eating basashi (raw horse meat)

I hear you yammering out there.

"Why?"

"Why do it?"

"Why eat raw horse?"

I didn't know whether putting the phrase "raw horse meat" in the title of this post was a good idea or not. It might make you interested enough to read more, or it might turn you completely off and make you quit following this blog in disgust. Guess I'll take the chance. 

As for your question ("Why?"), all I can say is, Because it was there.

In Kumamoto, that is. Where I was  between August 6th and 8th. And you know me: if there's a weird food around, I'm going to try it. I've had pig intestines, alligator nuggets, ostrich burgers, live octopus, canned snails, squid jerky, lamb spleen, buffalo steak, beetle larvae, dried scorpion and cricket lollipops. I'm not about to quit now. When I heard that Kumamoto was famous for basashi, or horse sushi, I knew I just had to try it.

It was something of a family betrayal. My parents and (maternal) grandparents are all horse people. My grandfather, between fighting in the Korean War, raising four children and being a traveling veterinary supply salesman, had a humongous and gorgeous ranch in Grass Valley, about 30 minutes north of Sacramento in Placer County—the same county I was born in, actually. He raised Shetland ponies and later Clydesdale horses.

Please tell me you know what a Clydesdale is. You've seen them before. They're the Budweiser horses—and in fact, some of the ones Grandpa raised wound up being part of that famous Budweiser hitch in years past.

Clydesdales in New Zealand. From Wikimedia Commons.

My parents raised mustangs on their two-acre property in the Mojave Desert. Mustangs, just so you know, are feral horses descended from the Iberian breeds that escaped from the Spanish explorers hundreds of years ago. There are herds of 'em roaming around the wilds of Oklahoma, Nevada and Utah, hardy and wild. My folks would adopt them from the Bureau of Land Management's facility up in Ridgecrest and then truck them back to our spread in California: breaking them, training them and riding them around the desert.

Free-roaming mustangs in Arizona. From Wikimedia Commons.

So, naturally, when I told the folks back home that I was going to eat horse meat, their reaction was mixed. Mum has generally been quite supportive of me in my adventures (half-baked or no), but I understood why this would give her pause. I felt worse about the effect this knowledge would have on Gramp 'n' Gran, but I steeled myself. I knew I wouldn't rest until I'd sampled this stuff. I wasn't going to be disinherited, for Pete's sake. And you're only young once.

So, after getting back from Kumamoto Castle, I went to a big, well-lit shōtengai (shopping arcade) just west of the Shirakawa River, south of Ginza Street. I poked around, asking locals where the nearest basashi place was. After a few minutes, I found what seemed like a likely spot. I should have taken a picture of the façade before I went in, but I didn't. Trying to get one after I left only made the lens fog up. So you'll just have to imagine a tiny storefront with a customer service window, the plate-glass in the door, the red lanterns (the standard, well, standard for an after-work hangout that serves beer and snacks, known as an izakaya) and gaudy signs with curvy Japanese letters.

The interior was essentially the size of a walk-in closet. It might even have been smaller (I've been in some crazy walk-in closets). There was a long wooden counter where about seven or eight customers could rest comfortably, and a line of huge sake bottles arranged along the top. A tough, lean, competent-looking fellow lurked behind them, bustling about. After a brief look at the menu, during which it became apparent that I'd be forking over 1,500 yen for this, I ordered and settled in to wait. To give me something to do while he sliced up my horse meat, the owner gave me this to munch on:

I sipped beer, nibbled on bean-pods and watched TV, trying to look and feel like a competent, street-savvy world traveler. I lamented the fact that I couldn't see what the owner was doing; my view of his hands and his work was obscured by the counter and the plenitude of signage in front of me. I'd have loved to see my basashi take shape under the knife.

After a few more minutes, this cornucopia of buttery goodness appeared before me:

C'est pas vrai! Succulent slices of horse meat (two different cuts, no less), plus various condiments! What a feast!

I could have ordered another beer, but I thought I'd keep my palate—and my head—clear. And so I dug in. It was just as I had read: horse meat, particularly raw horse meat, is a great deal sweeter than other meats. It was firm as well, easy to chew and swallow. I don't think even a single piece became lodged between my teeth. It was downright delectable when dipped in soy sauce. I must say, I could have munched on the stuff for hours.

I even took a video. All it shows is my frizzy hair, blurry shots of the meat, and the TV blaring in the background. And me eating. I think you can imagine that without outside assistance.

Though satisfied in the most epistemological sense, I was still a bit peckish. So after I paid the bill and left the basashi shop, I sought out this restaurant back in the main arcade, a few hundred feet away:

Curry is something I know the Japanese are obsessed with (as they are with other things Indian in origin, such as Buddhism), and I wanted to see how well they did it. This place had about a thousand different varieties, some uniquely Japanese in flavor. I sat down, ordered up a plate of thin-sliced beef curry, and dug in. In a word: satisfying.

