Last night after work I went out with some of my students to a fugu restaurant near the office. The food was delicious, and they served plenty of blowfish in various forms for everyone. We ate it raw as sashimi, in soup as nabe, even fried as karaage. It was good to talk with everyone in English and also to try to improve my Japanese skills – they were kind enough to endure my broken Japanese. Also in the restaurant was a large fish tank full of live blowfish swimming around awaiting their day of reckoning. It was a good reminder of the before while we enjoyed the after.

We’re nearing the end of the week, and I’m looking forward to the chance to sleep in. These cold mornings have made it tough to get up on time. I think I’ll have a couple of days to catch up on my sleep coming up. I’m also happy about the upcoming return of Survivor and The Amazing Race – I love that stuff!

We are cruising along through February and there is no end in sight to the cold. Hopefully by the end of this month things will get a little warmer, but it is hard to imagine drinking beer under the cherry blossoms at this point.

I’ve got a couple of events coming up in the next few weeks. Kuniko’s birthday is coming up this weekend, and to celebrate we’ll go out for a Chinese dinner in Sannomiya. Tuesday next week I’ll meet up with the old Denya gang in Okubo after work and catch up with everyone, and then that Friday we’ll head back to Nadaya for some really delicious sushi.

Other than these big events we’ll just be trying to stay warm and stay out of trouble at work, so not much to report these days.

In a first for my life, I walked home last night in the snow. It has been snowing on and off the last few days, but yesterday was snowy enough to leave piles of snow on the ground. That meant that the trains were delayed, and I had to trudge through snow and mush to get to the station, and then walk through even more snow on the ground in Okubo.

This kind of thing just doesn’t happen much in California.

Luckily it was a good experience because of the sheer novelty of it. I can’t imagine doing that every day, though. Kuniko beat me home last night and cooked up some hot soup to welcome me home, along with some Valentine chocolate. Because it was so cold outside we spent most of the evening in the bath together warming up. Happiness is a giant automated Japanese bathtub.

The end of the week turned out to be pretty nice. I finally heard from my staffing company saying that they’d like me to stick around for another year at KHI, which set a bunch of events into motion. I contacted my friend Vishnu in India and started planning a trip for this year. We’re both looking into the trip from different ends to see what will work out the best.

Another year contract also means that I’ll have to pick a year of days off in advance, which is always tricky. This week Kuniko and I will pull out the calendars and see what happens.

Friday night we some of Kuniko’s college friends over for a late lunch/early dinner. We served Thai food and had a good time catching up with them. A new visitor was Chu-Chu’s fiancée who fit right in and helped us polish off three bottles of wine. After so much eating and drinking it was nice to have some time to relax on Saturday, and then Sunday the Okamotos came over for tea in the afternoon. We had fun playing with Sota – he’s a great little kid. He was very talkative, although nobody could really understand what he was saying. He didn’t seem to mind, though, and had a great time walking around and playing with the toys that they had brought.

Today is Valentine’s Day in Japan, and Japanese chocolate makers are very happy that it falls on a workday for the first time in three years. Women in the office will be compelled to give chocolate to the men they work with, and give homemade chocolate to the really special guys. Luckily I don’t work with anyone, really, so this Valentine’s will be easy on my waistline…

Well, hello there. Welcome back.

Things seem to be returning to normal here. I had some problems with the fredricks.net domain, but they seem to be cleared up now. My apologies for the downtime, and also to the rest of the family who depend on fredricks.net for their websites and email. Sorry for the inconvenience.

What happened? It’s a long story that really isn’t that interesting. I promise I’ll tell it to you offline, or at some future date if/when this domain changes locations. For now, everything is hopefully back to normal and I’ll get back to posting starting Monday.

See you then!

Last night after work I came home to a hot bowl of won ton soup. I had casually mentioned that it would be nice to have won ton soup a couple of days ago, and like magic it appeared on the dinner menu. I must use this power only for good.

The weather last night was rainy – perhaps the first rain we’ve had in more than a month. Luckily I got home before it started coming down. This morning it seems like the bad weather has moved on, but I like the rain. In a couple of months the rainy season will start, and then I’ll probably be sick of it.

