Foods!

Yesterday at lunch, a Zakuro Soda

Ugh, so delicious. Sweet and tangy.

Yesterday’s dinner (scrabbled together at 9, after dance practice)

Sashimi, rice with tuna and wakame topping.

Yum yum yum

Cats, Cake

So I went to Korea, and it was totally awesome.

All my best pictures can be seen here:

Click the clicky link, even if you don’t have the facebooks!

For some reason, the photos that other people took weren’t that exciting (in other words, don’t include me. I think there was one or two photos that either included me or were ones that I particularly liked). OH WELL. I should really travel with my own professional camera crew. I guess that anybody being able to get their own crappy reality TV show does have its merits.

“Hey, follow me around to cool places and take professional photos and video of me!”

Or I’ll just have to start having a relationship with a cameraman. Problem solved!

Some other stuff.

I made some cat friends in the park

Awww, aren’t they adorable???

They are super sweet and affectionate, love to be petted, and shed everywhere. The one on the left has a wonky tail and they both of notched ears, but other than that they are the same as someone’s pet. I hope park life treats them OK!

I ate this sweets:

Big disappointment!

It was a banana cream, advertised as being like a creme brule, which it most certainly was NOT. It was a cake cup with chunk of banana in the middle, surrounded by cream, and a burned crunchy top that was WAY too full of alcohol taste. Banana is good, but the rest was sort of BLEAH.

This is the big winner so far, apart from berries and vanilla dome featured last time.

Its a chocolate macaron with cream, jam, and berries as the filling. DELIGHTFUL!!

This is how I feel about these sweets:

It is DELIGHTFUL and I LOVE IT SO MUCH.

It’s Golden Week now, that long period of total nothin’ to do.

I’ll go to Korea on Wednesday, and yesterday I went to Takarazuka! We saw “Nova Bossa Nova”, a silly story about two criminals stealing a necklace from a girl and from eachother, and of course falling in love, during Carnival.

It was followed by an even sillier story about a guy who has to marry some girl to get money, but he isn’t so sure, so he and his manservent swap places, meanwhile the girl swaps with her serving maid, and the other suitors are variously delusional/in the wrong place/in love with someone else, and in the end everyone gets married.

On the bus (it was a tour arranged by a lady my friend works with) we played Jan Ken games (rock paper scissors) to win prizes. The first round, we all got a prize in order of losing (I stayed till the second to last round, and got a nice Takarazuka note pad). The next game was serious business: reverse Jan ken (so the losers stayed in the game instead of the winners) in order to win a pair of tickets to see “How To Succeed In Business Without Really Trying”.

I was planning on seeing that show with my JTE, because it’s at a good time (in June) and it’s being performed by my favorite troupe (Star Troupe). But because I’m really good at Jan ken, I won and fell out immediately.

BUT! My friend sitting next to me kept losing. And losing. Finally, she was the last loser, so she won the tickets! She played even though she couldn’t go that weekend, and gave me the tickets. LUCKY IS THAT??? What a nice friend ♥♥♥

Anyway, it’s good that I keep photos on my camera, because I would have forgotten everything I did by now without them.

Hanami happened!

I also got tuned into a good trilogy (currently only 2 books out) by Patrick Rothfuss, the second one shown here. The first one is called “The Name of the Wind”. Go check it out!

Hunting for wee little electric eels started. Photo taken from the bridge over the Yoshinogawa on my way to see a movie.

They built a parking lot next to my apartment, and when the finished, all the builders and owner had a parking lot blessing ceremony.

You can see the offerings of beer, bananas, cabbage, oranges, and what may be seaweed (in the green package, I’m not exactly sure). Awesome!

I went to Kochi with my old supervisor. I guess this is famous bridge in Kochi city? It was in a nice garden patch of the city.

We went in order to see my school’s traditional music club perform with Kochi city kids. A nice concert/day trip.

I ate this cake. It’s from the fancy hotel near the station. Amazing.

It was a nice day last weekend, so I walked up to the Yoshinogawa.

sideways and it stays.

A koi nobori (carp streamer) cookie for Children’s Day (5/5)

My bento from Takarazuka. Delicious! I love the little umeboshi (pickled plum) rice flower.

My favorite part. Sweet mushroom, carrot flower, and seaweed bundle!! SO GOOD. The brown bundle was bean cake with beans and carrot in the middle, it wasn’t so good. But the rest was delicious!

Rose wagashi bought on the way back to the bus. The inside bean paste had a weird flavor and funny little fruit/rose chunks. BLAH. I should have gone for the wisteria one.

We made it from Awaji Island all the way to Naruto, then had to turn around and go back because one of the ladies forgot her purse at the rest stop. When we came BACK along Awaji, across the bridge to Shikoku, we found that a big cloud had parked itself on the sea! It was really incredible. Apparently it caused a lot of airport problems. Even driving on the land bits, we couldn’t see well.

