Ekiben: The Art Of The Japanese Box Lunch Review

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(More customer reviews)Junichi Kamekura's, 'Ekiben: The Art of the Japanese Box Lunch,' is a beautiful picture book that will appeal to foodies, casual gourmands and even those interested in food-packaging design. Highlighting boxed lunches featuring regional and seasonal ingredients sold at train stations across Japan the wonderful presentation, freshness and overall deliciousness captured by the photography will leave most American readers envious of the high quality 'fast-food' enjoyed by the Japanese.
Even though this book was published in 1989, it is good to know that the eki-ben lives on as I recognized several bentos featured in this book on my last trip to Japan (several months ago). This book may be somewhat hard to find as its been out of print for awhile so if you should come across a copy be sure to snag it.

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Shows and describes the contents of a variety of Japanese-style box lunches and discusses their background.

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Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet (An Unabridged Production) Review

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(More customer reviews)Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet by Jamie Ford is one of those novels that I've heard a lot of good buzz about. Everyone that I know who has read it seems to love it. So when I saw an audio sitting on the shelf of my local library I thought that I would give it a go. Wondering all the while if it would live up to the hype that I'd heard. Well, hype is the wrong word but I can't think of one that will fit. This isn't a book in which I hear people screaming about from the rooftops but its got this quiet and growing following that is harder to ignore then those who scream to be read. When you pick up Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet know that there are no big bangs or earth shattering revelations. Instead there is just this rich story about a boy and a girl and the cruel realities of living in a world during a time of war. The story is told in two parts, there is 10 year old Henry living in Chinatown in the 1940's war is raging in Europe and there is an ever growing disdain for people of Japanese decent. The other is through Henry's eyes as a fully grown man still living in the same area of Seattle but in a world that is far far different from his youth. This story is also about a Japanese girl named Keiko who Henry meets at the white school that his father insists on sending him to and that of Henry's son, a modern boy who thinks that his father is stuck in the past and old ways.
Words can't describe just how amazing this story was. Jamie Ford has such a gift with words and story telling that I often thought that I was right there in the story standing next to Henry and seeing the world through his eyes. My heart leapt when his did and it broke when Henry suffered. I would sometimes find myself talking over the narrator of the audio - speaking to Henry's son telling him that he didn't understand, that if he knew all that his father had gone through he'd be in awe of him.
Speaking of the narrator, can I just say that I loved Feodor Chin's voice? He did an amazing job with this book and the accents. There were never any issues in trying to determine who was speaking as he had such distinct twists for all the different characters. I really enjoyed listening to this audio, not just because it was a great story but because the narrator was just so good. This is definitely a narrator that I am going to be on the look out for later on. Just as Jamie Ford is an author to watch. His words are pure poetry and his words are so amazingly drawn. I know I keep saying that but its true. Just as its equally true that I really can't find the words to fully express just how wonderful this story is. So rather than hear me gush fantastic about it I strongly suggest that you go and discover it for yourself.
As originally posted on my blog Ticket to Anywhere

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"Sentimental, heartfelt....the exploration of Henry's changing relationship with his family and with Keiko will keep most readers turning pages...A timely debut that not only reminds readers of a shameful episode in American history, but cautions us to examine the present and take heed we don't repeat those injustices."-- Kirkus Reviews"A tender and satisfying novel set in a time and a place lost forever, Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet gives us a glimpse of the damage that is caused by war--not the sweeping damage of the battlefield, but the cold, cruel damage to the hearts and humanity of individual people. Especially relevant in today's world, this is a beautifully written book that will make you think. And, more importantly, it will make you feel."-- Garth Stein, New York Times bestselling author of The Art of Racing in the Rain

