Eating in Nara

In our post on sake tasting, I already said a bit about narazuke - vegetables pickled in kasu (sake lees).

Here they are, if you missed them the last time around.

But even beyond this very local specialty, Nara is a pretty good place to eat, as you can get a lot of the Kansai regional dishes for less than you can in Kyoto or Osaka.

A good bet is to stroll through the shopping arcades south of the Kintetsu Nara station and check out the plastic food displays. It seems pretty hard to go wrong - we didn't have a mediocre meal all weekend.

Nara is also a good place to try matcha (frothy, powdered green tea) and a variety of related Japanese sweets. Below is a cup of matcha with some simple matcha rice cakes. Alongside the slight bitterness of the matcha powder, the rice cakes are also a bit sweet from (I think) a kind of boiled-down rice syrup.

But the highlight of our Nara dining experience had to be the Japanese breakfast at the inn where we stayed, the Ryokan Matsumae.

Grilled mackerel, fresh fruit, a few mild morning pickles, veggies, salted seaweed, and some bits of oden stew - with the centerpiece a bowl of yodofu, a delicious and mildly sweet Kyoto-style tofu porridge. An absolute steal at 840 yen each.

Pictured below: some very happy customers.

I can sit like that for approximately thirty seconds before needing to stretch out my legs.

Sake Tasting in Naramachi

Nana and I started our epic expedition to Australia and New Zealand in Nara, Japan, waiting for a cheap Sunday night flight from Kansai to Cairns.


Nara has two main sightseeing areas: the old town of Naramachi, and Nara Koen, a sprawling municipal park that's home to most of the area's 8th-century temples and shrines.

For our one night in Nara, Nana and I stayed at Ryokan Matsumae, a humble, old-fashioned Japanese inn located in the heart of Naramachi. Our first afternoon in Nara was spent on a leisurely stroll through the old town, punctuated with a few timely snack breaks and finished off with an hour in the baths at the inn. A much needed bit of decompression after the long school year.

The highlight of the day was a sake tasting at a traditional brewery on the southern edge of the old town. Five varieties of local brew about 800 yen - a really great deal.

I must now admit that I haven't been much of a sake drinker - I've generally preferred Kyushu's local shochu, or one of Japan's excellent but difficult-to-find microbrews. Scotch is also surprisingly easy to come by in Japan.

But that brewery in Nara has shown me the error of my ways. High-quality chilled sake may be my new favorite summer's-day quaff. I particularly liked the two seasonal brews: one a feather-light sake with a hint of Asian pear, the other a cloudy white sake that tasted a bit like a strong Belgian barley wine.

Took photos of all the labels for future reference.

My favorite.

My second favorite. It tasted a bit like Korean maekgolli.

Sake doesn't actually seem to smell like much. Not a huge difference in "nose," unlike whisky or wine.

かんぱい！

Nana's favorite was the special secret brew number six, a naturally carbonated sparkling sake - basically, sake champagne.

As a bonus, our tasting included several varieties of Narazuke pickles. Narazuke are vegetables preserved in sake lees.

The color and flavor both vary with the length of the pickling process. Relatively young pickles are yellow, with a lighter and more acidic flavor, while the oldest are deep brown and taste like they've been smoked. (I'm not actually sure the smokiest pickles weren't, in fact, smoked.)

Japanese pickles (tsukemono) are something of an acquired taste, but we've both grown to like them: each a tiny little bite of intense flavor, often overwhelming if you don't intersperse them with sips of miso or bites of white rice.

Surprise! It's Columbus!

Nana and I are back in the US - and vaguely alert, after a long morning's nap. This time around, we're starting our American tour in Columbus, OH, where the forecast high for today if 105 F. Two days ago, we were skiing. Today, we're hunkering down in an air-conditioned room with all the blinds drawn. Not a bad way to spend your jet-lag recovery, on the whole.

Stay tuned for some Down Under blog posts, as soon as we sort through these massive piles of photos from the trip!

Update: Leaving New Zealand

After a week of hot springs and hobbit-holes, slip roads and ski slopes, Nana and I are heading back to the US from New Zealand today. It's been an awesome Australasian adventure - where else can you snorkel and ski in the same trip?

It's a long way back, though - expect us to be out of touch (or out of our minds with jet lag) for at least the next 48 hours. See you on the other side!

