In a brutal dance of acrobatics and fierce headlocks, the wrestlers tumbled and flipped each other across the ring, stopping now and then to turn to the cheering audience and flex their muscles. They ranged in age and size from youthful bodybuilders to small but quick, middle-aged firecrackers, and all wore shiny face masks and colorful spandex pants that sparkled under the outdoor lights. The commentator kept up with all the action, dramatically rattling off the moves in Spanish over blaring loudspeakers. The referee bounced around the men in the ring, fielding insults from hecklers in the audience...
This is Lucha Libre, or Mexican wrestling – a mixture of sport, drama, comedy and sheer showmanship...
Forget the Alamo.
San Antonio
is about Mexican food. Specifically: Tex-Mex.
More specifically: the indulgent bliss of the #3 lunch plate special for $4.99 – two cheese enchiladas, one beef taco, refried beans, rice, two flour tortillas and iced tea. Chips and salsa come free.
When friends come to visit
San Antonio, the proud epicenter of Tex-Mex food, it is usually their wish and certainly my duty to introduce them to the local flavors. I promptly direct them away from the River Walk and into one of the older neighborhoods of San Antonio, where the best restaurants are – the ones that serve handmade tortillas with that perfect fluffiness-dusted-with-flour texture.
Japan is a country best represented in visual details. At least, based on my experience of its two capitals
(ancient and modern), I found endless examples of visual delights. The elegant rope ties of a handmade bamboo
fence at Nanzen-Ji temple in Kyoto. The shiny perfection of a plastic food display in a restaurant in Kyoto's
underground shopping mall. The ghostly beauty of falling snowflakes seen from the 53rd floor of a skyscraper
in Tokyo's Roppongi Hills. And on and on...
In a brutal dance of acrobatics and fierce headlocks, the wrestlers tumbled and flipped each other across the ring, stopping now and then to turn to the cheering audience and flex their muscles. They ranged in age and size from youthful bodybuilders to small but quick, middle-aged firecrackers, and all wore shiny face masks and colorful spandex pants that sparkled under the outdoor lights. The commentator kept up with all the action, dramatically rattling off the moves in Spanish over blaring loudspeakers. The referee bounced around the men in the ring, fielding insults from hecklers in the audience...
Forget the Alamo.
Japan is a country best represented in visual details. At least, based on my experience of its two capitals
(ancient and modern), I found endless examples of visual delights. The elegant rope ties of a handmade bamboo
fence at Nanzen-Ji temple in Kyoto. The shiny perfection of a plastic food display in a restaurant in Kyoto's
underground shopping mall. The ghostly beauty of falling snowflakes seen from the 53rd floor of a skyscraper
in Tokyo's Roppongi Hills. And on and on...
