If you want to make me happy, take me out for sushi. Fort Wayne's best and most popular Japanese restaurant is, and has been for the last several years, Asakusa at 6224 Lima Road. This is a busy part of town, near the interstate, on a major shopping artery. A big Meier grocery store and a home improvement store is right across the street. Its easy access and consistently good quality food has made it a Fort Wayne favorite.
We like the marinated seaweed salad with sesame and other seasonings. The rich green color makes it appear to be rich in phyto-nutrients (is that a word)? You should also try the Edamame, which is simply steamed, salted soy beans. This is a great whole food, simple for kids to eat, and good for any one's diet. A great snacking food, it slows you down while you crack open the steamed pods to get to the beans. It's sort of like eating soft, soy peanuts.
For lunch I like Don Buri, which is a dish served over rice. It's more filling than say, individual pieces of sushi, so tekka don is the sliced raw tuna over sushi rice. This becomes a more economical way to buy the same ingredients, and you can eat it with chopsticks or a fork. Add the soy sauce and wasabi you have blended to taste in a dish on the side.
I do like Asakusa's hand sushi rolls, which are more cone-shaped (as in ice-cream) but still have the green seaweed wrap. They are easy to hold, and again have more volume of food than little sushi pieces, which are fine but with which I'm becoming bored. Tactile yet not sloppy, it is fun to eat food this way. And food should be fun, should it not?
I like the Crazy Maki, which is fresh raw tuna, salmon, and red snapper, with a layer outside the seaweed which is rice and masago (fish roe). Some of their rolls have added sesame seeds to this outer layer, which give it a wonderful additional texture. I'm fond of the Orange roll and the California roll, which also have avocado and cucumber.
Although the green tea was a little bitter (had it boiled too much?) Asakusa did a fine job - they are often full but do a good job serving, considering. Now it's time to release the Kraken!
Yes, I said it - and have been saying it every chance I get. We went to the movie theater to see Clash of the Titans, and it did not disappoint. Liam Neeson and Ralph Fiennes (think the two biggest guys from Schindler's List) are Zeus and Hades, no less. Zeus' wandering eye has him disguising himself as an eagle, eluding his understandably jealous wife Hera and raping a mortal (wife of the king of Argos). Enraged, the king attempts to murder both his wife and her bastard demi-god son by throwing their casket into the sea, but the boy Perseus is saved by a fisherman.
Sam Worthington of Avatar fame is Perseus. My date noted how odd it was that only Perseus had the short clippper buzz, but I told him maybe they did it with sharp oyster shells.
Mortals want to fight back at the oppressive power of the gods, and warfare ensues, culminating with the proverbial releasing of the mighty Kraken. Zeus wants his son to ascend to Mt. Olympus, but Perseus wants to deny his father and assume the job of his adopted father, a fisherman. It's a good story and one from the ages.
My big tip here is I've heard there is no reason to pay extra to watch this movie in 3-D, because it wasn't filmed for that. They added the effects post-production, so save your money for one like How to Train your Dragon (a review in my blog is to come later this week. Btw I loved it) that was made for 3-D and filmed that way.
I'm a sucker for mythology but Hollywood has often done it badly. However, I really loved Clash - giant Kraken and all. The lovely woman who played Io, Gemma Arterton - it's fun to see a newcomer whom you don't type to another movie. She was lovely as was Pegasus, the winged horse - how do they make those feathers on his wings look so real! Somehow he didn't look hokey.
It's fun to think of the days thousands of years before television and movies, when people entertained one another by telling stories - in this case, the part of the story in which Perseus needs the head of the Medusa to turn the Kraken to stone. Any living thing that gazes upon its face, however, will be frozen as well. So Perseus must use his polished shield as a mirror to engage and behead the Medusa. My date was fascinated by this part - and he had never studied the old, ancient Greek and Roman mythology. They're such great stories all, the stuff of which legends are made.
Go see this movie if it appeals to you - and let me know what you think the creature is they ride in one part - Roger Ebert described it as a giant lobster but I was thinking scorpion, claws down. The scenery, the cliffs, the city Argos is beautiful - a well done action movie, and better than that.
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