Nippon Banzai 2017

Travel logs and questions
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Bok
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Thu Oct 26, 2017 8:28 am

Ethan Kurland wrote:
Thu Oct 26, 2017 6:57 am
Glad that you are having a good time, pedant. ? for you, "Are you seeing a lot of one-of-a-kind pieces?"
Japanese potters are very good in their techniques, they can reproduce the same pieces over and over again with amazing precision. It can be mesmerising to watch. I remember doing that in Kyoto.
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Bok
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Thu Oct 26, 2017 8:31 am

I remember reading a book about esthetics and wabi sabi in general and the -Japanese- author was saying that potters in Japan were trying in vain to copy the randomness of the famous Korean bowls. In his opinion they are incapable because they are trying to achieve something, whilst those nameless artisans in Korea were simply throwing the same bowls over and over without sparing a thought about the beauty of it.
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Brent D
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Thu Oct 26, 2017 9:01 am

Looks like you are having a blast!
Tough to not be jealous. Im loving that your sharing the journey.
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debunix
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Sun Oct 29, 2017 12:47 pm

I'm back and back to overwhelmed with work, and Photoshop has been unkind (major crash deleting lots of work each time I've tried to get through a portion of my trip photos), so no reports yet.

I wish I'd made it to the ceramics center. I was limited by the endurance of my travel companions so didn't get to nearly as much as I would have liked, and only saw small selections of ceramics in a handful of shops in Nishiki market, one very tourist-heavy street in Uji, and a quite limited selection at the Handicrafts center and Takashimaya. Lots like that one little cup posted above--many gorgeous variations on styles, shapes and glazes of sake cups, but many fewer chawan and barely any yunomi in those places.

I only bought one cup on my travels and was given one chawan that I suspect is raku ware (black glaze with a spatter of coppery-red on one side; it has an oddly dull sound when tapped, and I'm suspecting that means low-fired hence raku?).

More tea followed me home but I only realized as I was unpacking that the cute little containers I bought at Obubu Tea Farm were empty tins, sigh.
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pedant
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Thu Nov 02, 2017 5:09 pm

i just got back to the US and need a little time to readjust and get my thoughts and pics together, but i have some good stuff to post.
debunix wrote:
Sun Oct 29, 2017 12:47 pm
More tea followed me home but I only realized as I was unpacking that the cute little containers I bought at Obubu Tea Farm were empty tins, sigh.
:x that's a drag. i somehow think that if you contact them and tell them that, they'll send you replacements. let us know if they don't...
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pedant
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Fri Nov 03, 2017 2:27 am

Obubu Tea Farm

while i was in kyoto, i took the opportunity to visit a tea farm.
it's located in wazuka





it was really nice to get out into the countryside and see some tea fields and processing equipment.
we had been having a lot of bad weather due to a big typhoon, and this was the first nice day we had in the kyoto area.
great timing!

obubu grows over 6 cultivars, but they pretty much just use yabukita for the products they sell (including black tea).

they don't sell temomicha, but sometimes they make it for fun.
here's a temomi table:

Image

here are some shots of a 25kg production line:


they are a relatively small farm, so they don't need a huge production capacity. they said they get their equipment secondhand from other farms who are upgrading.

they have since upgraded themselves to a ~60kg line which was upstairs, so i asked to go up and take a look.
strangely, they said that our group was the first ever to go up there. can't imagine why no one ever asked before. the stairs were right there...



unfortunately, it was geared mainly towards people who are not familiar with tea, but it was still fun.
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Victoria
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Fri Nov 03, 2017 1:30 pm

Love the leaf and bud pictures springing from your palm. An offering...

And going to the farm right after the typhoon downpour with the sun rising, how perfect.
So if they grow 6 cultivars but mostly sell Yabutika, most popular cultivar I think, do they keep the rest for themselves?

