Hmmmm…..
Should I finally catch up on my blog posts on activities that include: Kamakura, Harajuku, Akihabara, Nakano, drunken shenanigans, Shibuya, shopping, the most awesome hat ever, Nikko, Canadians, Tsukiji Fish Market and sex shops?
….OR should I go out and do some window shopping in Shinjuku and Akihabara, with a promise of a Subway lunch?
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*grabs wallet*
The Hard Rock Cafe’s potato skins are better than sex.
That is all.
p.s. Hi Dad
Kudos to Circus Girl. I’m going to steal your blogging style for a moment ;)
Thursday:
Wake up late, sticky, hate tsuyu, oh my gods I need to change hostels, pack bags, pack more bags, what the hell kind of packing is that? Chidade, you’re a Rover, for shame! Empty everything, pack again, actually learn room mates’ names, then leave, heh, backpack, laptop bag, two bags worth of shopping, HEEAAAAVVVEEEEEEEE! holy crap my fingers are dead, should I get a taxi? urk, taxi expensive, how do I get them to go to Gojo? “Gojo House onegaishimasu“, “Wakkanai“, stuff it, I’ll walk, half way there, totally regretting that, fingers now blue, brainwave! bag in bag and now one less bag! still weighs the same /swt, are we there yet? who are you talking to? you! no, you! ok, definitely need food, but baaaaaaaaaggggsss! hey it’s Gojo! omg I made it, stumble in, collapse, “hey”, “hey”, “how are you?”, *gasp* “‘k. I’d like to check in, please!”, “check in isn’t until 3pm”, $%&##!@#^ need shower! “Ok, but I’m leaving my bags here until then”, huunnnngggrrryyyyyy, crap! I left my breakfast in the fridge at K’s House! waaaaaaah, ok, walking back now /sob, so much easier without bags, must be losing weight with all this walking, back at K’s, salmon sushi onigiri breakfast, eat on the steps, numnumnum, so what am I going to do until 3pm? At least the late check-in forces me to do something, CRAP! camera is in bags at Gojo, feck it, I’m NOT walking back there again, what can I do today that doesn’t require camera? Head to Kyoto station to get inspiration, watch fashion show, should I write about this for 3yen? Get bus map, needs camera, needs a camera, needs camera, maybe I’ll just go shopping? Really want somewhere with an air conditioner, OOOOH! International Manga Museum! Sold, buy bus ticket, …..no bus route nearby, MORE WALKING?! This place better have an awesome air conditioner >.< need ramune icypole to survive the trip. gari gari kun is teh awesome, is this it? is this it? are we there yet? It looks like a school, it IS a school! “Konnichiwa!”, that’s like the first time I’ve heard that on this holiday, 500 yen, Great Wall Of Manga, this collection must be James’ wet dream, there’s not actually that much here, any English manga? Just give me some English manga, a seat and a vending machine in air conditioned goodness, wait, a figure exhibition? 500 yen, hahaha Fist of the North Star, wow! Who’s she? KAWAII! bingbingbing 2.40pm blog time. Feet achy. Nearly time to check in but want to revive feet first. English manga!! Read last volume of Battle Royale, so that’s how it ended, time to go back, bus back the long way round, “ok now you can check in”, make bed, collapse, wake up 11pm, combini dinner, collapse again.
Friday:
Wake up, unpack everything AGAIN! repack properly, now only have three bags, taxi to Kyoto Station because I’m not going to be walking again and in the rain, book shinkansen, bakery breakfast, get on Hikari, I think I’ve been in this seat before, Kyo-kun gets a workout, pillows playlist, so many gaijin, too much rain to see Mt Fuji, pass through Shin-Yokohama, TADAIMA!! Arrive at Tokyo, TADAIMA!!! Change train, change train, wow, K’s House Tokyo is really close to the station, check in, SHOWER, I feel human again, laundry, run back to train station and go to AKIHABARA!! TADAAAAIIIMMMAAAA!!!!! Nearly everything is closed though /sob Hang on, what happened to Aso Bit City?! Stress! Oh wait, there it is. Any Ragnarok? Ragnarok, Ragnarok, Ragna- damn, only volume 1 and 3…c’mon Akiba, don’t let me down! None of the shops have Volume 2 /sob but oooh, I found Gorgeous Mysterious Katana-Wielding Woman from the Manga Museum….and for cheaper too! Glad I didn’t buy her in Kyoto *yoink* shops closed, must go collect laundry, hooray for wireless internet in K’s House! Make plans with M & T for tomorrow, watch Naruto and BLEACH on YouTube, eek! 2am! Collapse.
Saturday in Kamakura and with old friends: much fun an alcohol - next.
