Recently in Foods Category

Last weekend was happy days for me because I deeply experienced a British taste last Saturday and Sunday. From the beginning I preferred the USA to the UK or other English-speaking countries, but my affection has been shifting to England for years since I happened to read Kaoru Mori's Emma, a romance manga of a maid in England in the Victorian Era who falls in love with a member of the gentry.

On the first day, the first thing I did is to see Oliver! by the Musical Club of Kokugakuin Tochigi High School playing for the school's cultural festival held in this weekend. Oliver! is, as you may already know, an English musical based on Charles Dickens' novel Oliver Twist. It's the story that Oliver Twist, who has missing parents and is in a workhouse, is forced to get out of the workhouse and gets involved in a group of pickpockets. He tries to pick a pocket of a well-off lady, who finally takes him in and brings him up, and then he gets happy.

As I already wrote in this blog many times, I've kept in touch with Mito Saigusa. She is a choreographer teaching dance and choreography to the students of this club. I come and see their performance for the cultural festival every year in order to see her too. Of course she was well this year as well.

This year's show satisfied me much more, because its scene was in England in the 19th century so it was just for me. I was very happy with that.

After seeing Oliver! I left the high school to drive to British Hills, the educational facility located in Fukushima Prefecture operated by Kanda Institute of Foreign Languages, with Medieval British-style buildings in a 50-acre land. Each building is furnished with the fixtures modeling the era of the building. From the beginning it was only for the students of this Institute, it's been open to public for several years. More than a half of the staff working there were non-Japanese, ranging from Englishmen, Australians, New Zealanders, Canadians and more. As the official language in this area is English, even a Japanese attendant talks to you in English, because British Hills is for teaching English to guests.

A two-hour drive from Tochigi took me British Hills. It was almost on the top of a mountain, more than 20 miles far from the nearest motorway exit. Once entering into the site of British Hills, almost all traffic and informational signs on the road suddenly turned into English, just like crossing a national border into a different country.

I returned back from Shanghai Tuesday night. I couldn't see so many things there because it was completely a business trip, not a private sightseeing trip, and I had a lot of work there. But I found out how exciting and mysterious that city was.

I've updated a set of the trip on Flickr though I couldn't take so much pictures.

It was my first time to visit mainland China other than Hong Kong and Taiwan. In some points they were similar but in other point they weren't. Oncoming cars in Shanghai didn't stop even when we were crossing the street on a zebra crossing. In mainland China cars have the right-of-way so pedestrians have to give way to them when crossing the road, not to disturb the flow of traffic. When we caught a taxi cab, the driver honked at an old pedestrian pushing a cart and beginning crossing the road and ran into the crowd of pedestrians crossing the crosswalk. It was amazing.

There were plenty of tall buildings in the Pudong area and all of them were illuminated by gorgeous floodlights. I was surprised at those floodlights which were so showy that you couldn't have seen in buildings in Japan.

Foods tasted very good and they were much cheaper than in Japan. It was amazing that even if I had eaten plenty of garlic and spicy Hunan foods for dinner I didn't upset my stomach and my mouth didn't smell badly at all!

Security measures seem to be more advanced than in Japan. Luggage scanning and body screening were mandatory at every metro station and most of major building entrances. Officers did screening very roughly though.

Anyway, Shanghai is very close to Japan so I wish to visit it again in a warmer season. It was so snowy and chilly there that I couldn't walk around the city very much.

As is often the case with me, I don't usually go to luxury restaurant to eat foods abroad because I prefer foods local people usually eat on a daily basis. Here's a list I've eaten in Singapore and Malaysia:

Chicken macaroni soup: at a food court of Changi Airport.

Chicken rice plate: at another food court of Changi Airport, where stewardesses of Singapore Airlines were having breakfast.

Mutton biryani: for lunch at a hawker stall in Tekka Centre, Little India.
This wasn't put on a banana leaf but just paper, while in another local restaurant Indians were eating foods on a banana leaf by hand.

Chicken kebab, hummus and hibiscus juice: for dinner at Arab Quarters.

Nasi ayam (chicken rice) and sate (grilled chicken) sticks with coconut sauce: for lunch at a cleaner restaurant in Larkin bus terminus in JB. Those two foods and nasi goreng are what I couldn't help eating in Malaysia.

Pizza margerita (left) and sea bass with soba (right): eaten at a poolside bar of Thistle Hotel for dinner.

Nasi lemak: rice boiled with coconut milk with vegetables and half a boiled egg covered with a leaf. Bought at a restaurant in a Gemas station building. It was very difficult to eat because the rice was fragile. That restaurant was dirty, with small flies flying around the table. I couldn't eat even a half of it.

