Kappabashi

A few weeks ago, Mondo and I went to Tokyo to hang out for the day. We spent time in Kappabashi, Asakusa, and Roppongi. In this post, I'll focus on the first part of our trip in Kappabashi.

Kappabashi-dori is famous for two things. The first is "kappa", a mythological creature
from Japanese legends that has a plate shaped head and loves to eat cucumbers (and children)--yeah, very strange, if you're interested, here's a link to the Wikipedia article: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kappa_%28folklore%29
The second is kitchen supply stores, including ones that sell the food models that are displayed in front of many restaurants in Japan. It might sound like an odd combination (well, I guess actually it is a little odd) but it was fun and interesting. The pictures are two famous buildings with appropriate themes for the neighborhood, a kappa statue (there are MANY lining the streets all over the district) and a food sample store. Click on the food sample picture if you want to see how realistic the models are. They really are amazing . . . and expensive.

I'll continue the trip in the next post.

Japanese Burritos!

As I've mentioned (several times!) before, one of the only food items I miss here in Japan is Mexican food. When I visited America in December/January I had planned on bringing back cans of refried beans, which are nearly impossible to find here. I realized that could end up making my suitcase MUCH too heavy, so I decided to bring back dry pinto beans instead, so I can make my own refried beans. Yesterday and today I worked on my first try.

Cooking the beans was the easy part; time-consuming, but easy. They turned out pretty tasty. I experimented with different seasonings and ended up adding red chili powder, paprika, cumin, salt, pepper, and olive oil. I finally found a grocery store that sells a brand of salsa that's made locally, so it's not too expensive. For sour cream (which is rather difficult to find here) I substituted plain yogurt. The hardest part was tortillas. I have seen them here (only frozen, not fresh), but they are crazy expensive. I thought about what I could use as a substitute, and finally realized, since I'm in Utsunomiya (which is considered to be the gyoza/pot sticker capitol of Japan) I should use gyoza wrappers! They're not too different from tortillas, except for their size. I had originally thought that I could make very small versions of rolled burritos, but quickly realized that would be impossible. My compromise: put beans and cheese on a gyoza wrapper and then top it with another and fry both sides. So they ended up more like what some people call tostadas, but they were delicious anyway.

Maybe next time I'll splurge and buy real tortillas-it would definitely save some time . . .

America Vacation 2007 (and 2008): San Jose

(Note: I've tried several times to upload pictures, and it's not working tonight, so I'll have to add the pictures later. Update: the pictures are finally uploaded, but smaller size than usual. As always, click on a picture for a larger version.)

On January 2nd, I flew from Portland to San Jose, California to visit family and stay with my cousins. I stayed much of the time at Elaine & Tim's house and also visited Vic & Mary's place (uncle & aunt). My other "grew up through childhood together beloved cousin", Paula, (sister of Elaine) also spent an extended weekend there with us.

Elaine picked me up at the airport on a beautiful, warm, California afternoon with the greeting, "enjoy the weather today-a storm's coming from Alaska tomorrow!" So we made as much as we could of the weather that afternoon and early evening. We went to a nearby park and played Bocce (an outdoor, Italian version of bowling-very fun!) and watched a beautiful sunset.

The next day we went to San Francisco to take our "What's Up Doc?" movie location tour. In spite of the beginning of the arrival of the storm and the rain it brought, we had a VERY fun time finding and taking pictures of locations from our favorite movie (our meaning "Elaine & I"-Tim,thanks for putting up with our craziness!). I have several pictures of that part of the trip, of course, but I'm going to make a whole separate entry for that adventure, possibly on my auxiliary blog. I'll keep you posted, so to speak.

Even though the weather got nasty (with wind so strong that it knocked down trees and cut the electricity at Tim & Elaine's house for several hours), Paula braved the storm and (thankfully!) arrived safely Friday evening. Much of the rest of the weekend was spent hanging out and playing games including Carcassonne, Ticket to Ride, and various new and old card games. I also showed pictures that I'd taken in Japan during different trips with visitors. Paula and Caitlin had to return home at the end of the weekend, and fortunately the storm had mostly passed through by then.

Other fun activities included playing a variety of funny Wii games ("Now what do I do with this controller?) and listening to old 45s of disco songs (you know, 7-inch 45-rpm records, those little records that only have one song on each side-they used to sell them so that when you heard a song on the radio that you liked you could just buy . . . oh, never mind . . . ) I had Mexican food three times and In-N-Out Burger, hurray!

