Academy Award-winning film “Green Book”

I went to see the film "Green Book", which won the Oscar for best picture this year.

The film was set in 1962 in the United States. Tony was hired by an African-American classical pianist Don Shirley for a concert tour into the Deep South states. Tony's job is to keep the Doctor safe during his playing tour in the American South that racial segregation existed, and drive him home at Carnegie Hall in New York City safely.

In the film, the Doctor said, "You never win with violence." At the time, in the United States, there was discrimination against not only African-Americans, but also Italians and Chinese. Living in Japan, it is difficult to imagine, but I wonder how much people were required patience to live under such severe discrimination. Even so, the Doctor stated, "You never win with violence." If I replace the phrase with in today's Japan, perhaps it can be said, "You never win with bullying, domestic violence or power harassment."

Mahershala Ali, who plays the Doctor, is elegant and intellectual and I thought that was just wonderful. Viggo Mortensen also played very well Tony, who was rough but somehow lovable. It was a lovely film that filled me with warm feelings after I saw it.

One of my favorite scenes in the film. The Doctor touches up the letter that Tony writes to his wife.

 Green Book: travel guide for safe travel through America's racial segregation 

 had been published from 1936 to 1966 every year. The fact that this kind of book   existed was itself shocking.

 The film won the Oscar for best picture, best original screenplay 
 and best supporting actor. 

　　

Udon noodle specialty restaurant on an expressway, "Hanamaru Udon" Byobusan rest shop

I drove on the Chuo Expressway for the first time in a long time. At that time, I found the "Hanamaru Udon" at Byobusan rest area, which is one of the popular udon (wheat noodles) chains in Japan. I ate the udon with hot broth and clams because it was a cold day, and I had never tried one before.

I ordered a small one. But there were more clams than I expected for a small one and the soup was very good with rich taste of clams.

I didn't know that this "Hanamaru Udon" has been there for over five years. "Yoshinoya", which was next to the "Hanamaru Udon" is the same group company. Recently, they've been opening up their restaurants on expressways in sets.

I like noodles, but I'm allergic to soba (buckwheat noodles) so I don't usually eat even udon or ramen at any restaurant where all noodles might be cooked in the same pots.
At a restaurant like "Hanamaru Udon" that serves only udon, I can eat without worry.

This was possibly the first time for me to eat udon at a restaurant at rest shops on expressways.
T.S

Special open-day at a local sake brewery in Fukui

The local sake brewery Ippongi is well known for its sharp and dry sake, which is located in Katsuyama City, Fukui Prefecture, founded in 1902.

I usually don't drink sake much, but as the special open-day approaches every year, I look forward to it for some reason. Each year, the event is held on the second day of Katsuyama Sagicho Festival. However, last year's one was cancelled due to the heavy snow, so the event was the first one in two years.

At the event, you can go in the sake brewery and they have lucky dip of sake lees, games, sake stands, selling special sake available only on the day and special sake-manju (steamed cake using sake). Until now, I couldn't buy them because they were always sold out, but I could buy the sake and the sake-manju because I went there early this year. To be honest, I didn't like sake-manju that much, but I really enjoyed the sake-manju because its dough was fluffy and not too sweet. (H.S)

This year's Sagicho was favored by good weather and the festival music was more glamorous.

                                Arrived at the Ippongi sake brewery

                               They opened inside the brewery that day.

                                           
                                         Lucky dip of sake lees

                                             
                                                  Quiz about sake

                                             
                                                    Another quiz

                                             
                                       Popular sake stand

                                     
                                  This year's menu of the sake stand

The tinted left one is plum wine. It was delicious. I changed my image of plum wine.

Men of the drummers of the festival also enjoyed the event. Men wearing underwear for kimono is one of must-see sights at Katsuyama Sagicho.

The special sake "Funakuchi", which is non-filtered raw unprocessed sake, strong and thick but delicious.

Here is a video of when the event to start (10:00 a.m.) (5'37") Singing by the sake brewery workers and the formal announcement are cool.

 

Conversation salon and Bhutanese cooking class in Fukui City on Sunday, March 17th, 2019

Mr. Ugyen Dorji and his family member (his wife, son and sister) and

staff from Bhutan museum Fukui.

 

Mr. Ugyen Dorji is studying at University of Fukui as a teacher trainee

from Bhutan since September of 2017, and his family arrived in Japan

in the end of March of 2018 as well. And they are going back to Bhutan

at the end of March this year (2019).

 

Mr. Ugyen Dorji has been invited to a Bhutan museum Fukui's event

on Sunday, March 17th, 2019 as a guest speaker.

 

It's an event in which Mr. Ugyen Dorji and the participants of the event

will be discussing about the high school life in Bhutan. He studies Japanese,

so he can communicate with the ones who don't speak English as well.

Anyone is welcome to this event.

 

On the same day, there will be a cooking class held at Gas Cooking Studio

near Bhutan museum Fukui. A Bhutanese woman will be teaching the participants

how to cook Bhutanese foods. Most of the Bhutanese foods are very spicy,

so it's highly recommended to the ones who love spicy foods.

If you don't want your food to be too spicy, you can make it less spicy.

*The cooking event is no longer available due to the enough number of applicants.

