I’ve been holding out on you. After living for almost a complete year in our nation’s capital, it’s fair to say I’ve picked my local haunts. I’ve found my favourites and denounced the competition, but while I’ve been frequenting the likes of my top sushi joint in Virginia for many moons now, I haven’t let you in on the secret. Don’t take it personally, I’m more than happy to share the wealth, and if I’ve been hesitant to say a peep, it’s because I’m ashamed. I’m embarrassed because I always order the same thing.

Granted, Momo in Old Town Alexandria is a sushi stop, and any cuisine as specific as sushi probably warrants staying on well-travelled territory, but nearly every nigiri to touch my chopsticks has tasted well above my expectations so it was only a matter of time before I discovered the rest of the menu. It’s a risky move; I mean, how likely are the chefs to be good at sashimi AND teriyaki, really? But when I had an extreme hankering for some thick wheaty udon, I knew Momo was my place to go.

Upon first glance the shop seems small and modest, with a fairly run of the mill menu and friendly staff leading you to cramped tables. The noise level is nonexistent and the location is ideal, just a few blocks from King Street in the heart of the neighbourhood. You can find Japanese fare like this almost anywhere (though Momo’s rice is on the more excellent side of the spectrum), yet I’m almost always wary to say yes to the udon option linger alone on the back of the menu next to kuro-age and edamame. This was Momo we were talking about though, not the Frying Fish or Bonsai, so I gave it a go, and, well, you saw the video.

Perfect noodles. Udon done right: soft and chewy but not rubbery, clear salty broth that wasn’t too briny, lots of vegetables that still had a bite to them, that classic spiral-accented radish that makes me feel like someone knows how it should go back there, and a serving size that didn’t wither me at the onset. It didn’t break any records, but Momo’s udon was solid. It was a good, dependable, hearty dish that warmed my belly. How much more can you ask of a soup?

That’s kind of Momo’s niche anyway. Solid food. Really dependable, fresh sushi. In a region with as much great seafood as we’ve here in the DC area, I was astounded by the sushi selection and while I’ve had many a delightful crab cake, I’ve had very few worthwhile chirashi. Is Momo the best sushi I’ve ever had? Unsurprisingly no, having lived in both Japan and Los Angeles. But should you discount it? Absolutely not. Momo is a great place with stellar service and quality sushi and, as I discovered tonight, homey udon to boot.

I don’t hate salads, but I never seem to eat them. I rarely want to order them in a restaurant, and I not only dislike the kinds of home made salads always presented at potlucks, but I find my own salad materials rotting in the crisper every time I think I’ll get around to making one. I guess I’m just not a salad person, or so I thought.

I ate a scary large salad for lunch and enjoyed it, and a few days ago I ate another. I bought salad materials at the store today on purpose. Have I gone mad? No, I’ve simply found my salad stride. What changed? What led me from the dark side eschewing salad to feasting on the stuff? I realised a few things about my own tastes and began to experiment until I found out what exactly about salads I deplored and quickly excised them from my salad bowl.

First of all, I wasn’t doing math right in my head. As someone who doesn’t calorie count, like most people, I judge my food by quantity on my plate. This is all fine and dandy, but there’s a big difference between half a cup of rice or your sandwich bread and half a cup of spinach in terms of raw calories. If you’re going to eat a salad for a meal, you have to make it bigger than you expect. Double my salad quantity and I’m significantly more satisfied.

It seems logical then that a rib-sticking salad should include some form of protein to keep you from getting the grumblies a few hours later, but I realised that I do not enjoy protein in my salad. I don’t like beans, I don’t enjoy tofu, I hate fish, and I generally don’t even like cheese amid my leafy greens. Of course I like all of these things separately just fine, but put them in a salad and I start to turn up my nose. So guess what, I stopped trying to make sure I had protein in my salads and they started to look many times tastier. I’m happy to eat the protein, say a bit of peanut butter on an apple or a side of lentils or even leftover salmon but I immediately get disgusted if it’s put atop my salads.

Perhaps protein’s presence in my salad is overwhelming. On my path to salad bliss I’ve discovered that my least favourite salad of all time is the “hodgepodge” of anything and everything. I like vegetables. Not just most vegetables, I like all of them: the ugly green ones, the bitter ones that require extra cooking, the ones that stain your fingers and kitchen knives, the stringy ones, the ones masquerading as other foods, the ones toddlers are afraid of, all of them. Yes, even capsicum. I’ll eat the heart out of that, provided there’s nothing else in my icebox. However, I do not enjoy all of vegetables hanging out at town square together. I’ve never liked the cornucopia of roasted vegetables I grew up with. I never enjoyed the jubilee of veggies in a casserole. Only four ingredients allowed in my salad: one green, one onion-ish item, and only two others. Those other two can be whatever: pears and walnuts, grapefruit and avocado, mushrooms and hard boiled egg, so long as your ingredients don’t total over 4. Apparently I like thematic, segregated, minimal vegetables in my salad.

