I think we can live out of our refrigerator and pantry for the next week or so.   Despite eating nothing but leftovers Sunday and Monday there are still enough supplies inside to keep us in good food for a long while.  I’m hoping that everything lasts as long as it takes us to get around to eating it.

Yesterday at work I brought some extra cookies that we got from one of our guests on Saturday night.  They are ginger thins from IKEA, and so I thought I’d share with my students.  The highlight was serving them to the Swedish guy who joined the company in April.  He said they actually are quite traditional in Sweden, and people there love to make their own and eat them.  The American guy serving Swedish cookies to the Swede in Japan – what an odd situation.

I’m hoping to get a jump on vacation planning soon – I need to pop the question to the HR department to see if it is OK to take a long(ish) holiday during the summer.  I’ve just got to find the right timing to ask…

This Saturday Kuniko invited two of the assistant language teachers from her school over for dinner.  One brought her boyfriend, and the five of us sat around talking and eating burritos.  I think the food went over well.  We’ve got plenty of leftovers, including some excellent chili that Amy brought over, so the deliciousness will last until at least Wednesday this week.

Amy, Matt and Tiffany all have a good sense of humor, and Matt especially seemed to share my love for cheesy movies.  He recommended “Commando” for Kuniko and I recommended (and loaned him) “Road House”.  Sunday Kuniko and I watched Commando at home, while he and Tiffany watched Road House at their home and Sunday.

It’s back to work now, and for a full five days this week.

It seems like we just got back from Bali and we were already thinking about our summer holidays.  Before summer gets here, Kuniko will be taking a school trip with her students to New Zealand in March, but I’ve got no such overseas travel to look forward until August.

The current plan is to head to Spain and Greece – kind of a broken economy tour of Europe.  We’re pricing out flights right now, and as soon as our companies finalize their 2013 calendars we’ll be ready to pull the trigger.

This weekend we’ll be hosting some of Kuniko’s foreign co-workers for Mexican food.  I think there are three Americans, so I’m planning to make carne asada burritos for them, along with homemade beans, salsa and guacamole.  I always love cooking Mexican!

Last night after work I met one of my ex-students for drinks at the local tachinomi.  It had been a long while since I had met him – nearly a year – and also a long time since I’d been to the “standing bar”.  It was nice to talk a bit and drink a bit, and I still got home hours before Kuniko came back from work.  Wednesday is her busiest day.  Frequently she arrives home after nine or ten p.m., so it was just a simple dinner of leftover soup and then to bed.

It is getting colder and colder around here, and harder to get out of bed in the mornings.  It is also harder to avoid the temptation of driving to work together and enjoying the heater and the convenience.  We’ll see if we can resist this morning…

One of my new year’s resolutions was to bump up my language skills in languages I know and a brand new language.  The two languages I decided to focus on are Spanish and Korean.  After having a great time picking up the basics of the Indonesian language, I thought it would be a good idea to start from scratch on a language that I have a better chance of using in the future.  So yesterday I finally got started learning the Korean writing system (Hangul) at work during my lunch break.  By the end of the day, I think I’ve got the basics down.  I was able to write my own name, and at home last night I was able to read Korean words English origin.  Not bad for just a few hours of study.

I’ll spend the rest of the week focusing on Korean, and then next week switch to Spanish for a refresher course.  Hopefully I’ll be able to keep all the languages straight in my head.

We had a pretty nice weekend – sushi, dim sum, yakitori, and a pretty wild party at our place with the Tojos.  Friday night’s sushi was as good as we had hoped, and the master seemed to think maybe we were eating a little too much.  I don’t think he was worried about our stomachs, really, probably more worried about whether our wallets could handle it.  Luckily, my wallet was OK.

On the way home we stopped at a pretty massive liquor and imported foods shop in Nada.  The wine selection was OK, but they really have a lot of different liquors.  We didn’t buy any booze, but we did get some pepper jack cheese and a tiny jar of caviar to splurge.  I think maybe this was the first time I’ve ever bought caviar myself – foodie milestone?

