Japanese Wine Country – The Wine Cave

We spent the weekend with some friends up in Japanese wine country. Tucked into the foothills of the Alps, you’ll find a little town called Katsunuma, and in it – a lot of Koshu grape vines. You’ll also find the cave at Budo no Oka (Grape Hill), where you can sample 150 Japanese wines for just over $10.

Even though our enthusiasm was not matched by the quality of wine, we managed to have a pretty great time. I was feeling rather inspired by some of the wine labels, and I’ve decided to make a professional goal: Someday, I want to design a wine label! How cool would that be?

The format of Budo no Oka was really cool – the wine was set out on the tops of barrels for you to sample. It was organized in the same order you should drink it: dry whites > sweet whites, roses, light reds > full-bodied reds. You get a little cup when you go in, and you’re welcome to stay as long as you want. Sip, sip, sip. I wish they had crackers or water around.

I’ve joked about how it’s easy to speak Japanese; just add an “u” to the end of any word. What does it say when the winemaker apologizes for their wine before you try it?

Yeah. It was about as good as you’d expect. Actually, a lot of the wines weren’t very good. Koshu is a tough grape to do well.

Here’s what we learned: None of the reds were good. None of them. Some were less-terrible than others, but we didn’t have a single red wine that we would have been happy with purchasing in a restaurant. Koshu is best if made in off-dry white style, when they take on the stonefruit-and-mineral characteristics of viognier. When they’re made too dry, they get super acidic and the lime & grapefruit flavours dominate. When they’re made too sweet Koshu turns into a cloying buckets of nectariney goo.

Don’t let me fool you though – we still had a great time. (below is me with Emi & Mao)

Outside the wine cave, we strained to see the ever-illusive Mt. Fuji (it was too cloudy), and commented on how we all love to visit the countryside.

Tune in next time: finding a place to sleep, farmers market, and green curry ramen!

Snow Fest, Part 2

Is it bad that I want to stay in bed and read all day? Every day? I’m such a slug.

Also, despite my mothers frantic fears, there was no tsunami action in Tokyo. Should you have been worried, let me quell that by saying that we’re just fine. We spent the day in Tokyo (shinjuku and shibuya, mostly) eating ramen, wandering about, and drinking in the streets. With the exception of some rain showers in the morning, it was a very water-free day.

Part two of our Yuzawa trip, coming at you. In this episode, Jon and Michelle find a place to sleep and look at snow sculptures!

**

You’ll remember that we came out to the mountain town of Yuzawa without a hotel booked for the night. (scroll down if this doesn’t sound familiar. you probably missed part one!) We stopped in to the tourist association and found someone that spoke a small amount of English. Boy, what a help!

We really, really didn’t want to spend 300$ / night on a hotel (which seemed to be the going rate for most of the places we had found, and was also the reason why we didn’t book something BEFORE getting on the train). Other than that financial limitation, we tried to communicate to the guy that we didn’t really care about much else. Remember, I was okay with sleeping in the train station if it came to that!

A few phone calls later, he circles something on the map and tells us that it would be $50. … okay? okay! well. we still have no idea what we’re going to, but at least he circled it on the map. That will probably come in handy later.

We’re in the mountains this weekend to visit the Tokamachi snow festival, which is a 30-minute train ride away from where we were at. I think a lot of people were in town for this snow fest, because the trains were crazy packed.

The japanese need very little encouragement when it comes to having full-costume mascots. This is the suica (train pass) mascot! I hugged Suica the Penguin! Isaiah, are you hearing this!!?

We wander out to the streets and follow the crowd into a snow-walled off area filled with tents and sculptures. Speaking of trains, look at the level of detail!

This area is known for growing rice, so there’s a lot of sake makers around too. (remember, sake is basically rice wine) $1 for sake? count us in!

I love that this culture embraces drinking in public so wholeheartedly.

SUMO snow man! This isn’t the kind of stuff we made in our backyard. Tokamachi’ans really don’t mess around with their snowmen!

Just look at the level of detail!

But you know, not everyone… got the hint. Shouldn’t there at least be snow in the snowmen? Nice try, folks.

