Porto in brief part I

Written Monday evening...

I arrived back from Porto at around 5.30 this morning after a three hour bus ride having failed to secure a ticket in time for the afternoon bus. I had to be in Santiago today to get a few admin tasks tended too, and consequently I'm feeling pretty tired.

However, Porto was truly wonderful. I spent Friday in the university and gave a talk in the afternoon, which was very enjoyable, even if the bulk of it was aimed at a minority of the audience. It's tough to give a specific research talk to a group who knows little about the generalities of your subject, so I gave a half hour introduction and then a half hour on the details of my last paper. After this I spent some time discussing with one of the researchers there about his recent work, and some possible extensions which I hope we will explore via email over the next few weeks.

I left the department in the evening and walked over to the Casa da Musica, a striking contemporary building, to meet my couchsurfing host. We met up and did a little shopping in preparation for an evening feast with around ten of us. I was exceedingly lucky with my host, who was not only a lot of fun, and a very generous human being, but she happens to have a degree in the science of wine and winemaking and works at one of the major Port makers in the city as a tour guide when she isn't making her own wine in her family's estate.

This meant that the weekend was a luxurious treat of learning and tasting some of the best wines of the region (produced in the Douro valley), as well as having a private tour of the port cellars and a tasting of a huge range of very very fine beverages.

In terms of gastronomy, Portugal never suffers from any subtlety in its foodstuffs, and on Saturday as I walked around in the town centre, I spotted a cafe offering Francesinhas. I'd heard of these but wasn't yet aware of what they were. Never, to be scared by the unknown I ordered one (the waiter asked me if I just wanted one, to which I nodded, not knowing whether this would be enough). This must truly be the king of high calorie lunches, designed for a hard days labour. A Francesinha, ironically given the title 'little French girl' is prepared by taking: steak, minced pork, fried egg, sausages, sliced ham and thick slices of cheese, and putting the whole thing between two or more slices of bread. You then take this and drown it in cheese, so the whole thing is covered and you have to dig to discover that this is a carnivores delight. Take your meat-drowning-in-cheese-feast and pour a thick and spicy tomato sauce over the top.

My guess is that this beast has around a 3000 calorie kick to it. Just in case you're not satisfied, it comes automatically with a plate of chips. Apparently by ordering it with a glass of water and not beer I may have caused some sort of gastronomic offense to the owners of the establishment!

Anyway, I finished my lunch, worrying slightly about heart palpitations and spent the next hour or so wondering the streets. Later I met up with a friend of my couchsurfing host and he took me on a tour of the city, describing much of the history and how it had evolved over the last few hundred years. His time studying architecture made this a fascinating insight into the city. During this time we went up the steeple of one of the old churches to get this wonderful view of the city (click for a huge version!):

We then headed over to the other side of the river to spend a glorious afternoon Port wine tasting with my host, trying everything from dry white ports, great with tonic, to 30 year old tawnys and a deep rubys.

The evening was spent at a chef's house, eating vegetarian cuisine which made me feel only slightly less guilty about the herd of animals which had been slaughtered for my lunch. The chef was also a tour guide for the Port cellars and so a fine selection followed the meal....do I see a theme emerging from this weekend?!

To be continued...

Taking it easy

I have discovered to my cost the extreme generosity of Japanese businessmen. This post will be a somewhat labour intensive task for my now slightly dazed brain cells.

After going for a meal with the department on Friday evening, post-talk I made my way to my Couchsurfing host's flat. Couchsurfing is a fantastic scheme and is built in large part on trust. I met up with Chi on Thursday evening for a bite to eat and a trip to a Gifu bar where we chatted and she made sure that I was a reasonably trustworthy sort. Having passed the test I futonsurfed for Friday and Saturday night. Not only is CS a great way to get free accommodation all around the world (almost 200,000 members now) but it's the perfect source for useful local information.

Gifu snacks of Natto and egg:

Last time I visited Tokyo I spent most of my time looking at traditional Tokyo, the temples, and the Kabuki-za amongst many other things, so this time I've decided to see some more of the modern city. On Saturday we headed to the West, to Shibuya, Harakuju and Shinjuku, to see the famed fashionable areas which have a good mix of both big name brands plastered all over the buildings in neon and very alternative, counterculture shops if you get off the main streets.

