country greets
Japanese Restaurant Menu
The theater, as you know, begins with a hanger, and restaurants in Japan with osinagaki, the menu. Externally, menus often resemble, without exaggeration, works of art. There are oshinagaki, which are written with a brush on thin rice paper in the style of famous masters of calligraphy. In many restaurants, the texts of the menu are not inferior in artistry to the design. The list of dishes sometimes resembles the classic poetic three-verses. In any case, many images from poetry migrated to Osinagaki. In autumn, for example, you will be offered momiji oroshi. Momiji is a scarlet autumn maple leaves, a traditional poetic image, and osi, literally, is something passed through a grater. The Japanese mood is also caused by a dish with a name such as tsukimi van. A van is a thick vegetable soup with meat or fish in a wooden bowl. And tsukimi is an autumn ritual of admiring the reflection of the moon in water-flooded rice fields. Again in the name of the dish is a hint of the season. Late autumn is associated with boiled shigure-ni dishes. Sigure – translated autumn drizzle, but not cooking. Continue reading
Japanese taxi
We once sat down, out of inexperience, in a Japanese taxi; it was necessary to ride to the nearest department store in an unfamiliar city … If someone thinks that we did not like the trip, then he is mistaken. I also liked the price tag, since then I haven’t taken a taxi in Japan, it’s better to walk or ride a bicycle.
The main joke of Japanese cities, which is faced by a foreigner who first came to Japan, remains the order of numbering of buildings. On the same street, quite calmly, two steps away from each other, there can be, say, building No. 1 and No. 25. All this is because the numbering is carried out on the streets of Japanese cities according to the seniority of buildings. Which house was built before, that will be the first in order. Therefore, without knowing exactly where which building is located, getting lost in Japanese megacities such as Tokyo is a couple of nonsense. Continue reading
Cultural leisure and the rules of its passage
In light clothing, with a backpack on my shoulder in the early morning of the summer month of August, I walked unhurriedly out of the anthracite building of the Kyoto station. The fresh bustle of a long awakened city smelled in my face – the day was shaping up perfectly! Having reviewed not the most amazing urban landscape, I decided that you can live here for a while, but we’ll figure it out.
Kyoto is a cultural city, pleasant in all respects with its majestic (but rather low) palaces and ancient temples – this whole song in three days will reach any sane person. And then the question arises of cultural leisure (the essence does not change in this case from a change in emphasis). Where to go Russian and lonely? In Japan, without local knowledge, this is a rhetorical question. But if the soul has Continue reading
