Komaba Times Issue 9

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EXPLORING JAPAN3 Must-Eat Cuisines in KomabaBy: Zhiyun Du●Hishidaya:The most famous restaurant in Komaba is, forsure, Hishidaya.It’s been introduced on TV programs, discussedamong students, and even recommended byprofessors in lectures. Every lunch or dinnertime, if you walk along the Komaba Shouten-Kairoad, it would be unusual not to see a long linewaiting outside the small restaurant, each personleaning to have a peek on the daily menu writtenon a blackboard.The menu is reasonably-priced: for around¥1300, you can enjoy the teishoku 1 set that surprisesalmost every first-time visitor. In the set,along with the main dish, rice and miso soup, myfavourite is the small plate of pickled vegetables,the most refreshing appetizer you can imagine.Compared to the most popular dish, grilled porkwith ginger, I personally prefer the set of stir-friedmaguro 2 with scallion the most. The maguro ispacked with flavor and very chewy, combinedperfectly with the scallions that are zesty yet notoverpowering.Image by author.The restaurant always fills up quickly, and theservice doesn’t really match the quality of themeals, but it would be nice to snag a table andenjoy a filling dinner with your friends. (Watchout, in case you haven’t finished your report foryour professor yet: you may also find them liningup outside for a seat!)●Tiramisu Homemade:●Le Ressort:Image by Alexine Castillo Yap.Everytime I pass this bakery, the smell of croissants from the window alwaysmakes my mouth water. My favourite bread is the earl grey-flavoredone with chocolate chips embedded inside. Though a little bit pricey,sandwiches there are also excellent choices for lunch.Image by author.When talking about tiramisu, you may imagine something mushy and saccharine,only tasting like a conglomeration of artificial cream and sugar. YetTiramisu Homemade is anything but!The marshmallow-y cream has a smooth texture, and forms a great balancewith the cocoa powder on the top. The delicious taste progressesfrom bittersweet to purely sweet to tart. Bonus point: after having thedesert, you can also bring the small glass container home as a gift. Bonusbonus point, just next to Tiramisu Homemade, there is another dessertshop, IL Bignè, that sells great gougères 3 .Other than the above three, there are many great restaurants and shopshidden in the street corners of Komaba. There is a tiny café which I cherishas my own secret garden and am not willing to divulge here in fear of lettingtoo many people know. So, if you are a gourmand, or just want to kill somefree time, tap the restaurant label on your Google Maps app while wanderingthe streets next time; there may be some concealed delicacies waiting to bediscovered by you.__________________________________________________________________1 set meal2 Japanese term for tuna fish3 cream puffs20
What’s the weather in Tokyo?By: Alyssa Castillo YapOne of the things I was disproportionately anxiousfor when I stepped into the admissions interviewfor PEAK was the possibility of any questionsabout weather to come up — specifically,about the four seasons. That is to say, despitestudying the names, chronology and images ofthe common four seasons prior to my interview,I found myself paralysed in the middle of a fancyHanoi hotel, feeling as if all the nerves in mybody were maniacally failing to shoot the rightsignals. I realised two minutes before the interview,blood pumping in my ears, how unaware Iwas of such a basic fact. I hadn’t known weatheroutside the semantic field of “sun”, “rain” and“degrees Celsius”. The gears in my brain wereracing. Summer follows which season? Is winterin December? Or was it spring? I never even hada definition for weather that went further than 10degrees, give or take, from the 30 degrees CelsiusI had grown up with; it was the stuff of fiction.In the first three months of living in Tokyo as astudent from Southeast Asia, it actually terrifiedme to observe how regularly Tokyoites checkedthe weather forecast on their phones, in thetrains, from the television channels, on smartwatches and so forth. This behaviour, to me,seemed as if there was always a new stormcoming or a heat wave approaching when it wassimply a slight fluctuation in the numerical degreesof temperature that fuelled the eagernessor obsessive habit of the Tokyo busy bees tocheck the weather. This is an observation whichat the time, I considered to have really adverselyaffected my rather happy-go-lucky lifestyle.Growing up in the Philippinesand Vietnam, I neverfound any use to lookat the weather forecast.I would only check theweather updates if I knewthere was a tropical stormahead. For instance, unlesswind speeds wouldgo beyond 150kph, Iwould find it no use toequip myself with an umbrellaor to