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I Hotel Review

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(More customer reviews)This epic saga, 626 pages, ten novellas, ten consecutive years, twelve voices, explodes and combines the genres of the political novel, the postmodern historical novel, and the testimonio to imagine San Francisco's I-Hotel as a great, global hub of Asian American culture, art and politics during the decade of the 1970's.
Of all the novellas, I-Migrant is perhaps the most hopeful and heartbreaking, and the narrator, Felix, a Pilipino chef, one of Yamashita's most charming creations. Felix, a teller of tall tales and a character of great wit, describes a utopian world in which the workers unite around his excellent pan-Asian cuisine. "What's the story of the world?" he asks. "Food." (469). Here, a hilarious pig roasting contest begins with Samoans hunting wild boar in Salinas and ends in a huge party under a freeway pass in San Francisco attracting every leftist political faction. All is not pretty, in the world of migrants, however, and Felix himself insists that he was John Steinbeck's cook and the model for the racistly imagined character Lee in East of Eden. Felix also narrates Cesar Chavez's betrayal of Pilipino labor organizers when Chavez accepts a personal invitation from Marcos. Despite betrayals, all the fractured and fractious political organizations band together to save the I-Hotel in a two thousand-person protest; yet, wealth and institutional power win over pan-Asian cooking in the end. The novella closes with Felix, an old man, evicted from the hotel. In the brilliant last scene, he throws up in the gutter outside of the hotel, and imagines losing all the delicious food he has cooked to bring people together until he is only an "empty sack". (511). Watching the dissolution of the dream of the I-Hotel he says, "I never think it can hurt like this." (511)
The myth of Orpheus and Eurydice presides over Yamashita's ninth novella, Ai Hotel, which contains seven chapters, each named for a couple, each detailing, in some way, a tragic love. This novella classically links sex with death: there are several female suicides, Hades-like basements and pantries, a death in a hospital and a death in Vietnam. With this novella, Yamashita adds a new dimension to her oeuvre; although the novella contains her signature sensual descriptions of eating and reading, it also contains her most sexually explicit prose to date. The rhythm of the piece is Jazz inspired, and although no love affair ends happily, there is a lot of "Uun uun, ahh ahh ahh" (581) before death intervenes.
Yamashita's final novella, 1977: I-Hotel, her coda, written completely in first person plural, begins with the last radio transmission from the I-Hotel during the conflict between the police and protesters. This chapter honors those who recorded, through sound and video, the brutal eviction of the elderly tenants and the beating of protesters by police. It is perhaps also a celebration of the larger project of giving voice to the people as well as a re-assertion of the I-Hotel as a center for art and culture of the Asian American protest movement. As the collective narrator asserts, "The center of our great uproar was a gigantic organic voice box of our own making; it was our I-Hotel." (603). The second chapter of the last novella is a theorizing of the idea of hotel in the context of urban spaces as a temporary home for those participating in global migrations. The third chapter is a bitter postscript to the politics of the movement. Whereas earlier in the novel, we have seen the way in which the final protest brought the many political factions together; in this chapter we are told that after the protesters are defeated by the police, they turn on each other. While the police watch and laugh, the protesters "ridiculously" and "in frustration" (618) beat each other bloody. The fourth and final chapter is narrated by the "waves of yellow people splashed against American shores." (624) Here, we see the traditional image of Asian American immigrants--passive, hard working, watching the I-Hotel struggle but not wanting to get involved. Ironically, these passive watchers go out to a restaurant to eat rather than protest, and end up in the crossfire of "The Joe boys," a gang on "tong business" (626). The last image of the book is of these passive bystanders running away, invisible to the rest of the world, finally falling into "restless slumber". (626).
The I-Hotel is Professor Yamashita's opus. This 626 page book builds on and coalesces many of her previous obsessions, multiple perspectives, the intercessions of politics, art and culture, global flows, yet as playful as it often is, it is also finally an angry, brilliant call to action, to wake us from our "restless slumber."


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Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet Review

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(More customer reviews)I was excited to read this book because I knew it was set in Seattle during the internment of Japanese Americans during World War II, and that's a time period that has always interested me. I expected an interesting trip through history, but what I got was so, so much more than that.
Henry Lee is still mourning the death of his wife when he learns that the belongings of Japanese Americans hidden in the basement of Seattle's Panama Hotel for decades have been discovered. Henry is drawn to the basement, and what he's searching for there opens a door he thought he had closed forever. The story switches back and forth between 1986 and the 1940s, when a 12-year-old Henry attending an American school (he's "scholarshipping" as his father likes to say) meets another international student working in the school kitchen. Keiko is Japanese American, the enemy according to Henry's father, but the two become best friends before her family is imprisoned in one of the relocation camps.
This book does a phenomenal job exploring the history and attitudes of this time period, and Ford's portrayal of Seattle's ethnic neighborhoods is amazing. But really, the thing that pulled me into this novel the most was the richness of the relationships -- Henry and Keiko, Henry and his father, Henry's mother and his father, and Henry and his own son. HOTEL ON THE CORNER OF BITTER AND SWEET looks at the best and worst of human relationships, the way we regard others, the way we find ourselves reenacting our relationships with our parents with our own children, the choices we make along the way. Mostly, though, this book reminds us that there is always room -- and time -- for forgiveness and redemption.
I finished this book in tears, moved by the people who came to life so vividly in this story and sad that it had to end at all. HOTEL ON THE CORNER OF BITTER AND SWEET is a perfect, perfect choice for book clubs or for anyone craving a compelling story about human nature at its worst and at its best. An amazing, amazing book. It will be one of your favorites, I can almost promise.

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