Shopping is big here and some of the shops (mostly the 'underground' shops) are so popular that there are queues just to enter. People wait in line outside sipping on McDonald's milkshakes waiting to get into their favourite place to buy the weird and wonderful.

This area is famed for the huge crossroads where the people flow like ants across the street in a huge wave of bodies and then, just as suddenly it stops and the traffic resumes. It's a strange sight to see so many people synchronised like this. Interspersed between the shops are many little galleries for art, hand-made jewelery and clothes. My host makes bags made form vintage kimono fabric (I'm quite happy to advertise these as they are really very good indeed, they would make superb presents. The prices look high but many of the fabrics used are over 100 years old). We popped into a few places selling whole kimonos and pieces of old fabric, some of which are hugely expensive, just for a small patch of design. A paradise for anyone wanting to make their own clothes.
The Omotesando shopping complex:

The design Festa art space:

contrasting with the Audi building:

The main attraction of coming to this area (if you're not much of a shopper, like myself) is to simply people watch. Dressing up is big here, and I don't mean simply taking care of your appearance. There are several very distinct styles readily apparent as you walk around the streets here. This is most visible with the women, but some of the men fit into distinct categories of counterculture.

The shopping area is mostly noted for the gyarus. Girls with a dark artificial tan, towering heels and bleached or coloured hair. On the way to Yoyoji park we passed a group of gyarus practicing their dance moves in the street, possibly ready for a competition. You can't see here but usually they have white makeup around their eyes giving them a startled panda look.

Regular gyarus are perhaps the most un-extreme of all the subcultures, though the ganguros are more to the panda end of the spectrum.

A lot of the styles are derived from Manga and the Harajuku bridge is mostly populated with cosplayers who dress in clothes to look like Manga characters. Unfortunately it seems that they take the day off on Saturday, so I didn't see so many of them and got fewer photos. However, Flickr has lots of images of some of the interesting costumes and makeup which go on display on the bridge. Some of the most startling cosplayers I've seen are: The blue bride, Tatsurou, Ninja, and these girls in black.

It seems that some of the locals are not cosplayers but simply like to come and dress up in their own style. Also available on the bridge are free hugs, though there didn't seem to be many takers.

Near Harajuku is Yoyogi park where there was some Samba going on which we sat and watched having been on our feet for a few hours. I'm told that the woman on the right is a famous actress, but I haven't pinned down a name yet.


After dinner (number 1) in a conveyor belt sushi restaurant we headed to the East side of the city where Chi works in a bar. I wandered off and had a look around the local temples, which were closed by that time but the grounds were open and wonderfully quiet after the hectic crowds in the West.

I headed back to the bar, expecting to have a quick drink before going back to the flat and at this point the trouble started. It was a small bar and there were a few businessmen in, each with a bottle of shochu in front of them, gradually being consumed with green tea. It didn't take long to start talking with them. First there was a test of my Chinese character skills to see if I could read their names in Kanji, then there was the explanation of what I'm doing in Japan which resulted in a short explanation of electrons in metals and the electrician in the group literally jumping up and down with excitement as his job suddenly, apparently became clear (this has more to do with shochu than my skills at explaining atomic bonds). I was sitting happily chatting with, um, everyone in the bar, nursing my one pint that I felt I could afford and trying to keep four conversations going at once when the first drink arrived in front of me from the ship salesman to my side.

Unfortunately it seemed that if one of them was going to buy me a drink, the others would look bad if they didn't join in and so, inevitably I got through a fair number of the consumables in the bar, including several plates of the not inconsiderably portioned snack-food - mostly of the raw meat variety.

At one point I was being asked about my thoughts on Japanese life and culture and I mentioned mono no aware, which I know of only from reading about Japanese cinema. The bar became hushed, everyone looked at each other, rather confused and then shouts and cheers as I realised I'd pushed just the right button. I guess that the knowledge of this concept was enough to get me into 'the club' and the generosity only increased from this point on.

Somehow 1 o'clock rolled around, I was still relatively stable and had acquired a rather nice leather passport holder at some point. I was asked if I liked Korean food , I confirmed and we headed to dinner (number 2) a little way down the street. Dish after dish piled up as we got through a huge Korean barbecue. I'm pretty sure that conversation, though still extremely enthusiastic, had diminished in its fluency and for some reason French and Chinese dominated linguistically on and off.

