Review of five Maison Margiela perfume samplers

In my review of the LookFantastic Autumn Scent Edit, I commented that I couldn’t see the fuss around Maison Margiela’s Lazy Sunday Morning fragrance. On FeelUnique, the site where I have been getting perfume samplers for the last few months to share my thoughts on here, they conveniently had several other Maison Margiela fragrances as samplers. Thus, I thought this would be an opportune moment to see if my ‘meh’ response to Lazy Sunday Morning was an anomaly, or if this brand as a whole wasn’t to my taste. 

Product review: two Japanese snack boxes

One of the things that a lot of people have struggled with during enforced lockdown was that, without social events to attend in the evenings or at weekends, it was difficult to pass the time without something to look forward to.

I completely sympathise with this, and as an act of self-care, during the quarantine period, I have been ordering myself little treats on the internet every few days. It doesn’t quite substitute the endorphin rush of hanging out with friends in a packed, boozy bar, but I find that if you have mail deliveries to look forward to, it helps delineate the days, and prevent them from blurring into one.

If you have the means to do so, I recommend you do the same!

Two things I ordered near the beginning of the lockdown were two Japanese snack boxes. Below are my brief thoughts on them:

52 Japanese Candy and Snack Okashi Set (£20)

Restaurant review: MAI SUSHI (Kings Cross)

Eat Tokyo is my favourite Japanese restaurant in London. Their dishes are marvellous, so reasonably priced, and their meals are both flavourful and healthy. Because of this, I've dined there over ten times, and it's become my go-to Japanese place when I don't feel like researching other places.

Concerned that Eat Tokyo was becoming my favourite due to my own laziness and inertia, I decided to scope out its competition. As part of my job, I have tutorials for professional actuarial qualifications in Kings Cross, and I saw that Mai Sushi, which has a very salubrious TripAdvisor rank of being a top 1,300 restaurant in over 19,000 in London, was located in the vicinity of where my classes were. Thus, I decided it would be rude not to go there for lunch one day.

To start, I had veggie tempura. It was nice, but for £6.50, the structural integrity of it could have been more precise, robust (John Wick Chapter 2 reference, ehehe). You get roughly the same quantity of food for the same price at Eat Tokyo, and the one at Eat Tokyo is much more satisfying.

There were a few sushi boats on the menu at Mai Sushi. On one of my countless revisits to Eat Tokyo, I had actually tried a boat once, pictured in the centre below:

There's something about a whole lot of sushi, all laid out together, that I just can't resist, and the quality of the salmon at Eat Tokyo is unparalleled.

Restaurant review: KOUZU (Belgravia)

I bought a voucher to dine at Kouzu on BuyAGift. The restaurant fancies itself an upmarket Japanese restaurant, and the deal retails at £49 ordinarily, so I will be assessing it as if I paid this amount for the deal (in fact, I got a fair bit off the price due to a discount code, but I’m aware discount codes don’t occur all the time).

The starters were perfunctory. With regards to the salmon, if they were going for the 'high quality and low quantity' vibe that's typical of many high-class restaurants, they really needed to work on the presentation, because what is photographed below doesn't scream 'high-class' to me:

Film review: SPIONE (Fritz Lang, 1928)

A criminal mastermind, Haghi, wishes to get his hand on some Japanese government secrets. In order to do so, he enlists the talents of the Russian spy Sonja Baranikowa, who must use her feminine wiles to procure information from a debonair young spy, known only as his number, 326. Haghi's immoral plans are considerably complicated, however, when Sonja falls for the man she is supposed to be manipulating.

A hug is just a hug, a sigh is just a sigh

Congratulations to France on winning the World Cup!

As I said before the tournament began, they were who I wanted to win, largely because they have the dishiest squad, but also because two of their starting XI, N’Golo Kanté (the happiest man ever) and Olivier Giroud, are Chelsea players, so Chelsea can claim 18.2% of the victory.

Part of me wanted France to win for vengeful Gone Girlish reasons: England football fans love to sing that intolerable ‘it’s coming home’ song, and it would put their backs up something awful seeing the trophy ‘come home’ to their Gallic neighbours, instead. 

And, as I’ve mentioned, I feel English football fans don’t deserve to be rewarded, given the no small part they play in normalising racism against my people. The BBC presenter Gary Lineker making excuses for Jamie Vardy’s usage of ‘Jap’ is a shining example of how racism against east Asians in this country is considered fair game.

