Typical food #3

Ramen
If you read my first post about typical food in Japan you know that beef bowls are very popular. Another very common thing is a bowl of ramen. This differs some from the instant ramen many of you may have had in college or bought when you had to bring items to school for a food drive. I would argue (some of you may stongly diasagree after your ramen-loving earlier years) that a bowl of ramen here is quite a bit better.
 
There are all different types of ramen with different noodles, meat, eggs, flavor and thickness of sauce and various veggies. Each region in Japan has there own version/flavor of ramen. So, if you were traveling around Japan you would be able to order a ramen bowl probably everywhere you went and have something similar but get to taste the different regions idea or take on the dish.

First Games

This weekend we had our first games. Much of the league started last week, but we had a bye. So, we played our season opener this weekend. We played a team called Takamatsu, which was 1-1 coming into the weekend.
Our team had a slow start last year and went 0-8, so we wanted to start out on the right foot and get the season going in the right direction this year.
Saturday we did just that and ended up winning 89-63. Then on Sunday we kept the weekend going by adding another win; 79-62.
 
It was a great first weekend for us, and hopefully there will be many more weekends like this during the season where we can get both games (as we play on both Saturday and Sunday every weekend this year).
This weekend after both of our games we collected donations to help out the people that were affected by the typhoon that came through a little while ago. Normally after that games we go around and clap/shake hands with all the fans. But after our two games this weekend we were given donation boxes and took donations from people who wanted to give money (we also clapped/shook there hands). I am not sure how much money we raised overall but it was great that the team did this to once again try and help out the people who were affected (we also went and helped one farmer clean up a landslide that blocked a road on his property (link here).

Report from game 1: Here (tranlsated using Google translate)
Report from game 2: Here (translated using Google translate)

Spalding - $300?

Spalding Japan has a competition going on right now - not sure if it is just for people in our basketball league or if it is for anyone in Japan, but you have to spin a basketball on your thumb and whoever has the best picture will get $300.
So, one of my teammates had me do it to try and win the money. It would make for a nice team dinner/lunch.
Here is the link to the Spalding Japan Facebook site where the pictures are.
Spalding Good Contest Pictures - Spalding Facebook Page
As of right now I think there are only 3 entries so hopefully we can get lucky and win.

Money maker - Pizza in Japan

If you ever decide you want to up and move to Japan, or are just looking for a way to make money in this Asian country I would say open a pizza place.
Think about it for a minute, how much does a pizza actually cost to make if you were to make it yourself?
 
Back home in the states if you were to order a pizza from one of the main pizza places you like Dominoes or Pizza Hut you could still get a good deal. Right now Pizza-hut has the get it "any way you want it deal" for $10. Meaning: any size, any toppings on pan, hand-tossed, or thin n' crispy crust with delivery or take-out for only $10.
Sound like a deal?
 
Here if you wanted a pizza your going to have to reach a little deeper in your pockets. And, if you are used to peperoni or sausage you might have to look hard to find something similar.
For example one of the pizzas on the menu at a local pizza place is: the seafood pizza. Sounds simple enough, right? Well, that simple sounding pizza would cost you 3,570 yen for a large or 2415 yen for a medium (with the exchange rate it is roughly $36 or $25) - for one pizza. That's not a buy one get one deal, or a special where you get 17 liters of soda with your purchase, that's for one pizza.

Other choices on the menu include:
Hawaiian Delight (tomato sauce)
Tunamayo (choice of tomato or curry based sauce)
 
Cream cheese and smoke fresh ham Italiana (tomato sauce)
Pepperoni garlic mozzarella (no sauce specified)
Anchovy seafood basil (no sauce specified)
Cheese and honey (no sauce specified)
Teriyaki chicken (mayonnaise sauce)
Monterey (choice of curry sauce, tomato sauce, or meat sauce)
Spicy sausage (salsa sauce)

Not a good deal at all if you ask me, but last year there was a pizza place a few doors down from where we stayed and the scooters that delivered the pizzas were going well into the night (snow, tropical storm, rain or shine). It seemed like the never stopped going, so, aside from the seemingly high prices the business must have been doing well.

Typical food #2 - Sushi (rice balls)

This is the second post in a series about typical food in Japan. You can find the 1st post here: Typical food #1 - Beef bowls
When you think of Japanese food, maybe one of the things you think about is sushi. You would be right in your thinking as sushi is a popular food here.  There are different places you can get sushi - fancy places, running sushi places (where there is a belt that goes around the inside - tables are just on the outside - with sushi on it - you pay based on what you choose to eat), and among others convenience stores. The sushi you get at convenience stores is actually a very common thing for people to eat. And, people stop at convenience stores quite a bit here. I think it is part of the culture. Whether to get a coffee or some sort of snack it seems like we stop at convenience stores a lot when I am traveling with a Japanese person (many people get lunch there). The sushi that is normally found at a convenience store is a rice ball, or in Japanese: onigiri (oh-nig-er-ee - todays Japanese lesson).
 
