mongo
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Posts posted by mongo
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On 12/31/2024 at 3:21 PM, Orik said:
2. Airbnb is extremely limited in Tokyo, maybe take a look at serviced apartments for additional options. e.g. this company has good quality and value https://www.tokyoapartments.jp/ and ASR has a bazillion different properties (I imagine the Oakwood line is closest to what you'd want). Note that in some cases a listing will say it's for a month or more but that's just for regulatory reasons. I dunno about Sumida in general but if you have specific locations I can tell you about them.asr doesn't seem to have much for our dates. i've sent in an enquiry to tokyo apartments. not sure if they will respond: on the page where you send in an enquiry it says reservations are not available to individuals with addresses outside japan. and so i selected the "in japan" address option.
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i've held off on writing more because it all seems inadequate. like most of us on mouthfuls who are not based in nyc--and perhaps even like most of us who are--i knew sneak online. yes, i'd met him and eaten with him in new york but as far as i'm concerned our friendship was entirely an internet one. it's hard for people who're not severely online as most of us are and have been for a long time to understand the nature and depth of friendships that exist largely/only on online forums/groups. and the loss of people you didn't know "in real life" is not supposed to hurt so much. but sneak's death hurts a lot and i can only imagine how much larger the loss is for people like jesikka, mitch and others who did know him well offline as well as on.
i don't remember exactly when sneak joined mouthfuls. my path had not crossed his on egullet (where i did not have much to do with the nyc forum) and i'm pretty sure he was not here during the energetic and fractious early years of mouthfuls. people have mentioned his joining in 2007 or so. i would have guessed later. but whenever it was, i remember feeling a little bit of proprietary prickliness when this sneakeater guy showed up and was posting all the time and quickly zooming up the "most posts" charts. and, yes, i rolled my eyes too in the early days over his accounts of his outings with much younger women. but it wasn't very long before i was won over by him.
quite simply, he was the best of us. he was deeply knowledgeable (about so many aspects of culture) but he never used his knowledge as a weapon; i can't remember him ever putting anyone down. he was not shy with his opinions but he was always generous even with people he must have disagreed with severely (on specifics or with their broader worldviews). he was not someone who avoided disagreement or wanted mouthfuls to be a bland place without any drama but he managed to stay above it all even when he participated in discussions that got other people (not least me in the bad old days) very exercised. his interest in food, music, literature, film etc. of all kinds was exceptional in an internet culture that sees most people double down on unexamined cultural positions. it was clear what kinds of things he loved most of all but it was also clear that he resisted cultural hierarchies of taste. and in the last decade, as mouthfuls, and pretty much every other discussion forum of old, grew increasingly silent, losing members to social media or more complicated personal lives, he was one of those who kept it alive and made the discussions that were still happening vital and worth reading. (he was also very funny.)
i am sorry that as my own participation lessened, even before but especially after the loss of the old site, i didn't get to interact with him on the forums as much as i used to. i'm sorry that i never told him how much i admired him, how much i learned from him, and how much his opinion of me meant to me. i'm very sorry that i never reached out to him until it was too late after hearing the initial news of his diagnosis. but i'm very glad to have known him--i wish it could have been for longer.
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echoing stone. sneak was the heart and soul of mouthfuls for the last decade and a model of critical acumen and generosity. i’ll write more in a few days; been feeling quite devastated since i heard.
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the roles seem to have flipped at some point.
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i confess i only look at what shows up online and haven't paid much attention. so, yeah, i suppose the new yorker gig may not be as prestigious as i thought it was (though still prestigious).
for a while when she started there she wasn't reviewing restaurants per se. she was always quick to point that she wasn't a restaurant reviewer. now she clearly is. if she's interested the times would be stupid to not hire her. though given the fact that they have allowed priya krishna to write restaurant reviews...
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i guess the times critic is the biggest restaurant critic job in the u.s. me, i'd find it hard to leave the new yorker.
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you certainly made good use of my recommendations.
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On 1/1/2025 at 1:17 PM, Orik said:
They've recently repriced it so it makes little sense for tourists.
this is pretty crazy. as far as i can make out, a reserved seat on a tokyo-kyoto train will run about $92 and a reserved seat on a kyoto-osaka train will run around $20. that's $112. so just what kind of hectic 7-day itinerary would someone need to be on to make a $331 pass worth it?
