Confessions of a Tikka Addict

Don't get me wrong, Japanese food is great. I really enjoy Japanese food and we go out and indulge often here in Sapporo (where sushi is at its freshest and finest!). But every once in a while, we are looking for something a bit different. Just such an occasion last summer led us to the discovery of what has come to be one of our favorite restaurants in Sapporo.

Mohan Dish is a small Indian curry place not too far from the university (short bike ride in the summer or one subway stop in winter). For any readers looking to find the place, it is on N25 just 2 blocks north of the Namboku Line subway (Green line) exit. It is run by a couple of Nepalese people who are incredible cooks and always share a warm, friendly smile.

The cooks.

The aroma that hits you when you walk in defies description. I think that if I really needed to, I could survive on just the fulfulling odours alone. The food is all incredible. They serve around 30 different varieties of curry, make the best nan bread in Sapporo, have a variety of amazing tandoori meats and always bring us a hot cup of chai to finish the meal.

Mixed tandoori plate, curry with garlic nan, chai.

We just can't seem to get enough of this place and if it were closer to our apartment, we would probably end up there nearly every night. Seriously, the stuff is like crack to us.! We went for dinner on Monday night and found it was closed so ate at another place nearby. The entire next day we were both wrapped up in thinking about the closed sign in the window and that we just HAD to return the next night to fulfill our craving.

I guess the point of this little story is, if you find yourself in Sapporo and are looking for something other than fresh sushi, miso ramen, gengis kahn or soup curry (all Sapporo specialties) - Mohan Dish is the place. Itadakemasu!!

Nice in Nice

Just in case the recent trip to Okinawa wasn’t enough sun to get me through the winter, I just returned from a great little trip to Nice, France. There was an oceanography meeting there that I attended and presented some of the research from last summer’s “rock dentistry” work. The trip to southern France from Hokkaido is a long one, and it took over 30 hours of travel.

I arrived ragged and late on a Friday night to an unattended but quaint hotel in Vieux Nice. I had arranged my late arrival with the staff who provided me the door code to the staff entrance. I buzzed myself in and found an envelope with my name on it in the narrow hallway and climbed the tiny stairway in search of my room. The building that this hotel is in is in the range of 250 years old but it was smartly renovated in a way that kept the old charm (can tiny steep staircases be called charm?) while incorporating a comfortable room with a full bathroom (here is a link to that hotel – Villa la Tour).

The next morning I moved to an apartment in Vieux Nice where I would stay for the duration of the conference (here is a link to the company – I rented the Chateau View). January is low season in the south of France and holiday apartments in the heart of the tourist area can be gotten easily and relatively cheaply. My apartment had a great view of the Chateau that overlooks the city and was only 2 blocks from the fresh produce and flower markets, and 3 blocks from the crystal blue Mediterranean. On my first day I hit the market and got groceries and stretched my legs on the Promenade d’Anglais along the waterfront.

The view of the Chateau from my window.
The doorway to my apartment.


On Sunday I walked to the Port of Nice – it sounds far but isn’t. It was crammed full of elegant, massive boats and bordered by beautiful old architecture. I also checked out the morning sun overlooking the city from the Chateau. I was pretty jetlagged so had been awake since 3:30 am waiting until the sun came up before I let myself get out of bed. Next stop, I checked out the Museum of Modern Art. The art museums in Nice are all free entry (except the Chagall museum), all they wanted to know was where I was from for statistical purposes. The museum was interesting, but being relatively unfamiliar with art, I probably missed the point of a lot of it. This is the only one I recognized.



By the afternoon the sun had warmed the city and the crowds were loaded into the sunny patios sipping wine. I thought it wise to follow local custom and found a nice sunny patio and followed suit. I enjoyed a demi-pitchet of rosé at a café on the Place do Palais. In the square, 2 boys practiced football shots against an ancient doorway; wayward rebounds barely missed passing tourists. A drunken French woman paced in front of the café shouting in French at the patrons. Pigeons drifted in and out of the scene, barely missing my head on countless occasions. The sun eventually slipped away, so did the wine, the drunk woman continued.

