Banh Mi Pork Overdose!

As residents of southern California would know, Bánh mì (Vietnamese sandwiches) come packed with many different kinds of filling. They even do them with fish, as my girlfriend Nga informed me today. She was in bed in our holdout at the City Star Hotel near the Cultural Park, and had asked me to go out and buy a few kebabs at a place I had found round the corner earlier in the year, on my previous tour of duty. On the way out the door I remembered that the kebab stand opened in the evening, and it was now only lunchtime (late lunchtime). Time for a rethink: she suggested I go pick up some Bánh mì instead. "But don't get any with fish in them," she said. That was strange, I couldn't imagine Bánh mì with fish (although I have since discovered that they have them in San Francisco!) I guess Nga wasn't keen on trusting fish served on the street, she is kind of skeptical of street food in general (she reckons she can cook better.) On top of that, she says street food can make you sick. Having observed the kebab stand's meat pole standing idle out in the midday sun yesterday, hours before the stand was due to open, I can see what she means. Anyway, I went out and found a Bánh mì woman at work near Star City, opposite the Cultural Park, and ordered two sandwiches. Communicating through gestures, the Bánh mì woman asked me if I wanted the pork, and I nodded in agreement. As it turns out, pork was about all I got served. Salty, gristly, but scrumptious pork. There were a few bits of cucumber and carrots and so forth thrown into the sandwich, but it was mostly pork. The pork here came delivered either cool and warm, in forms ranging from liver pate to rolls of processed ham wrapped in red plastic, to meat sliced straight from the roasted pig, skin and crackling dripping with juice. I got the hot, roasted stuff, for two. The lady doused each Bánh mì with a salt shaker before wrapping them in newspaper and dropping them into a plastic bag. When I ripped into my roll back in the room with Nga, all that gristle and salt crunched in my mouth like sand. It might have been pork overdose heaven for me, but Nga was unimpressed.

Pork gets loaded into my baguette, in Ho Chi Minh City (Vietnam, 2010)

"Why isn't the bread warm?" she sniveled. As you can see from the photo above, the loaves in the stand do indeed look kind of wilted. And having stale bread is the worst offence when it comes to street Bánh mì in Ho Chi Minh City, or anywhere in the world. "This isn't fresh, and it is probably yesterday's bread," Nga declared. Which condemned it to instant fail, in her mind at least. As much of a fail as if it had contained fish! But I still enjoyed it.

Uniqlo, and the Japanese Rock Star Look (Revisited)

I have a colleague, a cheerfully gay American, who claims that Uniqlo is the only brand he wears. Like most gay men he is a fastidious dresser, and likes the fact you can throw together a readymade wardrobe at Uniqlo for just a few thousand Yen (this being Japan where we both reside). I don't have the kind of money he has, but my own wardrobe is about 35 per cent to 45 per cent Uniqlo derived these days, and has been ever since I discovered two たんぽぽ (Dandelion) recycled thrift stores across the river in Chiba. Most of the clothes they sell at たんぽぽ are, in fact, slightly compromised Uniqlo garments (Japanese, being Japanese, will throw out clothes if they get a coffee stain.) My wardrobe is now basically second derivative Uniqlo, with faint coffee stains or barely noticeable flaws. The only problem is, many of these items are kind of small and don't fit (me being a Caucasian and all.) Perhaps if I got my social media game happening, I might be able to buy the real thing, with the proper range of sizes to try on.

As part of their Lucky Counter campaign in the United Kingdom, shoppers can score a discount every time they mention a particular Uniqlo product on Twitter. The more you tweet about the item, the lower the price drops (down to a threshold of about 60 per cent off, according to one report I read.) Dang, if I lived in London I'd be taking advantage of that deal! The less I have to do with real cash, and the more I can make use of its derivatives, the happier I will be! Social media influence is the ultimate currency, and one day I hope to be trading in it, investing in it, paying it forward! Why don't they have these kind of campaigns in Japan? Until they arrive, I will have to keep going to たんぽぽ, or buy knock-off shit in Vietnam. They don't have Uniqlo down there yet, but it is probably just a matter of time. As The Sun Daily recently recorded: "Uniqlo, Japan’s number one fashion brand and world leader in casual wear, will open its first store in Malaysia in November in Bukit Bintang, Kuala Lumpur." 

