Japancakes

Flat Fanta Marinade

2011-07-28T18:59:00.003+09:00

I'm mostly putting the following "recipe" up for my reference only, but feel free to use it as you please. We had some orange Fanta left over from a party and it had gone flat. I decided to use it in a chicken marinade. As always, I didn't measure a thing, so your guess is as good as mine.

Here we go:

Orange Fanta
Salt
Garlic powder
Black pepper
Paprika
Ginger
Kimchee flavored sesame seeds (probably not necessary at all, but I like them)

I sliced one onion into rings and had chicken which was pre-cut into 1-inch chunks (roughly). I let both sit in the marinade while I dealt with a salad for dinner (as well as a failed attempt at taro root....which I like, just not my recent attempt).

I heated some canola oil in a wok and put the chicken and onions in it, keeping the marinade in my bowl. Between stirrings of the chicken and onions, I added some chicken consomme powder and a little corn starch and stirred them in well. After the chicken and onions were finished, I added the rest of the marinade to the wok and stirred the chicken and onions into it. As soon as it thickened (which was not long), I dished out the chicken and onions.

-Thoughts after finishing the meal:

The elements of today's dinner didn't match each other at all. A salad felt a bit alien next to the chicken. Perhaps if it were a chicken breast, instead of chunks, it would have felt more natural. I feel broccoli would have been more appropriate for the meal. Perhaps stir-fried with the chicken and onions. Neither Nat or I are fond of cooked green peppers, but some people might enjoy those with this marinade also.

The taro root was a failure on my part. I overcooked it, I think, and it got too dry. I also think it would have been much better in a miso soup than a side dish of its own. Either way, we didn't end up eating it. We had bread, which we used to soak up the leftover sauce! Mmmmmm! But really, bread is somewhat lackluster for the meal unless you turn the chicken into a sandwich. Oooh! That's an idea! .... Anyway, I think I'll use rice (my suggestion) or tortillas (Nat's suggestion) in the future. Maybe both.

Using flat soda-pop in cooking is definitely an idea for cost-cutting, though. I don't know many families who didn't let a bottle of soda-pop go flat at some point and since it failed it's first use, why not offer it a second? Just be careful what flavors you use with what dishes.

Adventures in Pudding

2011-07-21T13:45:00.002+09:00

Lately, I've become excited about making fruit-flavored puddings. It's mostly the fault of a medieval cherry pudding recipe I got from The Medieval Kitchen: Recipes from France and Italy. I've made the cherry pudding a few times now and got to thinking, "What would other fruit puddings taste like?"

So, when we had some friends over last week, I tried orange pudding. It tastes quite a bit like orange juice as a pudding. There is probably some way to get it to taste more like an orange creamsicle (which was what I was hoping for) but I liked the end result.

Orange Juice Pudding
Adapted from The Medieval Kitchen: Recipes from France and Italy

Ingredients:

Oranges (I used 7 "Stealth" oranges, which are roughly tennis ball sized and taste like navel oranges - if you end up with too much juice, just add more bread...and probably more sugar; alternately, you can use orange juice, but I don't know how much you'd be using)
5 fl. oz. white wine
4 slices of dry white bread, crusts removed (though I usually use frozen, non-dried bread and that works fine; you may also need less bread depending on how thickly yours is sliced - we get ours sliced thin (10-slice, for those living in a country that sells bread like Japan does))
(MORE THAN) 1/2 cup sugar (or honey; I used the original scant 1/2 cup of sugar for the cherry pudding recipe and added orange blossom honey until the mixture wasn't sour; using honey instead of sugar may require more bread)
A dash of nutmeg
zest from one orange
1 1/2 Tbsp. butter (less might be okay; I don't strictly adhere to this measurement)

Instructions:

Juice oranges and strain well using fine sieve or cheesecloth.
Cut bread into a small dice
Combine all ingredients in a heavy saucepan.
Bring to a boil.
Reduce heat and let simmer for 10-15 minutes, stirring occasionally. As the bread swells and breaks apart, the mixture will begin to thicken into a creamy pudding.
If you are like me, you may need to add more bread or sugar around this point (depending on how thick/sour your pudding is). A few more minutes won't hurt, but do keep an eye on your pudding and take a potato masher to it if any new bread you might have added isn't breaking down as fast as the pudding is thickening. (optional step for spazzes like me)
Place into a serving bowl, cover and chill well.
Serve (should serve 5 - maybe more, maybe less depending on what you consider a serving)

Today, I am attempting watermelon pudding. I expect this one to be strange. I'm using a blush wine and less sugar. Also, roughly five or six slices of bread (filling the blender with small chunks of watermelon may have been more than enough). It is looking very orange. Hmm. Interesting. Nat's not going to like this one because WATERMELON! So I'll have to make a mango or pineapple pudding sometime in the future. I have a feeling the mango will be more appreciated.

お久し振りですね!

2011-05-26T08:50:00.023+09:00

And a little over a year later, a new post! Gasps can be heard around the world!

By now, most of you are already aware that we are still alive and mostly unaffected by the Tohoku earthquake and surrounding incidents. As such, this will probably be the only reference to it in this blog.

Last we left off, Will was on his way to Japan. He has since arrived and returned to the States and Natalie's second school year began. Our friends, Katie and Ben, also visited last year (and we went to their wedding in October). We did other things. Ate some things. Had a lot of snow over the winter (more than usual for the region - also, it is not unusual for thunder to accompany gently falling snow here). Spring arrived and a new school year began, which brings us to now. That's a heavily abridged version of events, so I will try to fill in a few details with photos (click on them for to make them larger and clearer!

Here's Will and Nat in Asakusa (in Tokyo). Most of the cherry blossoms in the picture are actually fake. Whether they were just decoration for the upcoming Cherry Blossom Festival or placed around for photographers not happy with the already extravagant number of natural cherry blossoms around, I don't recall. Our hotel was right beside the gate to this temple, so it was the first big sight we took Will to see.

Randomly, there was a wedding going on at the Shinto shrine next to Asakusa temple. The bride and groom were able to take advantage of the rickshaws at the temple (and a few other tourist attractions in the city, I imagine, but I've only ever seen them in Asakusa - at least in Tokyo).

Randomly, there's a small amusement park tucked into the city just near Asakusa.

This bird was just hanging out in a tree branch, staring at all the crazy humans only two feet away while we all clamored to take advantage of this perfect photo opportunity.

Leaving Asakusa, we noticed this udon restaurant sign. Nat took the video.

We visited the controversial Yasukuni Shrine, which just so happened to be in the midst of its own Cherry Blossom festival. Delicious festival food was everywhere.

(this photo was taken by Will)

Then we saw another wedding procession when we visited the Meiji Shrine. It must be awkward having your wedding in a prominent tourist site, what with the random foreigners and strangers snapping photos of you all over the place.

Then, we went on to Kyoto! It promptly snowed the night we got in.

The following morning, we set out to visit the Kinkaku-ji (or the Golden Pavilion Temple). The pavilion is covered in gold leaf. We also visited Ryoan-ji, but we've got over a year to cover here and I've barely gotten through one week.

Besides, isn't this video of a fountain in one of the Kyoto Station shopping areas more interesting? Perhaps not, but it's still pretty darn interesting.

We then visited Nijo Castle (not pictured) and Fushimi-Inari Shrine (partially pictured). The Fushimi-Inari shrine complex is huge and connected by tunnels made of torii gates donated by businesses all over Japan. It covers an entire mountainside and I have yet to see it all. For a time, we wandered away from the torii tunnels and followed a path through a bamboo grove. It was pretty, but ultimately led us further away from civilization than we were willing to aimlessly wander (at least when we had a bus to catch).

After Kyoto, we brought Will to our home in Yosano. We visited some of the sights. This is the gate to one of the local Shinto shrines, reportedly one of the best cherry blossom-viewing locations in town and a view of the bay.

We also visited Nariai Temple (haha, try reading that Wikipedia page!), a nice spot with a scenic view of the Amanohashidate (and our town!), Ine whaling village and a local history museum (where we live used to be part of the Tango Kingdom!)

At the end of Will's stay, we took him back to the airport where a television interviewer asked him why he visited Japan and what he thought was "cool" about the country. A few weeks later, Natalie's students and coworkers mentioned seeing us on TV. National TV! Will is, apparently, good luck to have around.

I may share more photos from Will's trip in other posts, but not today.

On to August, when Katie and Ben visited and we hit a couple Morning Glory festivals (which are, generally, less exciting than Cherry Blossom festivals, but morning glories are my favorite flower, so I was pretty excited). This photo is from the Fushimi-Inari Shrine.

For the most part, when Katie and Ben visited, we went to a lot of the same places we went with Will. We traversed a bit more of the Fushimi-Inari Shrine until the summer heat and endless stairs broke down our will to live and we stumbled back to the bus.

While in Kyoto, we took a day trip to Nara, where they have a giant Buddha in a temple and wild "tame" deer which roam the streets and eat anything they can yank out of your hands or purse. Collecting tolls for being the city's protectors, perhaps? Vendors sell crackers to feed the deer. As soon as you purchase a bundle, the deer crowd around you impatiently.

After two weeks, we took Katie and Ben back to the airport and saw them off.

(photo by Len)

Sometime last year (probably around this time, so I'm screwing up the timeline here) our Japanese professor from college visited with a class. We met up with them in Kyoto along with our college friend, Len, who also teaches in Japan (there was also another former student there, but I didn't know him and I forgot his name! I'm appalled with me!). We were all really excited.

Sometime last autumn, Nat had a conference in Kyoto. I tagged along and went to see a few things while she was busy. I walked to Sennyu-ji Temple (technically, "temple" is redundant there, but that's how it's written in the brochure) and Fushimi-Inari Shrine (again) and returned to Kyoto Station to do some shopping before meeting up with the others for dinner at Harvest, an all-you-can eat organic food buffet (for relatively cheap!)

The next day, I decided it would be wiser to take the bus. That and my feet ached from the non-stop walking the day before. I visited the Sanjuusangen-do, the Heian Shrine and the Kyoto zoo. I also wanted to visit the history and art museums but the history museum was inexplicably closed for the month and the art museum was having a special event that scared me away. Unfortunately, I don't have any exciting pictures of the Sanjuusangen-do, as it was forbidden inside the hall. But I have this nice picture from the garden!

I wandered a bit more after the Sanjuusangen-do, trying to find another sight, but almost walked onto the campus of a women's college. Note: bus and train maps are not good pedestrian maps. Note 2: if you notice that, suddenly, there are only women around, you may have stumbled onto a women-only region of the world.

There were a lot of interesting animals at the Kyoto zoo. It's a small zoo, so it had the basics (zebra, giraffe, elephant, flamingo...) and a few other interesting species (such as this vulturine guineafowl - the colors!). It was mid-afternoon and a fairly warm day (for autumn) when I got to the zoo, so most of the animals were asleep. The hippo was nothing more than a lump in the water with a nearby child yelling at it to wake up. There was also a young child there with her grandfather who would occasionally roll her face in the dirt, despite protests, until she got a very light spanking.

It was close to closing time for the Heian Shrine, so I didn't get to see the gardens (which are, supposedly, very beautiful). The buildings were really pretty, though.

That brings us to last autumn. After that, most of my photos are random textures I took for art purposes. Hopefully we'll be more diligent in keeping up with this blog in the future!

OhhhhhhHHH FREAK OUT!

2010-03-23T13:23:00.002+09:00

Okay, that title is just to make my mom laugh.

Seventy-six hours until my brother is here to visit! YAAAAAY! I'm excited. Today after school I'm going to get the tickets for Alex and I to take the night bus to Tokyo. It's an overnight bus trip and it's much cheaper than taking the trains. Then we'll be spending a few days in Tokyo, a few days in Kyoto, spending some time at home, before heading back to Tokyo to drop him back at the airport.

Then we've got to bust home on the shinkansen because I have school the next day. Whew!

Today is the last day of classes at the junior high. I had one English class in the morning, and for the rest of the day I spent time with a boy who doesn't usually come to school. He usually studies alone in a room, and I suspect he's bullied and doesn't do well around others, but he's really the sweetest kid. I talked to him about comics and movies and we studied cursive together (it's been a while for me too! He laughed at some of my mistakes) for about two hours or so.

At the end, the lunch bell rang and he said "Thanks for coming to talk to me. It's lonely studying by myself all the time."

It's like a little oasis in the stress, you know? I hope I can help him come to school more often.

From Shogakko to Graduation

2010-03-15T17:05:00.017+09:00

Allo! The last few days have been particularly busy. Thursday was shogakko's mass 'birthday party', Friday was my last lesson of the school year at the other shogakko, Friday NIGHT was a big ol' potluck party at our apartment, and today was the graduation ceremony for our middle school third graders. Let's go in order, shall we?

Oh wait a second. First I have to do some stuff I promised to do a long time ago.

The English classroom is on the third floor of the school, and it falls to me to decorate it, which is cool, because I enjoy doing stuff like that. When summer changed to autumn last year, here's what I put up for my first wall decoration attempt.

Yeah, Nightmare Before Christmas! That's Jack, Sally, and Zero if you've never seen the movie, which would be tragic.

Except you probably wouldn't like it, Mom.

Please ignore the "Micky (sp) has more Easter Eggs than Minnie" over there. That has nothing to do with fall or Halloween. I just forgot to take it down before taking the picture. Eh heh.

Anyway, the kids really liked this. There were a bunch of the pumpkins, but the first graders stole/dismembered/destroyed a bunch of them, so.

Oh hey look, the winter decorations! As you can see I put a bit more work into these. Two of the penguins and most of the snowmen have become tragic casualties of the ichinensei (first graders).

But eh, middle school kids, whatcha gonna do.

I had a lot of fun making the snowflakes, and a lot of the kids were like, "How did you DO those?" For being Japan, the home of origami and papercrafts, I was really surprised to find that paper snowflakes were not a standard art form like in American elementary schools. But hey, that's cool! I'll teach them, someday. Mwaha.

This is the door to the nurse's office.

Apparently we get outbreaks of headpidgeons fairly frequently, and here you can see many little anime children of various hair colorosity waiting in line to have their headpidgeons cured by our sweet school nurse.

Bonus points if you get the reference. :D

Anyway, so the party on Thursday. The fourth graders were celebrating their collective tenth birthdays! The previous time I had told them that, in America, the tenth birthday party was a big deal. And we have parties of various types, etc, etc. They liked the idea of a theme party, and so they decided on their theme....

Princes, Princesses, and Samurai. Epic precious.

This is exactly as awesome as it looks. I caught this kid mid-conversation and it looked like Junior Hamlet.

See all the crowns and capes and stuff? They made those themselves, along with little samurai swords and broadswords, and little magic wands for the princesses. It was AWESOME.

Also, I taught the kids how to play Pin the Tail on the Donkey, hence the above video. If you listen, you can hear the kids yelling directions to their friends - "Migi" means 'right' and "Hidari" means 'left.' At the end of the video when you hear them yelling "Hai! Hai!!" they're volunteering to go next.

Here's a good shot of most of the class sitting together. One of the little princes has a red cape. It was supercute. SUPER CUTE.

There was even a girl samurai. You'll see her later though.

Then we all ate apple cake! The teacher, (standing in the middle) Aiko-sensei, asked me for a Michigan type of recipe, maybe with cherries.

But cherries are really, really expensive in Japan, so I went with something cheaper that also is really popular in Michigan - apples!

It was darn good cake. The kids all made it together. I was proud of them.

And now our different costume sets! First we have the Princesses.

Yep. They made me a crown.

This is probably the dorkiest picture of me that ever made me look like a dork, but I LOVE IT SO THERE.

See their magic wands and necklaces? They made me a little star necklace covered in foil, too. I will treasure it for ever and ever, or until I lose track of it which I do all the time.

And here we have the handsome and valiant princes! The one kid is determined to keep his sword in front of the other kid's face. I don't have any pictures of them where he's not doing this. It's kinda funny.

They all had so much fun with this. It was adorable.

And there are the brave and steadfast samurai! (with a prince stowing away in the picture in the back.) I thought it was so cool that one of the girls wanted to be a samurai, too! I was proud of her.

These guys had fun too with their ACTION pose.

I love my elementary school kids.

So then, on Friday, I had the first graders at the other elementary school!! They were so precious! I got totally mobbed though. That's always fun. We played musical chairs (which was easy for them, since it's really close to fruits basket, a traditional Japanese game. Also, musical chairs is really flipping easy, and I'm pretty sure SOME kids play it in Japan) and since I have all sorts of Super Mario Brothers music loaded on my iPod, that filled them with epic glee. And, they really know how to tell me what colors they like now! "I LIKE BLUE!"

Then I ate lunch with them in the lunchroom. Usually the lunchroom usage swaps between grades and classes, since there's only one small lunchroom for a huge school. The other classes eat lunch in their classrooms. The unique thing about Japanese schools is the students themselves serve lunch....even the first graders.

They all wear aprons, head-kerchiefs, and face masks, serving lunch to their classmates.

Everyone waits patiently (or impatiently) until everyone is served, and then the day-leaders stand in front, and yell "Be quiet!" repeatedly until everyone else is quiet.

This usually takes a while.

Then, everyone says "Itadakimasu!" (I humbly receive - kind of a secular grace that is rigidly followed in Japan) and is free to eat. Eating before 'itadakimasu' is a heinous offense and will result in several squeaking, peeping students suddenly bursting into a cacophony all around the offending party. It's adorable.

There you can see their school lunch. Fish and vegetables (The fish was full of bones!! No way would they get away with that in America! Some kid would choke and people would get sued and we'd only be able to eat pureed Fish Product or whatever. Still, I thought it was amazing!) along with a tofu-vegetable soup, a bowl of rice, an orange, and a carton of milk. No, you can't choose between white and chocolate here like ...well, like the schools I went to when I was a kid. But it's been a while since elementary for me so probably that was more of a middle-high school thing.

Then that night was the potluck party. I made spinach-artichoke dip and Alex made homemade pasta. Both were awesome. The rest of the conversation group brought stuff too. Really, really good stuff....in fact, too much, and way too much variety. I ate way too much and the next day I was like "UGGHGHGHGHHGH." It was unfortunate. But soooooo worth it.

Mmmmmmmmmmm.

Then, today was graduation, and I bawled. But only because everyone else was bawling, even the male teachers. I'm going to miss the third graders. It was a big formal affair. The principal did a speech, the mayor of the town (wearing a kimono) did a speech, the new student council president (one of next year's third graders) did a speech, and the graduating student council president (a really sweet kid) did a speech. Lots of speeches. And songs. And tears and sniffling. But it was a good time.

More foods

2010-03-10T22:06:00.009+09:00

For starters, I bought these mushrooms I had never seen before and decided to try cooking with them. I should know better than to try cooking a mysterious ingredient without a recipe in hand or at least an idea of what the ingredient tastes like. Luckily, this turned out well. I neglected to take a picture of the mushrooms, but if you want to do a Google image search for "nameko mushrooms", you'll likely come upon some tiny, yellow, slimy mushrooms. That's what these were. Tiny. Yellow. Slimy.

To be honest, I just stared at them after bringing them to my kitchen and thought, "Have these gone bad?" I had never eaten a slimy mushroom before. I had read about slimy mushrooms, but I couldn't recall anything about edible slimy mushrooms. I probably should have researched for details (as I did just before beginning this blog, so that I could tell you the name of this mushroom), but I decided to throw caution to the wind and make a food.

I cut up some chicken and half an onion, put them in a bowl with the mushrooms and added a marinade (soy sauce, sake, mirin, sugar and oyster sauce). After a little while, I dumped it all in a pan, added a little water and cooked it all until the sauce thickened. We ate it with rice. It was rather good, and was really only slimy in appearance.

We've also been eating wasabi-green salads. That's the vegetable in question on the right. They have a mild flavor and just taste good. Mostly, the salads have consisted of wasabi greens, tomatoes and a special, super-thinly sliced ham that the Japanese use just for salads. I've also added shredded carrots and sliced cucumbers. I typically dress the salad with oil, vinegar, grated parmesan and herbs. Not an incredibly exciting salad, but we like it.

I also tried my hand at tempura. For those who don't know, tempura is a Japanese form of battered and deep-fried food. For my trial hand at tempura, I used eggplant, shrimp and na-no-hana (also known as "rape blossoms" - because they are the flowers of the rape plant). Na-no-hana are a popular spring vegetable and really, really good when deep-fried (not when lightly boiled or steamed). As you can see, the vegetable isn't actually in bloom, just yet; only budding. You can sometimes find bunches with flowers on them in the grocery store. As it is, it looks a bit like broccoli or broccoli rabe. It tastes nothing like broccoli. When tempura fried, you batter and fry the whole thing, leaves and all. Even with one tiny Japanese eggplant, one tiny package of shrimp and one tiny package of na-no-hana, we had two piles full of tempura-fried food by the time it was over. We ate a little bit and left the rest for the next day.

On a related note, since most Japanese households do not have central heating, during the winter some people will keep food in a room that does not have a space heater. Prepared foods are "refrigerated" just by sitting on the spare room table. They are always wrapped or lidded, of course. That's how we saved our leftover tempura; we left it in a cold room through the night.

Today, I was feeling ambitious. We've been getting together some kitchen supplies, like a rolling stick and a larger cutting board. Today, I made noodles. I used the basic directions laid out in Joy the Baker's blog. I made a huge mess, but I also made noodles! I'm proud of me. I added some red wine I kept around for cooking in hopes that it would turn the pasta purple. Instead, it turned imperceptibly grayish. They still taste good, though. The recipe made a lot of noodles, though, so we're probably going to have them at our potluck this Friday and maybe pass some out to the neighbors.

Oh my gosh.

2010-03-04T12:23:00.000+09:00

I just received a handmade book, tied with a ribbon, full of post-it notes with well-wishes from one of the classes of the graduating third graders.

One boy wrote "I like you forever!"

I seriously think I'm going to cry.

