Big Sofa, Locker and Carpet for Sale in Osaka!

Hey guys! I’m moving next month and have a few things that I won’t take with me. All have to be gone by June 23rd. If you’re interested in one ore more items let me know via the contact form.

1. item: A really nice dark brown sofa which I love very much, but it won’t fit into my new apartment Bought around one year ago and in very good shape. The stool can be used seperately or attached to the right or left side as you see in the pictures below. I bought some pillows for the sofa which you can have as well. Pillow cases are exchangable. Outer Size: ca. 175 cm wide x 75 cm deep (stool attached: ca. 125 cm deep) Asking price is 25,000 Yen. Pick up near Osaka Airport. Can arrange delivery for you if you bear the costs.

2. item: A dark brown locker with two small drawers, also bought around one year ago and also in very good shape. Size: ca. 59 cm wide, 188 cm high, 52 cm deep. Aking price is 5,000 Yen. Pick up near Osaka Airport. Can arrange delivery for you if you bear the costs.

3. item: A mint and beige carpet. Also bought around one year ago and in good shape but you can see it’s been used. I’ll wash it before you get it though Size: ca 184 x 188 cm. Asking price 1,000 Yen. Can arrange delivery or pick it up near Osaka Airport.

Tanita Shokudo at Osaka University

This semester started off with a nice surprise. I was about to get some spinach omrice because that’s the only menu at “Sora” cafeteria which doesn’t drive up your energy consumption by 900-1000 kcal like the others and is a tiny bit more healthful than a plain omrice. But when I entered the cafeteria, there was a table and pinboard next to the usual menu display. A poster indicated that this was a campaign by Tanita, so I stepped closer to the table to find out that the cafeteria offers a Tanita set menu which changes weekly.

Tanita had opened its first restaurant in Tokyo in January this year and it was overrun during the first weeks. (Does anybody know the current situation?) Compared to the restaurant where the weekly set menu costs 900 Yen, the set menu at Osaka University is only 500 Yen which is among the highest prices for menus at the cafeteria but still almost half the original price. There’s even a body fat scale and I’ve seen a few people actually using it.

Of course I had to try the Tanita set menu and it was very tasty. In fact it had much more taste than the one I tried in Tokyo. The information on the pinboard says that the menu follows the same principles as the famous cooking books, which are 1) around 500 kcal per set menu, 2) spare use of salt, 3) reduced amount of fat and 4) being filling. But if you read the information on the pinboard closely, you’ll find that Tanita isn’t working alone here. There’s another company cooperating: Mizkan, which produces many basics for Japanese cooking like Mirin, vinegar and various kinds of broth.

Is Mizkan the secret behind the tastiness? But why does the menu at the Tanita Shokudo taste so bland then? Is Mizkan not used there? And I have one more question: How much money does Osaka University get for this campaign?

Anyways, Tanita seems to stay a part of my research and if Tanita continues to publish books with this speed I’ll be broke in no time… Oh, and if somebody knows about other campaigns, cafeterias featuring Tanita products and/or menus I’d be gratefull to hear about it!

Doubts and Confidence

If there was a list for endangered blogs, this one would be on it for sure. It’s getting harder and harder for me to find some spare time to type a few words, but I’ll try to keep it up and post a little piece about my current life.

So I made it into the PhD course at Handai and survived the enrollment procedures, orientation and guidance etc. Everything’s going well. My prof accepted my research proposal. I registered courses (only two though, because I’m also participating in two reading/study groups) and was asked to help with two research projects.

But at the same time, it began to dawn on me that if I’m supposed to finish my PhD after three years, I would start to write my dissertation after two years at the latest. Which would also mean that I have to write my preparatory thesis even earlier, which means: I… don’t… really… have… time……………….

If I was going to write the thesis in the subject I’m most familiar with (Japanology), it would be doable. But I had the great and clever idea to study Clinical Philosophy here, while my philosophic knowledge is very rudimental (what kind of drugs did I take when I made that decision???).

Well, I’ve studied Japanology as a major and Philosophy and European Ethnology as minor subjects, so my idea was to combine all these subjects with my current research. So far, that sounds like a good idea and I believe that studying Clinical Philosophy in Japan is just perfect for that. But the more I dive into Clinical Philosophy I feel that it becomes an ever thicker wall between me and my research. Since I’m enrolled in this subject I need to ask myself constantly whether what I’m trying to do fits into Clinical Philosophy or not. But what the heck is Clinical Philosophy? As I’ve already said here, that’s a question nobody seems to be able to answer…

So at the moment everything feels like a mess while I need to catch up on too many things. First of all, Philosophy of course. But the real challenge is Public Health with which I’m concerned and which is connected to so many other fields that every time I get a hint for my reasearch and think that I should do a little investigation on that it opens a Pandora’s box. And this is where I return to the first problem: Three years is a hell of a short time! How am I going to finish all this in only three years?

