SyntaxPC

I don't own my house, but I started renting a newly built condo almost four years ago. My wife and I are going to be buying a house in the next ~6 months, so we've been thinking about kitchens a lot. Sinks Definitely stainless steel! We have an under-mount sink, and it looks great, but there is definitely a problem with chipping the surrounding countertop with large pots. Also, if the under-mount isn't installed correctly you may have a problem of water leaking between the seam down into the cabinet below. We had to re-caulk ours, and it still isn't perfect. I don't really see the point to a split sink. If the sink is deep enough, then you can rinse things up in the air. Also, keep in mind that with split sinks you may only have one side with a garbage disposal. Countertops Granite is nice, but be warned that it does stain (especially for lighter colored granite). You will need to clean up spills immediately. Make sure all of your wine glasses are on coasters and your pots with dirty bottoms are on trivets. If we were to build our dream kitchen, the counter-tops would probably be stainless steel, but that of course depends on the design of your house. I personally like butcher block, but my wife doesn't like the fact that it requires upkeep and can pick up odors. We've also been investigating using laboratory countertops (like the ones that schools use in chemistry labs). They also seem to be relatively inexpensive. Does anyone have experience with them? Faucet Hands down, get a pull-out sprayer. It's the easiest way to clean the sink! Floor Our current place has hardwood. I'd rather have tile (or, ideally, concrete). The hardwood scratches very easily, especially if you drop things (which often happens in the kitchen). Another big problem is that crumbs get stuck between the seams of the floorboards; the only way to clean them is to get down on our hands-and-knees and clean the seams using our vacuum's hand brush attachment. I realize that you're not buying appliances now, but if you have the room (and especially if you only have one oven) then I'd really recommend getting a warming drawer. Lots of people on the TV housing shows say that they never use them---and when we moved in my wife and I didn't think we'd use ours either---but now we love it and use it almost daily. It's nice if only to serve your food on warm plates, but it's also really useful when entertaining to keep everything at the right temperature.

Thanks! Thanks! Those phrases seem useful, too. Yes, I am planning on learning the phonetic alphabets. From what I've read and been told, however, most of the food items contain a lot of kanji, correct? Yeah, those are also things about which I worried. That's very useful; thanks! I guess I should mention some things about the friend that told me this story: He does not look Japanese at all (his family is Scandinavian); He was living there in the late 1990s; He was living in a very rural area in Kumamoto; People would consistently tell him that he was the first non-Japanese person they had ever seen. Old people would tell him that he was the first non-Japanese person they had seen since the American occupation after WWII. #3 and #4 might explain the story. Also, things may have changed in the past ~10 years. As a somewhat amusing side story, he told me that he had a very hard time communicating because, even if he spoke to someone in fluent Japanese, people would always try and reply to him in broken English that had probably not been practiced since grammar school. It was very hard to get people to reply in Japanese. This was a particular problem for one of my friend's friends who happened to be from Brazil. The Brazilian friend only spoke Portuguese and Japanese. So when this guy would speak to Japanese people in perfect Japanese, they would reply in English and he would have no idea what they were saying.

See attached for a draft of the card up with which I came. The text (with English translations) is as follows: 我々は日本語を話さない深くお詫び申し上げます。 We apologize that we do not speak Japanese. 私たちは食品のすべてのタイプを食べる。 We eat all types of food. よろしければ、我々の食事を選択するとあなたに委託。 If it is okay with you, we entrust you to choose our meal. ご迷惑をおかけこれが原因かもしれない深くお詫び申し上げます。 We apologize if this causes you any inconvenience. 私たちは、このレストランの専門されている食品をしたいと思います。 We would prefer foods that are specialties of this restaurant. 我々は、日本のお客様の間で人気のある食品をしたいと思います。 We would also like any foods that are popular among Japanese customers. ひもじそうな: 少し -|--|--|--|--|--|- 非常に Hunger: not very hungry -|--|--|--|--|--|- starving 我々は一人当たり___________円をかけてしたいと思います We would like to spend ___________ yen per person. Any Japanese speakers out there want to correct this?

I'll do that. I wasn't quite sure for what to search when I first tried solving this problem. Thanks!