And finally, in health related news I stopped taking the medicine that the doctor prescribed for me – it was giving me more problems than I had originally. My milder diet has seemed to help a lot, though. Still going to see the specialist on Saturday as planned.

That’s it – short update today.

Down the street from our neighborhood, on the way to the train station, there is a strange bar/karaoke/restaurant place built from cheap plywood and patronized by some of the older residents of Okubo. It is garishly decorated with Christmas lights and hand-painted signs, and the crooning of the ancients can be heard while walking by on my way home every day.

But this post isn’t about that place.

Actually, this post is about “Tomato House”, which is a small shop that shares the same building as spooky karaoke place. It is advertised as a 便利や (benriya – handyman). Maybe it is the husband of the karaoke shop owner, maybe it is completely separate, but it always has a sign that says “OPEN”, even when it clearly isn’t.

I first noticed Tomato House a year or so ago while walking to work, and at first it just was a maroon building with a sign saying “Tomato House – Benriya” in Japanese on the side. The sign was hand painted, and appeared to be very casually done. After looking up benriya in my dictionary I decided that I wasn’t really interested in his services, and kept walking.

Months later apparently business wasn’t good, and you could see him starting to realize it. Out came a big sheet of low grade plywood, hung on the side of the building. This one described the services he performs and had a cute picture of a handyman drawn on it. Unfortunately the plywood is such a low grade that it is not a uniform color, and the guy just wrote on it with color markers. It was pretty much impossible to read, even as I walk right by the shop on my way to work every day.

But the nail in the coffin was something he wrote on the bottom of the sign – “from 10,000 yen”. Talk about a customer killer – he set his bottom limit at more than a hundred bucks, and looking at the outside of his shop I don’t think anybody is going to get that much value for their yen.

Months later he hung out a smaller sign next to his (perpetually) “OPEN” sign – this one said “I am available to work NOW”. I can’t say that the fact surprised me.

So when you stand a few steps back and take in the entirety of Tomato House with spooky karaoke bar next door strung with Christmas lights and cheesy signs you can really take in the flavor of my town. It gives us a lot of entertainment to walk by and see how the places evolve. A couple of months ago the karaoke place hung out another hand painted sign in English – “Welcome”.

Maybe they are looking for an international visitor. I just don’t think I quite have the courage to walk in there yet.

For the first time in a year and a half I called in sick to work on Friday. Calling in sick in Japan is pretty rare. In my situation, it is a big deal to call in sick because there isn’t really a teacher around to take over for me, so everybody that had classes that day has to reschedule. Also, it doesn’t look good for me, and it doesn’t look good for the company I work for when I can’t make it into teach. But despite all that, I had some serious stomach pains, and so I called in sick and went to the doctor instead on Friday.

The doctor I go to in Okubo is a nice enough guy that listened to my problems, ordered some bloodwork to check the situation, and prescribed a bunch of stomach settling medicine to try to ease the pain. The medicine seemed to work – after a weekend of taking it I feel much better. When the bloodwork came back on Saturday morning he showed me that the results were normal. So we’re not sure why, but I’ll keep on the medicine and maybe visit a specialist next Saturday morning.

The rest of the weekend was pretty uneventful. I had to cancel plans to go with Kuniko to Osaka when I had a stomachache on the train going to meet her, but after resting at home that night I was in good enough condition on Sunday to make carnitas for the first time in Japan. They were great, too – braised for 3 hours in the oven and then served in fresh, hot tortillas – so good.

So this week will be interesting to see how my stomach does. We’ve got a party at the end of the week on Friday, and we’re cooking Thai food, so that’ll really put my stomach to the test. I guess we’ll try to burn the engine clean!

One of the bad points about teaching nine classes a day means that I’m always in front of someone. I’ve only got an hour at lunch, and a couple of ten minute breaks during the day, so every time I sneeze, cough, scratch my nose, whatever – somebody is right in front of me watching carefully and waiting for instruction.

