Security Ordeal...

...Not!

I managed to get through security and customs with no problems.

... Really!

I'm now in the secure area right above the wireless access point that I have been using for the past two days. Though that it happened to be right here where I pulled my laptop out is kind of strangely coincidental, I think. There also just happens to be a power plug right here, as a random bonus.

Surprisingly enough, they didn't even pat me down or have to have me do anything weird. I even made it through the metal detector without having to take my belt off - a first! More surprisingly, I'm wearing my huge brown Marine desert boots and didn't they didn't make me take those off either. I was a little worried that they were going to say something about the fact that my ticket says I'm coming back in three weeks, but that my visa ends in about two, but I said I wouldn't be coming back for a while, and it was okay.

One guy at security was determined to talk to me in English, but after struggling his way through "Check... you... plane... on... [gesture at passport]... 20 o'ten... ride." he let us finish the conversation in Japanese.

Now, I'm killing another 45 minutes while I wait for them to begin boarding the plane.

Ko-Un

I woke up at a decent time today, for the first time in a week. Not such a big deal on its own, but I came with some good ideas for RPG stuff and read some interesting stuff from the GM guide.

When I went to school to meet with one of my teachers, she wasn't there, but I met up with another teacher, who took Kilk and I out to lunch for yakiniku (fried meat). When I got back, the teacher I was supposed to meet was there (she was coming in for work, so I was just supposed to meet her at some point after 1PM) and we talked for about three hours while she let me pick all the books I could carry from her bookshelf to take home with me. She also gave me a brand new electronic dictionary. It just happens to be one with a special feature that I will make great use of in the next year or so, as a random bonus.

Now, I just need to ship them home...

Food Pictures - maybe NSFW

Alright, three food-related pictures from the past week or so.

First is a giant parfait, aptly named the "Crazy Big Parfait". Not kidding.

Next is me after having defeated it.

As you can see from how big the bowl is in relation to my hand, it was, indeed, crazy big. It was filled with whipped cream and strawberry ice cream, with green tea pocky and waffle cones jammed in the side. It was yum! Fortunately, we split the $40 price between seven of us, so it wasn't so bad.

Today, I got this in the mail. Tell me what is wrong with this scene. What's that? Yes, "everything" is indeed the correct answer. Broccoli on pizza, covered in what appears to be a baked potato with nacho cheese being dribbled over it. WTF JAPAN?

On the other hand*, boobies! Chocolate!
Chocolate boobies! Surprisingly tasty, even. I only got six, as there were a bunch of other candies I wanted to get as well.

I made sure to use these backwards and eat the nipples first.

*Yes, I have the mind of a high-school kid. Did you really not see that one?

クリームパン作り方

I'm experimenting to see how alignment works to show translation. Tables in Blogger are such a pain.

This recipe assumes that you kind of know what it will look like in the end, but if you've never seen one, parts will seem pretty weird. The end product should look something like the thing at left if you decide to start dicing them up or something. There's a reference to a seam later on, and you can see it at the far right of the upper pastry.

[From http://plaza.rakuten.co.jp/butterbread/9000]

１０～１２個分
＜中身のカスタードクリームを作る＞

Makes 10-12 individual servings
Custard filling

１．薄力粉３０ｇを茶こしでふるっておく。

Sift 30 grams of pastry [low-viscosity] flour

２．卵黄２個、砂糖６０ｇ、ふるった薄力粉３０ｇを鍋に入れてから火にかけ、牛乳３００ｃｃを少しずつ泡だて器で混ぜながら加えていく。途中でヘラに替えてもったりするまでかき混ぜながら煮る。

Put two eggs, 60 grams of sugar, and the strained flower into a saucepan and apply heat. Slowly add 300cc of milk while stirring. Boil until thickened enough to stand a spatula [not kidding]

３．火からおろし、バターまたはマーガリン１０ｇと、バニラエッセンス２，３滴をヘラでよく混ぜる。

Remove from heat and add 10g of butter or margarine, as well as 2 or three drops of vanilla essence. Stir well with a spatula.

４．蓋をしてそのまま冷ましておく。

Cover and cool as-is.

＊あればバニラビーンズの方がエッセンスよりも香りが良い。

If you have them, vanilla beans make for a better smell than vanilla essence.

＜ホームベーカリーで生地を作る＞

Making the dough in a home bakery [real ovens aren't common here]

以下を機械に投入。生地づくりコースを選ぶ。

This assumes you have a bread machine. Select "dough course".

１．ドライイースト　５ｇ (dry yeast)
２．強力粉　２５０ｇ (pastry (low-viscosity) yeast)
３．砂糖　　大さじ２ (two tablespoons sugar)
４．塩　　　小さじ１/２ (one-half (.5) teaspoon salt)
５．マーガリン　２０ｇ (margarin)
６．卵　　　１個 (one egg)
７．水　　　１２０ｃｃ (water)

生地ができたら、包丁で１０～１２等分にカットし、生地を周りから丸めこむように丸める。布をかけて２０分放置。（ベンチタイム）

Once the dough is done, use a kitchen knife to cut into 10-12 equal portions and round each one into a circle. Put a cloth on them and let set for 20 minutes. (benchtime)

軽く丸め直し、円く平らにのばし（円のふちのほうを薄く）、カスタードクリームを割とたっぷりめに包み込んで下を閉じる。少し平らになるように軽く押し、 端に3か所切れ込みを入れてグローブ型にする。天板に並べ、２次発酵約５０分。（オーブンの発酵機能を使うか、ビニールをふわっとかけてこたつに入れるか する。気温が２８度くらいならビニールかけて常温で放置できる。）

Lightly fix them to be more circular, then stretch so the edges are thinner and fill relatively full with the custard filling, wrap and close under. [f you look at the picture at the top of the page, you can see the seam at the right side of the one that's been cut in half.] Lightly flatten them and cut three incisions [see picture at left] and make into a rough globe shape. Line them up on a baking tray [a cookie sheet, I guess?] and let ferment for about 50 minutes. You can put them in the oven for this time if you want, but you'll want to make sure to cover them lightly with plastic wrap and keep the temperature around 28 degrees [that's Celsius!].

２倍に膨れたら、１８０度のオーブンで約１３分焼く。

When they have doubled in size, bake them in the oven for about 13 minutes at 180 degrees. [again, Celsius!]

Creamy Essay

I've tried to be fairly true to the Japanese as I wrote it without embellishing it or making it sound too much more natural than it fails to be. I did this mostly so that I could make sure that there were no serious gaps in the writing that I was just missing because I couldn't evaluate the writing as a whole. Or something.
Now, I'm not saying that there are no fairly serious gaps where you're just like "Wait, what?" But they're not serious enough for me to want to reflow each paragraph.

When you're dealing with Asian names written in roman letters, last names are sometimes written in all-uppercase letters for clarity, as I have done here.