Of fish bones and blowfish

2010-02-22T10:40:00.018+09:00

Ahh, it's been a while since I've posted. Sorry about that. Let's get started with the fun and interesting things that I get to say!

To start with, Nat and I ate fugu (blowfish). Just the skin, but it was still fugu. We never really expected to. We never really had the desire to. I mean, with the potential for it being fatally poisonous one wonders why people have bothered preparing it in the first place. But we were at a restaurant with the English conversation group and fugu skins were one of the day's specials. It was actually pretty good. I still don't think I'd choose to order it in the future, but it's something we can say we've done.

On the note of eating fish, one day I had noticed little, glazed fish skeletons for sale at the grocery store. I thought I'd try some. They come in different flavors, so I chose one that I thought looked good. I didn't like it. To me, it tasted like a piece of chalk rolled on the floor of a fish market. It's actually better than that, but I just didn't like it. Of course, the Japanese usually eat these as a snack when drinking beer. We gave them away to one of our friends here who likes them.

I also picked up some odango at the store. Odango are commonly translated into English as dumplings. They are made of mochi (sticky rice which has been pounded into a doughy texture. The glaze is mildly salty; mostly sweet. I love them. Nat doesn't like them as much. More for me! Mmmmmm!

I made spanakorizo again, so I took a picture of the shiso leaves so that you can see what they look like. Not that it's an exciting thing to look at. It's just one of the things we get here. I mentioned before that it has a bit of a minty flavor. It's actually somewhere between mint and parsley, I think. In the end, it just tastes like shiso.

We also ate a bit of an incorrect version of sukiyaki this week. Mostly because we don't have the right pot for it. We used our clay pot, instead. Sukiyaki is typically cooked at the dinner table and you pick the food out as it cooks and eat it. I used a few ingredients which are not normally included in sukiyaki, like lotus root and udon noodles. The reason why one doesn't typically use a clay pot for sukiyaki is that the very thinly-sliced beef used in the dish is supposed to be fried at the bottom of the pot before the broth and vegetables are added. I fried the beef in a frying pan, instead and then started up the clay pot. We had Japanese leeks, shitake mushrooms, mushrooms, enoki mushrooms, lotus root, tofu, udon noodles, komatsuna (a leafy vegetable which appears to be translated as Japanese mustard spinach) and hakusai cabbage. There may have been more, but I don't remember it all. Traditionally, when one eats sukiyaki, they dip the hot food in raw scrambled egg just before eating it.

Yesterday, we ate shabu-shabu with several of the JETs and people from two of the town's English conversation groups. Shabu-shabu is similar to sukiyaki in that it is cooked in a pot at the dinner table and everyone grabs what they want out of it. Major differences are that the meat is cooked in the broth, the broth is more simple and you dip the food in sauces instead of raw egg. Shabu-shabu broth is a simple dashi broth (large pieces of dried kelp are boiled in water for roughly half an hour and then removed, leaving the broth). Sukiyaki broth includes dashi broth, soy sauce, sake, mirin (a sweet cooking sake) and sugar; the result, however, is not too sweet (unless you want it to be, some people like sweet sukiyaki).

The shabu-shabu party was fun and we were really glad to see everyone. We ate way too much food, though...and that was before they pulled out the snacks for tea afterward!

One of our dishes.

Because I am a klutz

2010-02-10T13:21:00.000+09:00

So I don't forget...

My spring vacation starts on 3/25 and ends 4/6. NOW DON'T FORGET ANY MORE, ME.

I have more stuff to write about but I'm kind of exhausted so.........

<3

English Test Theater

2010-01-26T08:49:00.003+09:00

Correcting the 1st year English midterms....

A collection of interesting answers. <3

Q: If you call Ms. Natalie and want to ask her what she's doing, what do you say?
CORRECT ANSWER: "What are you doing (now)?"
A: "What is it now?"
A: "Wats?"
A: "What is this?"
A: "I'm speak English?"
A: "Whose Ms. Natari doing."
A: "I timu bont play." (???)
A: "Where you playing now?"
A: "What is are you doing?" (Hedging their bets...)
A: "iPley stabey."
A: "What time is it now?"

Q: Where is your house?
A: "Yes, it's summer."
A: "Yes, he bas"
A: "Here." (<3 <3)
A: "Yes"
A: "No."
A: "It's studying English"
A: "whet"

Q: (There is a picture that they must write three sentences about. A girl named Tomomi is listening to music, a boy named Kenta is running, and two children named Yuji and Miki are playing tennis)
A: "Tomomi moujituk."
A: "Yuji and Miki are tennising now."
A: "Tomomi is the music."
A: "I pley baseball."

Q: If someone is walking too quickly on a dangerously icy street, what do you say?
CORRECT ANSWER: "Be careful." "Don't walk fast." (or stuff like that, as long as it's proper.)
A: "bont"
A: "You are not quickly!"
A: "Be careful is fast."
A: "Don't warking fast!" (<3 <3)
A: "Don't fost."
A: "Exuce cus me?"
A: "No"
A: "Don't could road walking." (I wish I could give this kid a bonus point. It's obvious he's trying to say "Don't walk on a cold road" or something like that. Creative!)
A: "Don't farst."
A: "rood wooking."
A: "Look! lunning not!"
A: "Excuse me. Be careful." (This was correct. I just thought it was precious.)

Q: You don't know where Miyazu Station is. How do you ask someone?
CORRECT ANSWER: "Where is Miyazu Station?"
A: "I don't ho."
A: "Miyazu Station?" (Though this would work, probably. <.<)
A: "What's Miyazu Station?" (close, honey!)
A: "How is a Miyazu Station?"

Q: You see someone swimming in an area with a 'no swimming' sign. How do you give them a strong warning?
CORRECT ANSWER: "Don't swim (here)." or "Be careful."
A: "What do you do swimming"
A: "Don't is swimming!"
A: "Swimming be careful." (Really close! I thought this was a great try.)

Q: How is the weather today?
A: "I am studying English"
A: "It's crudy."
A: "It five-ten."

They tried so hard!! Well, most of them did....some of them I'm not sure what they want to be saying, but...

Twice in a week? WHAT.

2010-01-22T14:01:00.002+09:00

It's me again!

I had elementary school today. The whole morning, the whole day, I prayed. I was like, "please don't let this be a horrific disaster that ends in me feeling like I got hit by a truck."

It wasn't. Thank God.

One of the fifth grade classes has a new teacher. I'm not really sure of the details, but I think she started from winter break. About ten minutes into class I got that she had about the same feelings about the class as I did, so that made me relieved that it wasn't just me.

But again, they weren't so bad today. I ate lunch with the fifth grade class with the new teacher and sat with the kids while they played Pokemon shiritori. Shiritori is a game where you say a word and the next person has to come up with a word that starts with the last letter of the previous word. It's pretty easy unless you limit it to something. Like Pokemon.

I'm embarrassed to admit that I could contribute to the conversation...but. I knew just enough of the Pokemon names in Japanese (and enough of the ones in English that were the same both ways) that the kids were really kind of confused. It was cute.

I'm zonked, folks. I can't wait to wipe out this weekend.

SHAAAAME.

2010-01-18T09:28:00.002+09:00

First of all, I am SO SORRY neither of us has posted! It hasn't been crazy, we've both just been lazy. Lazy, crazy. Crazy, lazy. Let's call the whole thing off.

*dance*

Anyway! We've both been going through some..uh.. difficulties. I had a really nasty awful cold around Christmas that left me really shaky and with a hanagoe (froggy voice - the Japanese call it 'nose voice') for about two weeks. I'm pretty sure it was some mild bronchitis ...thing, but knowing my stubbornness about the doctor (which is completely without reason here, seriously) I just chilled out until it went away. Then as soon as that was over I had another slight problem that increased in pain and intensity until this past Friday. I won't go into details (because they're TMI) but like, I wasn't getting any sleep, I was shaky and nauseated with pain (and painkillers, woowoo!) but again, stubbornly, I didn't go to the doctor.

"This is WAY too embarrassing to go to the doctor for." I stubbornly insisted, instead relenting to taking 2+ hot showers a day and more baths than I'd taken cumulatively over the rest of the time we've been here.

Which is a real shame, because Japanese baths are awesome.

Now, however, my Alex has come down with some kind of bug!! I have to say, (insensitively), that I'm glad that I finally have the opportunity to do something for him, since he has been very sweetly taking care of me and tolerating my whining for....um...the past month or so. So I'm really concerned about him (he's all achey and stuffy, poor kitty) but also really overexcited about what I can do. I'm going to try cooking stuff I'm not used to cooking, we'll see how that goes.

That made me think of taking pictures of the process which reminded me -- I have pictures of my classroom displays, but I left them at home - I'll put them up at the next post.

As far as non-awful things that have been happening, there are plenty of those too! We went to an Ebisu festival a while ago -- Ebisu is one of the seven luck gods of Japan, and he's all about protecting children and making money. Not sure if it's in that order. But he's a generally happy guy, and his main festival is in March, which is when all the gods go to some god convention somewhere else in Japan. So there are no gods and there's no use praying to any of them during that time....except for good old Ebisu, who happens to be deaf and just completely misses the summons. I like Ebisu.

Anyway, the festival was nice; we ate at a really fun restaurant afterwards that was basically a 'things you dip into things' restaurant (and it's close to our apartment! We're so taking people there!) and then the next day we went to Fukuchiyama for a movie.

The movie we went to was called "Nodame no Cantabile" (Nodame's Cantabile...that was easy) and was about students at some kind of music/performance college in Paris. It was a comic, it was an anime, it was a live-action TV drama, and now it's a live-action movie. I fangirled over the classical music the whole time. It was really....anime-esque though, and goofy...but it was really cute.

Lenny, you would love it, go see it, hee.

What else...um...I got nothin'. Alex made salsa for me. <3 I found out some of my vacation times, so that's good. But if someone wants to visit or someone wants me to come visit, you gotta let me know ASAP -- gotta fit in a visit home for the parents, and a couple visits here that I'm having arranged....mwahahaha.

Sorry for the stream of consciousness. How are you guys doing?

Just Soup

2009-12-30T00:28:00.007+09:00

It's been a while since I've posted anything resembling a recipe, so I'm going to fit one more in before we finish out the year.

Before that, I would like to apologize for our lack of a Christmas post. I hope everyone enjoyed their Christmas! Ours was really nice. Nat had to work during the day, but we hosted a potluck with our English conversation group for dinner. Nat made meatballs and her pizza bread. I made my tomato bisque, with some minor alterations (addition of some finely chopped mushrooms and substitution of one Japanese leafy vegetable for another). We still haven't sent out our Christmas gifts or cards yet, but know that they will be on their way...someday.

There was lots of good food at the potluck. As always, there were leftovers, which are just as delicious!

The next few days were mostly lazy, on our part. Yesterday, I walked to the local convenience store to pay the internet bill. You can pay your bills at the convenience store! Isn't that convenient? You can also pay for Amazon.com orders at certain convenience stores and have packages shipped there as well. Amazing! I ended up being lazy the rest of yesterday and buying dinner at the convenience store as well.

Today, though, I made soup. It's somewhat my generic soup, but we had some kumquats on hand and I decided to use a few to flavor the broth (mmmmm!). As long as you keep a regular stock of tomatoes, onions, garlic and keep your spice cabinet stocked like I do, all you should need to leave home for this are the kumquats and some sort of base. If you don't keep some sort of soup base on hand, that is. If you do, all you'll need are the kumquats.

The result is a delicious bowl of soup!

Just Soup
(Today's variation includes kumquats!)
(feeds 3 or 4)

Ingredients:

1 Tomato, peeled, diced and mashed
1/2 a medium onion, chopped fine
3 cloves of garlic, chopped up however you like to chop up garlic (I like the bell-shape you get from slicing it, but Nat likes to smash it for stronger flavor. I go back and forth between methods. If you like, you can too!)
5 Kumquats, washed (if you have extra, you can eat them whole - peel and all)
Soup base (I used 2 chicken "consomme" cubes which are quite a bit like bouillon cubes, but you could easily replace it with a can of broth or some sort of vegetable soup base.)
Olive oil
Water
Salt - to taste
Pepper - to taste
Ground sage - to taste, though I think I used about a teaspoon...I think
1/2 tsp. Turmeric
Oregano - a couple dashes
A good pasta for soup (smaller pastas like orzo or alphabet noodles are best, but spaghetti or angel hair can work if you break the noodles down into small pieces before adding them to the soup)

Directions:

Make sure you're thinking loving, happy thoughts. This soup needs to be made with love, even if it's not in the ingredients list.
Peel two of your kumquats, mash and remove the seeds. Add the kumquat juice and pulp to your mashed tomato and set aside.
Saute your onion and garlic in olive oil until they start turning brown (I usually do this in my soup pot to cut down on dirty dishes).
Add mashed tomato and kumquat to the pot, stir a few times and start adding water. I usually use the adding water step as an opportunity to clean out my ingredient bowls and not waste the last bits (get the last of that delicious mashed tomato off the sides and into the soup!). I just fill up my pot to a reasonable level, but since there are several types of cooking pots out there, I doubt that is going to help you much. This recipe should make three bowls of soup, so use as much water as would fill three and a half bowls (to allow for evaporation and pasta absorption). You can always add more if necessary. If you are using a liquid soup base, use that much less water.
Bring to a boil.
Slice two crosses into each of the three kumquats you have left. The cuts should be just deep enough to cut beyond the peel and each cross should be on opposite sides of the fruit. Add these to the soup.
Add salt, pepper, sage, turmeric and oregano and let cook for about five minutes and taste the broth to see if you need to add anything. (I keep a small sauce dish on hand for this purpose).
After you have the flavor right, add your noodles and continue cooking until the noodles are tender.
Remove the three whole kumquats.
Serve and eat.
Do NOT spill all over the counter!

Okay, so you may spill it all over the counter if you really have to, but just remember that you're going to have to clean that mess up.

I didn't spill this soup, but last week's chicken noodle was almost a waste.

I shall leave you with a picture of Toshiko and me from our Christmas party. Toshiko's the one in Christmas socks.

Typical.

2009-12-18T10:48:00.002+09:00

It's snowing in Iwataki!!

Not incredibly heavily, but there's big flakes blowing around and it's starting to stick. I'm really happy about this. I hate cold weather, but if it has to be cold, I'd rather it be cold and snowy than cold and just BROWN.

However, I also have Not-So-Angelic elementary school to go to today.

They insist I have lunch with the students (which is cool) but today the classes I'm teaching are both after lunch. Before, I thought this meant I could have lunch here and go to elementary afterwards.

Nope.

They're expecting me today at lunch, which is at 12:20. That's cool. The thing that gets me is that the students have like an hour of time between lunch and fifth period, which starts at around 2:20? So instead of leaving at 2, I'm leaving at 12, eating lunch with the kids, and sitting like a rock in the teachers' room for an hour. Awesome.

A little while ago, the administrator of the elementary school called. I perked up my ears, since, because of the snow, most people have been like, "You're riding your bike to Iwataki-sho today? That's kind of dangerous, isn't it?" and I'm like, "Well, it's quicker than walking.." so I thought it would be something along those lines. For a moment I was like, "Awh, they're worrying about me! That's so sweet."

Turns out it was just a reminder for me to bring money for all the school lunches they have me eat with the kids.

Typical. X3;

Snow!

2009-12-18T10:10:00.013+09:00

So our first snow of the season fell yesterday morning. Our first slush fell the day before, but that doesn't count. There's not much of it out there, but it's still pretty.

It's also still falling (though it wasn't when I took that picture), so who knows how it will look later. I don't even know how it looks now. The windows are all fogged up.

Yup, snow.
We were told to expect the first snow sometime around mid-December to mid-January. We were also told that a high count of stinkbugs supposedly foretells a lot of snow for the following winter. We had a lot of stinkbugs. Do you remember those pictures of our pet spider? Well, all those lumps in her web were stinkbugs.

Speaking of our darling Nephila (yes, we named her), she's gone. She disappeared some time ago, leaving a lonely web behind. She may have been knocked down by the particularly strong winds we had the week she vanished and decided to rebuild where she landed...or she could have been eaten by a bird. Who knows. She's gone.

We sort-of miss her.

...

Sort-of.

Anyway, two days ago (the day of the first slush of the season), I woke up earlier than I normally do and headed to the grocery store without checking the clock. I knew when I had woken up, roughly, and realized partway there that the store was likely not open for another while. As I approached the store, I noticed that it was not blaring music and the lights didn't appear to be on, so I promptly took the next turn and began an adventure! Lucky for you, I took my camera along.

Okay, so it wasn't so much of an adventure as an "Alex walks up a hill along a road he's never been on before and back down it," but still, I have pictures.

We shall start with this: the closest Buddhist temple to our apartment (at least I think it's the closest). The picture isn't actually the temple itself (at least, not the main building). The structure directly behind the tall stone with writing carved into it is just the entrance gate. The buildings to the right appear to be part of the temple compound, but the main building is that rooftop to the right. It doesn't really look as impressive as this picture, though, so don't worry that I never took a picture of it. Do you see the pond on the right? It has a tree hanging over it, held up with crutches. I'm assuming that it is a flowering tree because it fits with the Japanese sense of aesthetics...that and it doesn't look like a maple. I'll have to check back in the spring.

I continued on the road and it was abruptly rural. This is not to say that we don't live in a rural town, but we live in the town part of the rural town and most of where I need to walk is also in the town part. So, it was quite startling to suddenly find I had wandered into the rural part. It was the walking into it that made it startling, not that it was there. We'd ride past several rural locations while being driven from one event to another, so I knew the rural was there...it just took some more active presence to make me realize it.

Oh, right! Pictures!

So I did a terrible job of taking pictures of the actual farms, but I got some interesting pictures, nonetheless. Here's the edge of a bamboo grove near a farm and the farm's shed. Did you know that bamboo is actually a species of grass? Amazing! Just imagine mowing that every week! But, yes. Those trees which don't appear to be able to support their own weight are bamboo.

Next up, persimmons!

I apologize that the subject of the picture is so dark. I blame the lighting and the poor angle. But "up" was the only angle available to me (it was a tall tree on a hillside), so here it is. The persimmon tree is standing next to a palm tree. It's hard to tell, but they're waving hello. There are still a bunch of persimmons on the tree. They are much smaller than the persimmons we normally get in the grocery store, but you can sometimes buy small persimmons too.

Now, let's get a look at this hillside.

You can't really see it in the picture, but there's a dirt path (with the occasional bit of wooden stairway) zig-zagging its way up the hill. Most of the trees are cedars of one variety or another. There are some evergreens of other sorts mixed in as well. The hillside was rather pretty, though, so I just wanted to make sure that you had a chance to see it too.

I continued climbing until I came upon a road at the hill's crest. Across the road was one of the elementary schools Nat teaches at (she's teaching there today). I decided to turn around at this point and I saw the bay (if you look, you can see the Amanohashidate). Turns out it wasn't much of a walk, and the rural bit I had encountered was only a tiny bit of winding, hillside road that Nat bikes up every Friday, but I still enjoyed it. Seeing the bay, though, made me decide that I wanted to walk by the sea. So, I meandered back down the hill. By the time I was nearing the road to the sea, a fine mist of snow pieces (there was no way anyone could really call it "snow") began to fall. As I approached, I noticed that the road to the sea had a police barricade. I decided that it was a bad time to visit the sea when a fire truck joined the police. So, I wandered through some back streets for a while, noticed a few stores I had never seen before and eventually made my way to the clock-on-a-signpost to check the time. The grocery store had just opened! I bought my groceries and went home. Later that day, the mist of snow pieces turned into a downpour of slush...which Nat had to bike home in. Poor Nat!

A hilltop cemetery behind the Buddhist temple.

.

Of Christmas and Teeth

2009-12-15T15:36:00.003+09:00

This temporary filling is weirding me out. It's kind of made of foam or something and I keep messing with it. rawr. I'll be glad when the real one is in after the 25th.

We had a party on Sunday night. Alex played Santa; a bunch of ALTs and Japanese people came. Toshiko gave us a ride (thank you Toshiko!) and it was a ton of fun. Alex made deviled (angeled?) eggs and I made pizza bread, my new favorite pizza-type recipe since pizza dip.

...I should make pizza dip.

Drooling aside.

I got the cutest Snoopy mug!! It comes with a little matching teaspoon! I almost wanted to send it home to Mom but I LOVE IT SO MUCH. MINE. Maybe I'll give it to her when I come home. :)

Our Christmas presents are going to be kind of late. In all honesty, it's really hard to buy presents sometimes, simply because we don't have a car and have to rely on other people to get to places like Mipple (our local department store) in order to do our shopping. I've got a few things for a few people, but I really want to finish out before we do our sending.

If anyone's got anything specific they want, please comment and we'll see what we can do!

I really want to take another trip to Kyoto for shopping and stuff since I think I'm pretty used to the city now, and there's a whole lot of cool things I can pick up there. But every weekend has had something pop up to make it impossible for us to go. Grrrrr.

Though maybe I can find some good stickers in Kyoto, too. I brought some awesome stickers from the dollar store for my classes when I first came here and now I'm almost out of them. They're really weird things like sparkly, strangely colored vegetables. (green carrots, blue pumpkins, purple mushrooms and the like.) The kids just adore them, and the ones here in Japan are cutesy and all but they lack that ridiculous American flavor. Oh well.

We're going to be having another party on the night of the 25th for our English conversation members. The thing that stinks is...I HAVE TO WORK! T____T (that's a crying face). Because the school was closed for so long due to Swine Flu, it cuts into winter vacation. So...work for me. :(

Oh well, it won't be SO bad.

OH MAN

2009-12-12T11:31:00.002+09:00

I broke my flippin' tooth!!

My mom sent me a package with some tootsie rolls in it, and I was like "Eh I haven't had a tootsie roll in forever" and tossed it in my mouth.

Then I was like "*crunch crunch crunch* ...Huh...did I hit a sugar deposit or something? Oh well."

Next thing I know there's this big GAP out of the side of my tooth.

