DiscoverNikkei.org - Little Momo in the Big Apple - Comments

Hello, Simone. Very

Victor Nishio Yasuoka — Wed, 08 Oct 2008 11:24:31 -0700

Hello, Simone.

Very interesting flavor-tour. My wife and I sometimes have time to do something like that, here in Lima, Perú, tasting a lot of tipical and fusion preparations.

The tipical peruvian food is, now, in the international sight, but the offer is only gourmet, not the real ancestral preparation we can have in some places around here.

The fusion is quite more interesting: andean preparation with european spices, japanese rolls with peruvian fish plate, and a lot of other mixtures of flavors and textures in the mouth.

So, my point is: if you have the oportunity to eat peruvian food, you will find exotic flavors (like "ají amarillo" or the lemon we have here), and better when you come to Lima, I could guide you to different food-points, big and small ones, to have plates I haven´t had anywhere else, not even Mexico (which is similar, culturally, to Perú).

Regards,
Victor.

Diseñador Publicitario IPP (Advertiser), Artista Visual (Visual Artist), Columnista Prensa Nikkei (Columnist)
WEB www.cajoncreativo.com BLOG victornishioyasuoka.wordpress.com
Lima, Perú

tsukemono

vkm — Mon, 29 Sep 2008 09:12:57 -0700

Hi Simone!

Thanks for sharing your culinary adventures in New York! I especially liked the part about the pickle festival. Very interesting that there would be a lack of representation on the tsukemono front given that the recipe in the brochure included miso.

Oh, momo! I loved your post

viridescent4 — Mon, 29 Sep 2008 06:24:39 -0700

Oh, momo! I loved your post almost as much as I love food. So many of my best memories involve eating ... with you! Thank you for the recap of the wonderful cuisine found in New York City. I can't wait to get back this winter and have some lovely knishes. Maybe I'll bring you back some Japanese pickles for your very own!

nice article!

vkm — Mon, 21 Jul 2008 10:12:44 -0700

Hi Simone!

I enjoyed reading part 2. It reminded me of my last visit to NY to visit a friend. She took Russ & I to an area with some Japanese restaurants and then to some other Japanese shops - a really nice manju-ya near Rockefeller Center, a place that only served desserts that was run by a Japanese woman. It struck me then too how much of NY's Nikkei population seemed more Japanese than JA.

We ate dinner one night at a place where we could order various appetizer-like dishes - various yummy things on skewers and small plates. What I found was really cool though was that they were playing '80s J-pop, which was the time period that I really followed Japanese music so I recognized a lot of the songs. Through those songs, I found a connection back to my youth - going to Little Tokyo to buy records (still bought some vinyl back then!), cassettes, videos, and magazines.

culture shock

vkm — Sat, 17 May 2008 09:34:18 -0700

I really enjoyed your article. I had cousins who went to Maryknoll when they were younger. I remember going to the annual carnival with them. It was such a big deal back then, and at that time it seemed to still be primarily JA. Amazing how much can change in just a decade. I was envious because where I lived, I was about the only JA. My experience wasn't like your Mayfield one though. Whites were a minority at my school, we had many Mexican and other Latin Americans, Blacks, Samoans, and Southeast Asians (many from refugee families). There just wasn't hardly any other JAs. It was quite a culture shock for me when I went to San Luis Obispo which was predominantly White.

Thank you

spstocker — Tue, 06 May 2008 10:08:13 -0700

Hi Momo:

Thank you for your article. It gives me a lot to think about.

I'm black and my girlfriend is Japanese (from Sapporo) and we are contemplating
marriage and children.

One of my girlfriend's questions is whether our children - if we have them - would be accepted
in Japan. (We'd likely raise our children in the US, but I hope we'd visit my girlfriends parents
in Japan during the summer.)

I hope you don't mind my asking a few questions.

Do you travel to Japan to visit relatives? If so, are you welcomed by your relatives there?

I think raising our children will present some challenges that my girlfriend and I haven't faced
in our lives, but I'd like to be as prepared as possible to help any children that we have be
confident and happy.

By the way, I really like your point about not being half. That makes sense to me.

So if we have children they would be both Japanese and African-American. Wholly both. I like that.

Stanley

Identification

Victor Nishio Yasuoka — Tue, 15 Apr 2008 10:00:01 -0700

Hello. I am from Lima, Perú, but the point you have made about your name are, surely, lived (initially suffered) by all Nikkei wanting to integrate themselves to their societies. I fully understood the comparisons because my native language is Spanish.
So, I agree with you about your way to take those extranged attitudes of people who do not know, less understand, the origins of our cultural heritage; but also we must be alike in some ways when talking about their way of life, that is why everything should be taken with sense of humor.
I have read your articles, and think they are all interesting.
I will be posting, in Spanish, probably in may 08.
Diseñador Publicitario, Artista Aficionado, Columnista Prensa Nikkei
www.cajoncreativo.com, BLOG victornishioyasuoka.wordpress.com
Lima, Perú