All quiet on the eastern front – we are continuing a Thai food marathon to kill off all the yummy fresh ingredients floating around the house. Last night was pad gkaprow with pork, and I ink tonight Kuniko is going to bust out the fresh lemongrass for a salmon dish. All about the food around here,

Students at work have been especially tired in class, because now is the season of the bonnenkai. Literally, “forget the year party”, people in Japan have a few of these every December. Each group that a person belongs to will have one, so it can add up to a lot of parties. For example, Kuniko will attend her school’s bonnenkai, one for second year teachers, one for female teachers, and one for English teachers. Unfortunately this year we can’t do one with her college friends, because a couple of key members are unavailable.

As for me, my company has been suspiciously silent about a bonnenkai. I’m guessing the budget is tight this year, so they may have decided to quietly skip it. That’s OK by me, actually. I can use the time and money for preparing for California.

We had a good time with the Fukumi’s on Saturday night. We ended up making all kinds of Thai food, including some that we had never tried before. All things considered it turned out pretty well. It was nice to catch up with them and talk about the holidays, and local events in Okubo. Turns out they are pretty regular customers of the Indian restaurant that we have been to a few times. What do you know?

One thing that we noticed while cooking together was that although we have plenty of space in the kitchen, and plenty of dishes to cook with, we don’t have enough computing power for the both of us. Between looking up recipes, playing music on the stereo, and surfing the web, one little EEEPC isn’t enough. So yesterday I went out and got an iPad. Now the training begins – but Kuniko ordered some stuff from Amazon on it last night, and it seemed to go off without a hitch. More tech toys – just what we need. Every time I try to simplify life around here one thing gets easier, but there are quietly two or three other things in the background that sneak into our consciousness.

OK, I’m off to work. Starting to count off the days till Xmas!

Last night Kuniko got home late from her baking class, and that means that this morning we have some bread here that she made. She did two kinds of rolls – one white bread and one filled with chocolate cream. Very nice!

Last night I came home from the grocery store with some chicken to BBQ, but suddenly it started raining, and since the BBQ is outside it seemed like my mini-BBQ party was cancelled. Actually, postponed – we’ll BBQ tonight if the weather is clear.

Instead of BBQ chicken I had an emergency frozen pizza along with a quesadilla – extremely low effort – but one of the hazards of shopping for dinner daily instead of weekly.

OK, off to work, and then to enjoy the weekend. Looking forward to relaxing!

I always wanted to write a title like that.

Since it has been colder and colder these days I decided yesterday to drag out the long underwear, and at least be comfortable on the way to work and back.

And as you might expect, the temperature jumped about 8 degrees yesterday, making it almost a sweaty walk to work. Everybody around me was surprised about the weather, and in almost all of my classes it was a discussion topic. I wasn’t surprised, however. Because it was surely caused by my long underwear.

We are getting close to the weekend. Tonight Kuniko has a baking lesson in Kobe, so I’ll be on my own cleaning house and getting ready for a party we’ll have on Saturday. We’re cooking Thai food for the Fukumi’s, so there are a lot of preparations to take care of, as well as a bit of housecleaning. Tonight I’ll try to knock out some of that to make Saturday more relaxing.

A post recently on Japan Probe had an interesting tidbit on how some people interviewed didn’t know what country some famous companies originated from. This was apparently newsworthy in Japan because I think most consumers in Japan know (and buy) Japanese brands with almost religious fervor. To think that people from other countries might not even know that an American company was American? Crazy talk.

One person was quoted in the video saying pretty much what I wanted to say:

A lot of people in America don’t really pay much attention to brand nationalities. The quality of products is more important.

It is interesting how people that I talk to will pay big money for Japanese products (especially electronics) that don’t quite meet their needs, mainly because it has the Japanese brand name featured prominently on the item.

Recently LG, a Korean electronics company, began advertising on Japanese TV, and I wonder how much of an effect it will have. We have an LG Blu-Ray player that we bought mainly because it can be hacked to play other regions, but also because it was about 60% cheaper than Japanese models (that can’t be hacked). It serves our (admittedly unusual) needs well, and it is a very good product. But I’ve never talked with anyone else in Japan that owned an LG product.

Anyway, with all the nationalistic conversations going on out there, maybe it is time to look beyond what country someone or something originates from, and look at the character/quality instead.

