Food Review: Mr Curry by Waraku

Most of my friends know that one of the first few things I do whenever I visit Tokyo is to head for Coco Ichiban Curry house. The curry is delicious and the ingredients are taste, plus you get to put as much preserved veg on your curry as you like.

So when I say Mr. Curry in Central, I thought we could get a good japanese curry experience in Singapore… finally.

So some of my friends went in and order some of the curry sets and I must say that its very dissappointing.

Tim order a beef cury set and when the beef curry came, there was only strands of fats float in the curry with very little trace of meat. We thought it was a mistake, but the waitress told us that its normal, but offer to change another dish for us.

I order a fried oyster curry. The fried kaki was okay, nothing to cry about. However, I find the curry a bit too starchy, almost empty of personality. For around $12 per set, I had expected more.

Now our sets all come with the soup of the day, but I wanted to try their onion soup and found that I had to pay an additional of $2 for the soup. When it came, I regretted paying extra $2 for a bowl of onion water.

All in all, the curry is no where near any good curry house in Japan and for the price, I expected more and got much less.

My verdict: I wouldn’t go there again.

Japanese Dictionary for Palm/WinMo

Having been both users of plam phones (treo 650/centro) and Windows Mobile phone (Treo Pro), having a good japanese dictionary is surely an important addition for those studying Japanese and needs a quick reference to those difficult kanji.

For Palm OS, I found that PADICT is quick, easy to use and more importantly free. You can also search for kanji by writing on your screen. However, the dictionary is not as comprehensive as I would love it to be, but it is good enough for most of my needs.

For WinMo, I have tried 3 japanese dictionaries:

• EBpocket -> could not get the fonts working properly nor the dictionary to work
• Declan Japanese Dictionary –>totally useless, don’t work at all, plus it needs a larger screen then my Treo Pro has

I finally settled on PocketDictionary, together with JapaneseInput, both are incredibly free.  Together they offer the  japanese/kanji input dictionary experience on Treo Pro for me so far. Further the dictionaries are based on the famous Jim Breen’s dictionary.

おいしいそば

I was never impressed with soba, especially 茶そば or even ざるそば. What a waste of money eating nothing but carbohydrates with soy sauce!

Well, not until I tried the ざるそば at Kuriya at Raffles City basement, the other day. I was impressed by the rich texture and taste such a simple meal could afford. I cannot really describe how it tastes like, but its something you know it if you eat it. Even my boyfriend who don’t really like stuff like ざるそ, says its nice.  At least now I know why my friend Tadashi was raving about some soba at　新宿　２ chome. Really makes me want to fly there immediately to try it.

Having tried the soba at Kuriya, I have since tried soba from a lot of other places, but have not been impressed enough yet. For one thing, its my belief that soba should be eaten cold, that how the taste and textures comes out in full. In hot soup, some may just become soggy. However, I belief a good soba shop would know how to dish out good soba in hot soup.

The other day, we were at Shin Kyushiya at Vivo city and I order something similar but its udon.  The dipping sauce is sesame based instead of dashi.  The うどん looks a bit like our hor fun or the vietnamese pho (flat rice noodles), but the texture was good, it was actually unlike typical udon, taste more like a good pho. The dipping sauce was unimpressive but the udon was good. Worth the money spent.

7 stories of love

Eddie took this picture around Ueno station. Its a adult sex shop… 7 stories of it. I went into one of them before, er.. only the first floor…the shelves is fill up boxes of silicon pussy, whole wall of them! I never noticed the wordings on the building until Eddie too this picture. Anyway, the Japanese words at the side of the building says “大人のコンビニ” [Otona no conbini]. Translated: adult’s convenience shop.

Click picture to see bigger (no pun intended!)

Learning Japanese verbs

For many beginners in the Japanese language probably one of the most complex structures are the verbs. The Japanese verbs plays an important part of understanding the speaker’s intentions. Hence, the verb is conjugation (AKA changed) into various forms to express intentions of “to want”, “to become”, “probably will”, “may want”, etc.

The confusion

Now, for the first-half of my self-learning, I could not figure out how godan (五段) verbs and ichidan (一段) verbs were conjugated (AKA changed) and why verbs like:

- nomu (のむ, to drink) become nonde (のんで, drink) or,
- arau (あらう, to wash) becomes araimasu (あらいます, to wash in polite form) and aratte or,
- why aruku (あるく, to walk) becomes aruite (あるいて, walk).

To me, it looks like the entire verb was changing and it was just baffling. I was forced to memorize each verb and each conjugation which became a bottleneck and was just really silly and ineffective way of learning.

Swimming Pool Diary

After about one month in Tokyo, I have finally decided to take the plunge (so to speak). Knowing that every activity in Japan from talking to people to showering have their specify ways about it, I decided that I should find out what its like in the pools here, plus I REALLY need to, you know, excercise.

So off I went to Sendagaya station to the Tokyo Metropolitan Gymnasium. The indoor swimming pool there is the only public one with a 50 metres pool, according to Tadashi. Entrance fees is 600 yen per person and I think its for a 2 hours workout. They also have a multi-visit card, which offers I think 1 free entry or something like that (need to find out next time).

鎌倉 – Kamakura

Kamakura is like a mini version of Kyoto. Its main attraction are the temples, the beaches and an aquarium. However, the temples are probably not as glam or famous as those in Kyoto. Also from some tourist pictures, it looks like you can have a good view of Mount Fuji along the beach (I wonder if that was photoshopped!).

梅祭り (Plum-Flowers Festival)

Before the Sakura festival, we have the plum flowers festival. Some of the plum trees are already blooming with their red or white flowers and the temples should be crowded with photographers snapping away the best flower shots. Click photo to view more

Learning Japanese II

This was some 2 months ago:

I have finally internalised the number system and don’t need to translate it in my head. I normally take this as a good process. Before this, I would have to translate each number painfully into English (or Chinese) first before I could understand it. This movement signifies that the language jump has suceeded and learning should be easier going forward. So now, I will know how much a store keeper is telling me and fork out the correct amount, without having to look at the figures at the cash register.

Desert Storm..

Well, it looks like the desert of a Tokyo finally gave in today. Its SNOWING!! What’s more newspapers reported it to be the heaviest in 5 years!