Hi everyone! I'm just making a quick post as I've started a new blog over at Livejournal (why yes, Sue Donym is my pseudonym - I'm clever as a potato) to chronicle my new adventures in home-brewing, fermenting, culturing and pickling/canning. So far, it's a whoooole lot of posts about brewing as I'm using it in part to journal what I learn and log what I want to do in the future. I have a 2 gallon batch of Oktoberfest bottled and ready to drink, a 2 gallon batch of blueberry lager I just bottled yesterday, a 1 gallon batch of blueberry mead in the works and sometime today or tomorrow I will be starting a 2 gallon batch of either a berry saison, a grapefruit gose, or a milk stout, depending. Haven't decided which, yet! And at some point down the line I'm going to start a 5 gallon batch of IPA infused with orange. I've learned so much and am learning more every day and having a ton of fun.

Here's some pics of what I've been working on. I haven't got any of the Oktoberfest as I've been too busy drinking it, but the other two I have photos of. :)

Blueberry mead (technically, fruit mead is called a melomel) - honey, yeast, water, orange juice,whole orange slices (with peel) and blueberries. Here's a fresh batch, ready for fermenting - yeast hasn't settled yet.

And this is the mead after only 5 hours of fermenting. I used an ale yeast (because reasons, there are reasons, I promise) and ale yeast is a top-fermenter, so that cake at the top of the container is the yeast and all is as it should be. I love this color!

Blueberry lager on bottling day (you're not supposed to put beer in clear bottles [yes, Corona, I said it] but these were free :P). Gotta love the mix-and-match of used beer bottles in home-brewing.

While the new blog is pretty much all about brewing right now (beer, mead, and the cider and ginger beer I hope to make soon) I do plan to expand my hobby in the future to not only start utilizing wild yeast to create starters for sour beer and sourdough bread, but also get back into pickling/canning and other fermenting/culturing. I think. So far, beer takes up a lot of time. But is a lot of fun!

If these processes are your jam, please join me over at Livejournal.

Salud!

Miyuki-dori Shopping Street (Korea town)

Today, some girls from my dorm -- Kukhwa, Minji, Mihwa -- as well as Meaghan and myself went to Miyuki-dori, or Korea Town as it's known by us English speakers. I was really excited because I love Korean food (I think I like it more than Japanese food -- sshhhhhh, don't tell anyone). Japanese food seems to focus purely on umami and less on other flavours, in my opinion. Korean food seems to explore more flavours and of course use more spice, which I like! It took us about an hour to get there, we took the Hankyu line from Minamisenri station to changeover at Awaji, then to Umeda where we got on the Osaka Loop Line and got off at Tsuruhashi station. This is meaningless to most of you, but I want to remember it so I'm putting it here.

Here's the girls on the train (from R to L, Meaghan, Minji, Mihwa, Kukhwa):

And some shots from the streets of Miyuki-dori:

I was hoping that Korea town would be rife with neat gadgets/knicknacks from Korea (souvenirs), but it seemed to mostly be clothes and food. Clothes I'm not so interested in, but food I am absolutely interested in. Though, there was this pink dress that made me think that if someone wore it, they would look like Princess Peach:

A snack shop:

Metric tons of kimchi (YAY):

Fruits of the sea:

Some big-ass prawns:

We took a stroll down yakiniku street; yakiniku literally translates to 'grilled meat' or 'fried meat'; usually it is grilled and this street was exclusively restaurants that specialised in yakiniku - we would be back here later in the day!

Our first stop, and one of the prime motivators for going to Korea town was at Kanariya;

Kanariya is a "parfait shop" and it seems to be somewhat famous. It's a tiny place and was crowded; we had to wait in line for a seat, and then we ended up sharing our table with two Japanese girls just because they wanted to get as many people in the restaurant at once as possible.