菓子クリームパン！ ウィルロクド	Pastry Cream Bread! William Lockwood
もし一年前の私は「クリームパンって、何のことですか」と聞かれたら、答える事ができなかったはずだ。日本に来る前には「クリームパン」と聞いた事がなかったので知らないのは当たり前の事かもしれない。去年２００８には初めてクリームパンを見たのだ。クラスのみんあにはちょっと信じがたいだろう。	If you were to ask me a year ago "What kind of thing is a kuriimu pan?", I don't expect I could've answered. I hadn't heard the word before coming to Japan, so I think that my not knowing may be kind of a given. Last year, 2008, I saw cream-pan for the first time. Kind of hard to believe, right?
さて、クリームパンの発明に関すして話したいと思う。日本に１４世紀に中国からまんじゅうと言う食べ物が伝わった。当初、肉しかに詰められていなかったが日本人の口に合うようにあんこに詰められて来て、日本のまんじゅうが発明された。１６世紀にポルトガルからの探検者が日本へ火縄銃や宗教やパン、つまり技術と文化を日本に持って来た。その時に日本人の初めてパンを見た。もう少し後、日本は鎖国を始めた結果、パンは外国文化の一部として禁ずられたので約三百年間にほとんだなかった。でも、あんまんじゅうはのこっていた。	Okay, I'd like to talk about the invention of cream-pan. In the 14th century, the Chinese brought a food called manjuu ["steamed yeast bun", a super-soft bread-thing]. In the beginning, they were just filled with meat, but came to be filled with anko ["sweet bean paste", the Japanese version of corn syrup, basically. It's in everything.] in order to suit Japanese tastes and thus was the Japanese manjuu invented. In the 16th century, Portuguese explorers came to Japan and brought matchlock muskets, religion, and bread, in other words, culture and technology, with them. At that time, the Japanese people first saw bread. A little later, Japan started its seclusive phase and bread was forgotten about for about three hundred years. But anko-filled manjuu remained.
１９世紀の明治時代に侍の地位が政府にとられた。その前に侍だった人々は武士ではなくなって来たら、新しい就職を探された。その中の一人、木村安兵衛は西洋文化を普及させたほうがいい思っていたため１８６９年に日本の初めてのパン屋を作った。パン屋の名前は「文英堂」だって、すぐ「木村屋」に変わった。木村屋の新しいパンの種類として、アンパンが発明されて、毎日売り切れていたくらい大人気だった。	In the 19th century, during the Meiji period, samurai were stripped of their rank by the government. People who were previously samurai, when they came to lose their status as warriors, were forced to seek out new employment. One of those people, Yasubei KIMURA, thought that Western culture should be spread and, in 1869, made Japan's first bakery. It's name was "Bun Ei Dou" ["sentence","beauty","hall". Go figure.], but soon changed it to Shop Kimura [kimura-ya]. As a new kind of bread from Shop Kimura, the anpan [bread, filled with anko] was invented and was so hugely popular that it sold out every day.
１８７５年に天皇の侍従が木村屋に行ったら、天皇にアンパンをあげようと申し入れた。桜はずっと前から日本の印だったので、木村屋は新しい桜アンパンを作った。天皇と皇后がその桜アンパンを食べたら、もちろんおいしかったので、その時から木村屋のアンパンを注文して引き続いた。この出来事でアンパンは全国の人気できた。現在でもアンパンはまだ一番人気のある菓子パンだ。	In 1875, the emperor's chamberlain went to Shop Kimura and suggested that they give some anpan to the emperor. Because the cherry blossom has long been a symbol of Japan, Shop Kimura made a new kind of sakura anpan. When the emperor and empress ate that sakura anpan, it was, of course delicious, so from then for a long time they ordered anpan from Shop Kimura. By way of this big event, anpan gained nationwide popularity. Even today, it's the most popular of pastries in Japan.
今までの話は日本の菓子パンの全員に関する長話だった。アンパンは大人気になったら、さまざまな中身と作り方の変更をされて見た。その菓子パン実験によって、今日ジャンパンやメロンパンなどを食べられる。	The story up until now was the long story about all of Japan's pastries. When anpan became really popular, various fillings and recipes were tried. Because of those pastry experiments, you can eat pastries like melon pan and jamu pan [basically a sealed PB&J sandwich, hold the PB).
その一種はクリームパンだ。１９０４年に中村屋で働いていた相(そう)馬(ま)愛(あい)蔵(ぞう)と言うパン屋さんがカスタードを中身として試した。もちろん、すばらしくおいしかった。その慶事あったからずっと日本の全国にはクリームパンも人気のあるパンだった。というのは、現在日本の三番目人気だ。	One of those types was cream bread. In 1904, a baker working at Shop Nakamura, Aizou SOUMA. tried custard as a filling. Of course, it was wonderfully delicious. Since that auspicious day, cream bread has also been a popular pastry in all of Japan Japan. That is to say, even today, it's the third most popular pastry.
でも、日本に来る前クリームパン聞いたことすらないからそれら全然知らなかったのだろう。私の日本にいる二日に学校の前のショップ９９で証明写真を撮りに行ったと店の中のおいしそうな物は多そうだったため、できたらさっそく行きたかった。戻ったとき、三十秒うちにカスタードメロンパンを見つけて、買った。今でも、それは私の一番好きなクリームパンだ。	But before I came to Japan, I hadn't even heard of cream bread, right? On my second day of being here in Japan, I went to the Shop99 in front of the school to get some ID photographs taken and inside the store there seemed to be a lot of delicious-looking things in the store, so I wanted to come back without delay if possible. When I went back, within 30 seconds, I found a castard melon cream bread and bought it. Even now, that's my favorite cream bread.

Jes Visits! - Himeji

So while Jes was here, her, Roxanne, and myself went to Himeji, a city to the South where Himeji castle is located.
As you approach the castle, there's a large field that was probably used as a staging ground or something. It's just a big dirt field. You can see Jes wearing her new jacket in the center of the picture at left. This is a panorama that is composed of, I think, 12 different pictures.

As you come closer to the castle, you can see some of the battlements and the arrow slits and stone-throwing holes and suchlike. At left, Jes is just about to look out one, and you can see another square one at the right side of the frame. There were circular, rectangular, and triangular slits. I would guess they were for different purposes, but I don't know how those specific shapes would be advantageous to anything.

At right is a sign that I liked for the "No danger!" symbol in the lower right. The blue text above the sign says "Plastic bottles are allowed".

This just occurred to me now, but the walk up the walkways was pretty tiring as-is, so I can't imagine what this would be like while constantly trying to dodge rocks and arrows and oil and fighting well-rested sword-/pike-men.

Oh, feel free to add musketeers to that list as well.

This was one rack of guns that was to be seen, but there were probably racks for well over a thousand longarms such as this.

This is "Princess Sen's room" or one of them. She had a whole section of the castle devoted to her and her serving girls, if the signs are to be believed. I don't know what she's doing with the rocks, but I would guess it's some kind of prayer ritual or something like that.

This room is not very high up in the castle and kind of off to one side, but as you go up into the main castle area, you see these little fish guys (left) at random. I think they signify some kind of dolphin (though the tails are sideways for that) or dragon or something. I dunno.

Of the stuff at the castle, I think these fishy statues are probably the most artistic, useless thing there. The rest is fairly bland and militaristic, largely because it consists of empty rooms and hallways.

And doors like the one seen at right. They still work, I think, but were locked so you couldn't open them.

From the top, you have a great view of the city, and I managed to get something like a 280-degree panorama, as you can see.

