The 放題 System

Last night we went out for my birthday to this pretty nice placed called Rakuza for a 90 minute tabe and nomi-houdai (all you can eat and drink) yaki niku dinner. Man was it ever delicious. It's not too often I eat beef here considering the price, but last night I must have had close to 3 or 4 pounds of it, and boy was it good. I also got a lot of great presents such as a curry set, a toliet seat cover, L'arc en Ciel and Gackt photobooks, and a massive bottle of an award winning #1 sake. Really got spoiled.

I'm a real big fan of the "houdai" system. Generally it's the best deal at most places that offer it, and it's great when you have big groups of people. It's not just for food and drinking either. The strong point of the houdai system is that it can work with almost any kind of activity. Going bowling? Then take advantage of the nage-houdai (all you can throw). Game center more your thing. Enjoy the asobi-houdai (all you can play).

By far the best houdai deal is on Wednesday's at a bar/lounge called Den-en. Every day they offer a 1000 yen, 2 hour all you can drink student special for various university students. Wednesday is the Kyoto University day and the Wednesday trip to Den-en has become akin to going to church weekly. Not only is it rediculously cheap, but the drinks are fantastic (the have this one called the choco-banana oh man), and they make them really strong actually which is refreshing when so many other places make very weak drinks.

The weak point to the houdai system from the western point of view is that there is usually a time-limit involved, but more often than not it is more than enough time to adequately do whatever it is you intended on doing.

Nothing to do but wait...

Just got back from my interview at Takayasu. Don't really know what to think. It was very informal, lasted only about 10 miuntes, and the guy said he'd call tomorrow if I get the job. If I don't get a call, well 残念やなぁ。。。

苦しい失敗

It was a day that had long been coming. I had hoped to avoid it, but I knew deep down that ultimately it was inevitable. Today my friends, I, Tyler MacFadden, failed at an eating contest.

A ramen store by the name Nippon Ichi has a contest where in if you completly finish 2 monster bowls of ramen in 20 minutes then, you eat for free and you get your name up on the wall. If you do 3 in 40 minutes you eat for free, get your own poster on the wall as well as a 10,000 yen prize. Fail, and all you get is a bloated stomach and the unsatisfying feeling of paying 900 yen per bowl.

Today I challenge the 2 bowl contest. These bowls of ramen are ungodly. Clearly a device created by the devil himself. When the bowl is filled completely with soup, noodles, massive amounts of bean sprouts, and more meat than I've ever seen in a ramen, the total weight is probably close to 5 lbs.

The first bowl went quite fast actually. I finished the solid parts in about 6 minutes and then took another two to finish the soup. Shortly after the first bowl I hit a wall and knew that there was no chance of finishing bowl number 2. My pace had slowed to a crawl compared with how I flew through bowl number one, and I was at the point where eating more was actually starting to taste bad. There was no way to finish at the pace I was going, and eating more would have only resulted in some vomiting later on. I had no choice but to throw in the towel a quarter of the way through bowl two.

This challenege is definately not for the faint of heart. With some nearly 3000 challengers, only a couple of hundred have succeeded in the two bowl challenge, the last victory having taken place last August. Those who complete the three bowl challenge join an elite consisting of merely a dozen or so members. Oddly enough, many who have completed the 3 bowl challenge have repeated their victories as many of the posters up said 2 time champion on them. I couldn't find a winner for the three bowl challenge within the last 5 years though which leads me to believe that in that time they started making the bowls even bigger than before. Still an impressive feat nonetheless and I say this taking nothing away from those who have completed either challenge at anytime.

Will I ever challenge again? Maybe, but in my current condition I'm quite sure that I would never be able to succeed in the Nippon Ichi ramen challenge. I'm sure there will be other challenges that will present themselves in the future and I learned a lot today about my limits as well a a few key points that should help maximize the chances of success should I ever decide to challenge the Nippon Ichi ramen again.

I've said it before and I'll say it again. I just can't eat the way I used to in my prime. I don't know what made me think I could do it today, perhaps it was just some part of me that wished to relive the glory days of my past, but whatever it was it only resulted in a taint on a once perfect record of eating challenges.

バイトを探してる

Well the first semester of school is now offically over. With two months without school to look forward to I`ve started looking for a job. Nothing like full-time, but something that I can do a few hours a day maybe 2-4 times a week and still have time to do a bit of sight-seeing and travelling in my time off. Next Tuesday I have an interview for a job at a ramen restaurant called Takayasu that me and the other guys frequent. Takayasu is actually one of the most famous ramen restaurants in Kyoto, especially with the younger crowd and there`s always a line of about 10 people (The place itself only holds 11, but they`re moving to a bigger place in mid-March). I`m pretty excited for the possibilty to work there. Even though it`s not the best paying job, I could never have such an experience in Canada? It`ll be great for my Japanese as well, especially speaking politely, something I haven`t really been doing too much as of late. The hours are decent as well. Either working the day shift from 11-4 or at night from 6-12. I`m actually really hoping that I get this one.