Then I returned to the hotel and slept like the dead. I usually do when I'm stuffed to the gills.

Tomorrow: the last day in Kumamoto. There's only two things on my to-do list: MUSASHIZUKA PARK and REIGANDŌ. We'll talk about the park (and more about my hero, Miyamoto Musashi) then.

a day at the races

I love it when I get to drop Marx Brothers references in my blog post titles, but this one is especially apt. I just came off the perfect weekend in Seoul, and it wasn't even a holiday. Yet.

Here's what happened on Saturday, . First, Miss H and I went on our first double-date. It was one of my best buds from Sejong University, whom I'll call Sam, and his girlfriend JB. We went to Seoul Racecourse Park and bet on the ponies:

I even included a video for you schmucks, 'cause I think that highly of you: this is the final stretch of the 7th heat:

I was slightly disappointed. This was my first horse race, but even though I'd known in advance that they only ever made one lap of the track, it still went by too quickly and ended too abruptly. On the other hand, the palpable excitement we felt when the racers rounded the final curve and went flat-out on the home stretch, with the Koreans yelling and stomping all around us, and their cheers and shouts gradually building to an inhuman roar, was something to experience.

Then we went to our favorite Uzbek restaurant in Seoul (yes, we have one): the Fortune Café. Left to right: lagman (lamb and noodle soup); shiz-biz (bits of mutton and onion over French fries); and manti (enormous meaty dumplings, boiled or steamed); and there were at least five varieties of Baltika beer to go with it. (No. 7 is my usual favorite.) A steady stream of Russian pop music videos on the TV set guaranteed that we were never at a loss for something to listen to when conversation waned.

 
The Fortune Café is in Dongdaemun, which is sort of the Russian district of Seoul. So we also stopped by one of the many tiny Russian markets in the vicinity. We walk into the first one and see this:

Holy cow, ain't nobody got a selection of vodka like that around here. I nabbed some Parliament-brand vodka and a bottle of Napoleon brandy (French stuff; I've heard it's excellent). Score!

Then we walked back outside into the dying evening light. And lo and behold, what did we see but a grand parade! It was the Lotus Day Parade, an early celebration of Buddha's Birthday, which would be coming the next weekend. Take a look! It was an amazing spectacle.

 

Each group of people represented a different Buddhist temple in the vicinity of Seoul, and each had different flags and lanterns of all shapes and hues. And it wasn't just Koreans, either: the Chinese and Tibetan diaspora were out in force as well, with the flags of their nations and their own brand of Buddhism on display.

After the temple-goers passed in review, we moseyed down the road in the direction of the Dongdaemun gate, viewing the floats and moving sculptures people had fabricated for the occasion. The elephant dipped its head...

...and the lotus flower opened and shut, giving birth to Siddhartha over and over again.

When we'd finished viewing the parade, we slid down an alley to a tent city filled with cheap merchandise and street food.

This is a mixture of noodles, onions, cabbage, spicy red sauce, and sundae (noodles wrapped in the lining of pig intestines, a Korean favorite). It was surprisingly good. We got ripped off, though; these two plates and the four cans of warm beer cost us 40,000 won, or roughly $36.

And then it was time for the evening's crowning glory: a gem of a place I had no idea existed anywhere in Seoul. It's called an LP bar:

This one was called the Sam Cooke, after the American soul singer. It's near Hyehwa Station, north of Dongdaemun, near Seoul University. These LP bars are the bee's knees. Sam Cooke was no exception. It was quite dark (as you can see from the photos) and the decor was eclectic: photos of the Beatles on the walls, cubist paintings behind the booths, an image of Che Guevara by the door. We walked in, sat down, and looked around. The shelves behind the bar were filled with vinyl records. There were two turntables on the counter just going like the clappers, and sound—a sound I'd not heard played in public for 15 months—was blasting out of the speakers.

Classic rock.

No joke! These LP bars sprang up back in the 1960s when Park Chung-hee outlawed listening to Western music. Enterprising bar owners sneaked onto American army bases and bought LPs off the G.I.s, secreting them in their establishments and playing them after dark for willing patrons. Now these LP bars are old and scuffed, just like the records they play, but they survive as novelties, places where oldsters can go to feel nostalgic and young 'uns can go to feel hip. And that's surely what we felt as we scribbled arcane requests on slips of paper, giving them to the barman up front. Our eyes widened and our souls soared as we heard the familiar tunes piping out of the speakers a few minutes later. It was downright psychadelic to sit there sipping beer in a dark wooden bar while the Doors' "The End" oozed serenely out of the speaker grilles. 

