Lunch, Tuesday 12 February 2008

Koanosuke Thai cafe, second floor of the building where Peace Cafe used to be, Western side of Higashi-oji at Hyakumanben.

Green curry level four spice (spiciness can be ramped up or down)
with extra bits (+50 yen)
and Chai afterwards (+150 yen)

Spicier than expected, tasty green curry. Vegetarians ok, as contains nothing but vegtables and frozen potato wedges, that may contain meat. I like the potato wedges because they remind me of that lyric for the ages (with thanks to Mr White): I got a backyard with nothing in it, except a stick, a dog and a box with something in it.


Basic curry: 680 yen
extras 100 - 200 yen.

Dinner, Monday 11 February 2008

まんゆう軒（Manyu-ken）, on marikoji-dori, just north of higashi-ichijo-dori.

The posters in manyu-ken are:

• Ayrton Senna's head for the 1992 Japanese Grand Prix
• A large airbrush picture of Disney characters on a tall ship, with a 2008 calendar along the bottom, that recently and commendably replaced a large airbrushed map of the world, with Disney characters in explorer hats with binoculars looking at geographically appropriate cartoon animals, with a 2007 calendar across the bottom. Aside: Are there any non-domesticated Disney characters (assuming Ducks are domesticated insofar as they wear sailor-suits)? Aside: Do mice count as domesticated (since their co-habitation with humans is presumably (in the absence of confirmation from some kind of talking mouse) opportunistic)?
• Picture of yacht with squiggles on it for a regatta on Lake Biwa in 1986 (inside of toilet door)
• Toyota racing car from the 1992 Le Mans 24 hour race (back wall of toilet)
• Small sticker I think is another yacht, but haven't got closer enough to see
• The menu
• The daily special board (actually a board, not a poster)

Along the southern wall are arranged comic serials, and a small bookshelf houses the weekly rags, as well as newspapers and back issues of Playboy. In Japan Playboy is a general interest tabloid with a scattering of daft giggling bikini girls. While this means it can be left about in cheap restaurants, it is unlikely that Hunter S. Thompson could have reported on the Kentucky Derby in quite the way he did with a fake press-pass that said プレイボイ instead of Playboy.

Food: cheap and honest. Better than it needs to be. Miso soup is especially good. Shiro-dashi to remind you that you're in Kyoto, well salted with strips of daikon and tofu that stays firmer than usual.

Grilled mackerel with soy sauce and grated daikon
Thousand-Island cabbage
rice
miso soup

600 yen

Dinner, Sunday 10 February, 2008

Ingredients:
Chicken pieces
1/2 tin of tomatoes
1 small block of tofu
leftover spinach in the bottom of the fridge
madarin or orange
lemon

As much butter as you can find
garlic
ginger
turmeric
coriander seeds
mustard seeds
salt and pepper
Some dried basil leaves I'd forgotten I had hanging from the ceiling

Grind up the mustard seeds, coriander seeds and pepper in your nifty 100 yen mortar and pestle, until you get sick of it, or until you press down too hard and it tips everything all over the bench and the floor (and that's why we don't put the turmeric in yet)

Brown the garlic (as much as you like) in some butter over a low flame, and add some ginger (minced stuff from a jar, or chopped up, or you can get it in a tube like toothpaste over here)

Cook the chicken bits for a few minutes on one side. Turn over (don't shake them about) and add the ground up seeds, then a few shakes of turmeric, and some more butter, and squeeze some lemon juice over it.

Turn the chicken again after a couple more minutes. Add some more butter, because I know you're going to anyway. Cook the chicken through, then take it out of the pan and keep it in the oven or the microwave until you need it again.

Butter up the pan again, and throw in the (chopped) spinach, smoodged up tofu and some salt and pepper. Stir them around a bit, then pour in the tomatoes, but not too many. Mash the tomatoes up with your spoon or egg flip if the nice people in the factory haven't done it for you already.

Stir it around to get the burnt bits of chicken off the bottom of the pan, squeeze in the mandarin or orange, scrunch up the dried basil and simmer for as long as you've got time for. Add a bit of water if you need to.

When it looks and tastes ok stir the chicken bits back in.

Bit more salt and pepper, then dish it up with your favourite carbohydrate. Tonight had toast because I was rushing. Rice or decent bread or potatoes would be better.

(late) Breakfast, Sunday 10 February 2008

Groan. Groan again. Darken room. Back to sleep. Groan. Wait for hunger pain to overtake head pain. Fold up futon (30 minutes). Open door to kitchen (10 minutes).

Two eggs, sunny side up. Salt and pepper. Toast with butter. Two coffees. Darken room.

Except that outside, the sun is making up for time lost in the snow yesterday. And there hasn't been any sun for weeks. Months. And the snow is melting. And just then the egg-grease starts to work it's magic. And then a whole day on the Dark Side of the Curtains is starting to feel less necessary.

So it's fresh air all the way to Nina-ji temple, where the snow melting from the roof sends a curtain of crystal drips down onto the pebbles in the trench on the ground, making the new best sound in the whole world. And where, as the drops gather and bulge under the eves, the sun refracts through them onto the timber behind in the new prettiest pattern in the world. And if you ride up the hill behind the temple into what the old maps say are fields, but are now houses, you come to a strange cluster of deserted huts and shrines in an empty hollow like the start of a ghost story, and a little further on to a broken stone staircase that leads up to a trail over Oouchiyama that brings you past a view down over the city to the tomb of emperor Uda (867-931, reigned 887-897), impossibly still under snow that hasn't been disturbed. And if, on the trail back, you look to the other side, away from the city, you see tiny huts and forgotten shrines all over the hills, usually invisible in the trees, now picked out by the snow that hasn't melted from them yet. And then it starts to rain and you coast down the hill for home, and on the way you find Senbon-shaka-do, that you've always meant to look for, and make it back in time to cook fabulous dinner, then get to Mu~ra to see Jazz and eat cake, of which more later.

New personal best recovery-from-crippling-hangover, then. It almost certainly had nothing to do with the eggs and everything to do with living in this extraordinary city.

Oh alright it was the eggs.