Leaving the restaurant there were five of us, though we quickly lost one who fell asleep on the pavement. The fact that one of them had just bought me a very nice dinner left the other one looking bad, so a Japanese dinner was then offered. In another favourite restaurant of theirs, dinner number 3 arrived in the form of a large plate of sushi. I was truly stuffed but to turn this down would have been very insulting. It was great sushi but I probably didn't appreciate it as much as I should have!

Anyway, by 4 am after three dinners the others seemed to have forgotten how to get home if not which way was up. The group dispersed and I have to presume that the others made it back intact.

Sunday was not a lot of fun. Taking my luggage on the Tokyo underground with a stonking hangover and a belly fit to burst was not a pleasant experience. After a good sleep and a bite to eat I was a good 30% on my way to recovery and today (this post has taken a day to write) I'm 95% back to 'normal'.

Gastroentertainment

If you were completely disgusted by that top layer of solidified milk on a rice pudding or similar dessert then stop reading here, this post is not for you. This particular delicacy seems to split eaters just about as evenly as marmite or, in Japan, Natto. I happen to be in the latter category and so it was with great delight that I was taken for a meal of yuba (link is to the restaurant we dined at - see yuba kaiseki cuisine).

This meal was a strange combination for me, taking place in an extremely elegant restaurant with a selection of 10 or so dishes of the best fish, the freshest vegetables and some of the finest tempura I've ever eaten, combined with a childhood love of that top layer of solidified milk.

Yuba is a double-boiled soy bean milk, though it tastes much like full-fat cows milk. The top layer solidifies in the copper bain-marie in which it's slowly heated. Once solidified you use a wooden implement to separate the thin film from the sides and then pick it off the top of the liquid. You then dip it in a very fine savoury sauce, and eat.

Then wait for a few minutes for the top layer to solidify again and repeat, again and again and again. For anyone who covetted this particular foodstuff as a kid this will be a dream come true. All the rice-pudding tops you could ever want, without getting full from the slightly inferior food underneath.

After a couple of hours of extremely fine dining we headed back to the office, our preternatural urges satisfied.

Incidentally, for any scientists who enjoy cooking, or cooks who want to know why food does what it does, then I highly recommend McGee on Food and Cooking: An Encyclopedia of Kitchen Science, History and Culture. This is an incredibly detailed encyclopedia detailing just about every ingredient and process that goes into making the bread rise, the meat tenderise, the eggs fluff up and the pineapple preventing the jelly from setting (the enzyme in pineapple which catalyses the breaks down of gelatin is the same enzyme which makes it a great tenderizer of meat. It's also why some people, myself included, are allergic to pineapple, with fairly unpleasant oral reactions).

Every topic is treated in great detail giving feasts of information about the chemicals, enzymes and molecular processes which go on in the kitchen. It's a true joy for anyone who has a love of food and science.

-------------

Today, having feasted on fine foods yesterday, satisfying my childhood urges, I enjoyed a rather more adult culinary treat. In the South-East of Kyoto, a short train ride from the centre in the ever-misty foothills of the surrounding mountains sits the Yamazaki Suntory Whisky distillery. Since the 1920s this distillery has been producing some world class whiskies. My last distillery experience was marred slightly by arriving there early by almost two decades. Now, with a few fine whiskies under my gastronomic belt I could appreciate a good deal more some of the subtlety of the process than I had at the age of 11.

You start off in the whisky library, free to browse the bottles from around the world:

Though the tour itself was in Japanese, the tasting session is omni-lingual and although we were forced to taste the samples with ice and water (the Japanese I'm informed are not used to drinking it straight) the 12 year old whiskys were pretty good (I'm no connoisseur but I found the added mix of ice and water meant I couldn't really appreciate the depths of flavour).

After the two free glasses however, you're free to sample from the tasting menu, for a price, and then the dram comes as you like it. I splashed out on a glass of a 1980 distillation and it was truly one of the finest whiskies I've tried.

If you enjoy whisky and are in Kyoto I would highly advise taking the short trip out. You'll also be able to pick up some excellent, bottles straight from the factory at much cheaper prices than you could elsewhere.