Gender: Female
Status: Married
Age: 100
Sign: Gemini
City: San Francisco
State: California
Country: US
Signup Date: 9/1/2007
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Saturday, October 17, 2009
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Current mood:  hungry
 When
someone tells me about their love of Japanese food, I probe a little
deeper and ask, “What kind of Japanese food do you like?” Often the
answer will be “sushi” and upon further discussion the favorite sushi
will turn out to be a roll with an exotic name (Dragon, Caterpillar,
49er) and with even more exotic ingredients: fried prawns, sweet
potatoes, mozzarella. Now I love sushi (why else would I call my
blog chirashi?) and have nothing against rolls with names like Super
Crunchy and Titanic, if that’s what the market will bear. But I guess
what I look for when I go out for Japanese food is something that will
give me as close of a taste as possible as what I could get in Japan.  I’m
fortunate to live in the San Francisco Bay Area where we have a
multitude of choices of fine Japanese restaurants. But what is
interesting is how the landscape has changed over the years. While you
can still get some good Japanese food in San Francisco, I find that the
most authentic Japanese restaurants are in the area between San Mateo
and San Jose where the bulk of Japanese expatriates and temporary
workers live. This makes sense because these people will demand dishes
and flavors that remind them of home and restaurants that cater to
these will survive. So along with real Japanese food, these places will
be loaded with customers who are speaking Japanese and probably staff
that speaks the language as well, which lends even more to the
authenticity for me. By now I have the choice of experiencing many types of Japanese cuisine right in my own backyard. Restaurants Kaygetsu (Menlo Park), Wakuriya (San Mateo) and Nami Nami (Mountain View) offer authentic kaiseiki and kappo cuisine that is not easy to find outside of Japan. If I’m in the mood for a bowl of ramen I have several choices: Halu (San Jose), Santouka (Mitsuwa Marketplace in San Jose), Santa (San Mateo) and Himawari (San Mateo). A new addition to the area is Curry House
(Cupertino) a Japan-based chain that specializes in Japanese takes on
Western foods like curry, gratin and pasta, which are ubiquitous in
Japan but have been hard to find here. So next time you have a
hankering for a Caterpillar roll, you may want to try something a
little different and take advantage of the wide array of taste
experiences Japanese cuisine has to offer.
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Wednesday, September 30, 2009
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Current mood:  animated
Very happy to present the book trailer for Love in Translation, which comes out on November 24. “A
delightful novel about love, identity, and what it means to be adrift
in a strange land. This story of a search has an Alice in Wonderland
vibe; when Celeste climbs down the rabbit hole, one can't help but
follow along.” —Michelle Richmond, New York Times bestselling author of
The Year of Fog “An amusing story of one woman's quest for her
father and the improbable path of love.”—Meg Waite Clayton, author of
The Wednesday Sisters
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Friday, September 04, 2009
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Current mood:  disappointed
Category: Fashion, Style, Shopping
 I visited the new New People
mall in San Francisco’s Japantown a few days after its grand opening
the weekend of August 16. For as long as I can remember, I’ve been a
sucker for Japantown’s, Little Tokyo’s, Japanese malls, stores, urants,
etc. located anywhere outside of Japan. I’ve found them in Paris (in
the Opera district) and Dusseldorf and in more typical places like
Seattle, Los Angeles, Orange County, New York City, San Jose, San Mateo
and, of course, my hometown of San Francisco.  San
Francisco’s Japantown stood in for Japan for me before I ever traveled
abroad and I made the best of I could of it, enjoying the only Japanese
bookstore for miles around (Kinokuniya) and my first tastes of sushi
and udon at Toraya, which is still in business and happens to be right
next door to New People. 
But
I tend to get over-excited about these things and my expectations run
high. And when I heard about New People I figured that finally we’d be
getting something that you actually might encounter in Tokyo or Osaka.
And by looking at the physical structure, it does look like it would
fit right in, though any kind of center like this in Tokyo would
probably have at least five more floors (I envisioned something like
109 in Shibuya, but then, as I said, I’m a dreamer). And it boasts a
hip design and is all shiny and new. There’s supposed to be a
cafe and I guess you could call it that, but it’s really just the
concession stand for the movie theater (albeit with bento boxes from
Delica and Blue Bottle Coffee). Again, I envisioned something like the
very pleasant and cool cafe at Kinokuniya in Manhattan that has its own
space and actual seating. The flagship New People store sells
books, DVDs, toys, trinkets, etc. that are largely anime and manga
related. It’s a nice airy space, but it struck me that the merchandise
wasn’t too different from what you can buy at Kinokuniya or several of
the other gift stores in the Japantown mall. On the next floor
are two clothing stores and the footwear shop Sou-Sou. This floor feels
empty and maybe there will be additions in the future, but it felt
unfinished. The clothing, unlike the variety you would find in La Foret
in Harajuku or the aforementioned 109 in Shibuya, is of the extreme
niche variety favored by some anime fans—mainly frilly Lolita Goth.