That was it. That’s all it took to get me to eat salads regularly. It wasn’t the ingredients I didn’t like, nor was it the concept of a salad, and I’ll eat just about any dressings around. It was my idea of what a salad was. Now though, I did eat a salad for lunch and let me tell you, it was delicious.

My first experience with otaku culture and a little primer for those not in the know about Japan’s best known subculture. I attended Oni-Con anime convention in Houston, Texas and have a surprisingly good time talking to various cosplayers and fellow Japan-o-philes. Even if the scene isn’t your thing, give this video a shot. It’s an interesting look at a seemingly strange pastime. Enjoy.

We all probably have a love/hate relationship with YouTube, and for the wonderful array of offerings this portal hosts, YouTube has an equal number of ridiculous, crude, and worst of all, boring videos. Still, running across the occasional explicit video is well worth the myriad product reviews, art projects, and cooking lessons presented by the other 70% of users. The truth is, there’s a lot worth watching on YouTube, and as I’ve gained more and more exposure to better and better content from independent artists and professional experts alike, I’ve started using the YouTube subscription feature like a television DVR queue. So today, in a nice little roundup I thought I’d show you some of they really good YouTubers (and Vimeo-ers) out there and tell you why you should give their videos a look.

Pomplamoose Music / Pomplamoose Music
Jack Conte and Nataly Dawn (aka: Pomplamoose) are a pair of gifted musicians with a bright, airy sound and a fun attitude. The duo covers popular songs (think Lady Gaga’s “Telephone” and Earth wind & Fire’s “September”) with an engaging editing style and a downright delightful music composition. If they created the channel in hopes of promoting their music, it worked for me. They have by far the most creative music videos I’ve ever seen, in terms of quality, consistently, and quantity.

Kevin Cooney / tokyocooney
Kevin Cooney (aka: Tokyo Cooney) probably has the best daily life videos you’ll likely come across. Kevin is a comedian and actor living and working in Tokyo still going strong with super videos. He may not upload as often as some of the others in the J-Vlogging community of Japan, but Cooney’s videos are always of substantial length and never fail to make me laugh. He does a good job of not only explaining Japanese culture with the respect (impressive in a comedy setting) but also by relating it to the rest of the Western world. Whether it’s eating ridiculous flavours of ice cream at Ikebukuro Ice Cream City or marvelling at the bounty of the Kombini, Kevin’s videos are well worth your time.

Impactist / impactist
Couple Kelly Meador and Daniel Elwing (aka: Impactist) have an collection of their creative work: commercial work, fun little animated shorts, and incredible electronic music. They seem inspired at every turn, making their uploads really intriguing videos to watch, regardless of your profession. Sometimes cute, always quirky, Impactist are able to perfectly capture a different emotion with each video, be it child-like wonder, complete solace, redeeming curiosity, or just a little silliness. It’s experimentation meets expression at its finest.

Vancouver Film School / VancouverFilmSchool
At first glance the VFS channel is nothing more than a showcase for student work, but the extensive archives and impressive shorts make it one of the best art showcases out there. There’s alarmingly polished 3D modeling shorts, thesis projects, and some thought-provoking shorts I’d never have expected to find so readily. Best of all, VFS uploads all their videos in crisp high definition and when it comes to the work presented, the sharper the better.

Revoluiton Cycle / revolutioncycle
Simon & Fearghal (aka: Revolution Cycle) are just about to complete the first Irish circumnavigation of the globe by bicycle, but they posted many a video along the way documenting their progress. The videos are short but sweet and surprisingly entertaining, even if cycle touring isn’t your thing. They have some high quality travel videos that manage to strike a balance between the personal intimacy of a journey such as theirs and the public appeal of an internet video travelogue. It’s a hard line to walk, but they do it well enough for me to recommend their work.

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I get juiced up on the java as I do a coffee shop crawl in Houston, Texas, frequenting four great stops in the same neighbourhood. Not sure which coffee shop is for you? Not to worry, I give you the skinny on all the spots in the heart of the city no matter your needs, from tea and coffee to brunch and lunch and great meetups and outdoor patios. It was an afternoon well spent.

Meet Verbal and Taku, the greatest duo since bread and butter. Who are they? Japanese musicians. They work in a variety of styles with a number of other artists from BoA to Yoshika but mostly they just make rad beats and rap over them. So yeah, M-Flo are hip hop artists from Japan and they’re going to teach you how to speak Japanese. Maybe with a little gangster swagger, but hey, what did you expect from international playboys? Sure listening to Japanese music must be helpful, but why M-Flo in particular? Well, my dear friend and fellow Japanese language enthusiast, M-Flo is the perfect duo to help you hone your linguistic mastery. I’ve not just one, not two, but eight impressive reasons why you should put aside your differences and learn to embrace M-Flo for the sake of your fluency.

