Spoonful of Snark

2009-05-13T21:45:00.001-07:00

I'm working from home all day tomorrow in order to supervise my cooking class final project - a very promising-looking sourdough loaf.

Life is good!

My sourdough starter version 2.0 (Japan starter was the OG) has breathed what life it can into this project. I think we all know that San Francisco wild yeast kicks Japan yeast ASS (sourdough pretty much unheard of in Japan), so here's hoping. I will come up with a nickname for this starter, contingent upon edible outcome.

My menu planning project is also taking shape - mayhaps I'll post my final menu after it's done?

Earth Day

2009-04-15T21:02:00.001-07:00

Okay I don't even know when the hell Earth Day is...but every day is Earth Day as far as I'M concerned! I just wanted to vent because I got yet another asinine Earth-Day-related e-mail, from American Apparel this time, that reads something like:

Blah blah blah we are a pretty green company we have solar panels we recycle we use organic cotton sometimes. BUY OUR SHIRTS AND THINGS AND DO YOUR PART ON EARTH DAY!

So anyway, I really hate green-washed consumerist crap. If you really want to do your part on Earth Day, remember our tried-and-true childhood aphorism:

REDUCE - Don't buy more shit! It will, most likely, end up in a landfill or in the big garbage raft in the sea. And for god's sake, if you DO buy more shit, buy quality.

REUSE - Repurpose something you already have, or buy something used if you have to buy something at all. (Trees? Getting a bit thin on the ground. Used books? A STEAL!)

RECYCLE - Try to inventory everything you throw in the trash (and thereby directly into the earth) for one day. Recycle all those pieces of paper (despite how suspect your local recycling program may be, you might as well try), and give away your tchotchkes on Freecycle.

Argh! Okay. Getting off my damn soapbox now.

Just kids in the eye of the storm

2009-03-27T00:59:00.001-07:00

My favorite song of the moment: "Daniel" by Bat for Lashes. I have a total lady boner for Natasha Khan - her face and voice make my heart hurt.

And can you guess which Daniel this song's about? Iconic image at the end of the crazy video.

(Sweep the leg.)

meat, books, and blows to the head

2009-03-17T14:40:00.001-07:00

Having had a concussion this past weekend, am I exempt from St. Patty's day nonsense today? I think so. I'm now contemplating the virtues of getting a helmet vs. the pitfalls of severe helmet hair and bobble-headedness. And how often does some douche just blindside you from the left at a 90-degree angle? Probably too often, in snowboarding.

Anyway, tonight is the moist heat meat cookery lab (as opposed to the dry heat lab), where we're making one of my all-time favorite dishes, rogan josh, with meat from the little lamb we butchered last week. Yum! But I still feel a bit mentally foggy, so let's hope I don't lose any fingers. I also put together the grocery order for this lab, so let's hope I didn't miss anything important.

I just finished re-reading Ender's Game after starting the audiobook on my weekend Tahoe trip. I'd forgotten how good it is, but damn, it's good! It's far more about group psychology, adolescence and mental warfare than space battle, which is why I love it. I might have to finally pick up the rest of the books in the series.

I also grabbed Scott Pilgrim #5, which will no doubt be hilarious and offbeat like all the previous books. Scott Pilgrim, a funny, cheeky, slightly self-deprecating band musician, has to fight off the 10 evil ex-boyfriends of his awesome girlfriend Ramona (in mortal combat). The feel of the book falls somewhere between manga and webcomic. Love!

Um, I'm also about to start Heat by Bill Buford, the latest in my series of food-/culinary-related books from off the library shelves. I just finished Animal, Vegetable, Miracle, which is worth a read if only for the absolutely hilarious description of turkey sex that serves as the grand finale to the author's one-year experiment of living off the land. Otherwise, it's a great guide on how to eat seasonally and locally, especially if you have to wonder, on a farm, what could you possibly eat in January?

So, I think I heard that coffee is a bad idea when you're concussed, but I can't give up this fantastic blend I got from a local roaster. I like my coffee with hot milk, and this stuff is KILLER with milk. Makes a part of me bliss out and float away every morning. Also, dig the pseudo-scientific naming scheme - although I'm skeptical about the 30s lifetime (half-life?), I appreciate where they were going with that. Anyway, to be honest, Barefoot has some of the worst in-cafe ambiance but truly the best beans.

2009-03-11T01:13:00.000-07:00

Arrgggg so it's been a while. I've been busy! Here's what's been happening since my last post, in cop-out list form:

1. TWO hummingbird chicklets enter the world!!! So. Freakin'. Cute.
2. Possible job offer on the horizon? Keep your fingers crossed.
3. Hawaii trip planned for spring break (hopefully aforementioned possible job offer will not interfere).
4. I hacked up a spring lamb and a half pig today.
5. I am stuck with a real shit-for-brains group for a big group project. Sigh - this always happens.

Going to Tahoe for the weekend. <3 More updates when I return. Maybe.

2009-02-19T09:51:00.000-08:00

Look what I noticed outside my kitchen window this morning:

A tiny little hummingbird sittin' in a tiny little hummingbird nest! Seriously, the whole thing, bird+nest, is about the size of my fist. But craziest of all was seeing a motionless hummingbird.

Ahhhn. Made my day.

2009-02-13T16:25:00.001-08:00

I'd always taken public education for granted...until recently, when I realized I was being charged an extra $181 PER UNIT for my culinary classes at a local community college. Because they decided I wasn't a California resident.

Resident or non-resident is the difference between paying $1900 for 9 units and paying $250.

I reasonably thought I was denied residency because of the whole Japan thing, but upon further thought I realized there was no way the college would know about it. After speaking with the admissions office and all that, it turns out that they decided I was a non-resident because I RENEWED MY DRIVER'S LICENSE OVER THE SUMMER. WTF.

All I had to do to get my $1600 back was give them a copy of the old license, which (PACK-RAT TENDENCIES BE PRAISED!) I hadn't yet thrown away.

So yeah. Education is reasonable again, thank you o' beauteous state of California and your tax-paying residents. I can get my entire hospitality management degree (and maybe a few extra) for what I thought I would have to pay for one semester.

Morals of the story: don't bother with expensive culinary school, and don't ever throw away your driver's licenses.

homage to sweet pizzas

2009-02-07T17:27:00.000-08:00

One of my favorite pizzas of all time is the pear and gorgonzola pizza at California Pizza Kitchen. I almost had to initiate a tiny Japan-side riot when I heard they removed it from their menu, but they reinstated it before I came back so now we're all good. I love pizza bianca (no tomato sauce), and slightly sweet pizzas are even better.

I've been making a lot of pizza from scratch these days, using Peter Reinhart's oft-cited recipe (just google it) from The Bread Baker's Apprentice. You make a massive quantity of dough and then store a couple in the fridge (to use over 2-3 days) and a few in the freezer (to use over the next month or two). It's fantastic - dough goes from fridge to table in 2 hours.

We had a near overripe bosc pear sitting around, so I decided to try making my own version of the CPK pizza. Didn't have gorgonzola, so I just used mozz and feta, plus some halfway-caramelized (lazy!) onions and chopped walnuts. Didn't have the ceasar salad to go on top either. (So it was a little different! Who cares - it was still good.)

Let's talk pizza economics. CPK charges around $11 for that pizza. They probably only use an EIGHTH (weird-looking word!) of a pear on their pizza, because I COVERED my pizza in pear slices and I only managed to use a third of the thing. Cost for homemade? Half cup flour, yeast, pear, quarter onion, handful of walnuts, quarter cup of cheese...maybe $2.

No tossing pictures because...doughy hands and camera don't mix.

Pre-bake:

Post-bake:

MMMM MONOCHROMATIC!

No, it really was tasty. The yellow-brown cheese-and-carbs-and-caramelization color spectrum is probably the most delicious anyway.

Many thanks to Carla for the extended loan of her pizza stone! :)

my classes rawk

2009-02-03T23:12:00.000-08:00

Oh my god. I just had my first cooking class - basic food preparation skills. Or something. Anyway, what matters is that it's 1.5 hours of lecture, followed by 4 hours of lab/kitchen. Though we didn't actually get to cook anything today, we talked about the class content and the different skills we'd be learning. Squee!

Basically, for $600, I will learn about and then demonstrate my abilities in: knife skills, poultry, seafood, meats (we break down a whole spring lamb and a rack of pig!), sauces, soups, stocks, dairy, eggs, quickbreads, yeast breads, cakes, salads, sandwiches, and appetizers (which we get to invite friends and family to!). Each of us in the class is also in charge of managing one section, meaning we'll order all the food in advance for lab and then supervise and grade our classmates.

My midterm (and how cool is this) will be a written exam followed by a lab practical: the trussing, roasting, carving, and serving of a fucking chicken!

I get to do a final project on whatever the hell I want, having to do with food. (Any suggestions? I'm thinking of going hunting for wild mushrooms...or writing about a certain local distillery.)

My other classes are menu planning and intro to the hospitality industry. I might actually end up dropping menu planning, because I think it's aimed at students who are further into the program...and I'm going to be exhausted by the twice-a-week 5-hour food prep anyway (this doesn't bode well for my career as as chef). The hospitality industry class is taught by an adorably awkward Asian man, and it looks really interesting - it covers a lot of the non-culinary aspects of the service industry (hotels, casinos, cruise ships, event planning).

THIS IS GOING TO BE AWWWEESOME

Testing out mobile blogging. About

2009-02-03T16:51:00.001-08:00

Testing out mobile blogging. About to start my first-ever 5-hour class. Scared!!

I'm a big girl now!

2009-01-28T11:44:00.001-08:00

I finally got myself a bed. A real bed. A queen-sized bed! With a boxspring an' everything!

Nevermind that I got it for pennies on craigslist - this feels like a big step for me.

I realized that I'd been sleeping on one one country or another's version of a futon for about two and a half years. Honestly, at this point, the springs in this mattress are a bit disconcerting.

Before the futons, I managed on twins and twin-extra-longs (ah, dorm rooms), and although sleeping alone on a twin is fine, sharing can be pretty ridiculous. Now there's so much extra room on my bed I don't know what to do with myself. My capybaras will probably start multiplying.

half asleep

2009-01-25T21:03:00.000-08:00

I am absolutely in love with this song, by School of Seven Bells. It's sort of pretty and lilting and a little shoe-gazey, but it reminds me of certain prolonged fits of ennui that I couldn't escape in college.

And how cool is the band? Identical twin girls, one of whom is a lucid dreamer, and a dude, who took their name from a "mythical South American pickpocket training academy." (sez Wiki)

Sometimes I go whole days
listening, bored, half asleep
I won't say anything
that's worth a thing to me
One day, suddenly,
time took a turn that once felt so brief
I blinked to see polite ghosts fading quickly

What begins as an unguarded
train of thoughts slowly can become
an addiction
to the slumber of disconnection
and the resonance of
memory that no longer has a shape
but keeps you numb through
the hours till gone is another day

Be aware, my darling
these things I say I mean
are just traces of something
I long to feel again
I see our time expand in the air almost forcibly,
spreading thinner till it dissolves completely

sticks, balls, pucks, etc.

2009-01-18T19:05:00.000-08:00

I tried a new thing this weekend!

I wouldn't call myself a mini-golf regular, but I go often enough...maybe once a season. On Friday I scored a pretty sweet victory over my date at Golfland, so on Saturday, of course, we had to go to a real driving range...just to put me in my place.

I'm often averse to trying new things because I hate being told, scrutinized, criticized, and also generally sucking. But as it turns out, I'm pretty okay at firing off balls with a crazy bent stick. Using a 7- or 8-iron (who knows!), I managed to consistently thwack the ball out to the same 100 meter mound...without shattering my wrist or the club! My left hamstring got all tense, though, and I felt like I had tennis elbow in my left arm. Still, being decent at something the first time you try it is an Awesome feeling! I honestly don't know how I ever stuck with snowboarding, because that first day was so incredibly embarrassing.

There's something bizarrely satisfying about what I will euphemistically call "precision sports" - sports in which you have to get a particular object into a very particular place - e.g., darts, pool, bowling, mini-golf, archery, skee-ball. If I were to compare them to contact sports, I guess their appeal lies in the lack of direct competition and also the zen/robot/sniper state of mind you use (even when under the influence!).

Oh, but speaking of contact sports, I went to my first hockey game this week. Call me a poser, because I'm jumping on the bandwagon now that our team is #1 (fuck yeah Sharks!). Even better than our team being awesome and full of hot, burly (but not TOO burly) men who remain mind-bogglingly graceful (yet manly!) on the ice, I got free pizza because we scored all over Tampa Bay. How sweet is that?! Football can eat a dick.

branching out

2009-01-14T10:18:00.004-08:00

My BFF and I have started a new blog, dedicated to the good things in life - namely, appealingly-packaged impulse buys (usually boozes) and the bad movies that make them seem like excellent choices in retrospect.

If you notice my beer belly growing and my brain cells struggling, understand that it is all for the sake of good blog communiqué.

label whores
(name under construction and open to suggestion)

Progress

2009-01-09T12:57:00.003-08:00

I just enrolled in classes for spring. I'm a student again! Wheeee

It felt strange and exhilarating to be walking on a new campus yesterday, especially one so close to home. Classes aren't in session, but there were still quite a few students milling about and badgering the counseling office - like myself (n00b). It being a community college, the population is really diverse in both age and ethnicity, which is refreshing and more than I can say for UCLA.

Only when they asked me to bring my diploma with, did I remember that I never picked up my diploma. Whoops! What was on my mind that last year of college? GET THE FUCK OUT.

So, anyway, it feels so good to have something lined up in my life, finally. Although winter break was The Best, my friends (and my sister) have returned to their respective locales for school or work, Mom is off to Taiwan at the end of January, and soon it will just be me and Dad again. I love having the house to myself, but if not for classes, this is probably when I'd hang myself.

The one other thing keeping me alive and kicking is, of course, the snow! ...And a new friend who shares my love of the snow and has the car and gear to take us to the mountain. :) Right now we're having a rash of sunny days, but we'll be headed up to Tahoe as soon as the weather gives us a rainy little nudge.

