Annelogue

Kobayashi vs Giant Bear

I think I've finally found a sport that has me biting nails in excitement. Food eating competitions! I discovered these competitions when I was in Japan in April this year. It was the only thing on TV that I could understand and I found myself glued to the coach for two hours during a eating competition between 3 girls who devoured obscene amounts of food. I learned that all the competitors had different strengths. One girl was particularly good at eating sausages, another was very good at eating cakes and the third was a whizz with warm food.  In addition it needs to be said that these girls were quite skinny, making the amount of food they ate more unbelievable. In the first round they ate tempura prawns freshly made, two pieces on each plate. Tempura prawns are deepfried prawns and they were very warm and they can be a bit sharp when crisp, so one girl cut the inside of her moth badly. The winner ate like 60 tempura prawns in the half an hour contest and do you know that she said when the TV-host asked her what she felt like doing after the contest..."I'd love an ice cream...to round off with something sweet"...whoa. Respect.

Memoirs of a Geisha

Arthur Golden

I just finished "Memoirs of a Geisha" by Arthur Golden. I saw the movie when it came out here about a year ago, but the book is quite different from the movie, that obviously was made to please an American audience. Anyhow, I found the story very intriguing, because the world of geisha is surrounded by so much mystery, since geisha's have a traditional code of silence about their profession. So therefore I swallowed the story raw. It wasn't until later that I looked around for some reviews of this book that I realized that the publication had been surrounded by quite a hoopla. Arthur Golden had listed Mineko Iwasaki, Japans top geisha during the 60's and 70's, as a source of information in his acknowledgments and for that she sued him for breach of contract and defamation, since he had promised to protect her anonymity. Mineko Iwasaki later gave out the book Geisha of Gion, to give her version of life as a geisha. So, I guess I should really read that one as well, to read about her experiences as a geisha. To get the real story. All though, she would probably idealize it, to make it sound better than it is. The truth probably lies somewhere in between...

What is your favorite cover song?
Question submitted by Ray.

What are the 5 words that best describe your life right now?
Question submitted by mojito.

Beginning, awaking, calming, restoring and positioning.

If you could open any sort of restaurant, what would it be like?

I would open an izakaya restaurant here in Copenhagen. It's a Japanese style restaurant/bar. It would be a really casual chill place where you could just sit at a counter a have a light meal, for example noodle dishes or sashimi, or just have a drink after work.

Kafka on the Shore (Vintage International)

Haruki Murakami

I just finished listening to the audio book version of Haruki Murakami's "Kafka On The Shore", downloaded from Audible.com. I really liked this imaginative, dark and trippy bizarro world novel. The book was exciting, even though I felt that some of the intertwining story lines did not add up to the sum of the plot in the end. I'm looking forward to get stuck into another book of his, "Norwegian Wood".

Music On Fire

I love summer this year! It's been unusually warm and nice here in Copenhagen, which is wonderful for people who have their vacation now and unbearable for people who actually are still at work. I love the afternoons and nights, it's very comfortable. Tonight I'm going to the outdoor summer cinema to see Crash. It's free, which is a good thing now at the end of the month.