The conference started that evening with registration and more wine. From then on, I was in meetings pretty much right through the week (I won’t recount the details here) with the exception of Thursday when I planned to take a short trip to Monaco to see the oceanography museum and aquarium. Unfortunately, the French labour unions had other plans and had organized a massive nation-wide strike as a protest against recent financial plans and bail-out schemes in France, meaning that there would be no buses or trains running to Monaco. I took the opportunity to do some shopping in the morning and of course went to the central park where the protests were happening.

French protesters.

I still am not sure what happened (Sarkozy agreed that he had made bad decisions…?) but the buses were back online by the afternoon and the marches and dissipated. I spent the afternoon in the incredible Monaco Aquarium and Oceanography Museum. Who would imagine that the second smallest country in the world would have such a great collection! Prince Albert do Monaco was an avid oceanographer – hence the collections.

The Oceanography Museum of Monaco

The building itself is perched precariously overlooking the Mediterranean. The aquarium was a perfect contrast to the one in Okinawa I had also visited recently. The collection itself contained many more invertebrate species than had been contained in Okinawa – and let’s face it, invertebrates make up 95% or more of all marine species so let’s start showing them to people so that I can stop looking like a raving invertebrate lunatic. The panels labelling each display contained interesting and well prepared scientific information and were presented in French, English, German and Italian (unlike Okinawa where very few panels were presented and you were luck to find any English). And they used unique and creative lighting in the tanks to highlite the colour diversity of the animals. Overall, the Monaco aquarium was much smaller and older than Okinawa, but somehow the smells of saltwater and corroding metal seemed to authenticate the experience.



The upper floor housed the museum where collections included old oceanography tools and equipment, marine mammal skeletons and sea-inspired artwork. One of my favourite items in the collection was the Bushnell “Tortoise” submarine. This contraption was built by an American, Bushnell, in 1774, and like many great scientific developments, was used in the American war of Independence against British ships (really not sure how effective this little tub would have been, maybe that is what the drill on the top was for).




The main floor contained their polar exhibit that pays tribute to early polar science expeditions and demonstrates the dire circumstances faced by our polar regions due to climate change. The exhibit pulls no punches in its message for global responsibility and action on climate change. Overall, I liked the museum for its scientific approach. Particularly evident in the polar display, they were not afraid to present complex scientific ideas to the public. Messages such as these are important and it is about time that institutions stop worrying about careful politics and get these messages out and in our faces – and maybe most important, we need to start listening.

Robot Workforce

My time in Japan has provided me with a new and unique lens through which I viewed a recent feature on CBC's The National. The story shows the Japanese robotics industry in a fun and playful way, but at the heart of the story is another motivation. I applaude the CBC for showing this aspect of the story, if only briefly.

The decision by Japanese authorities to focus masses of national resources on solving a population/workforce crisis by developing robotics is fueled by their leading-edge technological savvy and a national obsession with robots. True, but there is also a more troubling component in the minds of some in the decision to invest so heavily in a robotic workforce, and that is avoidance of foreign labour. Arguments can, and have been made, for and against foreign labour in Japan and in reality there are already nearly 500,000 foreign workers in Japan, but the reference in the story to concerns over foreign crime rates is evidence that at least in some cases race plays a role in the drive to develop worker robots.

The debate over culturally acceptable racism and political remedies continues in Japan and I can't personally add much to the discussion. I can say with confidence that the receptionist robot is way too scary, and if I worked in the office with the security-bot I would probably snap and devise some sort of saltwater-in-the-wiring accident.

The link to the story is below. The video is about 12 mintues long, so if you don't have time to watch it, you will just have to take my word for it (the creepiness of the reception robot that is).

CBC's "Send in the Robots"

Whalesharks to Sea Snakes

Love the white plastic tarp look.