On the way down, we saw a couple of really neat sights, and I got what is probably my favorite picture of the castle proper, at left. The sunset is what's causing it to turn that nice orange color, though I think they have lights that come on at night to keep it that color. If not, I don't know what they use the massive lightbanks that they had set up for.

Here's that same sunset, a few minutes later, looking the other direction.

And some cats we found. A little after us, an old guy came with two little girls and they fed the cats.

These pictures could really use some warming up, but I guess I missed that when I was working through this set. Oops.

And then there's the toilet. We went to an okonomiyaki place on the way back to the train station, and the place we ate had this toilet. The picture at right really doesn't do the horror of the thing justice, but suffice to say that it had the strangest color scheme of any bathroom I've ever seen.

On top of that, the girls commented that the toilet was kidn of strange, so I had to go investigate. It turns out that it's an old-style toilet with what something like a booster seat on it so that you can sit down like a Western-style toilet. I moved the seat aside for this picture so you can see sort of what's going on. And yes, I washed my hands afterwards.

Pi

I refuse to take responsibility for lack of pie.

ごちそう！

Yesterday, instead of a second period of basic Japanese, we went out to a mall nearby and the teacher treated the whole class to dinner. I had 玉子焼き and some kind of あんこ soup. I'm in a bit of a rush, so I don't have time to explain those, but I wanted to note it.

Political Debate

I went to get pastries last night and ended up getting in what was at times a rather heated political debate with a the clerk at the pastry shop.

At first we were just talking about random stuff, and we eventually got onto the topic of water usage during bathing. She feels that Americans waste vast quantities of water by only bathing in bathwater once.

This is a great example of cross-cultural weirdness. For a Westerner, I think the idea of using the same bathwater that was just used by three other people is kind of gross. For a Japanese, not doing that is a terrible waste of water, and they don't seriously consider our cultural aversion to reusing bathing water as a valid point because, to someone raised with that kind of tradition, it's just silly. I'm speaking in sweeping generalizations here, of course, but I thought it was an interesting point.

On the other hand, I was able to counter by pointing out that Japanese shower before they take a bath, and that shower is as long as many people's entire bathing process. In other words, the shower at the beginning of their shared-bath thing may use a similar amount of water to what someone in the US might use in their shower.

At one point, we were talking about congress and various houses and whatnot, but I have neither the vocabulary nor the knowledge for a lengthy discussion on such things.

A bit after that, she said that she was someone disturbed by the fact that America drafts only black people and the poor into the military. When I was shocked by this, she said "I see there are many things Americans don't know", which I have to admit, I thought was kind of rude. I slowly managed to batter some sense into her (this is, of course, assuming that I am more knowledgeable about it than she is) about what the draft is and how it isn't currently implemented, and how the Selective Service works, and how it doesn't.

Later, she played the "You nuked us!" card and even knows history well enough to play the "You firebombed us!" card to trump the "You nuked us!" card.

Clerk: Attacking civilians... There should be a better way.
Me: I think it was done to lower the morale and try and convince the Japanese government to stop fighting in the war.
Clerk: Still.
Me: I agree, but that's how World War II* was fought.
Clerk: But napalm? Think of all the people, just sitting in their houses in fear, with no way out. And Japan is made of wood, so it's all the worse. It just burned completely.
Me: Yeah, but if you look at that from the enemy's point of view... That's good thinking, isn't it?
Clerk: Civilians.
Me: Yes.

It was quite an interesting discussion, and I enjoyed it. Further, it was very good practice, I think, and I felt I was doing a surprising job of holding up my end of it, which really shows the advances my Japanese has made from the first day of class last semester. I had to ask her to slow down a couple of times, but when people start getting upset, they're hard to understand no matter the language.

Oh, and the pastries were delicious, as always.

*第二次世界大戦 dai ni-ji sekai tai-sen Or "major second worldly big-ass war" Thank you, Okada! I don't what other vocab I remember from her class, but I've been wanting to use that one in discussion for two years now.

Kitty... Kat!

I was out and about with Yanavy, looking at cameras and whatnot, yesterday. We stopped by an AM-PM so she could look for magazines with her dreamy guy (Nino from Arashi) and so she could look for random things involving chocolate. She passed these up, but I found apple-flavored and anko-("sweet red bean paste")flavored Kit-Kats. I found a muscat (green grapes) flaovr of Kit-Kat the last time we were in that area.

In order of eated:
Grape Kit-Kat: Surprisingly decent, and a nice change of pace. Based on white chocolate.
Apple Kit-Kat: Really, really good. Nobody else seemed to like them, but, well... me and apples... have a thing. You know. Based on normal milk chocolate.
Anko Kit-Kat: Opposite of the last one; I didn't really like them, but everybody else seemed to. Based on normal milk chocolate, which I don't think really goes with... beans.

Pudding/プリン

So Chikari, my cute パン屋 (bakery) girl brought me some yummy apple pie and...
this, a half-liter bucket of pudding. The pudding was delicious.

More Slow Days

Nothing particularly of note has happened in a while. Been studying and learning lots of words and kanji, but news of that doesn't make for the most interesting blog posts. Yes, I still hate kanji.

We have kanji vocab quizzes every day in Basic Japanese, ranging from 15 to 42 words per quiz, averaging about 25. That's not so bad, but studying up ten of those, plus ten sentence patterns with one to four sub-patterns each, miscellaneous stuff we've done in class, a presentation, and a short paper in Japanese... I'm not looking forward to our next collective test.

I studied for the last one for four hours and scored a 78% on the test and 84% on the presentation and paper. Best score in the class was 93% and the worst was 70%, which says to me that they targeted the test's difficulty pretty damned well.

Thinking about going to Kiyomizudera with a friend and checking it out during momiji (leaf-changing time). That's supposedly when it looks the best.

Just ate a huge lunch - tofu will not burn easily, by the way: even if you drop it in boiling oil, it takes a good 20 minutes - and am feelin' that "just ate a huge lunch" need to take a nap. Class in an hour, though, makes that not the best of ideas. Probably just watch some anime or something.

Or fall asleep on my laptop.

Strange Day

Today has been interesting, despite not starting until a good deal past 11AM. I hung out with Yanavy and her group who just sort of dropped by around 10PM and we all watched a movie and sat around and slacked off until 5AM, when we collectively realized we ought to get some sleep. My room still smells like Magi's (sp?) perfume very faintly. Could just be a little left on me, though.

That sounds bad, but nothing happened. She sprayed some around at one point.

Anyway, everybody went home and I... was at home, so I just fell over and went to sleep.

On my way to practice today, I stopped and stared at some pigeons, and found one with a peg leg - or at least no toes. I did my best to take his picture with my cell phone camera, but... Cell phone camera, so...

Once I got there, I found out practice was canceled and there was an art show. Random, no? I bought a scrunchie (シュシュ) I liked and headed back home.

Upon returning, I was summoned to go do some tech support. But on the way, I saw a wallet lying on the ground, open, stuffed full of money, in the road. I stopped my bike, parked it off to the side of the road, grabbed the wallet and immediately signaled a nearby guard and explained the situation. He wanted me to hang out for a while so the wallet's owner could thank me, and while I was saying how I was in a hurry, the owner of the wallet came out of the store looking confused and patting his pants pockets. The guard flagged him and we returned his wallet, they both thanked me, and the guy gave me $30 for my trouble. He said I should go buy some ramen or something with it. I thanked him and we went our ways.

