Travelogue: The Fowler Museum and Ramayani

Date: Saturday, January 31, 2015

Location: Los Angeles (primarily UCLA and Westwood are)

My cousins and I are close. We like to get together every now and then. Somehow, I end up planning many of our day trips, but I don't mind. It gives me a chance to steer the agenda to my objectives. Mwahaha. Aren't I devious?

In this case, I wanted to do some research. I'm setting a book I'm writing in April, "Counterfeit Diamond," in a magical version of Dutch-colonized Indonesia. It's not the easiest country to research, but I did discover that the Fowler Museum had Indonesian artifacts and that there was an Indonesian restaurant nearby. I presented my agenda to the cousins ands was surprised by their enthusiastic response. So the date was set and we were off.

The Party of Intrepid Adventurers (minus Krystal who took the photo)

Seven of us went on this adventure: me, Mitchell, Krystal, Kevin, Alyson, Nathan, and Nathan's girlfriend Cindy. Mitchell and Krystal picked me up around 9:30, while the rest of the party set off in a second car a short while later. It was a warm, sunny, clear day, and since it was Saturday, the traffic was relatively light.

Stop 1: California Donuts (Korea Town)

This was actually the pick of my cousin Kevin.

California Donuts, a corner donut shop in Korea Town, in an unremarkable block, distinguished by the line of people trickling onto the sidewalk. If you squeeze past them and stare at the case, you'll see a wide variety of donuts with toppings that will bring out the inner kid in you. 

Our First Stop

 Green-frosted donuts, pink-frosted donuts with sprinkles, donuts topped with Saturday morning cereals, donuts with cookies crumbles, donuts topped with bacon. They also have an Oreo donut in the shape of a panda, but those were unavailable today.

Our car arrived first. Parking in the parking lot was out of the question, but fortunately, we found a spot along the sidewalk of a nearby residential zone after only 5 minutes of mostly stress-free searching.

The line went fast, and while we were still deciding, it was time to order. I bought a box of six mostly normal donuts, figuring that everyone else would buy only one or two specialty donuts and fill up on my cheaper ones. That didn't really pan out. As it turned out, it was almost impossible to buy one.

Afterwards, Krystal and I stood in the parking lot, taking selfies and not caring a wit if we looked like tourists. Mitchell directed the second car to the parking lot. Once we all had our donuts, we set our boxes on the trunk of Mitchell's car, cut them into fourths with plastic knives, and began passing around donut pieces like hors d'oeuvres.

Donut tailgate party!

 Here are some of the donuts we ate:

•   Maple Bacon Bar (The boys loved it. The girls weren't so keen.)

•   Fruity Pebbles (The cereal provided a nice crunch.)

•   Snickers (A whole Snickers bar was baked into the donut, along with toppings of chocolate chips and nuts. It was too much.)

•   Samoa (Based off the girl scout cookie, with coconut flakes and chocolate on top. Taking a bite of with a piece of the real cookie was good, but the rest tasted ordinary)

•   Cinnamon Toast Crunch (I thought the frosting was a normal glaze randomly colored purple, but it actually had a different, slightly creamier flavor. It was pretty good.)

•   Japanese Green Tea (Matcha has a distinctive strong, bitter flavor that was missing here. The Matcha could hardly be found.)

We stood and we ate and those who bought milk drank it and we had a good time together.

Stop 2: The Hammer Museum (UCLA)

The Hammer Museum is a free art museum open to the public. It's on the part of UCLA that bleeds into the city. I wanted to go there, for three reasons. One, I like free museums. Two, it was conveniently located midway between my two true destinations: The Fowler Museum and Ramayani. Three, I discovered that parking was a mere $3 all day on Saturdays and Sundays. Score!

Inside the Hammer Museum

We all arrived by 12:30 and spent the next half hour exploring the galleries.

The Armand Hammer Collection, which was half-hidden on the third floor, contained a pretty thorough Who's Who of Western art. In one little room was stuffed paintings by Van Gogh, Monet, Degas, Remembrandt, and Titan, to name a few. Mitchell admired the huge religious paintings where the figures in the bible were dwarfed by the magnificent surroundings. I liked a pair of contrasting Van Goghs: dismal gray landscape of his home country of the Netherlands and his signature flurry of colors in France.

