Gil Asakawa's Nikkei View | food & dining
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February 2, 2008

Erin and I went out to eat tonight at Thai Basil, a very popular restaurant in southeast Denver. We had eaten there a couple of weeks ago with friends and enjoyed the food, so we decided to give it a shot on our own. The food was fine once again -- we had chicken coconut soup for starters, and Thai curry lime beef and sesame tofu for entrees. But during the meal, it occurred to us that aside from one woman at a nearby table, we were the only Asians dining in the packed room. The servers were mostly Asian, but on the way in this time, I noted that the owner and much of the staff is Chinese, not Thai. These observations maybe are unimportant if the food is great, but I started wondering about the importance of authenticity in ethnic cuisine. First of all, does it matter what ethnicity the staff, owners and even maybe the chefs are, if they can make great Thai food, or Chinese, or Japanese or Korean? Shouldn't the end quality of the food be the measure of a restaurant's quality? Yes. And... I've had various ethnic cuisines served up by people not of the ethnicity and had the food fail the taste test. Even years ago in New York City, when I was in college, I was so desperate for Mexican food that I went into a Mexican restaurant in Greenwich Village, only to be served enchiladas with spaghetti sauce -- no lie -- poured over them. That's why that Pace Picante tagline works so well: "...from where? NEW YORK CITY?"
January 1, 2008

I've been drinking something that tastes like dirt. I've also been drinking something else that tastes like weeds. Both are supposed to be good for me. It's an Asian thing -- there's a cultural fascination in with potions and powders and pills outside of "Western" medicine and healthcare. I don't doubt that a lot of Eastern alternatives work, and not just acupuncture. Some of it is that foreign countries simply have different medicines. I grew up taking Japanese pills called "Ru-Ru" (more or less pronounced that way) because my mom used it for everything from headaches to colds and fevers and just plain old feeling icky. She still buys bottles of it when she goes back to Japan. The pharmacist at her hometown drugstore recognizes her everytime she returns to stock up on Ru-Ru and other Japanese drugs. Beyond pharmaceuticals, there are a lot of other health products marketed to Asians that might make non-Asians scratch their heads. Or just laugh. For instance, there's a popular tea called "Diet Tea" that shows up in Asian grocery stores. We've tried it, and it helps people "diet" by serving as a powerful laxative. You'll lose weight, all right. But it won't be from managing what you eat. Along these lines, I've been drinking up powders that were given to me: Aojiru and Ginseng Tea.
December 1, 2007

Glico caramels

In the U.S., snack food manufacturers in recent years have become creative, and come up with a variety of flavor combinations beyond the old barbecue-flavor potato chips or the nacho cheese flavored Doritos. Now you can get black pepper and olive oil Triscuits, or chili-lime flavored corn chips. But American palates probably aren't ready for some of the flavors that are available in Japan.

October 14, 2007

We ended the week with a flurry of shopping at the famous Flea Market at Aloha Stadium.
Sat. Sept. 22 It's our last day in Honolulu, but we're now slowing down. It's jam-packed, with a trip to the fabled Flea Market that Erin has been raving about since we've been planning the trip. It's a sale that's held every Wednesday and Saturday at Aloha Stadium near the airport, and it's truly a treasure trove of inexpensive omiyage – gifts to take back to the mainland. There are vendors with t-shirts as cheap as eight for $20; ties for $5; aloha shirts for under $10. It's a shopper's delight, and a negotiator's training ground. Everyone haggles for a better price. In my case, I was proud to have talked a woman down on her Hawaiian print ties, only to find a vendor a few booths down who had them even cheaper. C'est la vie.

October 14, 2007

We didn't see many geckoes during our visit, but here's one tiny one we saw next to a sculpture of a gecko, outside Richela's front door.
Friday, Sept. 21 Another big food day. We're eating our way across Oahu. It was also a day of hunting history. We began the day with Richela, who joined us in a drive downtown to the Japanese Cultural Center of Hawai'i. It's a very nice facility in a nice building, with a museum, gift shop and research library dedicated to the history of Japanese Americans in Hawaii.

September 30, 2007

Tamashiro Market, a jam packed shop on a busy street corner. Bill took us there for corn flake cookies, which were, as promised, fantastic.
Thursday, Sept. 20 This was a food and friendship day. We got up and had a leisurely morning, hanging around Richela's condo. Then Erin and I drove past downtown to meet up with Bill Rose, one of the more intriguing people I know. So let me tell you about Bill Rose.

September 27, 2007

One of the beaches Richela drove us to along the eastern shore of Oahu.
Wednesday, Sept. 19 It was sad leaving Laura and John's in Mililani – it's a beautiful and comfortable home, and they were so gracious and generous, it felt like we've known them all our lives. At the same time, we were looking forward to seeing Erin's friend Richela, who we knew from the Colorado Dragon Boat Festival. She's half Japanese, half Chinese, and she volunteered and helped Erin with the festival's performing arts stage. She moved from Denver to Honolulu several years ago; she's a native of Hawaii who lived in Colorado for over two decades. She now lives in a condo along the marina in an area west of downtown Honolulu called Hawaii Kai, with two cats, Sporty (who looks like a mature, heavier version of our black-and-white, Rufus) and a handsome gray and tan cat named Tokyo. We reserved the day for sightseeing, nothing else. No shopping (!), no family research. Of course, eating was allowed.

September 24, 2007

Hawaiian specialites at Helena's: (from foregournd, left to right) poi, kahlua pork, a bit of Hawaiian seasoned salt, lau lau, lomi salmon, fried ahi tuna, haupia (with sliced onion, which we ate with the salt), tofu, beef stew and more lau lau.
Tuesday, Sept. 18 We spent the day with Regine, Laura's twin sister, and the evening with Laura and John. She lives just a few minutes away in the older section of Mililani, land of rusty dirt. She came to pick us up but we headed straight back to her house because I needed her son William, an extremely tall (for someone who's 3/4-Asian) handsome lad who speaks flawless Japanese and is some sort of young genius studying Japanese and poli-sci in college, to scan a few pages out of an old yearbook for me. The yearbook is for McKinley High School, the imposing campus right in downtown Honolulu, not far from the state capitol and royal palace grounds. It's the school my oldest aunt attended, and so did some of the Hanzawa family members. Auntie Harriet had borrowed the McKinley yearbook for 1939 from a friend of hers who remembered my Aunt Miki, the one everyone says was "the smart one," and the one who would have attended the University of Hawaii if my grandfather hadn't taken the entire family back to Japan. Miki, or Michiko, shows up on a list of students who were inducted into the National Honor Society. The page with her senior portrait lists her accomplishments: "Asakawa, Michiko – McKinley Government Magazine & Map Chairman; National Honor Society; Torch Society."