So I got to the Cristina's apartment, where Valentina, Betta, and Daniela were waiting, and was able to figure out why they couldn't get on the Internet (they were connected to the wireless router as a gateway instead of the router plugged into the VDSL modem - and their modem had locked up at the same time). Being somewhat short on time, I set up their computers to use static IPs and assigned the gateway and DNS settings manually, and left them with instructions on how to power cycle their setup. It's nice to be able to help like that.

Oh, and I'm currently waiting for Chise and Mikako to show up, and we're going to make okonomiyaki and play some Super Smash Brothers.

Barring anything really bad happening, this has been another pretty decent day. This makes me worry a little bit about tomorrow, but...

Stomach Rumbles

I made some breakfast.
I used half of an onion,
Now my stomach turns.

Shopping Wander with Fish and "Lady's Only"

I went out and did some shopping in Kawaramachi today. I should've gone to club practice, but I just didn't feel up to it.
So I went via Sanjo street because it has long portions that are covered and it was raining pretty decently. I was wearing my rain gear, so I wasn't getting wet, but the opportunity to undo my jacket and cool off was certainly justified the choice. Further, I found these delicious fishes. Some were filled with cream and some with bean paste. Kind of expensive, but something I've wanted to try for a while. They were decent.

I also found this sticker on the side of a public telephone. The red-outlined stuff is my appended translations. I'm not quite sure what to make of the whole thing, but the whole thing was worth it for the "Banana Milk" bit.

Numbers have a couple of ways of being read and you can take advantage of this to create mnemonics to help remember them, such as they have done here.

A Little Late, But Good Enough

I want to start this post off by saying that I'm straight. That is to say, chix FTW.
While Japanese men and women are about one pair of genitals apart, that's a topic for another time.

So last Tuesday, a bunch of the the 留学生 (study-abroad students) went out to an 居酒屋 (kind of like a bar) and for dinner. The people I was sitting with (seated at lower left in the picture later) decided to leave early and go get ice cream.

I later discovered that the reason we had gone to this particular place was because four of the five girls I was with had a crush on one of the guys working there. Now, these people are all fairly new to Japan and are not quite comfortable with the language.

This led to me using my Japanese for something I never expected to: asking a Japanese guy out.

...

Yeah, it was for Maggie, who stood there the whole time and made little noises at random times, but still... Well, at least I know I can ask out a Japanese girl now, if I need or want to, 'cause there's no way that could be more awkward than this.

I took a bunch of pictures while we were out at okonomiyaki, but didn't gel my flash, so they all came out kind of lame. Random picture from the set that I stitched together:

Food Costs

On Wednesdays, I usually go get udon at a nearby place that's really cheap, but I'm trying to save money wherever possible, and I was in the mood for something pretty filling, so I came home and decided to cook some lunch.

Step one: Turn on the frying pan, because everything I cook gets cooked by that one frying pan. Damned good $10 investment, that.

Step two: Grab some tofu and take 1/3 of the block and toss it in the frying pan. $0.10 I'll never see again. Woe.
As a note, it takes some doing to get something composed of 50% to burn.

Step three: Some oil.
Step three point five: Get bored waiting for the tofu to do something and start playing with it.

Step four: More oil, more playing around. Maybe 2 cents worth of oil by now.

Step five: Drop an egg in 'cause I have them handy. $0.15 there.

Step six: Add some amount of rice. Probably about $0.10 worth, though that's less than you might think.

So 40 cents later I have a nice big lunch. Total amount saved by biking home and cooking for myself? About $2.
Oh, and I actually got some nutrition, as opposed to wheat noodles in salt-soup. I guess mine's higher in fat, though.

Left Behind

I left some camera gear back at the party last night, which is 4.2 miles (6.7km) ( away, according to Google Maps, on the route we take. Multiply that by two for 8.4 miles (13.4km) round trip and it's a great way to start the day!

I'm kidding, in case that's not obvious. Bleh.

On the bright side, I found a place that has even betterdango than the soba place I've mentioned. Same price, slightly smaller amount, but they know how to cook them perfectly and you can buy as many as you want instead of just plates of three.

Oh, and I found not only my missing camera bits, but a friend's lens cap. Bonus.

It Came from the Miso

I'm pretty sure I just made a new dish. If I didn't, the person who made it before me needs mental help.
The basic process went like this:
"I like miso soup, but I don't want to wait to boil water, and I'm too lazy to stand and stir it. Shimpei said never to boil miso, but it shouldn't make anything too poisonous, so..." And I took about a tablespoon of soup mix and tossed it in the frying pan, then put the pan on high heat.
"But that's just going to burn and make an awful stench if I don't give it something to dissolve in..." In goes a tablespoon of oil and some random amount of water.
"I have judo in a bit, so I need some kind of protein. I know tofu goes well with miso..." So I cut up half a block of tofu and put it in the pan. Stir.
I turned down the pan to medium-high and came back in a few minutes, stirred again, and came back a few minutes later. I was getting hungry, and just took some out.

Meh.

Add some pepper. Tastes like... chicken.
Not kidding at all.

So the tofu wasn't firming up at all, so after I took out about half, I cracked a large egg and tossed it in, too. It helped, but it still tastes like chicken.

Anyway, it's definitely edible, and it... is... probably not too poisonous. I won't go so far as to suggest that it might be healthy, but...

Warning: If you try this, you should do so with the knowledge that I will not be held responsible for the following bout of death that insues. And it probably will.

Interesting Choice of Words

Looking up a compound for some homework, I discovered that there's a kanji compound that means "business" and is pronounced けいき keiki. This is effectively the same way that you say "cake" (ケーキ keeki). Anyway, I was a little curious, and apparently there's a whole list of words prounced "cake" in Japanese:
契機 【けいき】 (n) opportunity, chance, (P)
景気 【けいき】 (n) condition, state, business (condition), (P)
計器 【けいき】 (n) meter, gauge, (P)
刑期 【けいき】 (n) prison term
継起 【けいき】 (n,vs) occurring in succession
軽機 【けいき】 (n) light machine gun
Now I will never know whether or not I want to eat some cake in Japanese again. I'm not going to take the chance that the person's talking about an LMG. Hopefully, I won't find anything dangerous that's pronounced クリームパン kuriimu pan, you know?

Yum.

Rice Cooker, Translated

I don't know why I never did this post before and I feel a little silly just getting around to it now, but I put the diagrams together over the past hour so. I think spent half the time playing around with fonts and stuff, and trying to figure out how to label all the stuff and make everything fit, with the remaining time devoted to looking up kanji and actually positioning the labels.

I finally decided on using two separate pictures, as I can't realistically fit all the labels on one picture unless I overlap with the labels themselves, which would defeat the purpose of the entire thing.

First up is the buttons, since they're the most important. Everything should be pretty self-explanatory.Second are the translations for all the various labels. No, I've never used most of the modes. I just use timer-cook and the start button. It'll start on its own though if you leave it alone for about two minutes after setting a timer.
I've also never made okayu.

Oreo Wafers?

I have a new partner at work now, apparently. I don't really know anything about her except that she speaks Chinese natively, speaks Japanese far better than I do, and has a decent command of English on top of that.