But yes, congratulations to France! I’m delighted that Hugo Lloris, who has been toiling endlessly to no fruition at White Hart Lane, finally gets to experience glory!

My last World Cup-related blog that I will do before reverting to my status quo of pedantic BBFC blogs and throwing shade at restaurants, is ten adorable bromantic intra-club moments from the tournament this year. 

This World Cup has been absolutely immense, the Banter World Cup, if you will, featuring sensational goals (my personal favourite was Benjamin Chalamet’s one against Argentina), thrilling games, hilarious moments and memes and general WTF-ery arising from the use of VAR on margin calls. And I’ve loved every minute of it.

But my favourite thing about the World Cup, and all international football tournaments, for that matter, remains the lovely display of fraternity between footballers from the same team (but opposing countries) at the end of the game.

Remember, before the World Cup started, the thing I was most excited for was some manlove between Chelsea club-mates Gary Cahill and Eden Hazard. Did my expectation get fulfilled? Read on to see!

A disclaimer, that these are just ten bromances that involved players who I like.

Needless to say, there were a plenty more than just ten displays of intra-club fraternity throughout the World Cup, such as, for example, Sergio Ramos (the Spain and Real Madrid captain) hugging  his club-mate Cristiano Ronaldo (Portugal captain and general showboater) after Spain v Portugal in the group stages. But I don’t like either of them (the fact that I put both in my World Cup Ugly XI may be somewhat of a giveaway...), so I didn’t think it was worth chasing pictures of the moment, aha.

In chronological order…

Two film rating observations regarding Wes Anderson films

Being as big a BBFC nerd as I am can be an affliction sometimes. It means that, for purposes of BBFC research, I end up watching titles that I would not watch otherwise (Fairy Tale – Dragon Cry, Red Sparrow, etc), and not particularly enjoying the experience.

Isle of Dogs was another example of such film. It wasn’t a bad film at all, but Wes Anderson is just not to my taste, and I didn’t feel like the film had enough of a sense of jeopardy regarding the dogs' mission, to keep me gripped.

Hair styling attempts: trying to curl my hair to look like Jessica Chastain's at the Golden Globes.

I loved Jessica Chastain's look at the Golden Globes on Sunday, so I tried to replicate those curls on my own hair. Due to time constraints, I didn't have time to use the hair curler, so just tied my hair up in a tight bun immediately after I washed it, used a hairdryer until it was partially dry, and kept it in the bun until the evening, which is when the photo was taken.

I daresay it looked better on Jess, but hey-ho, it's fun to try new things!

As for the OOTD...

Sweater/shirt combo: Debenham's

Glasses: Red or Dead

Earrings: TK Maxx

Restaurant review: EAT TOKYO (Covent Garden)

Over the past few months, I’ve been to Eat Tokyo twice, and if I’m ever in Covent Garden and struggling to decide on somewhere to eat, this restaurant will be at the forefront of my mind.

Just with Dishoom and On the Bab, it doesn’t take reservations and you have to queue. This suggests the restaurant cares more about profits than comfort of its customers. However, the fact that there are always droves of people queuing outside the Covent Garden branch of Eat Tokyo means that these people deem the food is worth queuing for.

The first time I dined there, I had a salmon teriyaki bento box. There are a variety of bento boxes at Eat Tokyo, ranging from sashimi, chicken katsu and vegetarian. They range in price, but the most expensive bento box is £18. These two are both less than that (~£16 and £8.50, if I remember correctly):

Authentic Japanese food at its best!

Restaurant review: STICKS’N’SUSHI (Covent Garden)

Despite meeting Per Mertesacker at Sushisamba, I’ve never actually dined there, and thus the mantle of fanciest sushi restaurant I’ve been to is Sticks’n’Sushi at Henrietta Street, London.

We had the ‘Gala’, which, at £75, wasn’t cheap. The option included Beef Tataki, Edamame, Hotate Kataifi, Nigiri, Chicken with chili & teriyaki, lamb chop with miso herb butter and duck breast with panko & wasabi Caesar, so there was plenty to fill two people’s boots!

Restaurant review: GILGAMESH (Camden)

Gilgamesh advertises itself as a pan-Asian restaurant, bar and nightclub. I visited it with my brother using a LivingSocial deal that I had bought for £34. The deal entitled us to afternoon tea and free-flowing Prosecco for two hours. I personally tend to find LivingSocial deals more honourable than Groupon ones, and the 'unlimited Prosecco for 2 hours' part of the deal appealed to me.

Endless BBFC Nerdiness [Over Brief Strong Cesc].