Now, why on earth would a parfait shop be famous? Well, let's see; we ordered this monstrousity:

Now, because it's JAPAN and THERE ARE RULES we had to order another parfait. The big one is for FOUR people or less, not FIVE and since there were five of us, we literally could not order the big one to share. I'm really getting sick of all the rules here, I tell ya that much. I was already kind of irritated because we tried to do nomihodai last night for Meaghan's birthday at a restaurant we'd done nomihodai at before and they told us that now you have to have some kind of coupon or some crap to do it. Not, "it's more expensive without the coupon" but "you can't do it if you don't have the coupon, period." Many restaurants straight up refuse to split bills (betsu-betsu style), and some have the sizing issue - where you can order something but only for a certain number of people. In fact, at nomihodai, everyone at your table HAS to do nomihodai, so if one person doesn't agree to do it, you can't do it at all. So sick of the rules. But anyway, I thought it was funny because our comically gigantic parfait came with some comically tiny glasses of water (here's one next to a 100 yen piece - about the size of a quarter - for reference):

It was like a shotglass. Anyway, since we weren't allowed to order JUST the gigantic parfait, we got this also:

I eyed the roughly six metric tonnes of ice cream before us, and knew with a surety that can only come via experience that there was no way in hell us five girls would be able to finish all this ice cream.

I was wrong.

Lo, the beast, she is slain. Hark, who be our champion? Why, Minji!!! (Though, admittedly, we did help a bit) :D

We ate the other parfait, as well. Beast, I tell ya, BEAST! Also, I snapped some shots of the parfaits the girls we shared our table with had (all parfaits featured Hershey's syrup :D):

Ridiculous amounts of ice cream, but anyway... We headed out and someone suggested we try a pachinko parlour. I hadn't tried pachinko (at least, not in the traditional sense, though I have tried a slot machine before), so I said sure, let's go! The machines ended up being ￥1,000 just to play, so we decided to skip it (that's like, $12.00 USD) due to the price, but I got some pics of the parlour and some video. Pachinko parlours are notoriously noisy, smoky places; not really that pleasant to be in. I suppose similar to casinos in the U.S. except the pachinko parlours are A LOT LOUDER!

I got some video because I was trying to capture the noise, I don't think it really comes through but you can get some idea of it (also, I took some video of the little anime they were showing on the screens of the slot machines):

After this it was about 6pm, so we did a bit more shopping and then headed back to yakiniku street. The restaurants are apparently highly competitive, and there was a person outside each one hawking their deals to passersby. The girls conferred in rapid-fire Korean. Meaghan and I stood back and let them handle it. At some points it seemed like they'd decided on a place, but then for whatever reason we'd press on to another restaurant. Then we stopped at one with this picture out front:

Minji conferred with the person who was trying to draw us in. Prices were discussed. Eventually, she and the others had decided that this was the place! And frankly, I'm really glad they did because it was delicious. Also, I really liked the atmosphere:

The built-in grill:

The specialty menu (we ordered the one on the left, along with some side dishes):

Yummy in mah tummy; Asahi beer! I had two :)

HOT MEAT ON GRILL ACTION!

Our brave, parfait-slaying hero, Minji, was manning the tongs:

SIZZZZZZLE!

Bibimbap:

Japchae:

I don't remember what the green, fried onion thingies were called, but they were good. And the white dish to the right is my new favourite thing in the WHOLE WIDE WORLD - horumon!

Take a closer look at the horumon. LOOK AT IT! BEHOLD ITS SPLENDOR!

Here's this delicious stuff on the grill:

Minji cut it into smaller pieces (we had scissors - no joke):

A different type of horumon:

Now that you've beheld the beauty of horumon, let me tell you about the texture. The texture is a bit fatty, slightly chewy but nowhere near like squid. It melts on your tongue, I tell you -- melts! The flavour is positively divine. Now that we've looked at horumon and talked about the flavour of horumon, I will tell you what horumon is. This was pig intestine. Now, my understanding is that horumon can be either pig or beef intestine, and can be either the large or small intestine. I'm sure that sounds horrifying, but I can assure you, it was delicious. Andrew Zimmern had some during his trip to Osaka, so who am I to turn it down (you can view the clip of him eating it, as well as his description of it and reaction to it here). It's delicious. We also had some lengua and other beef things, everything was quite good. To finish off the meal, the girls ordered a cold soup-like dish that I was quite fond of. It was sweet and vinegary, very refreshing and a great way to end the meal:

