Quick and Tasty
I made a drawing based on a scene of one of my favourite episodes of Ghost in the Shell. The story contains a lot of unexpected cultural references and there were interesting challenges in the creation of the work. Ghost in the Shell Ghost in the Shell is a Japanese anime series about a team of cyborgs in a near-future (~2030), rather dystopian Japan. It is based on a manga by Masamuni Shirō…
An old film I love very much is “Shanghai Express” , from 1932, directed by Josef von Sternberg and featuring Marlene Dietrich and Anna May Wong in very interesting roles. This is probably the most famous collaboration between von Sternberg and Dietrich and lot has been written about it, essays, reviews, in-depth analysis of what makes it so special. I have listed some of them at the end of this…
I’ve finished reading “The Island Where Red Spider Lilies Bloom” ( higanbana ga saku shima , 彼岸花が咲く島) by Li Kotomi 李琴峰, and it is one of the best novels I have read in a quite a while. I read it in Japanese as it has not been translated yet in any other language I can read. It was a delight to read, especially after reading Yoko Tawada’s “The Last Children of Tokyo”/”The Emissary” (献灯使, kentōshi )…
One of my favourite films is “Spring in a small town”, (小城之春 xiao chéng zhī chūn ) from 1948, directed by Fei Mu. It’s a story of an unhappy marriage and an old love turning up unexpectedly. I love the way it is filmed, both in terms of pace and framing, and how the story is told in a very understated manner. This is probably one of the most famous Chinese films ever made and lot has been written…
Yokohama Kaidashi Kikou (ヨコハマ買い出し紀行, “Yokohama Shopping Trip Log”) is a manga by Hitoshi Ashinano serialised between 1994 and 2006. I wanted to write something after reading it, even though a lot has been written about it already, so I probably have no original insights to add. It is quite famous after all as one of the early examples of what is called “healing” post-apocalyptic stories (the…
Onigiri are just rice balls. They are a staple in Japan and there is nothing magical about them but they are delicious. The simplest version is rice, salt or maybe miso and a little seaweed as wrapper, but even that is optional. I like to put in some tasty filling. If you want to know more you should definitely read Makiko Itoh’s article . Japanese-style vegan gluten-free 30-minutes • 850 kcal per…
This recipe is inspired by Artisa’s Greek-style green beans recipe . It’s a bit more fusion with paneer and miso; make this variant more often. vegetarian 30-minutes • 825 kcal per person Ingredients For two people: Fresh ingredients & groceries 225 g green beans (I used frozen cut beans) 4-5 small potatoes (150-200 g) 1 or 2 sticks of celery 2 cm ginger, finely chopped 2 cloves garlic 1 tin…
One of my favourite movies is Wong Kar-Wai’s movie “In the mood for love”, from 2000. It’s set in Hong Kong in the early 1960s, almost all scenes are at night and it rains a lot. It’s a tale of love and unfaithfulness. Wong Kar-Wai says Is it basically a love story about these two characters? Finally I think it’s more than that. It’s about the end of a period. 1966 marks a turning point in Hong…
I would like to tell a little story. I have always liked drawing, and sometimes I use ink and brush. Long ago and far away, in a country over the sea, a fellow PhD student from China made me present of an inkstone. It came in a box with a damasked cloth sleeve which opened like a book. The box itself was covered in bright cerulean fabric and inside it, the stone was cushioned in pink silk. But it…
This is a quick variant of the traditional Japanese red bean paste anko (餡子). One way of serving it is on toast with whipped cream. The proper way to make anko is beautifully shown in the movie An (Sweet Bean) ; there is a good recipe on JustOneCookbook . It is similar to making jam. My recipe is much quicker and still delicious. I used blueberry syrup because that’s what I had going, but any…
This is a delicious vegan pasta recipe with some slightly unusual ingredients. The less common ingredients in this recipe are doenjang , a Korean-style soybean paste and tobanjan , a broad bean chilly paste, and mung dal ,skinned yellow split mung beans that are common in Indian cuisine. vegan 60-minutes • 750 kcal per person Ingredients For two people: Fresh ingredients & groceries 400 g carrots,…
I wrote about the Japanese movie Tokyo Story ( tōkyō monogatari , 東京物語) and a poster I drew in an earlier post . It is a black-and-white movie from 1953 directed by Yasujirō Ozu about an elderly couple who travel to Tokyo to visit their grown-up children. It’s moving and poetic family story, slow-paced and without much overt drama. I very much like the cinematography, with long static shots of…
