Japanese Deer Dance at the Thames Festival

Kanatsu Shishi Odori
at the Ashmolean Museum
8 September 2012

Last week, England was visited by a Japanese troupe of 14 deer dancer cum drummers. Invited to the Thames Festival, which took place on the weekend (Sept 8-9), they also danced at the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford and at the Embassy of Japan in London. The troupe is from Iwate Prefecture in northern Tohoku where they traditionally dance at festivals and blessing ceremonies; here they danced in memory of those lost to the tsunami last year. Though the dance is stately and serious, the audience was wowed by the tossing of horns and flattening of the white spires to the ground as they bent over.

The dance is called Shishi Odori. We actually heard a Japanese guy telling his British girlfriend at the Thames Festival parade that it was a Lion Dance from Fukushima. Wrong! It is a Deer Dance from Iwate, even though the word shishi in Japanese is written with the Chinese characters for 'lion'. The word shishi itself is ancient, meaning 'meat', and there are several kinds of meat mentioned in old documents:  ka-no-shishi (deer meat), and i-no-shishi (boar meat), with inoshishi becoming the normal word for 'boar'. The tossing of the heads resembles real deer behaviour, and the dance may symbolize ancient hunting practices revering the animals providing the food. Several other origin myths surround its distant beginnings.

Deer Dancer kneeling,
from the back

The dance costumes are very heavy, weighing about 40 pounds, a lot of the weight residing in the headgear. The long spires are bamboo that are slivered into spikes, then tied together with string into which folded papers are entwined. The papers are similar to those used in Shinto rituals to call down the god(s). Two of the fourteen dancers have spired with black bands at the top: these are the troupe leader and the single nominal doe in the group, this time actually played by a woman dancer. Traditionally the dancers have all been male, but women can now join the groups. See their dance in the Thames Festival night parade, at 0:55-1.14 minutes.

The headdress is fixed with steel antlers and has two long flaps that cascade down the back. These are painted with designs similar to those painted onto wide back panels of the divided skirt (hakama). Many such costumes, drums, and actual dancers of Tohoku performing arts were lost to the tsunami on 3.11; for this particular troupe, one drum was washed away but came floating back – taken as an auspicious even among tragedies. Sponsored by the Japan Foundation, it was quite an undertaking to bring a large dance troups and their accoutrements to London, but we hope to see them here again sometime.

Bone marrow at the Court Restaurant, British Museum

The Court Restaurant is a classy place to eat lunch at the British Museum. Situated high up in the Great Court, you get good views of the wonderful geometric glass ceiling over the court and can see the clouds beyond. Because there are two coffee shops in the court below, the buzz of conversation from there is a little diverting, but the restaurant's tablecloth settings, including a live miniature chili plant (with chilis) instead of flowers, give a fancy ambience. For those pleasures, the menu is stiff: ca. £22 for a 2-course or £28 for a 3-course meal. But a la carte held some surprises.

Bone Marrow at the Court Restaurant, British Museum

In the past month, I have seen three references to bone marrow on menus. Where has this come from suddenly?? I suppose bone marrow is consistent with the traditional down-market English cuisine of whelks, steak & kidney pie, tongue and tripe, etc. I first ate it (trepidatiously) mixed in with mashed potatoes. Wonderful! What a flavour. So yesterday at the British Museum, I thought I'd try the Small Plate meal of Bone Marrow (£6.50, not a bad price for lunch).

What did I get? Four halves of a long bone and three slices of baguette. I needed more baguette! The stuff was so rich I could only eat one and a half of the bone contents, sharing an equal amount with my co-diners. That took care of the three baguette slices and left one bone contents uneaten. So I asked to take all the bones home with me (of course, the waitress thought it was for a dog, but it was really for my husband to try, on a rice cracker).

