Under Asian Influence

Yu Choy/Chinese broccoli... Preparing what very well might be the best steamed veggie ever.

2011-04-19T06:50:00.002+09:00

1. Purchase!

A delicious bunch of fresh Yu Choy from Super H Mart.

2. Cook!

Rinse, then steam it.

3. Consume!

Good alone or mixed with Japanese Tofu and rice

No added anything necessary. It tastes like butter all by itself!

Craft Project: Make your own homemade dining chair pads

2011-04-18T13:52:00.002+09:00

My parents have had cane seat dining room chairs since they got married a few decades ago. Great chairs, very nice, but they have one major drawback. The cane seats are not super comfortable and not super strong so eventually they break. Ours broke. My parents were thinking that they would simply get the chairs re-caned, but I convinced them that I could do one better and make built-in padded seats for them instead. Thus, the project was born.

First, I looked online to find some instructions and I found them at ehow.com.

How to remove cane:
http://www.ehow.com/how_4407773_remove-chair-cane-webbing-spline.html

How to make a chair pad:
http://www.ehow.com/how_7815799_make-dining-room-chair-pads.html

I essentially followed these instructions, and I give you my photos of my process:

1. Original Cane Chair

2. Removing the cane and spline.

First, I cut a square hole in the middle (notice the piece on the floor). I used a hammer, chisel and needle nosed pliers to *carefully* remove the spline that anchors the cane into the groove. Then, I slid the chisel in between the cane and the top surface and gently tapped it, doing this all the way around the chair to loosen the cane from the glue that holds it in the groove. When I had all the cane out, I used a chisel, flat head screw driver and rough grit sand paper to clean out the inside of the groove.

3. Caning cut and removed.

4. 3/8" plywood boards cut and sanded

I traced the opening with newspaper, which was not easy and not recommended, and then cut out my template. I originally had 4 templates, but ended up just using one of them four times because they were trivially different. I bought the plywood from home depot in two 2'x4' boards along with some 1/2" mounting brackets. I cut the boards into 4 squares using a table saw, and then traced my template onto the squares and cut that template using an old (like 20+ years) Sears electric reciprocating saw. I then used an electric sander with 100+ grit sandpaper to smooth the edges and the top and bottom surfaces.

5. Plywood seat

6. Staining, sealing the boards. Optional.

I used some leftover Minwax stuff that would pretty closely match the color of the chair.

7. Board with mounting brackets attached to 2" batting.

I set each board on a chair, trying to line up the edges so that they covered as much of the groove as possible. With the board in place, I marked where I wanted each bracket then drilled small pilot holes and attached each bracket. Make sure you mark which plywood board goes with which chair, which side of the board goes up and which side matches to the back of the chair, otherwise you'll have a hard time matching them up later on, especially after the fabric is attached! I used a can of spray-on adhesive to attach the 2" batting (15" x 17" x 2" Nu-Foam, $11/ea. from Jo-Ann Fabrics) to the plywood. I had to wait a while to get a day above 65 degrees so that I could do this outside. In hind-sight, the adhesive step seems completely unnecessary and I would skip it next time.

8. Batting trimmed

I used some standard Fiskars multipurpose scissors to trim the batting. Ouch. This was very difficult as they were not fabric shears designed to cut through 2" batting. Next time I would try this with fabric shears or something that is better able to cut through very thick material. I wore a mask to avoid breathing the loose fibers (just in case).

9. Attaching the fabric with staple gun.

We picked out our fabric, 2 yards of a soft green/brown fabric to match the chairs and the green paint scheme we have in the room ($15.99/yard, from Jo-Ann's as well but we used a 40% off any single item coupon). My method for attaching fabric:
1. place the fabric good side down, place batting on top of that, and the plywood board with brackets on top of that.
2. Choose a bracket to start. Staple about 1/2" in from the edge of the fabric and 1/2" away from the bracket.
3. Move the the bracket directly opposite the one you just stapled. Pull the fabric as tight as you want it, staple that one.
4. Move to one of the remaining two sides, repeat 1 & 2.
5. Staple once on either side of the original staples so that each side has 3 staples about 3 inches apart. Make sure to pull the fabric as tight as you want it, and check how it looks from the opposite side often!
6. Now pull a corner directly towards the center of the board, check the tension and staple it. Go to the corner opposite and repeat. Repeat for the remaining two corners.
7. Now if you want a smooth corner (i did), you have to make several folds (rather like a chinese fan) and staple each. (wing it, that's what I did).
8. Trim any excess fabric that is sticking out at the corners, but don't cut it too close to the staples, you don't want the fabric to pull through the staple!
9. My pads did not completely cover the grooves that the spline had been in, so I used some long 1" wide scrap strips of the new fabric, folded them long ways and stuck them into the groove before attaching the pad. This way, the groove wouldn't show and it would simply look like an extension of the pad.
10. Final step, attach the pad to the chair. Put the pad into the chair, mark the holes in the bracket, take out the pad, drill pilot holes, put the pad back into the chair, screw in the screws to attach the pad. If you are having a hard time screwing in the screws, either drill a slightly bigger pilot hole, or try rubbing the screws on a bar of (cheap!) soap, or both.

10. Finished chairs with pads! Comfy!

Original cane chair again (for comparison)

Spring flower quiz

2011-04-15T07:44:00.000+09:00

What are these flowers?

California koshihikari rice.

2011-03-09T11:44:00.001+09:00

Yum!

Epic Snow Blizzard '11

2011-02-03T02:43:00.002+09:00

Woke up to 3-4 foot snow drifts at 9am today.

Helped Mom & Dad clear snow in front of the house.

...and helped clear our neighbors' driveways.

Before:

After:

Now time for hot chocolate and a hot bath.

Cookies for the Blizzard of 2011

2011-02-02T14:25:00.002+09:00

In honor of the thundersnow blizzard of 2011 that we are currently experiencing in Chicago, we have made one of Mia's favorite recipes:

Pumpkin Ginger Pecan Cookies

Ingredients:

1 cup canned pumpkin puree

3/4 cup packed light brown sugar (or 50% white sugar, 50% dark brown sugar)

1/2 cup nonfat plain Greek-style yogurt

2 tablespoons canola oil

1 teaspoon vanilla

2 cups sifted cake flour

1 teaspoon cinnamon

3/4 teaspoon ground ginger

1/2 teaspoon baking soda

1/2 teaspoon salt

1/4 teaspoon ground nutmeg

pecans for topping

Directions:

Position a rack in the center of the oven and heat it to 350 degrees. Coat 2 baking sheets with cooking spray or line with parchment.

In a large bowl, combine the pumpkin, sugar, yogurt, oil and vanilla. Whisk until smooth.

In a medium-size bowl, stir together the flour, cinnamon, ground ginger, baking soda, salt and nutmeg. Stir the dry ingredients into the wet, mixing until just blended. Top with pecans.

Drop tablespoons of the batter onto the prepared baking sheets, spacing cookies about 1 1/2 inches apart. Bake, in 2 batches if necessary, until lightly browned, about 15 minutes.

Eat! Yum!

Turtle Maki

2011-02-02T14:11:00.001+09:00

Now that I have a proper phone camera, I am back to blogging.

I give you... Turtle Maki. From Dozika restaurant in Evanston.

We're still alive!

2011-01-15T07:30:00.003+09:00

Here in the Chicago area, both going to school and working part-time jobs (Mia's is very very part-time). Happy to be home, but still missing Japan.

Mia wants a bunny. Brian wants Shinkansens. Both want winter to be over. We miss all our Japanese friends and students. Hope you all are doing well!!

A new blog

2010-11-14T05:25:00.000+09:00

I've started a new transportation blog for my ramblings about transportation-related stuff.
it's here: http://publictransitbug.blogspot.com/

Public transit, traffic, highways, bicycles, whatever I feel like ranting or raving about at the moment.

enjoy if you will...

-Brian

Word of the Week

2010-09-08T03:17:00.003+09:00

Blue Butterfly at the Morton Arboretum

Predilection

Meaning "a disposition in favor of something" or "preference."

When I went to the Morton Arboretum with my family, I took photos which suggested an overwhelming predilection for nature photography.

-B

Metra's Free Rides

2010-08-31T14:04:00.008+09:00

Image: http://chicagowildernessmag.org/issues/summer2007/images/transit_first.jpg

Chicago's Metra commuter trains provide a vital service to the public and are an asset to the entire area. However, their ability to handle high capacities leaves something to be desired.

When Chicago's Metra commuter trains are at capacity or over (during Ravinia concerts, Lollapalooza, Taste of Chicago, the recent Chicago Blackhawks celebration (429,000 people?), to name a few examples), the policy is to not charge the people that conductors cannot reach, which ends up being pretty much everyone. Those of you not familiar with the Metra system might not understand. If the average round-trip fare is $5, that's over $2.1 million for the Blackhawks event alone, if they collect all the fares. One Ravinia evening concert might overfill 8-10 trains round trip, at $5 per person, 200 people per train car, and 8 train cars, that's about $80,000, if they collect all the fares. There are Ravinia concerts all summer long.

A little background: Quaintly, in the Metra system, conductors still collect fares and hole-punch tickets by hand (no digital assistance, no automatic fare cards, etc.) while walking through the train trying to remember who they've charged, where they're getting on and off at, etc. You can board a train without a ticket and purchase one from the conductor when (if) he/she walks by and asks for your tickets. In some cases, this is your only option since there are no automated ticket purchasing machines, station houses have extremely limited hours, and many station houses are unmanned.

Metra's trains are bi-level, and have narrow aisles that make the task of ticket checking and collecting neither easy nor quick... fortunately, the assistant conductor doesn't have to go up to the 2nd level.

A recent example: My wife and I went to see Rodrigo y Gabriela at Ravinia on Saturday Aug. 28, 2010. The train we rode to Ravinia Park was packed (as were the 2 or 3 after us), and nobody was charged a dime. When we returned that night, the trains were even more packed, and they ran extra trains in order to meet the extraordinary demand (this happens regularly for Ravinia concerts, as the exact same thing happened to us 2 years ago when we went to see Feist on July 11, 2008). Once again, nobody was charged a dime in either direction. In fact, this doesn't just happen during special events. On Sunday Aug. 1, 2010 I took the train into the city. It wasn't particularly busy, but nobody in my train car was charged because the conductor never came by to check tickets.

Stop.

Think about that.

When you take the CTA train or bus home after a Cubs game or after Lollapalooza, do they let you ride for free? No.
When you drive to the Taste of Chicago, and the Millennium Park garages are packed, do they just open the gates and let everyone park for free? No.

This is, in essence, what Metra is doing... whenever their trains are too full for the conductors to walk the aisle and collect fares.

Why?

Their system does not scale. It cannot handle high capacity. It's not the fault of the conductors, it's the system. The fare collection system must be updated, able to handle all capacities, especially at the high end. In a time when companies and families are tightening their belts and trying to run more efficiently, it is baffling why Metra would be allowed to continue to forego collecting fares during the very times when their revenue and profits would be highest. Back of the envelope calculations suggest that they are forgoing hundreds of thousands of dollars if not millions... every year.

Metra needs to find a way to charge all of their customers, all of the time, ESPECIALLY during the times when the trains are the most packed. Private companies live and die by their highest volume days. However, by virtue of being a public entity, Metra doesn't seem to have to follow the same rules. But as a taxpayer, and a regular, avid Metra rider, I believe that this is unfair to the taxpayers of Illinois and unfair to other Metra riders who have to pay their fares.

B

Full disclosure: I love public transportation. I love trains. I love transit. I've been to Japan and South Korea. They charge all of their customers, all the time (unless the train is extremely, horribly late, in which case you can apply for a refund).

Homemade Pizza & More

2010-08-27T02:49:00.003+09:00

Upon our return to the States, we decided to take advantage of the weather and make our own homemade grilled pizza -
- Pizza crust (available at our local Jewel-Osco supermarket, NOT the frozen kind)
- Fresh Mozzarella cheese (round, sliced)
- fresh herbs from the garden - basil, oregano, thyme, rosemary, etc.
- fresh tomatoes from the garden (this is tomato season after all...)
- Red bell peppers
- Pizza 1 : Turkey pieces (pre-cooked, chopped small)
- Pizza 2 : Turkey sausage (pre-cooked, chopped small)
- artichoke hearts
- button mushrooms
- Pesto, olive oil
- Peachy Canyon Red Zinfandel (wine, very good)
- Yeti Imperial Stout (beer, not my favorite, but not bad)

Word of the Week...

2010-08-07T04:15:00.009+09:00

Our extemporaneous dancing/jumping party in the Cherry Blossom park near the Fushinogawa.

Extemporaneous

Meaning improvised; done without preparation.

Merriam-Webster's definition:

http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/extemporaneous

1. a (1) : composed, performed, or uttered on the spur of the moment : impromptu

(2) : carefully prepared but delivered without notes or text

b: skilled at or given to extemporaneous utterance

c : happening suddenly and often unexpectedly and usually without clearly known causes or relationships

"a great deal of criminal and delinquent behavior is…extemporaneous — W. C. Reckless"

2 : provided, made, or put to use as an expedient : makeshift

— ex·tem·po·ra·ne·ous·ly adverb

— ex·tem·po·ra·ne·ous·ness noun

One of my students was inclined to give extemporaneous piano performances, though she often said she played "at random." At the time, I suggested she use "I played an improvised piano piece" (suggesting no prior preparation) but she could say: "I played an extemporaneous piano piece" if there were some preparation ahead of time...

-Brian

Chicago Pizza

2010-07-29T21:17:00.004+09:00

Here is a faux wedding photo that we had taken during a photo shoot a few years ago.

One in particular gives a very nice example of what Chicago-style deep dish pizza looks like:

And here are some of the more famous Chicago-Style Pizza restaurants:

If you ever visit Chicago and want to go on a guided tour of Chicago-style pizza restaurants, these folks have a nice tour package: http://www.secondcitypizzatours.com/

And this page has several downloadable audio tours of Chicago (including Japanese!): http://www.downloadchicagotours.com/

Finally, here's what the Wikipedia community has to say about Chicago-style deep dish pizza:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chicago-style_pizza

Take care!

-Brian

Footprints in Hawaii...

