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| Link | Quote | Stars | Tags | Author |
| 0fa0f67 | 2Do not mistake these multiple trends--the energy flows of metropolitan growth, the new taste for tea, the nascent, half-formed awareness of mass behavior--for mere historical background. The clash of microbe and man that played out on Broad Street for ten days in 1854 was itself partly a consequence of each of these trends, though the chains of cause and effect played out on different scales of experience, both temporal and spatial. You ca.. | Steven Johnson | ||
| 13e17e5 | Those early spectacles were called roidi da ogli, meaning "disks for the eyes." Thanks to their resemblance to lentil beans--lentes in Latin--the disks themselves came to be called "lenses." | Steven Johnson | ||
| 0b32a4f | La cuestion es inventarse formas de explorar los limites posibles de lo que te rodea. Esto puede ser tan sencillo como cambiar el entorno fisico en el trabajo, o cultivar un tipo especifico de red social, o mantener ciertos habitos en la forma de buscar y archivar la informacion. | Steven Johnson | ||
| 19c6c58 | Up to now, the philosophers of emergence have struggled to interpret the world. But they are now starting to change it. | Steven Johnson | ||
| fe5d8e6 | Amplification created an entirely new kind of political event: mass rallies oriented around individual speakers. | Steven Johnson | ||
| a9a7614 | No one recognized - and exploited - this new power more quickly than Adolf Hitler, | Steven Johnson | ||
| 592c98f | Early risers strolling along the Thames would see the toshers wading through the muck of low tide, dressed almost comically in flowing velveteen coats, their oversized pockets filled with stray bits of copper recovered from the water's edge. The toshers walked with a lantern strapped to their chest to help them see in the predawn gloom, and carried an eight-foot-long pole that they used to test the ground in front of them, and to pull thems.. | Steven Johnson | ||
| 7644b92 | Steven Johnson's Emergence: The Connected Lives of Ants, Brains, Cities, and Software. | Verne Harnish | ||
| 704a0a5 | In the U.S., to have a personal relationship with a Japanese chef across the counter, you have to go for sushi. I enjoy sitting at a sushi bar, but there is always the whiff of haute cuisine in the air (or, if you pick the wrong sushi place, the whiff of something worse). You can visit an expensive, artisan counter in Tokyo and order unusual and impeccable seafood, but come on: tempura is fried stuff. You drink frothy mugs of cheap beer and.. | Matthew Amster-Burton | ||
| c4b65b5 | We ate spiral-wrapped eel meat. We ate guts. We ate liver, which is somehow different from guts. We (mostly Iris) ate two bowls of of crispy fried eel backbones. We ate eel meat wrapped around burdock root and eel fin wrapped around garlic chives. We ate smoked eel that tasted like Jewish deli food. I ate better than anyone, because I was the only member of the family willing to try the offal. All of it was precisely like Oishinbo, down to .. | eel meat | Matthew Amster-Burton | |
| 2a4c251 | At Iris's direction, we enjoyed all sorts of skewered bits. While most yakitori places serve various cuts of chicken and a few vegetables, the menu at Yakitorino was all over the place, and nearly everything was good: breaded and fried beef cubes on a stick; fried lotus root; pork jowl with miso; peppers. But Iris and Laurie's single favorite dish at Yakitorino was neither meat nor vegetable and was not served on a stick. "If you'd really.. | onigiri rice-balls yakitori | Matthew Amster-Burton | |
| 1122988 | Before heading to our respective baths, Laurie, Iris, and I went to the food court and got lunch. I loved this food court, not because the food was especially good (although it was seventeen times better than the average American food court) but because it was such a perfect microcosm of the Japanese dining landscape. There were three noodle stands (udon, soba, and ramen), a sushi stand, a dessert shop selling soft-serve sundaes with fruit .. | japanese-food | Matthew Amster-Burton | |
| 2f3227d | The hot case at a kombini features tonkatsu, fried chicken, (a breaded hamburger patty), Chinese pork buns, potato croquettes, and seafood items such as breaded squid legs or oysters. In a bit of international solidarity, you'll see corn dogs, often labeled "Amerikandoggu." One day for lunch I stopped at 7-Eleven and brought home a pouch of "Gold Label" beef curry, steamed rice, (sushi rice in a pouch of sweetened fried tofu), cold nood.. | kombini ramen | Matthew Amster-Burton | |