I'm finally going to try some freestyle stuff. And split my head open like a sad little melon.

Other things we've got planned for warmer weather: rock wall, shooting range, archery range, skydiving, paintball. I'm documenting it here so I won't forget or pussy out on any of it. Spring is gonna rawk!

idle hands...

2008-10-05T15:04:00.006-07:00

Maybe because I have too much free time on my hands these days, I've acquired some pretty "granola" habits. They're sort of fun so I'll share:

I've gone no-poo (no more shampoo).
I'm going to start cleaning my face with oil.
I've switched to the cup (for two years now) and it's THE BEST THING EVER.
I'm trying to buy 90% of my groceries at the farmer's market. (Note: they need more cheese-mongers.)

I expect my body will implode in some sort of hippie singularity. Any day now.

Ode to 大戸屋

2008-10-05T14:18:00.003-07:00

Thanks to this Add an Egg post that was featured on Tastespotting, I found a Gourmet mag spread featuring some simple Japanese food recipes. Everything looks mouthwateringly tasty and easy to do. I'll definitely be trying the shrimp and daikon salad (ume-shiso! YUM) and the spicy glazed eggplant, and the black cod recipe adaptation in the Add an Egg post also sounds amazing.

There are a lot of things I miss about Japan (hello, suddenly a full-time job seems like a glorious thing), but I'd say the food ranks near the top. This is not so much the food that's available for you to purchase and prepare at home, but the options that you have when you go out to eat. It's not like you can't find good Japanese home-style food here, but it's really hard to get it on the cheap. And forget sushi and sashimi - that's not what I'm talking about. Sadly, unless you go to a pricey "Asian tapas" -style place, your other options are often limited to a mediocre slab of misoyaki fish, pork katsu, or teriyaki chicken. BUT, I guess we have a pretty fantastic selection of Japanese food here, in California, compared to the dearth of any decent ethnic food in Japan.

Traditional Japanese cooking is quite light and healthy, and ingredients shine for their freshness and subtle flavors. If compared to, say, typical Chinese food, it can seem rather subdued, but it's also much easier to stomach on a day-to-day basis. Hm, then again, Chinese food is nectar and ambrosia if you haven't had it in a while. Maybe what I'm saying is this: Japanese food is to Chez Panisse as Chinese food is to Roscoe's Chicken and Waffles (...drool). Both definitely have their strengths.

back in the swing of things

2008-08-01T16:44:00.004-07:00

After settling back in, first on my agenda was to try two of the most-hyped establishments in the area: Barefoot Coffee Roasters and Mama's on Washington Square. (Really, if I don't end up working, this is a clear indicator of how the next year will pass for me: deliciously.)

Barefoot was a kitschy little cafe with some really nice-looking coffee roasts...although the ennui-struck teenage/early-20's crowd leaves something to be desired, and the dead-sprawl-suburbia location isn't great.

Because I don't have a grinder, I typically get 150 grams (~2 weeks-worth) of fresh-roasted beans, and have the roaster grind them up for me (in Japan). Unfortunately, Barefoot only lets you buy huge 1-lb bags of roasted beans. I guess you can only specify small amounts of beans/grounds at larger chain stores like Starbucks or Peet's. SIGH. So I didn't buy beans, but the cappuccino I had was delicious, and you could see the barista putting a lot of attention and care into the cup (not just the foam art!). The register guy, though, was bizarrely friendly - TOO friendly. It was exactly like the weird uber-polite-service-robots you'd get in Japan, except this was an uber-casual-jive-talking-best friend-service-robot. JUST TALK TO ME LIKE A NORMAL PERSON! I can see how it would be a refreshing change from your typical disgruntled 'bucks barista, though. I wasn't overly impressed with the overall atmosphere, but I'll be back for the coffee.

Mama's was pretty good. It was my first time being back in the city after two years, and it was a great way to get reacquainted...except for the wait. It was 10am on a Thursday, and we had to wait an hour-and-half from line to food. It's such a tease - you wait in line outside, then you get in only to have to wait in line to place your order, and then after you order you wait some more to get seated. Then, you wait a good while at your table for the food (although the drinks come fast). It's not unlike waiting for a Disneyland ride, when parts of the line are hidden from you and you keep thinking the end is JUST around that bend.

All the horrible waiting aside, the place is an adorable, homey corner shop with an all-day breakfast menu and a pretty enticing lunch menu. My spread was a heart-attack-inducing eggs benedict with prosciutto and tomatoes, with red potatoes on the side, and my sister had chocolate cinnamon french toast with seasonal berries. My dish was perfectly seasoned - no alterations/additions necessary - and the textures were sublime. I really enjoyed the meal...but I think it was 45-minute-wait-great, not 90-minute-wait-great. It's not stuff you couldn't make at home with a little practice, and it's a bit pricey for what you're getting. But, if you love breakfast and you're in the city, I think it's worth considering.

FOOD! AGH! The sheer number of tiny eateries and cafes in the city was making me hyperventilate (with joy). I want to move out there so I can be in food heaven...I plan to get some stupid job downtown just so that I can take fabulous lunch breaks.

rejoining society

2008-07-31T18:03:00.007-07:00

This has been an amazingly productive week. With naught but an expired license, and dubious insurance to boot, each day I've had to pester some poor family member or friend (thanks, guys) to drive me to the DMV, mobile phone store, electronics store, post office, grocery store, or bank for random errands. Random errands essential for reestablishing me as a real card-carrying American, that is. (And let's not forget the occasional pizza-and-gelato run!) I've probably gotten more done than if it had just been me hauling my lazy ass into the driver's seat. And I finally feel like I've got all my little life details back in control, which is a really nice feeling.

And yet, I also feel like I'm now a guest in my own home. My sister and I are sequestered in the loft while some friends of my father live in our room. I think I'll be living out of my luggage from Japan far into the foreseeable future. With much less space and the same number of responsibilities and expectations, family-home-life can be kind of rocky (only occasionally). I worry, because after our last move, the two of us had our rooms combined. If we move again to Colorado, I'll probably be thrown in a spare suitcase and left there.

pretty lame mind powers

2008-07-22T07:38:00.005-07:00

I saw the new Miyazaki movie - Ponyo on a Cliff / 崖の上のポニョ - yesterday. It was, as you might expect, extremely adorable and heartwarming! Sigh, awww, too cute.

Thankfully, we have Miyazaki Hayao back working on this one, despite his previous hints at retirement and the last Ghibli film put forth by his son (Tale of Ged / ゲッド戦記 - definitely lacking, IMHO).

Also thankfully, it was extremely easy to understand in Japanese. There's something giddy-exciting about seeing a Ghibli movie debut in its home country...even if that means being surrounded by 5 year olds and their parents and extended families who reserve whole rows of seats such that you and your friends threaten to be separated to far reaches of the theater.

Good movie, but definitely aimed at the under-10-or-rabid-Ghibli-fan set.

So, a strange thing happened to me this morning. I was having a rather adventurous dream about being held hostage and then setting a huge fire to thwart my captives. As the fire in my dreams was blazing, I was woken up in real life by the blaring alarm of my smoke detector. It was signaling fire, but groggy inspection revealed no smoke, flames, or even high heat around my apartment, much less the detector. It persisted even after I tried the disabling switch, and I ended up having to take the batteries out to stop the grating noise.

It seems fine now, but here's hoping I don't dream about The Big One tonight.

moving on up

2008-07-16T18:47:00.008-07:00

My mom just sent me the best eco-alarmist e-mail about moving to higher altitudes - STAT. This is how it begins:

Wow, you are going to be back soon!

You know, I started to think about our future today. I am a bit scared about global warming. Perhaps California is going to be flooded in a few years time.

While environmental conscience isn't really a big part of my mom's day, sudden fad obsessions are definitely her cup of (vitamin-laced, new-agey, diet) tea. I worry about global warming and flooding too, but I can't foresee more than a few meters of flooding in the next couple decades. We're a good 25m above sea level, so it's not quite time for me to flip out yet.

She says, hilariously, that she's been looking at housing foreclosures in Colorado, specifically noting, "the city of Denver (5000 ft above sea level) and Colorado Springs (2500 ft above sea level)."

Sounds...cold and lonely?

Asians are incredibly prescient when it comes to real estate decisions, but when it comes down to it, I don't wanna live in Colorado. HOWEVER, I can't deny that all those snowy mountains are very, very enticing.

We really need to e-mail more often, if only so that I can submit her best material.

exotics

2008-07-09T05:15:00.010-07:00

What with shiso (fancy mint!) and soba noodles (fancy pasta!) and konbu (let's freak out about umami!) being big gastronomical hits these days, I thought I'd post a few of my own Japanese market findings to the interwubs. These are two Japanese foods for which I cannot find any common English name, or any English presence on the web (it was hard enough finding the scientific names!).

Really, I don't even know why I'm posting this. Perhaps just for my own reference. I suppose I could always add to the list...or you can post your own quandaries in the comments.

コリンキー南瓜 (korinkii kabocha)
- Lies somewhere within Cucurbita Maxima (western pumpkins)
OR Cucurbita Moschata (Japanese kabocha pumpkins)
- Korinki's appeal is that it can be easily peeled, sliced, and subsequently eaten raw. This is pretty novel in the Japanese squash department. The skin peels like a butternut squash, no hard rind like a green kabocha. The taste is not incredibly striking, but squash-y and slightly sweet. The texture also sets it apart - where raw green kabocha is dry, a bit grainy, and quite firm (almost like a potato?), the korinki is much moister and has more give (like a cross between a potato and a canteloupe?). Disclaimer: I am not a food writer.

ソルダム　(sorudamu)
Prunus salicina Lindl. cv. Sordum
- This may be a fairly common type of plum in Japan, but it only seems to exist on the web in scientific articles and breeding experiments. This worries me because they're popping up in all my supermarkets and I want to try them. Hard to choose a good bunch because they don't really give off any aroma compared to the other kinda of plums. I guess they can range from deep yellow-green to red to purple, but the ones I've seen have all been greenish purple. The one defining characteristic seems to be a really significant wax bloom obscuring most of the vividness of color (that whitish haze that appears on the outside of plums and some other fruit). I'll update on the taste and texture later, maybe.

free rice and GRE training

2008-07-09T00:17:00.002-07:00

So, this is totally old news but free rice is really addictive and also an OK means of studying for GRE vocabulary.

I just wanted to blog it now because palaver came up, and it's a word that's been seared into my brain by none other than The Dark Tower. I smiled a bit as I answered that one.

the beginning of the end

2008-07-08T07:23:00.006-07:00

...and it couldn't have come any sooner. Not much blogging these days because I'm moving back to the states in LESS THAN THREE WEEKS (holla). Being swamped with errands and busywork has me thrumming with nervous energy - in a good way. Me being the freak that I am, I find that I totally get off on secretarial shit like preparing maps, information, pictures, etc. for my successors. God...I'd be perfect as the spinster event planner, blind to my own path in life and my own desire to love, waiting for someone else to plan my life, in the ubiquitous rom-com of the 90s. And so it goes.

That reminds me! Something interesting - I've been listening to Slaughterhouse Five as read by Ethan Hawke (yes that Ethan Hawke). Unfortunately, the dulcet tones of his voice are a bit too sultry...and it all ends up powerfully soporific. I really can't listen through a chapter without nodding off. This, however, has its own advantages! Thank you, Ethan Hawke - my personal Ambien substitute! (Vonnegut, please don't roll over in your grave like that...) It's funny how listening to audiobooks gives you this weird appreciation for the qualities of voice that really keep you engaged. Let me just say - A Scanner Darkly, as read by Paul Giamatti? Totally weird but totally engaging. The Game, read by some British dude with an abominable American accent? Complete boner-killer.

(You know, I think I would make a fantastic audiobook reader - I'm adding this to my list of possible careers.)

Okay, anyway, back to the moving. I'd be a little sadder about leaving, but right now any sentimentality is tempered by pretty intense job-loathing. Maybe it's just an angsty phase, but I can't tell if the timing is unfortunate or terribly convenient.

How is it possible that the days are both crawling and flying by? Why do I get the sense that I'm leaving Japan with very, very few things of worth? Why do life changes make you feel like you need to write profound things as acknowledgement? MAKE IT STOP.

lei yau mo GAU CHO!

2008-06-17T17:17:00.002-07:00

Okay, probably only my sister will understand that title, but all you need to know is that it is a scrap of ridiculous Cantonese that I've retained from my childhood.

Yes, armed with the Cantonese of an lazy 5-year-old, I'll be heading to Hong Kong this evening. I'm staying with my crazy aunt and comparatively quiet uncle, and I'll be gone for a week. Internet connection will be sporadic. Hopefully, I'll return with slicker Canto skillz and a much bigger stomach.

shaka shaka chicken

2008-06-13T17:03:00.003-07:00

Just now, I was on the verge of sleeping through a sports festival, when a 7.0 earthquake struck not far from where I live.

BEST. ALARM CLOCK. EVER.

(I squished under my kotatsu.)

Help is on?

2008-06-12T05:29:00.004-07:00

Haha so, after that last post, I was thinking about No Mercy and how there haven't been many big Hispanic music groups featured on MTV and the like since. Then I thought, oh hey, what about that one-hit wonder, OMC? You know... "How Bizarre." (The lyrics have always sounded like "help is on.")

Well, I don't believe I'm alone in thinking that they were Hispanic - I swear that's what everyone thought back then (it's the style of music, I guess). As it turns out, though, the frontman is a Kiwi! Half-Maori, half-Niuean, to be specific. I honestly had never heard of Niue before this. Thank you for broadening my horizons, OMC!

It's especially hilarious because I think he bears a striking resemblance to one of our other JETs from NZ - one of our CIRs to be specific. Am I right, Sendai JETs?

Y'all ready for this?

2008-06-12T04:21:00.005-07:00

This a long one, but it's worth it - I promise. It is very, very high on the kitsch/camp scale.

On my way home yesterday, as I was nearing my apartment, I suddenly had a powerful kick of musical nostalgia. Surprisingly, I wasn't yearning for the grunge, alternative, or hook-laden R&B and hip-hop that was popular in the mid 90's. Instead, I was thinking of the pulsing beats, talk-rap and percussive synths that really defined early-90's dance music (you know, along with the spandex, high-tops, and MTV's The Grind).