This is fine, but it would be great to see all kinds of Japanese
fashion represented at New People. There is also a museum in the
complex, but it was “closed for repairs” the day I was there so I can’t
comment on it. And there is a movie theater, which is a welcome
addition to Japantown, which long ago lost the Kokusai Theater to a
Denny’s. The Kabuki Sundance theaters do host the Asian Film Festival
but they don’t show first-run Japanese movies very often. It looks as
though the New People cinema won’t only be showing anime and will
embrace other types of Japanese film and that’s a good thing. All
in all I am glad to see that there is anything new in Japantown, but
New People, at least at this point, is kind of a disappointment.
Perhaps it will expand and grow in the future and I do wish it well.
But it caters more toward the more narrow American anime/manga fan view
of what Japanese pop culture is, which isn’t surprising since the
vision is from the head of the Viz Media empire.  Ironically, a branch of the Japanese “livingware” supplier, Daiso,
has recently opened in Japantown. Daiso is famous for its 100-yen shops
in Japan and has nine stores in the U.S. It should tell you something
that the biggest branch is in Union City and that one of the last
places it opened was in Japantown. Japantown does not attract many
Japanese expats because so many of them live in the South Bay and this
is also why some of the best, most authentic Japanese restaurants are
south of San Francisco. And this is why sometimes when I’m at Curry
House in Cupertino I feel more like I’m in Japan than when I’m visiting
Japantown.
Walking through the latest branch of Daiso, with 99 percent
of the products made in China, but designed with the Japanese
sensibility I first fell in love with in Tokyo years ago, it struck me
that this is what evokes the real Japan to me much more than New
People.
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Monday, August 17, 2009
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Current mood:Fashionable
Category: Fashion, Style, Shopping
 When
I lived in Tokyo in the 1980s one of my favorite pastimes was observing
the street fashion bursting all around me (and trying in my own way to
emulate it). And every time I have visited Japan since (trips too
numerous to count!), I still can’t get enough of it. I’m not talking
about the more over-the-top stuff like Lolita Goth or those manga maids
and cos-play, or the wildness you might see in the Fruits
series. And I’m not talking about Gwen Stefani’s lame attempts at
capturing Harajuku fashion. I’m talking about how many young people
(and some not-so-young) make an effort to look “put-together” when they
go out of the house. In Tokyo or Osaka or Kyoto you don’t just “throw
something on” when you go out, even when you’re running errands. You
take pride in your appearance and feel good about yourself. And
this isn’t all about brands and haute couture. In fact, it’s often
absent from the scene. This is about how young women (and men too) take
disparate pieces of clothing, shoes and accessories and come up with a
creative, fashionable outfit that expresses their personality along
with the latest fashion trends. I was a big fan of the Sex and
the City TV show, but even though I love fashion I was never crazy
about the clothes on that program. The outfits seemed inaccessible and
often the result of over-trending, which led to the four women often
looking like fashion victims instead of trendsetters. I
certainly haven’t been all over the world, but I have spent quality
time in Manhattan, Chicago, Los Angeles and Paris, and have lived most
of my life in San Francisco and its environs. And I think Japan (and
especially Tokyo) still rules the street fashion world. Japanese put an
importance on accessible, smart style that I don’t think exists to this
extent anywhere else in the world, though I have to say I do not have
much experience with London (only spent two days there long ago) and
I’ve yet to visit Hong Kong, Seoul, or Shanghai (which I assume
probably take their cues from Tokyo). Of course I’d love to hop
a plane right now and be back in the thick of Tokyo fashion, but thanks
to the Internet I can see what’s happening on Tokyo streets right now.
There are many Web sites devoted to Tokyo street fashion, but one of my
favorites is Tokyo Street Style.
TSS offers photos of the fashionable strolling the top fashionable
Tokyo districts: Shibuya, Harajuku, Ginza, Daikanyama, and Omotesando
and is updated weekly. When I wanted the art department at my
publisher to change Midori’s face on the original cover of Midori by
Moonlight, I sent them three photos from the Ginza section and they did
a great composite job of creating the face I had envisioned for her. The pictures on TSS are all real people—not models—and show that everyone can have a great sense of style if they want to.