We were sitting around, waiting for the students to take a test and we somehow started talking about cookies I guess. She totally thought Oreos were made by a Chinese company, so I pulled my usual Wikipedia trick and was victorious. (There's not really a trick, it's just that people are really shocked when I have an article about something up within seconds of them mentioning it.)

So she gave me one of the packages (above) of Oreos that she had brought with her since she was on her way to a party. You can see that it is not what you might normally think of as an Oreo.

If you've ever bought those really, really cheap wafer snacks at Safeway that come in a pack of about 30 for $1, you're on the right track. Now take normal Oreo filling, minus 1/3 of the sugar, and coat the whole thing in chocolate. That's the Chinese version of an Oreo cookie.

I don't recall seeing any kanji-ish business on the wrapper, though, which seems weird because I understand that she bought them in China. I'm somewhat worried about whether or not they're a dairy product, but not so much.

Cuy and Culebron

I had one of the guys from my Basic Japanese class come by tonight and we watched parts of a couple of movies. Afterwards, he was telling me about something, and ended up looking guinea pigs on Wikipedia.
Me: "You guys have guinea pigs in Peru?"
Kilk: "Yeah! Haven't you ever had one?"
Me: "Yeah, I sure miss him..."
Kilk: "I know! They're so delicious!"
Me: "... Heh?"

Lo and behold, he wasn't kidding. Apparently, guinea pigs are a common food in Peru. On the news of other pets that you eat, they sometimes mix dog meat in with beef. I was able to verify the guinea-pig-eating with a couple of sources online, and Wikipedia comes through once again, though I didn't find that article until I went to find a site I had found previously. Here's a small quote:

"Peruvians consume an estimated 65 million guinea pigs each year, and the animal is so entrenched in the culture that one famous painting of the Last Supper in the main cathedral in Cusco shows Christ and the twelve disciples dining on guinea pig"

What spawned this sudden interest in Peruvian foods was Kilk explaining to me one of his favorite (I guess?) drinks: culebron. Plus or minus an accent mark on the O to make it sound less French.
Culebron is made by taking a live snake and putting it in a bottle, and getting some kind of alcohol, usually 35-50%, from what I've seen online. You then fill the bottle with alcohol and drown the snake. Then... I guess you drink it? I don't know what you do with the snake.

My Arguably-NSFW Breakfast

This is what I had for breakfast this morning. It had all the qualities as stuff I cook: it's ugly as hell, smells delicious, and the taste was weird at best. At times, it was good, but other parts, I hadn't cooked enough water out of the broccoli, so the egg got wet, which created a bit of a texture issue. Egg to me is a fairly dry food. Not soggy, anyway. Or at least, not a gushing kind of soggy.The ingredients are a yellow pepper I've had in my fridge for a few days, some half-frozen broccoli, about a half pound of chicken, three eggs, soy sauce, ginger sauce, and some pepper.

The title of this post is due to how scary the food looks.

Rice and Water... Disaster?

I went to make another batch of rice last night only to discover a couple of flies flying around in the bag. To me, that says there's probably something in there that I don't really want to know about, much less eat, so I grabbed it by the top, twisted it shut, and tossed it in the trash. Unfortunately, I was not smart enough to get a reserve bag of rice, which I fully intend to do soon. I understand the Japanese disaster recovery system blows, and it sometimes takes a long time to get basic services back. Having enough rice to eat for a week or two set aside seems like a good way to at least combat that somewhat. Rice in an airtight bag should last quite a while, I think.

I have 10 liters of water store in bottles that are completely full and under negative pressure to inhibit bacterial growth. It's not enough (about two and a half gallons), but it's something I only recently started building up with bottles as I use them. It's potable water to last me a few days if I don't wash my dishes and whatnot. I regularly use the same bowl for weeks, so that's not really an issue, though going without showering or clean clothes would kind of suck. I'm slowly adding to it, but I'm going to need to move some of it outside soon so it doesn't take up too much floorspace.

I've heard that you should expect to use five gallons of water per day per person, but that seems awfully high to me. In addition, it's simply unreasonable to expect to be able to store that much water. For reference, the big jugs on water coolers are usually five-gallon (19 liters) containers. Imagine having seven of those in your living room and you can see why I think that's a little unreasonable.

Tokyo: Ramen Museum (Day 1)

I don't know how many of you know this, but I'm kind of a fan of instant ramen. When I was about 15 years old*, I heard about a mystical place filled with ramen, ramen history, and ramen-related stuff. Now, if you can think of a more delicious place, I welcome you to try - a cheesecake or licorice factory might give it a run for its money - but it's a great combination of educational and culinary goodness.

*I previously said that I'd been wanting to go for ten years, but when I went to write this post I thought about it a little more and I think it's closer to six or seven. Please excuse my zeal.

For a slightly heartier description, you might check out Wikipedia's article or this random website. If you can read Japanese, you might try the official website.

I'm not certain why I took these pictures, but if it helps, here's an image of the last intersection on the way to the museum form Shin-Yokohama station. It's at the far right of this picture, and the road that goes off in that direction runs North-South.

Finding it is pretty easy, as you can follow a path marked by convenience stores at each corner, which makes it really easy to follow a map to it. I mean, I found the place on my own - without getting lost one or more times - so I'm pretty certain anybody can. At right, you can see what the entrance looks like, and you can also see that they, for some reason entirely beyond me, spell ramen with a U. The "Shin-Yokohama Raumen Museum".
No idea.

Inside, they have a gift shop, a timeline, a little fake ramen shop, drawers, examples of various kinds of ramen, and... the basement.

The gift shop takes up about half of the ground floor. It's got some neat stuff, and quite a variety, from musical instruments to cell phone charms to high-quality (presumably?) ramen and ingredients. It's pretty decent as gift shops go. With stuff that's not too painfully priced, you could say it's a bit of a rarity here.

The timeline was pretty cool, but since it was all in Japanese and I'm really not that much of a history person, I kind of stared at it for a while and tried to make noises that sounded like I was getting something from it. The basic gist of it was that the whole thing started around the middle of the 1800s and there are still innovations taking place in contemporary times. It seemed well-done, and someone with better reading skills than me would've probably liked it.

The fake ramen shop was pretty neat. It's a red-themed replica of a ramen shop - a bar, basically - but you can go on the other side of the counter and play around with some of the utensils and stuff. In addition, there was information on kinds of noodles and ingredients and their history here. I'm not sure why, but I never took a picture of the whole area, and only got a bunch of the details, like this one at left: examples of varous kinds of noodles.
In addition to this display, there was a display in another area that had various kinds of instant ramen from the past hundred years or so. You will see an Arnold Shwarzeneger one among some of the more strange ones - it's in the lower-right.

The drawers area was kind of like a morgue for ramen shops. It had memorabilia from probably two hundred ramen shops from around the country. They were numbered, though I'm not sure why. I opened up drawers three and four and took the picture at right.
"Ooo, bowls and a T-shirt", right?
This picture is a good example of when one might use a polarizer. I think I might have, actually. The flourescent lights tend to put quite a lot of glare on shiny stuff, and the glass covers for the drawers hardly show up in this picture.

Then there's the basement.

The basement is a two-level replica of some city 1940s Japan. It looks kind of like someone was filming a Western movie, and then accidentally imported a bunch of stuff from the 1940s and just kind of... blended them. I'm not saying it's not fairly authentic, merely that it was kind of weird.