We also browsed a couple of galleries holding temporary exhibits. On the ground floor was a display of Francis Upritchad figurative sculptures of tricksters and non-conformist characters, including an old woman with face half in yellow and half in blue (could she be a Bruins fan?) and a green-faced red-head with colorful clothes. They were arranged near paper mache crocodiles and dinosaurs. I liked this exhibit more than the others, which showed a sculpture made of guns and a bizarre video.

Sculpture by Francis Upritchard

The people at the desk told us dancers were performing near the gift shop, but the first time we saw one, we thought she was injured. A woman, alone on the staircase, lay in such an broken position, it looked as if she'd taken a nasty fall. We asked if she was all right. She didn't answer.  Uncertain, we continued up the stairs and saw three more women in contorted poses moving very slowly. We figured it was art.  All the dancers were very quiet, and something about their windblown hair and dull faces made me think of mannequins.

Walking UCLA

By the time we got out of the museum, it was 1:00. I wanted to go to the Fowler Museum on the other side of the campus.

We walked. Why not? We're all young and in decent shape, and it was really just a little over a mile. The sidewalk was on a slight incline, but nothing too steep. Stores showed displays of Valentine's gifts and Bruins paraphernalia. But once we came to the campus proper, it was quieter, with shade trees and beautiful buildings.

I model a shade tree in UCLA

 We came to Bruin Plaza and immediately got distracted by the statue of a bear (UCLA's mascot), the Sports Hall of Fame, and, worst of all, a giant campus bookstore. That bookstore nearly sunk us. In an ironic, I was the one who had to tell everyone to stop looking at books and get going.

Up until then, the walk was straight north on Westwood Boulevard, but after Bruin Plaza, we turned right, up what looked like a hill with billboards advertising clubs. A million stairs loomed, but before we had to climb them, the route turned north again, to a grassy quad complete with lounging college students and--I kid you not--a brick castle in the background. The castle was beautiful, but we had no chance to check it out, because the Fowler Museum was straight ahead.

Looks like a brick castle to me.

Stop 3: The Fowler Museum (UCLA)

The Fowler Museum is another small, free art museum, but its focus is more on artifacts and non-Western art. Inside, the main corridors made a square around a courtyard housing a peaceful fountain and a some palm trees.

Fountain in the courtyard of the Fowler Museum

 The main exhibit was called Intersections, and featured artifacts from around the world. Surprisingly, most were made in the 19th and 20th century. Now, I was trying to research Indonesia, so I spent most of my time here, but I won't bore you with the details. Suffice it to say, I took notes on Indonesian betel cutters, textiles, puppets, and a video about the baroung, which looked like a Chinese New Year Dragon and is used in religious ceremonies.

Across the hall sat the second permanent gallery, Reflecting Culture. It housed silver treasures such as a piece by Paul Revere, a cup rumored to belonged to Rasputin, and a huge ship made of silver. Compared to the European highly ornamental plates, cups, and tea pots, America's silver pieces plain and boring.

Artifact in the "Intersections" display

I also wandered a temporary exhibition called World Share that included glass African statues, a bicycle piled high with boxes, razors suck in Styrofoam, a pyramid of colorful paper wads, and several bird houses nailed together on the wall. Actually, it was interesting, because the shine and colors would draw you in, but you wouldn't know what anything was until you took a second look.

There was also a display Contemporary Art from the Emirates, but I didn't have time to do more than glance at it.

Stop 4: Ramayani Indonesian Restaurant (Westwood Boulevard)

It was 3:45. Time for a late lunch, early dinner.

Walking south down Westwood Boulevard, we passed Thai restaurants, Japanese restaurants, Chinese restaurants, Greek restaurants, Indian restaurants, French restaurants, Persian restaurants, Lebanese restaurants, and a store called Nathan's Bagels that advertised falafel and sushi. But we were on a mission to try Indonesia food.

Ramayani was the name of the restaurant we sought. I was supposed to be blazing the trail, but I got distracted by my second-take of Nathan's Bagels and fell behind. Suddenly the alarm was called. "There it is!"  My party disappeared into a store front. 

Alyson models her meal in Ramayani

 I barely had time to glance at the yellow awnings, before I found myself stepping inside, going 'round the wooden statue of the dancer, passing the shelves of exotic groceries, and being seated in a long table in the corner. One side faced a window and the wall showed a painting of a woman in rice fields. The restaurant was clean and beautiful, our waiter was extremely polite, prices were affordable, and the food came quickly.

