Manga and Anime Rallyes in Seaside, California by Savvy Mom Ruth Paget

Manga and Anime Rallyes in Seaside, California by Savvy Mom Ruth Paget

My daughter Florence is part of the generation that saw Pixar animated films explode into the marketplace that used Computer-Assisted Design to create their mobile images.

When the “kids” became teens, they wanted to be animators, voice talent, and animation-studio moguls for CAD films (Computer-Assisted Design).

Japanese manga comics and anime comics were linked to CAD, especially anime, which creates 3-D images on a 2-D surface using the techniques of vanishing-point perspective, alteration of frame lengths, and color and shading.

The library system where I worked had a huge graphic novel collection (graphic novel = new word for comics).  When I was in library school, Art Spiegelman”s graphic novel Mauss was a hit and later Marjane Satrapi’s graphic novel Persepolis about Iran was made into a film.

I loved using the comics medium to introduce historical topics as well as being a leisure medium.  I also supported using the newer graphic novels to teach conversational English skills and vocabulary to English-language learners (ELLs).  There are usually 250 vocabulary words in a graphic novel, which is a nice amount of words to memorize before going onto a next graphic novel in a series.

When my daughter was in high school and received a car for her 16^th birthday (Detroit mom and French MBA dad gift), she was free to go out with her friends and do “Manga and Anime Rallyes.”

I was not allowed to go to the rallyes, but all the restaurants they went to in Seaside knew “Mom” would cover a restaurant bill, if Florence’s “beginner” credit card with a limited amount of money to spend on it did not work.

I did ply Florence with questions playfully to find out that she and about 5 friends went to Harumi Japanese (formerly Fuji) in Seaside and ordered a family-style meal that they all split the tab for and did Manga and Anime Rallyes. 

I thought what they ate sounded great and they left a good tip, because 6 is a rather large number of people to serve.    

-Dragon rolls made with eel sushi and and topped with avocado

-California rolls (cooked fish sushi rolls with mayonnaise)

-Bento lunches to share with shrimp tempura and beef teriyaki

-the bento lunches still come with miso soup made with tofu and seaweed, salads, and rice.

-the kids did not eat sashimi (raw fish), because it is expensive

-the kids drank sodas and Japanese fad sodas as a “cocktail”

The kids all had individual plates and would share out what they wanted depending on food preferences, allergies, and/or religious beliefs.

If Harumi was very busy, the teens would go to another restaurant in Seaside.  There were several very close to Harumi.  Florence had a mobile phone and would tell me, if she was going to a place besides Harumi for lunch and anime rallye.  Almost all of these restaurants are still there (20+ years just counting from the time I have been in California.)

-Nifty Fifties Café

-Baan Thai

-Orient (Vietnamese and Chinese)

-Round Table Pizza

-Stammtisch (German – Bavarian)

-City Diner (Filipino and American)

-Tortuga (Mexican)

-Orient Express (Korean)

-Lucky Bamboo (Chinese)

-Borders Bookstore Café

-Paris Bakery

-Chef Lee’s (Chinese)

-Former Lee's Garden in Marina (Chinese)

-Taquitos (in Salinas)

The reason I could not go on these outings was probably, because the kids met their boyfriends at these Manga and Anime Rallyes.

They played the Japanese game Go and Sushi Go!, read manga and anime, and drew before and after eating depending on the crowd in the restaurant.

However, I was the Youth Services Librarian for Monterey County (California) at the time, so I asked Florence to help me start a “Game” using library books with the ultimate goal of creating Animated Movie Moguls.

I did a handout for staff at all 17-branches of our library system, gave it to homework center coordinators, and did electronic database workshops around the county showing how to use the library’s online resources that you could get from home. 

I made handouts for these workshops.  All the students in Monterey County knew about these services and all library staff learned how to teach how to do these “holds,” which were “reserve-and-pick up” orders on books in the library system.

(I also let the Children’s Council of Monterey County know about these workshops and gave them information.)

The Animated Movie Mogul Game runs like this:

You had to make a list of all animated books in the Monterey County System and read them twice and do all the exercises in them twice to build a portfolio to show a college counselor to get into CAD classes using the leveling up procedure of video games:

-Practice D’Nealian handwriting to strengthen hands for drawing. 

(Also, some people will pay to have invitations, dinner placecards, and menus handwritten in this style.)