A grove of trees I saw today on a long bike ride.

Battle of the fruit beers.

My favorite snack these days: soft dried squid strips. SO GOOD.

My swag from Takarazuka! I bought 3 photos, two from Nova Bossa Nova, and one from Officer and a Gentleman. These are the official posters for the Star Troupe shows I’ve seen; L to R Romeo & Juliet, Nova Bossa Nova, Officer and a Gentleman.  VIVA!

Fall Tokushima

Halloween pictures are up HERE.

A few things from lately: (click on the image to make it bigger/scroll through images)

 

Moving on Up

I took three days holiday this week, to help James clean house (and to have my own mini-break… in Tokushima helping James clean house). It’s amazing to realize the amount of stuff one accumulates in 3 years. I’m looking at my own stuff right now, in a half-hour break I have before dinner. Will I keep most of it?

The pack-rat in me says that of course I will want to hold on to and treasure each little thing. A fan in my bookshelf, for example, was given to me by an old lady in my dance group. She’s very kind and friendly and talks with me all the time. It’s a nice fan. I have a memory attached to it. But is that enough to warrant a space in my bag home? Well… I don’t know. It’s a decision to be made in time. Usefulness, sentimental value, and packing space. Luckily I have another year to consider it all.

The other thing that happens when folks move away (besides all the pondering and cleaning and saying goodbye… which I guess is three things, making this number four) is that they give away lots of stuff. Or sell it. I got two plastic drawer units today from Rex, which have greatly improved the tidiness of my bathroom. One lives in there, and the second is in my bedroom, currently waiting more things (I think non-seasonal clothes and my growing collection of kimono/yukata paraphernalia will live in there). I’ve also picked up a giant bed-covering mosquito net, a PS2 and a few games, a DVD player (and copy of “Gentlemen Prefer Blonds”) and most importantly, bits and bobs that my English club can sell at their bazaar (cute notebooks from Scotland, Canadian stickers, and so on). Oh, and another external harddrive (James and Ada have been very kind to me)

I finished up my farewell gift to James this afternoon. Frantically working in his room while he cleaned in the other room, then finally I bundled it all home this morning and finished it up, tied a ribbon round it, and popped it in the EXTREMELY swank Doctor Who carry-bag that I made (Trust me. It’s EXTREMELY swank. I am very good with fabric crayons). So that’s all taken care of.

Tonight is Rex’s farewell dinner at an Izakaya, and tomorrow is Patrick’s (and by association, James, since they are leaving the same day) at the same Izakaya. Oh man. I’ll need Thursday to recover, dinner-wise… luckily, my shamisen teacher canceled my lesson. Hooray.

This past weekend we had a Yukata Kai, or meet-up. Everyone wore their official yukata, except for myself and one other lady, and a bunch of old ladies who just wore regular clothes. I was confused about one, because my teacher says I’m going to borrow her official kimono for the concert next February, but if she has an official kimono why doesn’t she have an official yukata? And why isn’t she wearing her official kimono and taking part? It made me extremely nervous, because I got the profound sensation that this older woman really doesn’t like me. And I’m borrowing her clothes. Urk.

Oh, and also, when I was changing out of my yukata, I tugged too hard while untying a string, and my hand punched through a panel on my teacher’s sliding paper door. Awkward. If it was old and patchy I wouldn’t have felt as super-embarrassed, but the whole side was one giant sheet, so I was the first one to break it. I apologized like crazy, but she said not to worry, she punches through the door when she’s cleaning all the time. But that room is her room, the closet is full of her instruments and tapes and things, and it’s where I have my lessons. I felt really bad, but I suppose… sitting and playing next to those doors every week… being a big awkward person… it had to happen eventually.

She sent me home with a milk carton of yogurt, after explaining how to clean and cut a milk pack and then make your own yogurt by mixing yogurt and milk, and letting it sit out, so that the bacteria can cultivate (then you put it in the fridge, and start another carton). I think this is very interesting and neat, but to be perfectly honest, I don’t imagine myself continuing it. I’d probably poison myself, for one. For two, I don’t eat that much yogurt. But still, it’s interesting. It reminded me of in Little House on the Prairie (actually, this happened in By The Shores of Silver Lake), when they made sourdough bread, but they would keep a bit of sourdough in a jar and just add more and more water and flour and the original sourdough would make the rest of it sour, so you always had that bacteria just waiting for you in a jar. Or a milk pack.

Food is science!!

And now I’m about to go enjoy the science of Izakaya.

Whoa There Ranger

Whooaaaaaa Nelly!