None of us had ever eaten Indonesia food before, so I made it a rule that we all had to order something different and taste each other's food. This, however, made getting good nearly impossible, for as soon as a dish came, we were passing it around the table like a Thanksgiving meal, scooping sample on our plate.

Here's some of the food we ate:

•   Otak Otak--gourmet fish cakes grilled in banana leaves (They arrived rolled up like cigarettes with a side of sweet, peanut satay sauce. The white steamed cake had a mildly pleasant fishy flavor.)

•   Guimie Dan Pangsit Goreng--braised noodles topped with chicken and mushrooms sauce served with fried wontons (The noodles were chewy and toothsome. It also came with a clear broth.)

•   Ayam Sauce Ramayan--crispy chicken pieces smothered in a sweet and tangy barbecue sauce (The chicken was crispy with just the right amount of char, and the sauce was sweet and thick and tasted of pineapples. Yum!)

•   Gule Kambing--lamb stewed in a curry of 15 aromatic Indonesian spices (The curry wasn't spicy at all. The lamb was tender, with hardly any of that funky aftertaste lamb tend to have.)

•   Nasi Goedeg--young jack fruit and coconut milk stew served with a combination plate of chicken curry, egg, and rice (This was mine, and I think it had the most exotic taste. The jack fruit was floral and unusual. The stew also housed something nutty and dense--tempe, perhaps--and stewed meat. The hard boiled eggs had an interesting a sweet and spicy red pepper relish on top of it.)

Otak Otak

On the whole, the food was reminiscent of Thai food, though it seemed a bit sweet, rather than spicy. Our meal was delicious. We ate it all up and were satisfied.

Then it was time for dessert. Now, the menu contained many perfectly nice foods, and we did in fact order Ice Shanghai, a combination of mixed fruits, mung beans, and grass jelly topped with vanilla syrup and condensed milk. The grass jelly was brown squares that tasted odd but pleasant, and the mung beans were green with the texture of firm gelatin and no flavor at all.

But something less pleasant lurked on the dessert menu

Ice Durian--sweet durian, brown sugar, and coconut milk

Food Dare: Durian

Durian is the infamous food that Andrew Zimmerman, who made a living eating boiled sheep heads, wouldn't eat. I saw an episode of Chopped where the judges described it as smelling and tasting like garbage. So, of course, I had to taste it for myself.

The waiter tried to warned us. He said that very few people enjoyed the taste.

"That's fine," I said. "I like trying new things."

Fruit Feared by 1000 Chefs

The Durian arrived in a parfait glass, lurking underneath a crush of ice. The mix of fruit chunks and juice looked an unappetizing sludge color. It didn't reek--we had to press our noses to the glass to sniff in any aroma at all. I was relieved that the garbage smell was closer to moldy water than chicken fat on a hot day.

Believe it or not, my heart actually pattered in my chest as I thought about tasting it. I gripped my spoon, but I was robbed of the drama of the moment, when someone took the cup and unceremoniously downed a big spoonful.

The boys hated it. The girls were more tolerant. Alyson said it tasted like raw onions, which it sort of did. First it tasted of raw onions, then of custard, then back to raw onions, with the faint odor of garbage lingering in the back of your nose. I didn't like it, but I will go on record saying it was not the worst thing I ever ate. Natto (slimy fermented soy beans) was much more disgusting.

Travelogue: Getty Villa

What: Heaven and Earth: Art of Byzantium

Where: Getty Villa, Los Angeles

When: Saturday, July 26, 2014

Introduction

Don't get me wrong, I love museums. I'd visit the Getty any day, just 'cause. But when I discovered they were having a special exhibition on Byzantine art running through the summer (ends on August 25th), I was determined to go see it. After all, my Three Floating Coffins novel ostensibly takes place in a fantasy version of Byzantine Greece. This could be "research."

But before I could research Byzantium, first I had to research The Getty.  The art collection started by J. Paul Getty is so big it needs two separate complexes to house it: The Getty Center and The Getty Villa. Both museums are free, but charge $15 parking per car. The Getty Villa also requires tickets. These are free. You can reserve them online and print them at home, which is what I did.

I invited fellow writers Debra and Michelle, but Michelle had an Alaska trip (grr!!!), so her friend Ken stepped in. My aunt made up the fourth member of our party. On Friday, I baked butterscotch chip cookies and packed water bottles. At 8:00 AM Saturday morning, we crowded into the Ken's car and braved the LA highways in our quest for art.  