One course I registered turned out to be a kind of self-help group for desperate graduate students and there I learned that the Japanese students have the same doubts as me which felt very relieving. At least I’m not alone. When it popped out of me that I wasn’t sure whether to enter the PhD course was a good idea I was laughed at and felt a bit embarrassed. It’s a very common expression in German to say that you’re “not sure whether something was a good idea”, but I figure that my words sounded stronger in Japanese.

Anyways, although I have some doubts about this PhD project I know that I would have regretted it forever if I didn’t even try. And I need challenges. I never go the easy way (though I’m not so sure whether that’s a good thing ;-p ). That’s what I’m confident in.

Maru no Uchi Tanita Shokudo – Eating for the Patient

Being in Tokyo for a day this week I used the opportunity to visit the restaurant of the Japanese scale maker Tanita which opened earlier this month. Tanita, the company which introduces itself as the one “who measures health” (「健康をはかる」タニタです）, had already published two cookbooks based on the recipes the company’s cafeteria offers its employees. All of these recipes describe set menus designed to provide around 500 kcal and hardly any salt while it is claimed they are tasty and filling. With these cookbooks Tanita tackled two problems of contemporary Japanese eating habits: Eating too much and too salty. Both books became bestsellers in no time and now it seems like Tanita hits the spot again with its restaurant based on the same principles.

“Maru no uchi Tanita Shokudo” is located between Tokyo station and the imperial palace. Walking to the restaurant you pass expensive brand shops and busy salarymen. This location certainly was chosen on purpose and hints to a Japanese characteristic. Unlike other industrialized countries, in Japan being overweight is not a problem of the poor but the wealthy so it’s no wonder that a restaurant which aims at educating people about food and maintaining a healthy weight is found in Maru no uchi.

When I arrived at the restaurant at 13:30 approximately 30 people were already standing in line waiting to get in. But these weren’t people who just waited to get a place in the restaurant as I thought at first, they were some of the lucky ones who managed to get a ticket in the morning.

Since Tanita Shokudo opened its doors on January 11th, there’s such a rush of people, that a ticket system was introduced to reduce frustration among guests and disturbance to the neighboring restaurants. 400 Tickets are now being distributed every morning from 8:30. You have to choose the time you want to eat while the restaurant is operating between 11 am and 3 pm, but you have to fetch your ticket early because they are given away in no time. It’s also not possible to get more than one ticket per person. Tanita says that information on the ticket system are published on newspapers and the restaurant’s homepage, but there are still many people who come without knowing of the system and have to leave disappointedly. While I was observing the scene, there was also an elderly woman who must have stood in line for over an hour without having a ticket and had to go when she finally was about to enter the restaurant.

For a last chance to enter the restaurant you have to wait at least until 14:30 when all persons with tickets have been served. If you’re lucky, some people cancelled their ticket so that a few more can come in. Around 2 pm the restaurant staff directed those willing to try their luck to wait on the stairs not far away from Tanita Shokudo so that they wouldn’t block the way to other restaurants.

In the meanwhile, guests of the restaurant also have a chance to get a free counselling from a dietician. There were constantly four to five people waiting for their turn to get into the totally transparent consultation room. The waiting guests observed and commented on the procedure inside and since the door wasn’t even closed they must have been able to understand the conversation inside. Privacy Zero.

The counselling starts with measuring weight and other data of the guest by stepping on a large scale. It is connected to a printer so that the data is immediately printed and discussed afterwards. The whole procedure takes around 5 minutes.

At 14:40 ten of the eighteen people waiting on the stairs are allowed to get into the restaurant, the others, including me, have to be patient a little bit longer and still don’t know whether their patience will pay off with a meal in the end. After another ten minutes the last six people are lucky and two have been waiting in vain… Being number 13 I am lucky to get in, but the usual choice between the weekly (900 Yen) and the daily (800 Yen) set menu has been reduced to the weekly only.