2010-07-11T10:44:00.006+09:00

On our way back from Japan, we stopped in Hawaii. Staying in a hostel, which means we could stay there much longer, for much cheaper than would be possible in a regular hotel. :)

We did all regular tourist stuff near Honolulu, nothing fancy:

We visited Pearl Harbor and the USS Arizona battleship memorial monument. Climbed up to the top of Diamond Head (not actually that exciting...). And we spent a lot of time on Waikiki Beach relaxing, watching a canoe race, enjoying 4th of July fireworks, tanning, boogie boarding and bodyboarding.

We also enjoyed some tasty meals, including the following one at the fancy pink hotel's restaurant, Azure.

On our second-to-last day, we managed to take the bus up to Shark's Cove for some snorkeling. The bus trip is really long (passes by the Dole Pineapple Plantation halfway through), so for anyone planning on doing this I'd highly recommend renting a car/motorbike, or just staying at a hotel/hostel on the north shore, far away from touristy Waikiki.

Next time, we'll have to go to Kawaii, Maui and the other islands.

I leave you with this photo, my homage to a very beautiful poem, which also follows:

Footprints in the Sand

One night I dreamed I was walking along the beach with the Lord. Many scenes from my life flashed across the sky.

In each scene I noticed footprints in the sand. Sometimes there were two sets of footprints, other times there was one only.

This bothered me because I noticed that during the low periods of my life, when I was suffering from anguish, sorrow or defeat, I could see only one set of footprints, so I said to the Lord,

“You promised me Lord, that if I followed you, you would walk with me always. But I have noticed that during the most trying periods of my life there has only been one set of footprints in the sand. Why, when I needed you most, have you not been there for me?”

The Lord replied, “The years when you have seen only one set of footprints, my child, is when I carried you.”

Mary Stevenson, 1936

National bike to work week!

2010-06-14T13:16:00.002+09:00

Yamaguchi, Japan makes it pretty easy to bike anyplace by providing covered bike parking.

At the community center where I teach class... it's a lifesaver on rainy Fridays. I have to bike on Fridays, so it's nice to know that I won't have to deal with a soaked bicycle at the end of the day. Just put on my rain coat, pop open my clear, see-through umbrella, and ride single-handed back to the office. (Also helps to have a wheel-friction-powered LED headlight, sturdy metal basket, splash guards, and built-in rear wheel lock as standard equipment on my inexpensive, but solidly-built grandma bike).

Covered bicycle parking outside the central post office...

Supermarket bicycle parking (right in front of the entrance), sharing the lot with cars (but the bicycles are much higher density).

Library bicycle (and scooter) parking.

-Brian

Rappers for sale..¥210

2010-06-10T14:55:00.002+09:00

Whale meat for sale at our local supermarket, YouMe Town.

Rappers, a new Wrap-style sandwich...haha! silent W tripped someone up.

Neighbors out planting their rice field. Ain't springtime great?

-Brian

Revisiting Mt. Ishizuchi

2010-06-09T00:09:00.011+09:00

I wonder why people are so enamored with climbing mountains. You go up only to come down again. Your muscles burn and your feet hurt. Before climbing Mt. Ishizuchi the second time around (we couldn't finish the first time due to time constraints) I kept joking that I wanted to conquer the mountain. But after passing through the torii marking the end of our climb I realized the reason why we climb: mountains help us conquer ourselves. Mountains give us a concrete way of overcoming our fears, our laziness, our desire for comfort and the desire to do a million things at once. All you can do is put one foot in front of the other, try not to fall, and tell yourself to just keep going.

Mt. Ishizuchi is the tallest mountain in western Japan and is located on the island of Shikoku. It's one of Japan's 7 holy mountains and the shrine at the top is accessible only by foot. The climb takes 6 hours (round-trip) at a moderate pace with a 45 minute break at the top. The most interesting features of the mountain, however, are the chains. There are 3 chains that "short-cut" the hiking path, as well as a bonus "Trial Chain" (which we climbed last time, discovering that it leads to a lonely peak, beautiful view, and another chain down). They range in length from 38-74 meters long. You don't have to be an experienced climber to do them, but you do need some faith in yourself. You can do it! This was definitely one of the best experiences we've had in Japan.

Brian on the 3rd set of chains, halfway through. I'm standing on a small ledge with one hand on the chains.

Here's a map I edited for English speakers (full size here):

The final chain leads directly to the small shrine on top of the mountain. You can then proceed to Tengu-dake, or Goblin-nose Point, the very distinctive tip of the mountain. Sadly when we went it was so foggy we could barely see in front of us so the tip was completely shrouded in clouds.

See? It was so cloudy! And yes, that's all I carried with me.

There's also a small restaurant there with cup noodles, water, snacks, trinkets, curry rice, toilets and a heater. The staff live up there! I wanted to ask how often they go down, but my Japanese isn't that good. I'm happy to report that they were open for service even on a Monday in off-season. You can sleep here for roughly $90 a night (per person), but it makes more sense to climb the mountain in 6 hours and go camp nearby at Furei No Sato which has big baths. Mmm....

The best part of the trip (other than the chains) was the people. The man who ran the parking lot chatted us up and gave us a banana (so sweet and random). Only one other couple was climbing that day and we talked with them several times on the trail and at the top, and they gave us candy!

Oh Japan, we're going to miss you so much.

-Mia

A Challenge to Democracy, 1944

2010-05-22T17:25:00.002+09:00

Was looking at this NPR report today: The Creative Art Of Coping In Japanese Internment
by Susan Stamberg

and it linked to this video from 1944 (Government-produced film attempting to defend the massive internment of Japanese Americans in concentration camps during World War II.):

-Brian

Okinawa

2010-05-17T11:24:00.002+09:00

Our favorite restaurant in Ishigaki. Great food, great value, really great people!

A&W is a famous American root beer (soda) brand. They also run their own fast food joints, but these are not so common in America these days. They were more common in the 1950's or 60's I believe... back in the days of the soda fountain.

-Brian

Sunshine Girl - Moumoon

2010-05-10T21:34:00.005+09:00

First time I heard this song I fell in love with it. Second time, I wanted to dance. Third time, I finally asked someone who sings it.

Enjoy!

-mia

If you don't have anything nice to say....

2010-05-09T18:36:00.008+09:00

Thumper the rabbit changed my life when I was a kid. His mother scolded him for bad mouthing something and made him recite, "If you don't have anything nice to say then don't say anything at all."

When we were leaving for Japan, so many people tried to give us advice about the food, the people and the culture. I was shocked when someone told me Japanese people would ignore it if someone tripped on the street because it would embarrass the 'trippee' further; that saving face was all-important.

Living here now I can't believe I listened to this person. What an absurd thing to say! First of all, it's a blatant stereotype, which I should have never believed. Secondly, it's a classic tale told in the West to make the East seem as foreign and opposite from us as possible. Here is some direct proof that you can't always believe what you hear:

A motorcyclist lost control and fell off her bike on a main road. No less than 3 groups of people stopped to pick up the bike, take care of her wounds and block traffic around her.
During a tea ceremony, my hosts gently corrected me every time I made a mistake instead of letting me err unknowingly.
A 70-year old lady repeatedly asked a man to sit down during Okinawa's Dragon Boat Races because he was blocking everyone's view. Very loudly I might add... lol. But she liked us because we instantly sat down when no one else did. She even loaned Brian her umbrella to block the sun and gave me a fan!

But the best story is from today. We went grocery shopping and while in the check-out line I asked Brian to grab an apple. The man in front heard us speaking English and as soon as B left started asking me to come closer to him in broken English. He then asked all sorts of strange questions about America like whether we drink black coffee or eat somethingmumblemumble. The lady bagging groceries must have seen my face (I was trying to be polite but probably looked really uncomfortable) so she intervened. She left her bagging post, came to where I was standing in line, and had me follow her to another register, which she opened. The line was short, so I know she did it for my sake.

"The problem with stereotypes is not that they are untrue, but they are incomplete." -Chimamanda Adichie

Same applies here. All the Japanese people I know would most definitely help someone who tripped on the street. But they would also manage to do so in a tactful and unembarrassing way.

If you don't have anything nice to say then don't say anything at all.

-mia

Depiller

2010-05-07T22:36:00.005+09:00

We purchased, for the ultra-low price of ¥100, a fabric shaver/depiller/lint remover. A "pill" is a little bunch of fabric that inevitably forms on synthetic clothing (and sweaters) after some time, typically from rubbing against other things. "Lint" is just general dust and whatnot that collects on clothes. This little battery-operated device is supposed to clean "pills" and "lint" from your clothes.

Boy does it ever!

Left side: depilled | Right side: untouched

It was quick and easy and there was no danger of hurting my pants, the depiller has no exposed blade. Best 100 yen I spent last month!

-Brian

Shizenha Restaurant Obanzai

2010-04-30T16:47:00.004+09:00

Mia (vegetarian) is overjoyed!

If you ever visit Kyoto, do not miss Shizenha Restaurant Obanzai... an all-vegetarian, all-scrumptiously-deliciously-fantastic (and I say that as a fairly avid meat-eater) buffet style ("Viking Style", as the Japanese would say) joint. Obanzai ryori, where this place gets it's name from, is the traditional Kyoto-style home-cooked cuisine... and one meal at this fine establishment gives you an extremely delicious impression of it on your taste-buds!!

Lunch (11am-2pm) 840 yen. Dinner (5-9pm, last order 8:30) 2100 yen. It's a short walk northwest of the Karasuma-oike train station.

-Brian

Mini Mini Mini Mini

2010-04-26T12:57:00.002+09:00

We saw this car today in our local grocery store parking lot. An original Mini complete with Rolling Stones stickers. It makes even little kei-cars look big!

-mia

Missing L?

2010-04-18T14:46:00.001+09:00

I'm pretty sure they meant "SPLASH"

The Moco

2010-04-15T12:24:00.005+09:00

There are two types of cars in Japan: regular cars and kei-cars. Essentially, reguluar cars include your standard Toyota, Honda, etc cars that you would see in the US with all the features like automatic windows, remote locks, etc. Kei-cars are cheaper cars with less features and much lower taxes. For example, our kei-car has only one reverse light and a visor only on the driver's side, but we pay only 20-50% the taxes of a regular car.

One of these kei-cars is the infamous Nissan Moco.

For those who speak Spanish, you already get the joke. :)

The word "moco" in Spanish means "booger" (the hard crusty version of 鼻水-hanamizu).

It even comes in moco colors - green, yellow and brown.

So cute.

Cheese

2010-04-11T23:13:00.006+09:00

Yamaguchi City does not have quite the same grocery food selection of say, Tokyo... In particular, cheese - not being a major part of the "normal" Japanese diet of miso soup, rice, fish, veggies, tofu, soy sauce, mirin, various kinds of seaweed, and more recently, meat (etc.), can be a challenge to locate.

However, through sheer force of will (in actually just going to each of the handful of supermarkets in town) we have managed to find and sample a decent number of Yamaguchi cheeses:

The funny thing is... the cheese here is not always what you'd expect...

(front to back, right to left)

Cheddar slices (a recent discovery), fine.

New Zealand Gouda, great!

American Cream Cheese, perfect.

Emmental Switzerland Swiss, fine for Mia.

Grated "Natural Cheese" (like mozzarella), good stuff.

BACK TWO: Cottage Cheese & Cottage Cheese? How do you have two different types of cheese named the same thing? So, as we discovered to our delight, the blue one is actually Feta (woohoo! and the photograph on the carton looks like Feta in a salad anyway), and to our dismay, the orange one is some sort of sour-tasting cream cheese-like concoction that is probably meant to go into cheesecake if the picture on this one is in any way accurate. Either way, neither of these cheeses was Cottage Cheese.

The last cheese (not pictured) was a small green carton labeled "Sour Cream" which got me real excited because when I saw it, I got an instant craving for it (having not had it in over a year). However, when I got it home and opened it, it turned out to be more like sour-tasting Philadelphia cream cheese (not creamy, not watery, not really sour cream if you ask me). I'll post a pic the next time I see it in the grocery store.

take care, and enjoy your cheese!

Brian

Red Quince "Knap Hill Scarlet" Flower in Kyoto

2010-04-10T02:09:00.002+09:00

Red Quince "Knap Hill Scarlet" Flower in Kyoto
Originally uploaded by bderstine

Took this photo on our recent trip to Kyoto... there are more on my flickr page (just click the photo to see the rest!).

:D

-Brian

"You look hot"

2010-04-02T22:33:00.004+09:00

At Chicago's 2008 Lollapalooza summer music festival. It was a hot day.

I was wearing a short-sleeved polo today, apparently a rather chilly spring day (10-14° C/50-60° F), which most of my students found rather surprising and brave of me. Some said I was "young" and "strong", implying that young folks like me have a different concept of weather than folks like them. However, one student in particular (a typical middle-aged or elderly Japanese mother or grandmother (somewhere between 35 and 65) who looks and dresses like she's in her late twenties) saw my outfit and said: "Eeeeehhhh?! (a typical Japanese expression of surprise, with rising inflection, sounding like a very long letter "a") You... look... hot."

Now, I'm pretty sure she meant something like: "Honorable teacher, you appear to be clothed for a day of warm weather." But Japanese-to-English translation being the difficult task that it is, what with English's rampant idioms/clichés/phrasal verbs/slang/irregular verbs/et al ... I totally understand her statement. However, there were a number of things that made her statement funny and interesting.

First of all, saying "you look hot" when I'm wearing a short-sleeved polo on a 'cold' day is a bit odd, because it implies that I'm showing physical signs of having a high body temperature (such as sweating, which I wasn't), even though I was under-dressed.

Therefore, "you look cold" makes more sense.

Secondly, "hot" has many different meanings in English, and in that context, this otherwise innocent "you look hot" statement becomes an instantly recognized compliment or come-on for native English speakers:

"You look hot." = "You look sexy/attractive/beautiful/pretty/handsome."

So the appropriate native response in this case would be "Thank you very much! or ... Domo Arigatou Gozaimas!"

Anyway, I spent the next several minutes explaining all the different meanings of 'hot' that I could think of... here's what I could recall from today:

Hot food = spicy food like the hottest curry in Tokyo.

Hot item = popular item like the hottest Christmas toys of 2009.

Hot person = popular person like Hollywood's hottest young stars of 2009.

Hot team = a team that has won all or many of their recent games, something also known as a 'hot streak'.

Athletes (especially basketball players) are sometimes described as having a 'hot hand' or 'being hot' when they score many points or baskets in a row. 'Hot hand' is also used to describe a gambler at the head of a craps table who is winning a lot of money.

Hotshot = someone who acts very confident or arrogant, see HotShots! (1991 movie spoof)

-Brian Sensei

"I play blog."