Now, granted, it was a tooth (the ONLY tooth) that I had a cavity in a long time ago. A part of the side broke off, absorbed by the horrible goo monster that was the tootsie roll, and you could see the filling right down the middle and everything. I was like "welp."

This happened last night. Today I went to the dentist. Because you can do that in Japan.

The dentist cheerfully informed me that the filling was made of (either silver or mercury -- I'm hoping he meant silver because if it were mercury I'd be seeing wallbunnies and they'd be telling me to kill people with a teapot launcher) and that this was not good for my body or my teeth and wondered if I would rather they just take the filling out and replace it with the white one. I was like "sure."

So they --

-replaced my filling.
-fixed my tooth.
-cleaned my teeth.

Now, the way Japanese health insurance is, you have a 30% copay. I was all like "doom, doom, doom" because American health care is ...so...bloody...expensive...

I paid about 30 bucks.

For all that! I couldn't believe it. It blew my mind more than when we discovered the microwave could have metal in it without exploding.

I go back on the 26th for a follow-up, but for now I'm just amazed at how quickly and cheaply this worked out.

Kyoto And The Difference Between Schools

2009-12-09T10:47:00.002+09:00

As Alex said, I've been SUPER busy last week. I've got a student who enjoys inviting himself over to play video games now, and this Sunday he proclaimed that he (and his younger brother, who I teach at elementary school) would be coming over every Sunday from now on. I was like, "Erm. I...might be busy...some weeks." Oi.

Last Tuesday and Thursday I went to Kyoto for an ALT (Assistant Language Teacher - basically we crazy foreigners teaching in Japan) conference with Ms. Matsuda, one of the English teachers here. We had a ton of fun - the conference was illuminating (though some of the speakers spoke TOO FAST for the Japanese teachers!! Holy cow, slow down!) and we got to hang out and shop in Kyoto after it was over.

Shijo-dori and Kawaramachi-dori, two of the huge shopping streets, are definitely places I want to take anyone who decides to visit us. The bus system of Kyoto is intensive as well, but you can get an all-day pass for 500 yen - a little more than five dollars. Kyoto is also one of the most historically significant cities in Japan, as it was the old capital before it was moved to Tokyo. So it has a ton of beautiful gardens and castles and pagodas. HINT HINT. COME VISIT US. I WILL SHOW YOU A GOOD TIME.

Also I found a shop that sells import goods, like.. (gasp) CHERRY COKE and tortillas!! I know tortillas are easy to make, but I haven't done it yet and when I saw them I freaked out. They also had feta there. I bought some for Alex. It was epic.

So on the train home I had Subway (another find -- I had a roasted chicken and avocado sub) and Cherry Coke for dinner. Mmmmmmm....I needed that.

Then, Thursday and Friday I had elementary school to go to. I go to the Angelic School every other Thursday and the Demonic School every Friday.

This particular Thursday and Friday I was given a very clear-cut example of the differences between the two schools. I was teaching both sets of students about Christmas. I'm not allowed to talk too much about Christian stuff, since they ARE public schools, but I focused on the family aspect of it instead of being like, "You get lots of cool stuff and it's awesome!"

Angelic School: A tiny first-grade girl approached me after the lesson and asked me in a sweet voice, "Natalie-sensei, do you know about Jesus? <3" I almost cried. It was the most precious thing in the world.

Somewhat Less Angelic School: The kids got into two seperate fistfights while making Christmas cards. Before lunch, a tiny first-grade girl approached me and asked me in a sweet voice, "Natalie-sensei, why are you so fat?"

Gotta love teaching.

Something Strange, Something New...

2009-12-08T14:42:00.008+09:00

For starters, we both apologize for not posting last week. Nat was busy and I was lazy. We do have some photos of a couple odd things we found in the stores, so I shall share our experiences with you.

First up, chocolate-covered potato chips.
I saw these while in the check-out lane at the grocery store. I was amused. The potato chips are Pringles-style and are coated on one side with chocolate. The same sort of chocolate you'd coat a pretzel with. In a way, they did taste like chocolate covered pretzels with a lingering hint of "WHAT ON EARTH DID YOU DO TO MY PRINGLES?"

Nevertheless, we found it difficult to stop eating them (until they were gone and by then we no longer had a choice). I believe Potattcho is the brand of chips (to rival Pringles). I'm not sure I would suggest these, but they were definitely different.

I Love Vegi is really most remarkable because of its name. At least it is to me. We have mixed fruit/vegetable juices in America, so this doesn't come as a huge surprise. Some Japanese brands even show up in the US sometimes. If you ever see Kagome vegetable juices in your grocery store, those are Japanese.

So far, we've only been able to get this brand from vending machines. It's fairly sweet but, from what we've been able to read, it is only sweetened by the fruit juices in it. What's in it, do you ask? Why, I shall tell you!

I numbered the ingredients on the can so that you can see the ingredient list yourself and follow along.

Orange
Apple
Grape
Banana
Peach
Lemon
Carrot
Tomato
Spinach
Moroheiya (also known as Jute...not well known in the USA either way)
Cabbage
Celery
Lettuce
Broccoli Sprouts

Next up is our blueberry-grape dessert vinegar...to drink.

When I first bought this, I thought, "Oh! How novel! Vinegar made from blueberries! Well, I've seen vinegar made from champagne, roses, violets, pomegranates, raspberries and, well, lots of things. This shouldn't be any different! I shall make a vinaigrette!"

I did, in fact, make a vinaigrette and a small salad for my lunch on the day I bought this. It was a mistake. It was far too sweet for a normal vinegar, so I realized that this had some sort of special purpose.

After some research, I found that blueberry-grape vinegar was one of several sweet, fruity vinegars that are a current beverage fad in Japan. The vinegar is mixed with water (our particular vinegar-water ratio is one part vinegar to four parts water) and imbibed. I tried it and it actually tasted pretty good. It tastes like juice with a pleasant tang. I'm not entirely certain it's healthy to be consuming too much of this too often, though. It is still vinegar, after all. So, one drink every few days...and not along with a salad dressed with a vinaigrette.

Last, we have a picture from our Thanksgiving meal.

This is Peter Corn. It is pre-cooked cob corn in a vacuum-sealed bag. It is named Peter. We ate him. He was delicious.

The majority of corn in Japan comes from the northern island, Hokkaido. Wheat, dairy and beef also tend to come from Hokkaido. That's because these things just grow better there. However, since Hokkaido tends to have weather patterns similar to Michigan, the growing season is really short, so corn is more and more difficult to come by in the winter and spring. There will always be some corn coming in from some mystery location that is always sunny (which is sometimes Australia), just not as much.

The growing season here...I'm not sure. Some of the crops look like they just planted new rice plants last month, but I'm not sure. The camellias (Camellia sasanqua) did just start blooming around the beginning of November and are still going, though. They're very pretty. I've been told that one house (or maybe it was a shrine) has a camellia festival in the spring, though those camellias are a different kind (Camellia japonica). The two types of camellias are considered completely different flowers by the Japanese. The autumn camellias are known as "sazanka" and the spring camellias are known as "tsubaki".

Thanksgiving in Japan

2009-11-27T13:47:00.008+09:00

As American Thanksgiving comes to a close in America (it's already after noon on the day after here), I am finally getting around to typing a post. We've been busy with one thing or another, so I'll try to get you all updated.

Before that, here's our Thanksgiving dinner:

We don't get turkeys in Japan (unless we're looking to order one to be delivered) and even if we did, we don't really have the microwave space to cook it in. We did learn how to use our microwave as an oven, though. Apparently, you can put metal in the microwave when using the oven settings.

Our meal consisted of chicken, corn on the cob (from Hokkaido, Japan's northern-most island...where all the wheat, corn and cows grow), a butter croissant and mashed potatoes with creamy chicken-mushroom dressing.

It was just the two of us, so this was more than enough food. After dinner, Toshiko visited for tea and sweets.

Monday was Japanese Labor Thanksgiving. It's not a major holiday, but Nat had the day off. One of her coworkers (who also happens to be our neighbor) went fishing earlier in the day and offered some of his fish to us. The three near-identical looking fish are horse mackerel and the reddish one is sea bream. The sea bream's fins are spiny and it has sharp teeth.

This was my first time to clean or fillet a fish. I think I did pretty well, but I know I could have done a lot better. The first day, we ate two of the mackerel. I made a mixture of yellow miso paste, crushed garlic, grated ginger and sake. I spread the mixture over the fillets and pan fried them for a couple minutes, flipped 'em, fried them for a minute more and they were done! Mmmm!

The next day, we ate the other two fish. This time, I rubbed salt, pepper, paprika and thyme into the fillets and marinated them in olive oil and sake (white wine would work just as well, but all we had in the house was red wine and sake). They only need to marinade for half an hour to an hour. If you have other things to prepare for the meal, just let them marinate while you get everything else ready. Chop up half an onion and some garlic and start frying them in some alive oil. Place the fillets on top of the garlic and onions, skin-side down. Fry for two to three minutes and flip for one last minute. Delicious.

Sunday, we went hiking to see a waterfall near Miyazu with some of the English conversation group members. I'm sorry to say we forgot to bring our camera, so you won't be able to see how awesome it was (unless Nat gets the pictures off of her cell phone). Afterward, we went to lunch and did some shopping.

Saturday (yes, I'm taking you backward through time), Nat made spaghetti carbonara and we invited another one of Nat's coworkers (also our neighbor) over for dinner and movies. I made garlic bread and a salad. We watched Foster's Home for Imaginary Friends and Moulin Rouge.

I think that's all of the things that we haven't had a chance to tell you about yet. They're not huge events, but they're what's been keeping us busy for the past week. Tomorrow, we're going to see an exhibit of wood block prints. I'm excited.

Obviously, since American Thanksgiving isn't celebrated in Japan, Black Friday doesn't exist here, either. It also helps that Christmas isn't nearly as big of a holiday as it is in the west (though they do celebrate it...with KFC and cake, from what I'm told; apparently, western holidays are supposed to be celebrated with western food). I went shopping today just because I could do it without fear of being trampled or mugged in the parking lot. Be safe, everyone!

I hope you all had a wonderful Thanksgiving and we are both very thankful for all of you!

Mexican dahlias
(These are much taller than me.)

寒いね!　(It's COLD!)

2009-11-19T08:56:00.003+09:00

Brrrrrrrrrrr. It's cold. It's getting to the point where I'm not a fan.

Last night I went out to the Lawson (our convenience store -- about a 20 minute bike ride away) to pay the internet bill. I felt a little safer this time than I did last time, but it still freaks me out. I stopped at the Komeri (housewares and garden store) and grabbed a garden spade for the strawberry SEEDLINGS (thanks Alex XD). I chatted with the cashier a little and she smiled and told me that the middle school was full of kids with colds, and to be careful. It's kind of nice being well-known in a small town.

We got our Playstation 2 from Alex's mom and our movies and games from my mom so now we are SET FOR WINTER. :) However, this is also a good opportunity to sort of elucidate on my specific brand of OCD. I have this...I mean...sometimes my room/desk/whatever is a huge mess, but when I have a collection of things in a space, like, a collection of CDs in a CD case, I HAVE to sort them in a logically sound fashion. So I spent about an hour sorting our case into - TV series, movies, anime TV series, anime movies, PS1 games, PS2 games, Gamecube games, and Wii games. Within those categories I subsorted into alphabetical order. I felt better after it was done.

So, now, when I get home, I smooch Alex, cuddle under the kotatsu, and pop in a game.

However, my OCD gets me here too. The strange thing is, if I have a list of things, or a sequence of things, even if the list was placed in a non-relevant order, I have to do them in that order. I started playing Chocobo's Dungeon because it was alphabetically the first of the PS1 games. The disc crapped out (typical) so now I'm playing Chrono Cross, which I've been meaning to play for EVER but finally am getting a chance to. Twitch, twitch. Must play in order...

I've got a headache today, but I'm holding out for the weekend -- three day weekend! Plus, I don't have my naughty shogakko (elementary) tomorrow! I only have the sweet angelic shogakko today. <3

I Sing The Snooze Button Electric

2009-11-16T12:22:00.004+09:00

Lately I've been having a ton of trouble waking up. I've got this habit of smacking the snooze button about four times before actually waking up and then zooming around the house, grabbing a piece of toast, and absolutely trucking to school on my bike in the span of ten or twenty minutes.

Last night, I went to bed late; around 12. I was a little worried about what would happen in the morning. My snooze duration is about 5 minutes long, so I set it to be 10 minutes instead.

The difference was incredible. My alarm went off at 7:00 as it usually does, and I smacked the snooze button. The next ten minutes, I was actually able to relax and wake myself up. It seems like when there's only five minutes I spend the whole five minutes frantically trying to relax, all the while knowing it's going to go off again any minute, but with ten minutes it actually seems like a fair amount of time to snooze. When I got up, I wasn't tired and didn't have to rush too much. It was amazing.

Sunday we had the cooking party with four ladies from Eikaiwa - Toshiko, Sanae, Mieko, and Keiko. We had a ton of fun. Toshiko and Mieko both brought salads, and Mieko also brought us some strawberry saplings! We'll have strawberries next year if I don't murder them horribly! I made spaghetti carbonara according to my mom's recipe. I want to make another batch of it soon and bring it to school for bento for a little while, since, amazingly, the six of us ate the whole pan of it (and believe me it makes a crapload of spaghetti). Of course, we were full as all, but...

The new student is really cute and sweet. Luckily her assistant teacher DOES speak English, and actually owns the import store in Omiya! She's super nice, too. The students are being really nice to the new student as well, so I'm happy about that - Japanese schools are known to have bullying problems sometimes....

Hm, I think that's all I have to update about.

Seriously: Autumnal Infestation

2009-11-13T01:08:00.003+09:00

So, you remember how I posted about the abundance of persimmons in our house? Maybe the post from less than a day ago about how I was trying to use up some of our persimmons? Or maybe the several recipes I've fabricated so that I can use up some persimmons?

We just got six more.

Don't get me wrong. I've learned to love persimmons rather quickly and I tend to wonder why I hated them so much as a child.

Luckily, we have a plan to use them all up before the weekend is out. Tomorrow, I shall make the persimmony rice pudding (again) and package it up to hand out to our English conversation group tomorrow night. Sunday, Nat's having some of the ladies over for a pasta lunch. The last of our persimmons will become fritters for dessert.

I fully expect to receive more persimmons on Sunday. It's the seasonal gift and, being a more rural community, everyone is related to at least one person with a persimmon tree. I was saving some seeds to see if I could start a persimmon bonsai. Maybe I should rethink this...

Persimmon Fritters

2009-11-12T14:58:00.005+09:00

So, I had some corn starch kicking around and wanting something to do, so I did a quick mental inventory and decided that our autumnal infestation of persimmons might help. I also wanted some lunch, so you will be horrified to know that this is what I made for lunch: Deep-fried persimmon slices. As delicious as these are, I assure you that I do not plan on making a regular habit of this.

So, here's the recipe:

Persimmon Fritters
(Another failure to have measurements)

Ingredients:

1 ripe Persimmon, peeled and sliced into thin wedges.
Corn starch (I don't know how much. Enough to coat the persimmon wedges at least twice. Also, if I mention flour at all in this recipe, I actually mean corn starch. I apologize in advance as I expect to make this mistake often.)
1 tsp. Salt
1 tsp. Paprika (You might actually be able to leave this out, if you want. I've never been able to taste paprika so I just use it to add color....not that it added much.)
1/4 - 1/3 cup Sugar (I didn't measure it, really. But roughly this amount.)
A mild oil for frying in. (You'll need roughly two inches or more. I did this in a sauce pan because I was only frying up one persimmon and I didn't need anything larger.)

Equipment:

Cooking Chopsticks (extra big ones for nabbing things out of hot oil....or some tongs are good too. Whatever you prefer for cooking operations of this nature. Just be aware that you'll need it.)
A sauce pan (or a pot, wok or deep-frier; whichever you feel safest deep-frying in)
Ventilation (Not that this is a particular smokey recipe, but it's always safe to have around when you're cooking...especially if you choose to fry with olive oil)
A bowl - for the corn starch and the mixing and the things
A plate with a paper towel on it (or a similar setup so the fritters can cool and dry).

Instructions:

Mix all the dry ingredients (corn starch, sugar, salt, paprika) in a bowl.
Add the persimmon slices to the bowl and make sure they are thoroughly coated in the corn starch mixture and let sit for a couple minutes.
Start heating up the oil in a sauce pan.
The corn starch should have absorbed some juice from the persimmons, making them now look uncoated. Coat the persimmons a second time.
Once the oil is ready, start adding the persimmons one at a time. Make sure they still appear to be fully coated in the corn starch mixture before you add them to the oil
Let the persimmons cook until golden. This may be difficult to tell sometimes, as the outer crispy layer may sometimes look more pale than it actually is. Once a piece starts turning brown, it's just barely overdone (but still delicious, so not a problem). Judge each piece's done-ness individually.
As you remove the finished persimmons from the oil, place them on the paper-towel-covered plate or a cooling rack (over a paper towel) so that they can drain and cool (just a little...they're best when still warm, but not blisteringly hot).
Optional: If you like, you can roll these in a cinnamon-sugar mixture, sprinkle cinnamon and sugar on top, or dust with powdered sugar. I haven't tried this yet, so I'm leaving the risk to you.

I'm ashamed to say that I ate them all. They were just so deliciously gooey on the inside and crispy on the outside. I need to make a new batch for Nat to try.

Natalie-senseiiiiiii!

2009-11-08T08:42:00.005+09:00

I was woken up this morning by the sound of elementary school students screaming my name in the street. It was kind of surreal. But, I did tell them where I lived, so I guess it's only natural. They've been getting a lot more genki lately, last week they kept poking me in the chest. o_O Weird.

This past week was kind of busy. Tuesday we had the English recitation. Neither of my students won, even though I think both of them should have at least placed - but my school brought home first place trophies in every category last year, so I think the judges might have wanted to spread it out a bit. Me and the other English teachers were cordial and mature about it in the contest, but as soon as we got back in the car all three of us got angry and were loudly proclaiming that it wasn't fair. :) The students weren't with us, obviously. Our third grade girl was heartbroken and sobbing, and our second grade girl was quietly disappointed. They both worked really, really hard.

But I had to wear a mask because it was the high school's turn to have Swine Flu, and that's where the recitation was held. XD So here's me in a mask. The Japanese really like wearing surgical masks for pretty much every reason conceivable, and Swine Flu is no exception. They also wear masks when they have colds, when other people have colds, when they travel, when they're around other people who traveled, if there's a sandstorm, if pretty much anything happens, if Godzilla is rampaging in the streets and kicking up dust, anything.

Additionally, one of the people we met at the Aberysthwyst (sp. whatevs) karaoke night....passed away. Her name was Kumiko Oda, and she was not much older than I am. She was a gamer, and we were really looking forward to getting together to play video games. It turns out she died of a heart attack in her sleep. Her mother didn't try to wake her up for a while, because she'd gone out the night previous and her mother thought she needed the sleep. It was really shocking.

Also, on that note, I just want to say something -- we had a friend back home pass away as well recently, Isaac Loughrige. He was a great kid and we would play together when we were young and living in Marshall. He was part of my brother's little cadre of neighborhood boys and is just unforgettable. He passed away of complications from Swine Flu a few weeks ago. So, if any of our friends from Crossroads read this, please pass on our condolences to the Loughrige family.

The teachers are all worrying because we're getting a new student at our school starting Monday. She's from the Philippines and doesn't speak any Japanese. She speaks some English and one of the Philippine indigenous languages, but no Japanese. They've hired an assistant for her who speaks Japanese (but notably not English or the Philippine language...brilliant) but mostly the other teachers are going to be relying on me and the other English teachers. This includes one of the English teachers who is really not confident in his own ability, and essentially begged me, if I don't have any other classes when she's in his class, to come and help him.

So I'm going to be a lot busier from here on out....

Jesus gave me buffalo wings while I was PMSing last week.

That was pretty much the best sentence I could ever have hoped to type in this blog.

Pepsi Azuki

2009-11-07T21:42:00.005+09:00

I have something today. I don't know if this is an amazing something or a something that is just amusing, but it is a something. This something is azuki (sometimes spelled adzuki) bean Pepsi. Azuki beans are sweet red beans the Japanese use in a lot of desserts and snacks. It is one of the primary Japanese flavors for sweet things. In addition to the plethora of traditional foods containing the bean, the Japanese have azuki flavored ice cream, azuki cakes and now azuki Pepsi.

We also went to a potluck tonight. I made my persimmon rice pudding for it. This was partially inspired by an incident where one of Nat's students stole the camera to look at the pictures and a teacher asked about the pudding and asked to try some. I also realize that my usual potluck fall-back of fried eggplant (with skordalia) doesn't travel well. Luckily, we're still in the height of persimmon season, so this is the perfect food for a Japanese get-together.

I expressed, when I posted the recipe for this, that it may be wise to use more than one persimmon for the recipe. More persimmons is definitely a good idea. Since I had one on hand, I went to the store to pick up more. The only ones that were ripe enough were smaller persimmons, so I ended up using my one normal-sized persimmon and three more smaller ones (this would probably even out to three normal-sized persimmons or five small persimmons). Since I was in a bit of a hurry, I used the blender to mash them into goo.

The food at the potluck was delicious. There were more Americans present than Japanese. I had no idea what to expect, so I was actually a little surprised. It was fun, though.

Octopus!

2009-11-05T20:21:00.007+09:00

When Nat and I started learning Japanese, we were jokingly warned to be careful if we were to ever order tacos in Japan. The reason for this is that "tako" is Japanese for octopus.

Today, I re-armed myself with octopus recipes and picked up a couple tentacles at our local grocery store. While you can buy octopus raw at some grocery stores in Japan, our store sells it pre-boiled, so you don't have to worry about pre-boiling it yourself (it can take a while). Also, it's much easier for the store to cut up an octopus that has already been cooked so that they can package it according to serving size (most people living by themselves will not be able to eat a whole octopus). The pre-cooked octopus at the store comes with one tentacle and a small piece of head per package.

