A little bit of Japan in Argentina
Today was a cooler day and a bit humid; I just got back from dinner. I went to a Japanese restaurant just a block away from the apartment in Caballito. I have been to 2 Japanese restaurants now in Buenos Aires. From what little I have read on the Internet, the Japanese were one of the first non-European communities in Argentina and primarily from Okinawa. This restaurant is called Deygo and is on Rio de Jaineiro. Last week, I went to another Japanese restaurant further North in the Almagro barrio. The name eludes me (typical). The food in both places was quite good. Sushi is on the menu but the sushi selection is not much more than Salmon; Tonight,I had a dish of tempura and it was quite good; I was craving something a little different and was quite looking forward to having some Japanese food. Argentina is like Spain that people don't eat dinner until about 9 PM.
As I have walked around this area, I have seen two Japanese Laundromats; how do I know they were Japanese? They had the word "Japonesa" in the signage. And there is even a Japanese/Spanish private school of some kind in Caballito as well.
http://www.nichiagakuin.com/
Here is a photo from the place I went to last week with Steve & his son Les.
I thought it to be quite surreal to be eating Japanese food in a restaurant practically on ' my door step. And let me explain why. I found myself reflecting on when I was working in Paris many years ago on a BBC project; I ended up going to a Japanese restaurant at least once a week. I got quite chummy with the owner and he always took good care of me when I ate there. In fact, he would always offer me special dishes and just round the bill up to some number. Ah, memories.
While, I was waiting for dinner, I was reading Jeremy Paxman's book "On Royalty". I had the great pleasure of going to a talk last year at Imperial college where Mr. Paxman talked about said book. That's is the one thing I greatly enjoy about the UK, intellgent discourse.
Pizza (the continuing story)
I mentioned that I had a "Fugazetta" pizza recently; I had another similar pizza called a "Fugazzeta Rellena": it is made with mozzarella, olives, lotsa of onions and ham etc...
Have you ever seen such a pizza? I checked with some Italian friends and this was a new one on them. So this appears to be an Argentine concoction (any comments on that?).
Back to San Telmo
I was back in San Telmo this past Saturday Oct. 27th;I was talking a Spanish class that involved walking around the barrio and learning about the history of the area and asking and answering questions in Spanish. I will be doing a 4 day version of this course next week.
I also went to an art gallery to see the works of a painter Rocio Perez who I met on my previous trip here. I had a good look around the gallery while I was there.
All in all, a really pleasant day.
Similar but different
I am renting a furnished apartment and it has pretty much everything. I did need to buy a small frying pan etc... And just noticed a few days ago there did wasn't a can opener in the kitchen. I found what I thought was a broken piece of the can opener. At the shops a few days ago, I saw that the can opener was in fact not broken but that is how they are here.
See the picture and you get what I mean
Using such a can opener is a bit more manual than what I have experienced.
Similar but different
