Homu Cooking

I had this dish the other day for the first time, which is funny considering how it's apparently such a standard dish here in the warmer months. It's called hiyashi chuuka which means "chilled noodles" basically, which is what it is. It turned out to be not that hard to make, but the one I ate at my office the other day was much better : / For one, I forgot the red pickled-ginger and also forgot to boil the bean sprouts. Oh, well..for first time it came out not too bad, I think (see pic above). It's really refreshing during hot, muggy days since its served chilled and with cool veggies. Other nice part is it only takes a few minutes to make. : )

I've been trying to cook some of my favorite dishes at home and although I'm still a long way off from nailing them, it's fun to try anyway(and edible, I might add!). I also tried to make hijiki nimono the other day. That one is a bit more involved, but since it's one of my favorites, I'll keep trying - ganbarimasu~! Maybe next one I will try a super easy one, namely, the infamous kare raisu (Japanese Curry Rice). We'll see how it goes ...

Moriyama Exhibit at Tokyo Photography Museum

I went to see a photo exhibit of Daido Moriyama at the Tokyo Shashin Bijutsukan recently. He is a famous post-war photographer from Osaka who innovated a style of high contrast, blurry, grainy photos, often with skewed horizons. He refers to himself as a "stray dog" (title of the image above) since a large part of his time as a freelance photographer was spent roaming the city streets and sometimes isolated areas. His work reminded me that you can see some amazing things in ordinary everyday life (if you are looking closely enough). They showed a video after and its incredible how this guy takes photos (sometimes not even looking through the lens, just quick, bold, and no hesitation). What was also cool was he seemed to 'paint' his photos as much as he take them with his exposure techniques. Check ut some shots on his official site by clicking his name at the top of the post.

Inspired by the show, I took some "shirokuro" (black and white) shots myself below ... with a little help from the digital darkroom, of course : )