So again, Elaine & Tim and Vic & Mary, thanks for hosting and for rides from and to the airport, and Paula, thanks for making a long drive for a short time to visit while I was there!!!! I had a great time!

America Vacation 2007: Portland-Christmas Lights, Friends and Chickens

On December 29th my sister and I drove back up to Portland. We looked at some beautiful Christmas lights (the picture is of an old house in Portland that they decorate with over 1,000,000 lights-very amazing place) and then hung out with my friends Betsy & Bryan. My sister stayed for a while that evening and we played Rock Band on the XBox-it was really fun, even though I didn't know all of the songs.

The rest of the weekend I stayed with and visited my friends Scott & Janelle (and Loene and Samuel!) and Doran & Vineeta. We watched movies, looked at pictures, talked, laughed and just generally had a great time! On Sunday I went to church and saw lots of other friends including Kent & Becky and Gale. I enjoyed catching up with everybody, and just relaxing in a familiar place.

On the way across town I took the picture I included of Pioneer Courthouse Square with the giant Christmas tree and the semi-famous Umbrella Man statue. Then I met my friends/Portland bosses Edmund & Carol for breakfast. They brought me up to date with what's going on with the school in Portland (LCIO/PBC) and I did the same with my experiences here.

And now.... the chickens. Why so many picture of chickens? Well, first of all, I just think chickens are funny. I don't know why, but they make me laugh; something about the way they walk or behave--I think they're very silly animals (well, and delicious too, now that I'm thinking about it!). These specific chickens are the pets / mini-farm / egg producers / (neighborhood attraction?) of my friends Jim, Marie, Kerry, Lucas and Nicolas (the official chicken lover). They invited me to their house for New Years Day with their family, and I spent a fun day with them. Thanks for including me in your family!

And thanks again to everyone in Portland for all the hospitality!

January 2nd I flew to San Jose, California to spend time with my cousins and uncle & aunt, for the last part of my vacation, which I'll save for next time.

America Vacation 2007: Springfield & Eugene--P.S.

Here are two links to videos that I took on Christmas Day with my family. They are both clips of us playing the card game "Pit".

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q6HE5D5IVuo
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y7NBQ3LZ_4E

America Vacation 2007: Springfield & Eugene

My flight from Narita to PDX was pretty calm and almost relaxing; probably due to the fact that it was Christmas Eve, the plane was only half full, so I got a seat with extra leg room, and there was even space to move to another area of the plane for a while and take a nap in two adjacent, empty seats. I'm pretty sure I watched a movie, but can't remember what it was-either I was tired, or the movie wasn't that memorable...

My sister was kind enough to take a VERY early drive from Eugene to Portland to pick me up. As we were driving down the freeway away from the airport towards downtown Portland, it struck me that it didn't seem like I had been away from Oregon for nine months. I had the thought "It seems like I was just here a couple of weeks ago!" which I thought was strange. But more and more I'm starting to think that time is what's strange--as it says in Ecclesiastes 3:11, God "has planted eternity in the human heart" (New Living Translation)--we were created as eternal beings. SO . . . no reverse culture shock, or at least not in the way I was expecting.

After a quick detour to check out my condominium in Portland, we headed to my parents' house in Springfield. After all my interest and amusement about KFC being a very popular Christmas dinner choice in Japan, and my assurances to everyone here that KFC is NOT an especially popular holiday dinner in America, for dinner on Christmas Eve my family had . . . KFC! I had a good laugh about that!

The next day, on Christmas, most of my immediate family came for dinner. We had a great time together, and the first picture shows people playing a crazy card game called "Pit", which is a favorite in my family. I showed everyone pictures of my travels during the summer when family visited me here, and it was fun to explain those adventures and remember my summer vacation.

Later in the week, my sister and I also had a good time at my brother, sister-in-law and nephew's house hanging out and playing another very fun card game. The last day before I left for Portland, my third brother and sister-in-law visited my parents' house (the third and fourth pictures) and we also looked at pictures and reminisced about their trip to Japan during the summer. The second picture shows their dog, Sunday, who cracked me up in his Santa costume. The last evening in Eugene I stayed at my sister's place (I just realized I can say that in Japanese! "watashi-no imouto-no tokoro ni tomarimashita" I'm learning-hurray!) and we had fun hanging out with her chinchillas and watching silly videos. She drove me back up to Portland the next day, but I'll save that for the next post . . .