The next time I go to Iceland, I might wear this ensemble, which is about 35 per cent Uniqlo-derived (Japan, 2010)

Not content with being a household name in Japan, Uniqlo is on its way to conquer the world. Like Mugi, like Best Denki Uniqlo champions and epitomizes a "Japanese approach" to retail. Mass produced, but paradoxically unique... that is the Japanese approach! High quality, but (relatively) cheap, with a strong customer service ethos. That's Japanese retail in a nutshell, and it might well prove to be a major export success story for the nation. Uniqlo Singapore is the brand's fourth store in Asia, following the brand's success in China, Hong Kong and South Korea. They opened a store in Taiwan this month, and are big in the United States. One day Uniqlo might even reach the sloppily dressed shores of Australia, my native land, where a pair of jeans might cost you a few hundred dollars, if the shop assistant feels interested in serving you. I am sure it is going to cause havoc when it arrives down there. They sure need some shaking up! 

Churches of Ho Chi Minh City

Even if you are not Christian or religious, the churches of Ho Chi Minh City offer a fascinating glimpse into the cultural life of the people... and its turbulent recent history.

According to Saigonist, one in 10 Vietnamese are Christian (predominantly Catholic).

They are a legacy of French colonialism, but the way they practice their faith is quite different from how things are done in Europe, or the West.

In this pictorial guide, I want to introduce to some of the churches that I have stumbled upon, in my rambles around Ho Chi Minh City.

I know what you must be thinking: SAIGON DOESN'T SEEM THE KIND OF PLACE YOU SHOULD WALK AROUND. The traffic is chaotic and pedestrians figure rather low on the food chain of vehicles. Red lights don't necessarily mean "stop", and footpaths can suddenly be invaded by those on wheels.

I have seen a couple of accidents already in my brief time here. This is a city where you need to have eyes in the back of your head.

That said, it is by walking the streets that you begin to appreciate the true nature of this place. Saigon is a city in which things that are normally kept well inside, such as furniture showrooms, spill out on to the pavements, literally blocking your path. There are fascinating discoveries around every corner, ranging from the sacred, to the profane. It is a hard slog, but it is worth it... (For my full pictorial guide to the churches of Ho Chi Minh City, click here.)

The Other Kampuchea

It is not too often that you discover a new country in this CROWDED OLD WORLD, especially one right beneath your nose. It is not often you learn of a new struggle in a mediascape littered with lost causes, but learn of one I have done, these past few days. Who would have thought that Ho Chi Minh City, my current home away from home away from home, is actually a new metropolis, a colony in fact, built on stolen land? Not any kind of stolen land, mind you, but the OLDEST LAND IN SOUTHEAST ASIA, according to those that know: KAMPUCHEA KROM. Once part of the Kampuchean Empire, Kampuchea Krom (henceforth called Khmer Krom) was conquered by the Nguyễn lords who marauded southwards in the late 18th Century, much at the same time that the British blustered their way into Australia. Saigon as we know it is not so much older than Sydney, which was also built on stolen land, much further to the south. Well, the Khmers lost their land, but the land did not lose its Khmers... they are still there today, speaking their own language, and cooking their own foods. I haven't seen them myself, but I am told they are there. Recipes for their meals can be seen online, at sites such as this one. They sing songs, reedy and melancholic, the womens' voices trilling. They have their own heroes, tragic and patriotic. Oknha Son Kuy seems to be the greatest hero of them all: governor of Trapeang province, he was beheaded by the Vietnamese in 1821.