Boy. All this walking around in the snow is making me hungry. If only there was a guy selling meat on a stick around here somewhere…..

Did I mention how cold it was yet? And wet? Cold and wet!

Unlike jon’s (much more practical shoes), my tennis shoes aren’t waterproof. My toes were angry with me, and so when the opportunity came to warm myself with a beer around a trash-can-fire, like a hobo, my toes simply wouldn’t take “no” for an answer.

They do this crazy thing all over Tokamachi & Yuzawa. Having lived in both Wisconsin and Colorado for some time, it struck me as odd that I’ve never seen anything like this before. It appears that the snow melt runoff is piped into the streets to keep them from freezing. Neat, huh? Neat that is, until you accidentally step in it and get your (already angry) toes more wet.

but you know, it’s okay. We’re having a good time and we’re together. And we did come for the snow, after all.

“it loves you”

Jon reminded me today that I shouldn’t abandon the blog to work on other things. He says “it loves you. It just wants some love back.”
This is another reason I would not be a good Mommy. I forget about things.

Today I saw a child screaming… screaming, running after a woman and a stroller. The “mom”-woman was gaining distance and the little girls screams started sounding less and less like “fun game” and more like “mommy come back”. I wondered… was that woman running away from her child? Literally? Was she trying to abandon the girl in the middle of the park? And more importantly, did I fault her?

Anyways. I love you, teamEggers. I love that you’re dependable and don’t ask too much from me. My mom called me yesterday, as I was in the middle of what must have sounded like a quarter-life-crisis. Despite our glorious surroundings, which I keep forgetting to enjoy, I seem to be having a small mental breakdown over the past few weeks. I think things are on the upswing, and I resolve that March will be better.

So for you today, I bring a very happy tale of one girl who gets to stay in Japan.

Yesterday afternoon, I jumped on a train into the unexplored Burroughs of Yokohama.

• Final destination: The Japanese Immigration office.
• The task: An attempt to extend my 90-day tourist visa, so that I don’t have to leave the country in April.

After standing in various lines in a room that was set up similar to the DMV, lots of back and forth with a man named Ki-no-shi-ta, and the most charmingest smile I could muster, I was awarded a visa extension!

(I just had to buy a 40$ revenue stamp before they let me have it. Good thing I had some cash in my pocket!) Really though, $40 is a gift, considering that leaving the country to go to Hong Kong would have probably cost us close to $1500.

Happy, happy.

Valentines Day Weekend

I’ve given you a few snapshots of Valentines Day weekend, but I thought I’d talk a bit more about the weekend on a whole. You may be thinking to yourself about now, “what, they don’t do anything during the week anymore? Here it’s a week later and she’s still talking about last sunday? this sucks! I want my money back!”

Yes, dear reader, you’re right. I’m lazy. Some days I don’t even leave the house. But I cook dinner almost every night! You want recipes? That’s about all I can give you. Recipes and pity parties.

To close up the weekend before I start the next one, here’s a quick recap:

Ramen Adventures! Jangara Ramen, recommended by two of the ramen blogs that we follow. Located right off the main drag in Akihabara (the electronics district)

The line is always this long!

Inside (they say not to take photos, so i had to sneak a few covert-like with my iPhone. I’m sure they didnt notice because I blend in really well. … and my iPhone is lime-green)

Then we went to the Edo history museum, where I sat in things:

…and jon stood in front of things (look, sumo!)

. next morning . up before dawn to take in the sights at the tsukiji fish market. Boy, I wish I had some coffee.

We were careful not to get in the way or get hit by one of the speeding fish cars. The market before it wakes up…

…as the vendors are still preparing for their days.

Large semi trucks unload fish to be sold starting at 3am. Most of them come in Styrofoam boxes that are turned into the makings of a mountain.

I love the view here of the city in the background. It looks so… dismal. If you think about it, a lot of fishies gave their lives for this picture. It is dismal.

We ended our day with a sushi breakfast (at 7am!). I was feeling kind of sick, but decided that stomachache or not, I was eating raw tuna that morning!! (it was worth it!)

