere at home.
The cost of one was about $420.
Japanese men are notorious for wearing boring, dark suits.
As you probably know, Japanese people are really into flowers and flower arranging, and the number of flower shops I passed were as numerous as the number of Italian restaurants.
This must be the season for sidewalk interviews,…
…this one by the Tokyo Broadcasting System.
As I headed back to the department store to meet up with Suzi, I saw this car displayed in front of a large department store.
Speaking of transportation, there were many nice bikes locked to metal posts. In Beijing, these would be stolen before the owners could return.
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ANSWER: They spray each other’s clothes to eliminate the charcoal smell.
I suppose I should apologize for my extended absence – at least to those who have asked me to get off my butt and update my blog. Thanks for your interest, both of you.
I should also apologize to those who have appreciated the respite; sorry for disturbing your reverie.
Anyway, I’ve been very busy with work (which is going well), I’ve had visitors, and I’ve been traveling. There’s my update.
It’s probably time I stopped fooling self and come to grips with the fact that I’m addicted to food. Worse yet, I seem to be contaminating my friends with this affliction. Before they met me, their rare down times mostly were spent taking walks in the park or playing with their cell phones. Now that I’m around we expose ourselves (ooops! poor choice of words) to a wider variety of cuisines, mostly unhealthy ones.
Here you see my reflection and that of a friend in front of an unusual place in the international part of Beijing called Sanlitun.
This looks like two restaurants, side by side, but in fact it’s only one restaurant with one menu and two cuisines.
Around the corner is another Luga’s installment with Mexican and Italian food.
I am indeed getting tired of Chinese food; I’m used to a much wider variety in the U.S. So I’ve tried to create that variety in my apartment. I am, of course, the supreme delegator, so I use my put my dinner guests to good use, simultaneously teaching them Western cooking methods. On this day, Jenny and I made meatloaf.
She shaped it,…
…and, using a small toaster oven lent to me by another friend, we produced a passable meatloaf.
I say “passable” only because the ground beef I used was only adequate. The Chinese eat more pork per person than any other country, but they’re not big beef eaters. If you go into a Chinese supermarket, there is a long, refrigerated case (a full 40-foot aisle) of pork stuff (we won’t go into the details just now) with 5 or 6 butchers awaiting your instructions. Then you come to a small (6-foot) case with one person standing behind it selling both lamb and beef. I recently decided to acquire a meat grinder, so now I buy good cuts of pork and beef and grind them myself if needed.
I think I’ve mentioned that my friends are always bringing me fruit. I had some very good Chinese pears on hand, so I decided to finish our meal with one of my favorite desserts: pears poached in red wine sauce (which I had made weeks earlier for other friends). We peeled and cored them, cut them in half, then poached them in red wine with some fake sugar, a little honey, and bay leaves.
We took some mascarpone cheese and added chopped fresh pistachios and a little vanilla. We nuked it for a few seconds to soften it up, and then put some atop the pear.
Earlier in the week I had taken some cherries another friend had brought me and made a cherry sauce, so we put a little of this on top.
We added a little of the poaching liquid,…
…and Jenny decorated it with strawberries.
Voila!
It was indeed exquisite.
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