For my birthday Sandra surprised me with a 2-hour sushi making course. The two of us have certainly eaten our fair share of sushi so it made sense that we should actually learn how it is made. When I was studying Japanese back at school, I won’t say how long ago that was but fair to say its in the double digits at least …, I remember going out on a excursion to watch someone make sushi. The two things I remember from that day was that rice was cooked in a rice cooker and that you needed to use a bamboo mat to make your sushi.

At the Your Sushi sushi making course you not only learn how to roll your sushi you also learn how you actually make sushi rice (it involved a lot more than whacking your rice into a rice cooker!), how to prepare some vegetables and then how to roll four different types of sushi. We actually learnt quite a bit in two hours – even given that we had time to muck around prepping veges and creating our own sushi rolls.

The good thing about the class was that it was only a small group (there is only ever a maximum of 12 students) and it’s a very hands on session. The surprising thing about the class was that we were taught by a non-Japanese sushi chef – Chef Manu (Emmanuel)Letellier – now he was certainly not from Japan but he sure new his stuff! One of the facts he imparted to us was that before you can get to the stage of even being considered a proper sushi chef that you would have to spend many years first learning the art of perfecting sushi rice not to mention all the other training that goes into learning about the ingredients and then the presenting!

As anyone who has ever cooked rice in their life one of the very first steps in cooking it is to rinse off the starch. With sushi rice you could be washing it up to nine times before being satisfied that you’d gotten rid of as much starch as possible. Eating sushi you can taste a certain flavour – and this comes in preparing the rice by mixing in a whole lot of vinegar, sugar and a touch of salt (about 600:395:5 ratio.) I was surprised by just how much sugar goes into the sushi rice – and here all along I thought it was, if not healthy, at least not unhealthy! Then after your rice is ready you have to wait a certain amount of time for it to cool etc. etc. Anyway, long story short – the rice was prepped for us and our hands on bit started with us preparing the veg and then, the fun part, making our sushi!

As I mentioned earlier we learnt how to make four styles of sushi: Hosomaki (thin rolls), Futomaki (fat rolls), California rolls (technically a type of maki or roll with very specific ingredients) and urmaki (inside out maki) and then also learnt about some presentation skills. Just imagine that making just four rolls took us quite some time.

The class certainly gave me a better appreciation of the effort that goes into making the sushi that I devour. If there is any kind of food that really typifies the Japanese traits its gotta be sushi. The amount of detail and care that goes into making the sushi (e.g. making the vegetables or ingredients precisely square, or making sure the item is balanced) is exactly how I know the Japanese to be – precise, neat, and taking great care.

The class was an excellent way to spend the afternoon, and even better, we got to take away our creations for nibbling on later!

Jules has recently started up a new training regime which is a little more well-rounded than his usual regime for training for marathons. This includes embracing new techniques such as introducing Bikram Yoga into his routine. I’ve always wanted to improve my flexibility (the reason why I started Tae Kwon Do many years ago though in Oz though I haven’t followed through with it in London) so I thought I’d join him for a session.

Bikrams Yoga was developed by Bikram Choudhury and involves moving through a series of 26 postures in a room at 40+°C and high humidity. Classes are generally specific with an instructor taking you through the postures in normally 90 minutes. This yoga is apparently a bit different in that you often have rest and recovery breaks in between postures where some other yogas will have you continually moving in and out of postures. The high temperature in the room is a double-measure for sweating out toxins and keeping the body warm to increase flexibility.

Today we got to the class quite early. Many people turn up to the session early so they can lay down and relax in the very warm room. Its very quiet and almost meditative – no one is laughing or joking around or even talking. It was pleasant to lay in the room waiting for the class to start. You can attend the class no matter what level you’re out though the instructor makes sure to ask if there are any beginners so he/she can tailor their instructions accordingly. I was the only newbie in today’s session! However, I was pleased to see that I could actually get into most of the postures though I struggled with any that involved flexing my arms like the Garudasana or Eagle Pose which involves twisting one arm within the other. Something to do with my man shoulders!