The recipe I was following assumed that the cook would be using a raw octopus, so I still had to do some pre-boiling to get some of the juices of the octopus into the sauce and some of the seasonings into the meat, but that just made the octopus that much more tender. For those curious about the recipe, it's here.

It turned out really good! I accidentally misread the amount of cinnamon and doubled it, but that's what I get for reading the recipe from across the room. It was still good, though. This is definitely a recipe I'd be willing to repeat.

Tomorrow, we're probably going to eat mabo tofu from a boxed mix. Fridays are my easy meal days.

Kotatsu and Clear Soup with Japanese Clams

2009-11-03T19:28:00.010+09:00

Today, I armed myself with new recipes and went to the grocery store. I was determined, today, to prepare some sort of seafood for dinner, be it octopus, clams, mackerel or ishitai (striped beakfish). Luckily, I had little choice in the matter, as most of the other aisles were still being stocked. There wasn't any ishitai (it's not one of the most common fishes we get here, but I see it in the grocery store once every few weeks). We can't get some of the ingredients for the octopus recipes I had on hand (dill or cloves) so I put that on hold until I can figure out some good substitutions. Mackerel was...well, I forgot my list of fish names written in kanji (the Chinese characters in the Japanese writing system), so I couldn't tell what fish was mackerel. We'll try this again some other time. Clams it was. I also managed to pick up a small bag of bay leaves. They were actually at the store this whole time, but I only just realized what they were. Part of the problem was that they were labeled in French, since the Japanese borrowed the French name of the herb (laurier). For those who don't know, a bay tree is also known as a laurel. I have been aware of the dual name of the bay/laurel for a long time, so I felt a little foolish that I hadn't realized what "laurier" was earlier. Especially since there was a picture of the leaves on the bag.

After dropping my groceries at home, I grabbed an umbrella (it's started to rain) and headed back out to go to our household goods store, Komeri. I picked up a cord for our kotatsu. A kotatsu is a low table with a heating element underneath. The top of the table is removable so that you can place a kotatsu blanket over the rest of the frame to keep the heat under the table. People then sit with their legs under the kotatsu to keep warm in the colder months. We have two of these. We didn't have any cords for either of them. So I picked one up and headed home. I would have bought two, but I wasn't sure if I had the right thing just yet.

On the way home, the sun was shining, and I tried a different route. Walking by the bay, I saw some flying fish jumping out of the water. It was pretty cool. I didn't have the camera with me (Nat had it for English recitation competition, which she may or may not write up a blog about later), but I have some pictures from the last time I was by the bay. Today was definitely more photogenic

When I got home, Nat was there! Yay! Apparently, today is some sort of holiday and her only duty at work was to attend the English recitation competition. So work was only a half-day!

Today's dinner was Japanese pumpkin cooked like acorn squash (that recipe with the brown sugar and butter and sometimes walnuts), clear soup with Japanese clams and sushi (if you get to the grocery store early, you can buy whole, uncut sushi rolls for much cheaper than the pre-cut ones).

For the soup, I basically used the recipe by Setsuko Yoshizuka at About.com, except I used green onion for the "garnish" and added some grated myoga. Mmmm! I spilled a little too much sake in it, but it was still pretty good.

For those wondering what myoga is, it's this stuff to the left, here. It's the sort of flower bud/sprout thing. Not the clams. It's sometimes called myoga ginger or Japanese wild ginger. I don't know if it's actually related to ginger or not. For the soup, I grated it really fine and let it simmer in the broth.

Supposedly, much of the myoga plant is toxic, but this part is considered safe. Still, I'm told that telling someone that they eat too much myoga in Japan is like asking someone if they ate paint chips as a child in the USA. We're going to play it safe and only eat a little bit...rarely.

We found a casserole dish. I don't really know why it's here. It doesn't fit in our microwave. We don't have an oven. I can't wait until I know how to get to the thrift store (or "recycle shop", as they call them here).

Persimmony Rice Pudding

2009-10-30T20:31:00.013+09:00

It worked! I made some persimmon and rice pudding, adapted from some stove-top rice pudding recipe I discovered somewhere on the vast internet sea. This means it's time for another recipe post!

Persimmony Rice Pudding
(Adapted from some recipe somewhere else
that had no persimmons in it at all)

Ingredients:

3/4 cup White Rice, uncooked (If you can get your hands on it, I highly suggest mochi rice, as it's texture lends itself best to rice pudding)
1 1/2 cup Water
2-3 ripe Persimmons (Note that if the persimmon is somewhat dark inside and has a lot of grainy-looking dark spots, this is actually a good thing. This is actually an indicator that it is ripe.) *Edit: After a second go at this, I would say that three normal-sized persimmons or four small-sized persimmons are good, plus an extra persimmon for garnish.
2 cups of milk (You will use 1 1/2 cup and 1/2 cup separately)
1/3 cup Granulated sugar
1/4 tsp Salt
1 Egg, beaten
1 Tbsp Butter (I'm tempted to say that butter is optional, but I haven't tried it without, so I can't say for certain)

Optional Ingredients (I do not recommending using these all together, they are each their own variation):

1/2 tsp Vanilla (optional)
1/2 tsp Ginger root (optional)
Nutmeg
1/4-1/3 cup Raisins

Directions:

Peel, deseed and cut one or two persimmons into small cubes. Whether you use one or two depends on how strong you want the flavor to be. Either way should taste good.
Mash the persimmon. You may use whichever method to do this you prefer. I use a mortar and pestil, but I realize that this is a long and tedious process that many people do not have the time or patience for. That, and many people don't own a mortar and pestil. You can also use a food processor or a blender. Whatever makes it look like orange slime works. *Optional step: If you are adding ginger to this recipe and you are using fresh ginger root, add it here and get it all properly mashed up along with the persimmon.
In a pot or saucepan that you think can handle 4 or more cups of this stuff, bring the water to a boil. Add the rice and mashed persimmon. Reduce the heat and allow it all to simmer for 20 minutes.
Stir up the rice mixture. Add 1 1/2 cups of milk, salt and sugar. Stir and cook over medium heat until it is thick and creamy. This may take another 20 minutes, it may not. It all depends on how cooperative your mixture feels. *Optional step: If using raisins, add them here. I abhor cooked raisins, so I will never be using this step. But some people like them, so this step is for those people. If you are using powdered ginger, add that here as well.
Slowly stir in the leftover 1/2 cup of milk and the beaten egg. This is more important for the egg than for the milk, as the egg will start cooking immediately and you want to get it as evenly mixed into the pudding as possible. Also, you may wish to turn down the heat a little at this point, so as to keep the pudding from popping out at you.
Continue cooking for another two minutes while you STIR CONTINUOUSLY. Don't stop. Really.
Remove from heat and stir in the butter. *Optional step: If you are using vanilla, now is the time to add it.
Dish the pudding up. Peel, seed and cut up your second (or third) persimmon into small pieces (strips, cubes, little hearts...you choose!) and place them on top as garnish or put them in a bowl for people to add as much or as little as they want to their own pudding. Heck, do both! *Optional step: If you are using nutmeg, sprinkle it sparingly over the top of each serving before adding the persimmon garnish.

That's it! This recipe should feed at least five people. Unless you eat a whole, freaking lot. In which case, shame on you! You should have saved some for the others!

Dinner itself was a mishap (a delicious mishap, but a mishap nonetheless), but that was due to my being distracted by the pudding when I should have taken some noodles off the burner, resulting in some very mushy yakisoba. Mmmm...mushy yakisoba.....

Autumn Fruits in Yosano

2009-10-29T22:00:00.006+09:00

We've been eating a lot of new things, here and there, in addition to the plethora of things we've eaten in past trips to Japan and foods available in the US. Today, I'm going to tell you about some of the fruits we have here.

To the right are two fruits we have in the house right now. The one on the left should be easy to recognize. It's an apple. For the most part, apples are the same in Japan as they are in much of the rest of the world. This particular type of apple is usually used by the Japanese around festival time to make candied apples. The fruit on the right is a persimmon. There are several different kinds of persimmon, some of which need to be overripe before they are edible. Luckily for us, the Japanese tend to put things in stores when they are exactly ripe (except for tomatoes, which are usually sold frustratingly under-ripe).

Oh! I should put something in there so you can tell the sizes of these fruits. How's that? I bought a persimmon a few weeks back, just as they were getting in season. I ended up mashing it to a pulp and throwing it into a beef roast. It was pretty good! We got two more persimmons from one of Nat's coworkers (and our neighbor), so we just ate those plain. Then she gave us three more, along with some mandarin oranges. We ate all of the mandarins and I have plans for our current persimmons. Secret plans! If they work, I shall reveal all at a later date.

For those curious about the flavor of a persimmon, it's very sweet. When properly over-ripe, it's almost too sweet and can be used as a substitute for sugar in many recipes. When not eating the raw fruit, the Japanese sometimes dry it and eat it as a candy or as a sugar substitute. When under-ripe, it can be rather sour, due to its high tannin content. While some foods are lauded for the health benefits of their tannin content, persimmons have a bit too much and are best avoided until they ripen up quite a bit. After all, tannic acid is named because it was used in leather tanning. I think you might imagine what an immoderate amount might do to your stomach. If you've ever considered eating acorns, be aware that these are also reported to have a high tannin content and must go through a process to leech the tannins before they are good to eat. One or two probably won't hurt you, though (I used to eat an occasional acorn on the school playground as a child).

Back to the subject of Nat's coworkers giving us fruit, another coworker gave us some Japanese pears around the beginning of the month. Apparently, he had a surplus of FREAKING HUGE and insanely delicious Japanese pears. If we get more, I will smear a slice all over my computer screen in hopes that you guys will get a chance to taste them. Just thinking of people half a world away licking their computer screens wants me to try it right now.

Yes, I know it doesn't work that way, but a wild imagination has to get some use every now and again.

I guess that last picture might not really help you understand the actual size of the persimmon. The spoons in our house don't really come in sizes most of us from the States are used to.

Perhaps, I meant that you might want a better understanding of the size of the apple. That's right. We have miniature apples. Japan has normal-sized apples, too. These were just in the store for the festival season. As I mentioned above, these apples are typically candied (like American candied apples, only smaller...and sometimes different colored candy, like blue). I originally thought they were plums when I saw them at the grocery store. The price looked good, so I picked them up and noticed that they were, in fact, not plums. The novelty was too exciting to pass up, so we've been eating miniature apples for the past week. After some research, I discovered that Japan was not the only country with miniature apples. France also has a cultivar or two. So do some other countries, but I never got around to finishing my research. They taste like your average apple (as in, not any of those specific apples, like Red Delicious, Granny Smith or Gala; they just taste like "apple"). They're not incredibly filling, but a good snack for tiding one over until mealtime. Likely, they're going to be out of stores soon, if they aren't already. The demand for them in Japan appears to be extremely seasonal.

Spiders!

2009-10-28T00:10:00.010+09:00

Nat pretty much said most of what I'd say about our day for the most recent kimono festival. It was all pretty fun. Nat didn't get a chance to record some of the more amazing fireworks, though if you watch her videos closely, you might catch a glimpse of one of the kitty-face fireworks or one that looks suspiciously like a pair of glasses. We also had smiley-face fireworks, bunny-face fireworks and a few that looked like sunflowers, the Yosano town flower. It was pretty amazing!

For the past few weeks, Nat's been trying to get a good picture of the spiders around here. We finally got a one. While I was hanging clothes out to dry, I snapped a couple photos of one that's been hanging around on our balcony. To best see the image, you should probably click on it for a better view. That way, you can see all of her stripes and colors! This spider has been back there for almost as long as we've been living here. Her web survived the typhoon we had (which is pretty amazing!). She's about as large, if not larger, than the size of the palm of my hand, if you count the legs. In this picture, she is busy trying to remove one of Nat or my stray hairs. It must have drifted over from the clothesline.

She is a jorō-gumo, also called a golden orb-web spider or nephila clavata (for those who like to know all those specifics). Like many of the prominent animals in Japan, there is folklore associated with them. Supposedly, these spiders can turn into beautiful women who attract and eat men. Those two bulbous bits in her web are her stinkbug victims. I imagine one of the two is the retarded stinkbug I rescued three times from unrelated fates. Also, in this and the next photo, you can see our neighbors' rooftops! They're made of stone or clay tiles. Some people even buy metal tiles, nowadays, but the traditional tiles are still used on the older houses.

You should probably click on this next picture for a better view as well. This picture gives you a slightly better idea of how big the spider and her web are (hint, her web extends past the sides and top of the picture). You can also see the remains of yet another stinkbug.

While I'm at it, here's a picture of the laundry. Amazingly, you can't even see the spider or her web from this distance (she's in that far corner there). I had often wondered how the bugs manage to fly into such obviously enormous webs. This somewhat convinces me that spiders aren't just preying on stupidity.

Now we just need to snap a photo of some suzumebachi (giant hornets), an oniyanma (giant dragonfly) and one of the various giant cicadas and we'll have a giant Japanese bug collection started! I guess there are also the stag beetles, dung beetles and such to take photos of, but we haven't seen them yet. Also, it's getting cold enough that we may not see more beetles for a while.

This next picture (the one to the left) is one of our nearby rooftops. Most of them have some sort of decoration like this in the top corners. This is a more simple and common one. Some of the more ornate buildings and castles have statuettes of fish on the corners to ward away fires.

That's it for now. No new and exciting recipes to share. We shouldn't have any more festivals to worry about for at least another month or so.

The Silk Road Kimono Festival and Fireworks

2009-10-25T21:24:00.029+09:00

Hi everybody!

Well, this has been a fun week. The beginning of the week was quiet, because the kids were all home with swine flu. Everyone but the third graders, anyway.

I put up a huge construction paper Jack and Sally from Nightmare Before Christmas in the English room. I haven't taken a picture of it yet, but I will, and when I do I shall post it. Thursday I went to Ishikawa elementary, and Friday I went to Iwataki elementary. (And had school lunch again. Whee!)

Now, these two elementary schools are soooo different. Ishikawa is very small, and only has one class per grade. The children are polite and sweet, and always help me to understand them. They're very well-behaved, but still very vivacious kids. Iwataki elementary is very BIG, there are three classes per grade. The kids are rowdy and raucous. The three boys who always scream after me when I'm on my bike going home are in this school. The teachers are more strict with them, and every time I come out of class, the school secretary asks me very sternly if any of the students asked me any inappropriate questions. I have no idea, because I can hardly ever understand their Japanese. When I ask them to slow down or tell them I can't understand, they stare at me and then run away. But they're back two minutes later with another question. Both are adorable in their own way. XD

Friday night we went out for karaoke with some visitors from Yosano's sister city, Aberysthwyth, Wales. (I think. Welsh! OI.) The karaoke machine was old and kept screeching. I thought I sounded awful (I sang "Blackbird" by the Beatles and "LoveFool" by the Cardigans and I don't remember what else) but Alex said I sounded great...husband filter? :3

Saturday was a day to shop. Toshiko came by and took us to K-Stanky where we FINALLY got our new printer/scanner and I bought a new camera! It's so cute! I love it! And it was on super sale. So you'll be seeing a lot more pictures from here on out since this new one is a ton more portable (and comes with a rechargeable lithium battery pack instead of having to change out AA's all the time. <3). style="font-style: italic;">Chirimen Kaido Kimono Matsuri, or the Silk Road Kimono Festival. Yosano is famous for its special type of crepe silk, so this was all about that. Yay!

PICTURE TIME LULZ

First, we went to a rich silk merchant's house from the 1800s that had been kept in very good condition. Yay for really old-style Japanese houses!

This is one of the kimonos worn by one of the owners of the house. His surname was "Tsuru" which is Japanese for "Crane." The little white circles on the back and sleeves have cranes in them. Yay for cranes!

This room had a lot of really neat decorative screens and stuff. But I won't bore you with every single picture I took.

There's a bit of the deer-decorated shoji sliding door in this picture, and the entrance to the house. And some tatami mats. Yay tatami mats!

Here's the other side of the deer screen. Yay for deer? Again? There were also some beautifully decorated closet doors. Everything is painted very ornately in this house.

Here is the garden that is bordered by the guest rooms. This little garden is specifically for guests to use. There's a bigger one in the middle of the house (the house is shaped like a two-story square ring) but this one was so cool I just had to take a picture. I love Japanese lanterns and stuff.

This is all of us sitting in the room upstairs together! We are, in order from left, (I don't know), Myeko, Aberysthwyth person, Alex, me, Kimiko, and (I don't know). Ambiguity is fun!

Look! Look! The sliding doors had baby chick handles! HOW ADORABLE IS THAT!? I don't have much to say but I love it.

Okay. There were at least two bathrooms in this house. These two pictures are both of Japanese baths. The one on the left is embedded in the ground. It's kind of small around, but it's very deep. My dad, who's pretty tall, would probably be able to sit in it and have water coming up to his chin.

The second is another type (probably older) of bath style - an outer bath. Notice the little stool to help you get in it, and the cover that keeps the water warm so multiple people can use it in succession. Before you get grossed out, remember - the Japanese don't wash in the bath. They wash thoroughly BEFORE getting in the bath, because they keep in mind that other people will want to use it after them. The bath is just for relaxing.

Here is a bridal palanquin. In olden times (the Edo period) Japanese brides were delivered to their husbands' family's estate in these thingies on the rejoicing shoulders of their servants and/or families. It kind of looks like a crunch to me.

It brings a whole 'nother meaning to 'mail order bride', doesn't it?

Here's one half of a traditional old Japanese kitchen! Note the sake bottle, baskets, etc. That's actually a really old sink in the picture.

What you can't see, is that hanging above was a kind of water spout, and there was a pump off to the side and on the floor. There was a pulley system that, when you pressed the pump, it would pump water up and through the spout, and water would fall from above into the sink for use.

And here's the stove!

As you can see, it kind of looks like a brick oven. But the doors underneath are for burning wood, and weren't used as ovens at all. They were more just for heating the 'stovetop' above.

The circular parts on top with the wooden lids are for rice. They're actually pretty deep, and the stick-spoon thing on top is an old fashioned rice paddle.

The wooden box thing is a steamer, for fish and vegetables.

And that's Kimiko over in the corner. Hiiiiii, Kimiko!!

Once we got out of the house we got to (had to) take a picture with the Kimono Queens, who just happened to be on their way in. They're all wearing the long sleeved furisode that practically scream "I'm brightly colored, female, and single!"

My shirt is pooched weird. Ugh.

But Alex sure is cute!!

Then, we went to this place; another traditional Japanese residence that was attached to a Buddhist temple, for an informal tea ceremony. We drank matcha, which is sweet, creamy green tea that is whisked until frothy. I really like matcha. It's goooood.

Also, curiously, there were CD's hanging on long strings from the roof of the shrine. Alex and I curiously looked at them for a while before asking Myeko what they were for. She answered "To scare off the birds." Genius!!! At very least, birds that are more interested in shiny things would smack into those instead of the windows.

There were a handful of street performers around, and I wanted to get a picture of them. So of course, when I say anything (or even make the motion of raising my camera to my face) the camera is immediately taken from me and I am shoved into the picture that I had really rather been candid, with hapless Alex dragged behind. This type of entertainment is called Chin-don-ya and consists of people dancing playing and chanting in the streets. Apparently it was an old form of advertisement, actually. This troupe came from Osaka, it seems, to perform at the Kimono Festival. See the look on my face? WE ARE NOT AMUSED.

One of the big events of the kimono matsuri was the kimono parade. It's where, aptly, all the people who wore kimono parade slowly down the silk road, with the Chin-don-ya people blaring and dancing in front. Everyone behind them got to shuffle behind slowly in their geta, or traditional Japanese sandals (the ones that KILL). The Aberysthwyth (sp!? Whatevs) people also were put into kimono and haplessly walked by.

HERE IS A VIDEO. HA HA HA HA HA.

This was the beginning of the parade. You can hear the Chin-don-ya people playing, and at the beginning was a troupe of people dressed as if for a traditional old Japanese wedding, with all sorts of old costumes. The two ladies at the end are Toshiko and Kimiko. The conversation was basically Kimiko protesting that I was taking video and me playfully responding that she wasn't allowed to protest since they made me take the picture with the Chin-don-ya. XD

Hey look! Lots of people in kimono!

There were a lot of gorgeous kimono today, but it was a lot colder. A lot more people are seen here in their fall and winter kimono; not as many bright colors as usual. In fact, I think the only people I saw wearing bright colors were the UK kids....hrm.

This is Yuuko, posing alongside a giant, anthropomorphic grain of rice.

Yes, the grain of rice is wearing a kimono.

Oh Japan.

Hey look! Some classic cars!

They had these on display too. I'm not really sure why. But hey guys, isn't this cool! Old cars! ...or something.

These two are Toshiko and Junko, who were in the video. This is probably the best picture of Toshiko I could have asked for. She's definitely an Enneagram type 7. Anyway, Toshiko and Kimiko are both in our eikaiwa group, along with Junko from before. Toshiko is boisterous and fun. Her English is fantastic, and she loves to tease me about everything. Kimiko is much more gentle-natured and very sweet, but she's a little forgetful, frequently late, and has a 'second stomach' for sweets. :) They and the rest of the group take really good care of us.

After we finished at the matsuri, we went home for a little while and then went back out to watch the fireworks over the bay. We saw a lot of my students there and met a couple of the students from Wales, as well. I took two videos of the fireworks, but I'll only subject you to one of them; the first one is easy to find on Youtube (same title, just part 1 instead of 2. :3)

Kimono-matsuri Part II (We Have Photos!)

2009-10-21T09:42:00.008+09:00

So, Nat has told you about most of what happened at the kimono festival. I get to show you the photos!

This first picture is probably the last one that got taken. It's right outside the house of the family who lent Nat her kimono and helped us put them both on. Everyone remarked on how well Nat's purse from Calabash matched her obi (kimono belt). The men's kimono I'm wearing is technically too small for me (in all dimensions), but was considered good enough. If I were wearing one more properly sized, the collar would have closed a little higher up. I should have also worn a different style of undershirt as that really shouldn't be visible. Also, sitting became awkward. Normally, a kimono shouldn't open in the front just because you sit down. Since mine was too small, I usually ended up holding the fish on my lap to keep the folds in place.