I'd been listening to Cut Copy, and while their album In Ghost Colours sounds kinda New Order / 80's New Wave overall, this one song, "Hearts on Fire," is very 90's. As in, reminiscent of La Bouche, Real McCoy, 2Unlimited, etc. Don't hide it. You remember those guys and you loved them, too.

In the early 90's, around 4th grade, my treasure was my Casio radio casette player. Like all my friends, I was doggedly loyal to the one radio station that was cool - and it also happened to be a radio station dedicated to dance music. It was called - and I can almost hear the DJs in my head as I type it - Hot 97.7. I think I mostly used TV for cartoons back then, so new music came in via FM and friends' mixtapes (CD-Rs had just been invented). God knows I didn't give two shits about independent radio stations, so alternative had yet to register as more than a blip on my radar.

Wiki calls this genre, "Rhythmic Top 40."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/KFFG

In January 1988, 97.7 became KHQT (Hot 97.7), with a Rhythmic Top 40 format. They became very popular in the South Bay [holla!], often besting San Francisco's KMEL in the ratings. The format continued until late July 1995, when the station was sold to Susquehanna Radio and turned into a simulcast of KFOG. [Boo.]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rhythmic_Top_40

Rhythmic contemporary, also known as rhythmic top 40, rhythmic contemporary hit radio and "rhythmic crossover", is a music radio format that includes of a mix of dance, and upbeat rhythmic pop, hip-hop, and R&B hits. While most rhythmic stations' playlists comprised that mentioned above, some tend to lean very urban with current hip-hop, urban pop, and R&B hits that gain mainstream appeal. Rhythmic contemporary is usually the music played at clubs and school dances.

They will not play music with a harder rock sound or songs that sound too adult for their taste, leaving those songs to the conventional top 40 stations.

Most of its core listeners makeup a multicultural mix of African-Americans, Hispanics and Asian-Americans, that include a core group of teens, young adults (mostly 18-34) and young females.

By the way, right there, they nailed my home demographic. And I am so many of those things!

Anyway, thanks to Hot 97.7, even to this day, when I hear a thudding dance beat and synthesizers, I can't help but shake my booty a little and get all fired up. Here now, for you, are some of my favorites. People, this is what got me started on music...but somehow I doubt any of the readers of my blog are nearly as obsessed as I am. Still, relive the magic!

Real McCoy - "Run Away" Oh GOD the club dancing!! And I don't remember the singer/rapper dude being...kinda fug.

Real McCoy - "Another Night" Oh yes, he is all about making love to the mic. Aviator helmet, what? I believe I owned this album.

No Mercy - "Where Do You Go" Gay? No, just typical 90's fare. Mmm, well, maybe a little gay, too. Lots of random arm-flailing bordering on vogueing.

La Bouche - "Be My Lover" Drag queen-y big hair and bondage.

La Bouche - "Sweet Dreams" Yes, I totally owned this album. A startling amount of vogueing here.

(Oh god but check out the European version! Extremely fetishistic.)

Corona - "Rhythm of the Night" More uh...strong black vocals, shoulder pads, and pagan imagery to boot.

Whigfield - "Saturday Night" A lesser known song, but a good one. E-piano chords and nonstop frog sounds. I once took a cheer/dance class, and we composed a whole routine to this song. Am I proud or ashamed? I don't know.

Rob Base and DJ EZ Rock - "It Takes Two" Crossing over into another genre here, seeing as these guys can actually rap and can actually dance. Old school hip-hop is a whooole 'nother blog post. But, the background "WHOO! Yeah" sounds are so, so characteristic of 90's dance. That's probably what really got me in the Cut Copy song.

Unlimited - "Twilight Zone" This is also crossing into another genre, maybe, but it's also got the "WHOO!" thing going on. Also, the breakdown in this song is great, and even more, it is reminiscent of the Mortal Kombat movie song.

Carla: OH MY GAWD

Carla: i know HOW i know this song
me: hahaha
me: school dance?
Carla: as a kid...saturday mornings...JAZZERCISE

If I've forgotten any real gems, feel free to put them in the comments.

Laugh And Grow Fat!!

2008-06-09T05:15:00.001-07:00

For months now I've been dying to try my hand at making macarons (NOT macaroons!), those delicate yet toothsome, notoriously finicky, sublime little meringue sandwiches. I'd been hesitating because whipping egg whites to stiff peaks by hand...well, sucks. This weekend, however, I finally scored a hand mixer from my blessed friend Aki (助かったよ～！).

I used La Tartine Gourmande's Matcha/Chocolate recipe, subbing toasted ground sesame for wattle seeds. The sesame was a bit overwhelming - or maybe there wasn't enough matcha - but still quite a nice flavor. Despite the prevalent obession/paranoia (read the comments or google "macarons"), they were actually pretty easy. Unsurprisingly, most of the variability came via my weirdass Japanese microwave/oven/toaster. It turned into something of an empirical study, but I'm happy to say it CAN be done!

The first batch:

Nearly perfect. I piped them out a little wide and too close together, but I got the little "feet" and no peaks on top! Because I don't care for food coloring, they baked golden instead of "matcha" green. The only real issue here was that they were hard to separate from the parchment, so I think the bottoms were just a bit undercooked. To bake, I had set the parchment atop the ceramic plate that goes in my microwave/oven, and put them both in together. That plate is ultimately not the best conductor of heat in such a small space, but I don't have anything else that fits in the microwave. Here's the finished first batch next to the patiently waiting (slowly sinking) second batch.

For the next batch going in, I decided to put them on the still-hot plate and pop them directly into the oven while it came back up to temperature. The little microwave/oven heats up fast, so I didn't think it'd be a big deal...

Tops cracked and no "feet." They look like cookies! They were still incredibly tasty, though, and they separated easily from the parchment. I like the clean removal, but I think the overall cooking time was too long, and letting them come to temperature with the oven caused too much "oven spring."

Third batch was started on a cold plate, inserted into the fully preheated oven, for a slightly shorter time than the first batch.

Got the feet back, but this time they were even harder to remove! They almost ended up hollow because half the insides wanted to stick to the parchment. Oh well, I think the key is hot plate, hot oven, shorter cooking time (or lowered temperature halfway). More experimenting to come.

The important thing is that they are all fucking delicious. My brain likes to think of them as low-fat (hey, egg whites and sugar and just a teensy bit of ganache!), so I find myself popping them like chips. I've been kind of on a baking high recently (also made ciabatta, Mia has pictures!), and it's rooted in the gluttony that binds together my life. I love eating, and I love buying more food stock than I could ever eat. Now, I'm left with under 2 months to finish off masses of bread flour, all-purpose flour, pasta, rice, sugar...

On that note, I recently got my first Engrish shirt for a mere $10. It's about damn time, and it's pretty fabulous:

But possibly the brand is even more fabulous:

Well, time to get a PS3

2008-05-27T18:49:00.001-07:00

IGN: Prince of Persia First Look

can, can you do the can-can?

2008-05-23T19:04:00.004-07:00

It's election time again, I think.

Someone has been driving their promotional car around my block for the past hour and a half, blaring out campaign mumbo-jumbo. It would usually tune this out, except in the background of their speech, they're playing the CAN-CAN!

How can you not pay attention when you hear the can-can? I think of be-stockinged legs kicking high from under frilly skirts! Or, I think of Carla's cell phone suddenly ringing out its can-can ringtone during an especially somber scene at Shakespeare in the Park!

But now, I'll think of nonsensical propaganda. THEY ARE RUINING IT.

Death Note is tame, and every kid has a black book of enemies

2008-05-21T01:19:00.007-07:00

Apparently, one of the Death Note movies (yawn, old news) is coming to US theaters at the end of the month, and conservative parents are flipping out. One of my biggest pet peeves is the western world's often skewed view of all-things Japanese (let's talk about how much I hated Lost in Translation). Here are some highlights from a recent Wired article about it (emphasis my own).

Death Note Manga Spawns Movie, Crime Wave
By Lisa Katayama 05.19.08 | 5:30 PM

Okay, really, CRIME WAVE? Not exactly...

It wasn't until the anime was distributed outside Japan that the copycat crimes began. The first Death Note-related controversy took place in China in 2007: Students took death notes to school, prompting the government to ban products and conversations related to "scary magazines based on popular Japanese stories."

"Copycat crime?" Kids everywhere like to buy show paraphernalia. Hell, when I was watching the show, I wouldn't have minded having my own sleek Death Note to use as a daily notebook.

A few months later, in a case local police like to call "the manga murder," two human thighs and a matching torso were found on a Belgian hiking trail next to a handwritten note that read, "I am Kira" -- a phrase used in the original manga. Some suspect a serial killer was involved; others call the incident a grisly prank played by med students with access to spare body parts.

I don't really see what this has to do with any of the deaths in Death Note, just a tag that shows that the person involved is a fan. BIG DEAL. It has a broad following - some of the followers are guaranteed to be crazies. It has even less to do with "manga" as a whole, so I hate that they call it "the manga murder."

Then, students in South Carolina, Virginia and Alabama were suspended for carrying around death note replicas that listed their enemies.

Some parents and teachers are furious that such a morbid idea is being marketed to children, and some have called for Death Note, in its various incarnations, to be banned in the United States.

Alright, I can see how this might be worrisome, but it's not uncommon for students to have a list of people they hate. I think the Death Note is actually a pretty obvious metaphor for the common notion "he's going in my black book" or "she's going on my blacklist."

I agree that it probably shouldn't be marketed to very young children, but I don't really think it is. The majority of older kids who watch it can handle it. Parents, it is your responsibility to notice if your kids are in the small percentage who cannot watch violence without being adversely affected. If your child is locked in their room watching it all day long, or carrying a "death note" to school, you can then ask the obvious question: "Is my kid a school bomber in the making, or is he just a very impressionable consumer/otaku?" I mean, this goes for any overt obsession with violent media, a la Marilyn Manson or Grand Theft Auto.

To boot, unlike in most violent songs or games, the killer here is morally scrutinized throughout and (SPOILER!) earns his due punishment/goes batty. Also, the way the city shows a polarized reaction to the "killer who only goes after bad guys" is nothing less than social commentary (see Showtime's Dexter).

I do, however, love the final quote from the director, which echoes one of Cher's more brilliant lines in Clueless.

Kaneko, the movie's director, says he thinks it's ridiculous that there's a controversy about the franchise.

"If preventing them from seeing this movie is going to make kids better, then why not prevent them from watching all bad news?" Kaneko says.

Conclusion: If you haven't watched Death Note or Dexter yet, you should.

This is why I love anime

2008-05-20T21:39:00.003-07:00

Because they get ZERO credit on the official website or in the trailer, you should know that animation studios involved (fuck the directors!) include:

Madhouse
This studio does EVERYTHING from old classics like Vampire Hunter D and Ninja Scroll to the newer adaptations of Satoshi Kon's films (Perfect Blue, Tokyo Godfathers, Paprika). They've also contributed to the animated The Boondocks cartoon, the Ghibli film Howl's Moving Castle, and a host of other regularly syndicated anime.

Production I.G.
Another amazing animation studio. They've worked on the Ghost in the Shell movies and TV series (way better than the movies, in my opinion), FLCL, Patlabor (oldie!), and the Evangelion movies. They were also brought in for that animation sequence in Kill Bill vol. 1.

Studio 4°C.
They have Spriggan and Tekkon Kinkreet under their belt, and did a few of the shorts featured on The Animatrix. They've also done music videos for the likes of Glay, Ayumi Hamasaki, Utada Hikaru, Linkin Park (remember "Breaking the Habit"?) and Kanye, apparently.

SO EXCITED!!

Batman: Gotham Knight - Official Site

another booyeah

2008-05-16T20:13:00.002-07:00

Gay marriage legal in California. For good.

YAY US!!

happy dinner

2008-05-15T07:52:00.005-07:00

I was going to try a new ramen place with a friend yesterday, but she had to cancel. I was a tiny bit sad until it started raining cats and dogs outside (thunder and lightning, finally!) and I made myself (more like I assembled) this delicious dinner.

Look how freakin colorful it is! Many colors usually means healthy but... I'm not so sure in this case.

Here's the most important thing you can know about Japan before coming: they refuse to crisp bacon. You can tell the restaurant, "I want it crispy, cook it until it BURNS!" but you will get mildly chewy strips at best. SO, I caved and bought some fat-ass strips of bacon at the deli and crisped the crap out of them. Grabbed a heaping of fresh lettuce, a lesser amount of onions, a few giant slices of tomato... loaded it all into two toasty slices of homemade whole wheat (booyah!)... and voila! Perfect BLT.

The only thing that could have made this better is homemade sourdough whole wheat, but let's just say I gave up my sourdough efforts for the time being. Sigh. Too many variables for such a weird cooking environment.

Strawberries were on sale - a basket for 200yen. This might sound ridiculous but it's not bad for Japan. I am also excited about some slightly green on-sale mangoes I got that are waiting on the sidelines.

On the way home, I made my first visit to an Italian-style pastry shop that I never see anyone go into... and yet I know it's making business somehow. I picked out a lemon curd tart, saving the panna cotta and tiramisu staples for next time. I ordered it by the Italian name on the label, surprising the Japanese pastry chef who had to check which item I was pointing to.

I really, really love treating myself to nice desserts. A crap dinner is all but forgotten with a sublime dessert. There is a nice French patisserie on the way home as well, so maybe I'll have to alternate week by week.

Nerd evolution, 98% complete

2008-05-12T17:26:00.001-07:00

I finally gone and done one of the more nerdy things I've ever considered doing in my life...which is to say, I've joined an anime fansubbing group! Heh heh! It's only been a day and I've already learned a lot about the process. Anyway, this will be a really interesting way to keep my Japanese from getting rusty. Man, I had to listen to and translate an audio clip to audition as a translator, and it was hard! Well, the hardest part was transcribing the audio without visual cues. I would instinctually think they were trying to say one thing, but the grammar would tell me otherwise. Blah. I'm hoping that even though the show contains a lot more technical jargon and keigo, it'll be easier to translate with situational context (and I wouldn't be working alone).