So yesterday thanks to this very dry weather I got a bloody nose for the first time in about ten years. Luckily I caught it early before there was a mess, but I’m sure my student was left wondering whether Bryan was addicted to cocaine or something. After a short break in the lesson to clean up I kept on going with class, but it sure was strange. The show must go on, I guess.

Last night I experimented with open-faced omelets with cornmeal, cilantro, and plenty of cheese. They were pretty good, but we ended up topping them with Cholula for a little more excitement. When it comes to eggs, Cholula is always the right choice. And go ahead and use that on the label if you like, Cholula corporation.

Today is Setsubun, the first day of spring according to the old Japanese calendar (which is possibly based on the old Chinese calendar). So we’re going to do the rolled sushi tonight. I was able to confirm from other sources that we have to eat the sushi without speaking between bites – I always had a suspicion that Kuniko told me that to have a quiet dinner once a year, but apparently it is true. Interesting.

Things are going pretty well these days – work is pretty smooth, home life is good, and both Kuniko and myself are healthy and happy. It’s kind of like the movie where everything is going well right up until something horrible happens. So lately we have both been wondering when the horrible thing will happen. It can’t be this good for this long, can it?

Last night Kuniko prepared a chicken and avocado stir fry along with some nanohana (菜の花) flowers boiled and then mixed with mustard, soy sauce and sugar. Healthy and delicious.

Today is hump day, and it is always a good one for my students as they can go home early (for them, that means 5-6 p.m.). Some students feel the pressure of having to finish their work in eight hours and they struggle, while a minority have embraced the chance to go home and spend some time with their family. The work environment there is fascinating – for a hundred years they have worked late until the night – and that results in some pretty old fashioned views of the work-life balance. It’s nice to see progress, though, however slight.

Tonight I’ll try to cook open faced Ecuadoran omelets based on a recipe from Global Table. If you haven’t been there to explore you’ve got to check it out. It has a great story and pretty simple recipes that are a lot more interesting than yakisoba and okonomiyaki.

In a strange weather occurrence the temperature has suddenly gone up as we changed to February. Yesterday on January 31st Kuniko’s hair froze on the way to work it was so cold, but today it is much warmer: a balmy -2 degrees now, with an expected high of 9 degrees this afternoon. I’m sure it’ll get cold again before spring comes – but it is a good chance to roll up my sleeves (not really) and enjoy the (slightly) warmer temperatures.

At work I finally got around to poking and prodding some people about my next contract, and I should hear something this week about it. If I get a new contract at my current workplace I’ll be hitting the travel sites booking tickets, but if I don’t I’ll probably still be hitting the travel sites booking tickets. I hear Egypt is great this time of year.

Today Kuniko has the afternoon off as a substitute for working last weekend, so she’ll be home early to relax, and she will likely be creative in the kitchen. That means a hot prepared meal waiting for me when I get home. I give my students some grief about never cooking and relying on their stay-at-home wives to provide meals when they return, but sometimes I can see why they like it. Coming home to a warm house and a hot meal in winter is pretty nice. Once or twice a week, I get to experience it too.

On Saturday night I went out to the underground sushi place in Akashi (マサムネ) with Mr. Komori. It was good to see not only Mr. Komori but also the sushi master and his wife, who were eager to find out how many babies I had. The conversation was very interesting, and it included discussion of sushi knives, identifying namako, and how many different kinds of squid were swimming offshore just a kilometer away.

After sushi we walked over to Donkey to catch up with the master and his wife, and were waylaid by three former students of mine from Takasago Minami, who chanted “Bryan, Bryan” until I looked over and recognized them. They were as surprised to see Komori sensei (also their old teacher) as we were to see them. We chatted with them a little bit and then they went on their way to a drinking party of their own.

Donkey was the same as ever, and it was good to have a couple of Guinness and talk with some of the regulars. We caught up on what has been going on lately, and I was struck with how quickly you can get comfortable in that place. We stayed off the dart boards and instead enjoyed each other’s company.

Sunday morning we were off to Costco to do some shopping. We scored some good stuff, including about two cases of “everyday wine”, some guacamole (not bad for Costco), and some prepared enchiladas to try out for dinner. It was pretty tiring driving all the way out to Amagasaki, and I am always reminded of how far it is on the way back when our energy starts to run out.