I refuse to categorically go through what was in the basement on the basis that I don't want to spend the next week writing this one post, but some of the highlights follow.

I tried mizu-ame ("water sugar-candy" is about the best I can do with this one), which is basically runny, flavorless taffy. I guess this was Japanese kids' first experience with pure sugar, because it is just like eating caro syrup. Yum.

I had a bowl of ramen. At $10, I had pretty high expectations, but I was stupid and got a spicy ramen, and the Japanese don't really know how to make spicy food that has flavor without involving curry. Or something. Anyway, it was fairly average ramen, especially compared to the place I had gone to the previous night with Shimpei.
It was prettier when they sent it out to me, but I didn't think to take a picture until I had poked at it a little.

Lastly, I got some ice cream and headed back out. The ice cream was pretty decent and was really good after eating a hot bowl of spicy ramen. Cooler was the little stand they brought it out on. In? I don't know.

On the way out, I asked a random Japanese girl to go pose for me, and after a minute or two of giggling, she did. This picture really doesn't do her justice, but I'm not sure who would look good in that frame.

Tokyo: Japanese Toilets (Day 1)

There are a couple of weird things about Japanese toilets. I don't mean the ones that are not a toilet as much as a hole in the ground coated with porcelain - those are definitely weird - but there are some features Japanese toilets have that seem to be pretty normal that I've never seen in the States.
The first is that it's pretty common to see toilets in private homes with heated seats. I haven't been to a lot of people's houses - nearly everybody I know lives in student apartments - I'll admit, but the few I've been in have had heated toilet seats. I've only tried it once, but I forgot I had turned it on and was a little confused until I remembered. I'm sure it would be nice on a cold night, but it felt uncannily - pardon the pun - like going right after someone else.
If you look at the picture at right, you can see the control knob and power cord running off from the seat itself to the wall socket.

You can also pretty clearly see what appears to be a faucet on the top of the toilet. This is, in fact, a faucet. Someone decided that, if you have to fill the tank, and the water in the tank is just going to be used to flush various human wastes, it probably doesn't need to be clean. Right?
So why not first use the water to let someone wash their hands?

In case anybody cares, that there is a high dynamic range picture composited from two shots. Given that it was handheld, I'm surprised it worked, but there you have it.

Rice and Cookers

Most of the time I've been here, I've made it my policy to always have at least a bowlful of warm rice ready. In theory, it's a great policy, but when combined with my air conditioner and electronics, it's too much power. Last month I went over my pre-allotted allowance by $10, so I'm going to try and cut back a little this month. I don't want to cut back a lot, since I'm paying for the rest of it anyway, but a little would be good.

Anyway, I still like to have some rice ready, but I don't leave the rice-cooker on it's "Preserve Warm" setting 24/7 anymore. In spite of that, the rice I made early yesterday morning (about 30 hours ago) still has some last vestiges of warmth in it.

So if you're wondering why Japanese rice cookers are so expensive...

管理人 Departure

The manager of my apartment has had back pains for a while, and since it's interfering with his ability to do the job, he's going to quit. Apparently, the manager of the sister building will go back and forth between the two starting next month. It's too bad, really, 'cause the manager is probably the Japanese person I know the best. He says he wants to use the massive amount of free time he'll have to "play".
He was born sometime around 1941, which puts him at nearly 70 years of age.
Did I mention that, for the most part, hiking is an old person's activity in Japan? Hiking gear here is painfully expensive as a result, since most of the people who hike are retired, and retired people... have too much money?

He makes some kind of bittersweet juice at home and keeps a bottlen hand here, and occasionally shares some with me. It's pretty good, and we had a "Splitting of ways toast" today, and I brought some mochi.
Mochi are those candies I always try to get people to eat that feels kind of like "some kind of... fetus... covered in cornstarch". It's actually made of rice that is percussively gelatinized, then filled with something, such as bean paste or fruit-flavored goo.

On a Roll?

For most of this quarter, a girl has been bringing Hamid free stuff from the panya (kind of a pastry shop) where she works. He's leaving, so there's nothing to do with the tasties now... or so she thought!
I must be having good luck today with getting free food, 'cause "Hamid's cute panya girl" (what I've been calling her all semester) came down and was there by chance when Bryden knocked on my door (wearing only his underwear, strangely enough) to see if I was going to come over and watch Superbad.
Well, I couldn't remember her name, but she recognized me instantly - this is fairly common, so I wasn't surprised - and I had to ask her name, which was Chikari. Anyway, I then found out she was the pan-ninja, and said that she could drop off bread to me if she wanted to, which seemed to make her excited.

Long story short: free pastries hand-delivered by a cute girl, almost every day, starting next month when her job's summer break ends.

Did you catch the pun in the title?

おふろ！ごちそう！

I tried a Japanese public bath for the first time today. Actually, it was my first time in any kind of public bath, but it was one here in town. It was decent, but I can only wash myself so much before I'm clean. That said, it was not what I was expecting.
To start, you take off all your clothes, then go sit on a stool that's about as tall as your ankles. You then wash yourself completely, with soap, from head to toe. It is critical that you get all the soap off of you. If you don't, the pools become sudsy pretty quick and people get upset. Or so I have been told.
This is standard public bathing stuff in Japan, but the details of the next part may vary.
Anyway, you then proceed to either of five different baths, of varying temperatures, in whatever order you feel like. There was one that was at about 55 degrees F (as far as I can guess, anyway) and I felt dizzy sitting in that after only a few minutes. There were a couple of lukewarm baths, a hot bath with a special thing*, and one I didn't try. There was also a sauna.

In case you don't do American English, or at least, Will English, a sauna is a room you go into that has a heater in one corner and is very, very hot. I don't know how hot, but it's hot enough that if I didn't blink a lot, I would burn my eyelids with how hot the water layer on my eyes became. Usually, a sauna has a thing of water that you can dump on some hot rocks that are on or in the heater, and that allows you to control the humidity of the whole thing, but this one was all electronic, which takes all the fun out of it.

The hottest tub was slightly warmer than your average hotel hot tub, but a hell of a lot cleaner. The lukewarm tubs were actually pretty toasty; well into the 90s I'd guess. As you still couldn't sit in them for too long.
By the way, the Japanese think Western bath tubs are weak, in general.

*The "special thing" was two conductive plates mounted in the water about three feet apart with a sitting area in between. I have no idea what they were for, but I saw a guy sitting there for quite a while. Hamid tricked me into putting my hand between them because I thought they were little jets. It was... shocking.

---

So afterward, we went to a ramen shop that Hamid said was pretty grungy. I don't really understand why he wanted to go back if he didn't like it, but we went there anyway. We went upstairs and he ordered fried rice and I ordered gyouza, having eaten some rice just prior to the ofuro (bath... kind of). I finished off my gyouza, feeling fairly full, and waited for Hamid to finish his fried rice.
About the time he was halfway done, I asked a person nearby what one of the things he was eating was called. He named it - though I can't remember now, it had shrimp and an in it - and proceeded to hand the plate over to me and refused to take it back despite Hamid's best attempts. I refused, but I wanted to try it, so I didn't refuse quite as strongly.