Sunday in Harajuku: tale of heartbreak and love - after that.
Monday in Akiba and Nakano: victory and defeat - after that again.
Tomorrow I have a date with the Emperor. Hopefully I’ll actually post about everything eventually.
1am, time to collapse.
Some background:
Yakitate!! Japan is a Japanese manga and anime which is basically all about baking bread. The title means “Freshly Baked!! Japan” which is also a pun, because “pan” is the Japanese word for bread. Sounds like an odd subject for a series but it is honestly one of my favourites.
It’s about a boy named Kazuma Azuma who wants to create a bread that is uniquely Japanese, much like there is German bread (doitsu-pan), French Bread (furansu-pan) and Italian bread (itaria-pan) - hence the name Ja-pan.
The series is above all funny but it may be better appreciated by those who have watched plenty of anime before, and know the conventions and clichés. A lot of the jokes are parodies of other anime/manga or their genres.
Still, it could be interesting for non-otaku too. The manga actually had recipes of the breads featured in the series, as well as general baking tips. The manga-ka Takashi Hashiguchi hired a bread artisan consultant while writing the series. That consultant’s name is Kouichi Uchimura. He created a lot of the bread that appeared in the series and is apparently really trying to create a uniquely Japanese bread (I personally thought that they had plenty, but anyway). Uchimura has a bakery here in Kyoto called Pan no Mimi (which translates into ‘bread ends’, or ‘bread crusts’) and that’s where I went today!
To get to Pan no Mimi, you need to get on the JR San-In or Sagano Line (Platforms 32 and 33 at JR Kyoto Station at time of writing) and get off two stations later at Nijo Station. Yes, that’s Nijo, like Nijo-jo, or Nijo Castle. The castle is a block away from the station. When you get out of the station (take the east exit, there should be signs pointing to Nijo Castle) and you get to the main road, take a left and walk for a while. You’ll pass two major intersections and about four traffic lights in total. Pan no Mimi will be on this street you’re walking down, on your left. There are only signs in Japanese.
The first thing I thought when I found the place was “Yay! I found it!” because it really was a hike from Nijo Station and I thought I may have missed it. The second thing I thought was “….it’s so tiny”. And it really is. There is barely room for two customers to move around. There is a small display with some Yakitate!! Japan manga and posters explaining how Uchimura was involved, plus a few manga scans and what seems to be a thank you card from the Yakitate!! team to Uchimura.
But that was all that showed that this was anything more than a tiny, local bakery servicing the residents in the less-touristy part of Kyoto. In keeping with its name, Pan no Mimi was in fact selling bags of bread ends and bread crusts on one table….for what I’m not sure. It just looked like duck and koi food to me.
In every Japanese bakery you walk into, you’ll find a pile of trays and tongs at the door so you can serve yourself. Go around the display and place what you want to buy on your tray, then take everything to the counter where it will be bagged by the assistant and totalled.
I decided to go for two very Yakitate!! breads: melon bread (meron-pan) and a French baguette (furansu-pan). Coupled with a bottle of lemon ice tea, the whole thing was less than $6.
If I remember correctly, in the anime, the melon bread that Kazuma made was rather ugly and sickly looking, but then it tasted fantastic. It was the same with Pan no Mimi’s melon bread. It didn’t look anything like the carefully sculptured and identical looking breads that you get from the local combini - but, oh man, when you tasted it……yumyumyum. There was only a hint of melon flavour - it was mainly just a sugar hit, complete with slightly caramelised bits on the edges.
The baguette was slightly sticky and chewy on the inside while being very crusty on the outside - again, just like they said it was in Yakitate!! - and it was also damn tasty. In fact, it was so good that I had eaten most of it before I remembered to take a photo, heh.
I didn’t have extreme and comic reactions to the breads’ taste like the characters in the series, but I did like it enough to decide to go back tomorrow - despite the hike to get there.
Pan no Mimi is quite unique among Japanese bakeries. There’s great bakeries here, no doubt. The Andersen under Kyoto Station makes an excellent Polish-style rye, even if they call it “brot” (ie: German bread). But they still seem very…Japanese and like Yakitate!! says, the Japanese aren’t known for bread. Uchimura must’ve trained in Europe or somewhere, because his bread is the most continental of the breads I’ve tasted in Japan, while still being unique and still Japanese. He sells those 3cm-thick-6-slice-loafs too. Those loaves are generally the worst kind of bread you can find anywhere. I think Uchimura’s may be good though. They’re slightly burnt around the edges, I noticed, heh. I wonder if they’re made with wasabi like in the anime?
Inspecting my purchases from Pan no Mimi, the Yakitate!! Japan bakery in Kyoto.
