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.

So last night we figured out how to use a pizza stone correctly and were rewarded with very crispy crusts for our pizzas. We’ve still got some tweaking to go for the perfect pizza – the sauce was a little runny and the toppings liked to jump off the pizza – but we’re much farther along than we started.

Other than eating delicious pizza there wasn’t much to report yesterday. A cold wind came in again, bringing in moisture and even colder temperatures. This week will be another tough one walking to and from work, I guess. It’s still January and April is looking better and better.

We’ve also been laying out our social calendar for the rest of this month and February. We’ll be meeting up with Komori-sensei, the Okamoto family, and also have the postponed Christmas party in the middle of next month with Chu-chu and her boyfriend (fiancée?), Ai-chan and Chiemi. There may be some others in the near future – we’re eager to entertain.

Well, that’s it for today – I’m out to face another blast of arctic temperatures on the way to work…

I’m happy to report a successful weekend tinkering with technology. The server installed easily, and it seems to be working well. It is a relief to know that all our important files are being backed up. I also took the opportunity to organize some of the files and clean up the computers that I am running. There are still a few things I want to play around with on the server, but I think I can declare an end to major operations. Mission accomplished!

On Friday night I joined some students in Tarumi for dinner at Mayumi, a teppanyaki place that is popular because of the amount of garlic they put in their dishes. They had garlic okonomiyaki, garlic in the yakisoba, garlic sprinkled over the pork steaks – you get the picture. My students and I ate big and had a great time there. The signature drink they make there is called “buruhai” ブルハイ – a chuhai drink made with Bulgarian yogurt. It really helped to soothe the palate after all that garlic.

Saturday and Sunday were spent tinkering on the server and doing some shopping. I got an interesting message from Yoshi on Saturday. He heard that they are building a Costco in his neighborhood in Tarumi. That means that instead of the long drive to Amagasaki (which can be almost two hours) we will instead be able to get there in about 45 minutes. Very good news, indeed. We’ll have to exercise more to balance the increased calorie intake, however.

Finally, a weekend wrap-up isn’t complete without describing our dinners. Saturday I grilled some chicken thighs and several GIANT shiitake mushrooms. I think I finally discovered the right blend of seasonings for the grilled shiitake, and I’m thinking I might make vegetarian burgers out of them in the near future. Sunday it was Kuniko’s turn to cook, and she made homemade pizzas. We were a little impatient waiting for the dough to rise and we gave up on batch one. Batch two turned out great – and we were very happy with the results. The only problem is nailing that crispy crust – how do they do it? Batch one of the dough has been sitting out overnight, and we’ll try again tonight and see if we can get a crispier crust.

Last night Kuniko and I both arrived back at Okubo on the same train, and since we had only a few leftovers in the fridge I was able to convince her to join me for dinner at Swaad, the Indian restaurant in town. We had the place to ourselves, and we tried two new curries – a mutton curry and a spicy/sweet eggplant and prawn curry. They were awesome – and the jumped into our top two curries that they serve there. It is fun to try different curries at that place. I’m often surprised at the variety that they can make.

Back home I received a package in the mail – a new home server to run at home. I’ve been wanting to migrate all the data that is spread out across several external hard drives and three different computers. I think this will be the best solution, but I get to set it up in Japanese which will be a good test of my abilities. This weekend I’ll be working on this project, so if there are no posts next week you’ll know that something went horribly, horribly wrong. Let’s hope it doesn’t work out that way.

Tonight after work I’ll join some students from previous classes in Tarumi to eat garlic okonomiyaki. It’s a little rare to find a restaurant that puts garlic in their okonomiyaki, and very rare for one to proudly advertise it. I’m looking forward to checking it out, and also seeing some students that I haven’t talked to in a while. Hopefully the end of this party won’t be as wild as the last one with these guys.

I went out yesterday with a couple of the inspectors from the factory to their usual tachinomi joint. The vibe was pretty different this time around, and at first it wasn’t exactly clear why. One guy was completely off his game and left after 15 minutes, and the other hung in there but seemed a little down. They said that their next gig isn’t clear, and so they don’t know what will happen with their jobs in Japan after March/April. Possibly they will continue, possibly they will move to another country, and possibly they will go back home to the USA. A lot of uncertainty right now, so there was definitely an impact on the evening.

Their uncertain futures kind of mirror my own. My current contract will wrap up at the end of March, and I haven’t heard yet what the next step is. I’ve heard about some ideas being floated by my staffing company, but no response (that I’ve heard) from KHI. So we’ll wait and see. Lucky for me that if things don’t work out for a new contract I don’t have to leave the country – there are plenty more companies out there looking for training.

So this post ends with a big question mark… hopefully the answer will come soon.

A former student of mine dropped by the classroom yesterday evening to tell me about his recent trip to Hawaii. He goes pretty frequently with his family, staying in Honolulu in a hotel on the beach. He (like us) took advantage of the strong yen to stock up on all kinds of goods, both normal and luxury – it’s a good time to spend money overseas. The more pictures he showed me, the more I wanted to visit again myself.