I was browsing HMV when I spotted this, and instantly, my film classification board nerd senses were tingling.

I didn't see Endless Poetry when it hit cinemas, but I was tempted to, only because it got a 15 from the BBFC and an 18 from Ireland:

A Silent Microaggression.

You know, for a newspaper who loves to lecture their readership about racial stereotyping (in a case of timing you couldn't make up, just four days ago they ran this hectoring piece about Asian stereotypes), you'd think they'd bother to learn the difference between Japanese films:

The caption pertains to A Silent Voice. Yet the image is a still from Your Name. I guess all Japanese animes look the same to Guardian sub-editors.

Perhaps of Guardian writers focused on say, actually doing the research they're paid to do, rather than preaching piously or shagging about, they wouldn't have made such a mistake. Just suggesting.

This isn't the first time they've confused two compatriots, with embarrassing circumstances. In their tribute to the passed away Cruyff, they published a photo of Rob Rensenbrink:

No wonder The Guardian are begging for money now. #FakeNews

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Bonus graphic, from The Evening Standard, which perfectly encapsulates my confusion on how Isabelle Huppert's icy tour-de-force in Elle lost to Yellowface Felicia dancing like she had two left feet:

Your Misname.

Another one of these 'times the Irish rated a film lower than the BBFC did' posts (on average when the two awards bodies disagree, the IFCO tend to rate higher).

Your Name, which has a cracking trailer and almost universal acclaim from everyone who's seen it, is bizarrely getting a very limited release in the UK. I have my ticket to see it on the 24th November, but had to settle for a slightly out-of-my-way Odeon venue, as all the central London ones were all booked up. Hopefully it will be worth it tho; I bloody love me some Anime.

Needless to say, I read the BBFC long insight as preparation for the film. That's a bit of a gamble as the long insights are laden with spoilers, but there you go. It's rated 12A over here for 'moderate language, sex references', in a classic case of a BBFC misnomer. 

The plot revolves around a small town girl living in a lonely world and a city boy exchanging bodies, Freaky Friday-style. From the report, it sounds like the main reason the film's a 12A is because the boy, in discovering he's in the body of a woman, touches his boobs.

Bit harsh to rate a film a 12A for that, given that would be a pretty natural response! I also don't think lingering on a girls' chest counts as a 'moderate sex reference', either, so major inaccuracy in its short insight, there. 

Glad to see that the Irish saw sense, and gave the film the PG it (sounds like it) deserves. Note how they also accurately classed the focus on a girls' chest as 'suggestive scenes'. That is pretty much all it is, not a sex reference. No need to make it sound seedier than it is.

Why are the BBFC so affronted by a bit of cleavage???

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I'm somewhat of a BBFC obsessive. All my other BBFC pieces are listed here.

Restaurant review: KOI SUSHI & NOODLE BAR (Finchley Road)

I went to Koi Sushi & Noodle Bar last year on a Groupon deal, which entitles the bearer to 306pieces of sushi. Truth be told, it wasn't the best deal Groupon have sold me.

The decor in the place is terrible: faded tables that are so rickety, I wouldn't be surprised if they were lifted from a garbage disposal. The toilets smelt extremely bad; one suspects that they're washed once a week, if that. 

The restaurant is short-staffed and the waiters are rude and inattentive. You're supposed to get unlimited green tea with the Groupon offer, but we only got two refills, because each time I raised my hand to try and get the waiters attention, he either pretended not to see me, or told me curtly 'later'.

The food was horrifically basic. As you can see in the photos, the sushi rolls were wrapped in plain rice, and the ingredients used for the meat or vegetables inside it tasted strange, like they were past their sell by date, but the chefs would try and hide it by dousing it in sauce. Maaaaate. Your punters have tastebuds. We won't be fooled that easily. Lastly, the rolls were tiny in size, and 18 measly pieces per person did not suffice for dinner.

Even the attempts to make the food look aesthetically pleasing were half assed: the picture above indicates the chef had tried to dress it up with some sauce, but then decided the punter, who had only come in with a deal they bought on the internet, after all, didn't merit such decoration to their plate.

Verily I say, don't be tricked by the £14.80 Groupon deal. Do you tastebuds a favour and just go buy a large box from Itsu or Wasabi, where the ingredients they use at least aren't bottom of the barrel. Your body will thank you.