(Please Note: I'm not an expert on anything. I'm just a curious soul listening to tour guides, reading signs, and making up conjunctures in my head.)

Building

In 79 AD, Mount Vesuvius exploded. That day, the city of Pompei was in the middle of celebrating a feast to Vulcan, the Roman god of fire and volcanos. Well, they must have offended him pretty badly, for he showered the city with ash, killing everyone inside, but perfectly preserving their homes. The neighboring city of Herculaneum met a similar fate the very next day.

It's this second, less famous (but equally smothered) city that J. Paul Getty went poking around in when he decided that his red-roofed ranch house was no longer suitable for his growing art collection. He dug up a Roman manor called Villa dei Pampiri but decided that excavating it was too much hassle. Instead, he recreated it best he could in the hills of Malibu. The museum and garden is sunken, so as to represent the excavation site. Striped gray stone resemble the original layers the archeologists had to dig through in order to find the villa.

Not that I notice. It's just after 10:00, and I'm at the cafe, drinking coffee, skimming through pamphlets and trying to decide which tour to go on. I've come for the Byzantine art, but it's my first time at the Getty, and there's no reason not to soak up as much as possible. My aunt and I decide to go on a garden tour. Ken wants to go on a tour of the Main Collection and Debra decides to browse. We will meet for lunch at 12:00.

The garden tour begins at 11:00. That gives me a good hour to kill.

The entrance is decorated with the white Corinthian columns and red-tiled roof one might expect from a Roman Villa. Less expected, but more interesting are the painted ceilings: red roses, yellow daisies, and white lilies floating within a pale blue circle. These pastel colors and painted ceilings will become a theme. The so-called "dining room" has cornucopias and grapes, while the ordinary walkways boast blue panels with yellow flowers.

Corinthian Columns and Yellow Flowered Ceiling

I step inside. My map informs me that this is the atrium, the main public room in a Roman house. A man informs me that food and drinks are strictly prohibited. I stare at the black and white mosaic floors and the lion heads surrounding a skylight, or compluvium, as my map calls it. There's an impluvium, or sunken fountain, just underneath the skylight, to collect rainwater. On an ordinary day, the sound of trickling would soothe a tourist. Except that California's in the middle of a drought and the fountain's been drained to conserve water. Still, the black statues at each corner of the basin are kind of cool.

I had planned to stride from room to room, as leisurely as any Roman Emperor, but unfortunately, my time is cut short when my camera dies and I have to beg my aunt's phone as a replacement. I glance at a few displays, while furtively checking my cell phone clock every few minutes.

Creepy Bust of a Young Girl

There's a creepy bust of a young girl. Her skin and hair are waxy black, and her thin tight curls remind me of pencil shavings, too fine and rigid to ever have been hair. Her eyes are white and inlaid with glass. They stare out in horror, as though her soul has been cursed to reside forever in this prison.

It's cool.

Garden

So I'm a bit of a mess. I've come as a scholar, and I'm trying to juggle a yellow notepad, a pen, a camera phone, and a portable listening device. The little green box clips to my pants. A plug-in earpiece amplifies the voice of the tour guide, so she doesn't have to shout and we don't have to crowd around her. 

California has a Mediterranean climate, she tells us, which means that plants that grow in Greece and Italy, will grow just as well here. As we walk through the herb garden, she  proceeds to throw out the names of the trees: olive, fig, plum, pomegranate, peach, pear, and citron. (The citrone currently looks like an avocado and smells like a cucumber but will one day resemble an orange and lemon mix.) I'd like her to tell us more than just names. I know that olives were sacred to the goddess Athena and important as a food and fuel source, and I know that pomegranates played an important role in the myth of Persepone's abduction. I'd like to hear stories like that.

Carp pool in herb garden

But no, we whip through the herb garden, faster than I can scribble notes. We pass a sad plot of dried-out wheat and patches of marjoram, thyme, oregano, and lavender. There are trellises of fat, tempting Cabernet grapes. The guide tells us she sampled some, and they were sour. She plucks a green fuzzy leaf called Lamb's Ear and lets us rub the fuzz between our fingers. Romans use to pack these with salve and stick them on wounds--the band-aids of their day, I imagine.