Valentines in Ginza (Ukai-tei)

< fair warning: this is a food-lovin’ post, chock-full of pictures. EOM >

Last year, jon and I bought the Michelin Guide to Tokyo and vowed to visit our first Michelin starred restaurant while we were out here.  For whatever reason, it never ended up happening in ‘09, but we did manage a last-minute reservation last night at Ukai-tei in Ginza.

Valentines teppanyaki. Oh, oh. We decided on one of the seasonal set menus, which started us with an amuse bouche: an airy cream-based soup set over custard and topped with uni. A few nights before, jon and I had pledged our allegiance with uni (in brief: a type of sushi), and so this was a welcome (and buttery) treat. Not something that I would have ordered with relish last week.

The appetizer course: king crab w/ sauteed leeks for me…

…marinated filefish sashimi for jon. Filefish are funny-lookin buggards, with their odd shape and clumsy patterning. It’s not very common as sushi in America, and they’re most often found dried, turned into jerky, and snacked upon in Korea. Those crazy Koreans.

After the appetizer course we found ourselves with parsnip soup – so intensely parsnippy, and so incredibly tasty, it made wonder why I always overlook parsnips at the supermarket. They’re just so… good. A great uncommon-yet-familiar flavour. I promise to roast more of them in the future.

The dinner we ordered was the abalone menu. We hadn’t ever had abalone before (that I can remember), so I wasn’t positive what to expect in either preparation or flavour. It was so neat! They bring out two abalone-on-the-half-shell, that are then put on a hot flat top grill and covered gently with two banana leaves. (Really, the chef nestled these leaves around them.) Then they MOUND on the rock salt (it looks like a miniature ski hill at this point), and pour white wine all over it before covering to steam.

In a separate pan, they bundle up some crinkly savoy cabbage and put it in a pan with a-little-bit of-this and a-little-bit-of-that, until what emerges is exactly like a classically prepared béarnaise sauce. Lovely! The abalone were creamy, and hearty enough to stand up to the rich sauce, and my acidic white French wine was a perfect compliment.

After fish comes the meat course, and they brought out the sirloin to present to us before asking how we like it cooked. It’s so lovely there, sitting in front of us. Naked and full of potential.

When you say “medium rare”, you get it a perfect medium rare. And the marbling melts in your mouth. And you wonder why, on earth, you have ever eaten anything else. And just then, as to break my reverie, the woman across from me comments on how this is just the best meal she’s ever eaten.

It’s very traditional in Japan to eat your rice after the meat / fish course. Our Japanese friends always look at us oddly when we ask the waitress for a bowl of rice during dinner. For our parts, Jon and I had one of each, noodles and rice.

I started with the Japanese Noodles, which reminded me of that quiet dinner in Kyoto – cool, intensely flavoured broth holding gently suspending thin, delicate noodles. Served with a side of grated daikon (radish), just in case you needed to clean your palate. Jon opted for the garlic rice, which was equally tasty.

Clearly, by this point in the night I had lost my ability to take photos that were in focus.

The table was decorated sparsely with flowers, but it was perfect because you didn’t really want anything more complicated than a single orchid. Because the single orchid was, in itself, a metaphor for the Japanese cuisine: Striking in its simplicity, but perfectly formed and prepared with a great deal of deliberateness.

…and just as jon and I were beginning to dream of a chocolate ending to our affair, the waiter came to tell us that our “dessert table was ready”. I sat in reverie and jon remarked about how “money can’t buy love”. We both knowingly laughed – I love him so much for his shared interest in this kind of stuff, not because he can / we can afford to take us out to schmancy meals.

Dessert started us with an orange geleé gratineé – this culture loves its geletain products. Really, they make everything in to jello-like cubes.

Jon had a fudge-like torte that I wasn’t speedy enough to get a photo of, and I ended with espresso and a caramel pudding that in another world would have been called either flan or créme caramel.

We found it hard to not linger on the service, quality of food, and overall fantastic-ness of the evening, but knew it was time to go. We have early morning plans with a tuna-man.