Winter Food

It's almost Christmas. Sort of, but that is what I am teaching now, anyway. Basically it means memorizing how to say mistletoe and reindeer in Japanese (yadorigi and tonakai), but it's fun, and who doesn't like getting Christmas cards. That reminds me, mad props to mom for sending me Christmas stuff. There is a package which should be put in the mail tomorrow, but getting to the post office here is often a pain.

Here's one awesome thing ma sent me:

Gingerbread Peeps! They are actually gingerbread flavored, too. Peeps are slowly becoming candy appropriate for any holiday. People often talk about how my generation grew up with the internet, and that this shapes our outlook like no other generation's before, but I think it is Peeps. We grew up with these, too. And they are so much better than Facebook it is almost ridiculous. She also sent some other Christmas-themed Peeps, but I don't feel like photographing them, and I already ate one of the boxes, anyway.

Human shaped food is surreal.

The cup is filled with wheat (barley? the character can be either) tea. I found a bag containing something like 54 jumbo sized bags for super cheap, so I got it for these cold nights. It is generally below freezing in my house during the night. The important thing, though, is that it has some sort of incredibly happy old guy on the bag, so I can only assume it has some sort of magical health effects. I hope so, anyway, because I've been drinking like ten cups of it a day, which works out nicely because the bags are huge and can be used to make multiple pots of tea before losing flavor. Crazy.

It's not all candy here, though sometimes I am given enough snacks with tea/coffee to constitute a fourth meal. Here's some soup and rice I made which is pretty boring, but check out the little fish. Neat. Oh, yeah, I went fishing today with a special ed student and it was sweet. I caught one. Awesome.

Maybe it is weird that this is enough to excite me now. This is bread. Just plain white bread, uncut. I was so happy to find bread that wasn't only 4-6 slices of bread cut to be about 1.5-2 times the size of normal sandwich bread. You wouldn't think you would miss sandwiches, but there you go.

Here's an odd one. It seems to be fake champagne (still with .02% alcohol) marketed to kids for Christmas. I chose the keroppi one over the hello kitty or pokemon because I have a thing for frogs and I don't know all the newfangled pokemon. It's pretty good. I'm still confused as to it's purpose. As a side note, I think kero, kero is the sound that frogs make here.

Behold this. Japan is so far ahead of us in flavor technology, it is incredible. That bag has "beekoneggu" written on it, for those who can't read backwards katkana. Yes, they are bacon and egg flavored chips. And they actually taste like it, too, which is awesome. The can is a new seasonal brew from sapporo which is supposed to be white wine-like beer made with hops from New Zealand or something. It was darn good, but apparently the convenience store has no faith in it, because they are selling it with the cheap beers. Joke's on them!

Japan is so crazy. That's it for now.

Wasabeef

"'WASABEEF' has grown up with customers. We hope everybody to enjoy this grown-up and exciting taste!"

Also, mayonnaise-flavored shrimp things and some booze. I stopped by James's to pick up the brown bottle, which I had left there after Thanksgiving (actual held on a Sunday), and a couple of his students were there. They also happened to be some of my students. One of them remarked that I am Santa. Last time I checked, Santa drove a sleigh, not a Daihatsu Mira. Also, I don't remember Santa coming to people's houses to take things. The moral of the story, though, is that even when you think that shochu is sake and warm it up mistakenly, it is good. The other moral is that snack companies know far more about making delicious chips that taste really nothing like either of the two flavors that they have claimed to combine than they do about English grammar.

Answers

Thanks to all who took the little loanwords quiz. Here are the answers.

Shaapen, シャーペン, means mechanical pencil. It is a shortened form of sharp and pencil put together.

Hochikisu, ホチキス, means stapler. It's called that because of a dude named E. H. Hotchkiss. I didn't actually feel like reading that page, so it may be crap.

Hoomu, ホーム, actually means platform, as in a train platform. Yes, apparently the word platform was too long for Japanese people.

Pasokon, パソコン, indeed does mean personal computer. It's just shortened and stuck together.

Baito, バイト, was really unfair to ask, I suppose, since I made it seem like these would be English. It's actually a shortened form of arbeit, meaning work, if my German is right (which I am not going to check). The Japanese use it to mean part-time job. Weird, eh?


This is a pretty much unrelated picture of a box of Christmas doughnuts I bought the other day. The writing is backwards, but if you can read katakana, you can probably make out that it does indeed say kurisumasu doonatsu, クリスマス　ドーナツ, so I'm not lying. Also the picture of doughnuts with santas and reindeers all over the place is kind of a giveaway.