2010-03-26T22:52:00.000+09:00

Yesterday I had a class with one of my bright, young students. He's 11 years old, loves table tennis and shogi (Japanese chess), is very respectful, has a great laugh, and speaks English pretty darn well for his age!!

We were reviewing adverbs of frequency when this little gem came up:

"Do you ever play computer?" he asked.
"No, I rarely play computer games," I responded, thinking he forgot the word 'games.'
"I always play computer. I play blogs," he replied with a smile.

I was going to correct him and say, "Ahhh, you mean you have a blog," but a funny thought struck me: maybe his way of saying it is better.

According to dictionary.com, "Play" can be defined as to engage in (a game, pastime, etc.) or to do or perform (in certain contexts).

Touché.

Sakura 90

2010-03-26T22:05:00.002+09:00

Sakura 90
Originally uploaded by bderstine

This photo has gotten quite a bit of views on my Flickr page. It is the 90-year-old Cherry Tree (Sakura-no Ki) in at Mukoshima Elementary School near where I play tennis every Sunday.

Simply beautiful.

"Yatta!"

2010-03-06T22:49:00.002+09:00

やった!!!

"Yatta", according to the internet, can be roughly translated as "I/We did it!" But my students seems to use it for everything from picking a good card in UNO to receiving an extra chocolate.

This song captures the joy and exuberance of that word (only partial sarcasm here... it is really happy!). I'm only sad to admit that I found out about it today and not 9 years ago.

Hakata/Fukuoka!

2010-02-28T14:45:00.004+09:00

We visited Hakata last weekend to meet up with David, who was visiting from Korea.

We got sushi!

... and Takoyaki (balls of fried octopus) from a street vendor:

David loved them!

Then wandered through Canal City shopping mall and found a 50% off sale and 70% off sale (couldn't resist picking up some fall/spring sweaters with such a heavy discount)... and caught this water symphony show:

Hark! Yamaguchi Brewery!

2010-02-22T23:07:00.006+09:00

Discovery of the Week!

Chocolate Stout
(courtesy of a generous, thoughtful student and Izutsuya Department Store where she bought it)

The brewery... looks like it's in the German countryside!

Behind the brewery, a gorgeous waterfall and interesting Japanese rock carvings.

So, after the Chocolate Valentine's Beer post a few weeks ago, one of my students realized I had a thing for Chocolate Stouts, and brought me a new one from our local Izutsuya department store. It turns out that they beer had a website on the label, which in turn had a map to the brewery, which happened to be about a 10 minute drive from our apartment.

So now we can visit our own local European-style brewery/restaurant... plus an extremely scenic waterfall just behind it. They brew and serve 6 different beers: pilsner, stout, porter, pale ale, chocolate stout, and weiss. They also offer tasty, handmade pizzas, pastas, beef cutlets, a fountain of chocolate, etc.

So, next time I'm getting a 6-pack variety box.

So.

http://www.yamaguchi-jibeer.com

Microwave Oven...

2010-02-19T23:50:00.001+09:00

All of the buttons on our microwave are in Japanese! ~~We don't know what most of them mean.~~

We got some local help figuring out what all of them mean!

Valentine's beer: Chocolate!

2010-02-09T17:42:00.004+09:00

I just discovered this Sapporo-Royce Chocolate malt at Lawson's, one of our many "conbini"s (convenience stores). Delicious!

(Update: It's also available at grocery stores like The BIG.)

Dinner: Fresh Sand!

2010-02-04T18:37:00.003+09:00

"Please make your best choice of fresh and delicious."
(says the small print on the packaging... the white text on the black background)

This sandwich is one of those more humorous examples of daily 'Japanese-English' that we encounter here in the fine land of Nihon. I like having an egg and tuna "sand" from time to time, I just wish they wouldn't use mayonnaise! At 185 yen (about $2) from convenience stores like Popular, 7-eleven or Lawson's, sandwiches aren't super cheap, but they're tasty and filling in a pinch between classes.

Easiest maki in the world

2010-01-31T13:38:00.003+09:00

I make no claims to be a sushi expert or maki master. I just like eating it!!

"Maku" is the verb for 'roll' or 'coil' in Japanese. Let's take that to mean that there is no right or wrong way to make maki, so long as they're rolled.

1) Assemble ingredients:

rice (I'm lazy, so this is just regular rice, no vinegar/sake/mirin/etc. Still tastes good!)
nori (seaweed sheets - as you can see, mine are actually for hand rolls)
fillings (avocado, thinly sliced cucumber, kani kama a.k.a. fake crab, and cream cheese)
wasabi paste (not shown)

2) Put a little rice on the flat rice spoon and smooth it about 2-3 grains deep onto the nori sheet, which is sitting on the bamboo rolling mat. Leave a space at the end of the nori. I smashed my rice, which isn't aesthetically pleasing, but it stays in place.

3) Place fillings at the edge of the rice adjacent to the blank space. Don't cover more than 50% of the rice, otherwise it won't close!

4) Dab some wasabi on the end if you dare.

5) Wrap the goodies with the blank nori edge using the bamboo mat to grab the lump and make it round.

6) Open the mat and re-adjust the maki towards the end of the mat closest to you again.

7) Finish rolling the maki until all the nori is incorporated. Squeeze it gently and try to make that round shape again.

8) You can now cut the rolls into thin, bite-sized rounds with a sharp, slightly wet blade (so it doesn't stick to the rice), but remember I'm lazy, so I just eat them!

I know full well that this isn't the "correct" way to make maki. Usually you have to take the freshly cooked rice, mix it with the perfect amount of vinegar, etc and special stirring techniques, but I think that scares people away from just making the things. Plus, I like the taste of plain rice better. Most people use too much vinegar and then you can't even taste the fillings or fish.

Thailand - Jungle Fever

2010-01-18T18:35:00.007+09:00

After the madness that is Bangkok, we flew back to Phuket and took the 3-4 hour bus ride to Khao Sok. It's not on the coast, but rather is characterized by its rain forest, abundant wildlife and beautiful flora. We stayed 3 nights in the extremely cute Our Jungle House resort in one (well, two actually) of their open-air tree-houses on the river.

Our tree-house! No bats as one of the reviewers claimed. I was actually a bit disappointed :(

The only bummer was that the website claimed we would wake up to the call of the gibbons, but never heard any. We did however see a family of 7-8 monkeys playing on the cliff across the river from our balcony each afternoon.

Go monkey go!

Our feet still hurt from all the sightseeing in Bangkok, so we spent the first day relaxing in the river, eating delicious food from the outdoor hotel restaurant, and reading books from their small library (I gobbled up The Lost Book of Salem). Our first full day started with an early canoe trip on the river. Even though we weren't allowed to paddle ourselves, we saw plenty of kingfishers, a couple large snakes including a python sleeping in a tree, a family of monkeys, a few large lizards, and plenty of beautiful scenery.

A super enhanced picture of a kingfisher. These guys were hard to photograph!

That afternoon was one of the highlights of our trip: an elephant ride! It was a leisurely hour and a half on the supremely cute Saonui (which means "Big Sister" in Thai). We got on the rather uncomfortable metal seat (why don't they use wicker seats?) from a platform, adjusted ourselves to the back-and-forth swaying on the elephant's giant plodding feet, and got a ride through the rain forest to a small waterfall where Saonui got a 15 minute break. On the way back we took turns sitting on her neck, which was far more comfortable and easy to balance than the seat. Legs tucked behind her warm ears, hands on her spiky haired head and bum resting easily on her fleshy neck, it was a lot of fun! After the ride we got to feed her some bananas which she greedily accepted before she went off for another ride. I'm happy to report that our mahout (elephant trainer) never hit Saonui. When she occasionally stopped, he simply said, "Ehh?" to her and she would giddy-up to her place behind the lead elephant.

All smiles on Saonui

Gimmeeeee!

The next day was quite a workout. Khao Sok is famous for the giant Rafflesia flower which is very rare and blooms only for 3-4 days before decaying entirely. Only a few places in the world have this flower, and Khao Sok with one of the largest known populations of it had only 11 known flowers this year (though this is significantly more than the 6 or so a year only 10 years ago). It's a parasitic flower with no roots, stems or leaves of its own, and seems to pollinate by air, which seems horribly difficult since there are so few and they are often situated rather far form each other. A bud is the size of a football, and a full-grown flower can reach 110 cm, though most are around 50-60 cm. Our hike was 2 km, 90% of which was UP a hill. Took about 1.5 hours. But the reward was several buds, a dead flower, a half open bud, and a gorgeous 55 cm flower. (Just a note: We were extremely careful about not touching the flower or it's host).

Yum. Don't worry, it's too stinky to take a bite.

Sweaty and happy with the Rafflesia

If you ever get a chance, visit Khao Sok! It's gorgeous.

Travel tip: If you go to Khao Sok from Phuket Airport, take the airport bus south a little bit and tell the driver you want to get off at the bus stop on highway 402 (main road) to catch a bus to Khao Sok headed for Surat Thani. This saves you an hour of traveling in the wrong direction to get to the main bus station in Phuket Town, only to drive another hour back to where you started (near the airport). The bus stop on 402 is next to a Wat guarded by two gaudily painted statues that are nearly as tall as the pedestrian overpass next to them. We waited 45 minutes for our bus towards Surat Thani, which eventually dropped us off for another bus to take us to Khao Sok, and it cost maybe $8-9 total per person.

Bird of Paradise growing wild

Thailand - The Bangkok experience

2010-01-11T17:24:00.019+09:00

We took the long way to Thailand. The very very long way. Flights (and trains to the airport) in Japan are expensive, so instead, we flew for about 1/2 the cost from Korea using Malaysia Airlines. Sure it took a couple extra days to get to our final destination, but we got to see friends in Korea on the way, so it was worth it.

(side note: Malaysia Airlines is amazing. Best airline food I've had, best service, best outfits, and very comfortable. They routed us through Kuala Lumpur actually, and since we booked 6 months in advance, there was (of course) a schedule change, so they ended up paying for one night's stay for us in KL. Fun!)

In Kuala Lumpur's Chinatown with the first of many many coconuts.

After KL, we flew into Phuket airport and hopped right onto the local, cheap but good Nok Airways to Bangkok for a 3-day stay.

Arrival at Phuket Airport.

Nok Airlines.

We arrived at our super friendly, cute, and highly-recommended hostel, Niras Bankoc... after getting scammed by the taxicab driver (FYI: always pay the tolls yourself when the cab arrives at the toll booth, because you pay them in the end anyway, and if you wait to the end of the trip then the taxi driver might lie and try to confuse you about the total cab fare and cause a scene).
Anyway, Niras Bankoc hostel: Highly recommended, once again. Only a 20 minute walk from the "lively" Khao San Road (read: full of foreigners, street vendors trying to distract you with green laser beams and sell you something and random noisy chaos), and 20 minutes walk in another direction from all the main Wats (Buddhist temples), it was perfect. At one point, no less than 9 Americans teaching English in Japan were in the hostel lobby, which is hilarious considering the hotel only has 7 rooms (some of which are dorms).

DAY 1: Shopping Day
The first full day we spent shopping, since Bangkok is the place to do it. On advice from our hotel and our guide book, we went to MBK, a 7-floor mall with approximately a bazillion independent shops selling everything from electronics to clothes to food to decor (many of them selling the exact same thing at different prices). And all prices are highly negotiable.

MBK and traffic.

A light dinner that night was at the infamous Chote Chitr. While not as hard to find as everyone says, the prices appear to have tripled since it acquired fame from a New Yorker article. It was empty when we arrived at 8pm, but that may have been due to our late night eating habits (or other foreigners' later night drinking habits. We had the banana flower salad (amazing) and some stir fried veggies. We decided that more filling things could be eaten at other, cheaper places.

We spent that evening wandering Khao San Road, eating in the street stalls, people-watching the other foreigners, and doing some more shopping. In the process, we discovered that you could buy many of the same things that were available at MBK but the starting and final (after negotiation) prices would be significantly lower on Khao San Road. We also got a 1 hour, full-body (naked!) oil massage for only 200 baht a person, which is a little less than $6. Needless to say, we took full advantage of this and got massages all three nights in Bangkok, twice at the fabulous Joe's House, located on a smaller street parallel to Khao San Rd. Truly, truly... Heaven.

DAY 2: Sightseeing Day (plus Christmas Eve)
The second full day was crazy hectic, but fun. We managed to visit the major Wats in Bangkok: Wat Sraket, Golden Mount, Wat Mahathat, Wat Phra Kaew- home of the 'Emerald' Buddha, the Grand Palace, Wat Pho, and Wat Phra Chetuphon - home of the 46m Reclining Buddha.

At Wat Pho/Grand Palace

Mia and the Emerald (but really Jade) Buddha

With the 46m Reclining Buddha.

Incredible Christmas Eve dinner view at Deck restaurant.

We ended our stay in Bangkok by going to a lady-boy cabaret show at Calypso Cabaret.

Calypso Cabaret

Next: Khao Sok National Park, and our Thailand jungle adventuring.

Photos from Thailand

2010-01-09T12:58:00.002+09:00

We've uploaded photos from our Thailand trip on Facebook.
More details to come... Enjoy!

and Merry Christmas too!

2010-01-06T22:07:00.002+09:00

Santa and me at our company's Christmas party.

Pictures of Thailand to come soon!

Happy Thanksgiving!

2009-11-26T22:58:00.002+09:00

Marinated & baked chicken, mashed potatoes, broccoli, corn & green beans, red beans and rice, quiche, wine & beer.

Bananas

2009-11-24T23:39:00.003+09:00

Teaching English to little kids is hilarious. Here's just one example:

I have a class of 5 kids, all between 6 and 9. 2 boys, 3 girls, and they all have major personalities. One day for our warm-up, I did the usual game of finding things around the room.

"Find 1 dog." Screaming and running until someone spots a dog.

"Find 2 birds." More screaming and running and pointing.

"Find 3 strawberries." This one takes more time, but they get it done (screaming and running of course).

"Find 2 bananas..."

This is where it all fell apart. We have two plastic bananas as part of a fruit basket set, but that's not enough for each kid to hold one. The boys got to the basket first, so the girls figured out another way to participate.

"BANANAS!!!!!" one girl yipped as she held her hands around a long imaginary object in front of her jeans zipper. "BANANAS, BANANAS!!!!!" the other chimed in as they imitated the same hand gesture. Then someone swiped a plastic banana from one of the little boys and used it as her prop.

