May 2012 – Page 4 – A Geek in Japan

Berserk is a manga by Kentaro Miura that has been being published since 1989. The art is impressive and the story gets you completely hooked, specially during the first 5-10 volumes. In addition to the art, the fantasy-horror feel and the atmosphere of a particular medieval Europe, the best is the collision of the personalities of the main two characters Guts and Griffith. I like a lot how Kentaro Miura plays with the feelings of the reader as the story is unveiled and you start feeling attached to one character or the other but at the same time you like both of them. I liked it until volumes 12 or 13, after that the story started to lose interest for me.

If you haven’t read it, you should give it a try!, it’s available in English.

Berserk

During this year a trilogy of Berserk movies called Golden Age Arc are being released on Japanese movie theaters. We were able to enjoy the first movie last February and the second movie will be released next month. In the movie theater I went to see the movie the cafeteria was decorated with Berserk stuff!

Berserk

Official website of the Berserk movies

These are photos of a shop in Shibuya that only sells seaweed. All kinds of seaweed!

Seaweed Shop

One of the most well-known seaweed is nori, which is used to wrap maki-sushi. It is also eaten as a snack or along with steamed rice. When I arrived to Japan I didn’t like it that much but after some years here I am now an addict to nori.

Another seaweed that is very popular in Japan is kombu, used to flavor soups in Japan as well as in China and Korea. It is also used to make a kind of tea called kombucha.

Wakame is another seaweed usually used in soups (as for example in miso soup) and also in salads.

Mozuku is maybe the least known seaweed for foreigners and the one that people dislike the most. Most likely because it doesn’t look really tasty:

Mozaku seaweed doesn’t look really good but it doesn’t taste that bad as an appetizer along with a refreshing drink.

The kinds of seaweed I have mentioned are the most used and well-known in Japan, however depending on the region you can find other kinds of seaweed which are used in regional cuisines, for example, in Okinawa one of the most used kinds of seaweed are sea grapes. Japanese people say that eating seaweed is healthy and it is specially good to keep your sking young.