Wednesday Weirdness: Corn Pie and Pineapple Pie at Thai MacDonalds

(Nana and I are traveling until July 7, but we've put some Wednesday Weirdness in the pipeline to tide you over until then.)

As mentioned before, Nana and I like to pop into MacDonalds in different countries. This is partly because sometimes you just need some fries, and partly because MacDonalds is an interesting case of finding local differences within global similarities. You see, in each country (or in each region of larger countries like China), MacDonalds tweaks its menu, its interior decorating, and its business model to fit local tastes and dining habits.

For instance, throughout Southeast Asia, diners expect to get fried chicken in their fast food restaurants. Thus MacDonalds in Thailand serves fried chicken, a la KFC.

Local dessert tastes often show up as variations on the (in)famous Hot Apple Pie. Behold: the Pineapple Pie and the Corn Pie. 

Yes, the corn pie is intended for dessert: something like a cross between creamed corn and cornbread.

 We actually liked this one a lot.

The pineapple pie, on the other hand . . .

. . . much, much, much too sweet, with barely a hint of (artificial) pineapple flavor. Blech.

Bonus side note: in Thailand, you get this "plum sauce" when you ask for "sweet and sour sauce." Nana said the flavor was pretty close to the American stuff.

Angkor Day 4: Pre Rup, East Mebon, Ta Som, & Preah Khan

(Nana and I are traveling until July 7, but we've put a couple posts in the pipeline to tide you over until then.)


Also known as: the anti-climax.

On the advice of Lonely Planet, Nana and I saved Angkor Wat for our last day of touring . . . but on the advice of our flagging legs and wobbly stomachs, we did Angkor Wat in the morning and left some less important temples for the afternoon.

And a good thing, too: while we had planned about six small temples for our last hurrah, we only made it through three before giving up and heading back to the hotel. Taken together, they were a good farewell to the temples of Angkor, covering all the major temple styles: the temple mountain of Pre Rup, the (former) island temple of East Mebon, and the forest ruins of Ta Som & Preah Khan.

Pre Rup


Pre Rup was dedicated to Shiva in the 960s as the state temple of Rajendravarman II. It is a classic temple mountain, with the addition of a few galleries more typical of later temple pyramids like Angkor Wat.

It's every bit as steep as it looks.

Just ask Nana!

Pre Rup has been the site of much conservation, but little restoration. That's another way of saying there aren't any trees, but a lot of the towers are still in bad shape.

A carved false door atop Pre Rup.

An apsara who has seen better days.

You can see East Mebon from the top of Pre Rup - it's only a few hundred yards due north.

You can also faintly make out the central tower of Angkor Wat on a clear day. Unfortunately, in the tropics, "clear" also means "blisteringly hot."

Getting down without falling is almost as tough as getting up without passing out.

East Mebon

East Mebon was dedicated to Shiva in the 950s by Rajendravarman II. It used to be an island temple in the center of the East Baray reservoir, but the reservoir has since been drained.

If it looks a lot like Pre Rup, that should be no surprise: built by the same guy, only a decade apart. But the shorter East Mebon, being less exposed, is in significantly better shape.

Each corner is guarded by a friendly lichen-encrusted elephant.

These apsara were carved directly into the brick, then overlaid with stucco. Of course, the stucco has long since fallen off.

A well-preserved lintel depicting Indra.

A restored lintel of Garuda atop a decorative false door.

Ta Som & Preah Khan


Ta Som & Preah Khan are two of the smaller Angkor Thom temples commissioned by Jayavarman VII, who is most famous for the face-towers of the Bayon.

This guy. You remember him.

Both temples date to the 12th century, and both are largely deserted, as the nearby Bayon itself draws off most of the crowds. In addition, both exhibit Jayavarman II's chaotic blend of Buddhism and Hinduism: while the central sanctuaries of each temple were Buddhist, each includes satellite shrines and temples to various Hindu deities.

I won't really bother to differentiate here, partly because I wasn't careful about keeping track of the photographs. In any case, the overall impression is the same: woods and ruins, a lot like the larger and more famous Ta Prohm.

The balustrade along the causeway into Preah Khan. AKA, more Churning of the Sea of Milk!

More Garuda + Naga = Buddhist Hindu Happy Friendly Fun Time!

More huge trees growing out of walls!

More!

MORE!

More Nana looking through ruined doorways!

More atmospheric close ups!

More detail on obscure bas relief carvings than you ever thought you would read in your life!