Buddhist monks of Khmer Krom.

In a country already divvied up into provinces and districts, crowded into communes, sewn into strategic hamlets, it is refreshing to find alternative maps, alternative names, written in a strange, flowery script. To the Khmer Krom, Ho Chi Minh City is called Prey Nokor (ព្រៃនគរ ). Vũng Tàu is known as O-Kab (អូកាប់), while Phú Quốc is called Koh Trol. Reunificaton Hall was actually given a Cambodian name when it was built (the Norodom Palace (វិមាននរោត្តម)). Óc Eo (អូរកែវ), the former capital of the ancient state of Funan, is located in Khmer Krom. If the southern Khmers ever regain their independence, perhaps Óc Eo might be born again.

Here are some websites and weblogs on the Khmer Krom cause, and the land that they inhabit:

Khmer Krom News
Khmer Krom NGO
Phu Quoc Island
VOKK

Fouling the Nest

During my Australian life (realUniverse#1990s) I was employed as a journalist for Cumberland Newspapers and worked at many of their titles in Sydney and on the NSW Central Coast. One of my gigs was at the North Shore Times where, as well as being general office shitkicker, I served as the resident restaurant reviewer. I didn't understand why all of my colleagues thought it was a shit job, I myself assumed it would be something of a prized position, and definitely a lurk... anyway, as soon as I lobbed up at their office in Chatswood, one of the first things I got asked was: "Can you do the restaurant reviews?" Some female reporter there had been doing it but she was more than happy to let me take over if I didn't mind, and anyway she was going to be far too busy from now on with her new brief (which was writing about real estate, or something like that). Being the new guy, I was kind of obligated to oblige, and help her out. Being the new guy, I was expected to take on the tasks that others didn't want; I had to be a shitkicker, at least temporarily. I shifted in my seat, smiled, said, "Yes, of course I can!" and then the job was mine, just like that. Possibly the other journalists there regarded it as a waste of time, not "serious" enough for them, or an impediment to their career... but while the guy I sat next might have dreamed of being a Rugby League reporter at the Sydney Morning Herald, I was after nothing more than a free feed! And nothing is better than getting free food, than being paid to eat it! Of course, nothing is really free in this world, and I had to work for those meals, I had to fawn and flatter for them, and write nice things in print. I had to spend the odd evening in a drafty restaurant somewhere with the staff photographer mopping up curry with naan and making small talk, when I could have been at home. Naturally, I wasn't allowed to write anything negative should the food disappoint because the restaurants were also advertisers, and advertising was the name of the game at Cumberland Newspapers, it was their bread and butter you might say. In any case, even if the food was good, and it usually was, the restaurant review system didn't seem like a fair way to go: as the establishment in question always knew I was coming, they naturally laid on a good spread, waiters buzzing around like moons and all the rest. Had I visited incognito, guerrilla-style, it might have been a different story, a more honest story! That's why websites like urbanspoon are so much more honest, and so much more candid... they're democratic, and tell it how it is. I wasn't allowed to do that in my reviews (or in any of my "harder" stories, to tell you the truth.) And maybe that's why, in their wisdom, my fellow journalists at The Times hated writing the reviews... they knew it was just glorified copywriting. They had places to go, and bigger fishes to fry. They were aiming for the top, which left me the bottom to colonize.

The United Colors of Crows Nest, near North Sydney (Australia, 2011)