Exasperated, I tried to steal the plastic bananas away from them, but it was too late, the madness had taken over. Truthfully, I was trying really hard not to fall on the carpet laughing with them.

(A week later at a festival, a Japanese man gave a small, baked sweet potato to one of my friends and then explained with his hands and words what he thought it looked like. We were mortified. He must have met my students.)

Japan the beautiful

2009-11-09T14:07:00.003+09:00

We've taken some amazing pictures recently, and here they are!

Rainbow in Tokusa, on our way to pick apples

Cosmo flowers on the river side in Yamaguchi

Two little girls playing in rice husks in Tokuji

A serene morning lake view in Shikoku

View from the top of Mt. Ishizuchi, the tallest mountain in Western Japan, complete with a shrine.

Saga 30th International Hot Air Balloon Festival (pt. 2)

2009-11-07T23:55:00.005+09:00

Picture post!

Last morning's "drop the flag" competition. This is only a fraction of the balloons there.

Solo shot of one of my favorites.

Brian's camera: Nice shot showing a good number of the balloons flying over harvested rice fields.

Us being dorks at the nighttime event.

Shaped balloons! Jerry, a fox, Babybel cheese unwrapping itself and an elephant (there's a panda hiding in the back too)

Balloons!

2009-11-03T14:20:00.004+09:00

Photos from Tuesday morning of the 30th annual Saga International Balloon Fiesta!

The balloonists were competing to try to drop a 'marker' into a big target X on the ground. Whoever drops theirs closest to the center wins I suppose...

Last night was too cold and windy for the La Montgolfier Nocturne... we're hoping for more favorable weather for tonight's Nocturne.

Today's Balloon Fantasia, an exhibition of interesting-shaped balloons, didn't have any inflated balloons due to high winds.

[more photos here]

Happy Halloween!

2009-10-31T17:27:00.002+09:00

Some photos from our kids party and parade today:

parade towards the main shopping street

my motley group (the ghost group)... most of the girls chose to be witches

pumpkin cupcakes that we made at cooking class this week

Apple pizza!

2009-10-27T21:01:00.002+09:00

We took a short trip to Shimose apple orchard (map: Shimose Ringomura) in nearby Tokusa on Monday (one of our 'weekend' days off). Not only do they have 3 different groves of 3 different varieties of huge, delicious apples... they also have:

A bunch of awesome chickens with attitude (and style, clearly) roaming about

Two very large, very furry, and very friendly pet dogs (the one pictured above liked to be helpful by carrying things in his mouth and punctured my umbrella in a few places with his teeth). The building he's walking out of is their on-site café.

After picking and eating some of each kind of apple and purchasing some to bring home for homemade apple pie, we had a quite tasty lunch of apple-cheese pizza (handmade on-site and cooked in a brick wood-burning oven!)

our pizza in the oven...

our pizza. complete with mini apple and apple syrup.

Oishikatta!

＄6 grapes

2009-10-23T22:12:00.002+09:00

why?

this is so sad because they're tasty but too expensive!

Eco-Friendly Japan

2009-10-21T23:23:00.005+09:00

Let's face it. I'm a passionate person, and I tend to switch the object of my passion quite frequently. However, the environment has been one constant. Hooray for trees!

Japan is in so many ways a very eco-friendly place. Rice is grown in your own neighborhood, so the carbon footprint is relatively low. Many farmers still even plant by hand! You can wash your hands with the water that flows from the pipes into your toilet when you flush (before it enters the bowl of course). Many people bike to work everyday here. Trash is meticulously separated into burnable, plastic burnable, recyclable plastic bottles, recyclable glass, magazines, newspapers, cardboard, etc.

But the one thing that Japan really could improve on is plastic use. True, most large stores now don't hand out plastic bags for free and encourage the use of your own grocery bag, but convenience stores do. Not only do they give out a plastic bag with everything, but all the food comes in layers and layers of plastic.

I'm not trying to complain about it, but rather present a solution. For all my friends in Japan right now, consider carrying your own chopsticks (hashi) with you to avoid getting both plastic AND wood every time you eat out and think if you really need to take that plastic bag. If you're really into saving the environment and happen to be a big oden fan too, bring your own plastic container to the convini. The girls at my local convini think it's really cute that I bring my own, and I feel good about getting a warm vegetarian meal for only $3.50 with no plastic at all!!

Oden in Fukuoka at a famous night ramen stand by the river accompanied by grilled scallops.
Clockwise from top: Tofu pouch stuffed with meat (that I gave away), a half-eaten daikon, atsuage tofu, and a heaping of wasabi mustard.
And yes, it's hot enough to make a grown man cry.

Fukuoka

2009-10-15T13:49:00.003+09:00

Last weekend Mia found the perfect burger joint... too bad its so far away.

I sampled Hakata ramen (above). Hakata and Fukuoka are basically the same place, so either name can refer to the same area. I visited the place pictured above with TK while the girls were shopping in Tenjin (essentially a neighborhood of Fukuoka). We all went to a famous ramen stand along the river in Tenjin and had ramen, oden (boiled veggies and egg), and yakitori (grilled chicken on a stick). Apparently, this place liked to serve theirs with a generous portion of fat still on the meat... and there was a whole boiling pot devoted to nankotsu (gristle/cartilage).... yuk.

I woke up at home with a bad cold... probably from getting an extremely poor night's rest sleeping in an internet cafe, half on a chair, half on a floor mattress. So now, in keeping with Japanese manners, I'm wearing a mask to protect my students and fellow teachers. Not sure how much protection it provides since germs can infect people in all sorts of ways, but wearing a mask is the generally accepted thing to do when you're sick and have to go to work.

Is my English getting worse? I can't tell.

Shikoku 5-day whirlwind tour

2009-09-23T22:06:00.003+09:00

Phone pictures from our trip to Shikoku:

Climbing the chains at Ishizuchi-san (a rather large, famous mountain)

The view from up high...

Camping in a gravel parking lot near Ishizuchi-san...

good thing we had futon mattresses.

One of two kazura-bashi (vine bridge) at Oku Iya Kazura-bashi...

"Look Ma! No Hands!"

Running on empty on our way back down the mountain...

Sanuki udon at a roadside restaurant in the Iya area

Lunch Viking at Tokyuinn Hotel's Shangri La restaurant
(In Japan, buffet = "viking style")

Naruto whirlpools sign (the actual ones were much smaller when we went).
Apparently, the best time to see the big ones are during the spring tides in March/April.

At Ryozen-ji, Temple ＃1 of 88 on the Shikoku pilgrimage route

Cotton Field campground... once again pitching our tent on gravel.
Although this campground was right up the street from the wonderful Kamiyama Onsen.

We took the local highways for the entire trip since our car (courtesy of the school) doesn't have an ETC installed (highway electronic toll payment thingy - like Illinois' iPass except more complicated).

The Free (sort of) Route:
From Yamaguchi, we took route 262 to Hofu, then got onto route 2 towards Yanai. The expensive part was the ferry boat from Yanai to Matsuyama (really Mitsuhama port) (the cost depends on the length of your car and number of people - 13,000 to 18,000 Yen - although the return trip only costs 1000 yen ~$10), but we figured it was worth the cost because it saves us time and is much more relaxing and fun. From the port, we headed to the Matsuyama train/bus station to pick up maps and ask questions at the Tourist Information Center (TIC). Over the next few days, we essentially followed route 11, then route 192 east to Tokushima/Naruto, with a few side trips off on narrow, winding mountain-side roads. Then back again, although we found out the hard way that the correct ferry port to get back to Yanai is actually Mitsuhama port, not Matsuyama port.
No Shinkansen, No buses, No trains, No expensive expressways, one somewhat expensive ferry.

Random things...

2009-09-13T23:13:00.002+09:00

Some things didn't really fit together in one cohesive post, so this is a catch-all post for all of those things... and I have decided to call it:

Random things I'm enjoying about Japan, Part 1

1. Funny (although helpful) toilet signs.

2. Tasty 100％ juice (and 100% juice blends) drinks.

3. Bunches of onions hang-drying.

4. Yummy Tandoori chicken/curry dinners at Shiva Restaurant.

5. Fancy, colorful drinks at fancy, birthday dinner restaurants (La Francesca)

6. Happy, coffee-flavored soy milk in the morning... (LEFT - soy latte anyone?)

7. ...or regular flavor (RIGHT) with fresh fruit and yogurt in the best granola cereal ever.

8. Kids making letters of the alphabet (M!).

9. Playing tennis at Yamaguchi Refresh Park.

Surprise...Beppu!

2009-09-10T03:37:00.002+09:00

Mia planned a secret birthday weekend trip for us...and the surprise destination was Beppu plus a big Taiko festival!

Takegawara Onsen (public bath house) with sand 'bathing'!

how to take a sand bath:

1. remove clothes, put on yukata (robe)

2. lay on sand, let old ladies shovel it over you (except your face)

3. go back to the bath, remove yukata and wash off sand

4. soak in a relaxing hot spring bath

Famous for having the most hot springs, Beppu was true to it's reputation. We experienced sand onsen (public baths), sulfur and mud onsen, hotel rotemburo (open air bath) and a good ol' modern onsen with mixed gender outdoor baths (with swimsuits)! Plus, we visited the 8 hells of Beppu!
More pictures here...

Giant Beppu mascot sculpture

Dessert plate from our hotel dinner

Iwakuni

2009-08-31T11:59:00.003+09:00

Yesterday, we took a little day trip with our friends Thi and TK. Destination? Iwakuni's famous bridge...

Kintaikyo Bridge

...and the best chicken-on-a-stick I've ever had (teriyaki flavor). Sanzoku restaurant was a giant, sprawling place with several different eating areas, gurgling streams, a little waterfall, and the biggest onigiri I've ever encountered (although it was a bit too salty for my tastes)!

Dinner on tatami, with our legs crossed, at a very low table

The giant Onigiri had 3 different fillings - umeboshi, seaweed and salmon

Giant scarecrow at the entrance

more weekend pics!

2009-08-24T22:25:00.004+09:00

The waterfall next to the (outdoor) somen noodle place

Brian's view of the somen noodle eating event

A large hawk sitting on top of a sunset-viewing structure on Tsunoshima (Tsuno island)

Land of the rising sun moment! (actually setting sun here)

"Joyfull Restaurant" menu cover

-Brian

(pictures from my phone)

somen nagashi!

2009-08-23T13:47:00.001+09:00

Flowing noodles! They flow with water down a spout, traditionally a split bamboo stalk, and you catch them with your chopsticks, dip them in wasabi dashi stock and eat them! It's a super yummy and fun lunch, but a bit hurried! Gotta catch 'em all!

(Mia, from my phone)

Kyoto & Nara: Final days

2009-08-17T01:06:00.003+09:00

In Kyoto, we stayed at Bon guesthouse hostel our last few nights. Great family-run hostel: real friendly, helpful, multi-lingual & clean... with showers, internet, bike rental, maps, kitchen facilities and washing machine.

Guesthouse Bon (Hostel)

Our first stop was Kinkaku-ji (the golden pavilion). Very impressive and certainly worth the ￥500 entry fee, but it was drizzling rain at the time so the pictures didn't turn out so great.

Kinkaku-ji (The Golden Pavilion)

We then took a bus (Kyoto is a bus city) to Nijo-jo castle but decided not to go in because it was getting late and we wanted to get to Nara for their Bon festival events. Plus we were hungry and saw a sign for "Welcome Asia" a Thai/Indonesian restaurant that satisfied our desire for non-Japanese food.

"Welcome Asia" restaurant menu cover

Sated and happy, we headed to Kyoto Station (itself a cool site) to catch an express train to Nara.

An hour's ride later, we were walking down the streets of Nara, stopping briefly at the gojunoto (5-story pagoda), then proceeding to get in line at Todai-ji, the huge wooden temple with the Daibutsu (giant Buddha). While waiting in line, my cell phone died, so I wasn't able to snap any more phone pics from Nara.

Gojunoto at Kofuku-ji

We wandered through the rest of the park, seeing loads of stone lanterns at Kasuga Taisha shrine but missing the Mantoro (lantern festival) by one day and missing the giant burning Dai symbol on the mountain by 30 minutes.

We managed to get a train back to Kyoto just in time to hop on one of the last buses back to our hostel area (whew!).

(sleep!)

This morning the ladies were tired so I took a 10-min. walk to the nearest grocery store to buy some eggs, fruit, yogurt & granola for breakfast while they slept in.

Sick of walking, we decided that today would be our biking day, so we rented some bikes and biked around Kyoto for the day, roughly following the so-called "path of philosophy" seeing a bunch of shrines and temples along the way. (but only from the outside because we didn't want to pay ￥500/$5 each time!).

bikes!

resting our feet in the river with the fishes!

shrine monkey statue

Antique Kimono Shop and Café... what a combination!

one of the many temples/shrines we passed

Heian-jingu shrine complex entrance torii

Tomorrow is our last day... hope we see a geisha!

(sent from my docomo phone)

Osaka Koya-san Kyoto: Days 5-7

2009-08-15T00:43:00.002+09:00

Two nights ago we arrived in Osaka. We had some trouble figuring out the JR (Japan Railways) trains, but eventually arrived at the best hostel of our trip so far... Osaka-shiritsu Nagai Youth Hostel. Cheap, clean, friendly, and they had much-needed laundry facilities and a great subway map (and an 11pm curfew)! We didn't mind the curfew so much since we were so exhausted... we grabbed a quick bite at the nearest soba noodle restaurant, did our laundry, and hit the sack.

Late-night soba restaurant.

Then, early yesterday morning, we hopped on the very easy, very punctual, very clean subway to go to Osaka Aquarium shortly after they opened (to avoid long lines). We were rewarded for buying our aquarium/subway 1-day pass with a very short wait, but crowds of families with kids made the first few exhibits more trouble than they were worth. However, the massive 8-story main tank with two whale sharks, plus the giant crabs, glowing jellyfish, and non-stinging ray petting area exhibits certainly made the trek worthwhile.

Giant ray: Osaka aquarium main tank.

Since we spent most of the day at the aquarium we immediately set out for Koya-san, where we observed the night time Bon festival in Oku-no-in cemetary and spent the night at Daimyoin (a temple lodging run by super-friendly Buddhist monks) complete with vegetarian meals and morning prayer meditation.

Buddha grave marker: Oku-no-in in the morning.