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Thursday, August 13, 2009
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Current mood:  excited
Category: Fashion, Style, Shopping
 The
Internet continues to be all abuzz about the new J-pop Center dubbed
New People that is having its grand opening this Saturday in San
Francisco's Japantown (1746 Post Street). This mall will boast a cafe,
boutiques, an art gallery, movie theater, and more. Here's a good article from my hometown paper, The San Francisco Chronicle, that gives a lot of the details. This is sure to be quite an extravaganza. I
won't be able to make the opening but I plan to go sometime on a
weekday during the following week when things will be a little quieter.
And hopefully, armed with my newish Canon pink PowerShot camera I'll be
able to take some pictures and post them here. 
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Friday, July 31, 2009
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Current mood:Dazzled
 This
looks like such a fascinating play. I wish I could be in New York to
see it. Maybe it will come to San Francisco. heavenly BENTO tells the
story of epic journey of the founding of Sony by two friends who dream
of reconstructing Japan after the country's devastation in the days
following the end of World War II. The video gives you a taste of this
unusual production that will be at the Post Theater September 17-19.
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Monday, July 27, 2009
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Current mood:  focused
 You
can give me twenty lashes with a wet udon noodle if you wish, but I
sure find it difficult to keep up with writing a blog with any amount
of consistency. So I’m trying kind of a different format, which may
allow me to post with a little more frequency. I ran across this article in my hometown newspaper, The San Francisco Chronicle,
which has some good tips for traveling on the cheap in Japan for those
without any knowledge of Japanese. I love Shinjuku, but I’ve never been
to Yakitori Alley so that was a new one on me. And Mail Online offers up a very nice overview of Tokyo,
my favorite city in the world (with San Francisco as a very close
second and Manhattan as third). Many foreigners who travel or live in
Japan are partial to Kyoto and while I like it there, I consider myself
a Tokyo girl. Some nice photos here too.  And if you’re an otaku or just play one on TV, you’ll want to check out a review in The Japan Times on two new books: The Otaku Encyclopedia and Otaku: Japan’s Database Animals. Read more on the latter at the publisher’s site here.
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Friday, July 10, 2009
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Goodreads is a great community site for both readers and writers. And
I'm pleased that they are doing a giveaway of three copies of MIDORI BY
MOONLIGHT. Check it out here and if you're a book lover take a minute and join Goodreads.
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Wednesday, July 01, 2009
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Current mood:  creative
Category: Writing and Poetry
Hope you'll check out my new book trailer for Midori by Moonlight on my MySpace Profile. I made this video myself with Apple's iMovie. My husband composed the music. It was a lot of fun to make and I hope you enjoy it!
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Tuesday, June 23, 2009
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Current mood:  hungry
Category: Food and Restaurants
 I
have finally found a Japanese cookbook that is as good as having my
Japanese mother-in-law by my side in the kitchen. Amy Kaneko’s “Let’s Cook Japanese Food! Everyday Recipes for Home Cooking”
(Chronicle Books) demystifies Japanese cooking and, most importantly
for me, offers a number of recipes for “yoshoku” cuisine, those Western
dishes the Japanese have borrowed from other cultures and made uniquely
their own. These include mapo dofu (China), gratin (France), tempura
(Portugal), and many more. Japanese food means a lot of
different things to different people, from gloppy teriyaki sauce dumped
on steak to spider rolls on up to the pristine presentation of delicate
small plates (kaiseki) that take years to master. But the dishes in
“Let’s Cook Japanese Food!” are those you would encounter in a Japanese
home or at an informal Japanese coffee shop restaurant in a department
store. You’ll find many authentic favorites here, everything from
Toriniku Kara-age (Fried Marinated Chicken) to Miso Soup to Omu Raisu
(Omelet Stuffed with Tomatoey Chicken Rice) to my Japanese husband’s
favorite, Okonomiyaki (“As-You-Like-It” Pancake). Like me,
Kaneko is an American who married into a Japanese family. Unlike me,
she is a great cook and learned well from her mother-in-law and
sister-in-law. Her easy-to-use cookbook has now turned me into a pretty
decent Japanese cook. My Mapo Dofu (Chinese Style Spicy Tofu with Pork)
and Sunomono (Cucumber and Shrimp Vinegared Salad) went over quite well
with my husband last night. “Oishii!” he said. That means “delicious,”
a comment that will make a cook from any country beam with pride.
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