(P.S. After fighting with this crazy software to get the pictures to appear in the right order, I finally gave up, so they might not appear in the order I mentioned in the post above, but I think it's pretty obvious.)

Gyoza Party

A quick detour from my America vacation blogging: last weekend some friends from church invited me to a gyoza and soba party. Some people in the United States now use the word gyoza, but others say "potsticker" or "Chinese dumpling". You can see from the pictures and video how they are made. I had made them once before in Portland; my friend Mondo showed me how. Unfortunately, I didn't get any video of making the soba noodles. Soba is buckwheat noodles served either hot or cold. We had the cold version. Everything was delicious! Takizawa family, thanks again for inviting me!













Here's a link to a video of us making the gyoza: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JFod807KW_E

America Vacation 2007: Prequel

This is just going to be a short post to get me started on my Christmas vacation (February's half done-I'd better get Christmas posts done soon!).

After a couple of very busy weeks in the middle of December, I left for the United States on the 24th, which ended up being the longest Christmas Eve in my life. Not in the idiomatic sense of "oh, what a horrible day! That was the longest day of my life!" but in the chronological sense: I left Tokyo in the
mid-afternoon on the 24th and arrived in Portland at 7:00 am on the 24th. But, I'm getting a little ahead of myself-this is just supposed to be the prequel. On the way to the airport, Mondo and Aiko met me, and we spent a few hours hanging out at the Narita Temple, having lunch and waiting for my flight at the airport. Narita Temple is about a 15-minute drive from Tokyo/Narita airport.

The street lined with shops leading to the temple reminded me of a similar street in Kyoto where I visited last summer. Many of the restaurants lining the street serve eel, and you can see barrels of eels waiting to be filleted and turned into someone's meal. So, how do you feel? Does a real eel meal appeal? (sorry--I couldn't resist the rhyme)

The temple grounds are very beautiful, but we didn't have enough time to actually tour the temple itself-maybe on my next visit. After looking at the area, we had lunch at a little cafe (no eel-I had Italian food) and then headed for the airport.

Even More Snow!

The locals here tell me that last winter there wasn't any snow at all, so this is an unusual year. Just a quick link to another video of snow here. I was practicing using the "Windows Movie Maker" software, so it has several goofy text comments added in.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sw98ggw2j_E

Tomorrow is a holiday, and I have the day off from school (its National Foundation Day; here's a link at Wikipedia if you're interested: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Foundation_Day ), so I'll try to get some winter break vacation pictures posted.

More Snow In Utsunomiya

The weather report yesterday predicted snow for today, but there was a similar forecast last week and no snow ever fell, so I didn't expect much. When I woke up this morning, my room was noticeably lighter, so I opened the curtains and was surprised by how much snow had already fallen. Not that it suddenly looks like I'm living in the Alps, but it is beautiful. It's supposed to melt by this afternoon and be clear and sunny again by tomorrow--winter in Japan is MUCH drier than Oregon! All of these are pictures right around my house.

New Years Resolutions

I got started on two New Year's resolutions this week:
--I finally found a music book I'd been looking for: "Jazz Hanon" (you pianists and former piano students out there probably remember Hanon . . . finger exercises!) I'm going to get serious again about improving my piano technique and theory, specifically in jazz, so I started practicing from the book this week.
--I've been working on memorizing katakana, the writing system used in Japanese to transliterate foreign words. It's also sometimes used in a way similar to the English usage of italics. I'm over half done with that. Also, I ordered a book that just arrived today. It teaches kanji, the last (and most difficult!) writing system that I need to learn to be able to read Japanese. It's the system of characters originally borrowed from Chinese. I'm planning to start that this weekend.

And for anybody who hasn't already heard, recently I was officially invited to return for a second year of teaching at UICS, and I accepted the offer, so I will start the 2008-2009 school year in April.

Snow In Utsunomiya

A couple of weeks ago very light snow fell for a few minutes, but this morning we had our first snow that stayed on the ground. Only for a few hours, but it did stay. Here is a short video that I took this morning, the first one that I've posted on YouTube for a while:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3DQ7Y-HuMP0

Comments?

I just enabled the comments feature on this blog, so now you should be able to send me comments/messages directly through this site. I have at least one friend who was worried about accidentally posting comments; fear not! I have the moderation feature turned on, so I will see the messages before they're posted, and if you accidentally send something you didn't mean to, just send me a second message telling me what to delete, and I will (unless I think it's really funny, and then maybe I'll post it anyway---JUST KIDDING!).