Finally, this morning we returned to Osaka via bus, cable car & train... stopped off in the Dotombori neighborhood for "okonomiyaki" at Chibo restaurant before continuing on to Osaka-jo castle.

Osaka-jo (jo = castle).

We then proceeded to get back on the train to take a special limited express train (shinkaisoku - only ￥540!) bound for Kyoto. Arriving less than an hour later, we quickly checked into our hostel and then went straight out for tempura and gyoza in the Gion area. No geisha or maiko tonight, maybe tomorrow after we return from our Nara day trip!

BakPak Kyoto

Mia chows on some fantastic fresh-made tempura

(sent from my docomo phone)

Tokyo Day 3 & 4

2009-08-12T15:27:00.004+09:00

Yesterday, we slept in a bit to recharge our batteries (in both senses) then grabbed a wonderful Japanese brunch at the famous Ueno Yabu Soba (since 1892!). Continued on foot to Ueno Koen (park), with its beautiful and vast lotus pond (Shinobazu-ike) and Benten-do temple right in the center of the pond. By this time, we felt much more masterful of the Tokyo subway system (map below) and had smartly bought the most useful one day pass (TOEIC & Tokyo Metro for ￥1000).

Tokyo subway map, plus my stamp print from the Tokyo Nat'l Museum

From the park, we walked to Tokyo National Museum where we made our own postcard-size Japanese stamp prints of the famous big wave art print (see bottom of Tokyo subway map photo, above). Favorite exhibit: samurai swords

Yellow Watermelon!

Later on we went back to Shinjuku to get dinner and wander through the classic Tokyo-at-night scene. At one point, we even found ourselves in the middle of Kabukicho, Tokyo's most notorious red-light district.

Tokyo: Shinjuku area

We indulged in the general sensory overload for quite some time, but we were all happy to head back to our hotel for a bath and more sleep after yet another long day of walking all over Tokyo.

Today we took it easy and visited the Metropolitan Government Offices for a free visit to their observation deck.

Followed that up with a surprisingly "oishi" (tasty) brunch at "Jonathan's coffee & restaurant"... hooray for pancakes and beef stew omelette-rice with the ￥300 all-you-can-drink juice/coffee/tea bar!

now it's time for me to take a nap on the shinkansen (high-speed train)

Next stop: Osaka

(sent from my docomo phone)

Day 2: Rainy & Fishy

2009-08-10T23:53:00.002+09:00

We had an early start today... woke up at 4am to go to Tsukiji fish market to see the tuna auction and for the crazy experience (made even more crazy by the everlasting torrential downpour courtesy of the nearby Typhoon)

Tuna Market

Killing, butchering the fish

Nom Nom!

...had a fantastic sushi breakfast at the market with Amy and Gareth, a really cool Brit that we met at our hotel. Tried whale... interesting.

Directing the crazy traffic at the fish market.

Meiji Jingu in Shibuya in the rain

After, the rain stopped and we walked around Shibuya and Shinjuku areas for most of the day. My cell phone died otherwise I'd have posted more photos...when we get back we'll post pics from our real cameras.

(sent from my docomo phone)

Tokyo: Day 1

2009-08-09T23:30:00.002+09:00

Visited the Imperial Palace Gardens right away (after a slight detour in the wrong direction).

Mia grabbed a much-needed bite of udon with shrimp tempura after a long time walking.

Rode the very clean, very smooth, very precise, very quiet, relatively cheap (on time and stops at a precise spot so that the doors of the train line up with marks on the platform) subway at rush hour... but its Sunday so its not so bad. Variable pricing based on how many stops you travel.

Staying at a capsule hotel tonight because the hostel we reserved messed up and didn't have a suitable room for us. (It's a long story.) My "room" is the bottom right in the picture.

Odds and ends:
- experienced a mild earthquake while bathing at the hotel... alone, on the top floor (9), with a bunch of windows, public bath-style!!!
- checked out the sights in Asakusa (a Tokyo neighborhood) :)
- forgot where our locker was in Tokyo station... spent some time retracing our steps.

had a good day

(sent from my docomo phone)

...and we're off

2009-08-09T08:56:00.002+09:00

Today we take a series of high-speed trains to get to Tokyo (roughly 7 hours total travel time).

The second photo is a shot of a very localized rain squall I drove through on my way to class (taken after I got there, since you're not allowed to use your cellphone while driving...)

In fact, you`re not allowed to drive while tired or after even one alcoholic drink as well, but Yamaguchi makes this relatively painless by having many places to pull over on the road, plus cell phones have a "drive mode" button which notifies callers that you are temporarily unavailable.

swimming caps required

2009-08-08T11:12:00.002+09:00

Swimming pool at Yamaguchi Refresh Park during a 10-minute break. No sunbathing chairs, no diving boards, everyone wears swim caps, nearly all Japanese people sit in the shade. They were mostly parents with young children. In the background you can see the main building and tennis courts. (Picture taken with my cell phone, sorry about the poor quality)

Mia and Amy (Mia's friend from America) after our swim. Amy's visiting us for two weeks!

We decided to go for a swim before classes today, our last day of classes before summer break! Tonight we go to Karaoke!

Fruit fetishes

2009-08-07T14:04:00.004+09:00

"Peach Pineapple" about $19

Watermelon (from Hokkaido)... about $31

Mango... about $52 (that's not a typo...)

Grapes... about $52

Melon... about $84

As you can see here, there exists a bizarre expensive fruit culture in Japan. These ones here are meant to be gifts, and can be purchased (in cash, of course, this is Japan) from our local Izutsuya departments store, which has more expensive things than most stores. The bigger, fancier, weird-shaped the fruit, the more ridiculous the price. Apparently, some fruits can run into the hundreds or thousands of dollars.

(pictures posted from my Japanese cell phone)

The Colors!

2009-08-01T00:25:00.003+09:00

A bee posing as a butterfly in Akiyoshidai, Japan

Recent international potluck. Clockwise from bottom: multi-grain bread, Ethiopian cabbage, Pakistani rice, mini-quiche, fried salmon with Israeli salad.

My favorite cat ever, Mac, attended the potluck, but didn't exactly participate. A couple months ago he could fit in your hand, couldn't see, and was saved from certain death-by-abandonment by the Sondas. Now he can be found attacking string, ties, the air, your foot, etc. This picture is super uncharacteristic of him.

Not so long ago....

2009-07-25T21:32:00.003+09:00

August 6, 1945, 8:15 am was not so long ago.

And yet I sometimes forget. Today was one of those days. I was talking to one of my students who is in her 50s about my trip to Hiroshima last month and when I said we spent the day in the atomic bomb museum, I asked her if she had ever been there.

"I was born in Hiroshima. Eight years after the bomb."

The blood stopped in my veins. How could I have forgotten that this was a very real event that was only a few heartbeats ago? This is the country that still carries the burden of the memory heavily and silently. And we treat it almost as fantasy from history books, something we must memorize and feel a momentary twinge of something-we-don't-know-what, then go on about our lives.

Hiroshima is now a beautiful city, bursting with liveliness, a testament to the spirit of the people here, but it remains a bold statement against nuclear weapons with a large section of the city still devoted to the evidences of the bomb.

She told me her family's story. Her father worked for the military in Hiroshima and was sent out on an assignment that day at 6 am, coming back later that night. His wife was killed and never found. He remarried and she was born. Her voice was gentle, calm and factual. I was frozen.

We talked a bit about what the experience was like for me, a Chinese American. My people were collectively the saved, the savior, the destroyer, the guilty, the merciful.... my brain couldn't stop jumping back and forth, but my heart just hurt. All I know for certain is that it should never happen again. Ever. We can't create peace with explosions and burning and cancer.

Yamaguchi Gion Festival!!

2009-07-24T01:01:00.004+09:00

A couple hundred men dressed in white boxers, red stamps and hachimaki (stylized bandanas) were already standing in front of Yasakajinja shrine when we arrived at 6 in the afternoon on Monday. The heat of the day was persisting still and a friend graciously gave us an extra hachimaki to wipe the sweat off our faces.

Some wore white tabi boots, some wore sneakers and one was gaijin!

Three girls dresses as Heian beauties with "shaved" eyebrows and red painted dots

We were in good spirits though because one of the largest festivals in Yamaguchi was about to begin: Gion Matsuri. It's apparently modeled after the very large festival in Kyoto around the same time. Our version entails the carrying of three portable shrines about 1 or 2 km to another shrine where they stay for one week. The most notable feature is the sagimai or heron dance.

Sagimai, in action

Truthfully, the dance was a bit anticlimatic. Two men dressed as herons walked in a circle slowly flapping their wings interspaced by two more men wearing straw wigs, twirling what looked like black batons (maybe flutes, maybe kendo sticks? not sure). Three live instrumentalists accompanied them (a flute and a couple percussionists), and two adorable eight year old boys in the middle of the whole spectacle hopped twice and hit little double-headed drums strapped to their chests at various intervals.

The best part of the festival for us was watching the multitude of men in white gearing up for their trek around the neighborhood with the portable shrines on their shoulders. Even with twenty or so men carrying the shrine at any given time, and plenty of replacements on hand, they still looked exhausted when we saw them a few hours later depositing the shrines in their resting place for the week.

Tossing the portable shrine in the middle of the street

After the traditional activities, we wandered over to the main shopping area where the street was filled with young people wearing yukatas (summer kimonos), games (ring tosses, catching goldfish) and food vendors (takoyaki, french fries, shaved ice, cotton candy, and hot dogs). We managed to find a vegetarian option for me: osakayaki. It's a grilled dough/egg/spring onion package, covered in sweet okonomiyaki sauce and eaten hot. Yum.

Osakayaki: my new favorite festival food

Tomorrow, the 24th, there's supposed to be the second day of the festival where all the people join in a big dance, but it's cancelled because of the major flooding on Tuesday (don't worry, we live on high ground, but we did cancel classes that day because the roads were flooded). Keep those families in your thoughts and prayers.

Glass Beads and Misty Mountains

2009-07-21T21:33:00.003+09:00

Monday, our "Sunday", a friend treated us to a glass bead making class for my birthday. We followed her cute yellow car along an extremely narrow path in the woods to a large house with a small homemade studio. The teacher, Ida Sensei, and her husband are professional glass artists.

The path to their house/studio

Some handmade pieces sitting outside

Each of us made 3 glass beads and 2 little glass leaves for chopstick holders. In theory it's really simple to make a bead. I apologize in advance for no technical terms.... instruction was in Japanese and semi-translated into English! We mostly just watched and had our hands guided when the ideally round beads turned lumpy and wonky.

Glass rods

You start by heating up a metal rod coated in pink powder that turns white when ready. Then you heat the colored glass rod of your choice until the end forms a bubble of melted glass. Coat the metal rod in a circular motion, taking several turns to do so, until you get a round shape. It was really difficult to do this! You can then take smaller glass rods in different colors to add dots, swirls, hearts, etc. to your beads by using the same slow turning motion of the metal rod. Swirls were the most fun.

Brian applying melted glass to the metal rod (sorry for the bad picture!)

Me applying green glass to a very misshapen bead

Making the chopstick holders was my favorite part though because we got to squish the glass and there was no spinning involved.

The final products! Brian's are on the right. Gotta love a man who uses pink.

Thank you Akiko for taking us!

Getting Lost

2009-07-15T00:12:00.004+09:00

A month or so ago we went to the beach for the first time and found, to our surprise, especially Brian's, hundreds of dead jellyfish washed up on the sand and floating in a strangely beautiful way in the shallow water. Brian had a nasty encounter with a live one in Jamaica, and didn't really want to chance another meeting, so we stuck to combing the beach for shells.

Outer wall of Hagiyaki studio

Last weekend however, we intentionally got lost in Hagi, a coastal town famous for its pottery, on the Japan Sea side (as opposed to the jelly-infested Inland Sea side) and discovered a lovely little beach with no people, lots of hydrangeas, and the most breathtaking view ever. We poked at little anemones in shallow pools of water on the rocks, threw seaweed around and splashed in the water which was warm and lovely. Nature decided we had had enough fun after about 20 minutes though and drenched us to the bone.

Anemones! And Snails! And pink hues!!

wind-blown before the storm

Apparently we did a really good job of getting lost because we've shown people pictures and no one knows where this beach is! It's all ours (except for that guy who has a farm right next to it). We found it by driving across the bridge at one of the little docks, taking a road up into the mountains, and then walking down a hydrangea lined path to to the water. Very counter intuitive!

Follow the ajisai to the water...

We dubbed it "Hog-Nose Beach"

This weekend was uneventful, but we did walk around Rurikoji at night, which was really beautiful.

An unidentified animal kept mooing at us from the woods

Paper Anniversary

2009-07-02T23:16:00.014+09:00

So we're back... we celebrated our 1 year wedding anniversary, the paper anniversary on Itsukushima Island (aka: Miyajima or Shrine Island). That's the island famous for the sprawling Itsukushima Shrine, which most of my students are very quick to point out is a UNESCO World Heritage Site.

Mia at the Torii gate during low tide.

After a comfortable, if a bit expensive train trip from Yamaguchi to Miyajima station (note: most Japanese local, regional and high-speed trains, airplane flights, toll/express-ways are quite expensive by American standards), we hopped right off and headed to get some famous Hiroshima Okonomiyaki. Having satisfied our grumbling bellies, we boarded the ferry to Miyajima immediately and called up our inn to let them know that we were arriving a bit early... and they offered to pick us up from the ferry port! Sweet!

Because we found very little in the way of English reviews of our inn, we are happy to strongly recommend that English-speaking travelers consider a stay at Kinsuikan, one particularly wonderful traditional Japanese inn (Ryokan - 旅館). It's not cheap (but also certainly not the most expensive) and your nightly rate depends on what room you choose (garden view, ocean view), but the price is well worth the expense for the experience. Included in the price: a several-course fancy Japanese dinner served in our room, a Japanese breakfast, free access to their hot spring (onsen), and traditional yukata (comfortable robes that you can wear when strolling around the island).

In our yukata

To our genuine relief, the staff spoke excellent English and were uber-polite in the quintessentially Japanese way. They even offered to pick us up from the dock and drive us straight to the inn even though we were several hours early and wouldn't be able to check in until much later. We headed out for sightseeing soon after arriving at the inn, and we were immediately thrilled by Miyajima's charms:

friendly (if a bit too hungry) deer wandering literally everywhere
beautiful shrines and temples, including the famous red "floating" torii
loads of surprisingly affordable shopping
oysters, oysters everywhere (which it turns out we don't like)
stone lanterns lining the sidewalks, lit shortly after sunset

Mia having a bit of fun with the local fauna.