Next is our lunch. Technically, this was most of Nat's lunch (3-11) and part of Maryann's lunch (1 and 2), but Nat didn't get her full lunch in the photo, so this will suffice. I outlined the lunch so you can see how many dishes are actually involved.

1. Mochi covered in red bean paste - This is dessert. We ended up having more for tea later.
2. Tempura fried shrimp and vegetables
3. Chilled soba noodles in...a particular broth intended solely for cold noodles.
4. Dipping sauce for the tempura
5. Sashimi (raw fish). There was some sort of fish that Nat had already consumed by the time she took this, squid and a huge prawn with the head and tail still attached, but the middle was bare meat. Everyone took off the head.
6. Pickles (not pickled cucumbers)
7. A spicy octopus and cucumber salad
8. Soy sauce
9. RICE
10. Green tea
11. Clear soup (with a fish sausage ball and kelp)

A lot of people ended up not finishing their meal for one reason or another. Most people were too full.

After lunch, we ran around and won some prizes. As Nat mentioned, I noticed a tour guide slowly walking up to us on our right. I thought she looked like she was trying to offer to show us around. Since we didn't really need showing around (particularly since Ken, Yuko and Taichi were with us), I looked away and noticed a photographer trying to snap a picture of us from the left. I quickly went back to looking candid. After I looked back, both the photographer and the tour guide were scurrying away. I was amused.

Somewhere during the running around for prizes, we met up with the rest of our group and caught a ferry that did a quick trip through the bay and back. Since this festival requires you to be in a kimono to participate, only people wearing a kimono could ride (yes, even the baby). It was really nice. It's probably hard to tell in this picture, but the obi of the woman second from the left (in the gray kimono) has a playing card pattern on it. It was really fun seeing it. Most kimono and obi have more traditional motifs (though a group of ladies won the award for best obi; their obi were tied and pinned to look like various flowers in the back). While we were on the ferry, a group of seagulls started following us. One even landed on one of the masts. A grandmother started rooting around her grandson's bag for a biscuit to offer the seagulls. Meanwhile, a hawk decided that it wanted a seagull lunch, so it started diving through the flock. The seagulls, never deterred from the prospect of a meal for themselves, continued following the ferry in a more elusive pattern. The grandmother finally found a biscuit and held it high above her head for the seagulls (who were too busy evading the hawk to notice). In the end, the hawk never caught a seagull, the seagulls never got any food, the grandmother resigned to feeding the biscuit to her infant grandson and there were a whole bunch of jellyfish floating in the channel. It was all pretty impressive while it lasted.

This is a group picture. It is not even close to including everyone. The mother and father of the house are not in the photo (as well as some random boy I noticed, peripherally, who was watching TV and did not partake in the festival). Also, we had separated from Ken, Yuko, Taichi and Maryann long before this picture was taken. I don't even know everyone's names. The people I do know are Junko-san (far left; a member of our English conversation group and our driver for the day) and Ai-chan (second from the right in bright red). This is also a perfect example to tell you about different types of kimono. At least ones worn during this time of year. You might notice that Ai-chan is the only one wearing a kimono with long, draping sleeves. This type of kimono is only worn by unmarried women (everyone else in the picture is married, in elementary school, male or a dog). They are typically made with brighter colors and bolder patterns, though a delicate color or pattern is not uncommon. The long sleeves are believed to be more suitable for attracting a male suitor. There are traditional poems and plays saying as much. The bright kimono worn by Ai-chan's cousin (second from the left) is a children's kimono. These kimono have the tendency to have more eye-bleedingly bright colors and more outlandish themes (some young boys' kimono have cowboys on chartreuse), though neither are necessary. Men's formal kimono (like the one I'm wearing), tend to have the most sedate patterns and colors tend to be dark or masculine. Khaki, black, navy, gray, brown and olive green are typical colors for men's kimono. Also, I'm the only one wearing the geta (Japanese sandals) that are elevated with a couple thick strips of wood. This isn't really a men/women thing. These were just the ones available I thought would best fit my feet. But it's also a good way to show you some different kinds of geta. The tabi (toe socks) I'm wearing are technically too small for me as well, but they actually got on my foot. The more traditional tabi I was originally offered...I would have had to cut off my toes to fit into.

Junko-san and Nat.

All in all, it was a lovely day. I guess there was rain either last year or the year before (or both). We were home by 5:00, which somewhat surprised me. The family who helped us put on our kimono live right next to the bay where I walk, sometimes. I had even said hello to the mother and the grandmother on one occasion. It was really fun.

This is a picture of our funeral home neighbors after a storm (perhaps the typhoon, but I don't think it was). There was a brilliant rainbow that Nat caught just as she was getting home from work.

Heresy.

2009-10-21T08:58:00.001+09:00

Crap.

My throat hurts. I have a headache.

HIT RESET!!!!

困るね…

2009-10-19T14:10:00.001+09:00

The above says "Komaru ne..." which means "That's worriesome." It's used generally when there's a feeling of impending doom; a little different than being worried properly.

Doom cloud over the school right now.

We sent the first graders home today for swine flu.

Now all that's left are the third graders.

DOOM...DOOM...DOOM...Go home now.

Kimono Festival

2009-10-18T17:10:00.003+09:00

Today was the Kimono Festival in Miyazu, right on the Amanohashidate. I took a few pictures so I'll put them up in a later post. It was a lot of fun!

First Junko (from the English Conversation Group - pronounced June-ko) picked us up. She's super sweet. She took us to her friend's house where a bunch of people were putting on kimono. This was a really huge house....the daughter of the house had been Kimono Princess last year, and like...I think they collected them or ran a kimono shop or something, because they had a ton of kimonos. The mother was about the same general size as me, so I wore a pretty black kimono with white butterflies on it, and a pretty dusky purple obi (the wide belt) with a silver and violet tie on it. They put up my hair with these cute pink flower pins and I wore Japanese toe socks. I'm sure I was cuter than I felt.

Japanese sandals are MURDER OH GOD. As I type this post, my feet are crying. Literally crying. I remember the first time I came to Japan I got a cute pair of shoes for my aunt, and now I'm realizing what an awful present that must have been because oh god.

Anyway. There were lots of really cute kimonos today. There was a girl with cute poofy pigtails in an orange and green kimono who I wanted to take a picture of, but she vanished before I could. Later, she won some contest. So I guess a lot of people shared my taste. We walked around a lot, and had lunch at this restaurant all together. (We met up with Yuuko and Taichi and Ken, three of our twentysomething Japanese friends who are all very good at English, at the festival, along with Maryanne, one of the other JETs in the area.) I took pictures of the lunch because it was epic Japanese.

Then when we got out, we were considering what to do next when Alex ('cause I didn't see) noticed a tour guide sneak up alongside us and a photographer sneak up along the other side of us, snap a quick picture of our group (mid-conversation) with the tour guide beside us, and the two of them slunk off. So we'll probably end up in some tour brochure. If I find it I'll scan it for laughs, but...seriously!?

Actually a lot of people were taking pictures of us. It was fun. "Foreigners in Kimono" will be the theme of next month's VOGUE-U.

We rode on a boat...

We got our pictures taken near the rotating bridge...

We drank complimentary green tea and ate mochi (pounded rice cakes - sticky and chewy - with sweet red bean paste on top. It's supposed to make you wise. Oo) and talked with some other JETs we met there.

Uhmmmm....

Oh! There were lotteries and stuff. Last year Holly (the JET who was here before me) won the huge TV we have now. I won a cute little wrap made of local silk for my lunchbox.

Alex won a big honkin' fish.

It was pretty epic. We ended up giving the fish away to Junko, but he carried it all around the festival with him. What a guy!

There was a lottery at the end, too, and I won a soy sauce set, and Alex won some soba noodles, so that'll be fun.

They made me and Alex enter the "couples" kimono contest. I'm glad we didn't win.

I'm tired.

Short Post

2009-10-16T16:18:00.002+09:00

The second graders were all sent home for the second half of the day today. We've got a total of five kids who've come down with the swine flu. All the teachers are really paranoid now, because it's come out that it can cause aneurysm, especially in children under 15. Soooooo....yeeeeaaaah...

Alex's farfalle (below) was AWESOME. There was lots so I took the leftovers to school for lunch and ate them smugly while the other teachers drooled. I'm so lucky. <3

I went to elementary school by myself. There's a huge hill that I challenged myself to bike all the way up. It doesn't really LOOK that steep, but it's loooooooong. And winding. I made it about half way and DIED. I was walking the rest of the way up heaving. Something to work up to, I guess.

Elementary school kids really make me feel like I don't know any Japanese. Plus, I forgot my self-intro materials, and my dictionary, AND my school slippers, so I just felt like an all around loser.

But one of the kids ran up to me and we had a conversation that went like this -

Little boy: Natalie-sensei?
Me: Hm?
Little boy: DYNAMITE!!!!

Creamy Pesto Farfalle with Chicken and Broccoli

2009-10-16T11:49:00.004+09:00

So, I finally made dinner with my purchases at the import store. I call it creamy pesto farfalle with chicken and broccoli, but the cream sauce and the pesto sauce weren't mixed at all (though you could probably mix them, if you wanted). I messed up a little, but it still turned out alright.

Creamy Pesto Farfalle with Chicken and Broccoli

Ingredients:

Chicken breasts (de-fatted, de-skinned, about as many as you would have people to serve, though larger breasts or smaller eaters may allow for changes)
Farfalle pasta (enough for however many people you're feeding; substitute other pastas as you feel the inspiration)
Pesto
Broccoli (one small head feeds two people...heads in America are rarely "small"; cut into bite-size florets)
Flour
Salt
Black Pepper
Thyme (ground or crushed)
Olive Oil (again, I don't like Extra Virgin since I find it bitter, but you might enjoy it)
1/2 Onion, diced
3 Cloves Garlic, minced (not crushed)
Lemon juice
Shredded parmesan

Cream Sauce:

Butter (I forget exactly how much, maybe half a stick? Salted butter is probably best, but I have no idea what kind I used and it worked fine.)
Flour
Milk
1 Beef or chicken Boullion cube (optional, I didn't use it this time...you'll also need some celery salt if you do this....and, very important, unsalted butter)

Directions:

Tenderize the chicken. If a piece looks like it might be too thick to pan fry, keep a knife, plate and fork handy while you're cooking so that you can cut it into slices near the end.
Start cooking the farfalle according to directions. Add a little olive oil to the water in order to keep the pasta from sticking to the pot while you are busy with the chicken.
Mix flour, salt, thyme and pepper together in a wide dish. Place the chicken breasts in the dish and flop them around until they are well coated with the flour.
Put some olive oil into a frying pan (keep the bottle handy, you may need to add more as the flour will absorb some), heat the pan and add the chicken, onions and garlic. (This is one place I messed up. I sauteed the onions and garlic first, then added the chicken. I ended up burning the onions. Hopefully adding them at this point won't result in failure. )
Turn the chicken fairly often, making sure it doesn't get much more than a golden brown. Somewhere in the middle of cooking, add about a capfull (or half a capfull) of lemon juice over each chicken breast. Add more oil as necessary, since it will absorb into the four and onions. Once the chicken is looking done, feel free to slice open a thicker part of the chicken and check if it is done. If not, slice the chicken appropriately and return to the pan just long enough to finish it up.
At this point, the pasta should be done, so go ahead and drain that.
Refill the pot with just a little bit of water, add the broccoli, cover and place over low heat. Once the broccoli is a bright green, wait half a minute and take it off the heat and drain.
Place the pasta into bowls or onto plates (bowls is probably better, if you have pasta bowls), add the broccoli.
In a sauce pan/pot melt the butter. Once melted, add flour and stir. Once well mixed, add milk (and bouillon cube) and stir until thickened. If it's too thick, add more milk. Remember how much pasta this has to spread amongst. If it looks like you don't have enough, try adding more flour and milk (I've never had to do this, so I don't know if it works. Tell me how it turns out, if you try it!).
Once the sauce is ready, you may either mix in the pesto or add both to the pasta separately.
Slice the chicken into short strips and place on top of the pasta.
If you didn't burn the onions and garlic too badly, drain them and pat them with a paper towel. Add them to the pasta. (Also, please tell me if the alterations in this step worked!)
Add shredded parmesan
Yay!

So, that's that. Even with blackened onion bits, it was delicious.

"I'm NOT HAVING a GOOD DAY!" ;_;

2009-10-13T13:31:00.003+09:00

I'm trying to get myself to post more. In addition to having readers, I know that keeping this blog is the best chance I have of remembering this time. I mean, I have a hard enough time remembering what happened this morning, let alone a year ago.

Ummmmm...so Friday. Friday was Mime Time. I was so freaked out. Japanese people dancing and bouncing around in harlequin outfits. ugghghhghhh.

It was fairly entertaining though. They CAME INTO THE AUDIENCE, however, which caused me and Ms. Matsuda to cling to each other in terror. The whole time they were looking for people to sink their fangs into and drag onto stage to submit to their horrible whims we were murmuring "Kuruna, kuruna, kuruna, kuruna..."which translates to "Don't come here, don't come here" etc. They took Tatesawa-sensei, the popular second grade teacher who lives in the apartment below mine. He's a really nice guy. I felt bad for him, but as soon as they chose him (He was sitting right next to Ms. Matsuda) we looked at each other and said "Sei-fu." (safe.)

They effectively humilated them in front of their peers before sending them back into the crowds, thoroughly humbled by their brief stint in the world of mimery; the memory of the colorful harlequin hats that were forced upon them likely to be repressed in the bowels of subconscious memory for decades and influence how they treat their children.

But I got invited on the class trip to Kyoto!

This weekend I was like "I'm going to make the BEST LUNCH EVAR to bring to Kyoto." so I got to work. I tried to make my mom's rice balls with cheese, but I had no idea what I was doing, so what I ended up making was closer to...cheese...onigiri...which was still pretty good, but not my intention.

The meatballs I made alongside them, however, were FAN-FLIPPING-TASTIC. I'm so proud of myself. I used...

- 'bout a half cup/cup of panko (breadcrumbs)
- around a pound or so of hamburger
- around three tablespoons of worcester sauce (however the heck it's spelled.)
- a healthy couple tablespoons of leftover skordalia (Though you could probably just sub in about like five cloves of garlic, heeheehee. <3)
- TABASCO SAUCE. What probably amounted to two tablespoons of tabasco sauce. I'm drooling just thinking about it.

That's right keeds. Worcester, garlic, and tabasco.

Rolled 'em up and pan-fried them in a little bit of vegetable oil and they were awesome.

So I packed them all in a lunch for today.

Woke up really early this morning ready to go, put on my cute clothes, got everything ready and --

nobody was here. I fidgeted around. The school janitor showed up and was like, "Have you been waiting here for a while?"

Turns out the school trip is actually on Wednesday, not Tuesday. I wrote Wednesday on my schedule and everything. I'm just dumb.

I went home, and came back to school about forty five minutes later, changed and with like zero will to teach. I looked at my schedule for the day and it looked as though I only had three classes, so I was like, "Oh, well, at least all my classes are in the afternoon; I can wake up in the morning."

Then two of the teachers came up to me, about ten minutes apart, and were like, "First period is with me. :D" "Can you help me in second period?"

GRUMBLE.

When my brother used to get yelled at or in trouble when he was little, his big sparkly eyes would tear up and he'd say, with his little cute baby speech, "I'm NOT having a GOOD DAY." and go stomp off to pout. We used to laugh, but holy crap did he know what he was talking about.

Also on Friday I had elementary school with the three little kids I always see on the way home from middle school. It was fun. I got to eat school lunch with them. There was pumpkin soup.

KappaSushi!

2009-10-11T12:07:00.003+09:00

Last night, Toshiko offered to take us to the import store. We went and found things...like peanut butter, salsa and pesto! Most of the store was normal Japanese groceries with a few imported or hard-to-find items sprinkled about the store. After we were done there, we went to a roller sushi restaurant.

A roller sushi (also called conveyor belt sushi) restaurants have all of their tables arranged around a conveyor belt which carries plates of sushi and other food items past each table. If you wish to eat something going by, you just grab it. The plates are color coded and an employee counts them all up at the end and puts them on your bill. You can also order sushi to be sent to your table. At the particular restaurant we went to (Kappa-sushi), a little train delivers the food you ordered from the kitchen. There is also a hot water dispenser, stacks of cups and containers of tea and condiments at every table, so you never need waiting staff until it's time to leave! It wasn't my first time to a roller sushi restaurant, but it was still fun and amazing. Also delicious. The three of us ate ¥2257 (roughly equivalent to $22.57) worth of sushi. In America, that same sushi would likely have totaled at least $80. Delicious!

Typhoooooooooooon

2009-10-08T08:45:00.002+09:00

There's a typhoon! There's no school today!

...for the students.

The teachers all still have to come to school. So I ran through the rain and strong winds until I got to school. It wasn't really so bad though; not as bad as Michigan severe thunderstorms, so it was just kind of fun. But everyone was like, "WOW YOU WALKED TO WORK ARE YOU OKAY D:" when I got back so that made me giggle.

I looked up the cockroach and found out that it was a male Oriental Cockroach. Wiki it if you wanna; I don't feel like digging up the link. I'm really relieved it wasn't female. Then I'd have the creepy crawlies at night and be on the search for (yech) eggs.

Apparently on Friday there is a professional mime coming to the school to perform for the students.

A clown is my friend.

A clown is my friend.

A clown will not bite me and throw me in the basement.

A clown will not bite me and throw me in the basement.

(props for whoever catches the reference. XD )

Cultural Cockroach

2009-10-07T08:40:00.005+09:00

Yep, as Alex said, we had the culture festival this weekend. :) It was great! All the kids really did their best.

I had to stand up and do a speech in front of the entire school and the parents that were there after the English Recitation. I was insanely nervous; my heart was pounding in my ears. But after the speech, a bunch of the teachers came up to me and told me how beautiful it was (wat? I just told them that the kids worked really hard, and their parents should be very proud of them. I guess that's high praise?) so after that I was a little disappointed that more of the parents weren't around. You know, once I made sure I didn't completely ruin it.

I was working at the brochure table for most of the rest of the day, handing out programs and greeting the parents. I got to meet a lot of the parents this way, and got a lot of blank stares. It was fun. XD

The Snow White play was actually a little operetta, which was adorable. My favorite second grader (one of them) played the lead, and it was so funny to see all the little kid singing vocal arpeggios and really, really hard parts!! All of them were girls. That was cute too.

During the intermission periods, Alex got to meet Kawaii girl and What's Up girl. Kawaii girl said, in a very demanding tone, "I love her." and grabbed my arm. Alex responded by grabbing my other arm. It was hilarious. At the end of the little confrontation, Satoko declared herself Alex's rival. The other students were in stitches.

The PTA chorus got a heaping helping of NAT PROJECTION POWER. I was in the Alto section, right next to the blasting men. The Altos actually got the melody for part of the song (a situation which, as a chronic Second Violin, I'm utterly unused to) and the music instructor kept pushing us to sing louder. I didn't want to drown anyone out but....I can only be told to be louder so many times before it's time to Unleash the Beast, so to speak.

So I projected. And suddenly the Altos were loud enough, as suddenly the rest of the Alto section raised their voices to blend in, and I pushed my voice to be audible over the men.

The men still won, but we were audible, so I was happy.

The other song we sang was this weird samba song that was sung very rigidly. With whistles. Tambourines. And a set of bongos. The Japanese crack me up.

So when we got home, we were both pretty zonked out. But over the weekend....

At least, I think it was on Sunday? Anyway.

I was lying on the floor playing computer when I felt SOMETHING CRAWL OVER MY LEG.

I froze. "Okay...something just crawled on my leg." I matter-of-factly stated to Alex. "Something significant." I caught my breath and calmly turned around.

There was a MONSTER COCKROACH about the size of my thumb. Granted, my thumb is kinda small, but still... DANG that thing was big. And fast. I sprang up and turned on the light and it ran and hid. I asked Alex to grab a container or something I could smack down on top of it, and we got this plastic measuring cup he never uses.

So I moved and shifted everything, warily kicked things, and made loud noises in the vicinity I thought it was, but it didn't show itself. I turned the light off and settled in to wait, staring at the room while I went about my business.

Finally, it came out! We sprang into action, and it ran back into hiding, but we saw where it went - behind the music shelf, which we kind of checked halfheartedly before, since it's really the only feasible hiding place in the room. Alex moved the shelf and out it came and I smacked the cup down on it.....

...catching it right in the midsection.

Its head and forelegs were outside the cup and its back legs, wings and tail were inside. I was like, "eew." But when I went to slide a piece of paper underneath it to throw it out, it started batting at the paper like a cat. It was still okay! I was shocked and fascinated. It was kicking its legs and batting its forelegs as if nothing was wrong, and having this huge cup crushing its midsection was just some inconvenience. This did pose the problem of what the heck we were going to do. If we moved the cup, it was a sure thing it would just scamper off again. But we needed to get it out of there. I wasn't about to just grind it into the tatami.

So we came up with the idea of the Gokiburi Guillotine. Gokiburi is Japanese for cockroach. We got a big magazine, opened it up, and slid it under the front half of the cockroach. Then we closed the magazine. And pressed on it. The results were crunchy and unfortunate, but the cockroach wasn't moving any more.

We checked the house really thoroughly and are certain it must have just snuck in through my bag or something, because there aren't many places for critters to hide in our place. So I'm not worried about an INFESTATION or anything. But still, that was nasty.

On a much more pleasant note, I got the best present ever yesterday. One of the students shyly gave me a piece of paper, on which she'd idly doodled a sketch of my face. It was flipping adorable. I have it magneted to our fridge. <3 Once we get a scanner at K-Stanky I'll put it up.