On our hike the other day we saw some “Yama Girls” for the first time. One of the big newsgrabbers these days in Japan is that there is a trend for girls to dress up in fashionable hiking clothes and hit the mountain. Until now I haven’t seen any before, but on our trip last week we must have bumped into five or six. They tended to travel in pairs, and wore matching outfits, which was pretty interesting.

I’m not sure what I think about the trend, but anything that brings more cute girls out on the trail can’t be a bad thing. There are already plenty of “Yama Grandmas” and “Yama Grandpas” out there.

This weekend Yoshi and I took a long hike on Sunday from Arima hot springs to Ashiya, just east of Kobe. It was a pretty long hike, but it was not too tough. We finished the whole thing in about four hours, so not bad.

The start of the hike was actually my first visit to Arima. It is a famous town in the area because of the local history behind the hot springs. There are apparently quite a few natural hot springs there, and some of them contain a lot of sulphur which may or may not be medicinal in nature. You could certainly smell the sulphur in the air while we walked through the town.

After buying a few provisions we started climbing Mt. Rokko from a different approach than I’ve tried before. It was a long, gradual climb, and it seemed like there was a lot of foot traffic going the other way. It made sense – take a long hike and then end at Arima for a hot bath. We were going the opposite direction, and that made for a lot of chances to say hello to people hiking.

We reached the summit of Mt. Rokko after about two hours of hiking, and at the top we sat down, had a cold beer and some lunch (that we had carried up the hill) and enjoyed watching people line up in front of the summit marker for pictures. It turned out that one of my students was hiking the opposite course, and while we lunched at the top he and his friends happened to walk by. They stopped and said hello, and we had a few snacks and chatted. It was a lucky chance to catch him during our break.

Next was a long, long downhill into Ashiya. The trail weaved through rocks and so there was a lot of jumping from rock to rock. At one point we bumped into an inoshishi (wild boar) who looked at us incuriously and moved on.

Once we arrived in Ashiya it was a short walk to JR station through neighborhoods with Mercedes Benz and BMW cars parked everywhere. Then we caught a train back to Sannomiya, and killed a little time shopping and drinking beer before we could meet up with Kuniko, Mamiko and Akira. After meeting them, we took a train to Sumiyoshi, and we took our first ride on the Rokkoliner, a tram that runs out to Rokko Island. The restaurant was actually near the Sheraton hotel, site of some pretty impressive wine tastings in the past.

The restaurant was called Rico, and served mostly Spanish food, and it was really good. The place was full of customers, but Yoshi had made a reservation for a table in the back, and started to chow down on all kinds of delicious foods: tapas, steamed mussels, grilled oysters, paella, and a bubbling garlic oil with mushrooms and peppers. Everything was great – and it really hit the spot after hiking all day.

Finally we wrapped things up and caught a bus back to Sannomiya from the Sheraton, and then it was back home and early to bed. I’m pretty tired out this morning, but duty calls, and I’ll head out in the cold to catch a train pretty soon.

Yesterday was Thanksgiving Day, but I was pretty much unaware of it for the first half of my work day. On my way home one of the American inspectors at the factory wished me a happy Thanksgiving, and it was then that I actually realized that it was turkey day.

To celebrate (?) Kuniko and I met after work and went to the local yakitori for grilled chicken on sticks. I guess it is the closest we can get to turkey around here. The yakitori was bustling with activity, and the master looked a little stressed as he tried to keep all his customers in food. One drunken customer was negotiating with the master in a bid to try to get some ramen (he actually wanted the master to send someone off to another shop to get some). Luckily we got our food fairly quickly, and it was as delicious as ever. It had been a long time (since the summer) since we had been to the yakitori, which I decided is way too long.

So Friday is here, and I’m looking forward to wrapping up this week and starting my weekend. Unfortunately Kuniko has to work both days this weekend, so I’ll be on my own most of the time. I’ll go hiking with Yoshi on Sunday, and after the hike we’ll meet up with Kuniko on Mamiko for dinner, so that is something to look forward to.

Some interesting stories at work recently, but as usual I can’t really talk about them here. The good news is that they make the day more entertaining, and time flies that much faster. One of my students just got back from America, where he made a presentation (and received good feedback from the customer), another three students will be leaving in the next few weeks. So I’m spending a lot of time on practical English – which can be used quickly and the results of which can be evaluated fairly rapidly.