The Japanese conception of Christmas is excellent. This is a country with something like <1% of the population identifying as Christian, but Christmas stuff is popping up all over. All my students know who Santa-san is and seem to look forward to this holiday for the sole purpose of getting stuff. I don't blame them.

The Japanese conception of doughnuts is awful. They are tiny and dry and, like everything here, individually wrapped for no reason. I think the guys who run food companies here are the people that they based Captain Planet's villains on because it is as if they are going out of their way to hurt the environment for no other reason whatsoever.

Loan Words

So, the Japanese love loanwords, mostly from English. Of course, sometimes the words they end up with are just weird. Here's a little quiz. Feel free to guess what these words are in English in the comments. No fair if you already speak Japanese.

1. shaapen

2. hochikisu

3. hoomu (that's a double "oh" sound, not like "ooh!")

4. pasokon

5. baito

Good luck.

More Stuff that You No Doubt will Love

The other day I noticed that I was just about out of stuff to put on my rice, as I like to save my natto for special days, meaning any day I feel like eating it, and since rice is the main part of my breakfasts, I went to the store to buy some furikake. So, I got some that had Hello Kitty on the bag. Cats like fish, I guess. Furikake is basically like fish food. It is little flakes of seaweed and dried fish and who knows what.


Today I went to a kindergarten, which was cool, and included me playing both Anpanman's March and Doraemon's Song for the kids, but I don't feel like typing up a bunch of stuff like that as it would probably be far too interesting for my readers. Instead, have a picture of the assorted dough nut holes they gave me in a The Simpsons: The Movie bag. I saw that movie a while back. It is sad that the once great Simpsons could only manage a mediocre movie. They really lost something along the way.

Some More Junk

Check out this new Kirin. It is awesome.



Some weird chu-hai which I guess is grape flavored and was pretty good. Also, a new kind of Yebisu in a red can. The beer itself was a nice amber color and probably the best Yebisu I've had yet.

Top Four Things I've Learned from Phish:

4. The tires are the things on your car that make contact with the road.
3. The tires are the things on your car that make contact with the road.
2. The tires are the things on your car that make contact with the road.
1. The car is the thing on the road that takes you back to your abode.

Thanksgiving

Happy Thanksgiving. Here it is called kanshasai,感謝祭, but people obviously don't celebrate it. Weirdly, though, friday is kinroukansha no hi, 勤労感謝の日, which is basically "thanks for the hard work day." That's it.

Yeah, More Weird Stuff to Eat

I'm making up for the lack of posts recently by posting a bunch of crap at once.



That beer I picked up in Matsue. It's called akinama, I guess, meaning fall raw, roughly. I'm guessing on the reading because it isn't anywhere on the can. It's a fall beer, so it was marked down, and I don't think I've had it yet, so there. Also, a pretty can, eh?

That reminds me, the leaves finally started changing colors in the last couple weeks. So now it is pretty awesome looking. Also, we got snow last night. Not a whole lot, and it melted by the time I was home from work (it didn't snow in the other part of town which is somehow slightly warmer), but kind of neat, anyway.

The snack there is called ebitcho, which is a combination of ebi, meaning shrimp, and choko(reeto), meaning, you guessed it, chocolate. It is the little shrimp flavored fry snack things that I'm sure I've shown before but covered in chocolate. Weird? That is exactly why I bought it, and I am pleased to say that they aren't bad at all.

Top 5 Things I Learned from Roger Miller

Because all the other blogs and crappy websites just make top five lists, and because I want to be like them so much, and because I've been listening to Roger Miller lately, here is a list of the Top Five Things I learned from Roger Miller.

5. 110 miles ain't much distance, but it sure do make a difference.

4. We all have the right to be wrong now and then.

3. Chicken ain't chicken till he's lickin' good and fried.

2. You can't roller skate in a buffalo herd.

1. Roger Miller is awesome.

Another Use for that Hot Plate

Wa ha! My best investment yet!



It's getting cold here (as in below freezing at points) so I went up to Matsue this weekend to buy some warm clothes, and I happened into a grocery store which had stuff I can't buy in my little town, so I picked up things like this kit for making okonomiyaki (お好み焼き), which means things that you like cooked. A clever name. What they actually are are cabbage pancakes with various stuff (of your choice!) added, like meat or corn or in my case, squid tentacle bits.



The hot plate in action! すごいなあ！



The white stuff is mayonnaise, with which I best you are all familiar. The brown stuff is a sauce that as far as I know is used exclusively for okonomiyaki. It's very sweet and probably terrible for you. Whatever.



The little green bits visible there are 青のり, which I think is read aonori, but I'm not sure. It's just dried seaweed powder which doesn't really add much besides looks.