-Practice calligraphy styles

(Read about history and usage practices)

-Draw landscapes

-Draw buildings using perspective

-Draw landscapes in perspective

-Draw cars of various makes in perspective

-Draw various animals, including horses, in various poses

(Start with postcard photos of animals)

-Draw garden flowers and bushes using a gardening book and from real life

-Draw wildflowers using a field guide and from real life

-Draw stick figures of the human body in motion

-Draw portraits

-Draw fashion from a history of fashion reference book

(Start with Egypt)

-Read Dummies books about how to do Word, Excel, Powerpoint, and Access

Work on setting up a database of your contacts in Access, especially people who can help you get into college and apply for merit scholarships

-Read CAD (Computer-Assisted Design Books)

-Set up shots like Hitchcock did to shoot film scenes

-Meet with a college counselor to discuss your career goals

This Manga and Anime Rallye I have described above can be done at home or in a youth center, too.

Expansion 1:  History of Graphic Novels

Mini Expansion now that the "kids" have graduated from college.  I read all the library books I could on the history and techniques used in comics, graphic novels, manga (Japanese graphic novels), manwha (Korean graphic novels), and anime (Japanese 3-D comics that use the techniques of film).  There are probably many more comic history books in the library, but these  4 books look like updates on some more classical works:

Understanding Comics:  The Invisible Art  by Scott McCloud

This book along with Schodt's work that follows are the classics in the field.  I have read both of these.

Manga! Manga!:  The World of Japanese Comics By Frederick L. Schodt

The Comics:  An Illustrated History of Comic Strip Art by Jerry Robinson

Comic Book Nation:  The Transformation of Youth Culture in America by Bradforth W. Wright


Expansion 2:  French Comics

I like Asterix and the Goths.  Manga readers should learn about Comics Around the World.  There is an Asterix Amusement Park for families outside Paris, France.

This comic series, Asterix and the Goths, is about the ancient French called the Gauls, who had to defend themselves against marauding ancient Romans.

My husband Laurent and I were able to buy a series of Asterix in English over the years at Atlantis Fantasy World in Santa Cruz, California, which specializes in graphic novels.  We usually combined a visit here with a day outing to Beach Boardwalk Amusement Park.

Expansion 3:  Monica from Brazil

I have an entire blog devoted to Monica comics from Brazil on this Savvy Mom Ruth Paget website.

Read her series to be international.

Expansion 3: Mafalda from Argentina

This comic was available in Spanish in book format at the library system where I worked.  Mafalda is a comic from Argentina.  I mentioned this comic to Spanish speakers at work and said American students learning Spanish might like it, too.


(Disclaimer:  I grew up reading Archie comics about suburban, American high schools and Ivanhoe historical comics, because I am related to Sir Walter Scott according to a great-aunt through my Hodgson relatives. The Hodgsons have more children than the Penningtons even.  They all made use of public libraries to keep their children reading and entertained.)

By Ruth Paget, author of Eating Soup with Chopsticks and Marrying France

Click here for:  Ruth Paget's Amazon Books

German Appetizers and Soups by Savvy Mom Ruth Paget

Exploring German Culture through Appetizers and Soups by Savvy Mom Ruth Paget

When I went to live in Stuttgart (Germany) for five years, I was worried about what I would eat.  I knew about brats and Christmas cookies, but knew I could not subsist on those food items alone.

I read and bought German cookbooks before I left, so I could order German foods in restaurants and know what they were and buy ingredients for cooking at home.

I bought The New German Cookbook by Jean Anderson and Hedy Würz before going to Germany, because they had dishes from the Baden-Würtemberg state where Stuttgart is located.

The dishes from this region are sold in deli departments of supermarkets and in independent delis called “feinkosts.”  I learned how to ask for food items in both places in Germany in hochdeutsch, university – level German - not dialect.

Many appetizers and soups are sold in German bars and made from a mix of fresh food and bottled items traded by the ancient Hanseatic cities such as Hamburg, Lübeck, and Bremen. 

German bread is excellent and goes well with spreads like Liptauer cheese.  The Germans brag that they have a bread for each day of the year like the French have a cheese for every day of the year.

The New German Cookbook has 230 recipes, including many for appetizers and soup.  Knowing about the following recipes made it easier for me to live in a country that I did not know much about when I first went to live there. 

The cookbook provides the details, but I will provide the enticements to look up the recipes that Anderson and Würz developed, tested, and verified before publication:

Appetizers

-smoked salmon tartare with black caviar

-tiny potato pancakes with black caviar

-herring salad with apples, dill, pickles, and horseradish

-herring salad with potatoes, apples, hard-boiled eggs, onions, dill, peppers, mayonnaise, and yogurt

-rollmops – brined herring salad – hangover cure after Carnival

-herring in sour cream, onions, apples, cream, vinegar, mustard, and red pepper

-shrimp salad – shrimp with hard-boiled egg, green peas, and a dressing made with Dijon mustard, heavy cream, and lemon juice

-Liptauer cheese made with yellow onion, butter, cream cheese, Camembert, sour cream, plain yogurt, and Hungarian paprika

For a group of 6 people, 4 or 5 of the above appetizers with an individual bowl of a soup listed below with bread would be a nice meal for a brew pub where a house beer is brewed on the premises.