The anime is Saiunkoku Monogatari (season 2). It's quite good, especially if you're interested in the culture and style of government present in medieval China (i.e., oodles of erhu music and chrysanthemum tea, ahhh). I know no one who reads this is as big of an anime nerd as I am, but I'll just say that it reminds me more of the political intrigue of Juuni Kokuki than the fluffy romance/drama of Fushigi Yuugi. Yep. An empty comparison for all.

In other news, and I think I'm in love with Vampire Weekend. "Cape Cod Kwassa Kwassa" is the shit!

Vietnamese coffee pwnz j00

2008-05-08T04:00:00.005-07:00

I brought back a bag of Trung Nguyen #3 from Vietnam, mostly as an afterthought. I figured I'd need it, since I'd be jetlagged and I had finished off my last batch from Beethoven before setting out.

Well, I'm so glad I managed to stuff it in my suitcase, because this iced coffee I'm drinking now kicks some serious ass. Melted Haagen-Dazs, anyone? It was worth it even though it took an eternity to brew (metal drip), and even though it'll probably keep me up all night. But who cares when we're getting five earthquakes a night anyway?

Next I'm going to try it through the AeroPress with a long wait and double filter, because what's more fun than brewing with the AeroPress?

Can I get a hallelujah?

2008-05-07T17:22:00.002-07:00

In Google reader you can now add a comment to shared items. That pretty much seals the deal; my shared feeds will gradually replace this blog. I spend a few hours a month blogging compared to several hours a day reading feeds.

I could profess my love for Google reader some more, but I do have to say it's draining to come back from travel and see 1000+ unread posts. It's a good thing I don't have a real job.

Check my shared feeds here and also up and to the right.

home is where the convenience is

2008-05-07T06:16:00.004-07:00

I barely registered leaving Singapore this morning on a 6AM flight. I've been sleeping intermittently through flight, movies, meals, regular trains, bullet train, subway since then. (Ooh, I did get to see Jumper and a fantastically cheesy bollywood movie called Aaja Nachle. They really have the weirdest mix of movie selection on Northwest flights. Home Alone 3? Phonebooth? Why?)

I got into Sendai a few hours ago, and it actually feels really good to be back in Japan...if not a little weird. It's weird being the tourist amongst the Japanese again, when a few days ago I was having fun picking the Japanese out from the other East-Asian tourists.

Anyway, it was good that we transited through Singapore between Cambodia and Japan. At least, there's less sticker-shock that way, though no less culture-shock going from ethnic melting pot to near-homogeneity.

I've been sifting through mail, laundry, and photos for the past couple hours, but I should be sleeping. I'll probably lie awake with regret, because I really should have eaten more mangosteens.

Southeast Asia 1

2008-04-28T04:33:00.002-07:00

Singapore's Changi airport has a pretty fantastic reputation: fancy lounges to sleep in, showers, a pool, a gym, whatever you want. Bountiful amenities notwithstanding, when you arrive at 1:45am, bleary-eyed and stiff-jointed, it is really fucking hard to find a place to crash. We ended up getting a hotel in the red light district for the night. (No bed bugs, yay!)

We spent the next two days wandering about the city, being baked alive in the tropical heat. It is really, really draining to be out in midday...just wake up early and do stuff or sleep through it. My duffel, similarly exhausted, finally split open along a side. It served me a good 10 years, but I found a cheap and stylish replacement in Little India. Singapore is a tiny city divided into cool ethnic villages (e.g. Chinatown, Little India, Arab Street) -- allowing you to walk from a Buddhist temple to a Mosque in less than five minutes. However, Chinese food seems to dominate as the cheap fast-food of choice on the street and in hawker centers alike. What really matters is I finally got to have my siu gap ho fun (roast duck rice noodles).

Now we're in the Old Quarter of Hanoi, where I will probably die as so much roadkill -- flattened by a stinky herd of mopeds. Christ, the HONKING! It never ends! Do NOT wake up here with a hangover. Crossing the street here is like being Frogger in a very dense, noisy level. Walking around for a couple hours leads to sensory overload. Food, however, is stimulating in a good way and tasty cafes are a dime a dozen.

Restaurant and hotel staff are sweet, but most of the locals in this area of Hanoi do not give a flying fuck about tourists. I can't speak for other areas of Vietnam, but many are indifferent (once they realize they're not getting your money) and some are downright rude. Living in Japan, I take pleases and thank yous and common courtesy for granted.

I was looking at some items in a market today, and I was blocking a woman's path. She had a heavy bundle of goods on her head, but she didn't give me so much as a warning -- just yelled "OY! OY!"and swatted me upside the head with a book in her free hand. I felt bad for being in her way, but I also wanted to punch her in the face.

We're gonna check out the west side of town tomorrow, starting with Ho Chi Minh's embalmed corpse. Maybe that will be less intense.

Hinduism is OLD

2008-04-23T20:30:00.000-07:00

I found a nice site for a quick history brush-up (before I embark on my little Southeast Asia tour). Reasonably accurate, 90-second flash animations for that instant gratification we've become so used to.

Maps of War

sugar!

2008-04-22T07:08:00.007-07:00

I finished The Dark Tower on Sunday. I had been listening to the audiobooks for the second half of the series, and good god audiobooks take SO MUCH LONGER (especially unabridged) than reading! Basically, every moment of the day when I didn't have to multi-task, I had my headphones in and the Dark Tower playing...probably with a very tense, anxious look on my face. On the bus to and from work, during downtime at work, walking around town, doing dishes in my apartment...pretty much constant Dark Tower for a week or two. Anyway, now that I'm finished (it was very good!), my ears are finally free to relax and listen to some goddamn music.

Listening to music can lead to spiritual epiphanies, but more often silly epiphanies.

If you follow health food crazes at all, you've probably heard of the weird health "tea" that is kombucha. Basically, you culture a mushroom/sponge/zoogleal mat of yeast in a mixture of tea and sugar, pour off the fermented liquid, and voila! Gross-sounding health drink. (And just an aside--I wonder how similar this is to the hooch I pour off my sourdough starter?) The whole thing really confused me at first, because we have a seaweed in Japan we call kombu, and people drink a salty tea made from it called "kombucha." Kombucha and kombucha -- different things. Go figure.

Anyway, today I was feeling a bit nostalgic, and I put on some System of a Down. (Helloooo, high school metal obsession!) And I heard the opening lyrics to that radio hit, "Sugar," and I totally did an out-loud "OH. MY. GOD." I get it now! KOMBUCHA. MUSHROOM.

10 years later, some psychedelic nu-metal lyrics make just a little bit more sense. It's good to know my brain continues to develop, and I'm just a wee bit more granola than I was a decade ago.

The kombucha mushroom people,
Sitting around all day
Who can believe you,
Who can believe you,
Let your mother pray...
(sugar!)

Taiwan photos

2008-04-14T22:37:00.004-07:00

Okay, I've given up on actually writing a blog entry about Taiwan. Go take a gander at my photo album instead.

Taiwan favorites

so many NT dollars

2008-03-30T19:53:00.002-07:00

I've been in Taipei for four days and I've spent about 30 US dollars. Good food is cheap and THERE IS NOTHING ELSE FOR ME TO SPEND MY MONEY ON.

If I don't spot some good shopping soon, I am coming back to Japan with 50 fake Rolexes.

It's a fantastic city. Pictures and updates to come.

Hard at work

2008-03-25T08:08:00.001-07:00

...learning about my city's history, and promoting internationalism.

End of an era

2008-03-25T07:19:00.002-07:00

Sigh...

I got a new pair, though. I suppose I'll have to christen them by...schlepping them through the slimy bars of Tijuana?

I may be joining the work force, but you'll have my cons when you pry them from my cold, dead fingers.

Special bentos

2008-03-25T06:44:00.009-07:00

...for the ladies.

Spring break has started. Students are free from classes...but still come every day for sports practice. Teachers, but for the slackers who take paid leave, slug it out at their desks, already putting fall plans into motion. After break, the new school year begins, and this equals a big big hullabaloo: the third years have gone, new students are coming in, new homerooms are being formed, a handful of teachers are being rotated out to other schools, and new teachers are coming in to replace them. The new teachers come in sometime next week, so there are only a few days left to say our goodbyes.

Today, the women teachers got together and ordered special lunches from a fairly fancy bento shop. I say special bentos because they were apparently made with women in mind...and they cost 2500 yen! The typical 1300-yen-bento is already stuffed with more than I can eat in one sitting, so this time I was expecting a real monstrosity.

But, this bento was not crammed with slab-of-rice / slab-of-fish / chunk-of-chicken and the occasional limp vegetable. This bento was delicate and restrained. It was all tiny chunks that, for those with food-ADD, could be finished in one or two happy bites. There is something sublime about a two-bite food. When you finish the second bite, you're either enjoyably left wanting, or contented to move on. Sushi, to take an obvious example, is the perfect marriage of clever sample size and the satisfaction of personal choice.

So yes, everything was very seasonal and unique -- such that there were a lot of new flavors I couldn't even identify. Just when I thought I had it, my two bites were done and I could only savor the taste. Usually kaiseki-style food is hit-or-miss for me, but everything today was wonderful. I had visions of a tiny old lady, designing each piece to call up notions of spring and freshness.

In one of the empty, chilly third year classrooms, the ten of us sat in an oval and nibbled on the little hors d'oeuvres. We passed around a pot of tea and laughed about male teachers, favorite students, new schools, and new relationships.

P.S. I look sickly and tired because I am. Allergies + cold make for very little sleep. I am getting better, though, thanks in part to those giant strawberries and two (count'em!) slices of cake!

Become friends with Japan

2008-03-21T07:08:00.004-07:00

It's sweet sentiments like this that make this country almost too endearing to leave.

Foreign Minister Masahiko Komura appointed the cat an "anime ambassador," handing a human-sized Doraemon doll an official certificate at an inauguration ceremony, along with dozens of "dorayaki" red bean pancakes - his favorite dessert - piled on a huge plate.

Komura told the doll, with an unidentified person inside, that he hoped he would widely promote Japanese animated cartoons, or "anime."

"Doraemon, I hope you will travel around the world as an anime ambassador to deepen people's understanding of Japan so they will become friends with Japan," Komura told the blue-and-white cat.

If anyone can do it, it's Xiao Ding Dong! Also, don't miss the last line:

Astro Boy, another cartoon icon, was named last November as ambassador for overseas safety.

It's Macaron Day!!!

2008-03-20T22:02:00.002-07:00

It's funny, because I just happened to buy a macaron at Starbucks this morning before going to work. It wasn't the most amazing thing ever - certainly not as good as fresh one - but it was satisfying enough.

I love macarons, so I may have to make a little pilgrimage to this shop for next year's Macaron Day. Anything for a good cause, right?

Sent to you by Kat via Google Reader:

It's Macaron Day!!!

via Veronica's Test Kitchen by Veron on 3/20/08

...in Paris. If you are in the pâtisserie central of the world , don't forget to stop by Pierre Herme's shop for three free macarons plus a red macaron to raise money for charity. Feel free to buy more... :)

And Carol of Paris Breakfast was lucky enough to capture and experience the day! Apparently, lines started forming at 9:55am ....

Things you can do from here:

Subscribe to Veronica's Test Kitchen using Google Reader
Get started using Google Reader to easily keep up with all your favorite sites

booking success, bread failure

2008-03-13T16:53:00.001-07:00

First, let me talk about happy things.

I'm jubilantly sitting through another classless day at work because...I recently took time off from work and spent it travel-planning at home. At the end of the month, students have spring break, but teachers are required to come to school anyway. It's a painfully dull two weeks if you stick around...so fuck that! I'm taking paid leave and visiting my mom in Taiwan. The icing on the cake is this: it will be FREE! I've got airline mileage to spare, and my mom is house-sitting some kind of mansion for her friend at the moment. Very excited about this, as the free flight and housing gives me a lot of leeway to spend more in-country. Not too long after, I'm going to Singapore, Vietnam, and Cambodia for Golden Week. It'll be the usual limited-vacation whirlwind tour. Yay!

Okay, now on to sad things.

If you're any kind of foodie, you've gotten wind of Lahey's no-knead bread, recently made famous by the NYT's Mark Bittman. As I understand it, the main points are: looong, slow first proofing (replaces kneading), plus baking in a dutch oven (mimics hearth oven and also crisps the crust under the bread's own moisture) equals amazing bread. I decided to give it a try, but not without a handful of caveats:

1. I'm using my sourdough starter instead of store-bought yeast.
2. The only covered bakeware I have is a pyrex bowl with lid.
3. I only have my all-in-one Japanese microwave/toaster/oven. It's barely big enough for the pyrex, let alone a dutch oven. It also only goes up to 200C/392F, whereas most no-knead recipes call for 450F or higher if your oven can manage.

I guess...I like a challenge?

I actually used Breadtopia's modification for guidance and switched in a cup of whole wheat. I probably should have stuck to all white bread flour for my first try, though...but what can I say, I'm ambitious. The first proofing went well enough, but I think my dough was quite a bit wetter and stickier than it should have been. I had a gooey time trying to shape it into a ball for the second proofing. I then went off this recipe from Sourdoughs International, sort of, and put the dough in the pyrex into a cold oven and baked it from there.

In the end, the bread came out really nice on top, but undercooked and stuck to the pan on the bottom. I think this is because the "oven," with it's upper heating element, is so small that the heat can't adequately get through to the bottom of the pyrex bowl. I've actually had this problem baking brownies, but cookies and other small items turn out fabulous. The bread is also really, really dense...which is probably from the added wheat and excess moisture in the dough, plus the cold kitchen environment (needed a longer second rise, maybe...but a girl has to sleep). The taste is pretty good, though, and I can say that the bread is incredibly filling. :)

Now I'm trying to figure out how I can get the heat to penetrate the bottom of the bowl. I'll also save my next attempt for a weekend, when I'll have more time to play with rising times. 頑張らなくちゃ!