This week’s set menu consists of vegetables and fried codfish with a Japanese lemon and pepper sauce. The side dishes are the same as for the daily set menu and today consist of a dish made of carrot and konnyaku garnished with mangetouts, some cucumber and perilla mint salad and a soup containing onions and sprouts. Not to forget the white rice which you can take as much of as you like, but Tanita provides rice bowls with measuring lines that mark 100 and 150 g of rice. To make sure that your set menu doesn’t exceed 500 kcal you should take only 100 g rice. Tea is also offered and you can choose between green tea (sencha) or roasted tea (houjicha), both hot or cold.

Although the rice bowls have measuring lines, rice can be stuffed pretty much so that it’s difficult to measure the amount just by a line. Therefore, every table is equipped with a small scale so that you can check how much rice you really took. Unfortunately, I noticed the scale too late (it stood in a vertical position on top of the display at my table so I mistook it for a stand-up display), so I couldn’t check my amount of rice…

There’s also a timer at every table to check the time you take for eating. Both the scale and timer aim at educating people to reduce their rice consumption and eat slowly. Eating Shovelling large amounts of rice in a ridiculously short time is an often seen feature of Japanese men and said to be one of the reasons why men become overweight. All the devices used and displayed at Tanita Shokudo can also be purchased there to manage your eating habits at home, too. (One rice bowl for 1600 Yen anyone?)

I’m a quite slow eater anyways so I didn’t have to slow down to take more than 20 minutes as it is advised. Also, the meal is designed to be chewed a lot so it naturally takes some time to eat. The pieces of carrots and kabu, for example, were relatively big and hardly cooked so that they were still hard. I liked that they were not seasoned at all and enjoyed the pure taste of fresh vegetables. But this certainly is a point that won’t fit the taste of the Japanese at first. I often hear comments of Japanese about European food which they think is too bland and cooking for my boyfriend often results in a complaint that I should use more salt while I’m thinking I should be more careful with salt next time… The following video probably describes very well the impression of many Japanese eating at Tanita Shokudo:

What the guy in the video uses most often to describe the taste of the food is “yasashii” which means something like gentle and nice. He states that “it doesn’t contain anything unneeded” and that the miso soup tastes normal but not salty. While I really like Japanese food I find it too salty or sweet at times and therefore was surprised at the plain taste found here at first. The only spice that seems to be used a lot is pepper. It took me 22 minutes and 21 seconds to finish everything and I was pleasantly filled afterwards.

After all, eating at Maru no Uchi Tanita Shokudo is nothing for people on a tight schedule. At least not as long as you have to queue for a ticket in the morning and then queue again to get in at the time you want to eat. I wonder how long this rush on the restaurant will continue and whether the Japanese will get used to this somewhat tasteless taste. Reading the first comments on “Tabelog”, a website for restaurant reviews, most commentators agree on the weak taste and one even describes the meal as an “expensive hospital menu”.

I would be happy to hear your impression of Tanita Shokudo if you find the time and patience to eat there

Oops, it’s been ages…

… since I wrote something on my blog. This is due to the fact that I got very busy from November last year and didn’t do much interesting stuff. On the opposite, I had to cut back on social life a lot because I expectantly had to write a quite long research proposal for the extension of my scholarship within a week. I was glad to write this paper though, because it helped me to sort out my thoughts and bring the work of half a year into an order I could work with in the future.

My supervisor at Osaka was very pleased about the paper and formed a small study group together with other students who research about similar topics. Later I could also use this paper for a speech at university and when I sent it to my doctoral supervisor he was also pleased to see how I’m proceeding with my research.

On the other hand, I had to postpone other things I would have liked to do already and now I’m stuck in preparations for the entrance exam in February. I still have a lot to do for that but only a dozen days left…

So I’m looking forward to getting more active again when the exam is done, but I got a feeling that if I pass, my working style will have to change a lot from April and leave me much more busy than now. でも頑張ります！I’ll keep on fighting!

Sake with Wasabi

At the beginning of September I went to a fancy beef restaurant in Kyoto called Inayoshi. I got gift coupons worth 10.000 Yen from my company for my birthday which were to spend at Inayoshi or for Japanese classes. Of course I opted for a nice evening with my boyfriend at Inayoshi. Usually, I wouldn’t even think of spending 5.000 Yen per person for a course menu but thanks to the coupons I could get the course menu for free and spent only a little for drinks and to sit outside just next to the Kamo river.

The night was warm and the full moon shining so it was a very good choice to sit outside. I enjoyed it very much. The service was excellent as it usually is in Japan and we were mostly served by a waitress who was at least in her 60s, maybe 70s. She didn’t have the manners you’d expect from such a restaurant. In fact she would be more fitting into an izakaya, but I appreciated her casual and open-hearted manner.