In the past… 30(!) hours, I’ve spent 1 HOUR in my apartment. No lie. I’m TIRED. And, in that hour, I had a fit of rearranging and creative housekeeping, and wound up flinging half my belongings on the floor and moving big pieces of furniture.

I’m having guests tomorrow. I’ll have 1 HOUR of preparation time between school and GUESTS. So in a moment, I will begin to clean like a mad person and it will probably take me several hours and I won’t get enough sleep and I’ll have to take a nap on my desk and drool all over my daily scheduler. Why would I do such a thing to myself?

Well let me tell you…

I started reading a horoscope site that told me the scary combo of some planets would mean that rubbish that happened last November would repeat in my life now. Well, I definitely don’t run my life by this sort of thing, but I’ve been feeling kind of down lately, so I flipped back into my diary and SURE ENOUGH I was really stressed about studies and very anxious about my relationship and was just in general pretty blah though last November.

So I thought “Oh great, wonderful, because I actually do have very similar if not the same stresses and anxieties now”. But then I kept reading my diary, skimming actually, because it’s kind of embarrassing to read all the drivel that I wrote not so long ago. And you know what I did last November?

I HAD A TACO PARTY.

I invited folks to my house and cooked up a huge mess of tacos and people laughed and ate heaps of food and drank wine and played musical instruments and chatted and had a MARVELOUS DANG TIME. And I got all defiant at my horoscope because I’ll be damned if “A repeat of November” means only a repeat of the BAD things.

I’m going to make GOOD things happen.

So I rang up folks, bought mince beef and peppers and strawberries, and I’m having a taco party tomorrow night.

One might argue that this has brought me more stress and less free time and lots of pressure to have a clean apartment and food and so on (things I really don’t have much time for! I need to cut back on the extracurricular activities, I think) BUT I am having tacos and that makes me happy, neener-neener-neeeeeener. This makes me happy. Destiny is in my own hands, right? Right.

Here is a link to amazing treehouses.

muwah!
-Emily

Household Chores

Mmmm, chocolate orange. So delicious.

After eating Pasta Michi, James came back to my apartment to get his bike. I was sitting in my room reading a book when I heard really strange noises from my bathroom… strange noises for someone just washing their hands?

What was that? I asked, because my sink is really bad, because I can’t take the time to fix it, so oh man, what if it has really gone wrong this time?

He says, I was plunging your sink. You need to fix that.

Yeah someday I will.

Blah

I had a crazy weekend, which I’ll write about later.

Suffice it to say it was very physically demanding, and I am tired.

Last night I went out to DEAR for some Italian food. I try not to order the same thing every time, so I chose the smoked salmon and broccoli pasta. UGH. It was so BORING. And that is just wrong.

Pasta should never be a yawn-fest. It shouldn’t look and taste like nothing. It shouldn’t be lacking in both flavor and texture. You FAIL, DEAR. Solid F on that pasta.

Tonight I’ll be sewing beads onto my Glinda skirt, and watching Ugly Betty or the X Factor. Hmm, actually, as I recall, there was some weird fashion show drama on TV last week that I got really into. My costume, at any rate, is going to be awesome! I’ve got the skirt and top and shoes all sorted, I just need Glinda’s wand and crown and I’m all set!

For your amusement:

Good Times

Tonight I bought a cool shirt that says “FISH AND CHIP”, with a heart with the American flag in it. HA! It’s got long sleeves so it’s perfect for the weather. I wore it, and took some of the most hilarious purikura I’ve ever taken.

Purikura is short for Purinto Kurabu (Print Club). It’s a magical photobooth where you choose from a zillion different frames and styles, take about 8 photos, pick the best ones, and then step into another little booth to decorate them with doodles and stamps and backgrounds and all sorts of crazy things. Then you print them out and cut them up and stick them on things!!

Check out this crazy page for one girl’s example of her purikura.

If you ever visit me in Japan (I’m looking at YOU, family!) we will take purikura.

Purikura is super fun, and I don’t know why I don’t do it more often. OH WAIT YES I DO. It’s because I never think to, and when I do, I’m usually by myself. There is a kind of idea… that doing purikura by yourself, and having a picture album full of pictures of yourself alone is kind of a sad thing. Well yeah, but it’s also good to just take a photo by yourself… I get to take excellent series photos, and can make all the decisions about poses and decoration.

And then I get to keep all the photos, too (except for the ones I give away). I thought it would be funny recently to “attack” someone with purikura, and so I took a series by myself and then left them for this person to find (Ok, it’s my gentleman friend. HA! I love saying that). The first set I took was a little disjointed, but the ones I took tonight tell a funny story. I can’t wait to use them.

Now, I have a lot of funny ideas for purikura photo series. I need to get a stuffed dog for the next one, and write a little story line that can be done in 4-6 photos.

Hurr hurr hurr.