Kagrra、に会った

On Wednesday Kagrra, released their new single 誓ノ月　(Chikai no Tsuki). As part of the promotion for the single they were also holding a special 6 day fan meet-up at various locations around the country. One of the third day meetings was held yesterday at the HMV in Shinsaibashi Osaka roughly an hour by train from Kyoto and I was fortunate enough to be in attendance. Since this was one of two meetings that were held, the other being about 500 km away in Chiba prefecture, not all of the band was there, but I think I lucked out cause at my meetup were the bassist, Nao and one of the guitarist, Akiya, 2 of the three people that I would have really like to meet.

We arrived in Osaka a bit early and grabbed some dinner. Then we went up to the HMV and joined in the small crowd that was already assembled. Andy and I being the only foreigners stuck out like sore thumbs among the crowd of mainly high school girls. There were a couple other guys but in total crowd of roughly 150 we were heavily out numbered.

The event started around 7 with them showing us the new music video for the single. Then Nao and Akiya came out and all the girls were going wild. This was also the first time that I really noticed how much taller I am than most people as I was a good 6" above everyone in the crowd. Surprisingly, both Nao and Akiya are quite tall. Akiya was only an inch or two shorter than I was and Nao was just a bit shorter than him. They were wearing normal shoes too. I checked just to make sure.

They talked a bit about the new music video and the anime that the single is the theme song for. Nao did most of the talking and Akiya played shy-boy dodging most speaking responsibilities. When he did talk Nao was feeding him words quite often. It was actually kinda funny. They talked about a couple other things, upcoming shows, Nao's forgetfulness, toilet troubles, and answered a couple of questions from the fans. A cool thing during this part was in mid-sentence as Nao was saying something he stopped and said in Japanese of course "Aa, gaijin came too, cool!" Then everyone in the crowd turns toward us and we return little courtesy bows.

After this the handshake part of the event came where everyone got to go up on the little stage, shake their hands and talk a little one-on-one. Akiya seemed to be a lot less shy during this part as he was talking with people. When it came our turn up in line both Nao and Akiya gave us real Western-style friend handshakes. Locked it up and everything. Wasn't expecting that, and it actually caught me off guard a bit, but not enough to mess up the flow. I asked Nao how Dragon Head, a little side-project band that he Akiya and the drummer, Izumi are in, was going and he said ぼちぼち　which is a real Kansai-Osaka way to say "so-so" which I found funny because he's not a Kansai native, and I'm clearly not as well. I asked Akiya how the English learning game he bought for the Nintendo DS was going. He said it was fun, gave me the thumbs-up, and handed me the two posters that we all got as presents for coming.

All in all a very enjoyable time and I'm very glad I went and had the chance to meet a couple of great guys from a great band.

Pictures weren't allowed but I managed to sneak a couple. If I got caught I always have the gaijin excuse to fall back on. Not the best quality, but better than nothing.

On Ramen

I don't think I can eat Mr. Noodle anymore and I used to love that stuff, but after living in the mecca of ramen I just doubt I can go back. I've always loved noodle dishes regardless of the country of origin. There's something about noodles I just find fantastic very filling and delicious, and they go well with basically anything.

Where I live in I am but minutes away from one of the most famous ramen districts not just in Kyoto, but in all of Japan. The area, called Ichijoji, is home to at least 20 different ramen restaurants of varying sizes and varieties.

People don't mess around with ramen here, it's an artform and one that I've come to be highly appreciative of since arriving. To start with the soup bases come in a variety of flavours. The major varieties being, shio (salt), miso, shouyu (soy-sauce), and my personal favourite, tonkotsu (pork-bone). Many other varieties exist as well including a fantastic duck based ramen that I had tonight, a wild-boar based ramen that I have yet to try and while expensive, is too tempting to not try once.

Once you've got the soup taken care of you've got the noodles to take care of. Just like the broth the noodles come in a variety of lengths and widths. The wide noodles pick up more of the soup broth I find, but the slimmer noodles generally have a better natural flavour.

Then there the toppings. Most ramen usually comes with sliced pork, bamboo, and some green onion on top, but there is no required kind of topping and you'll often seen things like seaweed, hard boiled eggs, or some kind of lightly fried meat or vegetable item.

When you go to a real good ramen restaurant the balance of all these flavours as well as the subtlety of the flavours is really something magical. In the case of tonight's duck ramen the mixture of the pork and vegetables along with the garlic that was added to the duck based broth created a mosaic of flavours with no flavour really over-powering the other. They blended so well together yet you could taste each individual element.

If you're ever in Japan I implore you to try get out and try some real ramen. It's not just for poor college students anymore.