"there's something horribly efficient about you" - (quantum solace 007)

there's something wonderfully efficient out japan. EVERYTHING is thoroughly considered conceptually, thoroughly planned intuitively, thoroughly executed cohesively and thoroughly maintained stringently. if there's a right way to do things, it's the japanese way. this piously pristine way of life is bled into every facet of life from food to fashion, from chips to dips to chicks to tricks and so on into this spartan culture of efficiency that is all in all, pretty effin' cool. but while anal retentive life has little room for error, alcohol affinity reserves the right for a schizophrenic release.

everywhere you look everyone looks the same. socially engineered in a hitman uniform of black on white on black. perfectly skinny, perfectly uniform, perfectly simple, and perfectly uniform and perfectly without personality. that is until you see everyone in perfect suits with a perfect beer. everywhere you look there's beer. billboards of beer, tshirts of beer, kegs of beer, promotions of beer, and drunken men and women from beer. as much as im in love with pristine japanese cuisine, thoroughly thought out with reason for every subtle preparation, sauce and style of ingestion it's still as if it were designed only to accompany the beer.

raw chicken. liver. raw liver.




fugu (blowfish) - fish skin pickled salad style, grilled fin sake style, sashimi style, hot pot style, sperm style, deep fried style









there are chefs (if u know them well enough) who will give you a little touch of the liver so when u eat the blowfish, it numbs your mouth. (illegal and completely scary. 2 blowfish poison sacs can take out half a city)


ramen....ramen!!! (i love the idea of automated vending machine ordering, however it doesn't promote extra orders, don't know if i would have one if i had a restaurant)

once at 12.30am. with 2 beers and 2 brothers.


and once more a day later. the broth is so rich, so salty. so good.


takoyaki, okonomiyaki, yakisoba - osaka dishes. fat dishes. can't explain it. it just tastes better here.




efficiency...


I LOST MY SHRIMP!


and then...yakiniku. if u're not used to kobe, too much of it can give you a stomach ache. once all that oil is in ur stomach and the temp cools down and the fat congeals in ur tummy....make sure there's a bathroom nearby.




IZAKAYA!




japanese sweets aren't too sweet. strawberry tiramisu crepe. i could eat this every 2 or 3 days. it was that good.


i had every meal with a beer. and after the first sip of beer, which was actually half a mug, i emphatically exclaimed OIIISSHHHIII....just like everyone else. haha.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/northamerica/usa/barackobama/4953523/Barack-Obama-too-tired-to-give-proper-welcome-to-Gordon-Brown.html

But they concede that the mood music of the event was at times strained. Mr Brown handed over carefully selected gifts, including a pen holder made from the wood of a warship that helped stamp out the slave trade - a sister ship of the vessel from which timbers were taken to build Mr Obama's Oval Office desk. Mr Obama's gift in return, a collection of Hollywood film DVDs that could have been bought from any high street store, looked like the kind of thing the White House might hand out to the visiting head of a minor African state.
the breakfast burrito is the perfect example of every californians obsession with mexican cuisine. every asian person i know from the west coast lives for and craves for tortilla's wrapped with cumin flavored proteins. while i have no dislike towards taco bell and speedy gonzales, i never really understood//empathized with the taco cravings and even more so the breakfast burrito craving.

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the breakfast burrito was good. but eggs with salsa and tortilla still doesn't make me understand the craving.


the last time i had a 5 dollar orange juice and 20 dollar eggs was a "morning after date". this time it was with sihan. how fitting.

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i had been craving eggs benedict from the night before...the hollandaise was too thick and the yolk wasn't runny (is it a cali thing to have the eggs cooked through?). regardless, i think i'd go back just to try the french toast.

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Marston's Restaurant
151 East Walnut St.
Pasadena, CA 91103
(626) 796-2459


kimbo left this pic on my phone before i left ny...so when friends i hadn't seen in 10 years asked about my sis...i showed them this picture...

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all these people are losing money, but one has to think. if someone is losing money there's gotta be someone making a buttload of money. i never thought the same theory would apply to global warming but i just saw a documentary on greenland and apparently, they embrace global warming. sometimes the ways of the world is amazing.

"Greenland had been colonized by Denmark for hundreds of years and that relationship has largely stood still, since the frigid temperatures and icy terrain have prevented a real economy from developing.

But today, that ice is melting at unprecedented rates and it's revealing treasures - oil, gas, minerals - that, by some measures, may make Greenlanders among the richest people in the world. The promise of resource wealth has emboldened Greenlanders to cut the colonial cord - and the generous $US 600 million annual check from Denmark (that's $10,000 for each of Greenland's 56,000 people)." - adam yamaguchi

watch the video....

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/currenttvs-vanguard/i-heart-global-warming_b_146781.html



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somewhere along the line, i became a dog person. a massively canine friendly person. and i wish i had grown up with a pooch. of all families, i feel that we need a dog as a means of bringing the family together. as a buffer to break the ice, as a common happy denominator. coming from a family where love and care are dismembered through confuscion heiarchy, menopause, translation, star power and media attention...i think that having unconditional puppy love as a means to re-group the 4 of us in a healthy fun loving way is the perfect solution. not only that, while baby sitting other dogs, it's been revealed that my dad (who is adamantly against the responsibility of a dog) becomes the most attached dog lover of the group, making it his own responsibility for walking the pooch 2x a day hence increasing his daily exercise regiment. my mom, the queen of anal ocd dysfunction, has been seen allowing puppies to sleep in her bed, has been seen singing with the dog on the piano, has been seen spending the whole day feeding the dog. the biggest argument they don't want mans best friend in the house is (1. we can't travel and 2. we can't stand the heartache if anything were to happen). conservative chinese thinking. it's better to not have, than to have had and be hurt.

this movie was heartwrenching...