We had bought some things for the Fukumis at Costco so we gave them what they ordered, and Ms. Fukumi had baked some oatmeal raisin cookies that she gave us. It was as if she could read my mind – I had been thinking about baking some next weekend. They were really good – she really knows how to cook! Yuki Yamaji and his sister rang our doorbell and said hello as well. He came back from three months of cooking school in Italy, and it sounds like he had a good time but was a little lonely over there. I’m eager to see what he learned in the near future. He brought back two Italian scarves to keep us warm this winter – nice.

As for this week, it’ll be pretty standard, I’m guessing. I’m trying to find out more about what the future brings at KHI, so that’ll be first and foremost on my mind. Also I’m hoping to make carnitas for next weekend – I found a good recipe and I bought a good piece of meat to use at Costco. It is the first time I’ve made carnitas in Japan so I’m not sure how they’ll turn out.

During class yesterday one of my students recommended Minoh beer from Minoh brewery in Osaka. As local beers are few and far between, I promised to check them out. I happened to know that a store underground in the Akashi station sells all six kinds, so last night on the way home from work I stopped in at Akashi station to do some shopping. Ten minutes later I was back on a train headed home with six Minoh beers. Unfortunately, bottles don’t come in six packs (or even 12 or 24 packs, for that matter) and so they roll around loose in a grocery store plastic bag. Also, each bottle costs 400 yen, so that means six bottles works out to about 20 US dollars. Ouch. I haven’t tried them yet, but tonight after work we are planning on making okonomiyaki, and beer seems to perfect fit to the dish.

Tomorrow I’ll be putzing around at home for most of the day, but I’ll go out to meet Komori sensei at the underground sushi restaurant in Akashi for dinner. Sunday we’ll trek out to Costco mainly to buy wine. I found that since I brought back all these really nice bottles from America I can’t bear to drink them so quickly, and that some house wine is in order. Costco and the former Carrefour market both have lots of good everyday wines for good prices.

It should be a nice weekend – slow paced, like it should be.

Is it just me or did this turn into a food blog?

Last night the cold temperatures continued, and as it happened Kuniko and I arrived at the exact same time at the station, and we were both too tired and hungry to whip up a meal, so we ended up going to Junpu for some teppanyaki action. As usual the food was tasty. We had some tonpeiyaki, raw deer meat, a salad, and some Korean chijimi. After dinner we were walking home and since it was so cold we decided to run into the ramen restaurant to split a bowl of hot noodles in an attempt to warm up.

We ended up getting the hottest version of RaiRaiTei’s “Umakaramen” (来来亭の旨辛麺). When we ordered we asked how spicy it really was, and you could tell by the nervous looks on the waitstaff they were wondering if we could handle it. After all, nobody wants to see anybody get hurt. The soup was thick, bright red and full of pepper oil, noodles, pork, chives, and a few sprouts and bamboo shoots to round it out. The spiciness was perfect – very hot and more than enough to get the sweat going. The staff watched us carefully while we ate, but we didn’t scream in agony so they soon lost interest.

The heat of the noodles stayed with us for the walk home in the cold wind, making it a much more pleasant return. But today we’ll be back in the kitchen cooking our own stuff….

One of the nice things about the cooking classes that Kuniko is taking is that she often wants to practice at home, and that means lots of fresh bread for me to try. This morning was especially good – bread rolls with melted chocolate inside – and they went great with my morning coffee.

Tuesday at work was pretty interesting. One of my students told a dramatic story, another successfully completed a half-marathon, but the business side of things is still top secret. I’m really liking the work – nine classes a day is sometimes rough but it feels good at the end of the workday.

We are starting to look at travel plans in the short and longer term. One option is to hang up our travel boots this year and save lots of money for rainy days in the future, and the other option is to go to India and/or Cambodia this summer and/or autumn. The big question mark right now is my schedule. I haven’t heard a peep from either KHI or OTC about the future, so it is a little hard to make plans. Hopefully I’ll hear soon so we can decide if traveling is an option, and if so, where and when to go.