Saturday night I met Kuniko in Kobe after she finished work for dinner and a movie.  The dinner was trying a dim sum place in north Motomachi.  The atmosphere was nothing special – almost cafeteria-like.  But the waitress was not Japanese, and that is always a good sign for ethnic food.  The dim sum was great – just what I was craving.  Kuniko and I ate big and couldn’t stop.  I think we’ll be back – the place is called 大家好 – Daichahao.

Sunday night was hitting the Tojos favorite yakitori.  It has been a while since we got together with them, and between Mr. Tojo’s business trips and our trips for pleasure we mainly talked about travel and drinking.  The yakitori was pretty good – Kuniko thought it was a little salty for her, but I didn’t mind.  The master even prepared a secret wine list for us (me) to select from.  I guess word gets around. After dinner we invited them to our place for cocktails, and the party hit the second stage.  We tried all kinds of cocktails, wine and ended with some limoncello.  We had a good time talking and joking (and eating more) and even got into that caviar in the fridge.  Good times.

Monday was luckily a holiday, but we awoke pretty groggy from the night before, and ended up spending the entire day at home.  I just played video games, Kuniko was marking, and our customary weekend bottle of sparkling wine remained in the fridge while we were in recovery stage.  It was good to relax and recharge, though.  I would have hated to work after that party.

So we’re back to work today, and I’m looking forward to getting back to it!

Especially on the week after a long vacation.  We’re starting a three day weekend tomorrow, so this Friday is just a little sweeter.

This week I’ve been busy working on a translation project for work.  The work is a little high profile – translating a vice-president’s speech into English, so I’ve been squeezing in translation work between students all week.  I think it has turned out OK, but today I’ll put the finishing touches on it and then send it in.  It was a lot of work, and it’ll be nice to think about something else during the weekend.

Every time we go out of the country on a vacation, upon returning we get a serious craving for sushi.  This most recent trip was no different, and tonight we’re going to go to our favorite sushi shop in Nada.  It’s a nice reward for working hard all week.

Saturday night we’ll go out to see a “Looper” in Kobe, and then Sunday night we’ll meet Mr. and Mrs. Tojo in Akashi.  They are taking us to their favorite yakitori restaurant.  I’m looking forward to checking it out – we’re always looking to find out about more delicious local restaurants.

Monday should be a day of rest before going back to work.  Kuniko should be home all day on Sunday and Monday, so it’ll be a good chance for both of us to relax and spend some more time together.

We decided to hire out our driver from the airport and spend a day with him showing us the sights.  Ignoring the call of cocktails and the ocean we instead got an early start and headed north to the artist enclave of Ubud.  It was about an hour drive north considering the traffic.  It seemed like every road we traveled on was full of bottlenecks that brought traffic to a crawl.  Our driver said that road improvements are on the long list of things to work on once the government starts operating in the black.  It sounded familiar.

When we finally arrived in Ubud, our driver interpreted our request to see some local art as “let’s go to various touristy art shops”.  After two such stops we asked him to skip the shopping altogether and instead get to the sightseeing of local temples.  The driver didn’t get mad – he was getting paid already – but I think he was hoping to get some kickbacks from the shops for bringing us there.  The “take the tourists shopping” scam is the oldest one in the book.

Ubud was quite different from the scenery around Nusa Dua, and so it was fun to have the driver take us on backstreets and see how normal Indonesian people live.  It seemed like every house was trying to sell some kind of handicraft or artwork.  Our driver said that unemployment in Bali was at around 20%, so there were a lot of people around with time on their hands who evidently could learn art quickly.

After visiting some temples, he took us to a local restaurant that looked like it also was a tourist trap, but we were too tired, hungry (and hung over) to care too much.  The food was actually pretty good there, and my hangover told me to order a banana milkshake instead of our usual lunchtime beer.  It was a good call – a milkshake that I’ll never forget.

After lunch we asked the driver to take us back towards our hotel, with a couple of short stops on the way to pick up some essentials in the shops.  On the way back a huge storm came through – dumping water at a rate that was hard to believe.  We were lucky we were in the car, and I had flashbacks to our crazy ride back from Agra to Delhi in India last year.

The rest of the holiday we spent mostly around the hotel, taking it easy and spending a lot of time at the beach.  Surprisingly we didn’t get too much sunburn, and a lot of my co-workers commented when I got back to Japan that I looked like I didn’t even go to Bali.

