Indeed, they’re just conducting research out there – research in both the fields of deliciousology and deliciousonomy.  Feast your mammalian eyes on this!

By the way, I do think the beef-snarfers from the outside world are hypocritical to be all up in arms about this – but yes none of Japan’s arguments for this practice stand up to scrutiny.  Yes, it’s part of Japanese food culture – and it was the culture of many other places too before they stopped doing it for many of the same reasons they’re trying to stop you from doing it now.  Yes, it can be hunted sustainably – but only if you are the only ones doing it, and why do you get to be the exception?  I can understand the “screw the rest of the world, we know we’re right” attitude… but you’re wrong.  You can still eat all the daikon you want.

I walked by this place on Kazinczy utca about a week ago.  The sign on one side said bor, or Hungarian for wine. I figured this must be a wine establishment. But then my sister saw that on the other side, it said sör, otherwise known as beer.

So you see, you and your significant other can both frequent what must be a fancy establishment, as not only do they sell beer or wine, but both. Now isn’t that just classy right there?

Served at the wedding reception, these remained untouched in the Hungarian sections.

Good to see they keep you in mind as well.

Beer in Japan is like so many other things – a quite limited selection, of relatively high quality. There are 4 or so major brands – off the top of my head, Sapporo, Kirin, Asahi, and Suntory – each with a few “beer” products and a few “happoshu” or “zasshu” products. I put “beer” in quotes there because though they use enough malt to escape the “happoshu” (sparkling liquor) and “zasshu” (miscellaneous liquor) labels, all but the premium beers still contain rice and corn starch. Happoshu and zasshu are more or less the chemical opposite of pain relief medicine, inducing headaches and general joint pain quicker than you can swallow. If you avoid those two, which would be a fairer comparison to the typical American lawnmower beers than any of the legit beers the major companies here make, you’d have to say the (wet) bar is set relatively high here. But again, like cars, ethnic food, rice, electronics, and countless other things; if you trust yourself at all a consumer, the relatively high average quality of products in Japan doesn’t begin to make up for the sad paucity of choices. It isn’t really relevant to me that America’s biggest-selling beer tastes worse than Japan’s, since in America I’d never buy the biggest-selling beer with dozens of other brands sitting right next to it on the supermarket shelves. In Japan you really can’t buy anything but those 4 big brands without spending 3 times as much. Between no choice but the pretty good big brand and plenty of choices ranging from dishwater to Maudite, I’ll take Maudite every time.

The picture is of the old Kis West Balkán romkert, which closed about a year ago. In light of the fact that the relocated Nagy West Balkán won’t be opening this summer, that spawned the article for Pestiside, which also features the image you see above.

A rare post (featuring Eszter’s self-portrait) for Chew.hu:

• Have Yourself an Alcohol-Enhanced Weekend with Wine and Pálinka

Politics.hu:

• Hungary’s campaign finance laws just there for show

Pestiside.hu:

• Come to Budapest and Check Out Our Wonderful… Benches?
• With the Kert Season Upon Us, It’s Safe to Call the Romkert Scene Over

I know this bag of Jelly Bellys is just trying to flatter me, but I don’t really see how eating 2 flavors of beans at the same time is any kind of a “gourmet” treat. Any more than mixing mayo and ketchup is, anyway.

Dave Chapelle has a funny bit about the differences between “grape juice” and “grape drink” that I don’t think a lot of people here would get. You see, although Japan abounds in fruit both fresh and tasty, it’s very difficult to find any juice that’s not either from concentrate or grossly exaggerating its fruitiness like a newly uncloseted freshman at Berkeley. Anything sweet liquid that’s not soda is essentially “juice” in Japanese. And by “in Japanese”, I mean the borrowed word “juusu”(juice with triple the syllables), not the Japanese word “kaju”(actually fewer syllables, making me question the wisdom of borrowing the English word). I suppose it could just be part of the soft drink manufacturers’ marketing strategy to obfuscate the nature of their product by giving them lexically ambiguous (to non-English speakers) names, which would make the moms feeding their kids “juice” which is essentially Gatorade the victims of a linguistic hoodwink. Still, the only reaction I can muster to the whole situation is the same academic righteous indignation I feel when another English speaker says something like “I was literally shocked”. When it comes to English language issues in Japan, it’s very hard for me to get over the injustice being done to English and hence also to me as an English teacher and see things objectively.

Make a simple bean curry – cumin seed, fennel seed, chili powder, etc. – and use coconut milk instead of cream. It just reconfirms the old truism that saturated fat makes anything better.

Ok, so more like Australia-shaped. I’m waiting for one shaped like Jesus or the Virgin Mary so I can sell it on Ebay and take on less student loans for next year.