Journalistic ethics aside, I was on a roll at the North Shore Times, and as well as scoring lunches at French and Swiss bistros that I would not ordinarily be able to afford, I scoffed Korean bulgogi, bowls of pasta, gourmet hamburgers, and plenty of good Chinese. It was mighty convenient that I was living a 10 minute walk away, across the highway from the Royal North Shore Hospital, just past St Leonard's railway station near Crows Nest. I had a Hong Kong girlfriend and a leafy backyard... what could be better than that? Okay, my Trekkie flatmates were kind of anal, and they had a psycho cat to boot (and boot it I did, from time to time, when they weren't watching!) I split up with my Hong Kong girlfriend after just a month or two together, and the sea monkeys she gave me when we started out together died, dissolving into a milky cloud. But anyway, I had Crows Nest, just a matter of blocks away! Back then, before I had moved to Japan, I used to think Crows Nest was kind of sophisticated, exotic even, but not really that edgy. There were gorgeous multicultural treats in easy walking range, Italian pizzerias run by guys with names like Vince, or Dino (or Pino), and Thai takeouts with humorous/sarcastic names. In due course, I reviewed many of these establishments for the North Shore Times. I was totally spoiled for choice: North Indian, Japanese, Korean, there was even a Mongolian place in which I lunched with the Cumberland crew (I had to pay for this one). When I was off-duty, there were two bottleshops in roaming range, and for harder fare, my mate Jimmy (of Pablo Velasquez Shoeboarding fame) lived up the road, on Ernest Street. Whatever you needed, he could supply. The majesty of Sydney Harbour was also just a short stroll away, anyway really... whichever way you headed, you were destined to run into it. The water seems to be all around you, in this part of the world.

Last month I jetted down to Australia on Vietnam Airlines, and had the opportunity to revisit some of my roots. Two days after Christmas, a somewhat overcast day, I met up with Chris Mae, my old partner in crime from Japan, and his brother Garnet, the renegade film-maker, and cruised around the lower North Shore for a while, looking for mischief. Chris had just got a new skateboard for Christmas, and he was very pleased with himself.





After a nice round of lawn bowls we went over to Cremorne to eat some Mickey D's, and then Garnet suggested we drop in to have a chat with Jimmy, who still lived in his original crib, on Ernest. Back in the day Jimmy's was the place to hang, and if you were lucky he might get out his projector and show you Bladerunner on the big screen, or something from the Star Wars saga. Unfortunately Jimmy was out, but he told us to hang tight, and wait an hour or two. We decided to go for a walk, and look for some good grub. This was Crows Nest, after all: there ought to be plenty of fine dining selections at hand! 

Mumu, a grill joint, on Alexander Street, Crows Nest (Australia, 2009)

So, we went for a walk, looking for something promising. The sun came out, birds were flapping around, and all was well with the world. We walked up the road, to Alexander Street. Church was in session, and all the faithful were dressed up for the occasion. Looking around, it seemed like every second restaurant was a grill joint. MUMU (70 Alexander Street) was a case in point, and promised "grill,  tapas and bar"... who could imagine a better combination? According to my beloved North Shore Times, this place has the largest al fresco dining space in Crows Nest. It might have been nice, but Garnet is a vegetarian, so it wasn't really appropriate. Damn!

Grill'd, another grill joint, on Willoughby Road, Crows Nest (Australia, 2009)

We moved on, to Willoughby Road, to pass another grill joint, Grill'd (49 Willoughby Road). Nobody out to eat yet; perhaps it was too early. According to Menufest: "The Grill'd concept was born when Simon Crowe, the company founder, decided to do something about the lack of a decent, healthy hamburger in the Australian market." Lamb, chicken, beef and vegie burgers are on the menu here, which should have pleased Garnet. But, for some reason, he wasn't going for it. We walked on, passing Wrapido, and a Commonwealth Bank branch. Then we stumbled upon a place which is apparently renowned in this part of town: Pino's Pizzeria. We all agreed we could do with a good pizza, so we pulled up a seat outside.