It was interesting to see that he stayed in the same hotel that he has stayed in every time he goes, and he visited the same restaurant he always visits. He never strays far from Waikiki beach. Interesting – to him it is a sense of comfort and coming back to someplace he knows well, but for myself and Kuniko we wouldn’t want to take a long distance trip and do the same stuff we did last time. We definitely like going back to the same places, but I think we’d want to do something completely different the next time. I guess it comes from a sense of not being able to see everything whenever we take a trip – we always have to make sacrifices and see only a few of the things on our list.

My former student also brought back some omiyage for us – some cookies and chocolate. I handed over some omiyage from our trip (Reese’s peanut butter cups) and the meeting was complete. We don’t meet up much anymore as he completed the class last year, but I’m hoping that he’ll be able to take the class again, as he is a really good student and is pretty realistic about his English ability and goals. Nice guy.

So during our recent trip to the USA we left our houseplants indoors completely saturated with water, and I did some heavy watering outdoors with the idea that they wouldn’t need as much water as frequently during the winter.

When we came back, I was pleasantly surprised to find that pretty much all the plants were in good shape. Even the cilantro out front survived the snow and ten days without water, making a delicious contribution to our dinners the last couple of nights.

However, our living room plant is looking droopier and droopier by the day, and despite being in the usual spot, and despite the soil being moist on top, leaves are starting to drop. I pretty much suck at houseplants (I have a “black” thumb), and so it is depressing watching this poor plant slowly die in front of us. Outside it is wind and arctic temperatures, so the best I can do is put the plant near a window and hope for some sunlight.

Maybe it’s a good thing we don’t have pets.

Tonight Kuniko will come home early, and she’s cooking some mackerel for dinner tonight. It was one of the recipes she learned in cooking class, and since mackerel is pretty much the only fish I don’t like in Japan it’ll be interesting to see how it turns out.

This weekend was kind of a “hunker down” weekend. The weather turned clear, and an icy wind came blowing in, lasting through the weekend and still continuing as I write this Monday morning. Instead of going out and hiking I preferred to stay inside where it was warm and read books and watch movies. Since Kuniko was working both days of the weekend she wasn’t able to get in on the relaxation until the evenings.

We had a bit of a high calorie weekend. Friday was our first experience making raclettes. Kuniko scored some gruyeres cheese as well as some raclette for our experiment, and it turned out to be delicious. Melting high quality cheese like that is always shocking when you see how much oil comes out, but when the same unmelted cheese is on the cutting board you wouldn’t hesitate to pop it in your mouth. Anyway, we served the raclettes with potatoes, pickles, and french bread from Kuniko’s favorite bakery in Motomachi. Yum.

Saturday I grilled some steaks out on the BBQ in the cold wind, and thanks to some spicy rub that my parents got me for Christmas (from Penzeys spice) they turned out great. Some of the best steaks I’ve ever cooked, actually. Finally, yesterday we made tacos with some of the Canasta raw tortillas that I forgot in America and were subsequently sent by mail by my folks. The tortillas held up just fine on the journey, and were very delicious. We’ve got some leftovers from yesterday, so it will be back to tacos tonight – I can’t wait.

This week is a little more social for me. Wednesday I’ll be going to the “tach” – for some tachinomi drinking with Bill and Gary. This means plenty of smoke in my clothes afterwards, so I’ll need to remember to dress appropriately as well as stock on an Fabreeze before then. Then on Friday I’ll go out with some students (both former and current) to have some garlic okonomiyaki in Tarumi. The last time I went out with these guys I ended up with an ink-stained fork in my bag so who knows how it will turn out this time.

Well, I guess it is time to get some gloves and a jacket and face the icy winds outside – no more putting it off.

This week is rapidly drawing to a close. Kuniko will be pretty busy this weekend, but I have some free time ahead of me. Yesterday, today and during the weekend I’m in charge of dinner, so I’m looking forward to an international culinary experience. Yesterday we had shrimp pho, tonight is raclettes, and then tomorrow is steak and finally Sunday night we’ll have some tacos using some of the fresh tortillas that my family sent.

As a finish to the week I have an especially tough schedule at work – 10 classes, and two of the classes are double length. To get this weekend, it looks like I’m going to have to earn it.

I was talking with one of my students yesterday during class about how much we both like kimchee, and how although there are some perfectly good brands available in the supermarket, by far the best is homemade kimchee. Years ago Kuniko brought home some homemade kimchee that she bought from a Korean lady selling it at her school. It was several degrees higher in quality and flavor than the store-bought stuff, but getting it again was a little difficult, since she never knew when the lady would show up again.