Most of the time it is a triangle form. It is rice wrapped with seaweed and has some sort of filling: tuna and mayo, teriyaki chicken, salmon, fish eggs, spicy fish eggs, more seaweed. Last year, there were many times where our players would have these for lunch before practice and we always had some in the locker room for games.
This got me thinking that this is a pretty easy thing to make and maybe to try. So, I included a 1 min youtube video on the correct and simple way to make sushi. Have a look.
 
Or, if that is not quite your style maybe you could find a different recipe online.

Typical food #1

A very popular and common thing to eat here is: a beef bowl (gyudon - beef bowl in Japanese)
Beef bowls consist of thin strips of beef and usually with onion (in some sort of sauce) and placed over a bowl of rice. This is a pretty inexpensive meal in Japan as you can get a beef bowl for about $4 - $5.
 
Places:
Yoshinoya
Sukiya
Matsuya
There are other local beef bowl restaurants but these are the 3 main chains that sell beef bowls and there always seems to be many people in the restaurants, even if only to scarf their food down and leave. (I think one of the reasons these places do so well is: you get your food really fast and even with chopsticks it is a relatively easy and speedy thing to eat).

You can get your beef bowl plain, with cheese on top, with a mayonaise sauce on top, or the one thats the most interesting to me: a raw egg on top. (yes the person who ordered the bowl in the picture got a lot a bit aggressive with the eggs.
How would you eat that you ask? In Japanese slurping is allowed and very much apart of the culture. Sometimes I think people might overdo it a little, because.......well, because they can. But with this dish the eggs would get mixed in before you ate it and not slurped off the top)
 

Kick off party

Last night we had the tip off party for our season (it was the last part of a very busy day for us - see post below). It was held at the ANA Crowne Plaza Hotel in Kyoto. It was a fun night where we had a chance to sit, eat and talk with the sponsors that help make this possible for us.
 
The food (of course I am going to talk about the food) at the event was delicious and we had a 6 course meal. When I got the menu and saw 7 things on it (one was coffee so I am not counting that as a course) I got excited. I like to eat, and because I am not average size, need to eat more than the average person. So, when I saw 7 things on the menu I thought I was set. (Of course I couldn't read what it said as it was in Japanese but my counting to seven skills are amazing).
When we got the first meal though, I understood this isnt quite the cooking I am used to - not the hearty portions of everything, like we cook. The first plate of food came and it was tuna - I think Ahi tuna. I had two pieces of tuna the size of quarters, on a bed of couscous, with some glaze drizzled on the side. It was definitely something you would see on a cooking show - fancy. My hungry belly wasn't quite sure what to think but even though it was small it was really good! Each part of the meal was like that - small but good. We had the tuna, soup, champagne sorbet, a fish plate, steak and foie gras, and a champagne slurry. It was great and my belly smiled when I managed to snag an extra piece of steak or 2 :)
The event was a fun night, but now that its finished it means that it is getting close to the first game. Most of the teams play this weekend, but we are off and have our first game next weekend. Its exciting that it is time for another season and I am looking forward to the start. Only 8 more days and we will be ready to go.

To pray for our season

Yesterday, (10-3) we had a busy day. In the morning we went to a shrine to pray for our season and visited the Kyoto Mayor's office to ask for his support. Then in the evening we had our kickoff party for the season.
In the morning though, the first thing we did was go to the temple to pray for our season.
The shrine we went to was Heian Jingu Shrine


It was a very pretty and large temple. As far as I can understand this temple was built to honor the emperor who moved the capital of Japan to Kyoto in the 700's. It is a relatively new temple as the many of the structures were built in the 1900's, with the oldest being in the late 1800's.

The website for this temple said, "...does not only figure as a tourist attraction for foreign visitors but also serves as the spiritual center of the nation as a whole, as well as of the patriotic citizens of Kyoto. "

 To pray for the season were invited "into the shrine", past the area where you could go as a tourist, and were all asked to sit on little folding stools that they had set out for us. A Shinto priest (Shintoism and Buddhism are the 2 main religions in Japan) then went through a ritual of blessing us and blessing the few objects (one being a basketball) that we had brought with us. The ritual involved many bows, a few chants,
 
waving this object  in front of us and in front of the things we brought to be blessed, and some claps. When we were finished we were all asked to have a small sip of Sake to cleanse our body and then we were free to go.
It was a really neat ceremony and hopefully it will help us get started on the right track and injury free.