[pictures of bread brick to come here, currently posting via e-mail at work]

Last shreds of winter

2008-03-06T03:11:00.007-08:00

It's been warming up lately, but I'm glad it's still chilly enough to really enjoy some hot soup. I made this sweet potato soup with miso and ginger tonight, and it's fantastic. My soup is not nearly as orange as the one in the picture, but that's probably from using Japanese sweet potatoes. Oh...and I didn't fry the potatoes for very long... (hungry, impatient.)

It's still yummy and I find I'm really wowed by the difference fresh ginger makes. I don't feel a cold coming on, but if I did, I think this soup would give it a firm kick in the pants and send it packing. I have to get over my fear of moldy ginger (thanks a lot, damp LA apartment).

I've been eating spectacularly for the past 5 days while on a JET conference in Yokohama. The trip motivated me as a cook much more than as an English teacher. I wish I'd taken more food pictures there, but I do have a few that I like from Kamakura - home of the famed daibutsu.

You can never get away from the godforsaken schoolchildren. Sadly, blasphemously, I think I was more taken with the local food than the big Buddha. I found a lovely little patisserie-brasserie joint operation awkwardly called "Maison de 雪乃下." In the restaurant, I had a delicious saffron and seared scallops risotto, and they gave me a complimentary dessert for ordering coffee with my meal. The dessert was a delicate, toothsome, melt-in-your-mouth lemon macaron.

I was so hooked that I had to go downstairs to the patisserie to buy some more.

(photo by Greg)

I picked the pistachio on the right -- they looked awfully cramped in there -- and it was as quirky as I'd have expected.

(photo by Greg)

Sometimes, I think I will leave Japan having gained only a colony of yeast and some bangs.

taking care of baby

2008-02-26T16:53:00.002-08:00

I didn't make the starter until last night, because I had to go into town to grab a sizable bag of whole wheat flour -- something of a rare commodity here. I'm gonna get it kicking on whole wheat and then feed it white afterward. Girl on a budget, you know.

I stupidly realized, after whipping it up, that I'll be gone to Yokohama for five days from Saturday. With a starter, you have to feed it daily or even twice-daily until it really gets going. This can take up to a week, but after that you can slow it down in the refrigerator and feed it as little as once a month. If it isn't miraculously frothing and puffing by Friday night, I may have to find a starter-babysitter...or take it with me to Yokohama.

(Instead of flour-sack babies, they should really have jr. high school students take care of starters for a week. And then they can bake delicious bread with the result! In their big, American ovens...ahhh...)

Anyway, optimal temperature for a burgeoning starter seems to be 70-85F. Since the usual temperature in my apartment is below 50F, I kept it under my kotatsu last night (under heat for an hour and then shut off) and I brought it with me to school today. As long it survives the snowy walks to and from the bus stop, it can enjoy the ~70F heated bus and staff room for the rest of the day.

It's hidden in a paper bag so that people don't ask my why I have a tupperware of ecru paste on my desk. Gambatte, tiny yeasts!

If you're interested in making your own or wondering what in the hell I'm doing, here are the links I'm using:
Sourdough Baking, The Basics
Sourdough and Sourdough Starter (site down from excessive traffic, using Google's cache)
Sourdough Home: Starting a Starter, Mike's Way

New pet!

2008-02-24T16:43:00.002-08:00

I'm getting a pet. I'm hoping it will help alleviate both homesickness and general ennui. It will be perfect for my tiny apartment. I will give it lots of love, and it will return my love in its own warm and delicious way. Can you guess what kind of pet it will be? Some hints:

In actuality, it's quite tiny, but to be fair I'll be getting more than one.
It's a bit smelly.
It enjoys sugar.
It reminds me of San Francisco.
I'd feed it once a week...but it would survive a few weeks without me.
It will help me with my kitchen endeavors.

Got it?

I'm making a sourdough starter! So really, I'll have a happy, bubbly colony of yeast...living out of my refrigerator, and occasionally martyring its citizens to puff up my bread. Now all I need to figure out is what I should name it.

the sun sets for a music snob

2008-02-20T16:40:00.003-08:00

Recently I've lost interest in music.

It worries me a little, because I think I've climbed up and over a once-in-a-lifetime musical zeitgeist, and now I face the slow descent into squareness. I'm resigned to a fate of combing through my dearly-beloved CDs (yes, CDs) of the late 90s/early 2000s, and thinking over and over that Alice in Chains were maybe the best band ever?

But seriously, if you look at your parents, they probably went through their own period of musical discovery from their teen to college years (i.e., the 60s and 70s, boy music was really good back then, wasn't it?). And all the music that's come out since then has been, well...crap (what the hell do kids see in this soldier boy whatsihoosit?). Save for a few exceptions, of course: some new music is palatable (oh, who didn't like Coldplay) and some older folks continue to be receptive to new music (Dad, I don't want you to come to the concert!).

So, documented on this blog for the first time, a cold, hard look at the ups and downs of my musical heyday - that is, All The Music That Ever Really Mattered, And Will Ever Really Matter, To Me.

1995 - 5th grade - Obsessed with the angry, yet slumpy-shouldered and flannel-bedecked world of alternative and grunge. Remember the Violent Femmes? And Bush? And Stone Temple Pilots? And... (yes, yes, Nirvana. Whatever.)
*1997 - Jr. High - Brought back to mainstream hip-hop by that indomitable trio Biggy, Puff Daddy and Ma$e, and their persistent attack on school dances.
*1999 - High school freshman - For some reason got really into electronic music here. Trip-hop, trance, drum and bass, whatever, you name it. Maybe the allure of the rave scene? Or those really big pants that looked so comfortable?
*2001 - Jr/Sr in High school - Forced to get into local music and some heavier rock/metal outfits by the highly elitist band guitarist boyfriend of that time. I still cannot let go of A Perfect Circle and the Deftones even though...what the hell have they done since then?
2003 - College - No longer under the thumb of a band-boyfriend, needed something to fill the elitist void. Took college-indie influence from my roommates and got really into finding new indie rock, underground hip hop, and electro(clash?). Thank you, internet. Got very into full-album downloads.
2005 and on - Quite listless. Have resorted to downloading the year-end best album lists from pitchfork and the like. The last albums I really liked were from The Knife and Spank Rock, sigh.

* periods that I'm not real proud of.

Anyway, it looks like my personal Golden Era of music was '95 - '05. I'm hoping that by writing this I'll inspire myself to stay open, but honestly all the new music I'm listening to this year is falling on deaf ears. Then again, I've been listening to pretty obscure stuff...maybe the pendulum is just swinging back to the mainstream? I mean, I can't get enough of that fucking umbrella song!

You know, if I became a legitimate cognitive researcher, I could run fun side experiments on trivial issues like these. Or, if I actually wanted to make some money, I could ask: does this decade-long zeitgeist (that I think a lot of people share) coincide with some kind of cortical developmental period? Hmm.

moving on

2008-01-28T01:02:00.000-08:00

Ahaha. So last time I posted, I was leaving for *sing-song* Aaaameeerica!

My vacation was interesting, but not really what I expected. I had a lot of lofty ideas about all the things I would do for myself and for my job while I was home, few of which actually panned out.

After I moved to Japan, my family moved from our comfy old house into my grandmother's house down the street. The "new" house is a house that I'd played in as a child, but my grandmother had moved out of it maybe ten years ago. So, when I went home for vacation, it held this unique new-old-house kind of nostalgia. It's definitely smaller, and more space is allocated for my parents to do their work. My sister and I now share a room, which mostly feels like her room because my crap has been stuffed away into boxes in the garage. I think most of my vacation was spent soaking up the newness of the house and trying to appreciate its warmth (in both senses of the word). I didn't take videos to bring back and show my classes. I didn't catch up with all the ethnic foods I wanted to (fuck American portion sizes, I was forced to eat leftovers for two days after every day I went out to eat). I didn't buy the things I needed for my remaining time in Japan. I didn't even make it up to SF. In other words...I lazed like a retarded sloth on valium.

The extent of my socializing was a three-day snowboarding trip to Tahoe and an intimate little New Year's party, plus a handful of meet-ups with random friends. I may have botched my first stint as a snowboarding guide, as one of my pupils ended up with a broken tailbone, and the other a minor concussion. But you know, in my defense, there's no accounting for the effects of hard-packed snow and ice. I realize now, though, that three days in a row is pretty rough for beginners, and a two-day trip would have been more kind to the bodies. But when you have to go to so much trouble just to get to the mountains (renting a car, heading out pre-dawn...), two days just doesn't seem worth it. And I'm glad we got to spend two nights in our fabulous hotel.

We loved the place. And their dog. And their free breakfasts and afternoon snack bar. Aren't we just one big happy family (+dog)?

Lovebirds:

BFF:

Awesome lodge:

Anyway, I left the warm insulated house in mild California, parted with family and friends, video games and TV. I returned to my freezing cold, lonely apartment, where all that was waiting for me was my upcoming conference presentation (pretty much unwritten). In a word, it sucked. I spent about two weeks after that thinking, I am done with Japan, I am done with this job. Fuck this presentation, I want to jab pointy things into my eyes.

Thankfully, the conference has come and gone, and my workshop achieved new heights of unmemorable mediocrity. We had some blizzard-y snowstorms at the end of the last week, which was heinous during the conference but ultimately fantastic for weekend snowboarding. As you can imagine, I've cheered up some.

Ugh, so, I took my boyfriend out for his first attempt at snowboarding, on fresh powder, and he turned out to be some kind of prodigy. Granted, he had skied for a bajillion years and is rather nimble/athletic to begin with...but still, at the end of one day he could do runs and turn like I could only after many excruciating days of torture. He didn't even get whiplash! I think everyone deserves a little whiplash on their first day of boarding. Feh. I'd like to take credit as the teacher but mostly I'm just jealous.

Contented as I am now, I still happily signed off on my recontracting forms with an "uh, NO" this morning. Meaning, I'll be back in the states this fall! Yeeeaaa! Now the only question is, where should I live? Some options that I like: Bay area, CA (just...can't...get...away...), Boston, New York, Chicago, Toronto, Vancouver, and D.C.

SO EXCITING!

departure!

2007-12-20T23:01:00.001-08:00

tiny plane to narita! it kind of smells like poo outside.

kikoku

2007-12-20T17:12:00.001-08:00

I'm going to be in Sweet, Sweet America in less than 24 hours, and then Sweet, Sweet Tahoe in less than 48. It'll be my first time back to the states in almost 1.5 years. Now that I'm typing it, it really doesn't seem like such a long time, but it really felt like an eternity. I think I'm finally accustomed enough to the Japanese way of life that I may actually get the elusive "reverse culture shock" when I go home. Most likely, the hardest things will be:

1. Not mixing Japanese into my English sentences. Sometimes it's just so convenient! Nihongo-mazeta-Eigo is such a unique JET-ism...I just realized that, linguistically, it would pretty interesting to study which words people tend to adopt to replace English and why.

2. Not getting annoyed by excessive comprehension -- I'll suddenly be able to understand what everyone around me is saying, from annoying high school girls to annoying people talking loudly on cell phones in quiet places. I already get really irked in places bustling with English-speaking tourists, so we'll see how that goes.

Small worries aside, I am SO EXCITED to be going home. In fact, I'm just writing this blog entry to kill time before I can hop on a plane (several trains and two planes) and blow this popsicle stand.

The real issue is...how I going to fit my monster luggage(s) through the subway turnstile...?

reasons Saturday rocked

2007-12-09T22:17:00.001-08:00

1. Starting the day with Japanese toddlers amped up on Christmas cookies.

Japanese elementary school kids and kindergarteners are already notoriously cute, so preschoolers are pretty much unbearable. My friend was enlisted by a preschool downtown to play a real, foreign Santa for the kids, while me and another disappointingly Asian girl acted as his jolly helpers. After watching a show put on by all the toddlers (with a little help from the talented staff), we went from class to class handing out presents.

Some of the kids were definitely young enough to believe that my friend was Santa, just flown in from the North Pole, so it was pretty wonderful.

2. Parting gifts.

The preschool staff sent us on our way with a huge pile of gifts and snacks and a yummy lunch bento.

3. Coffee, on Santa.

My friend Santa treated me to coffee and dessert, so now you know -- that is exactly how nice I've been this year! Catching up with Santa and having some stimulating conversation was also nice.

4. Finishing Let's Go Jungle.

I met up with Greg, and then with our powers combined, we defeated this brilliant arcade game that I've been dying to beat for ages. It gives you compatibility statistics afterward, and uh, I can say that at least we passed the 50% mark. That aside, I placed 12th in the game records with my score!

5. Winning ホワイトさん

I had been eyeing this machine prize for a week. Tried to win it once and failed, but this time victory was mine for only 300 yen!! Now I have a matched set of capybaras taking up precious real estate in my room -- they are dubbed Nibbles and Wiggles. Nibbles (the brown) is quite a bit bigger (and lacks the little Xmas hat), but it's okay because he likes his ladies petite.

From here on, I am determined to become a prize machine master.

6. Free dessert

We went to a chic little yuba/tofu restaurant for dinner. They always have issues trying to understand our order, and this time, par the course, we got something slightly different from what we had expected. It was still good, though, and they brought us a free dessert at the end. It also didn't hurt that they had Kiki's Delivery Service playing on a huge LCD screen above us.

7. Slumber

There is nothing like the deep, delicious sleep you have after a long and exciting day...and the best part was not having to squeeze in a blog post first!

Think of the environment, will you?

2007-12-06T16:12:00.001-08:00

This is brilliant:

Conservation Group Condemns Waterboarding As Wasteful
December 4, 2007 | Issue 43•49
WASHINGTON—National Water Watch, a Washington-based conservation group, criticized the government's use of waterboarding Monday, calling the practice of stuffing a cloth into a detainee's mouth, immobilizing him, and pouring water over his face and body to simulate the sensation of drowning "a tragic waste of resources." "The idea that the United States could condone the despicable act of squandering several pitchers of water is shameful," NWW spokesman Gregory Hammil said. "It is amoral, unconscionable, and in direct opposition to all internationally recognized water- saving techniques." Hammil recommended the government switch to more eco-friendly means of enhanced interrogation, such as waterboarding with a return-hose device in order to reuse old water, or simply beating suspected terrorists to a bloody pulp.

