horvaths, my ear, and Juxtapoz Choe

Mexican without Mexicans. Yeah. This place is amazing. Manhattan Beach Mexican food. El Sombrero #2. I hope the #2 doesn't mean anything weird! It's a neighborhood Mexican place that I can tell is well loved. It's packed, it's good, and people there seem happy. That's David and Sun-min. So glad to have caught up with them. It's been ages. Look at their burritos! Whoa. I opted for 2 chicken tacos. Pictured is only 1 taco. All so good.

This was a tough one. It was chef Mina's turn. She cooked us up noodles, chicken in spicy sauce, and ice tea.

I don't know why I feel the need to blog my ear, but see that scratch. Imagine this. My cat, put one claw into my ear. It was stuck. I was trying to get it out and in the process, sliced through my own ear. That line goes through.

The below is my article on David Choe in the current Juxtapoz. I wrote it on the morning it was due. I think it came out pretty decent.

Strangers at LAAPFF

The Strangers Crew at the LA Asian Pacific Film Festival. That's Bill Poon, Robert Burke, Michael Aki, Eugenia Yuan, and Pryor Praczukowski. Bill Poon is the Assistant Producer! Robert Burke plays the perfect dirty loser underworld guy. Michael Aki's character is the Asian Kimbo Slice. The master of the gun. A killer. Eugenia Yuan is the subject. Pryor shot it nicely. Strangers screens sunday 9pm at the Sunset 5 in LA.

Instead of watching the opening night movie. I ate dinner with the group.

Eugenia and Michael Aki. The carpet might not be red, but this is the red carpet area.

Amy Hill was there!

Thomas Nakanishi should join Kiss.

The end of Tokyo - great food. Hanaya Asagaya

Neighborhood spots. The tasty of the tasty. I had omakase type of dinner at Hanaya in Asagaya. You get the drift. Great foods, amazing presentation. Nice people. This type of spot has your back when you want something really nice to eat. You can't go there daily, or, can you? It's not out of the control pricey, but at the same time, it's not super inexpensive. There's plenty of nice spots to eat in this area, this is just one of them. Toro and uni above.

a small fish and eggplant dish.

porco rosso

egg tofu and daikon with ikura

This is the drinker set of snacks.

daikon and gobo

The next day. cat #1

cat #2

cat #3. This cat looks really beat up, but I really like the cat's face. I hope this one recovers fully by the time I come back to Japan.

Yasukuni shrine images will end out this blog post.

Except for this image. I really like how the caramel box is integrated perfect into the handle on the train. Someone was thinking.

Japan finds

Famicom. Family computer. You'd think you could find this everywhere, but it's really not that easy. It's pretty, red and offwhite and the Japanese carts fit right in. The carts are similar to the NES but it's not the same. You need a converter, which it turns out is hard to find. There's so many little hacks for it, but in the end, it's best just to have the system. I'm playing a game called Super Chinese. It's pretty fun. I'll be exploring the rest of the games I picked up in Japan! Some carts are a $1. Some are $25!

The camera strap from Camera People. "Kame P" It's a small shop in Gakugei Daigaku. I didn't shoot these pics since shooting my own Camera strap on my camera is tough to shoot. But this is straight from their site. Here's their links. They even process film and print it. It's sort of the ultimate camera hobby shop and they even have a small gallery above. The leather straps are my favorite.

http://camerapeople.jp/

http://www.monogram.co.jp/

http://camepstore.com/?pid=13178443

While I check out this stuff, I have two cats sitting nearby. Here's what they do once in a while. Groom each other!

On the flight back from Japan, I shot a pic out of the window of LA. The red dot is literally my house. Below it's zoomed just a bit. It's amazing how much you can really make out of a window of a plane.

Daniel Dae Kim x me?

Do you watch Lost? Know this man? I'm going to interview him hopefully like none other. It's coming up May 15 2010. I'm already plotting my questions. It should be fun in all reality. This dude is totally cool, I don't think people really know who he is and he's one of the larger stars on TV. Want to come? Check out the Facebook link. We have some free slots.

Tokyo bits

Hara Museum is Shinagawa is a pretty cool spot. It's a small museum that has changing exhibitions, but also has a permanent room by Yoshitomo Nara. I couldn't take a photo of it. I think it was the only room that had a videocamera watching. The above image was in a room by some french artist. Yeah, it's like a bathroom or something, but it's also like TRON!

Akihabara - retro game hunting. There's a reason for it.

Junk at Akihabara. Japanese junk looks cool. You really don't know what you're going to get.

That's the sculpture Garden at Hara Museum. Next to Kohei's face is a vertical piece of metal which is an Isamu Noguchi piece.

Tai Yaki and they don't even cut out the extra parts

Too many toy figures. They're everywhere.

retro games at Super Potato. You'd think this spot is the best, and it's quite great, but in the end, it's the most expensive too.

Ice cream in a baguette, yes it totally works.

That's Taro Goto on the right. He used to be part of the SF Asian Film Festival. He led us to an Okinawan spot in Shibuya. Super great.

Sadatoshi shows off ice cream.

Ayako and camera

Ayako Fujitani and her new old camera. It shoots 35mm and although film is a dying breed, this is a cool rangefinder. I think it's called a bosley, but I'm no longer sure. Who's going to preserve the film cameras as digital everything takes over? When will film just be cancelled? It's all in the hands of the fans. Meanwhile, we went through Ueno area, and ate some yakitori.

That's spanish mackerel pate!

It looks like I have a blonde mullet in this frame. That's what it would look like with a neckwarmer. If I was Canadian, maybe. Not good. Now flip it to yourself. Imagine you with a blonde mullet. No! Don't rock that. I wonder if the woman sitting behind me would have ever thought her hair would be used so well in the background of a photo.

Yakitori is always good. No... amazing.

Hand it over! This is what a public bath employee used to do way back in the day. If you want to take a bath, this guy lords over the entrance and peeps at the ladies changing.

The flowers are almost gone from the trees.

This is in Ueno park. It's cool how there's tons of vendors dealing up Japanese snacks.

Saigo Takemori in Ueno. I haven't been to this park in perhaps more than 15 years. I'll guess that's a shiba inu.

This isn't good.

This is good. It's awesome how they sell great slices of fruit on the street. Too bad they have to use chopsticks, but the fruit was good. Thankfully, the chopsticks absorb water well, and the fruit sticks! Since fruit is pricey in Japan, you sort of don't get to eat much of it, so when you do it's refreshing.