For starters, all Japanese music, not just M-Flo are ideal choices to improve your listening comprehension because they’re written by native Japanese speakers for native Japanese speakers. While listening to Japanese audio tapes or informative podcasts will help explain some things, real Japanese speakers don’t use the same vocabulary found in Genki Chapter 8, they use much more and they say things much faster. Listening to native-made materials targeted to a native audience will get you to functional fluency much faster than Tanaka-san and Junko-san from your JLPT textbook conversation ever will. So start listening to the organic Japanese being created out there now.

Another reason why M-Flo are lightyears more interesting to listen to than Tanaka-san and Junko-san, aside from vocabulary and Japanese slang a-plenty: it’s musical. It’s catchy. It’s got beats and hooks and choruses (that, thank goodness, repeat) with sound effects and basslines and even bridges that make you want to sing along in karaoke or at least dance. It’s not rocket science, it’s pop music. You don’t have to judge it against Wordsworth and Mozart, you just have to nod your head because the important bit is that it’s catchy, and catchy = memorable. Remember all those folk songs you learned as a wee one? Well, Verbal is your new Raffi.

So they’re catchy songs, yes (did I mention Loop in My Heart yet?) but even better, they’re short. M-Flo tracks may be filled with dense blocks of surprisingly clever rap, but they’re short and sweet. By the time your not-yet-fluent brain gets tired of hacking away at complex sentence fragments with your mental machete of diligence, the song will be over. Just as you’re about to pass out from the 8-G speed at which you have to read hiragana, the musical interlude will be here. It’s not easy material — a plus really, since it means you can spend hours working on it and still glean more every time — so the shorter chunk you can take it in, the better. I don’t know about you, but I find three minutes and thirty seconds of full on concentration to be a lot, enough to make me feel accomplished when I finish a song but easy enough to repeat the process.

I never seem to mind repeating the process either because it’s actually interesting. Like most, M-Flo songs are loosely narrative anyway, so I’m always pleasantly surprised when I realise that peppy track is actually about cheating or that sad-sounding ballad is about the first kiss. Plus the tune about a summer fling gives you all sorts of specific vocabulary for such an occasion, and how else would you ever know the word for “golddigger” if M-Flo wasn’t there to teach you the ropes? It’s like reading a book but simpler and with a better backbeat.

The narrative story of an M-Flo song becomes especially apparent in the music video, which you can easily look up on youtube. You may have never heard of them before this very moment, but M-Flo are Japanese hip hop royalty and completely prevalent all over the interwebs, thus they, their videos, and their music is readily accessible to anyone anywhere the web can be accessed. You don’t have to go to great lengths to hear Love Bug, you just have to google search the song title.

You want M-Flo to be popular. You want people to use their songs as ringtones and you want their videos to be copyright protected and all that jazz because it means you can find their lyrics really easily online. That’s the best part of learning Japanese through M-Flo: the actual words being spoken are already written out for your to follow along with so you can learn the kanji as you go (hint, hint, nudge, nudge) properly. You don’t have to rewind and pay the clip nineteen thousand times to hear if he’s saying きもち or きもじ because it’s right there for you. You can learn the word and its proper pronunciation easily and quickly. TV shows rarely publish transcripts and movie subtitles are almost always off, but an M-Flo song has its own accurate transcript ready for your consumption. Just search the song title and 歌詞(かし)

Now it may be pretty daunting to skim through those lyrics, especially if you can’t read it quickly or don’t recognise all the kanji. This is why M-Flo and Wise are much better to study to than, say, Rip Slyme or Silk Road (other awesome Japanese hip hop artists). Verbal and Taku (and Wise for that matter) are both fluent English speakers, so their songs are punctuated by English catch phrases that you can actually understand. You can use these as placekeepers to see if you’re on the right line or to adjust your reading speed to match their speaking speed.

That’s the whole beauty of using M-Flo to learn Japanese, you can self correct without having a teacher over your shoulder or a native speaker feed you hints. Taku sets the pace and Verbal feeds you the hints already. You can hear a word and because it’s a catchy, short story punctuated by English you can figure out the meaning from context pretty easily. If you’re already in Japan, you don’t have to feel silly listening to practice conversations or survival lessons from JapanesePod101 (a great resource, by the way), to everyone else you’re just rocking out to some M-Flo. People may even compliment you on your music taste, and if you aren’t familiar with the Japanese music scene, M-Flo tends to feature some of the biggest artists so you’ll know who to name drop when asked for your favourites. Seriously, don’t be afraid to let Mssrs Verbal and Taku from M-Flo school you in the fine art of street words, dangerously catchy loops, and native-level (if informal) Japanese.