Oh god! What if the Japanese eat cockroaches? I DO NOT LIKE WHERE MY RECORD IS HEADING.

Culture Festival and a Salad

2009-10-06T12:26:00.003+09:00

So, this past Saturday was the middle school's culture festival. Nat will probably have her own things to say about it which will be more insightful than my own, but here's my experience.

First of all, it went really well. It was completely different from what I expected, but a lot like an elementary/middle school talent show in the US. Though it was all day long. I got there in the middle of the jazz band's thing, but they were one of the first groups to go, so I didn't feel too late. Besides, parents were coming and going the entire time. There were student arts and crafts on display all around the gymnasium (which is in a separate building from the rest of the school). The students did really well. The first half of the day was performances by the various performance clubs (the jazz band, a choral group, etc). There was an all-girls musical/operetta version of Snow White (the kids need to learn to project their voices, but they still sounded good) and the students who did best with the English recitations got to (had to) recite on stage. Out of all of this, there were only two boys on stage. Both of them were from the first year English recitation. I was a bit surprised at how few parents came to support their children.

Lunchtime came and I walked home, ate some food and wandered along the seaside until it was time for the second half to begin. When I walked in, I was almost floored at the amount of parents that arrived for the second half. The seats were mostly full with several parents opting to stand in hopes they may better see their child/children perform. My faith in Japanese parenting was restored. The first performance was the PTA chorus (which Nat is in). They did really well, even if the men drowned out the women when the women were supposed to be singing an important line and the men were just singing "lalala" ("rarara"). The students demanded an encore. The PTA chorus obliged. Then, each class was called up to sing a song. Their performance would be judged and winners determined later. The first-year students were noncommittal, especially the boys. Second year were better and third year really put their hearts into it. I was somewhat surprised. Some speeches were made and the judgment of the class songs was announced. The third-year student announcing the program was in tears because her class lost. The student giving a speech immediately following the announcement was also in tears, as she was also a third-year and her class also lost. There was also a song by the entire student body, but they didn't fit on stage. They ended up having to make a half-circle that spanned half of the gym.

The day ended with a speech from one of the music teachers and I went grocery shopping before walking home.

The next two days were uneventful and relaxing.

Today, I went grocery shopping again. Usually, when I'm at the grocery store, I buy a lunch so I don't have to worry about cooking for myself and only have to cook dinner. I saw some salads and I thought they looked good, so I bought one. I'm eating it now and have discovered that it is a spaghetti salad. I know that when most Americans hear "spaghetti salad", they think of some sort of pasta salad, like one might make for a picnic or a potluck. No. Don't think that. That is not what this is. This spaghetti salad is spaghetti noodles with a regular chef salad on top. Lettuce, cucumbers, tomatoes, sliced eggs...that sort of salad. It came with a soy-based dressing and is actually very good. But it offends my salad and spaghetti sensibilities.

I'll probably buy another one sometime.

Back to School!

2009-10-01T10:23:00.002+09:00

Well, I'm back. Which is good, 'cause I was going crazy.

The hilariously ironic thing is, I was feeling all bad about staying home...last night, Sekiguchi-sensei (one of the English teachers, and our neighbor. She's awesome and really sweet.) came by and said to me, in no certain terms, "I think you always working too hard! You need to rest! You need to take breaks!"

When I came in this morning, also, the vice principal stopped by my desk and said in Japanese what equated to "You always come in early, teach extra classes, and stay late. Don't overdo it...you need to take it easy!" so that kind of made me happy.

But yeah, the hilariously ironic thing, is, for real this time, when I came in today there was a survey on my desk that was sent from the Board of Education. Someone was doing a survey on culture shock among ALTs in Japan, and stress.

-Have you been getting headaches?
-Having trouble staying alert and awake?
-Paralyzed by nervousness?
-Having hot and cold spells?
-Scared and panicky for no good reason?
-Worrying unduly?
-Have trouble getting to sleep at a decent hour?
-Feel run down for seemingly no reason?

And I was like, "haha....oh."

So I'm now confident in saying that I'm not really SICK sick, I just must have had a stressplosion. And everyone seems to understand about it. In fact, people seemed amazed that I came back today.

I really need to like destress somehow. My friends have been saying so for years. It's just how to do it....

And now, for your amusement, the 3rd grade recitation for the culture festival. I've been helping the kids practice this for a couple months now, and they're going to recite the whole thing, in English, in front of the school on Saturday. As an American, it makes me kind of giggle nervously.

A Mother's Lullaby
A big old tree stands by a road near the city of Hiroshima. Through the years, it has seen many things. One summer night, the tree heard a lullaby. A mother was singing to her little girl under the tree. They looked happy, and the song sounded sweet. But the tree remembered something sad. "Yes, it was some sixty years ago. I heard a lullaby that night, too."

Me: Uh oh. This isn't gonna end well.

On the morning of that day, a big bomb fell on the city of Hiroshima. Many people lost their lives, and many others were injured. They had burns all over their bodies. I was very sad when I saw those people.
It was a very hot day. Some of the people fell down near me. I said to them, "Come and rest in my shade. You'll be all right soon."

Me: [glancing off to the side, scratching cheek nervously]

Night came. Some people were already dead. I heard a weak voice. It was a lullabye. A young girl was singing to a little boy.
"Mommy! Mommy!"the boy cried.
"Don't cry," the girl said. "Mommy is here." Then she began to sing again.
She was very weak, but she tried to be a mother to the poor little boy. She held him in her arms like a real mother.

Me: Oh man, and people say I'm drama...[shifts uncomfortably]

"Mommy," the boy was still crying.
"Be a good boy," said the girl. "You'll be all right." She held the boy more tightly and began to sing again.
After a while, the boy stopped crying and quietly died. But the little mother did not stop singing. It was a sad lullabye. The girl's voice became weaker and weaker.
Morning came, and the sun rose, but the girl never moved again.

Me: BAD END! BAD END! HIT RESET!

Not to make light of anything that happened as a result of the bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, but....aaaaaaawwwwkkkkwaaaaard.....

Home

2009-09-30T08:27:00.002+09:00

Well...after my last post, I felt absolutely awful yesterday and called my supervisor. She ordered me to stay home - there are a lot of swine flu scares around the area and the worst thing to do is to infect a bunch of students.

This morning I felt much better and got all dressed. I sat down to arrange some things in my bag before leaving, and then when I got up, I was intensely dizzy, and ran off to throw up.

I was worried, so I called the school again, and they told me that if I came in they'd send me home again. But I feel really awful. I mean, I don't feel good sick-wise, but I feel more sick about missing school.

I'd better get better by tomorrow or I'll be seriously panicking.

Yeth Now.

2009-09-28T15:24:00.003+09:00

I'm making myself post 'cause I don't do it enough. So I'll give my impression of the weekend, too. :)

Yes, the dinner party went great! There were more people than we thought there were going to be. The night was a mixture of English conversation, more English conversation, explaining English conversations in Japanese, fixing the ceiling in our tatami room, and eating a lot, a lot, a LOT of food.

Most of the people at the dinner were our English conversation group friends. Those that were not attended the conversation classes in Kaya, and we knew everyone who came. Curiously, one of the women was Catholic! I talked with her excitedly. I'm not Catholic, but Christians are rare enough in Japan that it's best to stick together.

As Alex said, Brett and Shawn are from New Zealand. We had this big long conversation about Chinese miners dying in New Zealand, having their bodies shipped to China, the ship crashing, the coffins floating back to New Zealand and being found by some Maori, and everything that ensued. But after we had this conversation, we glanced around and noticed that the Japanese attendees all had that blank goldfish look in their eyes. So I went about the daunting task of translating the entire conversation into Japanese. It was fun, but it was a challenge...

We ate a ton of food, like Alex said. There was...let me see if I can remember it all...

-Of course, the fried eggplant and skordalia. This went over really well. Everyone thought the skordalia was delicious, and Alex was so cute in his little headkerchief cooking-man style. <3 I noticed people putting the skordalia on EVERYTHING. It was cute.
-The spanakorizo. Alex made tiny little flowers out of cut slices of carrots and dressed each little bowl with one. People loved this. I don't think there was a single scrap left. I overheard some people mention that it tasted familiar. Maybe it was the shiso leaves?
-Homemade Spring Rolls. They were full of carrot, lettuce, and ...something else I can't recall but was a green vegetable, I promise. They were very refreshing.
-Fried Spring Rolls. These had meat and bamboo shoots in them, and had the traditional Japanese Mirin-Shoyu-Sake flavor to them. They kind of reminded me of tiny, savory crepes.
-Sushi. <3 Someone brought some sushi. It was delicious. Just a big variety platter of various nigirizushi (the long ones with the fish on top, not the rolls).
-Kara-age? I think? Small fried chicken pieces. These are really good, but I didn't eat much of it 'cause there was so much other stuff.
-Dango. Japanese breaded meatballs on a stick.
-Tiny grilled chicken wings.
-Shrimp-on-a-stick.
-Raw squid. I didn't eat any of this because I don't really like it, but that was fine - I was totally full by this point anyway.
-An absolutely delicious chiffon cake. It was flavored with tea.

So I think that's everything but we ate a whole heck of a lot so I might have missed something.

About the ceiling...our ceiling is made of about four or five really long panels that lay parallel, flush with one another, lengthwise across the ceiling. The one farthest from the window was sagging in the middle. We'd tried to fix it when we first moved in (since the panels are all notched and not set up with nails) but gave up.

Brett noticed this, and decided it needed to be fixed. So everything was moved around, couches were relocated, and about six people stood up on the couches to shift the board back into place. It was hilarious.

We didn't get to bed that night until like 1:30. I didn't want to do anything on Sunday, but I'm trying not to be a stupid stick-in-the-mud so I reluctantly agreed to do something the next day when pressed.

After the time was straightened out, we were off to Miyazu! We went to Mipple! Finally! I didn't buy anything since everyone seemed eager to rush along, but at the same time people were suprised I didn't buy anything. I was like, "whateva". :) But I noticed they had toaster ovens there. Once we get a long table to act as a counter I am SO getting one of those.

We ate lunch at a restaurant in Mipple (which by the way is a huge shopping complex. Well, huge for Japan) and I felt a little shy since I wasn't wearing socks....so I was walking barefoot in this restaurant. I'm gonna have to start keeping socks in my purse.

After we left Mipple we went walking on the beach. Shawn and Brett went swimming. I wished I could swim, but I satisfied myself with wading. Unfortunately the water got...a little...affectionate, and I soon was sporting "I'm-not-potty-trained-yet" fashion. I was soooooo embarassed! But you know...one of the pieces of advice I've heard from JET that's struck me the hardest is "don't be afraid to embarass yourself." This is really hard for me. But if I think about it, it makes it easier. So off we went to the cafe.

We had that great conversation Alex mentioned. The lady at the cafe/station was super nice. She actually made all the cakes herself. And I had this peach drink that was absolutely great, but I drank it way too quickly. I always drink way too quickly.

Then we went home. It was late afternoon. We were utterly exhausted.

And then I went to school this morning YAAAAAY! But I've been having hot and cold flashes, and some of the teachers noticed I was looking kinda iffy. I don't really feel good. But I'm not really sure what to do about that, as far as taking nenkyuu (paid leave) or something. But then again, the culture festival is this weekend; significantly featuring the English recitation contest, which I have been asked to help the students with every day.

So I'll hang in there and wait for Sunday. (Saturday's the Culture Fest, so I'm workin'.)

A Weekend with Kiwis

2009-09-28T14:18:00.003+09:00

I'll start with the dinner party.

It was really fun! Brett and Shawn (I actually never saw the spelling of either of their names, so it might be wrong) were very nice and talking to them was insightful. I was still frying some of the eggplant when everybody got here, so most of the women came over to watch me cook or ask if I needed help. Brett was the only one who managed to ask in time for me to give a job to. All of the food everyone brought was very delicious. We got to keep half of the leftovers (maybe more, but I know we sent some home with somebody...there was a lot of food) and I just finished them off for lunch today. Everybody helped clean up, which I was really grateful for. I think it's common practice at a potluck, though, since everybody wants to clean their own platters before they take them home. The skordalia and eggplant was a success, as was the spanakorizo and the lemonade. Everyone wanted to know what was in everything. I don't know if it was because they liked it and want to make it themselves or because they just found it to be such curious food.

As everyone was leaving, someone said "See you tomorrow!" I replied in kind, then turned to Nat and asked what was happening "tomorrow"? I had heard mention of going fishing and Nat had heard mention of going to Mipple (a sort-of shopping mall in the next town over), but we never really heard anything conclusive. It was late, so we went to bed. The next day, we woke up and saw that we were being picked up at 1:30. The doorbell rang at 11:30. We then realized that we misread the cellphone email. What we thought was a 1 was actually an 11. Whoops! At least we were awake and dressed (the dressed part was particularly important), but we had just eaten breakfast since we weren't expecting anyone for another two hours. So, off we went, not entirely sure what we were going to be doing or for how long. Most of the group from the dinner party was there, along with Shawn and Brett. We went out for lunch at Mipple, looked around an amateur art gallery, perused a few stores then went to the beach. We didn't expect to be going to the beach, so we didn't bring our swimsuits, but it seems the only people who were planning on it were Shawn and Brett, so we waded and wandered with Ken and Yuuko while the guys swam and the older ladies looked for a cafe. After the swimming was done, we went to the cafe which doubled as a tiny, local-access train station. There was a cat sitting in the middle of the last real parking space, so we got a little creative with our parking. All around the area were persimmon and pomegranate trees. Most of the persimmons were ripe, but the pomegranates were still ripening. There were some grapefruit and kiwi trees here and there, too, but most of those were down the street a ways. When we went in the cafe, there was a table of little old ladies drinking coffee that were moved to an outside table in order to make room for us (I am assuming the ladies volunteered, but it's more amusing to think that the cafe owner commandeered their table). Most everyone ordered cake and some beverage. I didn't order any cake, because I was still full from lunch, but everything was reported to be very delicious. Then, the cafe owner placed a whole cake on our table and told us it was on the house. So, over more cake, we discussed the differences between New Zealand and American English, New Zealand and Australian English, and that all the wildlife in Australia wants to kill people. (I should have mentioned earlier that both Shawn and Brett are from New Zealand. Shawn had Nat's job three or four people ago and Brett is currently an English tutor somewhere between Osaka and Kobe). After that, we dropped Shawn and Brett off at a larger train station and headed home. We flopped for the rest of the day. It's been a full weekend. I don't want to do anything today.

Dinner party minutes (supersummary)

2009-09-27T01:26:00.003+09:00

The dinner party went really well. It was really fun. One (or both) of us will talk about it more when it's not 1:30 AM and we aren't brain-oozingly tired.

Delaaaays

2009-09-26T12:28:00.003+09:00

So, yeah. As Nat mentioned, we're having the party tonight instead of last night. Miscommunication is fun. I'm still not sure how many people we have, so I hope we have enough dishes. Maybe I'll go check to see if the grocery store still has their sale on cheap dishes. It's in their section of rotating goods that are around for maybe a week before the store decides that something else would be fun to sell.

Also, as Nat mentioned, I made lemonade. I got done with most of the prep work a little (actually, a lot) early, so I ran to the store to buy some lemons (which were, oddly, not next to all the other fruits, but amongst the leafy vegetables). I made the lemonade in a 2-liter water bottle, since we don't have any pitchers (I doubt any would fit in our tiny refrigerators). I tasted some and put it away. A couple hours later, I tasted it again and realized that I had made it for me and not for someone with reasonable taste buds (aka "it was too sour"), so I added more sugar until it was a proper lemonade.

Yup.

Whoops!

2009-09-26T08:30:00.004+09:00

It's been a while since I posted. I had a nice five day vacation, in which I accomplished my goal of doing absolutely nothing. Thursday and Friday were back to school.

Thursday I went to elementary school and introduced myself to the teeny tiny first and second graders. They were absolutely adorable. I wanna teach Elementary School! They're so much more fun than these middle schoolers who are too cool to speak up in class. I'd much rather have the kids fighting over themselves to scream a response at the top of their lungs.

Friday.......

Okay so, the dinner party below? Both Alex and I heard Friday but it was actually Saturday. WHOOPS. @_@ Alex really worked hard to get the house sparkling clean and prepare everything. He even made homemade lemonade. (I had some, it was delicious!) And then at around 4:00 PM (about two hours before we expected people, give or take an hour) we get an email...

"[Name] is coming tomorrow. So we'll have the party on Saturday, also we're bringing some more people"

It had some more important stuff in it, but the point was...

Saturday?

Two hours before we were expecting the party?

It was one of those "Oh man" moments.

Anyone who knows me when it comes to things like plans, is that I absolutely lose it when plans get dropped or pop up really suddenly. I can be spontaneous sometimes, but other times (like after a long day) it's like "WHAT."

So I called the person about it just to clarify, just in case. See, what had happened in the first place, was that the AET (my position) from...like...three AETs ago was coming back to town. His religion stated that he couldn't drink, so we couldn't have a meeting for him at an izakaya, and the house he was staying at couldn't accommodate people on the night he was coming. So we agreed to have it at our apartment.

Now, both Alex and I could swear that it was Friday night. Both of us. But she was like, "Huh? ...No, it's Saturday....it was Saturday from the beginning!"

So of course (and this is Nat holding back full "I'm a moron" mode) I grit my teeth and was like, "Oh, okay! That's fine! Um, Alex prepared a lot of stuff but he didn't cook it yet, so we'll just cook it tomorrow..."

But OH MAN was I embarassed. Probably more than I should have been, but, hee.

That night I had PTA chorus practice anyway. So I walked there at night, sang, and then came home.

Now, I don't know if Alex has said anything about this, but we have loudspeakers all over our town that play little tunes at 7 AM, 5 PM, 7 PM, and 9 PM, and a siren at noon. It's because we're out in the country. I think they're signals for people working out in the rice fields.

But anyway, I was walking home from chorus when the 9 o'clock song went off. Now the song it plays...I think it's 'Moon River' from Breakfast at Tiffany's at 9. I'm not really sure what the rest of them are. But walking through a dark alley, and all of a sudden absolutely surrounded by this music...I was suddenly just overwhelmed with the feeling that...I'm here, in Japan, half a world away from almost everything I know. I'm in a tiny town full of friendly people who want to take every opportunity to spend time with me, and I'm not being an idiot and pushing them away for once, because it's part of my job. I've got a really fulfilling job with great perks, and I'm with my husband, the person I love most in the world.

So standing there in the alley, surrounded by corny music, I just started to cry.

I only cry for really stupid things! Seriously! Moon River played over an intercom system!?

Town Life-Long Study Center Intellectual Playing Mansion

2009-09-24T17:46:00.004+09:00

Today, I woke up, did some laundry and left. Last week, one of the local English speakers invited me to visit his workplace to look at some oil paintings in the gallery and I said I'd come. I figured I'd also stop by the grocery store on the way home so that I could pick up some necessities for tomorrow night's dinner.

I pass by the building every time I go to the ATM or the middle school (not as often for the middle school...Nat does that a lot, though), so I knew where it was. As I approached, however, I realized that the door I often pass looked slightly more like an employee entrance. I got cold feet and walked right by, deciding to see if I could take a walk to the shore. The route I took dead-ended into a field mere yards away from the seaside walkway. I didn't know if I was allowed to walk through the field, so I ended up turning around and going back to my original destination. The town life-long study center intellectual playing mansion (or "Town Culture Center", if you choose to be wise and not use Babelfish translations) loomed into view and there in the window was Johnny (he actually has a Japanese name, but he refuses to let me use it and so I completely forgot what it was). Johnny promptly encouraged me to enter the door which I had thought was an employee entrance. I was relieved. After I entered, he then informed me that it actually was an employee entrance and that the public entrance was on the other side of the building. I was embarrassed. We then proceeded to have an awkward introduction with the other three staff members in the office. Then, he and one of the staff members took me to see the aforementioned gallery (the other staff member apologetically informing me that she "English little".

The gallery was really nice. The current exhibition is oil paintings by a (former?) art teacher at Nat's school. There was a painting of Mikonos, a painting of the Mona Lisa with popped bubble-gum on her face and Amanohashidate in the background, a brushed ink sketch of an old man picking his nose, a series of flamenco dancer paintings and a surreal painting titled "Firefly" ("ほたる") without actually containing any fireflies (there were some seagulls and a girl, though). Partway through my tour of the gallery, Johnny excused himself to sneak off to the grocery store and buy some snacks for Nat and I, leaving his coworker and I to peruse the the works.

After he returned, I was served tea with my snack while they asked me what I planned to do with the rest of my day. I replied that I had to go grocery shopping and cook. They immediately tried to tell me what was on sale, but stopped short, because they didn't know what the words were in English. One of the coworkers tried, "Marron? Furansu-go ka?" (Marron? Is that French?). To which I timidly replied "H-hai, furansu-go desu," (Yes, that's French). I then explained that we called it a chestnut. Johnny confirmed this with his hand-held Japanese-English translator. The only reason I knew this was because of my current amusement with the French Republican Calendar. Then, they asked me if I knew Pacific saury (now that they had Johnny's translator on-hand, they could get specific with their fish), to which I replied that I knew what it was, but I didn't think we had it in America. They were then quite shocked and asked me if I ate fish. I assured them that I did. They later tried to name different kinds of fish I might, perhaps, have eaten ("Tuna? Do you know tuna? Do you eat...uhhh...horse makureru?" Horse makureru is horse mackerel in Engrish). After they were thoroughly impressed with my ability to eat raw fish, Johnny rushed me away to the public library section of the culture center (which was closed for the day...it's a holiday week here). I put down my half-eaten snack as he introduced me to the two librarians who were busy cleaning all the nooks and crannies of the library they don't have time to touch during open hours and then showed me the scant English-language section. I wasn't really expecting much. In fact, I had overheard someone say that all they had was Harry Potter, so I actually underestimated it...by about ten books. There was, indeed, the entire Harry Potter series in English. This made up the total of English language novels available in the library. They also have The Giving Tree and The Missing Piece by Shel Silverstein and Where the Wild Things Are by Maurice Sendak. They also had a bilingual Japanese cookbook and some books about Japan. Eventually, I was permitted to finish my snack and leave.