As I mentioned in the previous post, we relaxed so hard over the Christmas holiday that we earned ourselves a nice vacation in a warmer clime. We packed up our things, rallied the Goose and caught a flight to Naha in Okinawa. For those unfamiliar with the geography of Japan, it is a long, skinny country (group of islands really) that is oriented north to south. Hokkaido is the most northern part, and Okinawa is the most southern part, so our plan was to follow up our snowy wintery vacation with some serious beach time. The weather had other plans, but we still managed to have a great trip.

Arrows show Hokkaido and Okinawa.

We arrived, checked into our hotel then walked to the tourist strip to find some food. We ended up in a place that serves great local food and we all enjoyed Okinawan soba which is much different than soba from other parts of Japan. We strolled around and explored more of Kokusai Dori and worked up an appetite for that we quenched at a steak house! Yeah, steak!! Before coming to Okinawa I hadn’t realized that the American’s hadn’t relinquished their control over the islands of Okinawa until some time in the 1970’s meaning that most of the rebuilding effort (after they decimated it in the Battle of Okinawa near the end of WWII) was done with heavy American influence – hence the frequency of steak houses in Okinawa. The steak houses are now a big tourism draw with mainland Japanese families who vacation to Okinawa to see a bit of “American culture”.



The next day we explored a bit more of Naha. We walked through Tsuboya pottery district and saw the Shinkakuji temple. My sis was joining us in the fun and was scheduled to arrive later that day. I got a call from her in the afternoon, United Airlines, through a series of bumbling screw ups, had managed to have her miss a flight, then miss another connection and thus left her stranded in California and one day late arriving in Naha. We ended the day, without Ooots at a Mexican pub for dinner (again the American influence) where I had tacos!!! Yeah again!

We changed hotels the next day because the hotel we were in initially was part of a package with our flights. We moved to the Rasso Kokusai, a cheaper business hotel that was well situated and suited us perfectly. We rented a car in the morning and drove to Cape Hedo at the northern end of Okinawa Island.

Cape Hedo.

While there we stopped at a national park and took a couple hour walk through the unique karst (limestone) mountain overlooking the cape. The rocks were strange and big - but mostly just big... They had a couple beautiful Banyan trees in the park and loads of cycads.




After our little walk we returned to Naha to pick up the Ooostky. She arrived in one piece and exceptionally well rested after her complimentary night in a swank hotel during her unexpected layover.

The next day we woke up early and drove to the Rose Garden Diner for breakfast. A friend had recommended this place to me for some authentic American-style breakfast and we weren’t disappointed! The servings were enormous, the waitresses brought endless refills of coffee and the place even smelled like my grandmother’s house.


After a solid breakfast we drove to the aquarium where we spent 4 hours watching all the shows and exhibits. It is a great aquarium, a highly recommended stop while in Okinawa – after breakfast at Rose Garden of course! The biggest draw at the aquarium is the whale shark tank where they house 3 whale sharks (and other shark friends) in a massive tank with one whole side that is a 5 floor high viewing window. Amazing! One side of the tank overlooks the café so you can have lunch while the whale sharks glide past.

The sharks, and the viewing window are massive!
Lunch with the sharks.
Giant clam and cuttlefish - yeah for invertebrate content!

We wanted to get to Iheya Jima, a small island to the west of Okinawa Jima, but when we arrived at the ferry terminal we were told that the ocean was too rough and the ferries weren’t running (I told you the weather was bad!). Instead we went to Nago Pineapple Park and Winery. We took a tour of the small pineapple farm and living museum in an automatic pineapple cart, saw the shell museum and followed it up with pineapple wine tasting. All of this and they only charge 500 Yen to get in! What a steal! We bought a couple bottles of their wine, although we learned that there is a reason that pineapple wine hasn’t taken off in other parts of the world.