Our final trick was to go to the hotel spa and get a long Balinese massage just before heading to the airport to go home.  The massage was excellent – there is a big difference when they are professionals.  The ride back to the airport turned out to be a really long trip on the same traffic congested road.  What was a 20 minute ride when we arrived was a two hour ride going back, and I was glad we allowed a lot of time before check-in at the airport.

So that’s about it – a very relaxing trip and maybe the first one that we’ve taken that was centered around a resort rather than the cheapest hotel we could find.  It was a good experience, but I think it’ll be a while before we stay at a resort again.  There is something to be said for the independence and freedom that a small local hotel affords.  Besides, I like thinking on my feet, using the local language, and taking chances.  Maybe that’ll change as I get older.

We spent most of the week out on the beach, but there were definitely some highlights other than getting tan and sipping cocktails.  One thing about staying at a resort is that you start to see familiar faces.  One family was headed by a guy that looked remarkably like Vin Diesel, and bossed around his kids like it, too.  Walking along the beach we saw a Japanese guy with his upper body completely covered by tattoos, right up to the wrist where he could hide them with long sleeves if necessary.  He had a completely shaved head, and walked around like he owned the place.  Maybe he did, but we figured he was a yakuza getting some time away from Japan.

We also tried to get out from the bubble and explore other parts of Bali.  Our driver from the airport offered to take us anywhere we wanted to go for free, and not quite believing it we arranged a ride to a local restaurant with the hotel.  It cost us $20 to get a 15 minute ride to the restaurant.  The driver waited in the car outside while we went in and ate, and then drove us back.  The bill at the restaurant for both of us with drinks was only about $7, so it seemed pretty wasteful to use that service.  But the dinner was great, and we could use the Indonesian language that we studied and order successfully.

We also went to Jimbaran beach  not far from our hotel.  We arrived via a free ride from our driver, who dropped us off at a restaurant and then drove away.  Jimbaran beach is lined with seafood restaurants.  People gather during the sunset to eat on the beach with sand between your toes and white sand stretching away for as far as you can see.  We finally settled on a restaurant that we liked with a seat under some shelter on a patio outside the restaurant.  Inside we chose our dinner, ending up with a lobster and two king prawns.  The system is to pay by weight before cooking, so we ended up paying quite a bit for the dinner, but it was a fun experience.  The only down side was the heat and the flies.  Between the two of them we couldn’t really eat at a slow pace and enjoy the meal as much as we would have liked.  After dinner we walked along the beach at sunset for a while and then headed on back to the hotel ahead of a tropical storm.

It was rainy season in Bali, so there were often rainstorms that suddenly showed up, and then went away just as quickly.  Luckily you could hear them coming as they usually were preceded by thunder and some lightning.  We would just get under something for a while, and then we could go back out and walk around.  Even getting caught in the rain was a pleasant experience when the weather was so warm.

On New Year’s Eve we were required to join a big party at the resort.  When we reserved our rooms the website said that all people staying at the resort on New Year’s Eve were required to pay the fee for dinner, and since we would be charged whether we attended or not, we decided to attend.  There was free champagne at an opening reception, and we mingled awkwardly with people that we didn’t know until it was time for dinner.  We were seated with the other Japanese guests, but that turned surreal when the family across from us turned out to be Chinese people that live in Japan, and next to me was the yakuza gangster and his wife/girlfriend.   He wasn’t so talkative, and I was just hoping I wouldn’t say something stupid after drinking too much champagne.

The good news about the New Year’s bash was that we could enjoy a lot of traditional Indonesian food, including a spit roasted pig (yum!), and the quality of the food was excellent.  The Chinese family turned out to be really entertaining, and the yakuza left early.  We had a great time that night.  We left a little early since we had a bottle of our own sparkling wine chilling in the mini-bar in our room, and we ended up drinking that on the balcony and watching fireworks off in the distance.  We even took a slightly tipsy walk on the beach in the dark, but we made it back with to the hotel without any problems, unless you count a little beach sand on our floor.  It was a nice, relaxing New Year’s countdown.

Pictures from this post can be found here.