Garnet Mae prepares to dine, at Pino's Pizzeria (Australia, 2009)

Postscript: who would have thought that I would go all the way to Australia to get a dose of the runs? I have been to Vietnam six times in the last three years and even though I often dine on the streets there, I hardly ever get an upset stomach... nothing too bad anyway, maybe an overdose of fibre. I have lived in Japan for nine years and eaten raw chicken, raw horse and canned whale meat and felt none the worse for wear, accrued bad karma notwithstanding. It took returning to my native Australia to get a really intense case of diarrhea, one that lasted for nearly a week, and followed me all the way to my love nest in Ho Chi Minh City... and I believe it all started at Pino's Pizzeria. Mind you they were good pizzas that we quoffed there, me and the Mae brothers and their two halfJapanese descendents... mine were heavy on the anchovies. It was probably the anchovies that unsettled me. If I had been like Garnet and limited myself to the Vegetariana (artichokes, mushroom, onion, olives and capsicum) I would probably have been okay. Probably. Anyway, at least I have a chance to provide a really honest Sydney restaurant review, after faking it for so long. Incidentally, urbanspoon rank Pino's as one of the top restaurants in Crows Nest. Don't listen to my sad gripe; the majority can't be wrong!

altUniverse Me, Living in Strathfield, Shopping and Eating in Glebe

Why is it that all the good Australian food blogs are written by Asians? To be more precise, why is it that most of the food bloggers in Australia are Malays, or people from the Malay world? By the Malay world I'm referring to Malaysians, Singaporeans, Indonesians, Filipinos, etc, many of whom live, study or work in Australia these days. I don't know whether or not Malaysians invented food blogging but it is definitely a popular pastime for these people, and something they excel at. Just as everyone under the age of 50 in Reykjavik Iceland wants to be in a rock band, every young man or woman in Kuala Lumpur wants to be a food blogger... that is my observation at least! When I lived in Tokyo I was once bluntly informed by one of my housemates, an overweight Japanese gent named Matsumoto-san: "I liked traveling in Australia, but Anglo-Saxons don't understand food." I took that as a slur at the time but I can see where he was coming now -- Anglo-Saxons do indeed suck gastronomically. I think it boils down to our tepid tastes, and to our straitjacketed imagination. What constitutes Anglo-Saxon cuisine, anyway: meat and three veg, the veg boiled beyond blandness? Baked beans if you are English, Vegemite on toast if you are Australian? Hot dogs and hamburgers in North America, sausages on a braai in South Africa? Times may be changing, countries like Australia are supposed to be so cosmopolitan these days, you can even scoff sashimi in a shotglass, or eat wagyu beef on a burger! But I wonder: is this coming of age in a culinary sense, or is it just showing off how wealthy you've become? It's insulting for the sashimi to be served up in a glass, not only to the Japanese whose culture you have ransacked to spice up your workaday reality, but to the fish who donated its flesh and its life to help sustain yours! Show some respect, for God's sake. When I survey the dining scene in a city such as Sydney it seems to be more than a little nouveau riche to me, suggesting that people here have confused money with culture. Good cooking comes from the heart, not from the wallet, and I doubt that Aussies (along with Americans and Kiwis and South Africans and all the rest) will ever be as fanatical about their food as the Asians are about theirs. Young Australians would rather be football players than foodies, or food bloggers. Fair enough -- I will keep to the Asian blogosphere as I research places to go for my impending visit Downunder next month, and there are plenty of sites out there to be read. For example, on the topic of my home for a couple of months at the start of the year 2000, the Asian-Australian eat like a cow posse say: "It's hard to decide what to eat in Glebe - the area along Glebe Point road is full of delicious eateries. In fact, it's somehow like Paddington - but for hippies. This road strip is a melting pot of many cultures and races. One can see a seemingly endless myriad of people types - dreadlocked hippie girls, leather fetishists, even Asians in Louboutins. It's really an oasis in suburbia, lined with charmingly un-renovated old townhouses and fabulously dinghy second-hand shops..."

