Last year, I explained how the Japanese Film Festival has been a welcome part of pretty much every autumn since we've been in Malaysia. Well, this time round, because of the ravages of the ghastly Spikes, it's all online.

Which means none of the fun and razzmatazz -- no programme stamps, no stickers, no useful cloth bags, no cans of green tea, no filling in your feedback form with the paper held up against the corridor wall -- but at least we still get to enjoy the little injection of Japan that these interludes always offer.

I'll talk more about the movies in a Velvet Cushion post. This one is more about the little bit of razzmatazz we created for ourselves around the movies.

On Saturday, to ease ourselves into the mood for Lady Maiko, we ordered up from iZakaya an udon set to share, plus a beef tataki and a salmon furai salad (complete with crispy fish skin). Did the job perfectly, and I'm only sorry my picture doesn't do it more justice:


There's not a huge amount of story to Lady Maiko, but it's a very pleasant way to spend a Saturday evening.


And it spurred me on to hunt up photos of Kyoto, as we experienced it at the end of 2015:








Our third movie was The Flavor of Green Tea Over Rice.

The dish in question is ochazuke, which is basically steamed rice and a few condiments, with green tea or hojicha poured over the top.  A Japanese friend tells me that for an "instant ochazuke" you add to your rice a little wasabi, some dried seaweed, perhaps a little bonito, and a few drops of soy sauce, and then top it off with green tea.

No-one delivers this here, and I'm not really sure what our supermarkets offer in terms of Japanese ingredients.

But... what we do have is lei cha. As described here, this is "a Hakka Chinese dish of rice, condiments (mostly bits of stir-fried vegetables and roasted nuts and grains), and most crucially, a green soup made of basil, tea leaves, herbs and nuts blended together. To eat it, you pour the soup over the rice and condiments, and mix everything together into a gloopy green gruel that tastes a whole lot better than you’d think."

It's a controversial kind of dish. For a start, is it tea? This source also talks about a soup made of green tea leaves, basil leaves, mint, cilantro, and sesame seeds. But a friend whose views on culinary matters I definitely trust maintains that there's actually no tea in this "cha". Rather, it's made from basil leaves, mugwort leaves, mint leaves, and coriander leaves.

It's also often referred to in English as Thunder Tea Rice, apparently on the grounds that all the pounding of the ingredients makes a noise like thunder. But this source maintains that the Chinese characters are more accurately translated as "pounded tea rice" (lui cha rather than lei cha).

I had a noodle version once, from the always inventive Noodle Shack at Avenue K in KL. But I'd never had the real thing. Which is a pity, as it's really delicious, and I'll definitely be making up for lost time. Here's mine before the soup was poured on, complete with Sarawak "black" rice, veggies, and nuts (Nigel ordered the rice-free version):


I love tea dishes... On our first visit to Japan, I really enjoyed chaguyu, a rice and tea porridge originating in Nara. I adored Mongolia's tea and dumplings, and Tibet's tsampa (barley flour mixed with dried cheese and butter tea, and eaten with more butter tea). Then there was the delicious Myanmar salad made from fermented tea leaves:


How many paths a movie can lead you down, and how many memories it can evoke...

And we still have two more to come.

Just a bit more Kyoto, before I go: