This is Total Bullcorn!!!

What is going on? I turn my back from this blog for eight years and now country music icons are using corny dogs to get attention online.  It would be forgivable if it was Ray Wylie Hubbard, Mickey Newbury, or even Miranda Lambert (from Lindale, the town I grew up near). But Reba McEntire is from Oklahoma!!! She also obviously took this idea from me.  That she would be aware of the obnoxious and pretentious ramblings of a nobody in the most obscure corner of the internet and then feel the need to steal them is pathetic.

I will note that I didn't include Willie Nelson on the above list of Texans because I am still upset that he supported Lone Star in it's 1970s battle against Pearl to become the primary lawn-mowing beer of Texas.

Here is a fellow East Texan who should also be put on punishment.

This could be forgivable as it supposedly references his role as the young Sheriff Buddy Deeds in the 1996 John Sayles masterpiece Lone Star.  Deeds was played as an older man by the Country legend and one of the great film actors of the 1970s Kris Kristofferson (Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore, Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid, and Heaven's Gate, not the religious cult but the Cimino film that bankrupted United Artists and ended 70s Hollywood).  However, in the film Lone Star they clearly drink Falstaff.

Pearl did have its own bad history with the unfortunate jingle "Pearl's not a girl it's a Beer" and another featuring the reactionary Merle Haggard of Bakersfield, CA.  My main concern is that Pearl has become unknown as a Texas beer, even though it was from San Antonio and dominated sales in the state for decades, mostly because it is easier to identify the name Lone Star with Texas and it's been promoted by the likes of Willie Nelson.  This despite the fact that Lone Star was founded in part by Adolphus Busch and owned by Anheuser-Busch as early as 1895 

I am aware that Hubbard also references Lone Star beer in Redneck Mother.  But drinking that, along with his "I'd rather be a roper than a doper" bumper sticker, is one of the crimes for which he will be put against the wall when the revolution comes. It is also interesting that in Jerry Jeff Walker's hit version of the song the redneck (an Oklahoman just like Reba) drinks the national brand Falstaff.  Falstaff himself, in Henry IV, drinks the fortified wine sack and not beer at all.  That is also the drink of this man from Bakersfield.

Yes Frank Gifford and not Cowboy great and Willie Nelson fan Dandy Don Meredith, who did famously promote Alamo Beer on King of the Hill.

    

But wait, back to corn.

I wouldn't have been upset even if someone I hated was known online for eating corny dogs.

Even though he is pictured here at the Iowa State fair, Rick Perry was the Governor of Texas and once a cheerleader at Texas A&M.  Also I don't think he is happy this picture is online. One wonders if he is more worried that Texans will find out that he has experience suppressing his gag reflex or that he was actually eating a veggie dog here. 

Because of the obvious humor, you can find pictures of everyone from Obama and Michele Bachman to Kim Kardashian eating corn dogs. I am not going to do that because this blog isn't and never was about corn dogs or posting pictures of me eating them (despite Kendra trying to force me into it that time at a 7-11 in Tokyo).  Reba can have those pictures because I don't go for cheap, obvious material like that.

However, I have been interested in this.

This is a pickle corny dog they are selling now at Rangers' games.  Sadly, I can not eat it as my failing liver limits my salt intake.  I can't eat the all-beef wiener either because of the toxins my liver can't filter.  As a native Texan the beef prohibition does not bother me, just as I don't mind that I can't own a Ford F150 pickup here in New York because it would be hard to park.

The limits on salt and my teetotaling unfortunately have kept me away from this blog. That and the fact that keeping a blog is rather pointless (i.e. I'm too good for this blog).  I may never think of another thing to put here. But I wanted everyone to know that the "Queen of Country Music" is a biter. 

btw: I do like that she is portraying Colonel Sanders, although I love Norm MacDonald and want him to get work.

one more thing: The comment about blogs being pointless does not apply to stillisstillmoving.com  the Willie Nelson fan site where I found that great picture of Willie drinking Lone Star.  But it does apply to all other blogs, especially food blogs. Stop taking pictures of your food, what is this the '00s?

Did you guys do anything in Japan besides eat?

Well Kendra is not into cosplay so it was hard to find things to do.Also we aren't drinking so that limits it a lot. Here is the golden gai, an area in Shinjuku full of small bars that looks a lot like the Yokahama ramen museum's recreation of the 1950s.
I did play video games. This guy is playing a game where you use trading cards as your controller. They somehow interface with the game and I'm pretty sure it can tell what cards you are deploying. For instance, at points he would turn the cards over.
I still think it is 1982 and am playing pengo.
They had a great selection of old games put into these newer machines. Including one of my sega favorites from 1985, fantasy zone.
The other thing we did was watch baseball.
Not only little league baseball. We went to a Yakult Swallows game. It is sad that they can't fill this stadium that was built for the 1964 Olympics. Only the bleachers had any people.
One of their fun rituals is to hold up umbrellas when a home run is hit and it is raining baseballs.
This was the most interesting thing I could find to eat. Then I bought these for these two kids and had them pose for the blog.

Sushi and sashimi

Something we're noticing is that sushi isn't that common in Japan. Other than conveyor belt places which are pretty common, you don't have sushi places on every corner, and many that you do see are really expensive. What they do have is sashimi.
We found this place after unsuccessfully looking for a sushi place in Naka-Meguru. The sashimi was great and much fresher than most sushi you will find.
Here is another place with great sashimi called Nihonbashi Yukari. Kendra had it as part of a donburi (rice bowl dish). There is, of course, egg in there.
One could argue that I ordered more than Kendra with the tempura and all.
But that would be petty.