Let’s see. Today, I taught at Rogakko, and it was awesome. I did arts and crafts all day, with the 2-3 nensei in Jr. High (8th/9th graders), and the 5/6 nensei in elementary school. We made paper pumpkins and talked about Halloween and decorated a Christmas tree with Halloween cutouts. HAHA! I also had kids finish up their Halloween mobiles and paper maché pumpkins.

Lunch was a delicious piece of fish with skin on. At first it looked dry, but when you bit in, it was sweet and fishy and just the right amount of juicy. MMMMM. Couple that with a bowl of rice, miso soup, and a carton of milk, and you have a perfect lunch. WAY TO GO, JAPAN.

Seriously, I love the food here so much. I can’t believe the things I eat, but it’s soooo good.

The rest of the day I spent studying and preparing for classes. Tomorrow and Thursday, I have no class because of exams. Study party! If I was really smart, I’d take a day off and clean or go get my re-entry permit, or do something productive. But actually, I think that I have a day off coming up soon… a substitute holiday for a weekend I’ll be “working” (going to the school festival. Heck yeah!).

My English club is having a Halloween party on Friday, and on Friday night, I’m heading out west. Saturday morning, we’ll drive even more west, rent bikes, and bike for something like 70 kilometers across the bridge/island system that gets you from Shikoku to Hiroshima prefecture. Oh my yes. They say it’s a 4-7 hour trip one way. I’m super excited, despite having no “serious” bike experience.

I mean, I ride a mamachari. It only has one gear. A mamachari is a “Mama Chariot”, the bike with the big honkin’ basket in the front, and the really 1950′s design. It is the bicycle version of a people carrier, because you can put at least 2 kid seats on it, or put your friend on the back shelf bit (if you are lucky enough to have a shelf on the back). I feel like I should be wearing penny loafers and a pleated skirt when I ride mine. OH WAIT. That is what all students wear every day (and they ride mamacharis). Yup, pretty perfect, Japan.

That’s my days lately. And now, to the store to get potatoes for potato soup!!!

In other news…

So the more I read about the things happening in Iran, the more it was seeming that as a number of countries (read: the US) have some interest in the situation, their fingers were perhaps pulling the strings behind the spontaneous outbreak of a color revolution.

At first, that made me feel crabby, because a revolution of the common folk is again chalked up to sticky fingers manipulating the populous and in turn, the bloggers who have been (therefore) mindlessly spreading the information about the Iranian people. It cheapens honest people’s efforts to get the word out about something they believe in.

Then I thought about it a bit more. A comment from someone here in Tokushima was that “is there any country that could have a revolution now a days that you would not [speculate] was the US covertly overthrowing the government?”

And here it is. I don’t know what’s really going on behind the scenes, as it were. While I think it’s important to know what governments are up to, what we’re forgetting here is that while we marvel or speculate over how and what has happened in terms of turning this revolution into a more global cause across the internet, people die on the ground. Who cares who the players are when the pawns die for them? I don’t need to hear one more conspiracy theory that removes focus from the fact that someone somewhere is standing up for something.

Maybe it’s a masterful work of international politics. Maybe the people are manipulated into wanting what the player wants. Does that invalidate their wants as a people? When we forget about them as a people and see them merely as means to an end, then yes, it does.

And on a different note (because Iran really is difficult to put into good words) today is Tuesday, and I love Tuesday. Tuesday is the day I go to Rogakko. Rogakko is a always a day of small classes, lunch with students, and enjoyable class activities.

Today for example, we used kid’s doctor toys to act out conversations in a hospital (Senior High School 3rd grade). Then (SHS 2nd grade) we played a game about taking a bath that I had drawn up the night before (using my phone bill as a straight edge: take THAT, fiscal responsibility!) Later, (SHS 2nd grade, Academic course) we did one-on-one reading and past participle work. Lunch was curry rice.

I love Tuesdays!

Lastly, a cool thing that happened today was when I sat down to study Japanese. I recently bought two new study books, geared towards Grammar and Reading, and Vocabulary and Kanji for the JLPT Level 3 (which I’ll take in December). And lo, it all just clicked today in my Grammar book.

I really enjoy these particular books because they give you kanji within the readings and examples, but only give you the furigana (telling you how to read each kanji) the first couple of times. After that, you’re expected to remember what you’ve read. So I’m working harder. I’m remember more, because I’m expected too.
The other thing is, the examples and general explanations are all in Japanese. All that my workbook says for a grammar point is “While …ing”, to tell you what the point means.

It’s all because of my reading intensive Japanese lessons, and because I started playing attention to when my JTE would explain English grammar points in Japanese.

That’s about all I have for today. It rained the most amazing ocean-storm style rain last night, and I’d like to go outside today before it rains again.