Yeahhh, that's from The Onion. But isn't it scary-close to believable?

boogie!!

2007-12-03T05:40:00.001-08:00

Oh my god, this video was posted on Music for Robots today, and it makes me so happy in a way that "Soul Train" and it's voyeuristic doppelganger "The Grind" never could.

It's sassy couples grooving something awesome without the usual lewdness we're so used to now, and it's all set to the pinnacle of 70's electro-disco.

I want to have a party like this?!

stringy cheese incident?

2007-12-03T03:39:00.000-08:00

Yesterday, Greg and I did finished a sprawling NYT Sunday puzzle, in record time (as he said, "Take that, Will Shortz!"), so now I can't help but think in obliquely descriptive phrases that end in question marks.

I had a little fun with parmesan today. Cheese is fairly expensive here, so it's a real crying shame when a pretty chunk grows mold and you have to let it go. To try and keep that from happening to a new hunk of parm, I took half and put it into the freezer. Of the remaining chunk, I halved again, down to two jumbo-egg-sized lumps. After grating these, I made parmesan/basil/garlic/lemon butter out of one, and decided to store the rest.

So, with about half a cup of grated cheese left, the quandary became: how do I store this so it remains freshest, longest? I had a choice between two tupperwares: small and round or bigger and squarish. It filled the small one with about a heaping tablespoon of overflow. It barely came up to half of the larger one. So, with only the knowledge that air exposure for foods = death, I put it in the small container.

What, you might ask, did I do with the leftover? Well, I wanted to just eat it, but that seemed a little too indulgent. So, as I was right next to my stove, I fired up a nonstick skillet and dropped it in the center. It melted down all tantalizingly bubbly, then cooled into a slightly-crisp-slightly-chewy parmesan cracker. So. Good.

(And that, my friends, is why I'll get fat and have a heart attack.)

post-JLPT zombification

2007-12-02T05:35:00.000-08:00

It is done! The test went well...at least, better than last year, which is all I really needed. I'm not confident I passed by any means, but I'm quite happy just having the feeling that I've actually gotten better and made progress since one year ago.

Aside from that slight sense of satisfaction, my brain feels quite slow and mushy; i.e., it's been drained of all necessary sugars and is flooded with errant neurotransmitters. It's really been too long since I've felt that -- the electrifying burn of an intense info-in/process/consolidate/info-out session (wow, how much is studying and testing like pooping?). File intensive study under: things I miss about academia.

The test results are distributed in February. Until then, I'll be waiting anxiously, then gradually forgetting about it, and then working myself back up into a frenzy. If I pass, I'll be happy to say that either my sporadic studying improved my Japanese skills, or my voracious consumption of news feeds made my test-taking intuition better. Or both! One way or another, celebratory drinking will be in order.

If I fail, I'll be sad to say that either my infrequent studying did nothing for my Japanese, or my daily barrage of English news feeds usurped any new Japanese trying to enter my brain. As such, consolatory drinking will be in order. Who's with me?

today, christmas shopping. tomorrow, doom.

2007-12-01T07:48:00.000-08:00

Tomorrow is the Japanese Language Proficiency Test. I'm taking Level 2, the 2nd hardest level, again this year. I know my Japanese has improved in the past year, I just don't think it's improved enough (no one's fault but my own, bah). I expect failure or a verrrry close pass (giri giri, we would say), so one hand will have fingers-crossed while the other fills in bubbles.

I did a little Christmas shopping today, but it was no big deal because there's no Thanksgiving here and therefore there's no concentrated Black Friday madness. Instead, there's just a gradual increase in shopper-density all the way up through Christmas and New Years...and then WHA-BAM!! It's January 2nd, the first shopping day of the new year, and one of the two MAJOR sale periods in Japan has begun. Sales are pretty rare other than the "first sale of the year" (初売り: hatsu-uri) and a big summer-long sale, so people go semi-annually nutso. You should see what you can get in the "lucky mystery bags" (福袋: fuku-bukuro) they offer only at these times...e.g., $300 worth of winter outerwear for $100. Yes, I am a little excited to come back to Japan after vacation and shop at any of the three stores I usually shop at here.

Ooh, I also played an awesome round of the arcade shooter Silent Hill today. I shoot things good. I shoot things dead. I get really fucking AMPED doing it.

Zombie-hunting aside, today is also the last day of NaBloPoMo! It's been a really amazing run. I know the posts haven't always been riveting, but I'm just surprised I could come up with something, anything to say each day. I wanna try to keep this up, but I'll be honest -- it'll be nice to have the pressure off. There were definitely nights where, after realizing I hadn't posted by 11:45 and then panicking, I would ask myself, why do I even CARE? Sometimes it seemed like such a fucking drag, but in the end it felt really good to git'er done. I hope y'all have enjoyed this little blogging streak of mine.

Good luck to the other test-takers; just don't forget that THEY ARE ALWAYS TRYING TO TRICK YOU (the bastards)!

kind of offended my first hobo

2007-11-30T06:37:00.000-08:00

Homeless folks and panhandlers are a pretty rare sight to see in Japan. You spot the occasional guy sleeping in the subway station but...they never talk to you, and for all you know they're just night owls who've missed their last train.

Well, yesterday morning, as I'm heading to the bus stop, I meet my first hobo in Japan. Keep this in mind: I've been here a year and a half, living in a decent-sized city in Japan, and I have never encountered a bum. I encountered several a week when I was attending college in LA.

So, I'm walking, and this guy comes up to me and asks me for the time. Too sleepy to even think numbers in Japanese, I flash him my phone. He thanks me, but walks awkwardly next to me for a beat...and then he asks me for change. But, he uses a word for change I don't understand. He tries to explain: "You know. Change. For example, would you happen to have...500 yen or something...?"

[ For the record, 500 yen is, with the current craptastic rate of exchange, like FIVE DOLLARS. This shows you how having $5 in coin-form rather than bill-form can change your perception of its worth (and thus your sense of attachment to it). This also gives you an idea of how spendthrift Japanese society is, on the whole. ]

Once I realize what he's asking me, I'm quite shocked. His Japanese has been infallibly polite. Sure, his appearance is slightly disheveled -- crooked teeth and a bandage around one injured hand -- but I still had had no clue that he was begging for change.

In my surprise, I do an "Oh. What? OH! Oh." kind of thing. He jumps in with his own heavily accented English, "Ah, sorry, sorry, sorry..."

The reluctance on my face as I contemplate such a large piece of money turns his curiosity to other things. He wants to walk and chat with me until my bus comes. We sit on a bench, and he pulls out a folder of poetry he's written. It is all very sweet and nice and idealistic -- vast expanses of blue sky, birds flying free between the clouds, idyllic aspects of the natural , etc. He then pulls out a rainbow collection of markers and asks me to write a message in his notebook (in Japanese). I take the his notebook, and I can't help staring at his bandaged hand.

I'm struggling to write something nice and inspirational and not totally douchey, so he peppers me with personal questions in the meantime (personal for an American, maybe not so much for a Japanese person). "What's your ethnicity?" and "Do you have a boyfriend?" and then, "How old are you?" I tell him my age, after which he remarks, "Ahhh, so young! How old do you think I am?" I tell him I'm horrible at this sort of thing (really), then I venture, "Thirty...... (shocked look comes over his face)...three?" He looks crestfallen and abruptly says, in English, "NO." He's 27.

I lie through my teeth and assure him that, after reading his poems, I was thrown by his mature writing style and way of thinking about the world. I don't tell him that, once I'm close to him, I can see the weathering strain of hard times in his body, his posture, his hair, his face, and the delicate skin beneath his eyes.

faith and science, playing in the same sandbox all along

2007-11-29T05:24:00.000-08:00

That is what this article by physicist-cum-pop-science-writer Paul Davies seems to suggest:

Taking Science on Faith (NYT)
Feed byline: "Until science comes up with a testable theory of the laws of the universe, its claim to be free of faith is manifestly bogus."

Pretty sensational (in the tabloid sense of the word), eh? Anyway, all I have to say after reading it is...uh, NO.

It quite annoyed me, both for it's inflammatory writing style and overreaching straw man of a conclusion. Also, it was kind of surprising coming from a guy on our side? He does make a lot of great points and all...it's just the tone it ends on that bugs me. Anyway, it's got quite the buzz going on now, and a lot of other people (links pulled from Seed's daily zeitgeist) have written out interesting, pithy responses.

[ Oh yeah, and if you jump through to Seed Magazine's page, check out the pdf cribsheets on topics ranging from photosynthesis to hybrid vehicles to genetics. Very nice! ]

mixing the old with the new

2007-11-28T06:03:00.000-08:00

...is a fabulous philosophy for dealing with leftovers. I finished off the last of my hong siu dofu (red-cooked tofu) and garlic mashed potatoes with dill with the new addition of pineapple-glazed chicken wings. SO GOOD! I can never resist a succulent wing.

And now I will transition gracefully from talk of food to talk of bodily fluids, as I am wont to do. I do this by talking about how I'm transitioning! Right now! Like this! So elegant. So meta.

Anyway, how freaking awesome are medical exams in Japan? We just had a compulsory one for everyone at my work. In snappy assembly-line fashion, about 30 teachers were funneled into a room, checked through a series of stations, and pointed out of the room only to end up awkwardly in a trailer with the Mystery Machine (you press your boobs up against something that looks like an olde tyme television).

Fantastic, you say, but the best part is that you get to do a little traditional origami before the exam! Check out the pee test cup, plus folding instructions and wee (snirk) vial:

Total genius, although I got a little flustered in the bathroom when I had to pee like the dickens but, argh, I had to make some precise folds first. Uh, I couldn't tell from the packaging whether or not it was flushable, but that seems like the point of a folded paper cup...soooo I flushed it. Possible apologies, environment.

clever, clever boy

2007-11-26T23:02:00.001-08:00

This is fantastic:

President Bush Takes Credit for Stem Cell Breakthrough (wired)

Ohhhhh, this administration! They're all about firmly embracing science...when it's convenient. Keep it up guys, 'cause next you should be inspiring some radical new forms of contraception, eh?

(previous post re. skin-cells-to-stem-cells research)

sh-sh-shakin'!

2007-11-26T06:42:00.000-08:00

(...a la Rooney! It's a cute song.)

Two decent earthquakes today! One roused me from my sleep in the morning (and little better than my first alarm clock, to be sure).

And another rocked me back to sleep tonight. Sort of.

Exciting, eh? I live verrrry close to those X's.

Well, actually, this is Japan, so really there were like 10 earthquakes in the past day (most of them little), plus having grown up in California and all...it's kind of hard to find them a big deal. Now that I've said that, I'll probably lose all my shit in an earthquake sometime in the next month.

It would be just my luck to have a quake shake free all the bubble wrap and tape I so painstakingly applied yesterday...

reinforcing the cocoon

2007-11-25T06:28:00.000-08:00

I spent most of today being lazy and slothful, but I also spent a few productive hours weatherstripping my apartment. I didn't really do this last year and somehow I still survived the winter...but anyone who's been here a few years likes to brag about how last year was a warm one.

As the first snow came a couple weeks early, I figured I might as well take precautions. Although it's warmed up a bit since, the early chill has scared everyone into weather-proofing and sent car owners scurrying to get their snow tires fitted.

Weather-stripping is all cutting, pasting, and double-stick-taping, and I do so love arts and crafts! I put foam strips on my sliding glass doors, bubble wrap against two of my windows, and thin foam against my third window. I am skeptical of the effectiveness of the setup, but at least it's kept me busy. I'm a bit addicted to these sticky foam strips (not to mention the bubble wrap!), so I'm trying to figure out every space, seal, nook and cranny where I can apply them in my little flat.

My paper house is now trimmed with insulation. How novel, indeed.

please don't ever make me prepare a whole turkey

2007-11-24T06:15:00.001-08:00

I spent about half of today trying to cook a non-traditional slightly-belated Thanksgiving meal with my guy. We were just cooking for us, so we brined some chicken and made mashed potatoes with carrot and dill, carrot leek and thyme soup + baguette, Greek-style braised green beans, mulled apple cider, and an...interesting variation on creme brulee.

Everything turned out good, I guess, but I just don't think it was worth the insane amount of prep-work. I was just SO completely exhausted by the time the food was done. I can't imagine what mothers everywhere go through when they prepare a full bird and all the traditional fixings. God, I don't even like turkey. (Sorry this is kind of incoherent, but I've sunken into a carb-coma.)

Good cooking, for me, is all about the work-in/taste-out ratio. This is why I end up eating quick-and-dirty easy meals every night -- done almost as soon as you get hungry, and tastes fantastic because everything tastes fantastic while you're hungry! But, it was a lot of fun preparing food in the kitchen together, so at least there was that.

I am thankful for many things this year -- a job that pays well enough, my 楽 and fun lifestyle here, my quirky family and friends back home, my wonderful boyfriend, and so on...there are probably many things I can't think of because of the all the sugars fogging up my brain.

Anyway, I love my life! ...and I can't make sense anymore...so tired....signing off now. Happy Thanksgiving everyone!

pretty much recovered

2007-11-23T05:53:00.000-08:00

Yep, I can tell because for dinner I ate a pizza with a base of oily pesto and toppings of mozzarella, salami, asparagus, and a gooey soft-boiled egg. I would have taken a picture but after I popped the egg it was faaaar from photogenic. The restaurant named this pizza ミラネーゼ("Milanese"), and the basil pesto base was called ジェノベーゼ ("Genovese"). I imagine Genoa and Milan would be a little bewildered. (It's a crazy world I live in!)

I really miss Italian food from the states (sorry, but I've never had Italian food from Italy with which to compare). It's just that the Japanese are a bit too adventurous -- nay, downright irreverent with their interpretations of ethnic cuisine, and the ever-reliable pastas and pizzas have not escaped unscathed. Pasta types other than blase, textureless spaghetti or penne are oft overlooked. Pizza crust is often soggy and the cheese tastes processed. Pizza or pasta toppings regularly include corn, mayonnaise, squid, sea urchin...or all of the above. (yargle.)