Tokyo Story ( tōkyō monogatari , 東京物語) is a probably one of the most famous Japanese films, and definitely one of my favourites. It is a black-and-white movie from 1953 directed by Yasujirō Ozu about an elderly couple who travel to Tokyo to visit their grown-up children. It’s moving and poetic family story, slow-paced and without much overt drama. I very much like the cinematography, with long…
A watercolour of the Blue Dragon of Kiyomizu-dera during the procession. Kiyomizu-dera Kiyomizu-dera (清水寺) is a famous temple in eastern Kyoto. It sits on a steep hill and its main hall is built on a high wooden platform that offers great views over the city. There is an expression kiyomizu no butai kara tobioriru (清水の舞台から飛び降りる) which translates a “to jump off the stage of the Kiyomizu temple” and…
This is a vegan version of a Filipino recipe, Binagoongan Baboy sa Gata . It’s a variant of my own recipe with yellow peppers instead of aubergines, and a few other changes in ingredients. The less common ingredients in this recipe are dried tofu (bean curd) sticks , doenjang , a Korean-style soybean paste and tobanjan , a broad bean chilly paste. vegan gluten-free 30-minutes • 900 kcal per person…
I would like to try an explain why Banana Yoshimoto’s novel “Kitchen” is my favourite novel, because I think reading it might make you happy¹. You may think, well, that’s easy, it’s about cooking and food and Japan. But that is true for many Japanese novels; also, when I first read it, I was not as much into Japan or into food as I am today. I read this novel first in 1997 or so, in any case a few…
I’ve finished another watercolour, on a sheet of 56 cm × 76 cm ( 30×22 inches) so quite large. The paper is Fabriano Artistico 300 g/m² “not”, cold pressed with a rough finish. The materials I used are my usual combination of plain pencil and Derwent Inktense and Conté Aquarelle watercolour pencils. I started it at the end of March so it took about three months. The finished watercolour Topic The…
“The Memory Police” ( hisoyaka na kesshō , 密やかな結晶) is a novel from 1994 by Yoko Ogawa, one of Japan’s most renowned writers. It’s set on an island but the community there is otherwise quite similar to mainland Japan. Things disappear from the community’s life, and people forget about them. They don’t simply disappear. For example, when the “perfume” disappears , people pour out their perfume…
This is a traditional thin-crust pizza with a non-traditional topping: parsnips seasoned with tomato purée, tobanjan and garlic oil. It is easy to make but takes some time as the dough has to rise for two hours. Fermented broad bean paste (called doubanjiang in Chinese, tobanjan in Japanese) is a key ingredient, as it adds both umami and spicyness to the parsnips. Make sure to check the…
This is a nice summery salad of aubergines, chick peas and fresh mushrooms, served with Japanese rice in a separate bowl. It’s very simple, the secret is in the dressing. vegan gluten-free 30-minutes • 600 kcal per person Ingredients For two people: Main ingredients 1 tin of chick peas 100 g fresh mushrooms 300 g aubergines 1 cup Japanese rice Ingredients for the dressing: 1 tablespoon chopped…
Some time ago I stumbled across an intriguing random fact: of the fifty tallest statues in the world , fourteen are of the Buddha but eighteen are of a being called Kannon in Japanese ( Guanyin in Chinese). Thirteen of these tallest statues are in Japan and twelve of these are Kannon statues (the other is a statue of the Buddha). So who is this Kannon, and why are some many of the tall statues of…
I made a series of four portraits based on a scene from the 2015 movie “海街 diary” ( umimachi diary ) by Hirokazu Kore-Eda, called “Our Little Sister” in English. The movie is based on a manga from 2007 of the same name by Akimi Yoshida (吉田秋生) [1] . The title means “diary of a seaside town”. The seaside town in the story is Kamakura (鎌倉市), an ancient capital of Japan on the Pacific coast. The…
Eidon wrote a beautiful short piece called “per Tiziana” , with two different arrangements. Listening to these two quite different versions, I wondered if I could make a third arrangement. This is again a twin post, the other version is on Eidon’s blog . Eidon says: “ Conjure is an interesting word. It comes from Latin, from “ cum iurare ”, which can be translated back as “command on oath” (late…
Ukifune (浮舟) is a song from 2002 by the Japanese band GO!GO!7188 and one of my all-time favourites. It is a song about broken love, with very poetic lyrics inspired by story from very long ago. 春の匂いも芽吹く花も 立ちすくむあたしに君を連れてはこない haru no nioi mo mefuku hana mo tachisukumu atashi ni kimi wo tsurete wa konai “When spring comes, I’ll still be frozen and the scents and budding flowers won’t bring you back…
Yasunari Kawabata (川端康成) was the first Japanese novelist to receive the Nobel prize in Literature. I had read his novel “The Master of Go” (名人) and recently I listened to the BBC dramatised version of “A thousand cranes” (千羽鶴). This led me to look up his Nobel lecture “Japan, the Beautiful and Myself” and it made a great impression on me, in particular his discussion of poems by Zen Buddhist…