I just spoke with one of my friends that lived in rural Japan for a year. Below are some of his answers. Yes, it is a real problem; virtually no one spoke English when he was there. He did claim, however, that "almost everyone under the age of 80" should be able to read simple printed English. They will probably get the idea. Since most small restaurants list their dishes on wooden paddles on the walls, another option is to simply randomly point at the paddles and hope for the best. No and no. Probably not; most people are very honest. That is a definite possibility, but that will happen even if you speak fluent Japanese. My friend went on to tell me that even though he could speak fluently, many restaurants would often serve him a fork and refused to give him chopsticks. True, but that won't necessarily work if the restaurant is close to empty. Thanks; his services look quite reasonable and enticing, but it doesn't solve my general problem for the remainder of my trip. I think I am going to try and print up my card idea. Before I revert to using a combination of Google Translate and my gaijin friends, are there any e-gulleters out there that speak Japanese natively who are willing to help me translate?

My wife and I will be traveling to Japan for our first time this Spring. Neither of us speak Japanese and this will be our first time in a country in which we can't even read the printed text. Some Anglophone friends of mine that have lived in Japan for some time tell me that language can be a real barrier in some smaller establishments and especially in more rural areas. In the brief Internet research I've conducted thus far, I've already discovered a handful of places at which I'd like to eat that seem to be English-free. Both I and my wife eat everything and have no dietary restrictions. If we were to go to an English-free restaurant, we'd ideally just want to ask the server to give us a typical meal consisting of in whatever that restaurant specializes and/or whatever is most popular among their Japanese patrons. Is this a real problem? Would the server understand what I wanted if I just say "omakase"? ... ...even if it's not a sushi place? ...even if the place doesn't usually offer a tasting menu? I've an idea: I'd like to print out a bunch of business-card-sized notes stating in Japanese exactly what I said above (i.e., that we don't have any dietary restrictions and we just want a typical Japanese meal). The cards could even have a box were we could pencil in how hungry we are at the time and/or how much money we'd like to spend. We could then just hand a card to the server. Is this overkill? Has anyone out there done something like this before? Might this somehow offend the server? Do you think there's a chance that we would get fleeced (i.e., served way too much food and/or served the most expensive items on the menu)? Do you think the server might "dumb the menu down" because we're not Japanese? (This has happened to me before in my travels.) If this sounds like a good idea, can anyone help translate? Translation Party is failing me

Hi, SyntaxPC. What particular flavours are you thinking of ? To my knowledge it's true that alcohol will dissolve flavours that water won't, but it's also true that fats will dissolve most of those same flavours. (And again, also true that alcohol prefers water to fat: in the presence of both, it will tend to release the fat and amalgamate with the water). You are correct: Water does reduce the solvency of alcohol. Therefore, you're probably not going to get anything in terms of alcohol-soluble compounds from using wine or beer. From what I've read, however, anything above 80 proof or so does retain a good amount of its solvency. My point was that if you take a standard recipe for something like penne alla vodka and either omit the vodka or substitute it with water then the resulting dish will likely (albeit perhaps subtly) suffer. This is sometimes also due less to its solubility but more due to the fact that alcohol will behave differently than water during the cooking process. For example, alcohol inhibits gluten formation and is therefore sometimes used in baking; substituting water for the vodka in a pie crust recipe will yield a tougher dough.

Despite the fact that most of it cooks out, the alcohol in alcoholic ingredients is usually a vital component. This is because many flavor compounds are only alcohol soluble. I regularly substitute a decent quality dry vermouth for dishes that call for white wine to no ill effect. The benefits to vermouth are that it is relatively cheap (~$6 for a decent 750ml) and, thanks to its fortification, it has a much much longer shelf life than wine after opening. ~10 pan sauces and you'll be done with the bottle.

I'll be at the Friday dinner (there is also a second one on Saturday). I also attended the Friday dinner of the first series (although I didn't post anything given the other excellent recaps). I'll try and give an overview afterward this time. I'm really excited!

Does anyone know where one can buy maotai near Philadelphia? It doesn't appear as if the PLCB carries it.

Is this Chinese Cultural Center event BYOB?