wurple.net

So I’d heard a lot about this mythical place – J’s Surf and Turf. $28 for all you can eat Japanese and run by actual Japanese people. Sounds like a good deal hey? Well I finally got to go last night.

A bit of background first. I quite like Japanese food. For anyone who’s seen me eat, this might seem strange because I do tend to eat large amounts of food very quickly, which doesn’t really go down very well at Japanese places, where serves a often quite small and delicately prepared. I should point out that I am not one of those typical SE Asian types who seems to have a fetish for everything Japanese (although I do own a Japanese car), took Japanese as subject in school/uni, went to Japan to teach English and watches hours of anime. Rather, my interest in Japanese food is that I like tasty food – all sorts of interesting flavours.

So with the possibility of being able to try every single flavour on the menu for $28, I couldn’t really pass it up.

Of course, we had to get there first, which proved to be quite a chore. The reason I held out going to J’s for so long is that it’s in Brighton (131 Were Street since I hadn’t mentioned it before), which is a royal pain in the backside for me to get to. Traffic down Nepean Highway was grindingly slow and as usual, the rain made people drive like stupids.

But we did get there eventually and my folks had already started to order. The oysters (which you have to pre-order) were just oysters. Honestly, I’m not a huge fan of oysters, but they seemed to be okay. The takoyaki octopus balls were quite tasty, although had a bit more sauce than I liked. The agadeshi tofu seemed to be a bit too dense. The serve of prawn tempura was massive, however the batter itself was kind of heavy and the prawns tasteless. Teriyaki chicken was quite good and not too sweet. The beef salad was quite tasty, although again drowned in sauce. Sashimi again came in a very healthy serve and tasted okay, although was lacking a bit of firmness. The sushi was very cold and the rice was hard. Croquettes were actually quite good.

Sounds very average doesn’t it?

I will forgive it however because the service was excellent. We never had to wait long to get service and the food arrived in a flash. Unlike some other all-you-can-eat places where you order through a waiter, we didn’t sit there waiting for ages, trying to get a waiter’s attention. In fact, a waiter seemed to be hovering nearby all the time and ready to pounce the moment someone even looked at the closed menu.

Dessert was a very simple affair. vanilla ice cream & fruits with jelly snakes & chocolate coins. Very un-Japanese, but somewhat satisfying.

So overall, I’m really not sure how to rate this place. Food was quite average, but it was sufficiently cheap for all you can eat Japanese seafood. Serves were generous and service was generally quite good. Maybe I’m rate it descriptively rather than a score. I’d rate this as a place I’d go with a group of friends because it’s a bit of fun, but not really somewhere I’d go for a special event. If it wasn’t so far away, I would probably go back more often, but given the time and effort to get down there, I don’t really feel like I’m missing anything.

So for the month of November, the race towards the finish line in the TYP really started to get interesting. Not sure if I’ve mentioned it here before, but my bunch of riding buddies (TYP) are quite widely dispersed across Melbourne and in fact, the world (mostly London at this point). As such, we find it hard sometimes to get out on smashing fast rides where we push each other deep into the suitcase of courage.

As such, we’ve devised a way of racing each other through logging of stats on MCL. It’s a pretty loose sort of game, since we base it solely on distance traveled and make no allowance for the fact that some of us ride MTBs as well as road bikes.

Either way…

It’s the end of the year, so this is where it gets interesting – we’re all racing for end of year honours. I’ll admit that the cross-continental aspect has made it particularly interesting, as Norm put in massive distances on big organised rides over in the European summer. Meanwhile, back home, we’ve all just been waiting for the warm weather when we can really get out and put up some decent distances. As such, Norm has had the yellow jersey quite firmly in his grasp for quite some time.

However, with a good long string of warm days in November, Keith and I had a good dig and now the three of us are neck and neck and neck. In the end, Keith did pip me at the line for stage honours (month of November win), however I do now have a bit of a lead over him for yearly stats.

Some interesting things about this months stats however. Firstly, I managed to be competitive without riding my road bike once. Most of my monthly distance was actually done on my folding bike. Then there Mt Buller on the MTB where I clocked up any distance travelled, but did a crazy amount of vertical.

Not to say that I didn’t try to be a roadie this month, but basically circumstances would have it that I always just had the wrong bike. In fact, there were exactly two rides, when I attempted to be a roadie – one RRR, I woke up to find a rear wheel flat on my road bike. So I did the sensible thing and swapped over to my fixie for a hill ride. The second time was an aborted MTB ride, which turned out to be too wet and slow and actually became a Beach Road ride… on the mountain bike.

Both of these rides took me back to a place that I’d actually kind of forgotten about – the pain cave. Yes, that place where it burns oh-so-bad yet you still push harder and harder as if you can somehow chase away the burning.

The pain cave is actually something I’ve been thinking about for six months or so. I’ve actually been thinking back to early days when there was only one bike and a ride down Beach Road was a leg smashing, heart pounding, lung burning effort to keep up with the bunch. Sure I still do hard rides, but for some reason, I just can’t think of many rides lately where I really have had that feeling for any extended period.

Maybe it’s because I’ve become something of a plodding slow commuter type. Just nice and comfortable, solo riding and just making sure that I can ride as many days as possible during the week. Meanwhile, most of my weekend rides have become short blasts on the MTB or chatty group rides, where I run at about 60%.

However, those two rides really brought me back to that place.

Firstly, taking my fixie along for the RRR. Never quite being comfortable with my cadence and having to spin like a lunatic down the hills or stand and smash my way up the hills. There was no slacking off. Then there was the hard grind up Alto Avenue where I’m sure my cadence wasn’t far off dipping into single digits. The fixie also made it quite hard to get a decent run up on Wonga Road and I had to stand for pretty much the entire ride.

Then, riding my hardtail down Beach Road. Catching the tailwind on the way down to Black Rock and actually running out of gears while listening to the buzz of my knobblies on the tarmac. Then turning around and smashing my way back into the head wind and getting into as much of an aero tuck as possible with a riser bar. Of course, there was no slacking off and hiding in the bunch – I tried to get myself up the pointy end of the bunch as much as possible.

But you know what? Both of these rides were great! Digging really deep and realising that if I didn’t mash down on the pedals one or two more times, I’d come to a standstill and topple down Alto. Or maybe it was spinning my guts out at top gear trying to keep up with the pack until my head’s spinning and I’m ready to hurl.

Awesome stuff!

There’s something familiar and comfortable about the pain cave…