São Paulo with my dad

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My dad arrived in São Paulo today!! I picked him up at the airport at 7 am…ok, closer to 7:20 because American Airlines lied about the arrival time, so I was wandering around the airport waiting for his flight to officially land when my cell phone rang. He’s like, “Um, Adri?” Apparently my dad, on very little sleep and with no knowledge of Portuguese, figured out how to buy a phone card and use a Brazilian public telephone - a skill which I still lack, after spending aggregate over a year in this country. Anyway we found each other and everything got better from there.

For those of you who don’t know, São Paulo city and state have a huge Japanese population. I think São Paulo city has the biggest Japanese population in a city outside of Tokyo - in other words bigger than many Japanese cities. The first 156 Japanese families came over to Brazil 100 years ago, mostly to work in agriculture. BBC - The Lasting Legacy of Brazil's Japanese . The centennial celebration is going on right now, as those who are interested can read in the article from BBC. The Japanese revolutionized agriculture in São Paulo, moving it from a primarily coffee-producing state to a major producer of all sorts of fruits and vegetables for both domestic consumption and export. Many Japanese families stayed in São Paulo and developed a neighborhood called Liberdade (Liberty). I’ve never been to Japan but it is very Japanese-looking, full of little shops selling Japanese wares and food products, grocery stores with imported goods, and…SUSHI! Check out my earlier post from a few years back called “Sushi in Brasil?!” So during my stay here in 2006 I pretty much came to Liberdade at least once a week to buy sushi at the grocery store, or really cheap shiitake mushrooms, or herbs, or just to wander around and marvel at all the crazy stuff for sale. There is a great Japanese market on Sundays that sells amazing food and little arts and crafts. And, Lea (my former host mom) and I discovered a great all-you-can-eat sushi restaurant hidden in a building a few blocks off the main square. There are actually several restaurants in the building but it looks like you are going into an unmarked apartment building, and you have to walk up a few floors to get to the one we like. It has already been written up many times but everyone there seems like a regular, and most are Japanese-Brazilian. So I took my dad there and we feasted like CRAZY! Oh, how I miss São Paulo.

After we gorged ourselves, we burned off a little of the sushi running from ATM to ATM trying to find one that would give us money. Not that you all really care, but sometimes the banks can be finicky and don’t like to give money to non-cardholders of that bank. Or, on the other hand, maybe Citi and Chase are finicky about who they allow to process their cards. In any case, we tried at least six different banks and finally found an HSBC. I like how the big money-laundering institutions stick together.

Then we hopped a cab and went to the Mercado Municipal , the Central Market of São Paulo, which was recently renovated (about five or six years ago) and is just awesome. I tend to like street markets more for actual shopping because the prices are lower but at the Mercado Municipal you can see all sorts of exotic fruits, meat of every kind (including the weird parts of meat like intestines and ears), fish, nuts, herbs, oils, seasonings, olives, cheese, ethnic foods, and my favorites, crystallized fruits! I know that sounds weird, because candied fruit is something that you can get just about anywhere. But in Brazil, it is unbelievable. First of all, this country has an unbelievable sweet tooth and puts sugar in just about everything, and not judiciously. Sugar and coffee ARE the two biggest exports…(musings on that in another post). Then, take the naturally sweetest fruit ever - like pineapple - or very fresh vegetables - like pumpkin - and poach them in sugar syrup until they are candied inside and out. The natural sugars plus the process sugar creates something that just about melts in your mouth. Then, roll that in sugar! While I love the complicated and fancy Brazilian/Portuguese concoctions, the ultimate indulgence is a ring of crystallized pineapple and a cube of crystallized pumpkin. Oh dear lord.

After our protein boom and sugar bust, we headed back to the hotel to relax for a bit, then made our way out again for drinks at Bar Brahma. Brahma is in the center of São Paulo and has been around forever. It is an institution much as the Green Mill is to Chicago (or many other places, I’m sure). Brahma is where the beer Brahma was born, although now it is commercialized as much as Budweiser in the U.S., but infinitely tastier. Brahma was also recently renovated and now has a section for live music, a nice outdoor area, the “old” part with the vintage taps, and a chic part where private parties are held and I think where they are creating a shop or display of Brazilian Popular Music / MPB. We sat in the old part and had amazing people watching, a plate of antipasti, and delicious strawberry and pineapple caipirinhas. If you don’t know what a caipirinha is, you obviously haven’t been invited to a Miller party. Just kidding! Well not really…anyway a caipirinha is made from cachaça, the Brazilian libation made from distilled sugar cane juice, limes and sugar. Caipirinhas can be made from any fruit, and there are many. I’ve had at least a dozen variations and couldn’t possibly list all the possibilities here. A caipiroska is made with vodka, capisake made with sake, and caipiríssima made with rum. But it is always the same process: muddle the fruit with sugar (or add sweetener later, if you want a slower buzz), drop in some ice, pour the booze over and stir. Pronto.

On Saturday we got together with my friend Laura, an architect at UM who is studying Portuguese for 2 months in São Paulo, and another friend Veronica, my Brazilian partner-in-business-and-crime who is quite possibly one of the coolest people I’ve ever met. The very first time I came to Brazil, Juca and I went for lunch at her brother’s house near Campos do Jordão and she was there. A few days later she emails me, we get lunch, and an immediate friendship commenced! When I lived down here we started a little business selling our version of chocolate chip cookies, peanut butter cookies and individual apple pies to local restaurants and country clubs. They were a pretty big hit - even blogged about and I think at one point mentioned in a review of one of the restaurants. Anyway she’s great, and we all met up and drank juice and coffee for most of the late morning and early afternoon at the Hípica Paulista, an equestrian club in the city. We got to watch all the beautiful horses jumping and all the beautiful people walking around! So Veronica and I played catch up, and everyone got to know each other, and we all laughed a lot and had fun. Aren’t you all jealous?

Later, Laura, my dad and I went to the Praça Benedito Calixto in Pinheiros, an artsy, funky, somewhat grungy neighborhood a la Belmont and Clark in the 1990s. Every Saturday there is an antiques and artisan craft fair with some really wild stuff. We wandered around for a bit, got some snacks and checked out a really cool common exposition space that just started a few months ago. I met two really cool artists. One is the founder of a really cool social project that I recognized called Arte em Pneus, or Art in Tires. They use recycled tires and plastics to make chairs, tables, flower pots, and other really cool stuff. Aprendiz Cidade-Escola, or Aprendiz City-School, in Vila Madalena, has a lot of their products on display and works closely with them to run workshops for neighborhood youth and residents. Aprendiz is also awesome, I’m positive I blogged about it back in 2005, and if not will do a little summary later. Basically a group of people turned a nasty drug infested alleyway into several blocks of a “neighborhood school” where the local children can spend their mornings or afternoons in classes, the library, playing outside or making art. So the plan is to go to Aprendiz and participate in one of the tire-furniture-making workshops and learn more about the project. The other one I met was Instituto Papel Solidário, which is in the Ashoka/Artemisia network. From what I understand, the organization is a sort of umbrella for a variety of projects that both make paper and products from the paper ranging from notebooks to lamps to boxes. So I have the guy’s contact information and will be checking that project out soon too!

Later we went and ate awesome pizza at Bráz (Mom and David, we ate there too!) and had wonderful conversation for over three hours until the wine was gone and sleepiness was taking over.

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Photos

Sushi!
a clandestine photo of the sushi bar

São Paulo Sunset
Old, but good

Me - on a wall!
from last year

Coffee - looks better than it tastes
from last year too