In an alternative universe I might be living in Strathfield, the gateway to western Sydney and home to a large Korean community (Australia, 2012)

I haven't been to Australia for a long time now (2.75 years, as of the end of the month), but when I am in Sydney, my way invariably leads to Glebe. Recently I have started thinking: had I not left Australia to live in Japan in 2000, what would have become of me? I probably would have tended to the west (not Western Australia, but western Sydney -- that's where I was working, and that's where the cheaper real estate is to be found.) In my Aussie altUniverse, Glebe Point Rd would probably be as far east as I would stray, as I never really liked the wankers in Bondi. I'd be living in a share house somewhere in the inner west, fighting over the bills, and for kicks I'd drink coffee at Cafe Otto or Clipper Cafe or Badde Manors, or dunk donuts at Dunkins (is that still open?), or trawl for vintage clothes and New Age trinkets at the Saturday markets. My center of gravity would probably be Strathfield Railway Station, gateway to western Sydney as well as to the Chinese/Korean communities of the north-west. In realUniverse my uncle Bill died in the year 2000 somewhere near Oxford Street, and the subsequent chain of events carried me off to Tokyo, where I still reside. I think I like the real universe better than the alternative one, folks know how to cook here and Michelin stars abound. I am pretty settled here, I have my own apartment, no need to share any longer... but sometimes in my dreams the timelines converge, and I find myself back in the altUniverse. Heading off to work at some job I don't like, or waiting for a train which never comes. I wake up, almost with a fright... and realize it was just a dream. But you never know... someday the timelines really will skip, and I could wake up to find myself living in Australia, and Tokyo will be just a dream? Could that ever happen.. well, yes, it could. Stranger things have happened at sea.

Arco Iris (Peruvian Restaurant in Gotanda)

Of all the diasporas in the world, one of the least well known is the diaspora of Japanese people to South America. As Latin America Links has recorded: "In 1899, the Japanese government was concerned with over population and began a campaign to send Japanese to different parts of the world... 790 Japanese arrived in 1899 (in Peru) to work the sugar and cotton plantations. A significant number of them were from Okinawa..." Peru was not the only New World destination for these poor Japanese settlers: many of them ended up in the agricultural sectors of Brazil and Paraguay among other countries, all of whom were desperately short of (hu)manpower. Japanese DNA entered the racial melting pot of Latin America, but was not totally dissolved; the result is that even today distinctly Japanese communities can be found all over the continent. As the Japanese tourist Kimulog wrote on a 2006 trip to Brazil: "It was Sunday when I came to Sao Paulo first. On Sunday Sao Paulo, many stalls (Yatai in Japanese) are ranging in parks and plazas. One of them, held at Liberdage, was just like Japanese Ennichi. I could find many Japanese meals such as Yakisoba-Oobanyaki-Takoyaki-... ,and many Japanese immigrants working in stalls who can speak both Portuguese and Japanese..."

Arco Iris Peruvian restaurant in Gotanda, in the Shinagawa ward of Tokyo (Japan, 2009)

Diasporas have a habit of returning home, and in recent decades hundreds of thousands of Latin Japanese have been applying for Japanese ancestry visas, and settling in the homeland. Go to any foreigner-friendly psychiatrist's clinic or travel agency, and you will find Spanish language newspapers and magazines. I have seen census figures which show that Brazilians comprise the fourth largest ethnic group in Japan (after Koreans, Chinese and of course the native Japanese!) Those Brazilians are Nisei (second generation descendants of Japanese settlers in North and South America and other parts of the world). Peruvians are also having an impact in Japan: there is a band of Peruvian musicians who regularly make the rounds of major festivals in such places as Iriya (site of the midsummer Morning Glory festival). There is a girl who works for my boss's English school named T. who comes from Peru and looks Peruvian, although her visa says she is ethnic Japanese. My boss calls her a Nisei Japanese although she is probably not second generation at all, but third. Anyway, she wanted to introduce us to the delights of Peruvian food, which is how this adventure began.

