A few days ago, I cooked too many dried chick peas. Adding these peas to salad or soup gets a bit boring, so I made hummus for the first time. Hummus is from the Mediterranean and Middle East regions, but it's easy to buy it at any supermarkets in London. I used to eat it very often, spread on toasts, or used as a dip with crackers or freshly cut vegetables. But I won't buy it from a supermarket since tasting my own home-made hummus! It was very tasty and easy to make.

I didn't have my digital camera handy, so I used a mobile phone camera. It doesn't look good, does it? But it was so tasty!

A friend from London is staying with us. We asked him to bring Bertie Bassett's Liquorice Allsorts. I was scared to eat this sweets for a long long time, and I finally tried them a while ago. They were not that bad. As I wrote before, almost all Japanese people can't handle this flavour. I hated it too. It was about 10 years ago when I first realised that licorice is very popular in Europe. I thought that Eupopean people have a crazy taste bud. And now, I'm starting to understand their sense of taste, which some Japanese might call 'bad taste'! I tried to build Harry, Bassett's character, but gave up after making the legs. I guess I need some glue or sticks. Oops, I put the pink & black candy on the wrong side.

Yesterday, I got a packet from England. I won an orange enameled aluminium lamp shade from an Interenet Auction the other day. Louis Poulsen made this in the 1960/70's. I think Poul Henningsen's PH lamps by Louis Poulsen are famous, but they are not really our style (and pricey!). I don't know who designed this orange lamp shade, but I really love this design. The shade measurers 30cm at its widest and 25 cm deep. It was £23.40 (¥4,728) including the shipping.

The other day, C went to Seijo Ishii supermarket (in Japanese), and he bought Pim's by French company called LU (made in Belgium). Yes, this is Jaffa Cakes! We can finally buy Jaffa Cakes in Japan! I think this is the best Jaffa cakes I ever had. The good things about this cakes is that the embossed logos are on the chocolate, which is less sweet and more than others, so cakes won't stuck on top of each other. I want to thank Ryoka Japan for importing foods from all over the world.

Yesterday, we went to Nakameguro with a friend. We first went to Yodakinbo, where they serve Miyazaki cuisine. We had charcoal grilled Jidori (locally grown chicken) with garlic soy sauce and bit of Yuzu Kosho (a chili pepper paste mixed with Yuzu citrus fruits). Miyazaki food looks very tasty, I want to try Hiyajiru next time.

I finally got the cups and saucers from the Paratiisi series, the all white version (without decoration or colour), by ARABIA. I thought it would impossible to find them in Japan, but I came across them while surfing the net. A miracle!

Today, I was shopping at Tokyu Store (supermarket) and found Hakata no Hito by Nikakudo. This is a mini baumkuchen filled with sweet red beans, a local and very minor specialty of Fukuoka Prefecture. I believe that nobody who lives outside of Fukuoka knows about it. I used to live in Fukuoka City for 13 years, so I still remember the TV advertising song, even though I haven't heard it for more than 15 years. The packaging design is still the same.

Yesterday, I went to Finland Cafe which opened for only four weeks at SPACE FORCE in Nakameguro. I really wanted to try the lunch (80 plates a day) by the Finnish embassy chef. Tomorrow is the last day for Finnish lunch. I arrived there 15 minutes after the opening time, but the cafe was already almost full. People didn't care about the rain. The waitresses were wearing nice shirts.

We headed to Ashizuri Cape from Kochi. It was an hour and a half by JR train to Nakamura station, and another hour and 45 minutes by bus to the cape. I have to say that almost half of the time of our Shikoku trip, we were traveling, and my eye lids were closed... Ashizuri cape is located at the south end of Shikoku island. It is full of trees and creatures, I even heard the sound of cecada (we usually hear that only in the summertime). We enjoyed the hot spring at our hotel. It had just been refurbished! Lucky.

On Wednesday, 22 September, we arrived at Kochi station at 19:40. After we checked in to our hotel, we went straight to an Izakaya that I found in my guide book. Kouchi is very famous for Bonito fish, so we had lots of tasty bonito dishes! The Katsuo no Tataki slices were huge and had lots of sliced garlic on top. I couldn't believe it! The Shuto mayonnaise sauce, which came with Deep Fried Bonito, was very interesting. Yum yum yum... Sake please!

Back to the Shikoku trip report: On 22 Sep, Sep, we took a JR train from Takamatsu to Kouchi. But we decided to get off at Kotohira station to visit the famous Kotohira-gu shrine (aka Konpira-san). The song 'Konpira fune fune...' is very well known (someone made an English version! great!). It was raining a bit, I was out of breath and sweating, but we managed to climb up 785 stone steps to the main shrine, and 583 more steps to the back side shrine. It was so tough, 1,368 steps in total! But it was nice to see the great view from the top and to receive a goshuin. On the way back, there were some school boys on a training run, they cheerfully said 'hello' to us, but I bet it's sooo hard to run up (it was also a race!) those stairs, and say hello to everyone they meet.

'Mariko Mori: Transcircle (Japanese)' opened at "Koishikawa Annex, The University Museum, The University of Tokyo" (what a name!). The building looks amazing and I found out that it is a former Tokyo Medical School building and preserved as a national heritage. The red wine and nibbles were very tasy as I knew they would be. The Koishikawa Annex is next to the Koishikawa Botanical Gardens (Botanical Gardens, Graduate School of Science, The University of Tokyo). They are 3.5 times the size of Tokyo Dome. After the posh art party, we went to an Okonomiyaki restaurant near Myougadai station with our friends.