Apparently there are many more yearly anniversary names, but don't ask me, check wikipedia!

I also posted some of my favorite shots on my flickr site.

Rainy Season

2009-06-26T12:33:00.005+09:00

Rice field and farmhouse (plus typical tiny Japanese car) near to our apartment.

Recently, Yamaguchi has been alternating between hot & humid and very rainy. Our plants have been happy, and I took the opportunity recently to snap a few photographs of our neighborhood.

The river near our house is now flush with grasses (as you can see here) and wild flowers.

I found this little guy blending into the weeds right outside our backdoor.

Mia's favorite things about rainy season:

Watching the egrets hunt in the rice paddies
Hearing the "sploosh" of frogs jumping into the paddies as your car drives by at night
Poking little tadpoles and watching them squirm away
Driving by a rice paddy and having the perfect one-second view at that particular angle of the rows lining up perfectly

That Heat

2009-06-17T23:37:00.005+09:00

It's like a Michael Jackson song

In our normal weekend quest to find something new, we went to Tokiwa Park in Ube to enjoy some sun and sights. There's a large pond/small lake with many many wild swans (white, black, and everything in between), pelicans, and ducks.

We named him Kenji. Oh, and I cut my hair.

One big swan even came out of the water and hung out with us for a while, probably hoping we had some popcorn to share. Unfortunately for him we didn't and wouldn't have shared anyway. Butter is no good for swan tummies!!

In another week or so the pond will be covered in red lilies!

A large summer draw is the big iris and hydrangea (ajisai) garden which is stunning. The Boy took lots of beautiful pictures and will probably do a whole post on that later. [I posted pictures on Flickr, here, and on Facebook, here. - Brian]

I left the park nearly in tears though because of the depressing monkey exhibit across the road that looked like it was built 30 years ago with nothing but concrete and metal. No trees, no grass, no plants, but plenty of people willing to feed them disgusting potato chips and other processed snacks. I glared angrily at some of the people, and they hesitated for a moment but went right ahead and kept feeding the monkeys anyway.

It was really hard to get Boy to cooperate with this picture!

On a totally different note, it's hard to find genuinely hot peppers in the stores here. We lucked out a few days ago in finding an ornamental pepper plant for only 200 yen ($2) with a crop of yellow, orange and red inch-long, capsaicin-packing beauties. Not sure of how spicy they were, I tried a tiny piece and man, oh, man was I sorry. It burned my lips and finger for a good 20 minutes after the fact. Four peppers were sacrificed for our delicious Sweet Potato and Cauliflower Curry, courtesy of The Joy of Cooking. It's one of our favorites, so check out the link to my other blog and enjoy!

おはようございます。

2009-06-17T01:40:00.003+09:00

Which is Japanese Hiragana for "Good Morning".

It sounds like: "Oh ha yo go za ee maas."

We're learning to read Hiragana, which is used for phonetic spelling of Japanese words that either don't have Kanji characters, or are intended for beginners such as ourselves. :D

We'll also learn the very similar set of Katakana characters at some point. These are mostly used for phonetically spelling foreign words.

Among other things, there are no "L" or "V" sounds in these sets, so you quickly understand the difficulty that the Japanese have in pronouncing English words.

According to Wikipedia: "In Japanese, the R sound is pronounced as an alveolar lateral flap (ɺ), articulated with the tongue flapped against the hard palate behind the front teeth, so that it sounds like a Spanish soft R. Because the Japanese language does not have a separate equivalent for the English L, native Japanese speakers not fluent in English are often unable to distinguish between the R and L sounds.^[1]"

so there you have it. we'll post pictures of this weekend's trip to Tokiwa Park in Ube shortly!

take care!

Ungainly Angry Gangly Ganglion

2009-06-09T23:27:00.007+09:00

I like Japanese doctors so far. If you know me, that's a really big statement.

But here things have been pretty good! And the health care is great! We have Japanese national health insurance, which pays 70% of all medical expenses (at least on our plan... I'm not sure if there are different ones), and our monthly rate is incredibly low because it's based on salary you earned the previous year. In our case, we earned nothing last year in Japan, so we have the lowest rate possible. Next year will be more, unfortunately.

We went to Dr. Oka yesterday, a nice doctor who speaks excellent English and has his own clinic just a short bike ride from our place. You simply walk in, no appointment necessary, and he saw me in 10 minutes. He instantly recognized the bump on my wrist as a ganglion cyst. It's an icky little stinker that I've had for 6 months, but it started hurting in the last 2 weeks and that's no bueno.

We had it removed right then and there. You can either drain it with a needle or surgically remove it. We chose the former because it's fast, easy, relatively painless, and cheap. If it comes back, I'll opt for the surgery, but sincerely hope in the meantime that it never happens.

Note the cute smiling needle. Only in Japan!

He applied a topical anesthetic, waited 5 minutes, sterilized the area, inserted the empty needle, and pulled out quite a bit of strange jelly stuff. Brian and I were talking excitedly about how gross it was, so the doc squirted it out onto a metal tray so we could get a better look. It was perfectly clear with some little bubbles (probably from going in and out of the needle), had no odor, and really just looked like a marble-sized blob of aloe vera gel that you might use after a bad sunburn. I can't believe there was that much in my wrist.

It's a little sore now, but already feels much better and has no evidence that it ever existed except for a tiny little red dot where the needle was inserted. Fun!

*Note: 3 weeks later and it's almost fully back, and the little red dot where the needle was inserted still has a scab. It hurts again too from the pressure on my wrist joint. Not sure if I want to drain it again, get surgery or leave it alone.

Comments... liberated!

2009-06-09T11:49:00.001+09:00

A few people were having problems commenting, so we've removed the login requirement for comments. Feel free to try again if you've been having problems.

Akiyoshido & Akiyoshidai

2009-06-05T02:27:00.010+09:00

Quickie post! We neglected to post our photos from our trip to Akiyoshido & Akiyoshidai (back on April 18 or 19th), so here I am making up for it.

New pictures from our trip to Akiyoshido (cave) where we went on purpose....

...and Akiyoshidai (mountain with rolling hills of stones, it's actually rather difficult to explain until you see it), where we went by accident. We were driving towards the signs that said Akiyoshidai, and then decided to take a left and BAM!

How? Panorama Assist Mode on our little Nikon S550, and then loading the photos into Photoshop using the Photomerge Automation.

we found this huge open landscape that took our breath away!

The actual photo size after the panorama merge was nearly 50mb, so i've only posted much smaller versions online.

So Eggziting!

2009-06-03T00:03:00.000+09:00

1. Cutest Japanesey Thing Ever!

With practice, they should turn out better.

I've been wanting these ever since I saw them. They're molds for your hard boiled eggs. Today, after months of looking, the bunny/bear set was found sitting innocuously in the hyakuen ($1) shop. Maybe a bit too eggzitedly, I rushed home and boiled some eggs. Peel the shells as soon as you can possibly stand to do so and gently close them in the mold. Stick em in the fridge for 10 minutes (or more if you're paranoid) and voila! Bunny and Bear shaped hard boiled eggs. A certain favorite brother of mine is getting a set of these in our soon-to-come care-package from Japan.

2. New name!

Stuck on the wall hanging we made two weeks ago.

Yawnie the parakeet has temporarily been given a new name: Chawan Mushi. Chawanmushi is a Japanese dish, and the name literally means cooked-in-a-covered-ricebowl. Bad translation, but it is essentially correct. You steam a beaten egg mixture with bits of meat, mushrooms, shrimp and ginko nuts in a small cup or bowl. Yum. It's soft, yellow and a bit salty, just like our bird.

3. Iron Chef Yamaguchi Style

The tamagoyaki is hiding in the makizushi!

B and I are taking a cooking class courtesy of one of my students. Today was our second class and we learned how to make rye buns, banana okara cupcakes, flounder simmered in a brown sauce, sunomono (similar to that cucumber vinegar salad you get with Thai food), and maki rolls including tamagoyaki, or sweet-egg-omelettes. The bamboo mats for rolling sushi were sitting right next to the bunny/bear molds at the hyakuen shop, so we got those too. You'd better believe we're going to be experimenting with all sorts of maki fillings now!

4. Bonus picture of B being a kitchen ninja in our apartment

Don't mess with this guy when the bandana is on.

Shinto Shrines - Daijingu

2009-06-01T22:49:00.008+09:00

Although Daijingu is most commonly visited on New Years Eve, B and I couldn't help stopping in. We were riding our bikes aimlessly around Yamaguchi when we spotted the large torii, automatically identifying the area as a Shinto shrine. It was on three levels seperated by a flight (at least) of stairs. Each level also had it's own place for purification. You wash each hand with some water from the ladle, wash your mouth (which no one really does, and we don't do either), and finally the handle of the ladle itself. Even though no one was watching, we did it out of respect for the place we were visiting.

Temizu is the act of washing hands and Temizuya is the basin filled with water

The first was a shrine dedicated to Inari, god/goddess of agriculture, made clear by the 30 or so kitsune, fox, statues everywhere. It also had a series of red torii leading to a little path behind the shrine.

Pretty, eh?

The next level had several small shrines, a taiko drum, ropes and bells, and multiple places where you could pay a little money for either an omikuji (fortune telling piece of paper) or ema (wooden plaque). The omikuji is cheaper and contains a prewritten fortune (like fortune cookies!), good or bad. The bad ones are left tied to strings in front of the shrines and good ones are taken home or kept in your wallet. The ema are wooden plaques that are more expensive but much prettier on which you write wishes for the deities to grant and leave in front of the shrines. I desperately wanted to take home an ema with a beautiful bamboo/gohei/red-stamp pattern, but couldn't figure out where to pay for it. Oh well.

I wanted a blank version of the middle ema

We couldn't figure out the next level which had two newer "shrines" (actually, three gold-gilded buildings on stilts surrounded by a fence), a large roped off area that looked like the foundations of one of these three-part "shrine" structures, and a large flat rock covered in moss also sectioned off with rope.

The best part however was the random path up the mountain. Wild raspberries, caterpillars, and little white flowers that smelled almost like jasmine kept us company. We climbed at least 30 minutes before getting tired and going back down. The path was starting to get pretty rough and narrow. But we did get this awesome picture with Yamaguchi City in the background!

Sweaty and happy near the height of our climb

Welcome Dinner!

2009-05-29T23:20:00.005+09:00

Last Saturday, Mia and I were treated to a lovely welcome dinner party at a local restaurant (Subarashikikanajinsen - thanks!) :)

The gang (left to right): Mayumi, U, Brian, Mia, Azusa, Akira, Junko

Azusa, Akira and I had hot Japanese shōchū (an alcoholic drink made from sweet potato). It doesn't taste like anything I've ever had in America, and it should not be confused with sake. This was much less strong and much more sweet than sake, in my experience. Mia opted for the much healthier choice of orange juice. :)

Since there is zero tolerance for alcohol when driving (or biking) here in Japan, everyone had made arrangements to get home. Mia drove me home and my students either had someone come pick them up to drive them home, took a taxi, or walked. While Illinois has a limit of 0.08, the limit here is 0.00. No drinks. The fine for drunk driving is 300,000 yen (about $3,000), plus you lose your license and aren't allowed to drive for 10 years, so you simply don't do it.

Check out that new header!

2009-05-27T01:55:00.003+09:00

We decided that orange bar had to go. Hope you enjoy the new design!

The two little Ouchi dolls are famous in Yamaguchi Prefecture. They represent a happily married man and wife, and are an example of typical art from this region of Japan. A friend told us that back in the day, if a woman was upset with her husband she would show it by simply turning the little female doll to face away from the male one. Though it seems a bit silly (and really passive!), it may actually be true.

Of course, the header picture is not of real dolls, but rather a spray painted image of them. We really liked the juxtaposition of this historic art and, essentially, graffiti. Enjoy!

Japanese Tea Ceremonies

2009-05-23T16:00:00.001+09:00

During the week before we left for Korea, two of my adult conversation classes taught me about the traditional Japanese tea ceremony by demonstrating in person!

whisking the tea before serving

The basic steps are:
- Boil some water.
- Use the tea scoop to put one or two scoops of green tea powder into your large Hagi pottery bowl.
- Add boiling water to the powder in the bowl (not too much, only about 3 large gulps of water... see picture)
- Briskly whisk the tea powder and water together in each bowl until a nice layer of foamy bubbles forms on the tea.
- Then you serve the tea to your guests (one Hagi pottery bowl per guest).

There are a series of ceremonial steps that I've skipped here, but I couldn't remember them all and didn't want to make a mistake, so I'll leave that extra research up to you!

properly whisked tea

These were quick ceremonies done during or in between classes, and I was told that they weren't truly "authentic", but I certainly learned something new and we all definitely enjoyed ourselves!

tools: (clockwise from left) whisk, red bean sweets and pastry, Hagi bowl with tea, bamboo tea scoop, green tea powder

One of my classes held the ceremony after class at my student's home where she showed us her beautiful rose bushes, green tea ceremony room, and very nice kitchen! The other ceremony was held during class, and we tried to use as much English as possible to explain the process. One of my students even brought a large book (in English) that was all about the Japanese tea ceremony history, and we read a few excerpts from that for practice!

More photos from our Green Tea ceremonies.

When you're having regular Japanese green tea, you usually drink it out of much smaller Japanese style teacups, no whisk required. Typically, you boil the water, then pour the water into a little Japanese tea pot (kyusu) that has dried tea leaves in it and a metal strainer (to prevent the leaves from getting out of the kettle), then pour the tea from the pot into your little teacups. But some people just put tea bags or tea + strainer into the boiling water and skip the middle step.

More Japanese Green Tea Ceremony info at Wikipedia

Morning Sunshine

2009-05-20T23:06:00.002+09:00

Hubby got these for me from the riverbank on his morning run today.

Sunflowers, Asian poppies, clovers, and wild grass

Rice and Mud

2009-05-20T00:13:00.006+09:00

Mia: "So Brian, what do you want to do tonight?"
Brian: " The same thing we do every night Mia, try to take over Japan!!!"

The scheme of the day was rice planting. If we could perfectly hone our rice planting skills, we could grow rice in special patterns recognizable from outer space, telling extraterrestrial life that we (Brian and myself) are the rulers of Earth and that they should pay tribute to us. Alas, as we realized that the typical rice paddy in Japan is only as big as a living room and would be difficult to see from outer space, we decided to just have fun squishing around in the mud instead.