The Romans were big on mastering nature and imposing order on the world, which is how they got such roads and aqueducts. They were equally strict on their gardens. The herb garden is a grid of rectangles, three rows wide, with fountains in the middle, for beauty and irrigation. (Some even have been allowed to keep their water. Makes it easier for the carp.) For such a practical thing as a herb garden, I don't mind. But as we come to the vast Outer Peristyle, the "show-off garden," I find the order a bit tiresome. 

Outer Peristyle Fountain

A wealthy Roman would bring his guests to the Outer Peristyle, for pleasant walks and conversation. On one side of the path lies a long pool with statues sunbathing along the edges. On the other side sits busts of famous philosophers and great men--a conversation piece that the host could use to show off his knowledge. They'd pass under grape trellises and around blocks of carefully manicured flowers, hedges, and bay trees. 

This is what we do, minus (in my case) the leisure and pleasant conversation. I'm trying to take pictures on the phone and getting annoyed with having to re-type my aunt's password every few minutes. We go up the right side of the pool and keep going straight to the Inner Peristyle, leaving the whole left side unexplored. Not that it matters. Custom dictates gardens must be symmetrical, one side mirroring the other

The smaller, more private Inner Peristyle, strikes me as more interesting, for a couple reason. First, one of the creepy black fountain maidens has been stolen, ruining the perfect symmetry. Second, several birds chirp and dart about the four perfectly round trees that stand at each corner. This adds charm and surprise that the grander garden lacked.

Mosaic in East Garden

Last is the small East Garden, for family use only. I don't notice any relentless symmetry, because I'm too busy staring at a colorful mosaic arch with twin white masks on either side. Then the guide casually mentions the strawberry tree, and I'm all over it. It's the most peculiar-looking fruit I've seen: yellow-orange puffballs that remind me of Nerf toys. The guide says it's edible and, if enough sugar is added, can pass for a decent jam. I wonder if modern strawberries were domesticated from these paltry fruits.

Fruit of a Strawberry Tree

Lunch

It's noon. Time to meet up with Ken and Debra and exchange notes.

I'm tired of the juggling act. Thus far, I've barely even stepped foot in the museum itself.  I'm resolved. After lunch, I'm going straight to the Byzantine exhibition, no more tours, no more delays. It's time to focus on why I came here.

Peasant's bread and pizza

We eat outdoors and the waiter brings our food. I dine on a thick, chewy peasant's bread with an apricot-peach spread. It's the kind of thing I imagine a Roman might eat. But I'm pretty sure they wouldn't eat my Margherita pizza, if for no reason than tomatoes came to Italy from the New World.

Church

Rome fell. That's what the historians say. Problem is, the people living at the time didn't realize this. Emperor Constantine thought that by moving the capital to the city of Byzantium (present day Istanbul, Turkey), he was ensuring Rome's continuation, not starting a whole new Empire.

When I step foot into the Byzantine exhibition (no pictures allowed!), I see signs of this transition. The room is painted in bright classical blues with white accents. I see Romanesque busts and inlaid chests of Bellerophon slaying the chimera. The plaque I read explains that between 4th-6th centuries a hybrid of pagan-Christian beliefs permeated the culture.

Roman Bust.

This hybridization is best displayed by a plain marble slab chiseled with leaves and a flower: the gravestone of Athenodora. "The earth received and now owns this young mother, while her children crave for milk," the inscription sadly states. A cross before her name indicates she was Christian but her name ("lover of Athena") and her education were pagan.

By the next room, I'm definitely in Byzantine territory. The walls are red with dark brown panelling. The first thing I see is a photograph of the insides of the Monastery of Hosios Loukas (1000-1025 AD), tall enough to take up most of the wall. Domes painted with religious imagery spark my imagination.

Icon of St. Michael. From sign.

When people think of the Byzantine art, they think of two things: icons and mosiacs. A portrait of the Virgin Mary and child combines both. Bits dull blue glass make up her robe, peach rock chips her face, and gold-plated tesserae her halo. Time has cracked the mosaic, splitting the mother's face and the child's hand. I can see the red wood underneath, where the tiles were laid.

Another icon shows a red-clothed Virgin Mary gazing at the angel in the corner with a "grief-stricken visage," as though suddenly overcome with a premonition of her boy's death. Meanwhile the tiny, odd-looking Christ baby makes a peace sign. On a communal cloth, an older Christ holds an urn while two silver seraphim stand as guard. (These seraphim are literally nothing but interlocking wings.) This is an example of a woven icon. Down the hall good old Bellerophon has been replaced by a curly-headed Saint George who slew dragon in place of a chimera.