I found roasted sweet potato ice cream at a local supermarket. The wafer is shaped like a sweet potato and the ice cream inside tastes (just a little bit) like a roasted sweet potato. I prefer real sweet potatoes, but this ice cream is a funny product. Soon, we will see cars selling stone roasted sweet potatoes in the streets. It's an autumn and winter speciality in Japan. (They are different kind of sweet potatoes, a 100 times sweeter than the ones we can buy in Europe)

Our friends from London visited our flat with their young son. We never had a baby at our place before, and I was wondering if our furniture is safe enough (the corners are too sharp?), but no problems at all! The second family (mom, dad and son) arrived later. Lots of laughs. They are both about a year old, so they don't know anything bad yet, very sweet. After a while, when the babies seemed a little bit tired from playing, the third family (mom, dad, daughter and son) arrived. They liked each other, and went kind of crazy. An amazing kids power!

Before going to the party Swedish Style Sunday Night, I visited our neighbor friends. They received lots of sanma (Pacific Saury) from the family and offered me 4 sanma! I didn't have enough time but they looked very fresh, so I filleted 2 sanma, made into sashimi. It is true that if sanma's nose is yellow, it has very fatty rich flavour. It was tasty! At the party, champagne, vodka, caviar etc... were served to everyone. Thanks for the Embassy of Sweden in Tokyo!

I want a big breakfast on the next day of drinking late. We haven't had an English breakfast for quite a while, and I prepared it on Sunday morning. There are not many Japanese who love this breakfast (especially beans), in the same way as not many non-Japanese people enjoy Natto, Raw egg and Grilled fish in the morning. Well, I like either way! I found out that Kewpie/Aohata produces canned Pork & Beans in Japan. This Pork & Beans tastes exactly same as any baked beans in London, except that the beans are a bit too soft. I like baked beans but I wonder how Kewpie/Aohata can sell this product in Japan. I hope it won't be discontinued item...

We invited our friend for dinner (cooked by chef C) at our flat, in return for the dinner at his flat the other day. We thougth about cancelling this dinner because of the big Typhoon No.22, one of the most powerful to visit Japan in years, was attacking Tokyo. But when our friend visited us, it wasn't even raining much. I guess C went for shopping when the typhoon was very close to us.

Tokyo Designers Block started yesterday. Some friends and I went to see what's going on. The first party was Twinkle Twinkle at Laforet Harajuku (Japanese), organized by the British Council. After that we had some food at a cheap Izakaya. Then we moved to the TDB party at Spiral Garden (Japanese).

According to a Kirin survey for people in their twenties, their favourite drinks are beer (28%), cocktails (25%), chu-hi: shochu highball (17%) etc. Beer is losing popularity: in 1998, 43.5% preferred beer. And, surprisingly, wine dropped from 21.5% to 5.9% in the same period! I guess I can't go drinking with people in their twenties...

I noticed that I don't get any comments these days (and that I don't write any entries). I found out that it's impossible to comment on LDK. Because C was working on ... preventing comment spam on LDK. I guess the security was too tight. Thanks to my friend who emailed me about this problem. It's fixed now, leave some comments please!

Yesterday, we visited our friends to say hello to their baby girl. She was so cute. It's amazing to think that she is only 10 days old (By the way, it's been 10 days since I gave up smoking!). Our friend recommended the George Lucas debut film THX 1138, and we rent the DVD. It was produced by Francis Ford Coppola, originally released in 1971 as an expanded version of a short film that Lucas made at University. The great supporting actor Robert Duvall, who also played in The Godfather (my favourite), starred in the film. The story isn't so special but the visual is great! If you are a science fiction fan, you would love it. THX 1138 will be showing on 15th Oct at the Tokyo International Fantastic Film Festival 2004. But I think starting at 11am is too early...

We were invited to a friend's home party. She prepared lots of amazing dishes, and I very much enjoyed the Temakizushi (Hand Rolled Sushi) with cooked beef. When I used to live in London, I made Sushi quite often. I usually used vegetable or canned tuna because raw fish (fresh enough to make Sushi) was too expensive. I'm disappointed with myself that I didn't have the idea of using meat for Sushi!
By the way, Congratulations, Ichiro! You have touched my heart!

On the second day of our trip we checked out early, just after breakfast. I wanted to stay longer, but we had to go. We decided to walk around Seaside Park, but it started to rain! I got a free unbrella from Seaside Park staff (thanks!) and we went to see Yayoi Kusama's pumpkin sculpture in the rain. Later on we caught a bus to Honmura to see the Art House Project. I heard from the bus driver that the pumpkin had been suffering from Typhoon No.18, which hit Japan two weeks ago. But it was fixed just a few days ago. The scars left by the typhoon were still visible around Naoshima. Many big trees were uprooted and some walls of houses were broken.

I want to write more about our Shikoku trip, but I feel like I'm trying to finish my homework at the end of long summer holidays... So I'm having a break from Shikoku entries! Yesterday, I went to the onedotzero party at Roppongi Hills. I guess it was a success, but too many people! I'm glad that nothing happened (on the 52nd floor)! The 360 degree night view was the best ever for me. Very sparkling! The onedotzero Japan team has their official blog (Japanese only). It's interesting.