Grade: F

Film review: WHEN MARNIE WAS THERE (Hiromasa Yonebayashi, 2014)

Remember when I complained about how due to the restricted choice of films screened at Cineworld cinemas, despite watching 42 films on the Unlimited card last year, I saw a meagre 2 foreign films? Well, I’ve already seen half that number of foreign movies on my Odeon Limitless card, at Panton Street Odeon, where I saw When Marnie Was There.

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Ever since she was young, 12-year-old Anna Sasaki has been an outsider. She doesn’t fit in with the children in her year at school, feels disconnected from her foster parents and her social awkwardness is compounded by a deleterious breathing problem, which rears its head when she feels upset or stressed.

Deciding the key to Anna’s breathing attacks, and hence, her timidity, is clean air, her foster mother Yoriko (whom Anna refers to as ‘Auntie’) sends her to spend the summer with Yoriko’s relatives, in a coastal town. A few days after arrival, Anna spots a blonde girl in the window of a seemingly deserted mansion across the shore. The enigmatic girl introduces herself as Marnie, and a bond is immediately formed between the two girls.

Based on British author Joan G. Robinson’s novel of the same title, writers Masashi Andō, Keiko Niwa and Hiromasa Yonebayashi altered the location in the original story from Norfolk to the Japanese town Hokkaido. Graciously, nothing has been lost in translation. The story is simple, but told cleanly and elegantly, and the themes of bereavement and isolation, tackled with immense sensitivity.

As she embarks on her personal journey, audience members will recognise elements of themselves in the protagonist Anna, who is crippled with self-doubt, feeling she had never been loved due to her parents and grandparents having died when she was a baby. But behind those fragile Anime eyes, still waters run deep. She’s surprisingly intense for her age. The question of whether or not Marnie truly exists, or is just a figment of Anna’s imagination is soon broached. But you get so lost in the budding friendship between the two girls that it is only of secondary importance.

From the outside, Marnie seems to have an enviable life, living in a huge house with extravagant parties thrown by her parents. But inwardly, the two girls are just as alone and unhappy as each other. It is because of this similarity that Anna lets down her walls around Marnie, and we come to learn why it is that she feels so badly about herself. It is sad that a 12-year-old could feel so bad about themselves, but this just makes her blossoming friendship with Marnie ever the more rewarding. Throughout When Marnie Was There, the two characters embrace quite a few times, and it is refreshing that a film can capture the innocence behind such a sweet act.

As with all Studio Ghibli films, the film is exquisitely rendered. One shot, which taps into audience’s doubt of whether Marnie is real or of Anna is Fight Clubing us, is cleverly done without being so over-stylistic as to detract from the story. Unlike recent Disney and Pixar movies, which, for better or for worse, always feature a message, When Marnie Was There concerns itself with straightforward, unpretentious storytelling. The film is entirely about Anna, Marnie and their connection, and if anything about their relationship spoke to me, it was in an organic way, rather than feeling corny or heavy-handed. And finally, although it is by all intents and purposes a harmless U-rated film, it is not just the title that evokes memories of Hitchcock: there is a distinctly suspenseful undertone running throughout.

When Marnie Was There doesn’t reach the imaginative, pulse-racing highs of Spirited Away or the heart-shattering pathos of Grave of the Fireflies, but it is a delightful experience all the same, one which doesn't allow itself to get bogged down in the sadness to celebrate some of the richnesses of life: friendship, family and the power of memories. The hand-drawn animation is beautiful; I lost count of the number of beautiful visuals in it. At the film’s big reveal, I sobbed with abandon. Crying can be cathartic sometimes!

When Marnie Was There is said to be Studio Ghibli’s final film, although whether this is true proves to be seen. I sincerely hope that’s not the case: no-one tells delivers moving story like Studio Ghibli.

8/10

Restaurant review: NIZUNI JAPANESE RESTAURANT (Charlotte Street)

Situated on Charlotte Street, a road that is both close to my University and boasting some great restaurants (the previously reviewed BiBimBap being one of them), Nizuni is an elegant, dimly lit Japanese restaurant which serves a range of Japanese dishes, with sushi being its main draw.

We ordered two different sets of sushi, a nizuni set (in honour of the name of the restaurant, I thought it would be rude not to) as well as a 10-piece sushi selection. Both were utterly delicious (great quantities of fish and the sauces were tantilising), but frightfully overpriced. The 22-piece nizuni set came to £39, which averages to almost £2 per individual small piece, which, just by a visual inspection of below, you can see, are accomplishedly cooked and presented, but certainly not the gold that such a price tag would imply.