We’re back from our trip to Bali.  This trip was more of a “get away from it all and relax” kind of trip.  We didn’t expect to do much sightseeing, and that’s how the trip turned out.  Relaxing, swimming, eating and drinking – with only a little time spent snapping pictures of the local temples and attractions.

The trip started off with a long day of travel.  We got up early in the morning and got out to Kansai airport in a few hours.  We passed through security and immigration smoothly enough, and because it was still only 8 a.m. we exchanged our customary cocktail in the lounge at Kansai airport to a coffee and some breakfast instead.

We flew on Air Asia, which is a low cost carrier based out of Malaysia.  They have recently started a flight between their hub at Kuala Lumpur and Osaka once a day.  The plane layout was actually not so much different from a regular airline, and the I didn’t feel any more cramped than usual.  The service was good and the flight attendants were very friendly.  If we wanted to eat we had to buy it ourselves, and they accepted Japanese yen or Malaysian ringgit, so that worked out well for us.  At the end of the flight we bought a couple of beers and a really nice Malaysian dish that was spicy enough to satisfy our heat tooth.

Once we arrived at Kuala Lumpur airport we were stuck in the Air Asia terminal – no chance to go out and see the rest of the terminal where I believe there are probably more choices for restaurants, shops  and bars.  However, it was suitably exotic to make looking around the shops interesting.  We ate noodles at a stand, but Kuniko found that her chow mein had at least a couple small curls of shaved metal in among the vegetables.  Yikes!  My dish was fine, though – fried noodles and spicy chicken.

After killing a couple of hours waiting for our next flight we walked out the plane and caught a much smaller Air Asia flight to Denpasar in Bali.  This flight was just about three hours, and was a piece of cake.  Before we knew it we were landing on Bali and looking outside at the dark skies.  Local time was around nine in the evening, but as soon as the doors opened we could feel the heat difference.  It was time to change clothes and try to get through immigration.

I had heard that there are a lot of scams going through immigration in Bali, and it turned out to not only be true about the airport, but a recurring theme throughout our trip.  The first scam is directly government sponsored – pay 25 USD to get our “visa on arrival”.  The line for that was about 20 minutes.  Then you wait in the immigration line and that line is about 30-45 minutes.  Once you get through there you can pick up your suitcase and head out to whatever transportation you’ve arranged.   Because the lines take forever, you can pay some guys who walk up to you (in airport uniforms) about $20 each to speed through the lines.  They have some sort of arrangement with the immigration officers and a separate line for people who decide to pay.  This is a big enough deal to see that there were many people trying to get us to pay.  We refused to pay right off the bat and instead waited in line, but looking back now, it is probably worth the extra money to get through the lines, especially if you are tired out from a long day of traveling (like us!).  Next time, maybe we’d pay.

Anyway, after another hour of airport paperwork we got our suitcase and went outside to see hundreds of locals lingering around the exit, hoping to pick up some tourists.  We had arranged with our hotel to pick us up, so we were quickly able to find our man, and he took us to his car and then on to the hotel.  There were actually two people – one hotel porter, and the driver himself.  The driver (of course) offered his services to us directly (cutting the hotel out of the equation right in front of the porter, who didn’t seem to care) and we got his card and made some empty promises to call him later if we needed anything.

From the airport it was about a 20 minute drive to our hotel – the Nusa Dua Beach Hotel.  It is one of the older resorts in Nusa Dua – kind of a gated resort community in the southeast part of the island of Bali.  The check in process was quick enough, and we settled into our comfortable room and then went to the bar to take advantage of a free welcome drink.  There we met the bartender and had a really nice conversation with him.  His name was Yasa, and his friendliness went beyond the typical tourist banter – a really nice guy.  We had a couple of drinks and then went to bed pretty early.  The bar (and the rest of the hotel for that matter) was open-air, so we could smell the saltwater of the ocean nearby.  Since it was dark we didn’t have any chances to go out and play, but we figured we’d get to that the next day.