He then ordered Hamid a big (about a liter!) beer, and ordered two more orders of gyouza and some fried chicken. I was already pretty full, but managed to finish one of the orders of gyouza and the entire order or fried chicken. I gave up on the second order, though and had to give it back to the man. All in all, it was about $20 worth of food and drink on his tab. Never got his name, either.

I am so full right now.

I don't know how people can lose weight here...

Rice

I discovered last night that I eat rather more rice than the other people here.
My first week here, I bought a 10kg bag of rice, which lasted me the first two months.  I then bought a 5kg bag which, predictably, lasted me about a month. I'm now nearly done with a second 10kg bag of rice.  Fortunately, Bethany didn't manage to go through half of her 5kg bag she bought, and I have that as well.
Once I finish this bag, I will have cooked 55 pounds of dry rice in my rice cooker.

Hamid's Last Katsuragawa Party

We had another party up on Katsuragawa tonight, and we actually planned to have a fire from the beginner and were much more prepared. Bryden and I go there about 45 minutes before everybody else, so we explored a little and gathered up some firewood.
Once Hamid and everybody else got there, it got a lot more fun and we put some food on the fire to cook. We cooked up some sausages, but didn't have anything to put them on to put them in the fire, so I sharpened a piece of bamboo a little bit and used that.
Here's mostly everybody sitting around the fire at right. starting with the two people who are standing and working counterclockwise, we have Bryden, Soujong (crouching in green shirt), Robert, some guy, Hamid, Alessandra, Melinda, Martin (blue shirt), Rafael, and Aaron Poulliot.

I didn't start taking pictures until pretty late, but here you can see Sara trying to not get in the frame while I'm taking this picture and catching the flash at half power in the face from four feet away. Teach her to try and give me chocolate!
Tasty chocolate, by the way.

Apparently, Valeria will be singing in a band when she gets back to Italy. The obligatory stardom jokes were swapped, and you've got this, which is a pretty decent picture of the two of them. Actually, with my night vision gone due to looking at the LCD and whatnot, I had no idea they were posing. Last I could tell, they were facing the other direction. I imagine I looked pretty funny when I looked at this picture.

Not too long after this, people starting getting ready to go, and you can see them (very) slowly working their way towards that end here at right.

On the way back, I gave Melinda a ride back on the back of my bike. I didn't know she was there until about when we left, and I don't really have any good pictures of her face. Here's this, though, 'cause it's what I've got. Left <-- If you take a look at the picture at the right, you can see the waviness of a favorite of people's clothing caused by the temperature differentials in the air above the fire. When I first saw this, I was thinking my camera was being weird, but then I realized what it was.

I just spelled realized with two Ls and a W, so I'm going to bed. It's way past my... Zzz...

[Edit: This post is more coherent than I thought it would be, given that I was asleep when I wrote the last three paragraphs.]

Peanut Butter Jelly Time, redux

So I have rice. I have about 5 kilos of rice on my floor by the rice cooker.
However! I have not a single slice of bread. Goes bad too quickly, you know?
But, I have peanut butter. Source of protein!

What happened? Well, as it would turn out, peanut butter works pretty decently as butter.

That is, in fact, peanut butter and jelly rice.

Slow Week, part two

I did some wandering on Sunday and got these two pictures, of which type you'll probably be seeing a lot of in the next few days.

At left is a float under construction. As you can see, they don't so much build the float as much as bondage half a forest. Very Japanese, I think.

At right are some women who, after some tittering and debating among themselves, agreed to pose for me.

Also, I had some sushi, which was pretty normal for the most part. Saw a couple new dishes, such as black sesame pudding and somem kind of coleslaw sushi.

But what really took the cake* was the hamburger sushi. You can see it at right. The sign in the background has the name of the store, then under that, hanbaagu which is "hamburger" in Japanese.

Traffic... Laws? With Bonus Takoyaki

On the way back from the school today, I unintentionally joked a rather true observation: Japan doesn't seem to have traffic laws. It's much more like they have traffic suggestions. I don't know if it's the case in other large cities (Kyoto is 1.4 million. I consider that to be pretty big), but the lights here turn red, and people keep going through. Pedestrians wait at crosswalks about anywhere from 50% to 95% of the time, and this number varies on the width of the street the walk crosses, with streets 20m (60 feet) across usually not crossed unless it's green.
I've seen plenty of instances where motorbikes have been puttering along on the sidewalk or in a bicycle parking lot.
One of the weirdest things is that the areas with big, six-foot-tall signs that say "Don't park your bike here!" - and have large pictures in addition - these are the places where you will find the most bikes parked. They will theoretically impound your bike and charge you a $20-40 fee (varies on location) if you do, but these areas usually have a pile of bikes neatly lined up near them.

I had Sandy pose while parking his bike right behind the sign, as you can see here. I don't know why they even bother with the signs.

I picked up some takoyaki (octopus dumplings) at a place by the school for dinner, as they're cheap and pretty filling.

They don't look real appetizing in the picture, but a 10-minute ride over bumpy road in a sealed container covered in sauce doesn't make much of anything look attractive. But they were pretty tasty and at just the right temperature when I ate them.

One of the hardest parts about eating takoyaki is that they very quickly go from "Ohgodthefireextinguishernow!" hot to "That's some slimy... goober-balls you've got there" cold. There's a shop near the school that probably makes a killing in the winter selling these things for lunch.

Friday evening: "Gaidai Summer Gala"

Light-ish warning: My jury-rigged hard drive is a little too jury-rigged, it would seem, and it's being fritzy. Because of that, I didn't process these pictures at all, and they're the massive, 10.2MP 2.xMB JPGs my camera spits out. In sum: they will probably load slowly. Especially for you, Wash. I''m hoping to take care of this today, but I'm not sure I can fix my drive and write the other two blog posts in addition.
Maybe I'll just put one up as a gallery...
When I went to this, I figured I would take pictures and be bored pretty much the entire time. "So... why'd you go?" you might ask. I mean, you just might.
In large part because it was the largest gathering of study-abroad students in one place, and I didn't want to miss out on cool stuff.

That there was free food and drinks may have been what clinched it for me, but I'll never tell.

Aaron Poulliot (sp?) did some juggling stuff on stage. He dropped stuff a couple of times, but I thought he was really good. The fact that handled the drops so well only made it better, I think.

You can see him at left, dancing with his juggling clubs, or at right with his recipe for disaster that he likes to call "eggs". I understand he almost threw one into a speaker, but I didn't see it first-hand.


The school had at least two photographers there (not counting me, 'cause I don't get the cool armband), plus a three-person camera crew (at right). And I think every Japanese person has at least one camera. And there about 250 people. So there are plenty of pictures of this event.

From a photographic standpoint, I don't think I had a lot of options, so I used the very high-level, pros-only (sarcasm!) "Nuke 'em till they glow" flash method and turned my flash up to full power for every shot. Went from 80% charge to 30% charge in about 70 pictures, so you can see the drain of the flash on the battery, which can give me 400 pictures on the same amount if I don't use a flash. I had a spare with me, of course.

Here are two of the school's photographers. I call the girl on the left "Canon chick" because, well, she uses a Canon (whose model I can't recall right now) and she's kinda cute.
The guy at right is... I forgot his name, he's the guy that helped me check over my Japanese camera terminology stuff. We took pictures of each other whenever we saw each other, working especially to catch the other by surprise. He's an Olympus shooter, probably a 410, but I didn't get a close look.