 

I didn't know so much about Bhutan until a few years ago. Since I've met

Mr. Ugyen Dorji, his family and some others from Bhutan, I learned about

the country and the people. I learned that there's no ocean, Bhutanese people

love spicy foods so much that they even bring their own spices

whey they come to Japan, they're very religious, they're kind and polite, etc.

 

The event on March 17th will be a great opportunity to learn about Bhutan,

so if you are in Fukui City, how about participating in these events?

*The cooking event is no longer available due to the enough number of applicants.

 

T.F

Tello, first automatic flight

After struggling for two days, I finally succeeded in flying a Tello toy drone automatically.

 I often use the toy drone priced at around 5,000 yen. It's good for practice because it's safe to fly indoors, and it's less stable than the bigger one (like a Phantom one) so I can improve its flight stability by using it.

 Recently, I bought a Ryze Tech Tello toy drone, which is expensive for a toy drone. Because I found out that the Tello could be flown automatically from a book.

 At first, I installed the latest version of Scratch without reading the book carefully. And I became confused because the action of the application was different from the description in the book. I solved this problem by installing the old version "Scratch 2.0 Offline Editor" again.

 The book is written for Windows, which made me even more confused because I usually use Mac. One of the different parts is to run a node.js but it's explained in Sky DRONE's video "Programming RYZE Tello with Scratch (Mac edition)" and, which was helpful for me.

 Unlike manual operation, there are restrictions such as not being able to do more than two operations at the same time, but it seems to be possible to do some interesting demos.
T.S

Travel journal of 26 years ago

The other day, I was handed a sheaf of papers by a longtime friend, saying "Do you want to read this?" In fact, the copy over 40 pages was a travel journal about when I went to London 26 years ago with her.

She likes writing and has literary talent. She wrote a very detailed journal about our entire trip of the time. Of course, I can remember I went to London, but I have only a vague memory of what the hotel was like and the detailed itinerary.

Back in those days, the Internet was not spread, so I had only guidebooks to rely on. The photos that I took were analog ones of course.

When I started to read it with my heart thumping a little, it brought back my dim memories and as if they are updated vividly and I was moved. I feel like having a treasure, cannot be replaced by anything. If I take a long trip one day, I would definitely like to write a travel journal.

She also wrote a novel that a girl travels back to a sword training yard of samurai in the end of the Edo Period in Kyoto. I read it before and it brought tears to my eyes. I want the novel to be turned into a book, but she has no interest in publication because she said she wrote it merely for her pleasure. (H.S)

The purpose of the trip to London was visiting here, where is the residence of Freddie Mercury, who died in 1991. In the film "Bohemian Rhapsody", there was a similar scene to the appearance of the house in this photo.

Messages from fans were written all over on the brick wall of Freddie's house. We visited here again two days later and left flowers and letters.

A page of the travel journal

The amazing crabs from Fukui

There are three kinds of crabs caught in Fukui.

The male Zuwai-gani (snow crab) caught around Echizen Coast in Fukui is called "Echizen-gani". "Kani" or "gani" means crab in Japanese.
 
Fishing season for the Echizen-gani is from November 6th to March 20th. It's well known as the most expensive and the largest one in Fukui. It's a luxurious food, so even most of the people from Fukui, they hardly eat it.

Photograph：Rakuten

The female snow crab is called "Seiko-gani" which is smaller than the Echizen-gani(the male ones). Typically, the female ones are 1/3 of the size of the male ones. Their fishing season is from November 6th to December 31st. The pregnant ones carry "sotoko (fertilized eggs)". When you chew the fertilized eggs, you get satisfying popping crunchy texture like sea grapes. "uchiko (the ovary)" has a rich strong crab flavor. I like both.

The price of the Seiko-gani is much lower than the Echizen-gani, so it's more likely for people in Fukui Prefecture to eat the Seiko-gani than the Echizen-gani. In addition, at some schools in Fukui Prefecture, the Seiko-gani is served for their school lunch and students learn how to eat it properly.

After enjoying the crab meat of Seiko-gani and or Echizen-gani, it is even more enjoyable to pour sake into the shell and drink it directly from the shell. The sake will take on a subtle flavor of the "kani-miso (the brown meat)". It is the best way to complete the crab.

The freshly molted male snow crab is called "Mizu-gani". It is young male crab and the word "young" is "waka" in Japanese, so it is also called "Waka-gani". Also, the crab meat of Mizu-gani can easily be taken out of the shell, so it's called "Zubo-gani". "Zubo" is a Japanese word to show a sound of something is taken out of something easily. The crab meat of Mizu-gani is as large as the Zuwai-gani but the price of the Mizu-gani is one third of the Zuwai-gani. Therefore, Mizu-gani is popular as well.

A friend of mine from outside the prefecture visited Fukui Prefecture to have Mizu-gani. He enjoyed it so much and he even bought some more crabs to take home.

I would like to share a video of "Fukui Prefectural Tourism Federation". You can see the crab auction.

Last year and this year, there have been shortage of crabs, so I haven't eaten them as much I usually would eat. I hope that it'll be a good year for the crabs next year.

If you haven't tried having the delicious crabs from Fukui, how about visiting Fukui Prefecture, enjoy the charms of the prefecture, and eating the amazing crabs?

T.F