son of soy » Rick Elizaga

Day at the Pool

Rick Elizaga — Sun, 10 Aug 2008 07:11:20 +0000

I don’t remember my past summers in Kyoto being as hot as this one. While the neighbors suck up electricity to refrigerate their apartments, we leave the air conditioning off at our house, taking maybe too much pride in our environmentally conscious suffering. Shouldn’t we feel the seasons?

Still, one can only bear so much. A couple weeks back we found relief from the heat at a pool party with friends at Nenrinbou hotel in Takagamine.

Koujitsu-kyo Contemplation

Rick Elizaga — Sat, 12 Jul 2008 04:26:30 +0000

Koujitsu-kyo (好日居) is a café that opened recently near Heian shrine. Built in what used to be an old home, it’s a casually elegant space with a European-inflected traditional Japanese woody style. (My description is not so good… I’ll try to go back to take better pictures.) The owner, who worked as an architect before she quit her job to open the café, renovated the building herself. We sat in the soft light next to the garden doors in the back and snacked on red bean mochi, matcha, cookies and fragrant Chinese teas. Everything was delicious, enhanced by the peaceful atmosphere of the place and by the owner’s obvious bliss in sharing it with us. Koujitsu-kyo is a short walk from Kyoto’s National Museum of Modern Art, near the boutiques across the river and down the street.

The table centerpiece in the photo above is part of an exhibit of the café owner’s grandma’s delightfully strange and cute collection of kewpie dolls, each of which the grandma embellished with tiny hand-knitted outfits and accessories.

ゴジラ！

Rick Elizaga — Sun, 06 Jul 2008 04:35:08 +0000

One night in Tokyo last May, Mari and I turned a corner in Hibiya and ran into a familiar face.

Miho Museum: I.M. Pei’s Shangri-La

Rick Elizaga — Sun, 06 Jul 2008 04:24:35 +0000

When friends from the Bay Area visited last spring, we trekked out to Shiga to see the Miho Museum. Architect I.M. Pei called the museum, which is hidden in the mountains and built mostly underground, his Shangri-La. The journey to get there from Kyoto is a bit arduous — about 45 minutes by train plus another 50 by bus on winding roads. You arrive at a modest reception building in the middle of a nature preserve. From there, you ride an electric buggy into a tunnel lined in steel panels, passing through a mountain ridge. At the other end, a suspension bridge leads to a structure surrounded by trees and topped with what looks like the steep roof of a traditional mountain dwelling, only much larger and made out of glass and steel. That’s the main entrance to the museum. Most of the rest is underneath, cut into the hilltop and looking out over a valley on the other side. Inside the museum, the exhibition spaces and the antiquities on display — with the exception of a buddha or two — I found to be not very memorable. It’s the getting there, that tunnel, the feeling of discovering a secret temple in the woods, that stays with me.

ramen at rouji

Rick Elizaga — Fri, 27 Jun 2008 03:17:23 +0000

Rouji, a delicious ramen shop near Demachiyanagi station (map), serves their noodles tsukemen style, with the noodles separate from the broth. You dip the cold wheaty ramen into the fish-based broth. Boiled egg and char siu pork are optional, just choose at the ticket machine by the entrance. On a recent visit with friends from the U.S., I had an entertaining time finding the right buttons to press since none of us could read kanji. For any of you similarly handicapped visitors, here are the buttons, from left to right: “plain,” “with boiled egg,” “with roast pork,” “with boiled egg and roast pork.” Simple! (You’ll also need to choose how many grams of noodles.) A nice design touch: all the bowls, and the hot plates you can reheat the broth with, appear to be from Muji.

Winter to Spring 1

Rick Elizaga — Wed, 05 Mar 2008 06:17:59 +0000

In a kitchen garden not far from Manshuin temple, green onions peek out of the snow.
Some of the comments below refer to two photos that are now here and here.

New Year’s Food

Rick Elizaga — Wed, 05 Mar 2008 05:49:34 +0000

This post shows how late I am. Spring is starting, and I’m only now showing Mari’s osechi ryori, or New Year’s cooking, at her family’s place in Saitama. Served in a three-tiered lacquer box, as is custom.

Chris and the Carabao

Rick Elizaga — Fri, 29 Feb 2008 21:15:30 +0000

On our trip the Philippines last December, my nephew Christopher camera-stalks a carabao in the province of Pangasinan.

Mari & Momiji

Rick Elizaga — Wed, 27 Feb 2008 01:00:00 +0000

After the Kitaoka-Nishio wedding at Saginomori shrine, Mari and I took a few moments to savor the fall colors as we meandered home. We were still wrapped in our rented kimonos, strolling hand in hand through the falling maple leaves — as if in a postcard cliché. Cliché but true, as they say.

Omedetou Gozaimasu!

Rick Elizaga — Tue, 26 Feb 2008 19:00:00 +0000

Just a few minutes’ walk from here (and three months ago), our good friend Kitaoka Shinya married Nishio Tomoko at Saginomori shrine. I had the honor of being the official amateur photographer, armed with my digital Nikon, an old-school Nikon from Kitaoka’s camera collection, and a bag of his lenses. My lack of experience photographing weddings was complicated slightly by my not being able to review or delete the photos shot with the film camera. How did we manage in the old days? ; )

Congratulations, Kitaoka-san and Tomoko-san! It makes Mari and I very happy to see the two of you happy together, and we wish you long life, much love and many children.