wear specialattire for the day. To me,walking knee-deep in thefloods was occasional,and ankle-deep entirelyexpected. So, at first, Ithought it was just due tothe fact that Tokyo wasa much more developedcity with well-establisheddrainage systemsthat floods never came.Hence, with the recentTyphoon Hagibis, I sincerelythought that the announcementswere blownout of proportion. That is,I honestly saw no need forsuch stressful announcementsor precautions tohave been made when thewinds did not even causefor my windows to dance!On the other hand, I also realised that Tokyoitesare as indifferent to earthquakes as I was tostorms. So, what bothered me wasn’t the shockfactors of news coverage or the advanced naturaldisaster information systems in Japan (likethe sirens and loudspeakers in most neighbourhoods,warning everyone of the coming disaster).Instead, considering the obsession withchecking forecasts that I had so far observed inTokyo, what really bothered me was the cultureof believing that we could predict, prepare for,and perfectly adapt to changes in the weather. Ithought, that’s an entirely different thing.Sitting in my dorm room in Komaba during TyphoonHagibis, I noticed how much I longedfor the days where no matter the weather, I wasunfazed. I didn’t mind the chaos. In fact, I soughtfor the old thrill of 8-year-old me, clueless as towhether or not today was the day our roof wasgoing to fly off to Manila. I had never soughtreports online or forecasts on tiny screens todictate how my day, week or month was going togo. This is why I began to dislike my life in Tokyo— I was constantly looking forward to knowinghow my moods, activities, food or conversationswould be dictated beforehand by AccuWeatherreports. So, this past year, I concluded that I wasbothered by what we quite fondly call “patheticfallacy” 1 . We all seem to find some kind of literarybeauty to this term, and I thought the obsessionwith pathetic fallacy manifested itself in Tokyo’srelationship with weather. I thought: “You can’tcontrol your life via the forecasts, Tokyo!” Whereis the thrill of human life if we’re looking to liveas if we are the non-living elements beyond ourcontrol? Then, like a candle on a birthday cakebeing blown out for a wish, I realised with a blinkof an eye that Tokyo inspired me precisely becauseit lives in this eternal love-hate relationshipwith pathetic fallacy. “Will it rain today? Will it becloudy? Or sunny? Cold, warm or sweltering? Iam not the one to tell, but, I will adapt.” In Tokyo,I found a strange kind of living and looking back,I find now that it is all the more important for meto familiarize myself with the forecasts becausewe are only really “out of control” as much as weallow ourselves to be.Tokyo taught me four seasons as opposed to justhot or rainy days. Reality really struck me downhard the first time I stepped out into what for meused to be fictitious, single-digit temperatures.Cavite City to Ho Chi Minh City to Tokyo: I wasbothered by the drastic and crippling gap betweenaffluence and scarcity, expectancy as opposed toimprovidence, childish cluelessness turned intosense and sensibility — this city taught me that inthis world, some people might never know what itmeans to live beyond the temperatures of life thatthey have been acclimated to. I may not understandthe technical jargon surrounding weather,but that’s not what this weather-craze is about, isit? In the end, I still ask myself if I’ll ever adapt aswell as the Tokyoites do.___________________________________________1 According to literarydevices.net, pathetic fallacyis defined as “a kind of personification thatgives human emotions to inanimate objects ofnature; for example, referring to weather featuresreflecting a mood.”Image credit: Finan Akbar [Unsplash]21
Page 1 and 2: English Newsletter by Komaba Studen
Page 3 and 4: UNIVERSITY LIFEamongst many feminis
Page 5 and 6: UNIVERSITY LIFEThis is a great way
Page 7 and 8: UNIVERSITY LIFEno Fried Banana! (la
Page 9 and 10: UNIVERSITY LIFEI work in the Execut
Page 11 and 12: UNIVERSITY LIFEIt’s Time for Some
Page 13 and 14: pated when the next students to spe
Page 15 and 16: PERSPECTIVESland.” Among these co
Page 17 and 18: PERSPECTIVESIt was when I walkedthr
Page 19: PERSPECTIVESI am large, I contain m
Page 23 and 24: EXPLORING JAPANdistorted fuzz, all
Page 25 and 26: X PENSADO“women should not walk a
Page 27 and 28: KOMABA WRITERS’ STUDIO x PENSADO(
Page 29 and 30: K O M A B Aillustration Jade Hwang
Page 31 and 32: Sausagesby Ran Sheillustration Jade
Page 33 and 34: Theaterthe IneffablebyMinghao Xuima
Page 35 and 36: Of course, going to the theater is
Page 37 and 38: Photo ContestRay of Hope Natdanai K
Page 39 and 40: image Alexine Castillo YapLastly, H

Komaba Times Issue 9

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