Crispy crunchy chickeny chippy

I've seen some flavors of snack foods in Japan that are very strange by American standards including consommé flavored popcorn and curry flavored, well, just about anything curry flavored (even donuts---no, I'm not joking).

When I saw this in the store the other day, I had to buy it! "Fried chicken taste" chips. Okay, I'm opening it right now . . . it tastes... WOW!!!!!! It's pretty good! I can't say it tastes exactly like fried chicken, but it's pretty close!

Hmm....maybe I should make a regular feature on unusual foods in Japan. Well, we'll see . . .

Back In Utsunomiya

I had a fantastic trip visiting family and friends in the U.S. Here are just a couple of quick pictures, and hopefully I'll get a more complete trip account posted soon.





I took the train from my city to Tokyo and then on to Narita near the airport. My friends Mondo & Aiko met me and we visited Narita temple, had lunch together, and hung out until my plane left. The first picture is Mondo and Aiko standing in front of the main entrance to Narita temple.








One of the things I love about my city Portland, Oregon is all the beautiful lights at Christmas (and at other times too, actually). This is a photo of an old Victorian style house that is decorated with 1,000,000 lights every Christmas (yes, really-one million!).










The second half of my vacation was spent in San Jose, California with family including my cousins and their families and my uncle & aunt. The first and last days I spent there, the weather was fantastic--unfortunately, an Alaskan storm front arrived the day after I did, but that's another story... This is the sunset the FIRST day I was there.

More later . . .

Happy New Year!

This is my first post from America since . . . well . . . March, I think! I'm in the States now on vacation enjoying some time with friends and family. I spent the first 1/3 in Eugene, Oregon; the second 1/3 in Portland, Oregon; and I leave for the final 1/3 in San Jose, California tomorrow morning. Thanks for everybody who hosted me, and sorry that I couldn't see everybody in Portland that I wanted to.

Happy New Year / ake mashite omedetou gozaimasu!
and God's blessings for the new year!

Merry Christmas! Happy Birthday Jesus!

Merry Christmas!
I managed to get a picture of Santa and Rudolph on my recent trip to the North Pole. (If you look at Santa carefully, he might look a little familiar . . . )

I leave for my vacation in the States tomorrow --I'll see some of you soon!

Christmas plans and Utsunomiya Central Park

Just a quick note--many of you have already heard my vacation schedule, but probably not everyone, so here it is:
--arriving in Oregon December 24th; staying with my family in Eugene/Springfield
--traveling to Portland on December 29th; staying with ???? (anybody want to host me?)
--traveling to California on January 2nd; staying with family in San Jose
--returning to Japan on January 8th

The three pictures are from a walk I took a few weeks ago in Utsunomiya's Central Park. The leaves were just starting to change color at that point. Fall seems to come later here than in Oregon, but when the weather changed, it cooled off very quickly. The days now are in the mid 50s, mostly sunny, and the nights are quite cold.

Guests part seven

Our last day in Nagano we spent the morning at Zenko-ji Temple. It is very important both to the culture and history of Japan, and is a very impressive site. Because of the large number of buildings in a fairly small area, it was difficult to take any pictures that show the scale of the grounds. The first picture, taken from one of the main temples with other buildings in the background, is as close as I could get to showing the size of the site. If you want more information, Wikipedia has a good entry on Zenko-ji.




Besides all the umbrellas (the rain wasn't really that bad-by Oregon standards it was just sprinkling), in the second picture you can see the incense burner where people sometimes stand in the smoke and rub it on themselves in hope of a blessing.




In the final picture, you can see priests performing a ceremony. It was very fascinating to watch, but it reminded me of the difference between religion -- rituals that try to reach god(s) -- and faith -- relationship with the God who reaches to us.




That's my (relatively) short summary of our travels; Randy, Diane, and Paige, thanks again for a fantastic experience together!

Guests part six

On the day we visited Happo-One, we also traveled to the Sea of Japan/East Sea. The closest large city in the area we visited is called Joetsu, if you want to check a map.



It was a beautiful, clear, warm day, and as you can see in the picture, Diane and Paige enjoyed the warm water. It wasn't quite "Hawaii-warm", but I was surprised at how nice the water was, considering it was October.