I love pizza, though, so any time I see a restaurant with a real wood-burning oven, I have to give it a shot. At least the crust will be fool-proof, right? So far I'm 2 for 3: one really amazing pizza (the award-winning "Samurai" pizza at a place called Cheese-Cheese in Sapporo), one pretty good pizza bianco at a place near me, and then today's mediocre "Milanese."

One month till I'm home and I can gorge myself on California Pizza Kitchen! Their Pear and Gorgonzola is my ambrosia...

like the boyscout motto

2007-11-21T18:37:00.001-08:00

...something about preparedness...whatever I forget.

My sage wisdom for you: a suck-ass blisteringly cold day can be turned into a fantastic cold-can't-touch-me day with a thermal turtleneck and thermal leggings under your usual clothes (even better if they're tucked in interlocking layers!). Only $15 from Uniqlo -- take that, nature!

The weather report has been wrong like every day this week. It's all, "hey! So, yeah, today was snowy, but tomorrow! ...yeah, tomorrow's looking fine!" and then it snows. A little bit sometimes and other times a lot (right now -- a lot). Tomorrow it's supposed to be sunny...so...snow.

Speaking of snow, I was talking to the accountant at work today, and now I think he's maybe the craziest 60-year-old ever. He came up to me like, "Boy, I really hope it keeps snowing through the weekend!" and I did sort of a "What? WHY?"

"It'll be good for the skiers and snowboarders!"

"Uh, but the slopes aren't open yet."

"Ah, well, it's mostly up north, yes. But if you take your equipment up you can go to down the slopes now."

"Hunh?"

"I think I'll be going to the local ski slopes this weekend!"

"Wait, what? How will you do it if they aren't open?"

"Oh, well, it's very expensive to use the lifts at the ski resort, so I usually don't. I just carry my skis to the top."

"WHAT?! What...how...whuh....isn't it TIRING??"

"Oh, yes, I sweat a lot, but it's good exercise. And it's almost free."

So yeah. This guy walks up mountain faces with his equipment (and he favors the deep powder faces) and then skis down them. I mean, just so we don't all feel too bad, I think he's also a marathon runner. While this is in no way possible for my lazy ass, christ...can you imagine how cheap it would be if you bypassed the lifts by walking?! Do people regularly do this? How long would it even take?

Holy Crap-ola

2007-11-20T17:38:00.001-08:00

Here's a mind-blowing recent development in medical science: scientists seem able to create stem cells from ordinary skin cells, rather than plucking them from embryos. Can you imagine the possibilities for stem cell research, which, until now, has been crippled by ethical controversy? (Curse you, moral upbringing!)

If this works, the you're-killing-an-embryo moral opposition becomes moot. YET, somehow, I get the sense that most opponents would still be very reluctant to change their view. Even I feel like there must be some other contention point over stem cell research, and I was behind it 100% when we were murdering babies in petri dishes. Call it persistence of belief or perseverance or whatever...I know there's some cognitive term for it that I can't think of at the moment. Then again, maybe it's just the lingering need to explain away a deep-seated fear of technology, the future, and the singularity. (by the by, did you hear? Ray Kurzweil is making a movie.)

Stem Cell Breakthrough Is Like 'Turning Lead Into Gold' (Wired)

New Stem Cell Method Could Ease Ethical Concerns (NYT)

Anyway, this is one science-in-the-media story that I really hope isn't just hype!

reasons to love starbucks

2007-11-20T15:42:00.001-08:00

...because they're too easy to hate.

1. Toasted ham and cheese sandwich
2. Creme brulee latte (I haven't actually tried this yet but I don't see how it could go wrong.)
3. Cranberry bliss bar (Brought back this year! I was addicted last year.)

These three together = my perfect winter on-the-go meal.

Test your vocab...

2007-11-19T01:41:00.000-08:00

...and donate rice! You can feed hungry mouths while feeding your own lexicon. It is a good day for armchair activists and word nerds alike!

first snow of the year!

2007-11-18T14:46:00.001-08:00

and the leaves still havent dropped yet! i was just reading an article on spacing.ca about why that is...

buses are being either outfitted with/stripped of chains - snow is rapidly melting. it is 7:33 and my bus now 7 min late. pretty much unheard of in Japan(...unless youre in okinawa, where they live in a whole nother state of mind).

i am overdressed in parka, mittens, scarf, and hat (thank god i didnt wear the snowboots) because it's not actually that cold. the high school girls brazenly wear their short skirts...but then again, im quite sure they dont have a choice. remnants of misogyny still.

nose is doing the leaky-faucet-thing. i have a shitty meeting today. my stomach is still unpredictable. sigh.

childhood favorites

2007-11-18T06:29:00.000-08:00

Why are orange tabbies so damn cute?

Continuing my sick-vegetable weekend, today I managed to get a hold of Milo and Otis. This remains one of my absolute favorite cheesily-narrated animal movies from when I was a child (its only competitors being Homeward Bound and that horrible one with John Travolta and whatsherface.)

Because I can't sit through a movie anymore without pulling up IMDB or the wiki, I eventually scrolled through the IMDB to find that, tragically, many Milos and Otises were killed in the making of the film. This isn't that surprising now, as I watch Milo fall down waterfalls in a cardboard box and the both of them get attacked by a bear. But when I was a kid, I believed with my whole heart that Milo and Otis braved the dangers of the wild together, and grace and fortune smiled down upon them the entire time.

Now, watching the movie is a little sadder, but I still kind of love it. Dudley Moore's hammy "animal-ization" of all the different animal characters' voices is really brilliant. The animals are so freaking cute. It would take a staggering volume of film to cut together a film featuring so many different animals in so many environments. The classical music is choice. And even though every time any animal gets in danger, you can't help but think, well, that's where we lost Otis #17, at least it might make for a very morbid drinking game?

Watching the movie also reminds me of a book I loved as a kid. I can't remember the name, but the cover featured a green field with an orange tabby kitten in the middle. The book was about the kitten, named "Pickle," who (predictably) was always getting himself into trouble.

I really miss those days -- the days when I could easily believe in brave puppies, impish kittens, and the anthropomorphism of animals.

stiiiill sick

2007-11-17T05:24:00.000-08:00

Okay this is actually a little more like food poisoning than I thought. While yesterday was okay and I ate fairly normally, I spent most of today suffering for it (but not so bad as the first night). Hopefully it'll run its course soon.

My stomach is so gurgly! It's weird and unnerving. Every commercial about gastro-intestinal medicine suddenly has my rapt attention.

Anyway, as an end to a highly vegetative day, I just watched The Prestige, which was fan-tastic. I mean you've got fucking BOWIE as Tesla, Michael Caine, the guy who plays Smeagol (I still can't see him as anyone but), Scar-Jo, Christian Bale, uhh the sherrif of Rottingham from Robin Hood (aka Lord Marbury from West Wing)... yes, talk about a loaded cast. And it's about ILLUSIONS!

my body is staging a mutiny

2007-11-15T19:50:00.000-08:00

I think I had one of the worst nights of my life yesterday. I don't know what happened. It started after lunch with kind of a dull discomfort in my belly, then continued till night when I ended up in a fetal position on my bed due to sharp, twisting stomach cramps. I tried to hit the sack relatively early but was roused from my bed by the sudden desire to be completely at one with the bathroom (to put it nicely).

Anyway, it was not pretty, and I was violently sick for something like four hours before the pain abated enough to sleep. I've woken up today very, very weak, but it seems like my stomach is okay now (fingers crossed).

What the fuck? I've had food poisoning/stomach flu before, and though hellish, it was neither as severe nor painful, and the sickness usually stretched out to 3-4 days at least. I can't decide whether it's better to have one day of really violent symptoms or 3-4 days of milder ones. Anyway, I'm gonna have to be more careful about what I eat for a while. Today will be a day of laundry and slowly putting food and water back into my body.

who wants a banger in the mooouth?

2007-11-15T01:38:00.000-08:00

Holy. Fucking. Shit. I just downloaded the Bangers & Cash EP by Spank Rock and Benny Blanco. It's amazing. Maybe not as good as Spank Rock's solo album, but it still gives me my fix.

b-o-o-t-a-y, you ain't got no alibi
you ugly, yeah yeah
bitch, fuck me

(from B-O-O-T-A-Y, clearly a classic in the making with air-raid sirens and repeatedly shouted dance mantras and everything. If you're a rabid feminist or otherwise have a stick up your ass, you may want to stay clear. It's totally not their best song, though.)

Bangers & Cash is like the dirty rap / dirty beats of Spank Rock combined with the get-down-and-shake-your-shit guilty dance music pleasure that is 2 Live Crew. Stepped up a little. "Loose" is my favorite song so far (maybe you can find it on elbo.ws).

Yeah, so, I really just wanted to use the joint effort as a segue to talk about Spank Rock. I love this man. Seriously, if you like dance music, or underground rap (of the infectiously dirty variety), and don't mind a little dabbling into electro, WHAT-EVER just get YoYoYoYoYo. So Good. Easily one of my top 3 favorite albums of 2006.

I cannot wait till I'm back in the states and I can hunt down all these people and start going to live shows again!

Vid linkage:
Spank Rock interviewed by Flavorpill (Ronnie Darko dancing = too cute)
"Loose" at some FADER release party (how awesome are his glasses)
Spank Rock performing "Bump" (great song) with Amanda Blank (she fucking rocks, I'm kind of in love with her too)

Oh, nerds

2007-11-14T21:17:00.001-08:00

For any of you who read xkcd, one of the nerdiest webcomics out there (which I am proud to say I understand about 90% of the time), you can finally see what the creator, Randall Munroe, looks like! Couldn't you just eat him up?

http://www.wired.com/entertainment/theweb/news/2007/11/xkcd#

Although it's a webcomic with a lot of oblique references for math/science heads, it's got several strips that are pretty relatable if you're merely just neurotic.

"I think the comic that's gotten me the most feedback is actually the one about the stoplights[*]," says Randall Munroe, creator of the hugely popular comic with the unpronounceable title. "Noticing when the stoplights are in sync, or calculating the length of your strides between floor tiles -- normal people notice that kind of stuff, but a certain kind of person will do some calculations."

*I think one of the commenters is right when he suggests that maybe Munroe actually meant this comic about turn signals, not the linked stoplights one. [Aside: I think it's adorable that g-mail makes a point of using proper grammar. In linking that comic, the pop-up link creator said, " to what URL should this link go?"]

I am fully guilty of comparing the beat of my turn signal to other people's, the beat of other people's signals to my music, the beat of my music to my windshield wipers...

You guys remember that commercial where everything everyone is doing outside the car is in-step with the rhythm of the music inside the car (somehow I feel like this is a VW commercial from when the Bug was coming back)? And it's cool and kind of twilight-zone and you think "man, I love it when that happens." Well, maybe you do. At least, I get a kick out if it when it happens because it's like, amidst all this seemingly random chaos, everyone's personal rhythms are coming together for an instant. (As an English teacher abroad I can probably turn this into some kind of cross-cultural communication metaphor but fuck that shit.) Anyway, can you imagine every aspect of the world pulsing together at one consistent frequency? Actually, come to think of it, it would be very A Wrinkle in Time, wouldn't it?

kaiten umai sushikan

2007-11-14T00:54:00.001-08:00

torch-seared 3-piece nigiri set. 575 yen. (check out the different textures!)

Edit: kaiten is sushi that goes round on a revolving belt, pretty much like luggage at the airport. If you're from the states, you're probably familiar with "sushi boat," but I was shocked to discover that no one actually sends sushi on boats floating on a moat around the chefs here. Is that just a weird western adaptation?

Anyway. The top was beni-toro (salmon), the middle was O-toro (top quality tuna), and the bottom was buri-toro (Japanese amberjack, apparently). -toro means the fatty belly cut of the fish. Top and middle were great, the buri was meh.

Brian's Brain

2007-11-13T16:19:00.001-08:00

Virtually answering my kouyou post, this really captures the fall-winter transition. It's been a long time since I've bought a greeting card, but shoebox cards were always cute and sassy with minimal (or only appropriate) cheese. The shoebox blog is pretty much the same deal (I like it).

I have rapidly chugged a mug of coffee this morning in an effort to battle the sleepy and tired. Stomach is noooott haaapppy. :[

Sent to you by Kat via Google Reader:

Brian's Brain

via tinylittledivision by brian on 11/13/07

Things you can do from here:

Subscribe to tinylittledivision using Google Reader
Get started using Google Reader to easily keep up with all your favorite sites

dinner at Le Mac

2007-11-13T05:33:00.000-08:00

I went into a random McDonald's today, and it kind of blew my mind. I had heard that McD's was attempting to turn its image around and possibly with Japan as a jumping-off point (can't find the articles now, dammit). Today was the first time I noticed.

It hit me as I was noshing on my crack-fries and sipping my crack-shake. I was staring across my table at a modern, burnt-sienna (Crayola, anyone?) leather chair with simple metal legs. Other, more isolated tables had molded metal arms and legs with nice off-white leather (or convincingly fake leather). Booth seats were in unobtrusive earthtones as well. The wall paint/paper featured a stylish graphic design. The corridor walls featured dark wood tones, which continued into the bathrooms to meet with frosted green glass mirrors.

I mean, all fast-food restaurants that have made it to Japan are nicer here than they are back home...but this was something else.

So, the entire time, I was thinking, where the fuck am I? What the hell? I go to McDonald's expecting either: a) red and yellow and white plastic everything, dingy floors, grudgingly-rotating chairs attached by an arm to the center of the table ... or b) purple, pink, and green everything, dingy art-deco wallpaper and too much clip art and too much vinyl.

Hehe! I was looking for the articles I was thinking of, and I stumbled across this little McRib discussion at Chowhound (hilariously fluctuates between homage/condemnation). I kind of have to try one now.

Hmm, these other articles do reference the new-image campaign.
McDonald's to revamp brand image
[Siam Future]

Under the theme "I'm Lovin' It'', the costly campaign, introduced by the parent company two weeks ago, requires financial contributions from overseas subsidiaries in 118 countries, according to the local operator, McThai Co.