On the way to the grocery store, I realized that I was carrying the snack I was given for Nat. Carrying it into the store would be awkward and I didn't have any pockets to put it in (I have mentioned that I walk everywhere, right?). I decided my best choice would be to hide it on top of one of the outdoor vending machines and retrieve it when I'm done with my shopping. After entering the store, I notice that it is quite a bit less busy than it usually is around noon on a weekday. In fact, it looked a little darker. Still, there were employees and a couple customers, so it was definitely still open. The darker lighting, was probably because of all the new signs hanging from the ceiling that boldly claimed something I couldn't read. We're hosting a potluck dinner tomorrow night and the locals seem to think it would be a brilliant idea if I made fried eggplant and skordalia. I'm not entirely certain skordalia will appeal to Japanese tastes, but at least I can tempura-fry the eggplant to make it something they're more familiar with (or I could, y'know, do it my normal way since the only difference is how you add the flour). But this is what they wanted, so this is what I was at the store to get things for. I also decided to grab some ingredients for spanakorizo, just in case I'm feeling extra ambitious tomorrow. At least I can make that early in the morning and refrigerate it until dinner and reheat it.

I went home, and made the skordalia. We don't have instant mashed potatoes here, so I used the soggy bread method. The texture is slightly different and I don't dare make it as strong as I normally do, but it is good. Then, I remembered that I was going to buy shiso for everyone to eat after the dinner. Not only that, but I'd need some shiso for the spanakorizo. So, I ran off and bought a couple packets and ran back.

I put off vacuuming today because I want to do it tomorrow. I'll likely have to do it again on Saturday, too. Tomorrow's a busy day! I have no idea how many people we're hosting.

Goya: Round II

2009-09-22T17:49:00.003+09:00

So, Nat got a goya (bitter melon) from one of her co-workers on Friday. This meant I had to, once again, face off with the bitter menace. However, this time I was armed with the knowledge of true Japanese preparation methods. I had the upper hand! Last time, goya simply caught me off-guard. This time, I was ready.

The battle was epic. No one was spared. Not even the children. In the end, I stood victorious over a delicious (and only slightly bitter) bowl of goya champuru. I was pleased. Goya is reported to be highly nutritious, so being able to incorporate it into our diet and still enjoy it was a great success.

I'm sure you're now wondering what to do if you ever come across a goya. If you do happen to stumble upon a bitter melon (which would be quite impressive, for some areas of the United States) I advise that you never cook this for a guest on your first try. Since goya is so bitter, you may need practice with it before unleashing it on your friends in order to more fully understand the needs of the vegetable. Got that? Good. With that said, here's a recipe for two (adapted from an out-of-print, English-language magazine published in Kyoto):

Goya Champuru
(Note: This goes very well over Japanese steamed rice.)

Ingredients:
Goya (bitter melon) 1 - Cut the goya in half, lengthwise, and remove the inner pith and seeds with a spoon (or your fingers, like I do). Then, slice the halves into very, very thin half-moons. Rinse the slices in a bowl of salty water. Gently scrunch the goya to release some of the oils. Drain and repeat. You might even want to steam/boil the goya before adding it to this recipe.
Tofu 1 block - Place a paper towel on a flat dish or cutting board and place the tofu on top. Place another dish or cutting board on top of the tofu as a weight and set aside for 10 minutes. This will allow the tofu to drain. Once done, use your hands to crumble the tofu (do not cut it, since the texture is intended to be crumbly).
Onion 1/2 - Chop the onion up. The size of the pieces can be however you like, really. Just as long as you want to eat it in the end.
King Trumpet Mushrooms 3 or 4 - These might also be called Eryngii, Eringi or King Oyster Mushrooms. Slice these into sticks. If you wish to substitute other edible mushrooms, that should be fine.
Soy Sauce to taste
Mirin to taste - This is a sweet rice wine used solely for cooking. If you've managed to get your hands on a goya, you should be able to find this. Just talk to your grocer.
Katsuo flakes - This is another thing that may be difficult to come by in some parts of the world. It's a mix of things, not the least of which are dried fish flakes. Very delicious, very important to this dish. If you've already got the goya and the mirin, you'll likely be able to get this too.
Eggs 2, scrambled
Cooking oil 1 Tbsp

Directions:

Place a frying pan over high heat, add the cooking oil. Then add the crumbled tofu and onion. Fry the tofu. Fry the tofu until it starts turning brown. (This is what my recipe says. However this has never happened for me. Either my pan doesn't know how to brown tofu or I'm just impatient. At least fry the tofu until any leftover moisture is gone.) Turn the heat down to medium and continue frying the tofu until it is evenly brown.
Add the goya and the mushrooms. Fry these FOREVER! The goya, in time, should turn translucent. The recipe I have warns that stirring the goya too aggressively may make the entire dish bitter. I never had a problem with this, but you may want to keep it in mind.
After the goya has cooked for a little while, go ahead and season with soy sauce and mirin. you may be more liberal with the soy sauce, but be a bit conservative with the mirin as you want it to flavor the dish and not sweeten it. Also give a generous sprinkle of katsuo flakes.
Once the goya appears to be cooked to a limp death, pour the egg over the mixture in the pan and stir quickly to get the egg cooked evenly. Immediately remove from heat and serve over freshly-steamed Japanese white rice. Mmmmmmm!

On that note, it appears that my entries are going to be primarily food-based. Hopefully, most people will be able to try these recipes at home (though the ingredients for this recipe might prove to be a scavenger hunt for some). If I feel ambitious enough, I might start taking pictures of food and ingredients as I prepare (also, we need new batteries for the camera...). I'm going to need a small clipboard next to the counter so I can take measurement notes while I'm cooking.

Also, use for mochi rice #56: Soup thickener - Since mochi rice has such a high starch content, it releases its starches into any soup you might be cooking and acts as a thickener. You only need a little bit of mochi rice for this to work. If you have a soup recipe that includes rice, I suggest using a 3/4 the amount of normal rice and use mochi rice for the remaining 1/4. Adding a tablespoon or two of mochi rice to a vegetable soup recipe can work too!

Yes. Yes, I did make hamburgers.

2009-09-18T09:18:00.004+09:00

As Nat has just mentioned, I indeed made hamburgers with spinach and rice last night. The hamburger was mostly Australian beef (most beef is imported in Japan, save for a few heads of cattle who are treated like kings...until they are slaughtered) and American pork (I 'anno...). It was seasoned with fresh crushed garlic, salt, black pepper, oregano and a dash of soy sauce. I mashed the avocado up with some lemon juice in my handy-dandy mortar and pestle and used it as a spread. There was also sliced tomato and mayonnaise involved. While the concept of hamburgers is not unknown to the Japanese, I've only seen instances of a open-faced hamburgers when cooked at home (McDonald's and MossBurger still serve the traditional style: both top and bottom of the bun).

The spinach and rice was a little trickier. Earlier, I had accidentally bought mochi rice instead of normal Japanese rice. Mochi rice (sometimes known as "sweet rice") is slightly sweeter, a little lighter and a whole lot stickier than the rice normally used for a Japanese mealtime....and regular Japanese rice is already a lot stickier than rice normally found in Western cuisines. Normally, mochi rice is pounded into a sticky "mochi" (a rice dough or cake) which can be used for a variety of things. Typically, mochi is used for holiday cakes or traditional tea sweets called "manju". Very delicious. Very...not what you should be eating for your everyday meal.

Anyway, I'm stuck with this rice for now. I might attempt to make my own manju, but that's getting into realms beyond ambitious, since most recipes I can find don't take you from whole rice like the traditional method does (since that method is almost entirely ceremonial now, save a few small shops and country bumpkins). Instead, they tell you how to start with mochi rice flour. Obviously, since I have the whole rice and not the flour, this is not going to happen the easy way.

So, spinach and rice. For those unfamiliar, spinach and rice is a Greek recipe (also called "spanakorizo") using spinach, rice, a few other vegetables along with lemon juice and other seasonings. The largest hurdles for this recipe are that it calls for spinach, rice and mint. Well, the rice part wouldn't have been so hard had it not been for the mochi rice. I went ahead and used the mochi rice anyway. The extra gluten in the rice made the resulting dish a little gooey, but still delicious. I know they have spinach in Japan, but knowing which of the leafy vegetables is the spinach can be a bit difficult sometimes. I picked up a vegetable, hoped it was spinach and went on my way. It still may not have been spinach, but it worked well enough. The mint was going to be tougher. While some stores in Japan may have fresh mint or even dried mint, our local grocer is not one of them. I decided to experiment (as if the mochi rice and maybe-spinach wasn't experiment enough). A common leaf used in Japanese cuisine is shiso. Shiso comes in two colors. Red (actually a dark purple) and green. The red shiso is usually used for dying Japanese pickles and other foods while the green shiso is often eaten raw and whole as an accompaniment with rice, tempura fried, or shredded as a seasoning. Both red and green shiso are related to mint and have a mild minty flavor. I figured green shiso might work. It did! I'm so happy that it worked! So, basically, here are the steps (and ingredients) for Greek spinach and rice (I apologize for the lack of measurements, but I have no clue how much of what I use):

Spinach - (A lot...really. I don't think I've ever properly used enough spinach for this recipe, but I'm getting closer. I'd suggest at least two packages, if you're using pre-packaged spinach.) Chop this up, but not very small. 1 1/2" x 1 1/2" squares are probably best for the smallest pieces. Use the stems, too!
Uncooked white rice - (Any white rice will probably do, but I'd suggest not using mochi rice, since it makes the recipe more gooey. ~~About 1/2 cup or 3/4~~ About 1/4 - 1/3 cup is good for two people.)
1 Tomato - Peeled, diced and mashed into a sauce. I use a mortar and pestil. You might find this easier with a blender. An even easier solution would be to buy a canned version at the store.
Onion - One half of the onion is enough. Chop it up. I like chopping it up really fine, but as long as you think the pieces are small enough, they probably are.
Garlic - One or two cloves, minced. Mince! Mince! Mince!
Olive oil - I prefer to not use extra virgin olive oil because I find it bitter. You may use whichever kind you like. Some other oils with mild flavors are okay, too.
Lemon juice - To flavor. The dish should be just slightly sour, but not overbearing.
Mint - Maybe 1 1/2 tsp, dry mint leaves? The flavor from the mint should never be too obvious. If you're in Japan, mince green shiso leaves are a good subtitute.
Oregano
Salt
Black Pepper (optional)
Basil (optional)

Directions:

Put a little olive oil in a soup pot (or whatever pot you're cooking this in) and saute the onions and garlic until they start turning brown.
Add the mashed tomato, stir a little bit and add water (I used about three-four bowls full of water, but I was using a small bowl. You're cooking rice, so you'll want a fair amount, but not too much).
Also add the rice.
Bring the water to a boil, then add the spinach, mint, lemon juice, oregano, salt and optional seasonings. Stir in the spinach. It may take a while to wilt down enough to fit, but don't worry too much about that. If it doesn't all fit at once, just add portions at a time. The rice takes a while to cook, so you don't have to worry too much about some of the spinach being undercooked.
Turn down the heat slightly, cover and stir occasionally. Add water if it seems the liquid is getting too low. Once the spinach is properly wilted and has turned a more faded green, taste (try for at least some rice, a piece of spinach and some of the "broth") to see if you need to add any more of any seasoning. Never forget to stir occasionally and add more water when necessary. (I repeat this, because I forget it and am sometimes I'm very sorry for doing so)
Did you forget to stir and check the water levels?
Once the rice is soft (Soft, soft, soft! Maybe a little mushy, even!). Let most of the water evaporate out (aka "Remove the lid"). A little liquid is good. I even suggest leaving a little liquid.
Serve and eat!

While this works best as a side dish in a hot meal, it can also serve as a small, one-bowl meal. It's also good as a leftover. The estimates I have for measurements are for two people (hopefully...maybe three). If they sound wrong to you, feel free to change them or make your own estimates. Next time I make this, I'll try to record how much of some of these things that I'm using.

Mai Hasubando

2009-09-17T18:10:00.002+09:00

Alex made me a hamburger for dinner with avocado on it, and his spinach and rice on the side.

After how insanely busy I've been all week, I was like "AI LOVE YU"

I love him. ;_;

Kawaii Girl met up with What's Up girl and the two of them and I hung out before class today. (What's Up girl is a very enthusiastic third grader who likes going "what's up!" and knocking knucks. She's hilarious.) Apparently I'm cute because I'm short and look like Harry Potter (to the Japanese student mind). Also, it has been noticed that I smell good (!?!?). I was like, "Kay...I ..need a shower...?" Weirdness.

I don't have much substance for a post right now, I just wanted to hop on and tell everyone how awesome Alex is. ^_^

Sports Day Debauchery

2009-09-15T17:41:00.003+09:00

Whew....Oooookay. I've been putting this off for way too long. Post, Natalie! Post!

So originally we were supposed to have Sports Day - tai'ikusai or 体育祭 - on Saturday the 12th. This would be a day of work for me, and then we would have the following Monday off as a vacation to make up for it.

It rained on Saturday. So it was canceled, and we instead had Sports Day on Sunday.

It rained a little bit in the morning, but not enough to justify canceling it again. The kids were adorable. They all ran around in teams of about 100 kids....well, here, let me explain how the blocks work. Each grade is separated into three classes. There's First Year - Class 1, Class 2, and Class 3, Second Year the same, and Third Year the same. The first year classes are each about 31 students, the second year classes about 32, and the third year classes are each around 35 students.

The teams, red block, blue block, and yellow block, were made up of every grade's class one, class 2, and class 3. So for example, Blue Block was made up of classes 1-1, 2-1, and 3-1. And so on.

Sports Day started with a massive relay race. Every single kid in every single block ran the relay around the track, passing the baton from kid to kid to kid to kid. There were some insanely fast kids! My little special ed boy especially tore up the track.

Then, there were other sports, like tug of war, group jump rope (like fifteen kids at a time jumping rope! The same rope, yes.), caterpillar racing (About twenty kids standing in a line, with ALL of their feet tied together, their hands on the person in front's shoulders -- hilarious!), a sort of pole race where five kids ran carrying a pole, and had to spin around cones like clock hands, a sort of six legged race where one person was wearing a basket and the other two had to dump fuzzy balls into the basket (of course, when they bent over to pick things up, everything would fall out...), and a lot of other fun stuff. The kids were a lot of fun to watch - they were all wearing little headbands of their block colors - these are known as hachimaki. They were all very competitive, but at the same time they all encouraged the team that was running behind. If Red Block was falling behind in the race, everyone would start yelling "Aka ganbatte!" (Red, do your best!) and "Aka faitoh!" (fight-oh -- heehee) and it was all very adorable.

Okay, I interrupt the post here to say that Alex is an AWESOME COOK. He just brought me a beef and vegetable stir-fry he made with very authentic looking rice and pickles. OM NOM. I love it. Okay. Back to your regularly scheduled post.

Also during the Sports Fest, there were PTA events. There was PTA tug of war, which was hilarious, and PTA tamaire (玉入れ - Literally translated as "Put the ball in the thingie"). I was on the PTA tamaire team. Now, this SOUNDS like basketball, but actually it's very, very different. There were five teams. Each team stood in a circle, a student standing in the middle. The student was holding a fifteen-twenty foot pole with a very long and skinny basket at the top. I know you're thinking "Okay, how is this not basketball?" Well see this basket is about two and a half feet deep, and the rim of it is about...nnh....the circumference of a large grapefruit. Or a small cantaloupe. Whichever you prefer. There were beanbags scattered all over the ground, and, in a set amount of time, you're supposed to get as many beanbags into the basket as possible. The basket has a bottom so they don't come out. Now, the way the Japanese PTA people did it was grab big handfuls of beanbags and chuck them all into the air at once.

I'm a wimpy little weakling though so I couldn't chuck the beanbags nearly high enough that way. So I grabbed an armload and started winging them into the air as fast, hard, and accurately as I could.

Against all logic our team (consisting of misc. parents, me, the art teacher, and the music teacher) completely creamed the other teams. I'd like to think that I made some kind of contribution with my "You're doing it wrong" tactics, but I think I only got like one or two in.

Plus, it was fun, because everybody chucking these things in the air, they would just land on everyone, so I'd be lining up a shot and BAM beanbag to the face.

The students got a HUGE kick out of me playing tamaire though. I could hear them absolutely screaming from their little tarps where each block was sitting - "Natari-sensei FAITOH!"

Then we all got a little brand-new roll of Saran Wrap for our exertions and were sent back to our seats.

After Sports Day, the teachers had a party at an izakaya in nearby Nodagawa. We all took a bus to get there. That threw up a flag to me. A flag that said "Oh hey, people aren't going to be driving home from this."

Now, I have to get one thing straight right now because my family read this thing. I am really not a drinker. I can't really drink too much, and when I do I just fall asleep before anything exciting or amazing happens. However this also means I fall asleep before I can drink enough to get myself in trouble, so that's good.

That having been said.

Drinking is an intensely important part of Japanese business culture. Japanese workplaces are all incredibly formal. It's the after-work parties, the izakaya or enkai, where people really loosen up, get to know each other, and talk frankly.

So I was very culturally acceptably tipsy.

I didn't expect Japanese beer to actually taste good, and not awful like American beer! After a couple of those, an umeshu (plum liquor - very sweet! ...very strong...), and a shot of this weird white sweet rice sake that apparently is famous in the reason, I was having a little trouble walking...but apparently no trouble speaking Japanese.

By the way, I have very intelligent friends when it comes to drinking, so, Mother, I was very careful to drink lots and lots of water, at least one glass of water per drink. This way I didn't really get overly in trouble when people kept ordering alcohol for me. Of course, this made the Japanese teachers laugh at me. "Mada omizu!?" (You're ordering more water!?) they'd say, and I'd answer by holding up my drink in one hand and my water in the other hand and saying, very seriously, "Baransu wa TAISETSU." (Balance is precious) which of course made them erupt in peals of laughter at how SERIOUS BUSINESS I was.

Also, miraculously, while ...indisposed, I had to go to the bathroom several times, which is what happens when you drink a substantial amount of alcohol and five glasses of water over the span of two and a half hours...and when going to the restaurant's bathroom, I found, to my horror, it was a JAPANESE SQUAT TOILET.

For those of you who are unaware of the full horror of this revelation, here is a picture for your reference.

That's right folks. It's a porcelain hole in the ground.

You're supposed to pull your pants down (Girls too!) and squat over the thing, do your thing, and finish up. I'm always too scared to try them because I have this phobia of, you know, messing up and all the consequences that entails.

But you know, this isn't the sort of thing to worry about when your impulse control is already suffering.

Apparently I can use them just fine, even when I'm having trouble walking. I was pretty elated. I don't think I could do it sober.

But I mean the izakaya wasn't all JUST drinking. We ate a ton of food too. The way it works, is that you get a bunch of family style dishes and pass them around. We got a couple small pizzas, had some spicy marinated shrimp stuff, a bunch of stuff I didn't recognize but ate anyway (because that's how I roll!), tempura, chicken, french fries (!?), and....

wani.

Wani is Japanese for crocodile.

I dunno where they got it or if the teachers were just playing an elaborate trick on me, but it was actually really good. It tasted uncannily like chicken though. When I got home I asked Alex about that and he said that he'd heard the same thing. Surreal.

We got dessert at the end; I got a cute little piece of chocolate cake. One of the other girls got apple sherbet. It came in a frosty little frozen apple that had been hollowed out and filled with the sherbet. I immediately regretted my decision.

Other highlights of the night were me teaching everyone how to tell someone they're good looking in four languages, a double-jointed contest, and trying on each others' glasses.

We took the bus home in high spirits and boy oh boy did I crash.

The next day was a vacation. I was happy about that. But I wasn't hung over at all, thanks to all the water I drank.

Today I went back to school. One of the English teachers' children came down with the swine flu (!! seriously!) so he wasn't in today. Everyone was really busy. It was fun. I often prefer busy days to the not-busy ones, because I have a lot to do and a lot of classes to attend, and I'm not left sitting in the teacher's lounge like a lump.

After classes I went to visit the band again. Since the Sports Day is over, I have time to go see them again. The girl who asked me to come was there again, and we talked excitedly about classical composers for about fifteen minutes. She likes Chopin and Mendelssohn. My heart practically flew away.

As Promised

2009-09-11T10:05:00.005+09:00

Okay, I finally uploaded/fixed up the pictures I took!! Yay! So if you want to take a look, here they are.

If you want to see the whole image, you have to right click and choose 'View Picture' since this is only showing half and I DON'T KNOW WHYYYYYYY

This was my lunch that I took a picture of that one day. The main-looking thingie is a croquette, which had potato, ground meat of some sort, and cabbage inside it.

This is the view from the music room. You can see Amanohashidate on the horizon, the line of pine trees. It's actually just a very thin strip of land, but we're directly facing the bay that it crosses, so...

Some of my students! They're so cute.

The kids are practicing dances that they made up for the Sports Festival. Each class practices together in the hallway. Now they practice outside so they can spread out.

Here's the school band. I love them. <3 They're playing the theme from Ponyo (In Japanese, not the stupid (so I hear) English version), the theme from Lupin III, some Star Wars, and a bunch of other stuff that I think might be too tough for them....but good on them for trying!

Also, yesterday was my first day teaching at Ishikawa elementary school. It was so freakin' adorable. One kid kept asking questions about American food. "How big are American hamburgers?" "Are American hamburgers better than Japanese hamburgers?" "How big is American pizza?" "What do you like on pizza?"

The teachers tearfully shook both of my hands in theirs and thanked me fervently after the classes. One of them said, in Japanese, "I think the students are going to get very close to you very quickly." And the other said, "You're a fun and interesting teacher. I'm very happy to work with you." I was a little taken aback but blushed a lot and thanked them. They seemed to stare at me in absolute awe when I was speaking Japanese with them...I guess the elementary school program doesn't really require its teachers to speak English well, since it's not technically an English class, but English practice... so they were all immensely relieved that I could speak Japanese.