As tourists, looking more for what we expect than what Japanese people really eat, we did go have sushi. Here is me coming out of Daiwa Sushi in Tsukiji fish market. There is a long line but it moves fast.
Most of the places in the fish market don't allow pictures inside, but this one does and everyone takes them.
Here is part of the omakase starting with uni (sea urchin) and egg (in case I didn't mention it they love egg in Japan)
This is hamachi, along with Kendra's favorite Unagi (eel).
The shrimp head that goes with this shrimp they peel and clean for you which is very convenient as I never eat it otherwise. This toro (fatty tuna) was really good and somewhat chewier than the other piece they gave us which I kind of liked.
Finally, Kendra really knows how to clean out a subway car after eating too much sushi.

The Japanese are more into food than New Yorkers

Ramen is Japan's most popular foodstuff

So we were told, I'll get to that later. Here a sarariman enjoys his lunch.
This guy was great at the slurping which I thought was to show appreciation but apparently is more about cooling off the noodles. Because the noodles cook in the broth it is important to eat them fast, it takes 3 to 5 minutes for these guys to finish a bowl. Which is good because the better places have lines outside.

Here blue and white collar alike line up for the top rated place in Tokyo, Menya Kissou. It was excellent. We had tsukemen (pronounced more like tskay men) which has become a big craze in Tokyo over the last few years.
They serve the noodles on the side with the sauce for dipping. At the end they will add some soup to thin out your sauce so you can drink it. You can also order a double bowl of noodles so you don't run out. The other question they asked us here is if we wanted the noodles hard (katame).

For the uninitiated, here is a bowl of ramen.
It's basically a pork and chicken broth, filled with noodles, and served with various toppings usually sliced pork called chashu which you see here.

Here is Kendra eating it at a place in the opposite direction of the craziness of Shibuya called Nagi.

Nagi (above) was featured in a recent New York Times piece on the popularity of ramen in Tokyo. It was very good, but a little too much of a young crowd, seemed like a number of couples on dates. Ramen should be more of a lonely man's quick and fatty meal, not so stylish like the ridiculous Ippudo which now has a branch on 4th Ave. in NYC.

Here is the more traditional way to eat it, like they might have it in Fukuoka on the island of Kyushu, which I blogged about a few years ago.
This is a cart (these stands are called yatai) outside Shinjuku station, which seems to get it's wood or charcoal from this guy.
Not that I'm against innovation. This place in a suburb of Tokyo called Setagaya-ku makes a Ramen in Thai green curry flavor seen here.
The place is called bassanova for some strange reason, I guess the Japanese connection to Brazil. Here you can see the traditional set up with water, chopsticks, jars of garlic and ginger, tissues and a rag to wipe down the counter. The guy behind it doesn't have to talk to you because there is a machine where you do all your ordering.To learn more about the history of ramen, because that is what I'm into after all, I traveled to Yokohama to the Ramen Museum.
Yokohama was the first place to be opened up after Perry's black ships and the treaty of Kanagawa (that is the name for the whole area of Tokyo Bay or Edo Bay where Yokohama is situated). In 1859 when the port of Yokahama was officially opened to foreign trade the first people to come in large numbers were, naturally, the Chinese. They brought with them Ramen, which until the 1950s was known as Chinese Soba.

This museum attempts to recreate that era, when Japan emerged from U. S. occupation and became a growing industrial giant with a consumer culture and the fast food that comes with it.
Yes it's a little cheesy like a Vegas hotel, but the attention to detail in the phony back alleys like this one make it a unique experience, with broken down period motorbikes, wooden sandals neatly placed outside the doors, and even black and white wrestling matches playing on the TVs inside the homes.
Here we had real authentic ramen from the era, very greasy and heavy. They say a ramen cook might ask you in some shops if you want extra back fat in yours.

That brings me to our last stop, a shop, believe it or not, run by an American Ivan Orkin. He is trained at the Culinary Institute of America in classic french techniques but chose to move to a suburb of Tokyo and run a small ramen shop.
Here he is posing in front of it for us. Being a native New Yorker he is a talker and taught us a lot about Ramen. He is a celebrity in food crazed Japan, being featured regularly on TV. He seemed happy to see us, as he gets a lot of tourists but almost all of them are Asians.

He cooks traditional Ramen like Shio or salt Ramen, the most popular style in Tokyo. Having worked at Mesa Grill with Bobby Flay in the early 90s however, he does a Chipotle spiced Ramen with cooked down eggplant and tomato.
It was really great, without the overwhelming chipotle flavor you can often get with an unskilled chef. He even convinced me to eat the egg which I normally don't like. He told us that Japanese eggs are more natural than there American ones and therefore full of flavor. I would agree, but I wouldn't say it is the best part like he did.

He also does great side dishes like this pork and tomato over rice, and he had a very good salty, sour lemon ice cream. He says ice cream is one thing he misses in Japan (along with mofongo believe it or not).

Hanami

Hanami is the Japanese practice of having picnics beneath cherry blossoms (or Sakura).
We were in Tokyo while they were in bloom so that is my excuse for putting a lot of pretty pictures on the blog.
Seeing all these picnics begs the question as to what they are eating. Here are a few things from the food stalls set up around Ueno park which is one good Hanami place.
It isn't just because these fish are on sticks that I took the picture. I just thought it looked cool.
These "fish" are not on sticks. They are called Taiyaki and made from waffle batter and filled with an azuki bean paste.
Here is the big greasy okonomiyaki which you might remember from our trip to Hiroshima. It is a pancake stuffed with noodles and all sorts of other things. The point of this greasy food is that these picnics are more about the drinking than the eating.
These two guys are piling up empties.
These guys are looking for a place to put their cooler and cases of beer.
These people are keeping it cool in a kiddy pool.
These sararīmen are carrying cases home after a day of drinking. And this last guy has probably had too much.