Sydney's just not ready for manners Japan style

This is a chef in Syndey, Yukako Ichikawa who has a restaurant Wafu. She would be a perfect person to be organizing Japanese "setsuden" (electricity savings).   She's just shut her restaurant, aghast with Sydney diners and their lack of respect for food and dining.   She IS eccentric, but it's Sydney's loss.

The sign outside Wafu, telling diners what's expected of them. Photo: Stephanie Gardiner

Read more: http://www.smh.com.au/entertainment/restaurants-and-bars/after-the-backlash-ranting-chef-does-the-unexpected-20120706-21ksn.html#ixzz2121GEcy0

Electricity & politics 2012 part 1

Things seems to be changing in Japan.  Though I can't really say in what direction.

On Friday I went to the anti nuclear protests outside the prime ministers official residence - more to see what is happening rather than to be an active participant.   I have mixed feelings about nuclear issue.  On the one hand it has given Japan some stability particularly in the post oil shock era of energy uncertainty, but on the other hand the industry has been built on collusion and corruption.  It's partly paternalistic - that they that be know best,  but there has also been  very cynical manipulation and disregard for the population.  World over a lot of people believed in nuclear as a safe clean energy - presumably mostly in good faith.  However, a report commissioned by the Diet and released recently has stated plainly that the disaster was man-made - both the government and the regulators knew that TEPCO was stalling on making safety improvments that had been demanded.

Japan survived for several months with no nuclear reactors operating - even though they had been supplying 30% of national energy. The week before last, the Oi plant in Fukui was brought back online, to meet the "serious shortfall" of industry, despite a reaosnable amount of opposition.   Opposition has been fuelled by claims that there is a fault line under the reactor.  The rationale for the restart doesn't seem to make complete sense.
If the summer energy consumption is so much higher, it seems a no brainer to reduce the summer consumption.  And to be fair there are efforts being made, particularly at the government level.  The remedies being offered however tend to be increase the temperature of the aircon - the campaigns are not to turn off the aircon.  There are still restaurants and coffee shops that feel cold not cool, at uni I've walked into classrooms with the aircon on, the door open and no-one in the room...   In our building there were people adding a second aircon, which of course is their right, but I wonder how deeply the idea of electricity saving is seeping in to the public habits. Awareness of the need for electricity savings is there, but I'm sceptical about the degree of personal commitment to energy savings - particularly when someone else is paying the bill...
The argument is always being put that without nuclear there can't be viable industry, but I'm yet to be convinced.  Industry seems to have been able to operate without the nuclear facilities.Japan has been built on a presumption of cheap electricity - poorly insulated houses, flippant electricity usage like toilet seat warmers (not such big energy consumers when the seat is left down, but it often doesn't seem to be the case), shops that have been set to 20 degrees, shops with out aircurtains.  Is it the availability of energy that has enabled the demand, or increased demand that has necessitated increased supply.  It has to be both.  There used to be promotional posters to switch over to all electric houses based on nuclear power being cheap.  I'll keep trying to dig some up.  

Committment to setsuden: installing a second aircon...

The graph below is quite interesting and perhaps turns on its head the idea that Japanese industry cannot survive without nuclear. 

Japanese Energy Consumption
http://www.tradingeconomics.com/japan/electric-power-consumption-kwh-wb-data.html

Increased demand corrolates with increased supply - though establishing cause and effect is more difficult. 

http://www.world-nuclear.org/info/inf79.html  scroll down for a list here of nuclear plants.

a drinking problem

I celebrated Hiro's parents' return with a trip to MOS burger....it had been a long time between bread and meat... Man cannot live on bread alone.... doesn't come close to describing rice and pickles three times a day.  For some reason it doesn't trouble me particularly if I go to their place. But cooking rice and soup and okazu for 4 people up to three times a day stretches my lack of domestic skills.... but i digress.
this woman was sitting next to me in MOS burger on Kagurazaka.  She bought three drinks, I expected her to have friends joining her... since she moved the table that was much closer to me, to make a table of 4 for herself.... half an hour later, the drinks are partly gone, no friends have arrived and she was sitting there reading her book....
Whatever... it's Tokyo...people are allowed to have quirks like imaginary friends.... why do I care?
 

Lung cancer vs a coronary.

Hiro's parent's have been and gone. It was a long week which tested their patience at least as much as mine.  You know you aren't much of a housekeeper when  a visit from PIL necessitates a restock on chopsticks, glasses, rice bowls, zokin (floor cleaners), fukin (cleaning cloth for other surfaces), toilet slippers, white sponges that take the grease off anything, bathroom sponge - I forgot new balcony slippers & we don't wear slippers inside otherwise we would have needed them too.

Before they arrived they takkyubinned (parcel deliveried) a big box of vegies - pickled cucumber, fuki, shiitake dried and fresh, nameko mushrooms, lettuce, beans, asapargus and a gigagantic bag of  shungiku a leafy herb or vegetable that might remind a person of coriander or shiso, 9though the taste isn't particularly similar) which is abundant in their vegetable patch.

Hiro loves shungiku.... but only if it's tempura.  I don't usually cook tempura. I object to the amount of oil - less from health reasons than from the wilful hedonism of consuming a bottle in one go... enough to make me wonder if I was a Methodist in a past life (no disrespect to Methodists intended.)  Tempura is the kind of thing best rationed to nights when it's in the supermarket 50% off pile - externally enforced discipline  combined with the fact that at usual prices it's an utter rip off.   Faced with rotting shungiku or using a bottle of oil to tempura-ize it, the oil won out.

I guess Hiro prefers the option of dying swiftly from a coronary rather than the prolonged lung cancer death that is awaiting...

My first attempt at tempura in about 10 years....

The remains of the shungiku - now all tempura--ized -
mixed with onion.