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here I write completely random stuff.

🦑 My thoughts on food

  • If I could, I’d be eating 24/7. I like food a lot and can talk about it for years.
  • My favorite food is the pho I find around Jackson Heights / Elmhurst. I get all the types of meat (I like tripe and tendon especially) and add all the bean sprouts, lime, and herbs. Depending on the day I may or may not add a bit of sriracha in the soup but not too much such that it covers the flavor of the broth.
  • I don’t avoid any particular foods though I don’t think I see myself eating mammals besides pigs, cows, goats/lambs/sheep. I did eat horse meat before as it’s a thing in Japan; it didn’t leave much of an impression so I don’t think I’ll try it ever again.
  • Oh, but I do think chocolate is overrated. Chocolate ice cream, cake, pain au chocolat, cocoa puffs. Literally none of them are even close to being my go-to-choice. I do like me a good chocolate truffle though.
  • Steak is also overrated. I do enjoy all of them: dry-aged, steak and eggs at 2 am in IHOP, picanha, wagyu, etc. But it’s just so pricey for what. Also surely not all high-end restaurants aren’t one trick ponies only able to serve expensive pieces of steak with a buttload of truffles and caviar right? I know a select are innovative (e.g. The French Laundry), but every YouTube video highlights steak, truffles, and caviar ONLY.
  • I currently have three knives: a gyuto, pairing, and nakiri. All three are Japanese handcrafted steel. The first two have a western grip and the last a Japanese wooden grip. Personally I find western grips favorable.
  • The best and laziest dish I’d recommend making is buldak-sauce fried rice:

Follow J Kenji Lopez Alt’s recipe in making fried rice in a home setting (without the blowtorch stuff) using whatever toppings you’d like. Instead of adding all the sauces at the end though, just add half a packet of the sauce that comes in the 1x spicy buldak ramen. Mix it around and serve.

  • I barely know anything about the economics regarding serving “shitty ethnic” food but am inevitably a consumer of such and am not entirely against it (they tend to be a great gateway into learning more about certain cuisine and are usually rooted in immigrant history, e.g. Chinese takeout). Nevertheless, I think Japanese food in America can be so much better; it’s either just low-end sushi, steak, and ramen or high-end sushi, steak, and ramen. I’m kinda surprised at how this cuisine is looked at with such high regard by the fine-dining industry (e.g. the late Anthony Bourdain praising it), and yet haven’t seen any actual venture by someone leaving their fine-dining restaurant and making good Japanese food that’s authentic. Because no one is eating only sushi, steak, and ramen every day (unless you do ramen reviews). Great options are the Yoshinoya / Marugame extension in LA and also the Hawaiian fast food stores (which aren’t Japanese per-say but are related in cuisine; e.g. spam-musubi and katsu), but these aren’t ventures by some ex-Michelin-starred-restaurant chef.

🍕 Food recipes I found on researcher’s personal websites

These are literally random recipes I found on people’s websites. I will add more as I find more.

My current (as of Aug 21, 2025) recipe involves a small spoonful of hot fudge (Ms. Richardson’s) into a glass of milk and a big spoonful or two of dark cocoa powder (Hershey’s Dark) whirred with a whirrer device.

👖 My thoughts on thrifting (whether in America or Japan)

  • I love to thrift, but it’s honestly such a coin-flip and you really need to high roll to get anything nice. Statistically, finding anything good that’s within one’s budget is so low; fortunately, if you can go multiple times then the odds should balance out and you should be able to find something.
  • That being said, thrifting really depends on (i) what clothes you want (ii) why you want those clothes (iii) what size you are. Of course budget is a huge factor, but even if you have infinite money, these three factors inevitably come back.
  • On (i). Say you want 90s and beyond clothing, maybe some T-shirt you’d find at Old Navy or Target. Then the odds you’d find that T-shirt is probably like 100% at any thrift store that mass buys clothes (Goodwill in America or like 90% of the shops in Shimo-kitazawa, Tokyo). The problem is that I think within the thrifting customer base, there exists a good chunk of people, including me, that want to thrift to buy more niche clothes at a cheaper price. For example, I find designs made by (once-in-the-past) small studios or high-end fashion really fun and refreshing (what comes into mind is Bape), but I really don’t want to drop like 3 bands per purchase, so I look towards thrift stores to possibly find them. Unfortunately, the chance you’ll find any of these with a completely low-balled price tag is so low, so you need to be consistent in visiting places to find anything.
  • On (ii). If the goal for you is to upcycle clothes, then buying clothes from Goodwill (or something like Bookoff in Japan) is probably heaven. There’s bound to be such a wide range of very affordable clothes, so you’ll be able to find and test out different fabrics, sizes, designs, and textures. If you’re goal is to just wear and not upcycle, then this leads to my next point.
  • On (iii). Let’s say you’re trying to find some zip-up to wear and you actually found one that looks nice. “Great!” you think, until you realize that the size is completely unusable for you. I’m a really short dude, 5'3 or 164 cm. I’m pretty far from the American stdev but I’m not too bad from the Japanese stdev. Anyway, 90% of the clothes I find are L or XL or XXL. If I wear a t-shirt of that size, it’s like I’m wearing a onesie. If I wear pants that size, I need like 4 belts for it to fit. After my many outings to stores, I realize that the chance I find something that works to be pretty low. Now, I realize that I’m a rare case given my stature, but even if a person is within one stdev away from the median or even above the median, I’d hypothesize that they’d also struggle to find something that works. For example, I’d bet that a woman interested in finding low-rise jeans will struggle in finding a pair of pants that fit all criteria such that (i) it looks nice and isn’t full of stains/holes, (ii) is well-structured so that she feels confident AND comfortable with how her butt fits, and most importanly (iii) is well-structured so that it’s not like the McQueen Bumster (doesn’t show one’s buttcrack). I feel like most jeans found at thrift stores will fail all three criteria.
  • Nevertheless, I’ll still keep at it on going to thrift stores. There’s a sense of appreciation when you look at older clothes and how they were constructed, as well as the different eras of styles that came and gone. I’ve found various nice pieces over the years and have been accustomed to almost always taking them with me wherever I go. I hope that with these thoughts you can also get a more wholistic view of thrifting and still be patient and have a leap of faith into believing nice pieces will come your way as well (like the cat distribution system).