"Japanese Food - Better Than Sex?"

Is Japanese cuisine good? Many in Japan say it's better than anything else in the world. Yes, including THAT. Watch our video for the details!

Source: https://unseenjapan.com/video-japanese-food-better-than-sex/

"Japanese Artist Has Drawn Every Meal He’s Eaten for 32 Years: Behold the Delicious Illustrations of Itsuo Kobayashi"

Image and text from Open Culture, 3/24/2020.

Since the 1980s, Itsuo Kobayashi has drawn a picture of every single meal he eats. However notable we find this practice now, it would surely have struck us as downright eccentric back then. Kobayashi began drawing his food before the arrival of inexpensive digital cameras and cellphones, and well before the smartphone combined the two into the single package we now keep close at hand. We all know people who take camera-phone pictures of their meals, some of them with the regularity and solemnity of prayer, but how many of them could produce lifelike renderings of the food placed before them with only pen and paper?

"The Japanese outsider artist and professional cook, born in 1962, first began keeping food diaries as a teenager," Artnet's Sarah Cascone writes of Kobayashi. "In his 20s, he began adding illustrations of the dishes he made at work, and those he ate while dining out." When, at the age of 46, a "debilitating neurological disorder made it difficult for him to walk, leaving him largely confined to his home," Kobayashi began to focus on his food diaries even more intensely.

His subjects are now mostly "food deliveries — sometimes from restaurants, sometimes from his mother. And though his day-to-day existence rarely varies, he’s been pushing his practice in a new direction, creating a new series of pop-up paintings."

After 32 years of making increasingly detailed and realistic overhead drawings of his every meal — including such information as names, prices, flavor notes, and faithfully replicated restaurant logos — Kobayashi's work has caught the attention of the American art world. The Fukuyama-based gallery Kushino Terrace "gave Kobayashi his US debut in January, at New York’s Outsider Art Fair," Cascone writes. "His works sell for between $500 and $3,000." That makes for quite a step up in prestige from his old job cooking at a soba restaurant, though his copious experience with that dish shows whenever it appears in his diary.

But then, after decade upon decade of daily practice, everything Kobayashi draws looks good enough to eat, from bowls of ramen to plates of curry to bento boxes filled with all manner of delights from land and sea. Though hardly fancy, especially by the advanced standards of Japanese food culture, these are the kind of meals you want to savor, the ones to which you feel you should pay appreciative attention rather than just scarfing down. Or at least they look that way under Kobayashi's gaze, which even the most ardent 21st-century food-photographing hobbyist must envy. Many of us wish to eat more consciously, and the work of this cook-turned-artist shows us how: put down the phone, and pick up the sketchbook.

Read the story and see more images at the source.

Source: http://www.openculture.com/2020/03/japanese-artist-has-drawn-every-meal-hes-eaten-for-32-years.html

Last Day of the Year, Last Toshikoshi Soba...

On New Year's Eve in many parts of Japan it is traditional to eat soba noodles called toshikoshi soba, or "end of the year soba." We usually buy the noodles and soup mixing from a local shop and they are always busy selling soba at the end of the year. I went there today around 4:00 PM and was lucky to get the last package of soba. Must remember to get there earlier next year.

Please note that these photos were taken with my new iPhone 4s, the acquisition of which was one of the last big events of 2011 (and I'm still trying to learn how to use the thing...).

Thank you for your attention and efforts during 2011. Happy Holidays from VAOJ!

Female Body Presentation?

(Photo borrowed from Japan Today, 6/8/09.)

Today's Picture of the Day at Japan Today is rather spicy... Caption reads:

Participants take sweets served on a naked woman, known as Nyotaimori or female body presentation, during a fetish fashion event titled “Night of The Body,” organized by Libido M&J, in Tokyo, on Sunday. Hundreds of people gathered at the event, targeted at fetish fashion enthusiasts, which is a mixture of live performances by pole dancers, a fetish fashion show and other events as a showcase, the organizer said.

Libido M&J have a web site to promote their activities. From their "About" section:

How erotic are you?
How elegant are you?

"Libido”is
sexual drive;
creative force;
appetites.

Concept: Humans need sex, we need love (including self-love) and we have appetites.
All three of these needs can become fetishes.
This party, “Libido M&J,” will showcase fetish people as they express these three human desires in interaction with others in luxurious surroundings.

Details: The party will occur in Sabaku no Bara, in Ginza.
We want to bring the fetish world to Ginza: to show what fetish people are, and how we can get along.
There is no dress code for the party space as a whole, but people in fetish costumes will be allowed entry to the VIP space.
Ten hostesses and hosts, in fetish costumes, will distribute sweets to the VIP room audience, and encourage communication between fetish and non-fetish customers as they circulate around the room.

Link to the Libido web site:
http://www.libidomj.tv/index_e.html