On the way downstairs after class, I saw two little first graders, who couldn't have been older than seven, dressed all in white with little chef hats, working together to lug a huge pot of food up the stairs together. It was the cutest thing I've ever seen.

Then when I got back, I was watching the kids practice for their sports festival. One of them was sitting aside, and I asked her, "How are you?" to which she promptly gave me a pathetic look and said "NO."

I couldn't keep myself from giggling.

"How Are You" is translated to them as "Ogenki desu ka?" which is literally asking "Are you healthy?", to which the logical answer would have indeed been "No." I sat with her and talked a little bit - I couldn't figure out what was wrong with her, but she said something-byo (-byo means 'sickness' so I could really only figure out that she was sick) so I left it at that.

Cartilage

2009-09-10T12:58:00.003+09:00

So, last night we went out to dinner with Lok-Yin (the English speaker who works for the town office...she's from the UK), her husband, another JET teacher and a bunch of Japanese people who wanted to practice their English (we had met some of them before). It was a nice dinner. I would prefer chairs over the traditional tables, but it was fine. Basically, we just ordered a lot of small things off the menu and shared them at the table. One of the things was a dish of deep-fried chicken cartilages. They tasted good, but took a little getting used to. It was a bit like learning to eat shrimp tails. Different.

"How are you?" "I'm tired."

2009-09-08T17:25:00.002+09:00

Mnnnarrrr. Another day of five classes. It started out as my lucky day today though - I got up a little late and didn't have time to grab breakfast, but I ran out to buy my drinks for the day. I remembered that I left my change purse at school, but in the bottom of my purse I found a random 150 yen! Enough to buy one drink.

The vending machine outside our apartment was, so I thought, kind of broken. You'd put in your money, it'd freak out and flash all these numbers at you, and then give you your drink. So I put in my money, it freaked out and gave me my drink, but didn't give me my 10 yen change, just beeped at me a lot. I glared at it, 'cause I was running late, and was like "Hey vending machine, what's the deal?"

Then I looked and all the little lights under the types of drinks were blinking, and the number in the place where the prices usually show (this is where the numbers usually freak out, too) said "7777." Apparently that's a random number generator, and I won. So I got a free drink.

I need new shoes. I've been running around school in these awesome slippers that Yiayia got for me a couple years ago, but they just aren't made for 7 hours running around on hard school floor. My feet are killing me.

Hmm, what else has happened lately...I went to PTA chorus class with Alex last night and met a lot of the parents of my students. They were kind of shy and I got stared at a lot 'cause I'm foreign but it was okay. The principal wanted me to introduce him to Alex, so I did. He's a fun guy. I have no idea what I'm going to do for these songs though - it's hard to both try to read the music and read Japanese without falling behind in the rhythm on either of them. Oh well, I'll try my best. :P

Today I got to read some of the comments children wrote in their English journals. A lot of them are writing things like, "Natalie-sensei is lots of fun" and "Natalie-sensei gave me a sticker! I was happy." It made me feel all squishy.

Incidentally, dinner was fantastic. <3

Garbage

2009-09-08T16:15:00.005+09:00

So, for those of you who we haven't told about our list of garbage separation rules, here's how it goes:

-All burnable garbage that is a non-recyclable goes into a yellow bag and is picked up on Wednesdays. It is placed in the yellow grated box. Everything else is picked up on Tuesday and Thursday and is placed in a different grated box.
-Non-burnable, non-recyclable garbage is placed in a clear bag with red writing. You have to write your district name and family name on the bag (I'm assuming we either get billed for this or there's some religious thing involved in disposing of non-burnables...I have no clue). We finally got that much figured out and we're disposing an umbrella that looks like it was used in a fight with a brick wall.
-Glass bottles and recyclable metals are placed in separate blue bags with the appropriate box checked off to identify the contents (though the bags are transparent enough that one shouldn't need to look for the tiny identifying mark).
-PET plastics (the standard plastic for making bottles) must be separated from their lids and wrappers (which are made in a manner that removing them is convenient) and placed into a purple bag, with the appropriate mark.
-The wrappers and lids are then put into a different purple bag, along with most other recyclable plastics and plastic bags. Again, adding the appropriate mark.
-Thin cardboards (cereal boxes, etc.) and paper bags are placed in another purple bag along with the appropriate mark.
-Styrofoams that do not belong in the miscellaneous recyclable plastics bag go into a fourth purple bag.
-Corrugated cardboard, newspaper and magazines must be bound into separate stacks with recyclable plastic cord. Apparently, people get paid for these, but our apartment situation makes it difficult to know whose papers are whose, so Nat's coworkers/boss (I dunno which) want(s) us to take all of these things to be picked up at the school instead. I don't know how easy they think it is to bike four stacks of outdated magazines plus a stack of cardboard to the school is, but I think I might just put it out with the other recyclables.
-Hazardous materials (gasoline, kerosene, motorbikes, electronics and the like) are handled in a completely different manner. I don't know what that manner is, but it's completely different. The same goes for large amounts of brick, tile, stone or dirt.

Usually, we don't have enough of any one of the recyclables to take out every time (we can only buy big purple bags, while the blue and yellow come in both big and small sizes). The burnable garbage, since it is only picked up once a week, unlike the others, has been forgotten twice. Hopefully, we'll find our rhythm real soon.

Moving on to the subject of food, I managed to get some whitefish at the grocery store and made a fish soup. I also found some okra and slow cooked it with some chicken and vegetables. For both, I've been perfecting my homemade tomato sauce techniques. Having a mortar and pestil is helpful when canned tomato sauces and pastes are nowhere to be found. I may also get around to making a salsa sometime, if I can manage to find any sort of hot peppers....and tortilla chips. Well, maybe not.

Tonight's dinner includes a lotus root salad...unless I ruin it. I sure hope not! I like lotus root salad. My Japanese cookbooks are here, though (thanks, Mom!), so I shouldn't be ruining too many more meals. *shakes fist at the bitter melon*

Nonstop.

2009-09-03T17:55:00.001+09:00

Today I had five classes, right after one another. It was fun and exhilarating, but holy crap am I tired. One of the teachers said, "It's a rule that JET teachers can't teach more than three classes every day, I think..." and I was like, "PFFFFFF WHATEVER" and he seemed pretty elated about that.

The kids seem endlessly fascinated with the slippers I wear in school. They're like crocheted ballet slippers with rubbered bottoms for safety. They also seem to be warming up to me and talking to me a lot in the halls. I taught two girls how to say "What's up?" and the proper responses. I'm getting "kawaii sensei" from more than crazy Kawaii Girl now, so that's kind of fun. They also seem really amused when I say I like takoyaki.

The last class I had today was the handicapped class. There were only two students in it, but they were adorable and it was fun. There was lots of praise, encouragement, shouting, clapping, and stickers. As it should be.

I had quail eggs in my bento today. Surreal.

And I'll close from an excerpt from the summer English diaries I'm grading...

"It was too cold to swim. So I went to the hoehouse."

Addendum:

2009-09-02T14:45:00.002+09:00

HAPPY BIRTHDAY ALEX! <3

I was correcting papers just now. Here are the highlights.

"I goes to remove natural water."

"I had Chicken Lunch at tweleven."

"I had cornfreek for breakfast."

CORNFREEK

Classes and Papers

2009-09-02T10:46:00.003+09:00

Yesterday I had my first day of actual classes.

The school day started with a big opening ceremony to open up the semester. As part of this, I had to do a speech, in front of the entire school. It was supposed to be in English and in Japanese, but what ended up happening is I stood up there and stammered in both languages for like thirty seconds to 300 blank stares. The teachers told me my speech was great, but I was like, "Ahaha...kay."

I'm getting really close to the brass band club. One of the girls came up to me shyly in class and said, "We're playing a song that's from a really famous Japanese movie. Will you come and listen?" And I was like, "Of course!"

I have a VIDEO of it. >:D I've been toting my camera around. Hahahaha! I'll have pictures soon!

Afterwards she quietly snuck up to me again and said "I'm really happy that you came." It was adorable.

My second grade class was NOISY. During my self-introduction lesson, they were all loudly talking to each other and not paying attention...still in summer vacation mode. I tried to get them to pay attention for a while and then just quietly trailed off, watching them. They sensed something was amiss, since I was just watching them with a little smile on my face, and quieted down. So I was like, "Okay, are we ready for class now? Great!" and went on with my lesson. They weren't entirely inclined to pay attention until I handed out some puzzles and told them the first person to finish both of them would get a quarter. HAHA BRIBERY.

Third grade was exactly the opposite. They were DEAD. This class was after lunch, so I got all sorts of dull stares. One kid, front and center, was literally conked out on his desk, fast asleep. Front and center!! In the back, I don't care, but....when you're sitting up front? That's gutsy. At least they seemed to generally get things, and did a good job, though they weren't very responsive. But that's about par for the course for third years.

Oh, by the way, when I reference first grade/year, second grade/year, and third grade/year, I really mean seventh, eighth, and ninth. These kids are in the 12-16 range - middle school.

I was correcting papers today and got to see some really adorable English. Some of my favorites...

"I like animals. But I hate the zoo." (PETA, here we come!)
"I play my sister every day." (Dude, she got PLAYED!)
"I walked euphonium." (...wha?)

And my favorite was a conversation I had yesterday in the hallway with a handful of girls...

Them: "HALLO!"
Me: "Hello!"
Them: "How are you?"
Me: "I'm pretty good! And you?"
Them: "YESTERDAY!"

Dogs - They are here and they wear shoes.

2009-09-01T16:28:00.008+09:00

So, while I watch obnoxious Japanese children's shows, I shall make my first post to our blog. I'm still learning about how to live in Japan and I probably won't know everything even after our first year is out, but it's been a month and we haven't starved, so I'd say we're doing good.

While I knew that Japan has a lot of exciting new vegetables and even meat options in their grocery stores, I completely forgot that several of our common vegetables might be more difficult to find. At least on a daily basis. Our closest grocery store is only a short walk away, which is nice. Sometimes they don't have potatoes, red onions or some other bit of produce, but the store stocks fresh food, daily and discounts most meats and vegetables after dinner time. Some foods last a bit longer, so they only buy a stock of them once or twice a week. It's a small grocery store, though. We live in a rural area, so it's understandable. Just inconvenient, sometimes.

All this to say that I've been trying to learn how to cook some of the local vegetables so that I can still cook dinner if I go to the grocery store and can't find what I'm looking for. So far, I've attempted gobō (Japanese burdock) and goya (bitter melon) with varying results. This is primarily due to my recipes telling me very little in the matter of preparing the vegetables.

Gobō looks like a two to four foot long, extra-skinny, white carrot. It is typically sold and stored caked in mud (to help preserve it). To prepare, one washes away the mud and scrapes the skin away with a knife. It is important to scrape, not peel, the skin, as the nutritional value of the gobō is very close to the underside of the skin. That and gobō is very skinny. Peeling the vegetable could very well leave you with nothing. The gobō must then be placed in lemon water, salt water or some other solution to keep it from oxidizing. Next, it is the parboiling. This is important, since gobō is a bit woody. After that, you can do whatever you want with the gobō, so long as it tastes right. The recipe we used involved balsamic vinegar (a harder to find vinegar around here, but not as impossible as red wine vinegar). It was a bit vague in telling me how much of the vinegar went in and whether it was supposed to be a side dish or the main course (not as much as I put in, and not the main course). It was good, but next time I'll use it as a side dish and be slightly more conservative with the vinegar.

Goya looks, upon first glance, like a warty cucumber. It is regaled by the Japanese as being extremely healthy...and extremely bitter. It is sold when it is fully grown, but has yet to change color to be a ripe, bright orange. If you tried to eat it when it turned orange, no amount of cooking would remove the bitterness. We were given one of these by a woman whose husband grows them in his garden. We hadn't figured out what to do with it and it ended up rotting just as I found a recipe...so I went out to buy a new one so that we could at least say we tried a goya, even if it wasn't her goya. So, what our recipe never told us was that when you prepare a goya for cooking, you cut it open and remove all the seeds and pith and then slice the remaining shell into very thin, half-moon slices. Then, you soak the slices in salt water and "scrunch" them slightly. This helps remove some of the bitter oils. Most of the recipes involving goya will have you pan fry it in some way. When doing this, you must make sure that the goya is thoroughly cooked. I wasn't quite sure what "thoroughly cooked" meant, with goya, so it ended up being undercooked and a horribly bitter dish. Next time, I will keep what I have learned in mind.

I found some broccoli the other day and was extremely satisfied to make a boring chicken and broccoli stir-fry.

Today, while going to the grocery store (they had white peach juice and melon bread today!), I passed a tiny, long-haired dachshund, slowly tottering after its master. On the way back, I passed a rather large weimaraner that appeared to be walking in a rather odd manner. When I got closer, I realized that the dog was wearing shoes. I wondered whether this dog's owner felt that the traditions requiring people to wear shoes outdoors and keep them off while inside should apply to their pet as well. After all, the same dirt that would be an a human's feet would be on a dog's feet as well.

With all that rambling done, I must now go make dinner.

Kyoto and More Bugs

2009-08-31T09:59:00.004+09:00

Well, Friday I had an orientation in Kyoto that I had to go to. It was actually kind of fun. I like Kyoto. It's a big city with a lot going on, but it's less...overstimulating than Tokyo. It's still pretty overstimulating though.

After the orientation classes we walked around in the shopping districts. I got Alex a birthday present (His birthday is Sept. 2nd - No I'm not going to say what it is! He reads this thing!) and stopped at a 100-yen store to pick up some essentials that we didn't have around the house, but were just common things, like a bathroom stool and a little lunchbag for my bento box. It has English on it. It's grammatically OK, but it's all cute and stuff.

So after the shopping was done, I wasn't going to walk around with the couple of guys, 'cause I wanted to take the train home that night, and there aren't many trains that go to my local station at night because I'm out in the middle of nowhere. So if I wasn't on the train from Kyoto by...like...6:30, I wouldn't be able to get home. So I said goodbye at the nearest subway station and headed down to find my way. Turns out the subway line I took doesn't go to Kyoto station, and doesn't connect with any other lines that DO go to Kyoto station. But I had like an hour and a half, and the road I was on went straight down to the station, so I figured I'd just walk.

Bad idea.

I walked, and I walked, and I walked, and I walked. and I walked. AND I WALKED. I met some people at a big intersection, and approached them, asking them in Japanese if this road goes straight to the station. They were astonished by my Japanese and said yes, it did, but it was a little ways yet, and asked if I needed to catch a train urgently. They said they were headed down that way as well, and they would walk with me. Turns out they were Korean tourists and had just come from Okinawa, so they were flabbergasted that an American had managed to learn Japanese. It was cute.

So I walked some more with them, the pace picking up near the end...long story short, I was walking/speedwalking for that entire hour and a half and ended up sprinting to my train. But I caught it! I was bummed out though because Kyoto station is an awesome place to shop, and I was hoping to do some looking around at the import store, Jupiter. (I craaaaaaave mexican food!)

Over the weekend, we had a couple of my students prank our apartment, you know, the ringing the doorbell and running away thing. It happened like three times, so I hid out on our balcony after closing our door somewhat loudly the last time, and when they crept back up I popped up and was like, "Miemasu yo..." (I can see you...) They freaked out, fidgeted, and were like, "Natalie-sensei! ...er...Nice to see you!" *FLEE* I talked to Sekiguchi-sensei (one of the English teachers at the middle school who lives in the same apartment building) and she laughed. Since everyone who lives in that complex pretty much works for the school system, it's a common playground for the students.

Today I saw a massive, beautiful dragonfly at school. Turns out it's called an "oniyanma" and is what the Yanma pokemon is named after. I was amused.

Turns out the Japanese eat these too. I hope to god I don't have to make an entry about that.

Okay, back on topic.

2009-08-27T09:33:00.000+09:00

So here we are in Japan.

Alex and I left the U.S. on August 1st. I spent a three day orientation in Tokyo before heading to my assigned area - Iwataki. Iwataki is actually one-third of a larger town called 'Yosano'. But Iwataki, Nodagawa, and Kaya (the two towns to the south) were all three so incredibly tiny that they merged into Yosano a few years ago.

Lots of interesting things have happened that I wanted to write about but just didn't have the time. Hopefully now I'll be able to keep track of everything more easily, and therefore be able to have this blog to remember upstairs.

This morning I asked the music teacher, Ms. Fujimura, where I could buy a violin. I have a violin at home, but it'd be cheaper to just buy a cheap school-grade violin than have my regular one shipped carefully over to me by air-mail. She got all excited. She asked if I could sing, too. The English teacher informed me that she wants to play a duet, piano/violin, at the Culture Festival coming up next month. When she asked me if I can sing, I said I could, but my range was kind of weird....I'm sure it came out in Japanese as "My singing stovetop is unusual." (The Japanese word for stovetop is ガスレンジ (gasurenji - "Gas Range") and the word for microwave is 電気レンジ (denkirenji - "Electric Range") - of course the word for an electric stovetop is 電気ガスレンジ　(denkigasurenji - "Electric Gas Range" - classic) so when I talked about my singing range and used the word 'renji' I'm sure it wasn't the right choice!

The last couple days have been ...buggy. Even before the bee-eating incident. The previous day, I had to save the brass band from a marauding bee (Not just any bee, but a legendary Japanese suzumebachi - check it out on Wikipedia for the full horror. This is also the kind of bee that I ate) and had the unique opportunity to gently hold a Japanese emerald swallowtail butterfly after it kept smacking against the classroom window and let the gorgeous little moron outside. Those emerald swallowtails are absolutely everywhere. I love it. And they're about the size of my hand.

We also have some pretty massive spiders around. The garden spiders are actually kind of pretty, but the ones that hang out outside our apartment are pretty nasty. I'd freak out if one of them just popped up anywhere, since, they're still spiders and they're still huge. But I'll see if I can't get some pictures.

Alex and I got a gorgeous camera for our wedding - an Olympus SP-510UZ. The problem is, most of our camera memory cards were SD cards and this took an XD card - until recently I had my own little digital camera, and we used the old one usually because it could use SD cards. But after we sold it at the garage sale, we discovered that our awesome new camera only had capacity for 16 pictures without any sort of card.

So last night Toshiko, one of the ladies from the eikaiwa (English Conversation) group - an adult group of friends who gets together at a local izakaya (a sort of restaurant that just brings a bunch of group dishes and alchohol. It's a restaurant perfectly suited for getting together and hanging out) and talks and gossips and laughs in English - took us to an electronics store. Toshiko is absolutely hilarious. The store is called KS-Denki (Denki = 電気 - Electric Power) but when people say it it sounds like they're saying K-Stanky. We bought a 2 gig memory card for the camera and now have capacity for about 1100 pictures. Woowoo!

What else, what else. Alex made a really good dish last night with tofu, egg, and goya (Japanese 'bitter melon' - Wikipedia it, it looks freakish!). It was a great experiment. It was a little...bitter...but goya is always bitter, and next time we'll just cook it for longer. It's really good for you though, so that's fun.

Today I'm ordering a bento lunch. This school doesn't actually have a school lunch, so most of the teachers order one from a nearby restaurant. The restaurant employs mentally handicapped people, so that's pretty cool. I'll try to take a picture of the bento to show everybody. Yesterday's was pretty cool.

I think that's pretty much all for now. One of the students keeps screaming "KAWAIIIIIIII" when she sees me, following up with "SO CUTE" or "SO PRET-TY" in adorable middle-school English. She'll be fun in class when it starts.

I think I'm going to keep track of the stuff I talk about in the tags. Like posts with Japanese words and stuff in them I'll tag 'Japanese vocab' and cooking posts I'll tag as 'Japanese Food' or something. <3

I ATE A BEE

2009-08-26T13:40:00.000+09:00

I wanted my first post to be something really cool, and explaining everything that's happened to put us in Japan. I wanted to write something about where we are, and the school I'm working at, and the teachers, and the apartment....

BUT I ATE A FLIPPING SESAME-FLAVORED BEE THE SIZE OF MY PINKY FINGER.

All else just seems secondary.

Japancakes

Flat Fanta Marinade

Adventures in Pudding

お久し振りですね!

OhhhhhhHHH FREAK OUT!

From Shogakko to Graduation

More foods

Oh my gosh.

Of fish bones and blowfish

Because I am a klutz

English Test Theater

Twice in a week? WHAT.

SHAAAAME.

Just Soup

Typical.

Snow!

Of Christmas and Teeth

OH MAN

Kyoto And The Difference Between Schools

Something Strange, Something New...

Thanksgiving in Japan

寒いね! (It's COLD!)

I Sing The Snooze Button Electric

Seriously: Autumnal Infestation

Persimmon Fritters

Natalie-senseiiiiiii!

Pepsi Azuki

Octopus!

Kotatsu and Clear Soup with Japanese Clams

Persimmony Rice Pudding

Autumn Fruits in Yosano

Spiders!

The Silk Road Kimono Festival and Fireworks

Kimono-matsuri Part II (We Have Photos!)

Heresy.

困るね…

Kimono Festival

Short Post

Creamy Pesto Farfalle with Chicken and Broccoli

"I'm NOT HAVING a GOOD DAY!" ;_;

KappaSushi!

Typhoooooooooooon

Cultural Cockroach

Culture Festival and a Salad

Back to School!

Home

Yeth Now.

A Weekend with Kiwis

Dinner party minutes (supersummary)

Delaaaays

Whoops!

Town Life-Long Study Center Intellectual Playing Mansion

Goya: Round II

Yes. Yes, I did make hamburgers.

Mai Hasubando

Sports Day Debauchery

As Promised

Cartilage

"How are you?" "I'm tired."

Garbage

Nonstop.

Addendum:

Classes and Papers

Dogs - They are here and they wear shoes.

Kyoto and More Bugs

Okay, back on topic.

I ATE A BEE

寒いね!　(It's COLD!)