| 60ad9da | A depachika is like nothing else. It is the endless bounty of a hawker's bazaar, but with Japanese civility. It is Japanese food and foreign food, sweet and savory. The best depachika have more than a hundred specialized stands and cannot be understood on a single visit. I felt as though I had a handle on Life Supermarket the first time I shopped there, but I never felt entirely comfortable in a depachika. They are the food equivalent of Bo.. | french pastries street-food tokyo | Matthew Amster-Burton | |
| 0441fe2 | A soup dumpling is a little marvel of engineering. Called in Chinese, in Japanese, and "soupies" by Iris, soup dumplings consist of silky dough wrapped around a minced pork or crab filling. The filling is mixed with chilled gelatinous broth which turns back into soup when the dumplings are steamed. Eating a soup dumpling requires practice. Pop the whole thing in your mouth and fry your tongue; bite it in the wrong place and watch the so.. | fillings panfried soup | Matthew Amster-Burton | |
| fff7874 | moais | Isabel Allende | ||
| bcd96e6 | In Tokyo, ramen is a playground for the culinary imagination. As long as the dish contains thin wheat noodles, it's ramen. In fact, there's a literal ramen playground called Tokyo Ramen Street in the basement of Tokyo Station, with eight top-rated ramen shops sharing one corridor. We stopped by one evening after a day of riding around on the Shinkansen. After drooling over the photos at establishments such as Junk Garage, which serves oily,.. | tokyo | Matthew Amster-Burton | |
| 894f866 | Yoshoku is the Japanese take on Western foods; much of it was created during the Meiji period (1868-1912), when, after centuries of isolation, Japan began importing goods and ideas from the outside world, including food. Yoshoku dishes such as (salisbury steak in brown sauce), curry rice, potato croquettes, and "spaghetti " are now much-loved comfort food. They're also so unlike the dishes that inspired them that they tend to be really h.. | western yōshoku | Matthew Amster-Burton | |
| cbbc945 | Now, back to Sapporo-ya. The place is deep enough below street level that the windows let in no natural light; harsh fluorescent lamps made everyone look ill. The walls are greenish-yellow. If you are directing a modern adaptation of , shoot the purgatory scenes here. The waitress set down my hiyashi chuka (sesame sauce). It was in every way the opposite of its surroundings: colorful, artfully presented, sweated over. The tangle of yello.. | hiyashi-chūka ramen salad sapporo-ya | Matthew Amster-Burton | |
| d4bac8f | White bread in Japan is a steroidal megaloaf called . Brioche-like and great for toasting, shokupan is sold in bags of four, six, or eight perfectly square slices, without heels. Where do the heels go? Out back with the imperfect vegetables? I bought shokupan several times before figuring out why the four-, six, and eight-slice sacks all sold for the same price. It's the same loaf, cut into thicker or thinner slices. Eight-slice shokupan i.. | japanese shokupan slices white-bread | Matthew Amster-Burton | |
| c405e4d | Our neighborhood ramen place was called Aoba. That's a joke. There were actually more than fifty ramen places with in walking distance of our apartment. But this one was our favorite. Aoba makes a wonderful and unusual ramen with a mixture of pork and fish broth. The noodles are firm and chewy, and the pork tender and almost smoky, like ham. I also liked how they gave us a small bowl for sharing with Iris without our even asking. What I rea.. | eggs fish noodles pork ramen toppings | Matthew Amster-Burton | |
| 2471ef6 | If you already hate tofu, the term "tofu skin" is probably an effective emetic. But this stuff is addictive. You start by making fresh soy milk. I'm not going to soft-pedal how much work this is: you have to soak, grind, squeeze, and simmer dried soybeans. The result is a thick milk entirely unlike the soy milk you get in a box at Whole Foods in the same way Parmigiano-Reggiano is unlike Velveeta. Then, to make tofu skins ( in Japanese), y.. | silken skin soy-milk tofu yuba | Matthew Amster-Burton | |
| c855fd8 | Okonomiyaki, meanwhile, is to American pancakes what Japanese wrestling is to American wrestling. The basic batter contains flour and water, grated nagaimo (that big slimy yam again), eggs, and diced cabbage. You then augment this base by ordering little bits and nibbles a la carte to be added to the batter. We could not figure out the ordering system, but we listed off ingredients we liked and ended up with two pancakes' worth of batter te.. | how-to ingredients okonomiyaki pancake | Matthew Amster-Burton | |