I also had some delicious beer which I've never seen here, but I forgot to take a picture of it. It's called Super Gent, which is just fantastic in my opinion.



In a completely unrelated picture, no, it isn't an absurdly under ripe tomato; it's a persimmon. They're in season, and called kaki, or 柿 in kanji. I'd actually never had any before I came here. If you haven't, either, they have a texture kind of like apples and very little taste, but aren't bad at all.

Stay tuned for more updates which will no doubt be about whatever else I eat.

Awesome Stuff

I haven't done anything cool lately, so here are some pictures of stuff I've eaten.



That's Asahi Ajiwai, which I think means something like savoring, but I am not going to look up right now. It's a seasonal beer and not even as good as Super Dry.



There's a snack I bought that is made to imitate the taste and shape of takoyaki, another Japanese snack that is basically octopus balls. Delicious



And there's the actual snack itself, which was pretty good.



Mmm, squid and mayonnaise flavored cracker thing.



This is katsu kare, or curry rice with a pork cutlet on it. It's incredibly good even if I make it incorrectly using store-bought cutlets.



I didn't actually eat this. It's a hot plate I got for pretty cheap, mostly so as to make yakiniku, literally just cooked meat, but actually also using vegetables.



This is tare, a delicious sauce that is used with yakiniku. I found the bottle's claim of spiciness unsubstantiated.



Nothing goes better with cooked meat than a big ol' bottle of Japan's most popular beer.



And that is the actual squid that I cooked on the hot plate. Incidentally, it turns out that squid are essentially just rubbery tubes filled with brown goo.

Congratulations

I know I haven't updated in a while, but whatever. Big news.

The best girl I know is going to be going to Senegal with the Peace Corps. So, congratulations, Marisa!

Some Pictures

Sorry for the absence. I've just been lazy. Have some pictures of Hinomisaki, a sweet place near here.




















Obviously, I didn't caption these, but I'm sick today and I've already documented how stupid blogger is about pictures. There are a bunch of pictures of a massive shrine complex in there that had multiple buildings. There were some dudes working on the main building when I stopped by and an old guy painting a landscape from inside the complex of buildings. I didn't take a picture of him, though, because I thought it would be rude.

After the shrine, I drove up to the lighthouse, which is fairly famous, I guess, along an oceanside road which was beautiful enough for me to stop the car and take crappy pictures with a cameraphone.

The thing that looks like a fish shaped cake is just that. It's called taiyaki, with where tai is some kind of fish (I am not going to look this up just now) and yaki meaning cooked. It's filled with an, or sweet beans. I'm also not bothering with italics just now. I got one when I bought gas because they were giving them away. I actually started to drive off with it on my roof, but the kindly employee lady stopped me to tell me. It was good. That's all for now.

Happy Halloween

Happy Halloween! It's an awesome holiday, even if I just explain it to kids here and don't really do much for it. I got some pie and cookies for it the other day, though, so that is cool. I don't currently have time for much of an update, so enjoy these pictures I found using Google Image Search of some of my favorite Halloween costumes.

Pictures

Sorry it took so long to put up these pictures, but I forgot to send them to myself.



This is a little monument that was in front of a shrine I walked into a little while ago. I think the name is onikami, which would be ogre-god, but readings in names are notoriously irregular.



Here's the torii, or gate, at the shrine.



Here's the actual shrine. Neat. There was nobody around.



It might be kind of hard to see, but this is a picture of a snake that was just chilling on a stump near the shrine. I wasn't going to try to get a better picture. The Japanese word for snake is hebi.



There's some kind of huge rock that was near the shrine. It had stuff engraved in it, but I have no idea what it said. It was really huge, though.



Here are some Buddha statues I walked by. There are all kinds of little statues and mini shrines all over Japan, which is really kind of neat that they just sit there unattended and have been around for probably centuries in some cases.

Sorry it is sideways. My mac won't let me do anything useful with pictures. It also likes to hid windows. I am starting to get annoyed at lots of little navigation things on the mac that windows does so much better. Also, seriously, Steve Jobs, add a right mouse button, you idiot.



When I got back to my apartment, I heard what sounded like festival music, so I went outside and found that there was a tiny matsuri just for kids which basically was just them walking about one block carrying a tiny portable shrine while a truck drove alongside playing music from a speaker. Hilarious.

An old lady talked to me, though, and some guy gave me some sake for no real reason. Also some of the kids were my students, so that was funny.



WASHOI!



Here's the actual portable shrine that just rode in the back of the truck while some guys walked along to make sure it didn't fall out. Awesome.