And we did.

Sunday we took the short 20 minute drive to Tokuji, a nearby town, using the Chugoku expressway. Japanese highways are notoriously well maintained, but hideously expensive. We were misinformed that the drive from Yamaguchi to Tokuji (only one exit) was free, so we entered the highway at normal merging speed and flew down the nearly empty lanes. Upon arriving in Tokuji however, we were greeted by a toll attendant who kindly asked us for our ticket. "What ticket??" Long story short, we apparently flew right past the Yamaguchi toll attendant and never picked up a ticket to show where we had entered the highway, thus preventing them from knowing how much to charge us. Luckily we had a map that showed where we entered (and we kept saying, "Yamaguchi-shi, Yamaguchi-shi!!!!" and "Gomenasai" or, I'm sorry!!!) and they found us to be trustworthy enough, so they charged us the ¥ 550, or roughly $5.50, and sent us on our way. Soooooo much money!

To the point! We planted rice in a little paddy off the side of a very small mountainous road in a part of town 20 minutes from the nearest store. A field of mud is flooded with about a foot of water and then tilled so the soil is extremely soft. Nearly all of us were barefoot (about 50 people, Japanese and foreigners) and wearing raincoats because it was raining cats and dogs AND lizards. It was quite the shower. Lines had already been drawn into the mud for us to follow, and many of us took two lines each. We were instructed to take a block of rice seedlings, pinch off 2-5 at a time, and plant them one chopstick length apart. They even gave us bamboo hashi (chopsticks) to measure!

After getting used to our feet sinking pretty far into the mud and ruining our lines, we eventually got the hang of it and were moving pretty fast. The type of rice we were planting is called Koshihikari rice, and is known as some of the finest sushi rice in the world. I hope we eventually get to eat it too!

We found this cute little red-bellied salamander checking out our rice planting skills and decided to give him a bird's eye view.

Planting was from 9-10:30, and by the time we were finished, we were famished. Luckily, we finished a little earlier than everyone else (our paddy was a bit shorter), so we washed up and were promptly sent to the kitchen to help prepare lunch. We learned how to form little rice balls, onigiri, decorated with a single umeboshi, or pickled plum. These are known as Land of the Rising Sun onigiri because the red sphere on white rice looks like the Japanese flag. I'm not sure what went into the rice, but these older Japanese women simply instructed us to dunk our hands in a bowl of cold water, then plopped an extremely hot lump of rice in our hands and made the motions of how to form them into pretty little rounded triangles. Took about 3 before I could do it right.

The rest of lunch consisted of sweet bean mochi, or glutinous rice balls, steamed in leaves, several types of pickled vegetables, and tea. Gotta love Japanese lunches.

Lazy Korea Post

2009-05-16T00:47:00.006+09:00

That is to say, this is my lazy post about Korea. Here's a link to pictures! We'll write more later.

[Brian's quick update]
Here's my favorite photo of the ones that I took while in Korea, if you click on the photo, it will take you to my Flickr page where you can explore more of my favorites from the trip!

Gokoku-jinja

2009-05-13T11:07:00.007+09:00

Gokoku-jinja is a sprawling shrine very near to Sesshu Garden and we visited both on the same day. According to this Encyclopedia of Shinto website, Gokoku-jinja is a generic name for all shrines "dedicated to the spirits of individuals who died in Japanese wars from the end of the early modern period through World War II."

Unfortunately, I really don't have much to say about it since I couldn't find much info in English about this specific shrine. The reason that this was particularly interesting to us was that the priest that we met there (who happened to be locking the place up for the day) actually took the time to perform several minutes of Taiko drumming from inside the shrine while we listened outside. His playing created a very relaxing and meditative atmosphere. Afterward he chatted with us for a while and attempted to answer several of Mia's questions.

3 quick things

2009-05-13T01:09:00.004+09:00

Meet Yawnie, our parakeet-on-loan while we're in Japan.
He loves singing, speaks a little Japanese, and likes to sit on Brian's head.

We finally got a shot of the second crane (and a couple ducks).
Is it actually a different kind of bird?

Cute as this picture is, I can't help but wonder if my students think I'm fat!
*le sigh*

The day that changed everything (kinda)

2009-05-10T00:34:00.004+09:00

Anyone not living in the United States who thinks a grumpy old doctor with a cane and Viocodin addiction is attractive understands the above graphic. Hulu has viciously blocked anyone outside the US from using their services.

Ok, ok, you got me. They've always blocked foreign users, but we at least used to be able to use a service like Hotspot Shield, an IP anonymizer, to trick Hulu into thinking we were in the US. However, when we tried it tonight we got this semi-hurtful little message saying something to the effect of, "Hey, we figured out your little trick and you can't use it anymore. Nah nah nah nah nah."

Now we have two choices: use bit torrents and get the episodes illegally, but free and without commercials (see Hulu, you could have at least shown as the ads still!!), or buy episodes on iTunes. I'm happy to report that tonight we took the high road, but who knows how long that'll last. (I'm kidding.... of course we'll always be little angels.... right? *wink*)

If you have any insider info, let us know. *Sigh* Such is the life abroad. We get adventure and stories, but no TV in English.

Note: Hulu, we'd be happy to pay a monthly subscription for your services.

Sesshu and his garden

2009-05-07T23:08:00.008+09:00

Sesshu Toyo may only be one of the artists I have come to respect in Japan, but he is definitely the one that has most touched my heart. At a young age he was sent to live in a monastery with his uncle because his parents had passed away. One day he was caught drawing instead of doing his chores and as a punishment was tied to a pole to contemplate his wrongdoings. When a monk came to check on him later, he was surprised to find that Sesshu had drawn with his feet in the mud he created from his own tears. The other version of the story is that a monk was startled to see a mouse near Sesshu's feet, which turned out to be only a toe drawing in the dirt. Either way, the monks recognized his talents and sent him to China to learn traditional ink painting among other things.

The Five Storied Pagoda, or Gojunoto, is the beautiful piece of architecture from our previous pictures, was the child of Sesshu. I forget the significance of the five stories, but on top there is a spire with 9 metal rings, representing the 9 levels of heaven. No one enters the pagoda, because it is meant solely for meditative purposes. Additionally, there are no nails used in the entire structure and it's close to 600 years old! I apologize for this poor explanation of the structure, because a lot more was told to me, but it was a few weeks ago. Still, for some reason, Rurikoji doesn't compare to Sesshu's garden.

Sesshutei, or Sesshu's public garden, is supposedly a recreation of one of his famous landscape paintings, but I like to think he planned the garden first, then painted it, then planted it. It's composed of rocks, grass, a few trees, a pond, and a bamboo forest. The result is so moving and simultaneously immobile that you're almost forced to sit barefoot on the wooden planks of the attached house and just breathe. There's no analyzing of the artistry of the scene, no ideas of what to do next in the day, no desire to recreate the image in any way. You are simply present.

The large wooden house attached can be explored and it is full of tatami mat rooms, paintings, small shrines to unknown deities, bowls of incense, bells, and other mystical things. And yet, it seems that it's main purpose is to serve as a contrast to the effortlessness of the beauty just out the back door. The front leads to the zen rock and sand garden from the above picture. That day, we spotted several little tokage, lizards, creeping through the cracks in the steps and sunning themselves on the rocks. They were quite amusing. There's also a tea house attached, though we did not enter.

You can hike up the small mountain (hill really) behind the pond and the garden and see a small cemetery and three small shrines to more unknown deities. The walk was memorable only because an uguisu, Japanese nightingale, was singing the entire time.

It's a shame our pictures couldn't capture the full beauty of the gardens, but I guess you'll just have to come visit us and see for yourselves.

Here's a link to the local tourist guide site about this garden:

The broken ribs of ancient warriors puncture the earth's mossy skin
While the trees take turns showering gold into the pond that has slept the last 500 years,
and plans on sleeping forever.
And why should it ever wake up here?
The birds sing lullabies in the day
and the moon coos to it at night.
The bamboo simply watches from ever increasing heights.

(poem by Mia)

High Speed Internet plans in Japan and white cranes (Weekend 4)

2009-04-23T17:31:00.006+09:00

So last week we lost our internet connection at our apartment. That's why things have been so quiet here on the blog lately. We were using the final days of the previous teachers' internet connection and that plan finally ended last Tuesday at around noon.

That plan was supposedly a 100mbps (download) ADSL plan through Yahoo BB! for around 6500円 (Yen, or ¥6500) per month. That's about $65 USD. But we were only getting download speeds of about 1.5mbps, so we figured it was a bad deal and decided to sign up for cable internet instead.

The "C-able" building here is where I'm at right now typing this blog. They have a free community computer center available with public computers and with LAN wires, which I'm using with my laptop (noto) since typing on Japanese keyboards presents many difficulties and slows me down a lot.

Our "C-able" internet plan should be closer to 26mbps download and costs only 3500円 per month. Based on another teacher's experience, our actual connection speeds should be much higher than what we were getting with Yahoo ADSL. We'll see in about 2 or 3 weeks. [27/04/2009 Update - Internet was installed in the morning without any difficulties, cable guy was friendly even though he spoke very little English. As we had hoped, our actual internet speeds are much, much faster... around 16mbps download!)

So, last week (2 weekends ago) I snapped some photos of our first homemade Udon lunch, and several pictures of some baby cranes that were learning to fly in a copse of trees near one of my classrooms. Here's the link.

I'd post more, but I'm out of time at the computer center. Hope you enjoy these pics. We have a lot more to share, but no time!!!

Weekends and Sushi

2009-04-13T23:32:00.002+09:00

Mmm..... what a weekend! We finished work Saturday night at around 7 PM, got sushi (this post is mostly about sushi), went to the free foot spa, ashiyu, got dessert and came home. Sunday we biked all around town and discovered a really beautiful park on top of the mountain at another really beautiful park. Today we drove to Seshutei, or Seshu Gardens. Seshu is the painter/priest who designed the beautiful 5-story pagoda, Rurikoji, from other pictures. There will be a whole post on him and this garden later.

The big news here is that BRIAN LIKES SUSHI! Additionally, BRIAN LIKES EEL AND RAW SCALLOPS! I have photo evidence. (I know it's really annoying to type in all caps, but this is really really big.)

Ain't he handsome?

The sushi place by our house, Nonta Sushi, is a three minute walk. You can sit either at tables or around the sushi bar, which has a conveyor belt with freshly prepared sushi. It's called kaiten-zushi. This is great for us because we don't have to mumble broken Japanese to anyone, just grab stuff off the belt as it comes by. There's also a really long menu (that has some pictures! yeah!) from which you can order other items and they will promptly be prepared by any of the three sushi chefs in front of you.

Note the revolving tea cups on the lower level for macha, green tea.

The prices are determined by the color of the plate, and your total is calculated simply by counting up your plates! We gorged ourselves (maguro, hamachi, lots of ebi and scallops, crab, cooked tuna, shiitake, tekka maki, and more) and even got a dessert, and still only spent about $33 total. There's no tipping here, and tax is pre-factored into the cost.

Our Japanese is starting to exist (barely) so we were at least able to convey what we wanted to our chefs. The discovery of the night was definitely the scallops. They sear them for a few seconds on one side, butterfly them open and set them on small beds of rice with a lemon wedge. Honestly the most delicious thing I've ever had in my life. We got three orders of that... *sigh* and would have had more if we had discovered them earlier in the dinner. Glad we got over our fears on that one.

Two of these beauties (one was already eaten) cost only ¥250, or $2.50.

I grabbed a large futomaki roll off the belt, and tucked inside was a small piece of uni, sea urchin. I've been trying to find uni for years and finally got to taste it. It was soft like peanut butter and had a salty taste that went fruity sweet at the end. Yum.

We also discovered the difference between unagi and anago (eel and sea eel). The former is darker, more expensive and fattier. The latter is a light tan, still covered in the same good sauce, and in our opinion, much tastier.

Something that looked like canned tuna with cucumbers was "quite unimpressive," according to Brian. There was also some crab meat covered with a thin squirt of what looked like cat food that was strange. The crab was ok, but the green stuff was gross.

Icky. And it cost ¥400. :(

The biggest difference between American sushi and Japanese sushi is that there's a much much bigger variety of sushi here. For example, a regular bento box at the convenience store here is likely to have uni, squid, octopus, shrimp, tuna, mackerel, egg, flying fish roe and more. I think we mostly have california rolls back home. Avocados are small and expensive here so cali rolls are out of the question. Another difference is that the wasabi is placed under the piece of fish, directly on top of the rice, so you don't have to add any. The sizes seem to be the same in both countries, though I always thought Japanese sushi was smaller. Guess it isn't anymore.

I hate to be cheesy, but this just keeps getting better and better.

More than you ever wanted to know about toilets in Japan

2009-04-12T22:14:00.002+09:00

In my ongoing descriptions of things that are different between Japan and America, it was inevitable (and requested by my Mom!) that I devote an entire blog post to toilets.

Toilets in America really don't warrant much discussion. There's a tank, a bowl, and a flush lever. You push the lever and the toilet flushes. Recently, the law changed so that all new toilets use less water per flush, but that's about it. Anyway, this post isn't really about American toilets, this is about Japanese toilets... or at least the ones that I've encountered.

In Japan, the toilets are usually one of two types: Japanese squat or Western style.

Japanese squat is what it sounds like, you squat to use it (facing the flush lever).
I have been able to avoid using one by careful planning and by having the good fortune of teaching classes in buildings that have western facilities.

Western style is pretty much the same as an American toilet, with one consistent difference and several optional "features" designed for efficiency and comfort.

The one big difference is that all Western-style Japanese toilets have 2 different flushes to conserve water.

A weak, dilution flush for #1 (you pull the lever up to the flush position for as long as you want it to flush)
A strong, full flush for #2 (you just push the lever and it does the rest, like America). Also, some toilets even sense when you sit on the seat and automatically add a bit more water to the bowl.