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7 hours ago, Anthony Bonner said:
I was talking to someone over the break who told me Kyoto felt like Disney world when the went this fall.
well, we managed to enjoy rome, florence and venice in june 2023 despite the crush and so i think we will be able to cope with crowds in kyoto (and being there in moist season will likely help too).
ori: why no reason to go to osaka? the web tells me it's japan's premier food city etc.. is this just a lie put out by tokyo foodies to redirect tourists?
i will say that my own initial instinct had been to spend 10 whole days in tokyo. our boys actually enjoy walking around cities and eating out (it's just certain kinds of restaurants that we would not take them to). and they'll probably be very excited to explore video game culture etc. all that said, i think we will go to kyoto at a minimum.
not likely to fly anywhere else in japan. this trip--if it comes together as envisioned will be a complicated msp-tokyo-seoul-delhi-msp deal. bullet train to kyoto/osaka and then to seoul from there. but we're unlikely to want to add any more plane time to the travel. june 2026 after the end of the next run of my program is when we might do a tokyo-hokkaido add-on.
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would still be a tenfold upgrade on a priya krishna in full possession of her faculties.
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tejal rao might be at the intersection of those two circles.
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call me naive but i'm also surprised that position reports to the deputy food editor.
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and i am always moist.
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thanks!
i should note that the boys are now monstrously large. they'll be 16.5 and almost 14 at the time of the trip. so they don't really need "kid-friendly" activities and menus. it's just that we can't do kaiseki meals featuring, for example, mountain yam grown at a particular altitude on mt. fuji by monks who have taken a vow of silence on fridays because they probably will not eat it and cultural stereotypes have led me to believe that this will cause a diplomatic incident.
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i think i might have begun a thread on this before the great disappearance. anyway, there's a pretty good chance we will do a 10-day trip to japan this summer. if so, we'll probably be there around june 23-july 3. yes, i know this is not the optimal time to go to japan. but as academics and parents of school-going kids our calendars are pretty constrained. (also we'll be combining this trip with a short visit to seoul for logistical work for the second run of my off-campus program in 2026.) i have some preliminary questions for those who know japan well (ori, sivan) or those who've visited often (you know who you are):
1. what's a good way to break up a first-time 10-day visit? keep in mind that it is not unlikely we will return in the future (as it's easy to tag some time in japan on to the end of my biennial mumbai-seoul program). 5-3-2 tokyo-kyoto-osaka? just tokyo-osaka (7-3) or tokyo-kyoto (7-3), leaving the third city for a subsequent visit?
2. we will probably airbnb in tokyo at least. a quick glance at listings seems to show a number of decent-looking options in our price range (topping out at roughly $300/night all-in for all four of us). however, i have no sense of tokyo neighbourhoods/metro areas. i think ori advised me earlier to not worry about where we stay as long as it's close to a metro station. many of the nicer places in our range seem to be in sumida city or asakusa. a few places in shinjuku as well. any thoughts on these or other locations?
3. as the boys will be with us we're going to keep the eating to non-high-end places probably. they're far less picky than average american kids their age but there are still many things that they will not eat or which will be wasted on them (or which might cause consternation) at rigorous places. so we're not in the market for places that need concierges to book or where great hurt will be caused by uneaten things on plates. what are good places to look for recommendations for sushi, ramen, udon etc. that will be very good but not come with "temple of..." vibes.
4. what are the must-visit sights in your view if you had x days in tokyo/kyoto/osaka?
5. what are things to not do?
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yes, there's a lot of crap on eater but there's also a lot of good/useful stuff. with these cuts the crap:good ratio is going to get even worse.
and priya krishna is doubtless trying hard behind the scenes to be named the permanent times restaurant critic.
bleak times for mainstream food journalism in the u.s.
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that's not a soofle; it's too stiff.
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also, this is the recipe on the jiffy corn muffin mix box.
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i usually go 50-55. and i crack the egg directly in and just break/mix it in with the rest.
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i believe it was encountered at a gathering with mr. fantasty's family. their contribution was to re-name it "indiana soofle". it's too bad the original recipe is gone as that is probably the enduring and most material continuing thread from ye olde mouthfuls to the present. whether still here or gone into the ether, whether actively posting or lurking, a majority of mouthfullers are probably still making the soofle every thanksgiving. and every year we curse the fact that our guests enjoy it above all else (and pray that first-timers won't ask for the recipe).
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8 minutes ago, Wilfrid said:
Rightly, that they were boring live.
they're older than i thought.
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i wonder what they think of the beatles.
japan for 10 days this summer
in Asia
Posted
well, they responded…