Mark Cooke’s G-Mixer

Alerting New Zealand! You have wasted your hop on a terrible beer-like beverage that is currently on sale in Japan. (The beer advertising says “New Zealand Hop Included” on the can.)

Ah, another season and another new seasonal Japanese beer. Guess what? Yes, it’s a lager. Actually, “Sparkling Hop” isn’t even beer. It’s happoshu, a beer-like beverage with low malt content. It’s popularity is primarily driven by the fact it falls under a different taxation law than beer and is thus about 30% cheaper than the usual mediocre real beer lagers.

I was recently recommended Hitachino Nest beer by a friend. It’s brewed in Ibaraki prefecture, about 1.5 hours away from Tokyo by train. I’m looking forward to giving that a try. What I really want to do though is visit their brewery and make my own beer. I’ve been dreaming of recreating the legendary hazelnut porter I drank in Arcata, CA a few years back.

In case you were wondering – yeah, I do have some experience in brewing. At the end of the production of the Conan game, some Nihilistic employees made beer at the end of the project. Led by Stephen the brew master, we came up with two master beers:

Camel Punch Stout and Conan Nut Brown Ale
(Conan is a trademark of Conan Properties International)

Honey Roast Chicken Pringles

The convenience and fun of popping Pringles… the taste of a chicken leg.

Japan often gets some interesting flavors for international brands that I suppose must appeal to local tastes. Though they are all still certainly edible, for my taste buds they are just a little bit off.

From the minds at Suntory Beverages Japan comes a new variety of Pepsi.

I can’t say it tasted much like yogurt. This was my initial reaction:

Not really bad, just weird.

I’ve been thinking about good food recently and decided it was time to indulge in a rare splurge. I went for lunch at the Bvlgari cafe on the second floor above their shop on Ometesando street in Harajuku.

There I enjoyed the burger you see above. The meat is Matsuzaka Beef which looks about like this before it was ground up:

As you can see in the above image, it is roughly $250 per lb when purchased at a supermarket in sirloin form. The amount of fat marbling in that beef is epic!

On top of the beef was a grilled piece of foie gras with a small piece of gold leaf on it which you can see in the first image. I paid a ridiculous $45 for this burger but it was damn good. Not something I’ll do again soon.

Overall the cafe was quite good with great service and both an attractive atmosphere and clientele. Highly recommended if you’re shopping in Omotesando and are willing to spend the cash on some great food.

Ramen Shop Private Booth

This ramen shop in Shibuya has individual booths with walls so that the people next to you can’t see you and you also can’t see the staff due to the curtain. Based on my ramen eating experience this type of shop is fairly uncommon but it was quite interesting.

After waiting for your seat to open up – a map of the seating arrangement with lights for open seats lets you know – you fill out the small piece of paper shown in the picture with information like: how much garlic and onion you want, if you want pork, how much oil in the soup, how spicy, etc. Then you press a button which calls the staff and a ghostly hand reaches out and grabs the paper.

After waiting a few minutes a bowl of ramen slides from under the curtain and then a mini wall slides up to close the gap. It’s the first time I’ve eaten ramen in a little private booth but I had to wonder what the purpose of this system is.

I asked my friend Kouji who went with me and he said lots of women are embarrassed to eat ramen in public because of slurping and the general messy image of eating long noodles dribbling in soup. Interesting! Also I have to imagine part of it is making your own small little oasis in the middle of the millions of people of Tokyo. Even if that oasis’ purpose is only to give you a private place to eat a bowl of ramen.

Corn… In the Office

It is Japanese tradition to give gifts when you come back from a trip. It’s called “omiyage” and basically means souvenir. Grasshopper’s employees are constantly bringing crackers, candy, sweet red bean (“anko”) mochi, chocolate, and sometimes the odd box of energy drinks.

Well, today was a first… corn. Straight up corn. Raw, fresh, no need to cook, delicious corn. It was random but it was the first time I have had the pleasure of enjoying really fresh raw corn. The flavor was surprisingly sweet.

So next time you go on a trip and bring back your coworkers something, consider corn.

Captain Morgan with Treasure

Here’s the scene: I’m in a Mexican restaurant in Ebisu. Mexican restaurant’s are not a dime a dozen in Tokyo like they are in Northern California. They are fairly rare. I’m enjoying some tacos and a quesadilla after a long week while sitting at the bar because there were no tables available.

During the course of dinner, my friend and I who were eating were surprised to see two tall, slender, hot girls come in promoting Captain Morgan Vanilla Spiced Rum. They were wearing hot pants, cowboy hats with lights on them, tank tops… the works. If you’ve been to clubs or bars in a major US city you’ve likely seen a similar type of thing. Hot women promoting alcohol or cigarettes. Nothing new but I was surprised to see it so randomly in a restaurant.

What happened next blew my mind. After about 20 minutes of those girls promoting Captain Morgan products to the customers, Captain Morgan himself comes in holding a huge treasure chest filled with pirate booty (one must assume). The actor was an American guy and was incredibly loud – he did a pretty good job. Basically he had customers that he picked out randomly pick a key from a key ring of many keys, “the keys to adventure” (I guess that’s an analogy for the rum? get drunk and adventure?), and then if they picked correctly the lock would open and they would get a t-shirt or some such. Captain Morgan was speaking English exclusively so it was funny to see the Japanese customers talk to him in English as well when responding to his ridiculous pirate themed banter.

Unfortunately the picture quality here is not very good. Clearly I have to end this post by asking – Got a little Captain in You?

Hamburg

There is a food in Japan known to the Japanese as “hamburg”. It’s important to not confuse it with “hamburger” which is totally different and what you can get at any fast food joint.

Hamburg is what my Dad used to call “salisbury steak”. Which, incidentally, is fully explained on Wikipedia.

Basically it’s ground beef with spices inserted inside, often served with an egg on top and/or other vegetables on the side. There are tons of different hamburg styles; recently I discovered “Texas Bronco” which is a restaurant that primarily serves hamburg. There are spicy hamburgs, spinach hamburgs, humongous one kilogram hamburgs… etc. The Texas theme of that place is hilarious.

It’s similar enough to what American’s are probably familiar with but I have to say it tastes really good and just different enough to make it feel a bit foreign. If you make it to Japan, give it a try. While Japanese food is obviously excellent here the big surprise for me was how good the world’s food is too. You can find excellent quality food much cheaper than I could in San Francisco. The Japanese take food seriously – at least half of TV programs are food topics, seriously – and the hamburg is a hit.

A Slice of Heaven

Belgian beer is delicious. Being able to select from over one hundred different kinds is even better.

I found this place in Nishi-Shinjuku by accident last week with Phillip while tooling around on a Tuesday national holiday (what holiday? who knows!). The name of the bar is “Frigo”. The beer selection is incredible, the prices are quite high unfortunately though. From $9 to $14-ish per beer. Oof!