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Tuesday, June 21, 2011

AN 2011

The time of May 27-29, 2011 in my life was dedicated for Anime North 2011 as a comic vendor.

Great fun I definitely had.

It was my first time to sell fan arts at AN. I'm not a huge fan of most of the anime franchise-at least for the products of the past decade-however it's impossible for me to deny that Japanese pop culture has influenced my childhood in a great scale. So yeah, I embraced it with fan art!

It was quite an extraordinary experience since I was almost the only person with Ultraman fan arts to the scene.

More than enough people seemed to recognize the characters on my posters, yet not being able to relate to the characters. Which made sense since Ultraman isn't a big thing in North America. There were more characters they actually grew up with; think about characters from Nintendo franchise: countless number of people spent their childhood with NES, you know.

So basically I targeted the wrong market (from what I know, Ultraman series stopped being imported since 1960's for unknown reasons) with Ultraman products.

As somewhat of a backup plan, I prepared my secondary items: Team Fortress 2 paper dolls that are based on Minecraft 3D model structure.

Big enough number of people showed interest, yet I guess the fact that customers had to build dolls themselves were a bit of a turn off.

I didn't really have a choice since I was not supposed to sell anything pre-made 3D as a comic vendor, but I still think it could've been more thought through. :'( A lesson taken well.

Poor Heavy fell apart due to clumsy building skill I had..

I'm sorry I tried building you first as a guinea pig.

After all, I still had a great amount of fun =D

Especially with moments like two Japanese ladies stopped by, and started naming every Ultraman in Japanese (:'D my effort fully paid by that single moment, I swear)

or the moment where my girlfriend and I spotted Miso from Katamari,

or the moment my friend-I think- brought an amazing gift from her/his HK trip!

Ultraman Leo & Baltan Seijin figures!!

D: my nerdness exploded that moment, and these two epic warriors occasionally enjoy mega battles somewhere in Toronto nowadays when I can't help but start touching them.

...that didn't sound wrong, did it? I hope not.

Thursday, April 28, 2011

April 27th 2011 was definitely one of my favourite annual rituals within the city. :P

I'm pretty sure it is not bound to neither Toronto nor Canada, since there are few web pages like this showing this event is nationwide throughout North America. I tried to look up some history about this event but ended up getting distracted by things like.. a zombie-proof-house.

Every year what I feel is that the line up is long, yet worth waiting for my turn, since it constantly moves forward whenever I'm about to feel like it's taking long. I mean yeah, it's only a scoop or two per person, after all.

So yeah, I ended up with these bad boys. Paying only $0.31 per scoop. I can tell that it was a good treat for my recent icecream crave.

PS. I found out last night that it was 2 scoops per person in downtown TO, and 3 scoops in uptown. I'm thinking about moving fo' seerius now.

Thursday, April 21, 2011

a good bowl of Japanese ramen in Toronto downtown...

what this post is about: my love of Japanese ramen in Toronto, Canada, and a QUICK review over few related restaurants. It's going to be SO BIASED, oh yeah :D

...just kidding.

Yes. I am so very going to update this blog with my love for the food.

I've been looking for a restaurant that has a good ramen on their menu for awhile. Well, with not much of eager and zeal, but it's been always above my head, haunting me of an awesome noodle dish.

I can't even count how many times I have craved for Japanese ramen after reading mangas like 20th Century Boys or those infamous cooking mangas. It's like watching a film where the characters munches on nachos right before your eyes, and I fall for the stimulation like a kid.

If you are a Torontonian(I don't like the term Torontoist. Don't point that out please, I want to devour and cleanse that word from the air)you might know know how easy it is to find "Japanese restaurants." But it's hard to find something that's close to "real" Japanese food, isn't it? I mean, there are more than enough sushi-bento box restaurants that are mostly owned by non-Japanese folks, with, of course, decently quality of food and price for some of them.

There are few restaurants like: Manpuku, Ematei, Koyoi... where you can find so-called "real Japanese" dishes and recipes. However, except Koyoi, with their special ramen with 25 limited bowls on every Wednesday, I couldn't find a decent place that provides ramen.

and personally I found Kenzo and Ajisen-Ramen PRETTY DAMN AWFUL.

I rant easily, sorry about that.

My apologies if you like their ramen, however, to me they provided decent taste of greasy and factorized flavour in the bowls of ramen I ordered(I always went with around 5-6 friends of mine, and tasted different bowls, and I don't remember any of them being incredible, but just "ok it doesn't suck TOO bad, but still not that good.")

With quite disappointing experiences of ramen in Toronto, finally a good friend of mine informed me that Konichiwa on 31 Baldwin St. has ramen on their menu.

Thankfully I live nearby, and on the 20th of April, 2011, with my girlfriend aside, we walked through the terrible wind blows and finally reached at the doorstep of Konichiwa, the restaurant I never laid my eyes upon.

It sucks that I don't usually bring a camera around, but the overall interior design and the atmosphere of the restaurant was very cozy and warm. Wooden frames and hanging embroidery patterns on the walls, with a collection of few Japanese paintings..

OK YOU KNOW WHAT, STRAIGHT TO THE RAMEN.

They have only 2 ramen on the menu.

choice of 2 on broth: shoyu / miso

choice of 4 for topping: pork / beef / chicken / tofu

+ add 2 gyoza dumpings for a price.

each of us got: miso broth + pork on top, shoyu broth + beef on top.

as side dishes, 6 pcs of Spicy Salmon Maki and Shishamo(3 grilled sea smelts on their menu) were decent appetizers. Compare to the most sushi rolls, these makis were a bit thicker, with both salmon and rice, I remember. Shishamo was a bit burnt, but for such small fish, I think it's hard to avoid their thin tail and head tips to be safe from the grill.

Anyways, the ramen bowls were very succulent.

Juicy marinated meats on top, warm broth that has depth in its taste, chewy curly ramen noodles... I don't have a tongue of a professional food critic, but I can tell you one thing that honesty is the biggest virtue I value, and hell yeah their ramen is TASTY.

For both miso and shoyu broth, they were not too salty nor too sweet, bitter or sour. I even added some spicy sesame oil they provided, it still tasted awesome.

Shoyu broth has very clean taste like Udon broth, but less salt and sugar, but more taste of the broth itself-Oh man I suck at describing taste- On the other hand, miso broth is SLIGHTLY thicker than shoyu broth, therefore feels heavier but you can taste the miso in a level that the scent of miso remain on your tongue, but not for too long.

I didn't taste anything "artificial." That I can tell you for sure, although I'm still a modern child that has a tongue dulled by chemicals.

But.

Man, this damn ramen made me devour everything that was in the bowl except chopsticks and spoon.

I mean, they might not have the best ramen in the world, but from what I had so far in Toronto, they definitely offer something that will make me go back for.

Even right now as I'm writing about it, I crave it already.

I hope it's not the sign of some addictive sedative they put in the ramen :9

*random note*

Some guy's screaming his spirit out somewhere downstairs while I'm posting this. I wonder what this guy's up for... all I hear is "SAUDAJEW$DFKAFDER MA LIFE!!!! SOWAAAA FJKHAOAD!!"