So my student said that he heard from a friend that heard from a guy in a bar that you could buy the best homemade kimchee near Shin-Nagata station in Hyogo. The only other information was that the shop was called Jun-chan. After an internet search at the end of my workday I managed to find it, and it was almost on my way home – just a 10 minute walk to another (less convenient) train station. So on a whim I set out after work and went to find it. Walking through Nagata is always interesting. It is called a 下町 (shitamachi), kind of a traditional working class town. Lots of little shops, lots of blue-collar workers, and plenty of good food available. It is also a town that has passed its peak (like a lot of towns in Japan), and so everywhere you can see signs of prosperity that have faded away and imagine what it was like in its heyday.

My iphone handled the GPS and led me directly there, and I found not only Jun-chan, but a whole street selling homemade Korean foods. My student had told me that a lot of Koreans live near Shin-Nagata station, and it looked like I had stumbled on a mini-Korea town. The shop owners were a couple of cackling old ladies who recommended a particular blend of kimchee, demanded a payment of 500 yen, and then complemented me on my looks. One of the old ladies asked if I’d be willing to go across the street and have a drink with her, but I begged off and hit the road.

When I got home I tried out the kimchee and – as expected – it was really good. We’ve got enough to last a couple of days, so tonight Kuniko will have a try. If she likes it as much as I did I’m guessing that I’ll be spending more time in Korea town. Just not drinking with the old ladies.

So one of the nice things about the iPad is that it makes consumption of information much more entertaining and efficient. It also served as the trigger to check out Twitter, and start following some people that I know, and some people that I don’t. It is a little overwhelming right now, but slowly I’m settling into it.

Yesterday was the first day back at work after a long weekend. The students were mostly tired out from doing fun stuff over the weekend – skiing, traveling, and one student even spent three days holed up at a comic cafe. Life is good this time of year for my students – the dip in workload comes from the end of year closing, and things are taking a while to ramp up. Lucky for them.

Kuniko had a half day off yesterday, which meant a couple of things. One – I had a hot meal waiting for me when I got home, and two – she’ll be working this weekend. As for the hot meal, she cooked a delicious meal. Fried potatoes and sausage, insalata caprese, and ratatouille with peppers and zucchini. Home run.

Tonight she’ll be at cooking class learning some Japanese dishes, but she even had time last night to prepare my dinner for tonight. It’s in the rice cooker right now – I just set the timer and it will be ready when I walk in the door tonight. Life is definitely good.

We started with a rather ambitious schedule for this three day weekend, but as time went on we kept cutting events based on our energy levels. That meant that the weekend turned out to be mainly curling up on the sofa and reading, listening to music, and staying out of the cold outside.

That’s not to say that we didn’t do anything at all. Saturday night we went over to visit Yoshi, Mamiko and Akira. They were still buzzing from the trip to California, and over four pots of cheese fondue we recapped the trip, told stories of our favorite parts. It was a fun night. We picked up the wine that we had sent back with them as well as an old suitcase that they had borrowed to get their stuff back, and then drove straight home and went right to bed.

Sunday instead of watching Harry Potter in the movie theater we stayed home and watched some Ugly Betty DVDs that Mamiko lent us, as well as watching Inception and Toy Story 3. We opened up a good bottle of Malbec from Argentina, too.

Monday was also mainly spent indoors. Starting off with salmon omelets with cheddar cheese, we then did a little bit of shopping for groceries, but ended up back at home in the early afternoon sipping champagne and reading books instead of heading out to the Nishinomiya Ebisu festival. We had considered going at some point this weekend, just like we had considered seeing Harry Potter and considered going to Sannomiya. In the end laziness won out, and I’d like to think that was residual exhaustion from our recent trip that was the root of it.

This week we’re back to work, but since Monday was a holiday we’ve got a nice short week. Tomorrow Kuniko has another cooking class, and Friday I have a new year party with some coworkers, so there area few events to look forward to (besides work, of course).

Today I’ll wrap up the three day week and jump into a three day weekend. I’m looking forward to catching up on some sleep – I had a little bit of jet lag this week, and I want to get over it before next week.

Kuniko was baking again after work yesterday, and she came back late at night with some delicious bread to enjoy for today’s lunch. Tonight she’s got a new year party so I may take the chance to step out and hit one of my haunts around Okubo. Not sure which one, though.

This weekend we’ll go visit Yoshi and family at their house to celebrate the successful trip and also pick up some wine that they brought back for us. Sunday we’ll visit Kuniko’s folks, and maybe hit the Okubo shrine for the first (and probably only) visit of 2011. Then Monday will be downtime for both us before going back to work.

One of the great things about our trip back to Glen Ellen
was that we took my friend Yoshi and his family along for the first
part of the trip. It was especially fun to show them around and see
their reactions to what seemed pretty normal to me. Celebrating
Christmas, eating turkey for dinner, opening stockings – everything
was new and interesting – and in my opinion that is what makes an overseas trip fun.

For their part they jumped into everything headfirst and didn’t hesitate to try everything. Cranberry sauce on a turkey sandwich? No problem!

Hopefully we will meet up with Yoshi, Mamiko and Akira in the near future for a recap. It’ll be fun to hear more about what they thought of the trip.