(this is the flush lever in our apartment)

"Options":

'The faucet' - usually not found in public bathrooms since they have sinks, I've found the built-in faucet in most home and hotel bathrooms. The reserve tank has a hand-washing faucet attached to it so that you can wash your hands with the same (clean) water that goes on to fill the reserve tank. In public bathrooms, it's been pretty safe to assume that sinks are provided but not soap or towels. I bring a hand towel with me everywhere. Some places have a high-pressure-air automatic hand dryer.
'The heated seat' - (my favorite) it's also pretty safe to assume that any toilet that is plugged into an electrical outlet has a heat-able seat. The controls vary from turn knobs, to push-buttons, to those that sense when you sit on the seat, but it's not difficult to figure out. (notice the plug to the bottom left of the above photo, and the small turn knob to control the level of heating of your bum... from 'off' to 'max')
"The bidet" - rather than installing a completely separate bidet, the bidet is built in to many of the fancier toilets. I've typically seen around three buttons: one for female purposes, one for #2 purposes, and one to turn it off (red). If you ignore the Japanese Kanjii and just look at the pictures and colors, you can safely assume what the different knobs and buttons do...

(this is our friend's toilet, with all options - faucet, heated seat, sitting sensor, bidet control panel, you know, the works. Since this is at her home, there is a bottle of soap and a towel available in the toilet room. Yes, I said toilet room. That's an important distinction in Japan... In many homes, the toilet gets its own room, the shower/bath get their own room, and the sink gets its own room. This reminds me that we haven't posted a tour of our apartment. We'll devote a post to a tour of our apartment in due time, but we're still making some minor modifications to the place and want to show it to you in all its final glory so please remain patient.)

If this post wasn't enough for you, Wikipedia has a nice page devoted to the topic as well (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toilets_in_Japan).

EastWest chirp

2009-04-09T14:36:00.006+09:00

Simple List:

I thought bowing might seem silly here, but after only a couple days, it felt totally natural to do constantly throughout the day. And pretty nice too. People actually acknowledge others here!
The crosswalks chirp East/West and beep North/South.
Going to restaurants is becoming less frustrating because we can read and understand numbers now! And plastic food in the windows with signs helps too.
Grocery shopping is done several times a week here. You only buy a basketful (little more or little less) each time. Shopping carts are very small and simply hold one basket on top and one basket on the bottom. And they roll in every direction (B loves this)! [Something about spinning the grocery "cart" around in circles is really childishly amusing. In America this is impossible because the rear 2 wheels are fixed. - Brian]
Finding cheap fabric is seemingly impossible.
Soccer really is the universal language.
Our hours start anywhere from 1 to 4:30 PM each day, and end at 9:30 PM at the latest. We work Tuesday-Saturday and love it.
My biggest class is 4 students. Brian's is 10 I think [Yep, 10 adults in my biggest adult class. 5 kids in my biggest kids class. - Brian]
They're as young as 6 and as old as, well, sky's the limit on that one. All our students rock pretty hard. We love them.
GOMI. There will be an entire post on this later.
We sleep on tatami mat floors with futon mattresses. And like it.
I'm a little larger than average here, which is weird.
Rice paddies, gardens, houses and highways can all be found within a 1 mile radius in Yamaguchi. It's awesome. I love all the green and space here. We picked a good town.
There are water trenches on the sides of some roads here, most likely for irrigating the fields. Unlike Ghana, they are SUPER clean, very pretty, and bubble sweetly. No goats or chickens in these trenches.
Traffic can get congested in the middle of the day for no reason, but no one ever honks. People even look calm all the time in their cars. My road rage is pretty non-existent.
Japanese writing uses three styles, all in the same sentences sometimes. Hiregana is letter based (a, e, i, o, u, ka, ke, ki, ko, ku, etc), swoopy, and most commonly seen in America. Katekana is blockier, but still letter based. It's used mostly to write English words in Japanese. Kanji is the Chinese writing system of characters, each with a meaning you must memorize, no letters, though you can combine kanji to makes new ones. It's going to take us a long time to learn how to read.
Met the Baha'is in Yamaguchi and they're absolutely wonderful and have already adopted us into the community whole-heartedly.
Yes, sushi is popular here.

That's it for now. Sorry it's so short, but here are a couple pictures at least!

The white crane we see in every river. So beautiful. There's a blue-grey one too that usually is with the white one.

Us with friends at the Yudaonsen White Fox Festival. People were throwing mochi (rice cakes) into the crowd from an elevated platform and we all got one! Victorious!
[I'm taller than most people here, so it wasn't too hard to grab one for all of us, and give the extras to kids who didn't get one. - Brian]

First Week

2009-04-04T09:47:00.006+09:00

Today (Saturday, April 4) marks two full weeks in Japan, and the end of our first week of teaching. Our first week here was spent observing our previous teachers, taking notes and getting familiar with the teaching materials, students and class schedule. The second week, Joe and Liz were packing, paying their last bills and getting ready to head back home to Philly. On Wednesday morning of last week, we bid them farewell, asked a few last minute questions and then the taxi whisked them away to the airport to begin their journey home.

We feel very grateful that we were able to have the overlap week with Liz and Joe since they introduced us to a lot of places (Rurikoji, Ichi No Saka Gawa, shops, etc.) and people (other English teachers, students, Japanese teacher, etc.) in Yamaguchi. We feel like we are making a much smoother transition into teaching and living in Yamaguchi because of their wonderful assistance.

As I explained to most of my adult students this week (hopefully some of you are reading this!), our transition to living in Yamaguchi required us to get accustomed to many things that are different from living in Chicago:
(1) Geographically, Chicago is very flat land, but Yamaguchi has many mountains.
(2) Chicago is a very big city with many skyscrapers, such as the Sears Tower, but Yamaguchi is a much smaller city with no skyscrapers. Chicago is the 3rd largest city by population in America according to Wikipedia, I'm not sure where Yamaguchi ranks in Japan, but I'm guessing it is not in the top 5.

(3a) Driving in Japan is the opposite from driving in America in many ways: In Japan, you drive on the left side of the road, but in America you drive on the right side of the road. In Japan, the driver is on the right side of the car, but in America the driver is on the left side of the car. Fortunately, we have an automatic transmission car so we don't have to learn how to drive manual with our left hands!

(3b) Most cars in Yamaguchi are much smaller than cars in America. Our car in Yamaguchi is a Mistubishi Minica... as you can see by the picture below, it's an appropriate name.

Our car in America was a 4-door Honda Accord sedan, which is a mid-size car by American standards, but a pretty large car by Yamaguchi standards. The largest car I've seen here is one Hummer H3, but that was only once, and the rest of the time I've seen mostly 2-seat hatchbacks, SMART car type vehicles, or Honda Civic sized 4-door cars.

(3c) On the roads, the speed limits here are all in Kilometers per Hour, there isn't even a Miles Per Hour printed on our car's speedometer.

(3d) Driving etiquette is much more polite and subdued in Yamaguchi than it is in Chicago. In Yamaguchi, people don't really speed much, but in America people speed all the time, especially taxi drivers. In Chicago, people tailgate, honk their horns a lot, drive aggressively, and are very impatient with pedestrians and bicyclists. In Yamaguchi, you seldom hear a car horn, drivers are very passive, and mostly very patient with pedestrians and bicyclists.

(3e) The bicycle to car ratio here is much higher (more bicycles per car) than in Chicago, and bicyclists respect the right-of-way rules fairly religiously: no crossing at a red light until you get a walk signal, even if you can't see any cars coming from either direction; drivers don't make left on red turns, and all drivers must make a full stop before railroad crossings (if you don't and you get caught, you will probably get a ticket).

There are many more things that we've had to get accustomed to here in Japan, but I have already written too much for one blog post, so I will save it for the next post. This weekend is the White Fox Festival in Yuda (bicycle distance for us), so be sure to check back for pictures and descriptions from this weekend!

to my family and friends in America - we love you all and hope to hear from you soon!
to my students - were you able to understand this post? what questions do you have?

Flying to Japan

2009-03-31T00:07:00.001+09:00

IMG_9791
Originally uploaded by brianthedrummer

I know I've already blogged this, but I was revisiting photos today and found this one that looked a lot better after I retouched it. On our way to Japan we flew over Northern Canada, Alaska, Russia and on down to Japan. The first set of photos I took were in the Canada area. This photo is somewhere in the middle of the flight, so most likely over the Alaska area. The last set of photos that actually have some pine trees in them are most likely from the Russia area.

this one in particular stood out.

Fiddlesticks

2009-03-30T23:55:00.004+09:00

My grandmama never (or hardly) cursed, so you often found her saying, "Oh Fiddlesticks!" when she was frustrated. This post however, is not about disappointment at all: it's about fiddlehead ferns.

Brian and I were in YouMe Town (essentially an upscale Walmart- food, clothes, everything) and spotted this fern heads wrapped in plastic and styrofoam. After asking a friend the next day, we discovered they were fiddlehead ferns, or zenmai/warabi (it depends on which fern it's from... but I can't read labels yet so I don't know which I saw). After a bit of research I learned they're a sought after delicacy that's criticized for being possibly carcinogenic. My opinion is that 7 little fiddleheads just once can't be worse than standing next to a smoker for a few minutes.

The next day, we hiked Princess Yama (mountain) and saw billions of 'em!! I became obsessed. I MUST eat some. A few pretty ones came home with me as samples to check online to make sure they were the edible kind.

Sadly, I couldn't figure out if they were or not, so I went back to the grocery store to find more. YouMe town was out (the season is like sakura, only a couple of weeks), Aruk was out, but BIG had some. Success!!

Emeril came to my rescue with this easy recipe that only needed garlic, butter, salt and parmesan cheese. I added my own pretty little beech mushrooms (which was way cheaper than button mushrooms in Japan). The fiddleheads tasted like an earthier, easier to digest version of asparagus. Really good with the butter.... mmmm.... I only wish I had more. This was supposed to be eatten with some brown rice, but we couldn't figure out how to get the rice cooker to work. Haha.

*Left column: unidentified fiddleheads on the mountain.
*Right column: fiddleheads from the store

Rurikoji - 5 Story Pagoda

2009-03-29T16:29:00.003+09:00

New photos from our latest trip to the 5-story pagoda, more details soon!

We hiked up Princess Mountain this morning and are headed out to a Hanami party soon (see Mia's post below)!

Why the obsession with Sakura?

2009-03-29T12:57:00.006+09:00

Sakura = Cherry Blossoms

The other day I was standing in a forest of dark green pines trees and grey tombstones markers, when suddenly, like an eruption of light from the ground, I spotted a sakura tree. It was all alone and beaming, revelling in its escape from monotony.

This breathtaking display of fierce beauty only lasts a couple weeks each spring. This spring, we were lucky enough to arrive on the day the first buds began to open and we have been watching all week as the sakura continue to open all over Yamaguchi. This evening, we will be sharing in a time honored tradition around these parts; we will be attending a hanami party (flower-watching party). We will head down to the river with friends and acquaintances to barbeque some food... essentially to eat, drink and be merry while admiring the sakura in near full bloom.

There are many theories as to why everyone is so obsessed with this little flower. After all, we have them in the U.S. but they are not as much of a national obsession there as they are here. Sure, Sakura are heralds of springtime, but so are daffodils.

The Japanese sakura season only lasts two weeks. These little flowers bloom and put on a stunning show all over Japan for two weeks, only to die in less days shortly after. Some Japanese say it's as if their sole purpose is to show us how to live: in a flash of beauty that knows its own mortality. Even their death, a snow of white petals in the tiniest gust of wind, feels spiritual.

In Japan, the samurai would meditate on the sakura. Samurai were fierce warriors, originally hired by Buddhist temples to defend the temple from other rival temples. However, they were aggressors too. Ironically, the greatest tenant of Buddhism is to not kill, which the samurai frequently did. So, they would meditate on the sakura, this tiny flower which died so willingly, and use its life both as a guide for their spiritual life and as a way to escape from the horror and violence of their physical life.

I think one of the biggest differences I've found between America and everywhere else in the world is the way we view death. Americans shun the idea, except for New Orleans. We hide behind medications, Botox, corpses with makeup, cemented caskets, and the list goes on. The Chinese remember and honor their dead every day through offerings and prayers. Ghanaians have huge dance parties in the street when someone in the village dies. And the Japanese worship sakura.

Brian's Note:
Washington D.C. has its own interested history with Japan's cherry blossoms. From Wikipedia: "The National Cherry Blossom Festival is a spring celebration in Washington, D.C. commemorating the March 27, 1912, gift of Japanese cherry trees from Mayor Yukio Ozaki of Tokyo to the city of Washington. Mayor Ozaki donated the trees in an effort to enhance the growing friendship between the United States and Japan and also celebrate the continued close relationship between the two nations." - full Wikipedia article

Under Asian Influence

Yu Choy/Chinese broccoli... Preparing what very well might be the best steamed veggie ever.

Craft Project: Make your own homemade dining chair pads

Spring flower quiz

California koshihikari rice.

Epic Snow Blizzard '11

Cookies for the Blizzard of 2011

Turtle Maki

We're still alive!

A new blog

Word of the Week

Metra's Free Rides

Homemade Pizza & More

Word of the Week...

Chicago Pizza

Footprints in Hawaii...

National bike to work week!

Rappers for sale..¥210

Revisiting Mt. Ishizuchi

A Challenge to Democracy, 1944

Okinawa

Sunshine Girl - Moumoon

If you don't have anything nice to say....

Depiller

Shizenha Restaurant Obanzai

Mini Mini Mini Mini

Missing L?

The Moco

Cheese

Red Quince "Knap Hill Scarlet" Flower in Kyoto

"You look hot"

"I play blog."

Sakura 90

"Yatta!"

Hakata/Fukuoka!

Hark! Yamaguchi Brewery!

Microwave Oven...

Valentine's beer: Chocolate!

Dinner: Fresh Sand!

Easiest maki in the world

Thailand - Jungle Fever

Thailand - The Bangkok experience

Photos from Thailand

and Merry Christmas too!

Happy Thanksgiving!

Bananas

Japan the beautiful

Saga 30th International Hot Air Balloon Festival (pt. 2)

Balloons!

Happy Halloween!

Apple pizza!

＄6 grapes

Eco-Friendly Japan

Fukuoka

Shikoku 5-day whirlwind tour

Random things...

Surprise...Beppu!

Iwakuni

more weekend pics!

somen nagashi!

Kyoto & Nara: Final days

Osaka Koya-san Kyoto: Days 5-7

Tokyo Day 3 & 4

Day 2: Rainy & Fishy

Tokyo: Day 1

...and we're off

swimming caps required

Fruit fetishes

The Colors!

Not so long ago....

Yamaguchi Gion Festival!!

Glass Beads and Misty Mountains

Getting Lost

Paper Anniversary

Rainy Season

That Heat

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Akiyoshido & Akiyoshidai

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