The next day we slept in, had breakfast at the buffet, and then went out to explore the resort.  It was located right on the beach, which meant we could get out to the white sands within a minute of leaving our hotel room.  The resort was quite large, three different swimming pools, five restaurants, a spa with fitness center, tennis courts, a pool table and darts, and plenty of other diversions.  The next day we ran into our first problem, though – I had purchased a travel size of contact solution, but in the rush of the airport I had bought solution for hard contact lenses instead of the soft lenses that I wear.  That meant we had to figure out where to buy some solution, and everyone at the hotel said to go to “Bali Collection”, which was a shopping center about ten minutes walk down the beach.  We found what we needed there, and over the week spent a lot of time walking there as a way to get some exercise and see the sights.

Walking down the beach towards the shopping center you get a chance to walk through the other resorts – The Westin, Hyatt, and several others.  There were a lot of customers, but it didn’t look filled to capacity.  Apparently we were there during the rainy season, but that didn’t stop a lot of Russians and Australians from coming.  Every time we heard somebody speaking in Bali it was either a local speaking in Indonesian, or it was Russian or Australian English.  I was surprised that there weren’t more Asians (especially Japanese) or Americans there.

The other thing that was interesting was that as you left the area around the resorts you passed through an invisible barrier that separated you from the “bubble” of resort life and into regular Nusa Dua.  Nusa Dua is a pretty upscale area – later in the week we were able to see what was life beyond Nusa Dua.  I was really surprised how apparent this barrier between worlds was, and what a difference it was when you left it.

We’re in Bali for a week. I’ll start posting again when we get back. See you in 2013!

It is officially Christmas here, and Kuniko and I are both off to work.  Last night we had Kuniko’s folks over for dinner and we were able to celebrate with them, and afterwards we opened presents around the tree in our living room.  We got lots of great presents from family members in the USA, and the pile of loot is impressive.  Kuniko bought me the 50th anniversary box set of James Bond Blu-ray discs, so we’ve got a lot of movies to watch.

Today marks my last day of work of the year – I have a little bit longer holiday that the rest of the KHI people, so I’ll try to use that time to prepare for our trip later in the week.  For now, I’m concentrating on having some good classes at work and killing some of the leftovers in our fridge.  It should be a good week!

Last night during my short shopping trip in Sannomiya I stopped in at the new Burger King, and ordered a double Whopper with cheese.  That was a big burger.  Nearly as big as the ones we make at our house.  While the size isn’t necessarily the most important thing I look for in a burger, I think this point alone may be enough for them to be successful in Japan.  McDonald’s has the cheap burger, MOS Burger has the “premium/expensive” burger, and Burger King has the giant burger.  We’ll see if they do well in Kobe – the location has been bad luck for some other fast food favorites of mine, including Subway.

My shopping trip was very successful.  I even made a stop in my favorite Chinatown back alley shop to get a mysterious bottle of Taiwanese rice vinegar.  Can’t wait to try cooking with it.  By the time I got home I pretty much loaded to capacity, so hopefully I burned off the calories of that Whopper walking around and lifting heavy things.

Tonight my department’s year end party is being held in Sannomiya.  If it is anything like the welcome party back in April it should be a pretty lively one.  I’ll have to keep my wits about me – tomorrow we’ve got to get the house ready for yet another holiday party.  Busy busy…

Tonight after work I’m off to Kobe to do a little shopping, while Kuniko is away at a company party.  The plan is for me to buy some key ingredients for our Christmas parties on Saturday (at our place) and Sunday (at the Yamaji’s place).  I may have the chance to drop by the new Burger King in Sannomiya.  The last Burger King I had was in the airport on a transfer through Frankfurt Germany, and I waited about thirty minutes in line with a huge group of delayed Chinese passengers looking to blow their voucher on burgers.  This is a new restaurant, so I’m guessing it’ll be busy as well, but it is just not that often I have a chance to get a Whopper and onion rings.

Last night for dinner I decided to liven up the pot of nabe by cooking a crab in there.  It was really good.  It was my first time cooking crab in nabe, and it turned out pretty well.  The crab was pretty small overall – not like the giant crab legs we had in fall – so it was a little more work getting the good stuff out of the shell.  But we were totally satisfied.

While waiting for the nabe to cook, and Kuniko to get home, I finished up watching Survivor.  Now my reality shows are all over.  I just have one other show to catch up (Treme) and then I’m out of TV.  Luckily there are plenty of other things to do…