Love and Pork

And while we're on the subject of food ... if there was one place on the planet where I thought it would not be difficult to be a vegetarian it was Japan. But it took less than one bowl of soba noodles to dispel the myth of a land of rising tofu and tempeh. Japan seemingly has a love affair with pork.

I ordered a bowl of plain tofu as a last resort and it came served on a bed of minced pork. Everything comes with pork. Or fish. I gave up. A meal in a Mount Fuji refuge consisted of mini frankfurters, a meat rissole, rice and more meat. I was starving. There was nothing else. It was eaten. A veggie colleague who clearly has greater strength of character than I do survived on pot noodles and dal from an Indian restaurant in Yokohama's Chinatown, a place so cosmopolitan that it is possible to find a man of African descent playing Danny Boy on a Caribbean steel drum in a Chinese restaurant.

Apart from the surprising amounts of pork, it must be said that Japan also has some unique ways in which it brings love and food together. There is, for example, the homage to the humble Pot Noodle, with its very own Museum (although I have seen a museum to milk machines in New Zealand which says a lot about that country too). There is also, more pointedly, the French Maid Cafe. Far be it for me to suggest that any country's sexual mores are odd; I live in Britain after all where publicly mentioning the word 'orgy' on a train can generate great ire in fellow passengers (it's another long story). But there is something about the Tokyo French Maid Cafe that is slightly disturbing. Popping in for cup of coffee we work out the order of things. There's a 1000 yen (£6) cover charge for each 30 minutes of your hostess' time before 8pm, and 5000 yen (£30) for each 30 minutes after that. Then a little song that basically means 'cheers' with our hostess using a fake beer glass with pretend beer in it. And then the clock starts. Our hostess spoke no English but valiantly tried to ensure we had a good time. Using the phrase book and the help of the smart phone translation app of Geek No. 1 sitting next to me (this is Nakano Broadway after all, a burgeoning centre of geekdom and trailing sex shops), we introduced ourselves and worked out that she is living with an Australian English language teacher. She keeps smiling. Drinks are free and Geeks No. 1 to 4 on my left are happy to smoke, drink beer and have a lovely young woman laugh at their jokes. The infantalisation of women is everywhere along with neon, wide eyes and girlish laughs. I would mention that knee high socks are involved in this somehow but I like to wear them as well so I'm taking them out of the equation. We left after 15 minutes as Dingo Baby was looking decidedly embarrassed when the yen finally dropped and he realised what probably happens at French Maid cafés. Our hostess held up the timer to show us that we had 15 minutes more but we politely said goodbye. She looked a bit disappointed.

There are other kinds of French cafes in Japan that have perhaps more an element of culinary rather than carnal love to them although hints of the stoic role of women in Japanese society are still present along with the cream puffs and macaroons. Don't tell the French but Tokyo does better patisserie than they do, their bakes being things of beauty, shiny, bright and ranging from the pastel to neon. Even a Strawberry Slushy becomes a thing of beauty when the Japanese do it. Dingo Baby and I retire to the gentile surrounds of one such cafe for our daily 4pm ice coffee (which is also a thing of beauty in Tokyo) and cake time. Just as the French Maid Cafés are men's spaces (me being the only woman in them apart from the hostesses and a carer for a man with a disability), the cafés are for the ladies. We are joined by the matrons who used to cosplay in the streets of Harajuku but are now married and apparently taking up their more respectable position in café society.

While we're in Harajuku, like the patisserie it is a world of pastels and shiny bright things. It may not be the centre of cosplay that it once was but it is still driven by the energy of 1000s of teenagers to the extent that I was suddenly overwhelmed by the desire to buy the most expensive pastel t-shirt I've ever bought and a sparkly broach that apparently says 'Revolution' in glittering pink and blue kanji. Shops such as 6% Doki Doki are dedicated to a youth culture that Japan defines. There is kawaii (cute), lolita, french maid goth, the latest trend to dress up exactly the same (and I mean EXACTLY the same) as your best friend. There are beat girls (complete with woolly beanies in 30 degree heat) and boys in shaggy orange hair and baggy striped shorts. There is a surprising amount of jodhpurs and some 'yet to have a name' trends. Circulating constantly around this cacophony, adding to it with their own neon and pastel, are the advertising trucks that promote J-pop boy and girl bands.

Accidentally stumbling into a performance by a J-pop girl band in Yokohama (think neon hot pants and those knee high socks again), we watch several hundred salarymen (all men) getting very excited, deploying all the appropriate arm waving movements in unison and getting a tad hysterical at the end. Accidentally stumbling across a performance by a boy band singing a-cappella outside a music store in Shibuya, perhaps a hundred women, with a tad more decorum than the men, quietly, in unison, deployed all the appropriate arm movements and got very excited in an understated way, clapping at the end of each song.

