Oh LJ never leave me again...

[telophase]

...and naturally I found some really nifty stuff to tell ALL OF YOU shortly after LJ vanished.



Quoting the email I sent to rachelmanija:

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We may have to see if this place is still in business. This is from the book I have about a woman's yearlong stay in Kyoto studying the foods used in tea ceremony.

One afternoon in late May, I decided to cool off with the famous hot weather dish of nagashi somen, meaning 'flowing somen noodles.' In the small town of Kibune, a thirty-minute train ride north of Kyoto, I found the outdoor restaurant Hirobun, known for this eccentric specialty. After locating a free cushion on the tatami-covered wooden platform that extended out over the rushing river under a canopy of green leaves, I knelt down in front of a silver metal gutter filled with flowing water. The waitress brought me brewed green tea, then set down chopsticks and a bowl of cold dashi seasoned with soy sauce, scallions, sliced shiitake mushrooms, and a runny poached egg.

No sooner had I split open the chopsticks than a knot of thin white noodles flew by in the sliver gutter. 'For you!' shouted the noodle maker, leaning out of her wooden hut, where the noodles began their journey. I snatched the strands from the rushing water just before they sailed by and dunked them in the dashi. Theyw ere glassy and cool and bits of buttery yolk clung to the salty strands. Suddenly, a tangle whizzed past me. A party of Japanese women farther down my row looked over and giggled. Another noodle knot zipped by. More hands over mouths. I managed to grab the next nest of somen and was dipping it in the sauce when--whoosh!--off sped another white clump. Determined to rescue the rest of lunch, I seized several more bunches, not sure when to stop, since two new diners had sat down beside me. 'Yours!' yelled the noodle maker, pointing to me. So I plucked three more snarls of somen from the gutter before retiring my chopsticks.

*googles* Here it is!! And it was open in June!

http://regex.info/blog/2007-06-26/500
http://regex.info/blog/2007-06-27/501

The restuarant's website (in Japanese): http://kyoto.kibune.or.jp/hirobun/

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The blog above is by a man living in Kyoto who takes some excellent photos and I spent most of this Livejournal-less evening reading through his entries. Well worth looking at. Especially since I found a tiny temple that we'll have to go to in that blog. From another email:

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Man, my guidebook sucks. Why? Because it mentions the tiny Kyoto
temple Gioji (Gyouji), and mentions five statues in it, but utterly
fails to note the stunning moss gardens.

http://regex.info/blog/2007-06-16/491

Its website:

http://www.giouji.or.jp/top.html

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There are links to posts with more pictures of the garden at the bottom of that blog post. I can't wait!



Plus, Hellsing brings the CRACK. I mean come on VATICAN SUICIDE BOMBERS. How could you not read a manga that offered that?