And that was just Saturday. On Sunday, our old friend Joanna, Miss H and I went to Myeong-dong to go shooting (in and out, no pictures), had some delectable Italian food and then went down to Gwacheon to hit up Seoul Zoo. Another full, lovely day in the third-largest city in the world!

I'll just leave you with this bear to keep you company until my next adventure-filled post.

Stay tuned...

Swedish farriers and so on

This weekend was somewhat...odd. I had a Swedish man in my living room the whole time talking about horses' hooves.

His name was Ove Lind, and he was a farrier (somebody who works on horses' hooves, clipping them and making sure they're healthy). He's attracted the attention of a well-to-do horsewoman in the area named Melissa who is busily showing him around. He lives out of a van somewhere in Nevada and gives talks on his revolutionary new method of hoof care and feeding. These techniques are supposedly guaranteed to extend the life of the hoof (and thereby the horse).

Our neighbor, Sharon, was supposed to host one of his talks at her house, but it seems that her domicile is ill-suited to large groups and prohibitively hard to reach. Our house being lower down on the slopes of the San Gabriel Mountains, easier to find, and larger, Sharon convinced Mom to host the event. In return, Mom and Dad didn't have to pay the $150 admission fee.

All the previous week Mom and Sharon were out at Smart & Final buying up the necessary supplies: buns, lunch meat, mixed vegetables, fruit salad, potato salad, tortilla chips, plastic forks, paper plates, and all that lot. They moved all the furniture out of the family room and into the living room (where the computer is) and unfolded all of the tables and chairs Sharon rented. Then, all Saturday and all Sunday, 9 a.m. to 6 p.m. (and even after), Ove stood in the front room with a projector and some hoof bones and talked. And talked. And talked.

A refreshingly different and charming accent he may have had, but even that got to be wearing after the first six hours; especially all the endless jive about coffin-bones and foundering and ionized silver. Honestly, the man didn't know when to quit. There were occasional breaks for snacks and lunch, which was the only time I budged from my room and greeted the half-dozen or so Apple Valley horsewomen who'd come to our house to hear Mr. Lind speak. The rest of the time I stayed in my hidey-hole and read comic books, or wrote, or fooled around on my computer, or blogged. It was nice having all that time to myself, but it became hideously boring all too soon.

On a lighter note, the weather's been lovely: for some reason, yesterday, the sun was mild and the breeze almost cool, so that it never strayed much above 90. Then in the evening a truly temperate sea breeze began blowing and the temperature dropped further. It got down to 54 last night, and it didn't get above 80 today. Yippee! Mom and I took a glorious walk in the cool wind with Maggie and Harriet. It was glorious. Feels like fall's already here.

This weekend was also opening weekend for NFL football season. Normally I've had only a passing interest in sports, but I've decided to follow football more closely: particularly my favorite team, the San Diego Chargers. Tonight's game was San Diego vs. Oakland: my most beloved team versus my most hated adversary. The Raiders play so dirty and their fans are so ill-mannered and disreputable that everybody in the western conferences hates them. When I finally got tired and left during the third quarter, the score was tied up 10-10. The Chargers were having a horrendous time on defense, and despite decent showings in offense, including a couple of brilliant catches, the Raiders kept turning over the ball. I'll see what the score is tomorrow morning. It had better be good.

In current events, Saturday was September 11th: the anniversary of the attack on the Twin Towers. Of course there was a humongous memorial celebration in New York, with live music, speeches, and an impressive cluster of spotlights whose combined beams imprinted the ghostly images of the World Trade Center on the damp night sky. There were a few news stories here and there about 9/11-related charities and political rehashes...and of course, the obligatory slew of documentaries. Apart from that, the day was just like any other day.

...except that I got called into work unexpectedly early. Mark, the editorial assistant, phoned me at 9:06 a.m. He asked if I could come in. I said I'd be there at eleven when the Pastor was scheduled to come in and talk to me about his Life Changing Mentor Program. Mark said the sooner I could come in, the better. I put down the phone, sighed, got ready, and left. I arrived at just after ten, and got some obituaries done. Then the Pastor (from Ontario) and his Victorville counterpart sat in Ron's office and gave us the rundown on their program. I scribbled notes like mad, trying to keep up and not look like a fool in front of the editor. I think I managed to be pretty thorough. I paid close attention to the questions that Ron asked the pastors, to try to get an idea of the news values involved in such a situation as this, as well as which story angles Ron places the highest priority on. Afterward, Ron assigned me to write an article detailing what Life Changing Ministries was doing up here in the High Desert (starting up the mentor program), what they needed most right now (volunteers and partner organizations), and any upcoming events (a talk given by the Presiding Judge of the San Bernardino County Juvenile Court, Marsha Slough). I think I did pretty well on it. I'll find out tomorrow.

Wish me luck, William Zinsser.