Every course was explained to us as well as how to eat it. The main dish steak for example, came together with onion sauce, a very mild and delicious salt and fresh wasabi so you can enjoy different tastes or combine them. When we ordered some sake the waitress also told us that she likes to drink it with salt or wasabi so we should try these rather unusual ways of drinking sake. Although she had already taken the salt and wasabi she went to get it again for this reason. And it was really not bad!

Fresh wasabi is a delight in itself and combined with the clear taste of sake you can enjoy the wasabi almost purely.

Sake with salt also wasn’t bad at all but I wouldn’t advise you to try it with normal kitchen salt. If you got some nice tasting salt you should give it a try though

Kannon-sama, Katana and Sake – A Trip to the Countryside of Nara

Wow, it’s already October and I still have so much to write about what happened in September! Remember I made a trip to Uji at the end of August? It was a trip organised by a tourist agency to promote Japanese tourism. At the beginning of September I participated in another trip. This time we went to the countryside of Nara.

Our small group met at Kintetsu Nara station early in the morning and hat a short meeting at a hotel near-by. The sky was clear and it was going to be a bloody hot day, but we didn’t know how exhausting this day was going to be at that time… After our meeting we turned back to the station because we weren’t visiting Nara city but going far into the countryside of the prefecture.

Our first stop was Hasedera. This temple is dedicated to Kannon-sama, the goddess of mercy.It is surrounded by green mountains and designed to please Kannon-sama. Different kinds of flowers are planted all over the temple for this reason. Exept for September some kind of flowers are in bloom throughout the year, so unfortunately we happened to see the temple during the least fortunate time. But still it is a truly beautiful and impressive temple complex. The path to the main hall which contains a huge statue of Kannon-sama is completely roofed. Round lamps hang in line above the steps that seem to continue endlessly. Half the way up we made a stop at a small temple building where we wrote a prayer to Kannon-sama – with brush and ink of course. Being the only Western foreigner of the group it took me the most time to finish, but it didn’t turn out too bad. Then we continued to climb the steps to the main hall.

If you reach the main hall and go to the veranda in front of it you can view over the temple buildings that hide among the trees, just like Kannon-sama who faces in the same direction. Usually, you can only see her face this way but we were allowed to enter the main hall to pray just in front of her. We also got a five-coloured wrist band which symbolizes our new bond with Kannon-sama and where blessed with water from the vase she holds. Both the five colours of the wrist band as well as the blessing mean to give us wisdom. What more could students wish for?

When we descended we had lunch before returning to the station. As it was really hot there was barely something better than cold noodles (hiyashi somen) and that’s what we had. They came together with lots of other delights of Japanese cuisine. Unfortunately, we didn’t have time to relax because we had to catch the next train which leaves only once an hour. Walking really fast uphill we made it just a minute before the train arrived.

We didn’t drive far so again there was no time to relax and the next stop was even going to be more exhausting. This time we had to find our way uphill through a tiny village and rice paddies. Our goal was the house of a sword smith who showed us some of his katana and explained the different sizes and how to look at them. If you stretch out your arm you can look at the whole katana. Then you should move it slightly to see the pattern of it’s blade. The sword smith could tell during which period a katana was made by this method. Then we were allowed to hold the swords by ourselves. They weren’t as heavy as I expected.

Then the sword smith also showed us his factory. The long hammer you see on the picture had to be handled by three men before a machine took their part. It takes about eight days to create the blade of the katana. It’s handle and other parts are the work of other craftsmen. Today katana are only used for decoration. Engraved with sutras they serve as a good-luck charm for the house.

The last stop of our tour was a sake brewery. Again we went a few stations by train and also by bus. At the bus station I saw a sign saying they were taking measures against terrorism and I wondered what terrorist would attack the deep countryside of Japan? People are really hysterical about terrorism these days…

Anyways, we arrived at the brewery and were fetched by its owner. He was very friendly and offered us different kinds of sake including some rare varieties. There was for example a five years old sake which turned into a yellowish colour and tasted amost like wine. It’s amazing how the crystal clear sake made of rice can change that much over time. We also tried a sweet sake that tasted similar to umeshu which is made of plums. Unfortunately, there was no sake in process at that time and although the owner showed us his factory we couldn’t see much more than empty buckets and containers. On the other hand his 300 year old house was amazingly beautiful and well worth to see.

Nara is full of houses like this wich are usually well preserved. It’s like you’re doing a time travel and should not be missing on your places to visit if you come to Kansai.