The New German Cookbook has detailed recipes for these delicious soups.  I tried many of them when I lived in Stuttgart, Germany for five years:

-beef broth with dumplings

-pancake soup – uses leftover pancake strips in the soup

-Maultaschen Suppe with Swabian spinach-and-meat stuffed ravioli

-Goulash – Hungarian beef stew flavored with sweet Hungarian paprika

-Pheasant with lentil soup

-Asparagus with rice soup

-Fennel with bacon soup

-Kale soup

There are more soups listed in The New German Cookbook.  I like this cookbook, because it uses many ingredients that you can easily find in American supermarkets with the exception of herrings. 

Those sour fish bites are good once in awhile, though.  Maybe we could make them easier to obtain in colder parts of the US.

By Ruth Paget, author of Eating Soup with Chopsticks and Marrying France

Click here for:  Ruth Paget's Amazon Books

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Well-Seasoned Greetings: Christmas Feasts from Poland, Mexico, and France by Savvy Mom Ruth Paget

Well-Seasoned Greetings:  Christmas Feasts from Poland, Mexico, and France by Savvy Mom Ruth Paget

This column about Christmas that I wrote for the Monterey County Weekly (Circulation: 200,000) shows that having many ways to celebrate Christmas makes the holiday merrier.  This article contains information about holiday celebrations from Poland, Mexico, and France that I have celebrated throughout my life:

Well-Seasoned Greetings:  Christmas Feasts Feed Both the Body and Soul by Ruth Paget (Monterey County Weekly – Circulation: 200,000)

Eating messy krushchiki and listening to mystic kolendy, Polish carols, in the home of my mother’s best friend whose ancestors were Polish always made me feel the magic of Christmas as a child.

Polish “angel wings” – a twisted, deep-fried cookie liberally sprinkled with powdered sugar along with the Polish carols were the heart of the festivities.

Sometimes before we ate, our hostess would break an oplatek into pieces and share the flour wafer with everyone as a sign of peace.

We ate spiral-cut ham for dinner with gourmet additions like veal pâté flavored with cognace.  This early glimpse into Slavic culture set me on the path to becoming a global gourmet.

Later in high school, my best friend and I would debate whether or not to actually bake the pecan dough for Russian (also Mexican) teacakes that we made.

My high school buddy and I also purposely added too many chocolate chips to cookies, so they would bake into ovals of delicious, warm goop.

I also exchanged cookies with a Mexican high school friend, whose mother made empanadas, pumpkin turnovers flavored with anise.   I liked the way she folded dough to make a beautiful, scalloped edge for this Christmas Eve treat.

The French, like the Mexicans, traditionally celebrate Christmas on Christmas Eve, as I discovered when I married into a French family.  On my first Christmas in France, we attended midnight mass and got ready for an “all nighter” at the dinner table.

Hors d’oeuvres appeared on after the other:

-smoked salmon

-rillettes (pork cooked and preserved in its own fat, resulting in a salty, creamy spread

-foie gras

Next, we had an entrée of monkfish tail in a dish called lotte à l’américain.  This recipe is of Basque origin, but is dubbed American, because sweet, red peppers and tomatoes are used to make it.

Both peppers and tomatoes originated in the Americas.  Other ingredients in the sauce included olive oil, garlic, onions, white wine, and Armagnac.  I thought this dish tasted wonderful.

I was ready to crawl under the table and go to sleep after this dish, but, then Uncle Jacques entered the dining room carrying a yard-long platter holding slices of salmon terrine with a spinach topping he had prepared.

He decorated this sliced, terrine dish with lemon slice sails and pastry shells made of puff pastry.  The whole presentation looked like a Mediterranean galley.

After the terrine, we ate slices of chèvre goat cheese on toasted baguette.

Dessert was a chocolate cake called a büche de Noël followed by espresso.

The dinner party broke up at 6 am, but we were expected back at noon for another meal.

We began our “light” meal with raw oysters, another salmon terrine, roast turkey with chestnuts, and homemade chocolates.

Between courses during both meals, we sang carols and listened to my brother-in-law play the piano and papie (French grandpa) play the violin.  We made toasts going around the table, askng for “nouvelles” – news to report.

My pleas for water garnered me a round of Gallic scoffing.

“Water if for fish and flowers,” I was told.

“I don’t want to spread tipsy tales,” I responded and coffee quickly appeared.

By Ruth Paget, author of Eating Soup with Chopsticks and Marrying France

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