It is a big contrast to teaching at the high school or junior high school level. There students may or may not use English in the ‘future’, so there is a lot less motivation and very little perceived need for it.

So work continues to be very fulfilling, and I’m hoping that I can keep on this track in the future.

On the way home from work last night I stood next to the door waiting to get off at my station, and two students behind me were talking about me in Japanese. I don’t know why they assumed I couldn’t understand what they were saying, but they spoke in normal voices –

“Hey, look at the foreigner. He looks just like Messi.”

I was happy to hear that – usually I hear Tom Cruise or some other movie star. There really isn’t a resemblance, but most foreigners that these kids see are the ones in popular media and the movies. But that wasn’t all they said –

“Messi? No way – he doesn’t look like him at all. He’s just tall.”

“Maybe you’re right.”

“Yeah, he looks more like Harry Potter.”

Ouch! I don’t know about you, but I’d call that a downgrade. From sports star to wizard? Just like that? Anyway, I got off the train without comment and headed home.

Had a very nice long weekend, ending with a day of baking at home yesterday. I made some spaghetti sauce, meatballs, and peanut butter cookies, and spent the day relaxing around the house. Originally I had more dramatic plans, but it turned out to be a rainy day yesterday, so I spent most of it inside. I did sneak in a bowl of miso ramen at 来来亭 for lunch – that hit the spot on a cold rainy day.

The dinner at Oliva for our anniversary was a hit. They have pretty authentic food, and the paella was as good as ever. We also had a nice Spanish Riserva, and thanks to the scanner on my phone I found a mail-order source in Japan in case we want to order a bottle for home. After dinner we went to darwine since Kuniko hadn’t seen the new place. He served us a glass of Oregon Cabernet Sauvignon that was quite good. He has pretty good taste in wine.

This week should be pretty low key – the next plans we have are for next Sunday – so I think we’ll just hang out at home this week. We’ve still got lots of Christmas shopping we need to do…

This extremely detailed and quite long article although three years old sums up nicely the wine market in Japan. The gaps they mention in the article in retail price (namely the $12-16 price range) are very apparent while looking through grocery stores in my area. To find premium wines consumers are left with only the internet and specialty wine shops.

The article is a bit long but worth the read if you are at all interested in wine and the Japanese market. I thought it appropriate with the release yesterday of Beaujolais Nouveau in Japanese stores.

So we were doing pretty well – it is the middle of November after all – but we finally broke down and plugged in the electric blankets. Inside our house runs about 13 degrees C (about 55 F) during the night, so it is really not that bad, but we were cold and we hooked ’em up. Now we’ll see how long we can go without heating up the floors downstairs.

This week is going by extraordinarily fast for me. I have a three day weekend coming up, we’ve got an anniversary dinner on Saturday, and so despite the fact that there is a lot of good stuff to look forward to time is flying. We’ve got to work on our Christmas shopping as well – it’ll be a big sack of goodies heading to California this time.

There was an announcement from the Japan Post Office the other day saying that as of today, they will not accept packages over 1 pound to the United States. Talk about a bummer.

That means that I can’t send Christmas presents to family in America this year. Luckily, I’ll be going to California for Christmas, but it seems that I’ll be lugging a lot more on the plane.

Hopefully, they’ll figure out a way around this strange law, but until then I guess we’ll have to send very light Christmas cards instead…

Last night on the way home from work Kuniko was crossing the street in the pedestrian crossing with a green light, and a truck suddenly drove through the intersection. Luckily Kuniko saw it coming, and stepped back out of the way. Just a few more steps or a glance in the wrong direction, and it would have been all over.

Each morning when we get up and get ready for work we have the TV news on to catch up with what is going on in Japan since we don’t take a newspaper. Each day they have a short section on births/marriages/deaths in popular culture. Most of the people I don’t really know, but I have noticed that the deaths seem to be reported pretty much every day, while the others are only now and then. I guess from here on out, we’ll be getting more and more death notices, as Japan’s older people continue to dominate the population.

Just a little reminder that your time is limited.

On Saturday we had some younger guests over, and we were talking about our recent travels, and why we’ve been traveling so much. Kuniko told them that there are just some places that we want to visit before we die, and they laughed at the idea that we would be thinking about dying this early in our lives. I guess we just have a different perspective – it can end anytime, so why take chances? Enjoy it while you can.