Word of the Week...

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

National bike to work week!

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

Cheese

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

Sakura 90

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.

Hakata/Fukuoka!

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:

Dinner: Fresh Sand!

"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

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.

and Merry Christmas too!

Santa and me at our company's Christmas party.

Pictures of Thailand to come soon!

Japan the beautiful

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)

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)

Apple pizza!

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

why?

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

Eco-Friendly Japan

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

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

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...

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.