You’re advised to take two towels – one to put down on the mat you use and one to later wipe yourself down after the class. I was in no way prepared for just how sweating I would get from stretching and holding poses. It was amazing. As soon as I entered the first pose I started dripping sweat. No, actually it was more like a torrent of sweat. My towel was drenched by the end of the session.

Consider we didn’t move from our spots on the towel tonight’s session of Bikram Yoga was one of the toughest workouts I’ve had a in a long while! Even my heart was pumping a bit though that was probably from my body trying to cool itself! Very interesting.

So salsa was interesting tonight – for once at The Gate the girls outnumbered the guys … and by a WHOLE lot! Rather than have girls dancing without a partner or dancing with other girls Julio decided to mix things up and have two girls dance with one guy! This did cause some confusion at first with the less co-ordinated guys but in the end it worked out pretty well!

Courtesy of Mirela’s family we have some video footage from tonight’s visit to The Gate for salsa:

It was quite a busy night and for once at The Gate the female dancers outnumbered the males (well, in our beginner’s class anyway …) so Mirela had to take a spin at being a guy. She said it was well difficult!

I hadn’t realised that all this time D had been going to The Gate, which is literally about 5 minutes walk from my house, for salsa lessons. When Amelia and I heard this we were like take us there, take us there! We also dragged James B along to give it a spin.

When we first got to The Gate at just a bit before 7.30 (which was when the first lesson started) the place was fairly empty. This was a bit concerning. But I should have known from past experience that salsa lessons never start on time. You’ll be lucky if you are rock and rolling by 8! So by the time classes started the dance floor was full.

The format of the lessons was slightly different from the classes I’ve done in the past – this time around we had a substantial warm up before hooking up with partners. Also, although it was a beginners class for the first hour, the instructor didn’t hesitate in giving us less basic choreography. The key I think was that he gave us a decent amount of time to learn the steps.

Though D, Amelia and James left us for the second lesson (which was a little more advanced) Mirela came and joined me. Surprisingly in both lessons there were enough male partners and actually they were all generally quite good. It really does make a difference when your guy can lead you.

Mirela and I stayed for about another hour afterwards dancing with various partners. Another difference I found with this venue was that all the people were actually there to learn to salsa and not just pick up which was quite refreshing (though I think there was some small element of that.) There was also a familiar face – one of the guys recognised me from my “salsa days” at high street ken when Jules and I used to go. Small world!

It has been goodness knows how long since I last went and had a salsa – in fact I think it was probably something like a year and a half ago since Jules and I stopped going! Where does time go?!

So tonight, inspired by a friend’s email, Mirela, her father and I went along to the salsa lessons at Bar Salsa. I’ve never been to what I’ve always thought was quite a touristy and non-genuine destination for salsa but I must admit it was actually a lot of fun – there were soooo many dancers in there and also many spectactors so it was a very good atmosphere. Trying to work out whether we’d missed the start of our lesson or not was hard as when we got there lessons were already going on and it was hard to tell if they were finishing or just starting. Just as well we hung around for another 20 minutes – which was how long the first leg of lessons actually overran.

Bar Salsa is a much bigger venue than Bar Cuba ever was and the lessons were spread all over the place. That didn’t stop it being an absolute crush on the dancefloor though.

When it came to lessons Mirela somehow convinced me to go for the intermediate stage (over the improvers which was where I wanted to go and which was the level just above beginners.) the intermediate stage had its positives (more men than women so you always had a partner) and negatives (very scary dance moves – I wasn’t prepared at all but by the end I think I had it sorted.)

After our lessons they of course opened the floor up to the Club part of the night. I was actually just planning on piking out of the clubbing part of the night but there were plenty of guys who were offering to dance with me which was intimidating since my complement of moves comprises the back step, forward step, mamba, side step and open position! Very basic! However, I learnt important lesson – it is so much easier to salsa when the guy can actually lead you and you don’t need to learn a routine to be able to salsa. What a work out is all I can say!