How was it? Well, straight from the bone, it wasn't as tasty as the mashed potatoes. It might have been better if I had loaded the seasoned salad garnish with sea salt onto the bread as well. In making my open-face sandwich, it was hard to spread the marrow. It has the consistency of jello (English jelly) and tends to wobble around a lot and fall off the bread. It looked kind of greyey pink, somewhat like a pink speckled jelly bean. And I felt like a Stone Age carnivore eating it.

Would I try it again? Yes, for the novelty and to see if the flavour changes with different ways of cooking and presenting it. It was a great conversation piece over lunch and cost a quarter of what the others paid. So, see you at the Court Restaurant for a real experience!

Toilet paper rolls (literally!)

Toilet paper rolls!

Here they make 2- and 3-ply (!) quilted toilet paper that is so heavy, when you get towards the end of the roll, it unrolls itself onto the floor. Bonkers, or what?

When we were in graduate school in the States, we lived in a house with five students. There was an almighty row between two of them over how much toilet paper one should use (reflecting on household costs, of course). One said you only need three sheets, while the other would pull off two or three swaths of TP. The argument eventually broke up the household. The one that left would have liked this British quilted TP; she could have used only two sheets and saved even more money!

Mackerel: sky over Durham and fish in my fridge

Mackerel Sky

Lamb or Sheep clouds

Thursday we had a spectacular mackerel sky in Durham, where I took these pictures, that lasted for at least an hour. So unusual for England, where heavy undistinguished clouds are more the norm. Lots of people I talk to don't know what a mackerel sky is, so I looked it up on Weatheronline to provide more information. They are high clouds, forming between 6-10,000 m (20-33,000 ft). High winds disrupts cloud formation to make them streaky or puffy: the former look like stripes on a mackerel, the latter look like sheep. And indeed, these sheepy clouds are called schaefchenwolken in German (lamb clouds) and nuages moutonneux in French (sheep clouds).
    I always learned that high clouds don't rain, but Weatheronline says that a mackerel sky foretells rainy weather and storms, as any sailor or fisherman can tell you. It forms about 400km in advance of the rainy patch. Sure enough, Friday was cloudy with some pretty dark ones up there.

Smoked mackerel & banana

   Despite the rarity of mackerel sky, England can lay claim to some other, pretty nice kinds of mackerel:  honey-smoked mackerel, smoked peppered mackerel, even chili smoked mackerel. These are filets sold vacuum packed in supermarkets and are the perfect quick food, hot or cold. They can be mixed with cream cheese to form a tasty dip, or I like to eat them stirred into a ripe mashed banana. How disgusting, you might think, but a friend says it is a common food in places like Madagascar. Well, I've never been to Madagascar, but a trip there to see the birds and eat mackerel/banana sounds just the thing.

Mackerel sky over Durham

   When spending long spells in other countries, I really miss smoked mackerel – it's such a cheap and plentiful fish, I'm surprised more places haven't taken up this way to serve it. Personally, I don't like cooked fresh mackerel (too fishy) and can't think of anything much more repulsive than tinned mackerel like they sell in the States (well, maybe tinned pilchards are worse). Anyway, with the push to eat more Omega 3s, think of the lowly mackerel, with or without the banana!

What is a bacon buttie?

It used to puzzzle me, not so much the bacon but the 'buttie', or 'butty' as it is more often spelled. The Oxford Dictionary says it is a sandwich that derives from 'butter', and the word seems to be used only for hot fillings. So the sandwich filling of a bacon buttie is bacon, but what is the bread called? Up Durham way: a 'bap', of course, or a 'stottie/stotty'. Baps are soft like hamburger buns but they can grow very big, like 6" across; stotties are more dense and heavy, made as 12" cakes. Tremendous differences across England in naming these kinds of bread, though.