| 9d66f04 | While I struggled with the menu, a handsome middle-aged guy from a nearby table came over to help. "You like sashimi? Cooked fish? Sushi?" he asked. His English was excellent. He was originally from Okinawa, he said, and a member of Rotary International. I know nothing about the Rotarians except that it's a service organization; helping befuddled foreigners order food in bars must fall within its definition of charitable service. Our servic.. | hachi izakaya pub rotary scallop seafood sushi | Matthew Amster-Burton | |
| 2c5ae78 | We took a short ride on the Oedo line and surfaced near a sashimi-oriented izakaya called Uoshin. The upstairs counter snaked through the room so everyone could have a seat at the bar, and tucked into nooks at various parts of the arrangement were white-coated chefs, each with a knife and a wooden board full of freshly sliced sashimi. We ordered a few selections from the board, and then Mark, who is apparently one of those wiry guys with a .. | izakaya japanese-cuisine sashimi seafood | Matthew Amster-Burton | |
| 15c9ad2 | Takoyaki are octopus balls- not, thankfully, in the anatomical sense. They're a spherical cake with a chunk of boiled octopus in the center, cooked on a special griddle with hemispherical indentations. If you're familiar with the Danish pancakes called , you know what a takoyaki looks like; the pan is also similar. Takoyaki are not unknown in the U.S., but I've only ever seen them made fresh at cultural festivals. Iris is a big fan, but I'.. | japanese-cuisine japanese-food octopus street-food takoyaki toppings | Matthew Amster-Burton | |
| ba0af8e | He was as great as a man can be without morality. | Alexis de Tocqueville | ||
| 99d994c | True, there's an aisle devoted to foreign foods, and then there are familiar foods that have been through the Japanese filter and emerged a little bit mutated. Take breakfast cereal. You'll find familiar American brands such as Kellogg's, but often without English words anywhere on the box. One of the most popular Kellogg's cereals in Japan is Brown Rice Flakes. They're quite good, and the back-of-the-box recipes include cold tofu salad and.. | inventory japan kellogs rice salt sugar supermarket | Matthew Amster-Burton | |
| 59269a7 | Buying fish in the supermarket in Japan is a delight, even if the fish is displayed in styrofoam trays, as it is at Life. The most common supermarket fish, mackerel, also happens to be my favorite, and it's sold in a variety of precise quantities. Want three small mackerel fillets? Sure thing. One large? Right over here. Mackerel costs practically nothing and is a snap to cook with the fish grill. I also tried marinated (Spanish mackerel).. | mackerel | Matthew Amster-Burton | |
| c41d083 | When you visit Gindaco, spend some time watching the cooks make takoyaki before ordering, because it's an amazing free show. The shop has an industrial-sized takoyaki griddle with dozens of hot cast iron wells, each one about an inch and a half in diameter. The cook squirts the grill with plenty of vegetable oil. She dunks a pitcher into a barrel of pancake batter and sloshes it over the grill, then strews the whole area with negi, ginger, .. | grill japanese-cooking octopus skewer takoyaki tokyo | Matthew Amster-Burton | |
| e99eb94 | The meat section is mostly devoted to presliced meats for hot pots and quick-cooked dishes, with a thin steak or chop here and there. In addition to commodity meat, you'll find Wagyu beef and kurobuta pork. The quality of the meat in an average Tokyo supermarket is higher than at most specialty butchers in the U.S. Time to fess up. Life Supermarket is not the best supermarket in the world; supermarket in Tokyo is the best supermarket in t.. | supermarket tokyo | Matthew Amster-Burton | |
| 60d34ab | Japan isn't meat-crazed in the same way as the USA, but when the Japanese want meat, they want it as marbled as the Parthenon. The most popular topping for ramen is pork belly, streaked with fat, rolled up like pancetta and braised for hours in pork broth until fall-apart tender, then sliced into a perfect round. | meat | Matthew Amster-Burton | |
| 9455348 | Tokyo boasts similar food theme parks devoted to ramen, gyoza, ice cream, and desserts. If you don't like takoyaki, you're not entirely out of luck: the stand we visited, Aizuya, also offers . You would think radioyaki would mean "takoyaki that grows arms and legs after exposure to nuclear radiation," but no, it replaces the octopus with and beef gristle. Konnyaku is a noncaloric gelatin made from the root of a plant closely related to t.. | takoyaki themes | Matthew Amster-Burton | |