McDonald's new two-year campaign intends to promote the brand as a lifestyle instead of a name associated with an occasional meal out. It will create a more contemporary image in an effort to woo back young diners.

Also,
Chains take pains to reinvent themselves in bids to match hipper decor of newer rivals
[Nation's Restaurant News] (kind of tabloid-y)

McDonald's, amid some misgivings by franchisees, now is embarking on a domestic image overhaul that's an outgrowth of a campaign begun eight years ago in France, where hundreds of branches added hardwood floors, exposed brick and such theme packages as the "Mountain" ski chalet or "Sport" model with TVs showing athletic events. Some French McDonald's also went high fashion with a revamping of the chain's logo from red and yellow to maroon and mustard.

The chain's current stateside upgrade campaign seems more forward looking and studiously contemporary, though doubters have questioned whether the exterior revamping is too radical and might squander the brand equity of some instantly recognizable architectural elements.

Well, sneaky business tactics aside, I'm all for the transformation. Bring on the "linger zones." If you're saying I can sink into a couch, plug in my laptop, hoover junk food and find a decent restroom, I'm THERE. And let's get these transformations going in rest-stop McDonald'ses too, eh? (Highway 5, anyone?)

紅葉情報 (kouyou jouhou)

2007-11-12T06:10:00.001-08:00

It's a sweetly rhyming phrase, and it's been popping up all over television and internet news these days. It's even being thrown around offices, staffrooms, and classrooms. The buzz in noticeable. Yet, it's not some international event or major issue that's surfaced -- it's merely a seasonal addiction that comes with autumn.

Kouyou, while literally meaning "crimson leaves," is the term given nore generally to the time period when the leaves are changing colors in the fall. It's a time to say goodbye to the old season and welcome (or dread) the onset of winter. It's a time when people wax nostalgic, getting that faraway look in their eyes as they hold a mug of hot drink and sigh, "this year's kouyou is really beautiful, isn't it..."

[It also mirrors the cherry-blossom-madness that will come half a year from now, in the spring.]

Right now, people are flocking to the areas most dense with deciduous foliage. There, they can observe the striking red-orange of momiji (Japanese maple) against the pure yellow of the ichou (ginkgo), and all the shades in-between. At scenic viewpoints, they can breathe in the coming of winter and revel in nature's metaphors.

If you're curious, here are some kouyou jouhou (kouyou information) charts I found on the web today -- just a few of hundreds, probably. You can see that this is an obsession for them -- not a hobby. I would guess it's the product of a culture's singular devotion to nature (on the whole -- whale and dolphin issues aside!) and chronic dependence on weather-talk.

via Walker plus (prob for nature lovers)

via weathernews

via Yahoo! weather

I hope I get to see some pretty kouyou this weekend!

(The links will all probably be dead after December.)

ladies who brunch

2007-11-11T05:07:00.000-08:00

I went over to my friend's apartment today and had a scrumptious brunch with some wonderful company. She -- a fabulous cook with a diverse set of skills! -- had set out a beautiful array of breakfast-y and lunch-y foods, including banana-chocolate muffins, an omelet with roasted garlic, an avocado salad, fresh fruit, fried onigiri, and more.

Her stark but very accommodating apartment arrangement almost makes me wish I didn't have a bed, kotatsu, and a sofa cramping the center of mine. Almost.

Nibbling while chit-chatting and languishing about is really the perfect way to stretch out a Sunday morning that is typically far too short Hopefully we will do this more often -- perhaps with us moochers pulling our weight in the kitchen more. :)

---

So, the other day, I was shopping at an "America-style" mall that opened up here a few months back. Fully-indoor malls are pretty rare here, as most people seem to prefer the walking arcades conveniently attached to subway or train stations. Anyway, like any American mall, this mall had it's share of garishly-decorated stores filled with only knick-knacks and questionable (tongue-in-cheek?) novelty items.

Of all the crazy "import" goods, this Conguitos (what does this mean?) candy was definitely my favorite:

(The heads bobble!)

comfort food

2007-11-10T18:27:00.001-08:00

Bumping elbows in my tiny Japanese kitchen, G and I cooked up two of my favorite things this weekend:

- mushroom risotto
- sweet potato soup with nutmeg and maple syrup

we used maitake mushrooms and added a bunch of spinach, cut into ribbons, at the final stretch. usually I prefer pecorino but we used parm this time around. risotto is all about tender, painstakingly slow addition of stock, so it's a labor of love but So worth it. you can sub whole milk for the cream and the texture is still fantastic.

For the soup, with last time's episode fresh in mind, I let it cool before blending. this was a mistake, as the starchy, fibrous sweet potatoes become too gummy to blend easily. so, I recommend blending this one hot, in smallish batches. upping the amount of spices doesnt hurt either.

these two dishes are real champs at fighting the gloom of cold, rainy days.

Good Quotes: Amy Krouse Rosenthal

2007-11-08T17:38:00.001-08:00

This is for those of you familiar with my compulsive need to rearrange my furniture every month; her description really hits it on the nose.

Seriously, people. It's the like the sense of rebirth you get from a dramatic new haircut, but with much less personal risk.

Sent to you by Kat via Google Reader:

Good Quotes: Amy Krouse Rosenthal

via Apartment Therapy - San Francisco by elizabethc on 11/8/07

There's the buzz you get the first few times you walk into a room after you've just rearranged some furniture. Oh, yeah, the couch is over there now, next to the plant . . . and the chairs are here. This is great! You linger in the doorway and admire it for a few moments, savoring its exciting freshness (it will be two or three days before you're accustomed to it), remembering how it used to be, and how this setup is so much better.

-Amy Krouse Rosenthal

Image: gracey via morguefile

To all Good Quotes

Things you can do from here:

Subscribe to Apartment Therapy - San Francisco using Google Reader
Get started using Google Reader to easily keep up with all your favorite sites

mo-blog test

2007-11-08T05:55:00.001-08:00

blah blah

G.R.E.A.M.

2007-11-08T04:46:00.000-08:00

Alright, here it is. The first post on yet another new blog. A trial post, really. Why, you ask? Why must I keep flitting from service to service?

Well, I had a lot of issues with Livejournal. They seem incredibly slow to make progress. They seem quite satisfied with their community-based livelihood, and I understand that. But I want integration and development and most of all javascript sidebar widgets, heh! I don't really care about communities, userpics, mood, music, etc. And what the hell is the deal with people not being able to leave a name with an unregistered comment? Only anonymous / LJ user / OpenID? Ugh.

Blogger is almost too easy for the nerd in me, but all the fun customization really wins the day.

In the end, it's true. Google Rules Everything Around Me. (dolla dolla bills y'all...)

Gah. Tonight I am going to bed with a sweatshirt on over a long-sleeved shirt, with my PJ pants tucked into my socks Princess-Jasmine-style. Winter is nigh upon us, my friends...

put down the tablet; back away from the photoshop.

2007-11-08T02:02:00.000-08:00

[I've moved over from LJ but I want to keep all my Nat'l Blog Posting Month posts together, so I'm reposting them here. Originally posted Nov. 7, 2007, at 5:59PM.]

This is possibly one of the scariest things ever:

Fug the Cover: Julia Roberts

I do like the red of the rose and the red of the font against the overall paleness. But everything else about the cover is all kinds of unsettling, and isn't it ironic that this issue features a "special report on art"?

I don't think the writer's comment quite expresses the level of "AAUGH!!" I feel when I look at it. The crazy angle of her head aside, IT LOOKS LIKE HER HEAD WAS PASTED ONTO SOMEONE ELSE'S BODY AND WILL FLOAT AWAY. It's true that this is not at all unusual in Hollywood...or Hollywood-based porn, really. Still, I'm sure she has a nice enough body that it didn't need to be faded/softened/lightened so that it'd disappear into the background.

If you can get past that bit of editing, your eyes will naturally be drawn (as in all J. Roberts photos) to her gonzo mouth. Then you'll think, okay that rose has -- for some strange reason -- been PHOTOSHOPPED BETWEEN HER TEETH.

Then you'll realize -- ohhhh. It's so they could more easily photoshop a Longfellow quote on to the stem of the rose. Uh huh, yeah. Makes sense. But you know, a flower stem is only so long, so they couldn't quite fit the whole shebang.

It's actually a sweet poem and fitting for an issue about art, so here it is in its entirety:

"Art is the child of Nature; yes,
Her darling child, in whom we trace
The features of the mother's face,
Her aspect and her attitude."
[Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1807-1882), "Keramos."]

---

Carla:
i don't want to stare at her teeth ever
she has scary teeth
it's like they are sentient
Kat:
yeah, i know
i think her real teeth are aware of this egregious photoshopping slight
and they're coming to get the editor
Carla:
the last thing s/he'll hear is "graaag chomp chomp chomp chatter chomp"

(NaBloPoMo2) 悩んでる (what to do, what to do?)

2007-11-08T01:55:00.000-08:00

[I've moved over from LJ but I want to keep all my Nat'l Blog Posting Month posts together, so I'm reposting them here. Originally posted Nov. 6, 2007, at 11:06PM. This one's fairly ironic to read now.]

This is day two and I'm already like WHAT THE CRAP CAN I BLOG ABOUT?!

Well, blogging itself, I guess? Boring, but it's on my mind.

So, I can't decide. To switch to blogger or not to switch to blogger? What do you guys think (all five of you)?

My reasoning thus far:

1. Livejournal templates are really annoying to customize (if you don't feel like getting your hands dirty with html and CSS). At the mo, I don't think I'm enough of a serious-blogger-cum-elitist-computer-nerd to design my own layout. All I want are freely customizable sidebars that can have javascript widgets (read: I want my awesome shared Google reader feeds in your FACE).

2. Livejournal commenting is dumb. What the hell, "openID", "logged in Livejournal user", and "anonymous" only? I mean sure, people can pick anonymous and then write their name somewhere in the comment, but what a pain in the ass.

3. Indeed, Livejournal was one of the first real blogging communities -- emphasis on community. But, pre-blogger Blogspot has been around for ages, too (although a lot of the cooler templates have disappeared), and for the past FIVE YEARS the free realm of LJ has been stagnating. With mega-giant Google backing, Blogger is seeing rapid progress towards becoming more integrated with other services.

4. I'm not really into LJ communities or socializing via blog circles. I am really into the Google universe (reader, gmail, gcal, picasa...).

5. Most of my free time + blogging zeal happens at work; however, there's a nice network filter at work that blogs all the edit/post pages of LJ, Blogger, Wordpress, you name it. (but not ning.com! hmm.) I can, however, do the sneaky thing and blog via e-mail. The thing is, blogging via gmail to LJ formats all wonky, while emailing to Blogger is totally fine.

Yada yada. So what's stopping me? Having to start fresh, having to notify everyone, wondering if people will still read my blog if they can't access it from their LJ friends page, uh...er...

Okay, one side of this argument seems much more substantial.

This is what's good about getting things down in writing. It makes your laziness and love of procrastination starkly clear. Looks like I'll move to Blogger once I get it all tested and whatnot.

---

In other news! Tonight I had dinner at an adorable cafe in the back of a lingerie store that is also a bakery. Their menu is based on soup/salad/sammich sets with an attached パン食べ放題 (all-you-can-eat bread). The best part is that every time I go there with my boy, he is quite conspicuously the only male patron (and glaringly foreign, at that) breezing through the racks of lace-y, padded bras to hit the bread buffet. Hee hee.

(NaBloPoMo1) caramelized leek soup explosion

2007-11-08T01:51:00.000-08:00

[I've moved over from LJ but I want to keep all my Nat'l Blog Posting Month posts together, so I'm reposting them here. Originally posted Nov. 5, 2007, at 11:15PM.]

This recipe asks for like five ingredients and cooks them in hardly as many steps, so that makes it a winner in my book.

Just so you know: I used mirin (Japanese sweetened cooking sake) instead of vermouth and salted instead of unsalted butter, and added some pecorino for happiness, so I didn't salt it in the end and I omitted the sugar.

Thus, I spent the past hour pointedly neglecting a pot full of sliced leeks -- stoically resisting the itch to stir, letting the little crescents BURN yes BURN I mean gently sear to a beautiful golden hue coating the bottom of my giant pot. After a couple pounds of leeks had reduced to a clump of dark golden nothing, I added the final quantity of stock and brought it to a boil. Then I had a little think.

Most of the reviewers recommend blending/pureeing at least part (if not all) of the soup to give it more body, unless you want a rustic french-onion-type soup. I've been digging creamy-without-cream soups lately, but I don't have an immersion blender. In the past, I've given small quantities a spin in my normal blender while leaving a tiny vent open in the lid...with no complications. I was impatient to eat, so I went for it with about 2 cups of soup in the blender.

FOOM! Gooey leeky-ness all over my just-cleaned kitchen wall and dripping down and behind my little stove. I lost probably a good eighth of the soup to the explosion. I was pissed. Like, punching the walls and stomping around and throwing stuff pissed. But it's kind of hard to be pissed about something making a mess and then making a mess, you know? So I mostly just swore a lot in English and cleaned up with unnecessary and misdirected force. (GRAH!! *hurls paper towel in trash*)

At least the soup came out tasty in the end. Yum. Semi-blended.

Speaking of explosions:

I'm doing this! National Blog Posting Month! It means posting in your blog daily for the month of November (I started a bit late, so I guess a bit into December too?) -- with no weekend vacations! Yay! Day one! Huzzah. Okay so really, I was enticed because "NaBloPoMo" is such an awesome portmanteau, and portmanteaus are life in Japan. We'll see how long I can really stick with it. It looks like they have some pretty involved communities/social-networking set up there but...I can't be arsed.

Okay, moving on. So you know how I posted a few entries back with Gmail gripes? Well, according to Lifehacker, it looks like they've revamped their contacts manager! Among other things! Yay for progress. Hopefully this means more intuitive filter setup. Now the question is when do I get to play with the new features?

Until then, I am appeasing myself with some double-chocolate-and-cranberry oatmeal cookies (based on this recipe), dipped in a little applesauce. Two things that consistently turn out delicious. No 'splosions.