Thick slices of potato topped with egg and a winning cream, at Arco Iris (Japan, 2009)

Since the loss of my principle Tokyo food sponsor Sasaki-san due to family illness, I have been confined to eating konbini cuisine, or dining in the occasional famiri resutoran, or if I have been really desperate, cooking for myself. Now I must state here that eating convenience store meals in Japan is not the full culinary disaster that it sounds: Japanese convenience store meals are no doubt the best in the world, as my Bankstown food critic Oscar told me on a subway ride home recently (Toei Shinjuku Line, Shinjuku to Bakuroyokoyama.) Oscar said he had visited a Japanese prepared meal factory himself and reported that each meal was handmade, with stringent quality controls. Every product had its own focus group. There are usually no focus groups overseeing my home cooking but it nonetheless pleases me, although I can only basically cook a handful of dishes (that could change when I move to Vietnam.) But anyway, since the loss of my principle Tokyo Food sponsor, I have been forced to turn towards... my principal. Hiroshi Kobayashi, of Kidea Eigo Akademii. Lately he has developed a penchant for taking his staff out for dinner or lunch, and then picking up the tab. Tonight's outing was ostensibly a dual birthday celebration for two of the staff, but I suspect the real reason is that Hiroshi wanted to try some Peruvian food. (As T. had assured us, Peruvian food is much loved all over South America.) The place was the Arco Iris Restaurant near Gotanda Station. Arcoiris apparently means "rainbow" in Spanish, and the name seems fitting for the rainbow colored Japan which is slowly in the making. We took our seats, ordered some drinks, and one by one the dishes were brought out for us. Fittingly enough, potato seemed to be a major ingredient here. Boiled potato, fried potato... there was even a dish which just like fried potato and tasted just like fried potato, but wasn't potato. The first dish was T.'s favorite: circular chunks of potato topped with egg in a creamy sauce. It might have looked bland, but it was the sauce what made it. As a matter of fact, it seemed to be the sauce what made it for all of the dishes that were to follow. I drank my Peruvian beers, and conversed with the lovely blonde V., from Moscow. R. from London ordered a Moscow Mule by mistake, and passed it on to me. I'll drink anything, so I took it! There was a lot of conversation flying around the table in English, Japanese, Russian and Spanish. Presently the second dish of the evening appeared: kebabs of meat (T. claimed they were skewered cows' heart), smelling like a million dollars. I had a beer in my hand, and ¥1680 in small change to my name. Luckily Hiroshi was picking up the tab for tonight!

Skewered cows' hearts, or so I was led to believe, laid atop a soft potato bed (Japan, 2009)

Chomp your way through all of those skewered hearts (which apparently are called anticucho in Spanish) and this is what you find: a veritable bed of juicy soft potatoes. Did I mention that there are hundreds of varieties of potatoes growing in Peru, in all manner of sizes and colors and personalities? In fact, some consider that Peru was the home of the potato, the source, the origin. Once again, as with the earlier dish, it was the sauce which made the anticucho great, it was the sauce which made it happen. I could be wrong but it seemed to me that there was some homeland Japanese influence to all this food, a Japanese taste -- let's call it aji. The way Peruvians talk about the word aji (which to them means "spice"), it makes me think that they imported it from Japan (where it means "taste"). I could be wrong in this, and I probably am. But it got me thinking.

The bed of beautiful potatoes lies exposed, beneath the skewered hearts (Japan, 2009) 

Moving away from the offal and potato theme, here is some seafood (Peru is famous for its fish, which they apparently prepare imaginatively):

Fish dish with salad, at the Arco Iris restaurant, near Gotanda station (Japan, 2009)

This critter here is an octopus salad:

This octopus salad ought to appeal to the Japanese palate (Japan, 2009)

Arco Iris is on the 2nd floor of the Motomiya Building (本宮ビル２Ｆ) at 1-15-5 Gotanda, Shinagawa Ward, Tokyo -- the phone number is (03) 3449 6629. A typical dining experience costs about ¥1500 per person, if you don't have a sponsor or principal to support you!