Meal set at KFC: at a KFC in Gemas. It was cleaner, but shop girls of it were blunt and it tasted not very good.

Nasi goreng: at last I found it. With this, my travel to Malaysia was complete.

On the last day of my stay in Malaysia I wanted to try to visit a small town of Malaysia accessible by train. I thought that Gemas, Negeri Sembilan was the most appropriate town to visit for a one-day trip.

I checked out the hotel one hour before the train departure time (9:02 am) and asked the taxi cab parked in front of the hotel to send me to KTM JB station.

The waiting room of JB station was a bit dirty, and only a few people were waiting for the train. While sitting on a bench to wait for the train, a priest-looking man with ocher robe walked up to me and talked in Chinese or Malaysian language to me, trying to force a charm and a prayer beads upon me. I told him that I couldn't understand what he said because I didn't speak Malaysian. He then switched the language into English and said, "Doe-neh-sen, doe-neh-sen." I understood that he was saying "donation," so I refused it. He moved out of the waiting room and went somewhere else.

Half an hour later, quite a few passengers gathered in the waiting room. Then the priest came back, and asked a donation to each of them and was refused one after another. I guessed he should be a fake priest. It was only morning and my feelings were hurt by him.

About fifteen minutes before the departure time the boarding gate was open. We had my ticket punched and was allowed to get out to the platform. The rail had a 1000mm gauge, a little narrower than that of Japan Railway. As far as I could see, it had almost the same width as JR's rails, though. All the operation section is single-track, and non-electrified except certain sections in Kuala Lunpur.

No sooner had I get out to the platform than a train came in.

It was Express Rakyat, which had departed Singapore early in the morning and was to Butterworth late at night via Kuala Lumpur and Ipoh. A diesel locomotive was pulling coaches.

Inside view of a coach. Seats were hard like a bench and windows were dirty, just like a Japanese old train. Oops! It's not a coach, it's a dining car.

A coach was like this. It was much cleaner with soft seats and a LCD TV equipped on a wall, which displayed a movie while driving non-stop sections.

I'm going for trip to Singapore and Malaysia until next Thursday because we have the "Silver Week" in Japan, with two national holidays (next Monday and Thursday) and three days of leave. For me this is this year's second trip to foreign countries. As I have 20,000 miles of United Airlines' frequent flyer program, I can get a round-trip ticket from Japan to south Asia. I chose Singapore because Singapore is the country where I enjoyed six years ago and I have looked forward to visiting again. This time, I'm going to visit Johor Bahru and another city of Malaysia because they are close to Singapore and maybe I can have easy access to those cities.

I'll bring unlocked iPhone bought from Hong Kong other than regular cell phones I use on a daily basis, so as to use it at cheaper costs by replacing Softbank's SIM card I always use in Japan with prepaid SIM cards I'll get at destination countries. Skype is installed on the iPhone so that I can receive calls at any time regardless of countries I'll be in, even if a phone number will be frequently changed.

United 803 to Singapore

The plane departed Narita at 1735 and arrived at SIN at 2330. It was earlier than scheduled. Seven hours' flight in the economy seat of United Airlines was kind of tough and I had severe back pain when I got off :(

Arrival Gate

Immigration

Arrival Level

Every time I begin to visit a US military facility I feel that spring has come. Yesterday I went to Camp Zama for US Army Cherry Blossom Festival as this year's first visit to US military bases. It was a little cold but fine. Cherries were almost at their full bloom and looked the most beautiful. There were plenty of people coming the venue.

Here's the video recorded by a camcorder of my cell phone at Camp Zama yesterday and you can see what went on there.

US Army Cherry Blossom Festival in Camp Zama 2010 from Masayuki (Yuki) Kawagishi on Vimeo.

This is yesterday's lunch eaten at a food court Camp Zama Bowling Center because I didn't want to wait for many hours in line in front of the PX to get Anthony's Pizza :-(

On the last day, I gave up sightseeing in the downtown because I had not so much time, then I went straight to the airport from the hotel.

What I ate at the airport until the flight to Japan:

Luroufan, xiaolongbao and roasted duck.

See you again, Taiwan!

Note: all photos taken in Taiwan are uploaded on Flickr.

It's the Wanhua district. There are old Chinese buildings and stores in the area. I like it.

This is TAIPEI 101, which HAD BEEN world's tallest building until Burj Khalifa was built in Dubai. It was closed to general people but employees of its tenants.

It's Shilin Night Market, one of Taipei's famous night markets crowded for thousands of people from around. At stores of both sides of the main street clothes and wallets were sold for cheaper prices than at department stores. If you get on a branch road you have stinking stalls selling foods.

I got chicken rice at one of the stall. It tasted nice, although stalls around there stank.

That was very good. I love it!