| 96152be | We ate three tiny, geometrically engineered appetizers, including a perfect cube of kabocha squash-flavored fish cake and an octopus "salad" consisting of one tiny piece of octopus brushed with a plum dressing. Then the waitress uncovered and lit the burner in the center of the table and set a shallow cast-iron pan on top. She poured a thin layer of sauce from a pitcher. Sukiyaki is all about the sauce, a mixture of soy sauce, mirin, sake, .. | father-daughter-bond ingredients sauces soy-sauce sukiyaki | Matthew Amster-Burton | |
| d5deb04 | I've long been a fan of Hi-Chew, the Japanese fruit chews, for their resilient texture and uncannily accurate fruit flavors: sour cherry, apple, grape, pickled plum, and especially mango, which is closer to the flavor of an actual tropical mango than most imported mangoes. | flavors fruit japan mango | Matthew Amster-Burton | |
| 989835e | Alban was silent. It was difficult to talk to a man who spoke obvious nonsense. | Nonsense | ||
| a80f0b6 | After lunch we went to have our feet nibbled by hundreds of tiny fish. Then, after that- just kidding, I'll explain. The onsen offers a skin treatment where you dip your feet into a shallow pool stocked with , also known as doctor fish, which perform primitive exfoliation by slurping dead skin off your feet with their tiny jaws. This is illegal in most U.S. states, where health authorities believe that sharing fish between customers is as .. | feet fish nibbling skin-treatment | Matthew Amster-Burton | |
| fedfdde | In Oishinbo: Ramen and Gyoza, Yamaoka and the gang are on an assignment to help a lonely gyoza chef find a new recipe and true love. While investigating, they have lunch at a dumpling restaurant that boasts "100 types of gyoza" on the sign. (Incidentally, a cute thing about Japanese restaurant chains is that they often put the word "chain" in the name, like, "Gyoza Chain Hanasaki.") They eat dumplings with fillings like garlic-miso, flaked .. | dumplings fillings | Matthew Amster-Burton | |
| ca3eb21 | So what does matcha taste like, if you've never had it? It's commonly described as tasting "green," which is true, albeit begging the question. Good matcha is naturally very sweet, a plant sweetness quite unlike bad matcha sweetened with sugar, which is common in shelf-table convenience store drinks and at coffee places. When you're drinking matcha, even high quality stuff, you can rub your tongue against the roof of your mouth and feel tha.. | powder tea-leaves | Matthew Amster-Burton | |
| 5a86853 | We planned an Utsunomiya gyoza crawl, but when we emerged from the train station into 92-degree weather, we abandoned the idea and just went to the place with (Iris counted) seventy-four types of gyoza, including yogurt, coffee, tea, chocolate, liver, mochi, squid-octopus, sausage, curry, and whale. You can order a whole plate of your favorite variety or a sampler platter; we ordered a sampler (no whale) with a small order of regular pork g.. | fillings gyōza | Matthew Amster-Burton | |
| 9100980 | The ubiquity of great food in Tokyo is beyond imagination. It's not just that I'm interested in food and pay close attention to restaurants and takeout shops, although that's true. In Tokyo, great food really is in your face, all the time: sushi, yakitori, Korean barbecue, eel, tempura, , bento shops, delis, burgers (Western and Japanese-style), the Japanese take on Western food called , and, most of all, noodles. I found this cheap every.. | tokyo | Matthew Amster-Burton | |
| ae69b1b | Go out the north exit of Nakano Station and into the Sun Mall shopping arcade. After a few steps, you'll see Gindaco, the (octopus balls) chain. Turn right into Pretty Good #1 Alley. Walk past the deli that specializes in (steamed sticky rice with tasty bits), a couple of ramen shops, and a fugu restaurant. Go past the pachinko parlor, the grilled eel stand, the camera shops, and the stairs leading to Ginza Renoir coffee shop. If you se.. | octopus takoyaki tokyo | Matthew Amster-Burton | |
| fbd051c | If a Tokyoite knows anything about Nakano, it's likely to be Nakano Broadway, a shopping mall with several floors devoted to Japanese comics (manga) and animation (anime). It is geek central. I found most of it incomprehensible, but I did enjoy browsing at Junkworld, which sells useful electronic discards, like old working digital cameras for $5 and assorted connectors and dongles and sound cards. In the 1980's, when William Gibson was padd.. | electronics japan manga nakano | Matthew Amster-Burton | |
| 55cf977 | Kon Tiki, | Isabel Allende |