Month: January 2004

Robert Duckworth writes a great entry on his blog about the “new ramen.” He describes it as “hands-down the hip-hop of modern Japanese food, presently cutting a wild, flavorful, transform scratch all over the culinary world of Tokyo.”

A big congrats goes out to Jeremy Hedley of Antipixel for getting his blog nominated at the fourth annual Weblog Awards in the Best Asian Weblog category. I’ve always been a fan of his site, and hope he wins.

The second issue of REALTOKYO‘s bilingual art magazine ART iT is now out. I’ll pick it up today on my way to work. They’ve also launched a new website for the magazine. Volume two of the art magazine REALTOKYO is producing is out since January 17. This second issue is dedicated to explorations of the…

A reader sends me a link to this great radio piece from NPR on ramen. It talks about the trauma of getting a bowl at Ramen Jiro, and I was so surprised to see the pic as there’s a Ramen Jiro in Ikebukuro! I’ve walked in front of it a million times, and I always…

Last night we watched two Ghibli releases, both of them not directed by Hayao Miyazaki. The first one was TONARI NO YAMADA-KUN (MY NEIGHBORS THE YAMADAS), and I can’t recommend this enough. The animation style is very simple, like what you see in the image here. It’s based on a newspaper strip, and follows the…