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Normally a love letter from the daughter of your boss would be something wrought with complications. But when they are 4 years old, such a letter just really makes your day.
It was in reply to some Hato-Sabure I bought for Kana and her sister when I was in Kamakura last week.

Maybe you have been eating on something and thought:
“you know, this is pretty good, but it would be even better with cheese”.

Indeed! And so I will share with you the Secret to a good Okonomiyaki: Get cheese as a topping. It makes everything better.

But. What. About. Ramen. ?.

More specifically, what about Tonkotsu ramen? Despite the fact that it is the Best Kind of Ramen, it too can be made even tastier WITH THE INCLUSION OF CHEESE:

元祖マルキュー味噌チーズラーメン　(900円)

Last weekend in Ebisu I stopped in Tsukumo Ramen (website has Noise) and found something great that one might write poetry about, the kind of poems that furthers the expression of the human condition*. They make their own cheese and then they shred it over your soup, wearing red t-shirts with jeans as they do this. The cheese gets all melty and sinks (with the corn). So unlike regular ramen eating, where you finish off the experience by trying your best to get those slipperly noodle parts out the bottom of the bowl (and mostly just get onions or bean sprouts) at Tsukumo you are rewarded with the noodle-parts PLUS globs of cheese. You can’t lose.

They have three shops- one in Hokkaido, one in Ebisu, and one in Tsudanuma in Chiba(!). What’s that Kanagawa? You might be the prefecture neighboring Tokyo that has all the class and money and taste, but do you have any shops offering CHEESE RAMEN? No, you don’t. Japan’s New Jersey, Chiba, does.

Or is it Saitama that is Japan’s New Jersey?

Go to one of those shops and taste the sensation (I would suck at writing copy as a job)

FANTASTIC

*Here is that poem (a Haiku):

HOLY CRAP ITS CHEESE
THE RAMEN HEAT MELTED IT
STRAIGHT INTO OUR HEART(S)

I picked up the new edition of The Nature of Photographs (at right) last night at one of my favorite photo/art bookstores in Tokyo: Hacknet.

This is one of the few books which I’ve read more times than I can remember, and so it was really interesting to take the entire 45min chiyoda line ride home and go cover to cover with this new edition. The new version comes in at 133 pages, 47 pages more than the original. The new reproduction of the images is amazingly beautiful, and the color pictures in particular just leap off the page.

Phaidon did a fantastic job with this new version, and including the photographer’s name and the title of the picture was a nice touch. I’m not sold on their Courier-esque font use (it’s got the Hip Now Feel) but the overall layout is quite sharp. The text of the original was leaner, and maybe a little more poetic. The new one is a little more accessible in how it comes across much more like a real textbook by the way Shore presents some issues (the Japanese woodblock print page comes to mind.) and in how the sections are organized.

I bought the first edition back in 2002(?) at the university as it was a textbook for my photography class, and it’s great to think that this new edition is in a lot of student’s hands now.

I would suggest to you this: Buy this book NOW.