Your post about the wooden Temomicha hand rubbing machine, reminds me of a video of Dr Yukio Kondo, a Temomicha master and an Intangible Cultural Treasure. He says the leaves also need to be hand plucked, not machine cut, for the tea to be good. That’s what I say when making green salad, the leaves need to be hand torn, not cut, otherwise they will turn brown faster.
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pedant
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Fri Nov 03, 2017 5:45 pm

nice vid

i asked what they use the non-yabukita tea bushes for, but i didn't get a good answer out of him. maybe due to language issues.

Tokyo

here was a high quality shabu shabu meal with wagyu beef in ginza tokyo:



i stayed at someone's house, and they had a persimmon tree in the yard. yum:

Image
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Victoria
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Fri Nov 03, 2017 9:49 pm

Persimmons are one of my favorite fruits, just reminded me I’d better go to farmers market to see if they are still around. Have you ever had shabu shabu meal with high quality beef that is quickly grilled, as opposed to boiled in kelp water? That’s how I do it at home.
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pedant
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Sat Nov 04, 2017 12:06 am

i've had wagyu teppanyaki style before, yeah. pretty tasty.
also an fyi: shabu-shabu is an onomotapoeic term referring to the swish-swish noise of swishing the ingredients around in the broth.
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pedant
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Sat Nov 04, 2017 12:22 am

Kyoto

i had a delightful meal at renowned hand-made tofu restaurant Tousiro.
it located in kyoto in a narrow alley just off kiyamachi dori and sits on the kamo river.
i suggest you make reservations. i didn't, but i got in through some mixture of persistence and luck.

it was a kaiseki (set menu) lunch that delivered dish after dish of seriously delicious, next-level tofu.


my favorite part was perhaps the walnut tofu:

Image

i highly recommend this place and will definitely go back if i'm ever in kyoto again.
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pedant
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Sat Nov 04, 2017 12:45 am

Osaka

i had an evening out in Dotonbori, an area known for food and vibrant night life.



i had osaka-style okonomiyaki with scallops at a place called Mizuno.

it was good, but not better than other okonomiyaki i've had in the past, so i don't really get why it has a Michelin star.

what was really memorable for me there was the nagaimo pickle.
it's a yam that's normally grated into a kind of slime that helps to hold osaka-style okonomiyaki together. it's a component of the batter, used kind of like egg or something.
the pickle form was really good. a bit slimy with a light, crisp texture kind of like pear. never had it pickled before.

Image

and imo it wouldn't be a night out in osaka without some takoyaki:

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pedant
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Sat Nov 04, 2017 1:08 am

i spent halloween in tokyo.

i was in shibuya, and those guys go totally nuts for halloween. it was party central.

so many tricked out cars (many of them horror/halloween themed) driving around blasting techno. tons of people crowding the streets dressed in costumes.

i got a kick out of this:



at one point i got stuck in a sea of people in a closed down intersection. i didn't take pictures because i was afraid of getting my phone knocked out of my hand. i never would have been able to recover it if i dropped it, and i needed it desperately for google maps among other things.
it was so crowded, and it took me like 20 minutes to get out of there because no one could move.

i wish it wasn't my last night in japan -- i would have partied harder.
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tealifehk
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Sat Nov 04, 2017 10:20 am

Amazing pictures and trip report! Those Mario Karts are rentals I think; I saw a foreign couple in them in Tokyo and even saw them in Okinawa!
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debunix
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Sat Nov 04, 2017 4:27 pm

pedant wrote:
Thu Nov 02, 2017 5:09 pm
debunix wrote:
Sun Oct 29, 2017 12:47 pm
More tea followed me home but I only realized as I was unpacking that the cute little containers I bought at Obubu Tea Farm were empty tins, sigh.
:x that's a drag. i somehow think that if you contact them and tell them that, they'll send you replacements. let us know if they don't...
I think it was just my misunderstanding of the tins vs bags that were clearly labeled matcha. On me...
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