Bacon at St Lawrence market, Toronto
streaky bacon on left, peameal slices in
middle, peameal bacon loaves on right

   So, a bacon buttie is a bacon sandwich. The filling? Bacon – what Americans would call 'Canadian bacon' (made from pork loin), more solid than normal bacon which the English call 'streaky bacon' (made from pork belly) and the Canadians call 'side bacon'. The Canadians themselves have 'peameal bacon', so named because the log of pork loin meat is rolled in ground dried peas; when sliced, the bacon pieces have a rim or crust of peameal. Because of its excellent preservative qualities, this kind of bacon was apparently the biggest Canadian contribution to England during the war; it was called 'lorry' or 'boot' bacon because of its transportability.
   I learned all this from our trip to Toronto recently where we ate peameal bacon sandwiches at the St. Lawrence market (highly recommended to us). And upon returning to England, I decided it was high time I tried a bacon buttie, which I had been avoiding all these years. Rather than being disgusting (because all there is is bacon, butter and bread), it was actually very very tasty, probably due to the six kinds of umami in bacon which are thought to be addictive (see the Wikipedia article on 'bacon' – very informative!). Apparently bacon sandwiches were a favourite food of Fergie (the Duchess, not the footballer) before she went on her various diets. And they are ubiquitous in England – many people eat these for breakfast on the run.
   So how do bacon butties compare with peameal bacon sandwiches, and BLTs for that matter? Though sparsely appointed, a bacon buttie goes down very smoothly, while I struggled to finish even one half of my peameal bacon sandwich (had to take the other half away) because it was so stuffed with 8 layers of bacon. I presume the peameal bacon and BLT (bacon, lettuce and tomato) sandwiches are better for your health because they at least have some vegies in them, and the latter can be made with wholemeal bread. But I must say, that bacon buttie was sure tasty, probably because it was hot bacon and had more fat in it than the cold peameal bacon sammie. (The British Sandwich Association gives an annual Sammie Award; maybe I should nominate the bacon buttie.) Now converted, I'll have to try not to make them a habit. Maybe a 'chip butty' is next.

The Toronto peameal bacon sandwich
from Oink, St Lawrence Market

Bacon buttie at the Dun Cow in Durham
 served 11-2, Mon–Thurs

More interesting things from Japan

Automatic chain barriers to parking lots
Ok, I admit they aren't a necessity, but these chain barriers are pretty neat. When a car comes out of the parking lot, it triggers the automatic dropping of the chain down to the ground so the car can exit; then the chain is raised again in this cool gate-post structure. Good thinking!

Challenges to obesity
Again, England could take a clue from Japan. There, waist measurement rather than BMI is paramount. Unfortunately, the single measures they apply to men and women (separately) take no account of body height and bone structure. You can lose your job if your waist doesn't meet the required measurement. To help out people losing weight, not only are commuters encouraged to take the stairs instead of the escalators/ lifts, but how many calories you will burn by doing so are stated in some stations (here -2.0kcal on the "subway diet"). At least these signs make you think and remember so you can make a choice to walk instead of stand like an automaton.

Paris CDG Terminal 2E architecture

It seems to be a obsession. I am documenting the new airports of the world...

Here is the 2E K-gates terminal building at Charles de Gaulle Airport in Paris. Another beautiful use of wood in the interior, like Madrid. Moreover, the terminal floor is encapsulated in the oval tunnel, which wraps itself around the floor as it extends to the lower jetway. Really beautiful, innovative architecture – though now a few years old. The wooden ceiling of the boxy security area is frayed and not so attractive.

It is unclear which part of terminal 2E collapsed in 2004, but if the K-gates departure area is new, it dates to 2008, otherwise 2003. There is a nice YouTube offering of the 2E E-gates which look substantially like the K-gates area (I have never experienced such a confusing nomenclature of terminals and gates as at CDG).

To the left is the roof over the jetty, and below you can see how it curves around down under the jetty to meet the ramp to the jetway.

Despite the collapse, the building maintains its curved structure without any internal supports. Apparently it wasn't the architectural design that was at fault but material defects, which I hope have been corrected. A shame if it is rebuilt in a boxy style, like the Kansai International Airport (KIX). Soaring spaces, yes, but all rectangles, steel and glass. No soft woods, soft lines that really sooth when travelling.