That night was stayed at On the Beach Lue, since we couldn’t make it to Iheya Jima. It is a great little place, not too far from the aquarium with beachfront rooms or condominium rooms. The food was fantastic, we ate both dinner and breakfast the next morning there. Breakfast was out on the patio overlooking the breaking waves on the beach. Had the weather been warmer, we would have been tempted to stay longer.
Breaky on the beach!

The weather had cleared a little so the ferries were running on schedule again so we took a trip to Iheya Jima for the night. We stayed at a nice simple hotel there and rented a car to drive the island. There was a cave at the northern end of the island we wanted to see so we climbed down into it and found a small shrine at the deepest part of the cave where three women were praying and singing. We didn’t want to disturb them too much so we didn’t explore the cave much, but we did sit quietly and listen to their voices echo through the cave. Along the other side of the island, goats roamed freely among the many farms on the island. The weather remained cold and windy so we did most of our exploring by car.



Dinner that night was at the only restaurant on the island (as far as we could tell anyway). It served up delicious Okinawan food for incredibly cheap. We stuffed ourselves then returned to our hotel for baths and a nightcap.

We were leaving Iheya the next day, so while waiting for the ferry we checked out one more interesting sight. In a small obscurely located park is an ancient pine (the lonely planet dates it at 300 years old, but the sign I read – in Japanese…….- said it was 500 years old, either way really old) that had been trained to grow in an umbrella shape. Pretty spectacular.


On our way back to Naha we stopped at A&W for a late lunch. Okinawa jima is littered with A&W’s, I couldn’t resist. This particular one still had the outdoor drive in style where they bring the food to the window of your car and you sit in the parking lot to eat it. I almost expected them to come out to the cars on rollerskates (they didn’t). Back in Naha we checked back into the Rasso, then had beers and snacks at the Helios pub on Kokusai Dori.

The weather was still pretty much crap and we were all still wearing the one and only cold weather outfit we brought so we decided to hang out in Naha for a day or two longer rather than try to make it over to Zamai Jima. We shopped, ate amazing food, watched sumo on TV in our hotel rooms, did a do-it-yourself pottery class in Tsuboya district and visited the Okinawa war museum to see the tunnels built by the Japanese army during the war of Okinawa.



With the forecast finally predicting better weather, we hopped on the ferry bound for Zamami Jima. Zamami has only a handful fewer residents than Iheya but closer proximity to Naha meant there were more places to stay, eat and things to do. We stayed in a nice little hotel in Zamami and on our second day there we rented snorkel gear (including wetsuits – it is south of Hokkaido, but not that far south) from the rental shop near the entrance to the hotel. We walked 1.5 kms over a small hill to an adjacent bay (Furozamami) and snokeled in the morning. We watched piles of striped black and white sea snakes swimming around the reef and even saw a lion fish there too. The visibility was incredible in this protected little beach and amazingly, we had it practically to ourselves. The sun was finally out and the beach was warm so we all took a short nap after our snorkel to rest up before an afternoon walk where we visited the whale observation towers and saw whales (they were a loooong way away, but definitely were whales). Zamami jima was a nice place and I recommend a visit to anyone in Naha who wants a quiet escape.

Our private snorkel beach.
Whale watching... no more like whale searching.

The restaurant across the road from the ferry dock was the best food in town and provided us with nearly all our meals. They make the best Okinawa soba in Okinawa (this was from a Quebequois/Japanese visitor, not from our meagre review). We enjoyed a glorious meal on our second night there, all of us pathetic pale Canadian sporting a pretty pink sunburn.
Huh?

We departed Zamami and returned to Naha on the last possible ferry. We had one last night in Naha that we spent dining at the One-Pound-Steak-House. We all had the one-pounder, except my sister who is much more sensible than I (I didn’t finish mine, but did doggy bag it so I could enjoy it for breakky).

Okinawa in general for us was windy and cold (except the last two days which we spent baking on the beach) with amazing food and warm and welcoming people. I really enjoyed Okinawa and look forward to another chance to explore more of the islands.