Taiko Update

So I just got back from playing a show at a festival at a Kyoto Temple. It was my first time playing a song called Sato no Uta, and we placed two songs that I've played before, Miyake and Kassen. I believe Kassen and Sato no Uta are original Wadayama Torafusujindaiko pieces, but Miyake is a song that's played in various forms by groups all over the world.

Miyake is played with the drum placed horizontally and struck from the side. You spread your feet, keep your back straight and bend you knees so your weight is supported by your thigh muscles. When the inside hand closest to the drum strikes the head, your weight is shifted over your outside leg. When you use your outside hand, you shift your weight over your inside leg to allow your bachi to reach the drum. Solos and the basic rhythm require a great deal of shifting back and forth, which means lots of work for your quads. A ton of fun, but for it to look really cool, you've got to get down low and stay there the whole time...tough for someone as inflexible as me.

For Kassen, I play the odaiko or large drum. It's got a drum head about 3 feet wide and is placed on a stand at about chest height. Playing is done with your elbows at shoulder level and your elbow acting as the only pivot. It kills my triceps, but is maybe the funnest one I've played so far.

The song I learned most recently is Sato no Uta, and it's got a combination of choreography and complicated sticking that took me forever to get down, but looks really cool when everyone is playing in rhythm.

I'll try to get some video up at some point, but here's some pics of our group.

Sanjinsanjin Ramen 山神山人

Was in Akashi taking my written driving test last week (jeebus, 5 hours in the DMV for a test that took me less than 2 minutes) and stopped in Nishi-Akashi on my way back for lunch. One of the teachers at my base school had given me a card of a place she went to in Kobe. Sometimes it's nice when you blab the same thing about yourself (I love ramen) so much that they remember :) Anyway, I found Sanjinsanjin Ramen pretty easily.

It was fairly quiet because it was about 2 pm on a Wednesday, meaning their main clientele (you know, people with jobs) had already come and gone. I ordered a set menu that came with their normal ramen and a pork bowl.

The ramen was darn good. Some of the most addictive soup I've had in a long time, better than the stuff I had in Tokushima at Toudai, better than Ichi-ran in Tokyo and certainly on par with the stuff I get at Jaran every other week or so. It was thick, almost creamy, with none of the gross fatty bits that contaminate the sight of the soup (I don't care if it's in there, I just don't like seeing it). The pork was thick but SO soft and succulent and the noodles were very thin and firm. Great stuff and I can't wait to try and go back on the 14th after my driving test :)

Ramentary: Zundouya Ramen

Feels like forever since a ramentary, dudn't it?

So my buddy Mark's co-worker suggested a spot called Zundouya Ramen in Himeji and since we were heading down there to look for gear for Taj Ultimate (the ultimate frisbee tournament next month), we stopped by for a taste.

There's 4 spots in Himeji alone, with another slated for Osaka in 2011. It's a pretty funky little spot, with reggae music in the background and all young folks working there. Our cute waitress had like 4 wristbands and a sweet blond hairdo underneath a towel. Zundouya does tonkotsu ramen, with varying degrees of thicknes (4 levels from assari to kotteri) and they also allow you to choose the kind of noodles you want (we both went thin). Mark got the chashumen with kotteri broth and I got the normal ramen with normal broth. We also sprung for fried rice and gyoza (because hey, a bowl of meat and noodles floating in fatty pork broth just isn't bad enough for you).

The table had garlic cloves and a garlic press in case you wanted to up the deliciousness at the expense of your companions' noses, but we abstained. My ramen came with negi, some absolutely melt-in-your-mouth-like-butter pork slices, a slice of nori (seaweed), a full soft boiled egg and a fair sized serving of those afore-mentioned thin noodles. It was pretty darn good. The oil in the broth kept the heat locked in the broth so when you pulled a serving of noodles, they were far hotter than the soup you'd sip from the top of the bowl. The entire bowl was fairly well put together, but I felt like the noodles were a bit too soft considering I asked for them to be firm.

The real star of this meal was the fried rice, in my opinion, which is saying something considering I liked the ramen. A little smaller than most ramen places I go to, but with some nice ingredients and without any hint of oiliness. The gyoza was average.

When did June get here?

What I've been up to lately:

- Colin and Yuka's wedding party (they got married in February in Hawaii, had their Japan party a few weeks ago. Was sick, so wasn't feeling great, but had a good time :)

- Went to Yoshi's birthday party at a billiards bar called Pool Fool Cool. He's 33 now and the only Japanese guy I've ever met with a Australian accent. We made him a cake

Those are almonds we roasted, strawberries with chocolate, strawberry pocky, and whipped cream. It tasted aight, but it was a bit dry. That's what we get for buying the cake part pre-made :D

- Ran into my buddy Matt at frisbee practice (literally) and scraped up my knee. Took a while for the blood to stop, even though it wasn't that big. A lady in my taiko group laughed and said I have the same kind of injuries as my students :p

- Went to a beach party in Takeno last weekend for a little bit, then went clubbing. The highlight, other than me trying to teach my friend how to dance just a little, was RaiRaiTei ramen beforehand! The green stuff is negi, or welsh onion.

The next day, we went to a spot called Pine Needle that is pretty funkay. Cool sign

And here's the めちゃスペシャルオムライス (mecha special omurise)...mecha is kind of a Japanese word for super/hella/totally but can also mean a lot in terms of quantity. Basically they called it a super special omurice, and I agreed. Pretty good.