Behold, the damage:

We did well, and for all that delicious food and two beers, my total was only ￥1,790 (about $22.50, which for all that is absolutely a steal here). We headed back home and on the way from the JR line to the Hankyu line, I snapped a night-time shot of Yodobashi Camera - a huge multiplex shopping centre in the heart of Umeda (I couldn't even get the entire building in the shot, fffs):

And, swag from my journey! Three kinds of kimchi, some nori wraps that the shopkeeps kept throwing in as freebies and some soju! I also bought a pair of stainless steel chopsticks but it's hard to photograph them and get the detail; there's a crane and some other things carved into the handles. Just use your imagination :)

All in all, I had a great time today and really enjoyed Korea town. It made me want to visit Korea even more :)

Shitennō-ji Temple and Tennoji Zoo (5-8-11)

This is going to be another delayed and picture-heavy post. On May 8th, Lindzi, Meaghan and I went to Shitennō-ji Temple and then Tennoji zoo. This post is about the temple; I'll post later about the zoo.

This is Shitenno-ji Temple:

And here you can read what Wikipedia has to say about it. The temple grounds were interesting, very standard-style Japanese architecture. The shrine is very, very old, though most of the buildings have been replaced with concrete replicas. Still, it's a very historical site and there was a lot to look at. We did get a chance to go inside various buildings on the grounds, but again we were not allowed to take pictures of the giant Buddhas or anything inside the buildings. You actually can climb the stairs and go to the top of the temple itself, and each landing on the way up is filled with tiny, golden statues of Buddha. It's quite a sight. The view from the top is pretty decent, too, especially on a nice day like this one was.

We walked there from the train station and we passed a cemetery. I love Japanese cemeteries - there is a certain sentimental value to them because they really fascinated me as a child on Okinawa - and I wanted to snap a photo of it, but there was a wall. So I just poked my camera up over the wall and hit the button and here we go:

It was an absolutely stunning day; it was warm but by this point in the year it wasn't as hot and humid as it would get. We approached the temple grounds and I could see the temple itself peeking up over the walls:

I was pleased to see shrine water :D

Here's a shot of one of the side entrances to the inner grounds (though it and all other entrances but one were closed):

Another side entrance is guarded by these fierce warriors:

According to Wikipedia, these guys "are two wrath-filled and muscular guardians of the Buddha, standing today at the entrance of many Buddhist temples in China, Japan and Korea in the form of frightening wrestler-like statues. They are manifestations of the Bodhisattva Vajrapāṇi protector deity and are part of the Mahayana pantheon. According to Japanese tradition, they travelled with the historical Buddha to protect him."

This is the entrance that they guard, though it is a bit hard to see them in the shadows:

Again, the weather was glorious that day.

Also on the grounds was the world's most pointless bridge, and it's just so adorable I had to get a shot of it:

One of the external gates had these gold-coloured wheels on them, and they would spin (in the wind? I am really not sure). I got a video of the spinning wheel, but I accidentally recorded it sideways. Still, you can get the point:

Here's our favourite Buddha:

One of the things I like about Buddhist shrines and temples is that they all smell thickly of incense; there's pots in various places where people can say a prayer and put a stick of incense in. The incense is sold on the grounds and is fairly cheap (￥10-20 if I recall correctly, per stick). Here's a pot of incense burning - it smells sweet and musky:

We went into the inner grounds and walked the corridors:

There are lanterns suspended from the ceiling:

The rocks are kept in pattern, like many rock gardens, temples and shrines (both Buddhist and Shinto):

I named this guy Bob:

Say hi, Bob!

The dragon guards a well, and the ceiling of the little well-hut is decorated with another vicious beast:

Down the well!

We exited and walked around the grounds more, here's some random shots of that:

Outside there was a pond and there was a ton of adorable lil turtles in it!

Here's a shot of the temple grounds from a distance:

More cemetery:

And Japan's FINEST "Liquor Shop" which we saw heading back to the train station:

Later in the day we went to Tennoji Zoo, and I'll get that up soon. I guess this has become more of a "photo blog" than an actual blog, but I still hope it's somewhat interesting.

Until next time, ciao!