I see jewelry and chandeliers and tiled bathing floors and many more things. I cannot write down everything, but I feel satisfied. My goal was to see the exhibition and now I have: a fleeting glimpse of life in another age.

Travelogue: Art Books and Purple Treasure

 

My friend Ashley’s car stumbled off the freeway and I cheered.  After 2 turnarounds, we’d finally made it to Little Tokyo.  We had nothing in mind for our day together, but we chanced upon the LA Art Book Fair.  Ashley liked art.  I liked books.  It was meant to be.

Too Many Books

            The MOCA building, looked like a combination of old warehouse and modern museum, a maze of windowless white brick walls, with sunlight shining down from skylights in the rafters.  Volunteers handed out sunset orange building maps, but this did little to help us navigate through 235 individual stands and 2 galleries.  People were everywhere—at least one person manning the booth and two or three browsing.  The few pictures I snapped did nothing to show just how overwhelming the experience was. 

Picture a normal bookstore.  Thousands of books line the shelves in neat organized fashion: first by genre, then by author’s name or possibly subject matter.  A few thoughtful displays provide clusters of the newest, most popular books for easy browsing.  Each cover includes a clear title, a glossy picture, and some sort of summary to let you know what the book is about.  You can easily find what you’re looking for and decide whether or not you want it.

 

Not so easy here, where shelves are instead replaced by folding tables and books lay flat like so many rectangular patches on the tablecloth.  There’s no order, no genre, just whatever each independent company offers.  Some covers have no picture or no title.  And nearly all the books are so obscure, there’s no way of knowing what it’s about until you open the pages and see what’s inside.

Cloth composition books painstakingly stitched with an entry about zombie movies; onions dissected by microscope; a steampunk how-to guide for caring for your octopus; Japanese pocketbooks with textured pages; philosophy written in the dry jargon of academia—these were some of the more comprehensible things I found.  Looking through a single book was like viewing a college art gallery—and there were thousands of them.

One young man gave us a poster of a woman in a pool who liked to take pictures fully clothed in water.  His company had collected this lifetime of photographs and put it in a book.  “You find one thing and do it over and over and it becomes your mantra,” he said.  Then he tried to sell us a book on bricks.

I felt a little sad.  Many of the books represented the work of independent artists struggling to sell their work—much like me.  The art cried out for attention, but I couldn’t give it.  It was too much, too hard, too many images slamming into my brain.  Hard as I tried, I could not find meaning.

So I made my own.  I breathed in the white walls and found art in the collection: collections of pages, collections of books, collections of people.  I could not see the details, yet there was beauty in the patterns.  Rectangles everywhere: tables and books, halls and bricks—forming rows and crosses, trying to reign in the chaos, but never quite succeeding.

Food of Little Tokyo

Ashley’s vegan, so we have to be mindful of the restaurants we visit.  Shojin was the only Japanese vegan we could find.  It was hidden on the top floor of a dilapidated mall, which undermined its fanciness. 

Inside, there were murals of red Magnolias in thick ink strokes and gold prints of a lotus root and a crescent moon.  Our server laid out a sheet of paper as a tablecloth and gave us a carafe of water with a sprig of purple-rooted inside.  She was attentive throughout the meal.

We both ordered sushi.  Mine was called “Purple Treasure” ($12.95) and consisted of deep-fried eggplant smothered in a miso sauce on a brown rice and avocado, topped with strings of chili.  The taste brought back memories of Japan, where I’d first eaten eggplant and miso sushi. The flavor was rich and deep, with a twinge of bitter aftertaste in the nicest, eggplantiest way.

Ashley had what was playfully called “Crunchy Tiger, Hidden Dragon Roll” ($13.95), which had the same brown rice and avocado base, with BBQ seitan, asparagus, tempura crumbs, and spicy mayonnaise—a more American take on sushi.

For dessert we went to a little sweets place called Mikawaya in the easy-to-find Japanese Village Plaza.  I ordered two mochi-latos ($1.25 each): balls of gelato ice cream wrapped in a layer of pounded rice that’s soft and chewy and dusted with flour.  My plum mochi-lato was surprisingly sweet and unique, while the coconut one tasted creamy and had tiny chunks of fresh coconut meat inside.