Although the waiters were extremely helpful and obliging, there was a trainee member of staff working that day who got our orders confused, and thus, delayed us getting dinner. I’ll be generous and not dock the restaurant too many points for that as I could see her intentions were good, but her mind was jumbled. For her sake, I hope her memory has improved since our visit.

The alcohol selection wasn’t as expensive as the food, and we had a whole bottle of Japanese rice win between us and a beer apiece. Both tasted great.

Aside from the marvellous Hi Sushi, I am yet to visit a sushi place in London that offers good value for money. This certainly hasn’t changed having visited Nizuni. That said, the food was certainly high quality, and if you have the time, do check out their website, which is one of the coolest I've seen of a London restaurant so far! (If only they'd saved the money on their web designer and spent it on lowering prices of their food, I would have an even more favourable view of the place).

Grade: B

For more of my restaurant reviews, click here. If you would like me to review your restaurant, drop me an email at lemon_and_lime7@hotmail.com

Mugen (Monument)

Grade: A-

Restaurant review: TEN TEN TEI (Piccadilly Circus)

A cosy Japanese restaurant off Shaftesbury Avenue that graciously dabbles in more than just sushi, I went to Ten Ten Tei with eight of my coursemates to celebrate making it through term one (trust me, it was no cakewalk!). It was selected ahead of the neighbouring Kulu Kulu because when I called Kulu Kulu to book a table for us, they vaguely said they didn’t take bookings and that we could “just all show up”, which sounded a bit fishy to me. I like things that I’m certain of, and Ten Ten Tei’s keenness to actually find seats for us is what immediately put me in its good books.

The menu had a lot of variety, and between the nine of us we sampled six or seven different dishes, all proficiently cooked and presented. I’m a sucker for seafood, so I went for ten don. The prawns were absolutely brilliant; thick, juicy, generous slabs of the thing, and a big step up from Massala Hut, where I have a good mind to complain about false advertising, so meagre/non-existent were the prawn quantities. 

However, the rice was a little tasteless, and as I’d been a little carried away when ordering and asked for the large portion, there was also quite a lot of rice to slog through. Thankfully, the complimentary soy sauce on our table made the task much less gruelling.

To drink, I had the plum wine. The quantity-to-price ratio of this left rather a lot to be desired - £4.90 for a teeny, tiny glass, but it did taste wonderful, and barely alcoholic at all. i don’t know about the concentration of the drink, but I was feeling merrily light-headed after my meal despite the small glass size, so, it must have been doing something right.

We got complimentary miso soup with all our meals, a nutritional, flavourful treat, and I washed it down eagerly, vegetables included. From the remaining meals ordered, I detected that the meat parts were all artfully present and well-cooked, but the noodles and rice excited me, and the respective orderers, less. However, that could be said of pretty much all restaurants, and for the good quality offered throughout, nice portions and tasty meals, overall, my impression of Ten Ten Tei was a positive one.

Grade: B+

Restaurant reviews: ASSA JAPANESE and ASSA KOREAN (Tottenham Court Road)

Since attending a central London-based university at the beginning of October, I’ve wined and dined at several of the restaurants situated around the Tottenham Court Road/Oxford Street/Goodge Street area. Terrific for my tummy, less so for my poor River Island purse!

I went to the Japanese Assa a month ago, for lunch.

 

Being a sucker for salmon, I opted for the salmon tray, and had Japanese beer. It was a very well-presented dish, and I have absolutely no qualms with the quality of the salmon, which was tip-top. The sushi and dumplings also tasted great. In fact, the ensemble was only really let down by the lump of rice, which was presented unimaginatively, and tasted completely bland. 

There was also not nearly enough. I don’t eat half as much as I do for dinner at lunch, so I shudder to think how starving I’d be had I come here in the evening, but even for a quick lunchbreak between lecturers, even with the extra calories of a beer, I wasn’t near fed enough. 

My friend had a similar-style dish, again, presented stylishly enough, but not enough there. Thus, in terms of efficacy of a restaurant, I’m afraid I have to give Assa Japanese a C-.

The Korean Assa was visited on Monday evening, and I had a much better gastronomical experience, for smaller prices! 

We had a seafood pancake to share for starters (wonderful, and delightfully moreish), and for my main I had spicy chicken stir-fry, which, gracefully, didn’t burn my tongue off, but tasted great. 

The fact that drinks were on the house (cold Korean tea) added to the appeal of visiting this place, and for central London, it was very reasonably priced indeed. I can definitely see myself going back, particularly as it’s so close to my uni. A-