In my idea of heaven, the Okadaya department store of haberdashery (yes, six floors of haberdashery, yarns and textiles), I spent 20 minutes with a sales assistant who was trying to save me the expense of buying rayon for a skirt because cleaning it would be too difficult. We did this through her running (and really running) around the shop finding international cleaning labels on other fabric that I could understand. I found my own behaviour modifying after only a few days, becoming uber-polite on the Metro for example. I picked up my litter and let people on the train first. Anyone who has seen me preparing to board the Midlands express will know this is not my normal comportment.

These acts of civility in Japan tend to be conflated with conformity in the general 'how to do Karoake' guide books but for 130 million people to live on a tiny set of islands there can be no eccentric throwing about of hands or pogo-ing noisily in crowds. There is no space physically, and therefore no space culturally.

But dirty, noisy, impolite, sex must have its way and seep through the cracks that give it its own unique deformities. There are the vending machines with young women's knickers for sale, there is a popular culture that has a very distinct take on the proportions of women's breasts, and let's not even go near the kind of inflatables in the sex shop we accidentally stumbled into in Nakano Broadway. I'm sure Soho has something in its basement that wouldn't be too different, but while Soho revels in the vomit in its gutter making no pretense at putting lipgloss on, bespoke Japan presents a dissonant juxtaposition of french maid cafés and exquisite patisserie, misogynistic manga and politeness. The advertising trucks at night become the mobile hoardings for the bars in the red light district of Kabukicho where there is something for everyone on the love menu. To the soundtrack of an 80s video arcade game, the roar of pachinko parlours, the touting for business, the ubiquitous theme tune of the Vanilla hostess bar, the love hotels, the neon of Robot Restaurant, the androgynous, kinetic energy of Kabukicho envelopes everyone, along with its smells of beer and BBQing pork.

Step away from the kulfi!

Long has the Delhi consumer's capacity for craft melas held me in awe, particularly in the lead up to Diwali. There is nothing quite as frenetic as shopping at the famous open air markets like Dastkar and the Blind School's annual extravaganza. So many dupattas, so little time.

But I have finally discovered the secret ... kulfi. And not just any kulfi, but a kesar pista - think frozen condensed milk with saffron and pistachio. And in my case, along with the kulfi, have chai, mango sweets, date paan, more chai and a bottle of plum juice. On an empty stomach. Never have shiny things looked so shiny, silks looked so silky, colours looked so vibrant, and my bargaining been so ruthless as when the blood sugar levels are making for a screaming crescendo. Never have I been able to cover so much ground, leaping small children in a single bound to get to the last pashmina shawl at a bargain price.

Unfortunately the crash that came about 30 minutes later resulted in conversations that included sentences like: 'touch that kurtha again Aunty and lose a hand. It's MINE'.

Worse, after all the jostling, unfurling, trying on and taking off, reducing sales staff to bundles of quivering frustration, in the end I came away with nothing because my neurones were so close to bursting at the amount of choice that in a fit of ADHD they couldn't decide what they wanted.

The other unfortunate side effect was that I couldn't find my way out. As noted in other posts it is a bit embarrassing to be lost as a geographer and orienteer but sugar is clearly not good for the internal navigational systems. It took another hour of wandering with an increasing sense of hallucinogenic panic that the same dupattas were following me before I found the exit.

Luckily, just outside the entrance was now a line up of sweet potato sellers - my favourite Delhi street food and a lovely sign that winter is on the way. Sweet potato after kulfi, with a sprinkling of masala and splash of nimbu, is the equivalent of a spliff after crystal meth (so I'm told). As I sat on a wall with the street urchins, sharing our sweet potatoes in a twilight haze, the world stopped shimmering and calm descended along with the particulate matter of Delhi's traffic pollution.  

The gastronomic moral of this tale is that kulfi, while divine, should only be eaten on its own after a sturdy meal. Leave the chai, mango sweets, paan and plum juice for another day.

Sex and Money

So your man, Brooks Newman (Minister for Civil Society) resigns in shame after sending a picture of (I'm assuming because noone's been explicit) his penis to a fake woman (if you don't know the story it's just tawdry and misogynistic all round mostly on the part of the reporter and newspaper involved).  And yet whoever was responsible for coming up with the idea of PFIs is still walking around apparently not feeling any shame at all: not feeling like he (I'm assuming it's a he) has to say sorry; not feeling like he has to put his hand up and say 'perhaps it wasn't a good idea after all'.

A whiff of sex is so shameful it requires resignation. Beggaring the health service in the name of stupidity, oligarchy and greed is apparently nothing to get too embarrassed about. Whoever you are PFI Man you should hang your head in shame, and Vince Cable can join you for selling off the Royal Mail to yet another cabal.

If you have a strong constitution I'd highly recommend James Meek's book on privatisation in the UK. Read it and weep.