This is Asano (at left), one of people who works in the international exchange office, which is what keeps us alive and out of jail here in Japan. They help us with banking, paying bills, laws, and all sorts of things. Her English is pretty good.

At right is Kumada (in the purple), who deals mostly with people who are not yet in country, but she also helps us a lot. She also works in the international office. The thing that surprises me the most is that she's able to pull off so many different fashions, and do a pretty good job of 'em.

About halfway through the gala, I ran into a student from the dual-language class I TA (?) in. I wish my Japanese was as good as her English, but it's nowhere near. Her friend took a picture of us, and here it is. My camera seems to do strange exposures whenever other people take pictures with it, but I don't know why.
I just press the shutter button; they just press the shutter button. Where's the difference?

After they kicked everybody outside, I met up with Bryen, who wanted an action shot. He was trying to flirt with this girl, but she was completely and skillfully cold-shouldering him. "Well played!" is what I kept thinking. We had her take a picture of us in "action poses", and you're all probably familiar with my silly basic stance, but here's another picture, just in case you aren't.

Don't worry, I'm almost out of decent, relevant pictures. I'll finish up in just a couple more paragraphs. Hopefully.

Ran into Chise, my student assistant a couple of times. She is looking good, as she is wont to do.
I'm trying to get her to introduce me to her boyfriend, 'cause he's a gamer , but he's apparently hard to pull away from his many hobbies. Or something.

I met a British guy who will be here for another two weeks, and some of his friends. He was pretty cool and we got along very well. We talked largely about accents and comedy; in particular, Dane Cook and Eddie Izzard. He snuck off at some point and I haven't seen him since.

This is Catherine, one of the Swiss girls I mentioned a few posts back. She's in kyuudo, which kind of like archery, but only in that involves both a bow and an arrow. The similarities end there, and I'm not really joking. She works in IT back in her home country and is 24.

Here's a portraiture tip: apparent nose length/size in a picture has very little to do with actual length or size. The key that makes or breaks (ouch.) noses in pictures is whether or not they break the line made by the cheek behind them. You can see her nose is inside her cheek-line (above-right picture), as opposed to breaking it at left.

Surprising difference, isn't it?

Her nose is just fine, by the way.


Well, that wraps up the gala. I think I may have spent more time writing this post than I did actual time there, though.

Gala

There's a gala tonight at the school that I intend to go to. It's semi-formal, even, and in spite of that, I'm going of my own free will. And not just to mack on the women.
...
I'll admit that the free food was a pretty convincing argument.

"Birthday Box"

Just got another box o' candy from thots about stuff. I was pretty surprised when I went to pick it up, 'cause I didn't think it would weigh ten pounds. Here's why it weighs ten pounds.Or at least, there's most of it. I had already stowed the spices and one more thing of chocolates by the time I realized I should take a picture.

[Edit: I'd like to point out that I picked this up from the post office well after 10PM. The post office here is 24-hour for sending and receiving packages. You can also pay your national healthcare and various other bills there, but that sort of thing is only open until 4 or 5PM. I picked this up on the way back to the apartment]

Ramen Shop and Train

Went and took some pictures tonight. Had my 18-55mm on first, then went to my 50mm 'cause it just doesn't get any use here.

Despite the title of this post, the train crossing is up first, 'cause that's what I was taking pictures of first. All of these were taken with my 18-55mm.

You can see in the warmer picture that I tried to get a picture of myself. Then I realized that my remote only has a working range of about ten feet in this kind of weather. If I had held completely still for long enough, I could've just exposed myself into the picture anyway, but I didn't think of that at the time. I was counting on the flash to go off while I was standing there, and the flash set to rear sync goes off at the end of the shutter. To trigger the shutter to close again, I had to move from where I was to closer to the camera.
Weird problem, but hey, lesson learned.

Here's a ramen shop near my apartment building. The ramen isn't that great, but their gyouza is pretty passable and they have a spicy sauce that I haven't seen or tasted anywhere else that's pretty good. Some kind of chili... goo.
I got some more today since the owner put up with me. He thought there was lightning, 'cause I was using my flash as a way of knowing when the camera was opening and closing it's shutter.
The one I'm posing in at right was taken with my 50mm, while the one at left was taken with my 18-55mm at... 35mm.

Honestly, these were taken mostly just because I wanted to take a picture of something else on this walk.

Surprisingly Cheap

I went down to the bike shop at the mall to see how much it would cost to have the brakes fixed. The conversation went something like this:
"Excuse me."
"Yes?"
"My rear brake is always about halfway brake... ing..."
"Hm." The bike shop guy pokes at the break, walks inside, grabs a small wrench and screwdriver, makes a couple of adjustments. "Yosh." He proceeds to spin the wheel to demonstrate that it's fixed.
"How much to fix that?"
"No, it's fine."
"Really?"
"Yeah, thanks for coming."
"Thank you very much."

Then I went and bought a donut.

PB&J tip

Spread peanut butter with a knife, even if you can shave with that same knife. It works so much better than a spoon.

Peanut Butter Jelly Time

I just ate a peanut butter and jelly sandwich. The peanut butter is kind of dysfunctional and the bread is too thick and bleached way too hard, but it was decent. A little bit uncanny valley, but in terms of sandwiches.

In other news, my green pants gained a battle scar today. Calligraphy day I, for some reason, wore my only light-colored shirt and my green pants of "How old are those?" that Jes has patched up in at least two different places - which I greatly appreciaite!

I'll see about getting a picture up before I try and get the ink out of them. I'm... not optimistic, but I'll still wear them anyway. The fact that Jes has worked on them makes them very special to me somehow.

Lesson for today: Don't wear your only light-colored clothes on calligraphy day.

Not Completely Useless

I did do something productive today. A couple of things, actually. I took out the trash, for example, which has needed doing for a while now. Last week was busy, so my basic cleaning got neglected. Despite that, two different people came to my room the first time and commented that it was so clean. I'm thinking Can this really be my room?

Anyway, I also wouldn't want you to think the only random ads we get are porn ads and other unsavory things. While there's nothing savory about this picture, I feel somewhat redeemed by it.

It's a pizza menu that I got in the mail today, and nowhere on it is pepperoni pizza. And you're not reading that wrong; the average price for a large pizza is $31.

To, uh, top it off*, I thought I would show a sample of the stuff I drink. That's four flavors of Kagome, two cartons of orange juice, and a carton of milk. I ended dumping the milk 'cause it was only half gone in almost two weeks, which is roughly how long it took me to consume the rest of these cartons. That means I'm averaging roughly half a liter of Kagome-ish-ness each day. That's pretty much my entire vegetable intake, so I'm a little worried, but the Japanese seem to do fine like that, so presumably there's something going on I don't know about.
[*I feel safe making this one, knowing that KMD is on a different continent and doesn't have ICBMs... yet. That I know of.]

Things don't last long in hot, very humid weather, by the way, which is why the milk got tossed. Also, it says "delicious milk" on the front, which I just couldn't get over. It's very creamy.

In case any of you are wondering about my diet, I usually eat rice for two meals of the day and eat out for the other one. I vary where I eat, sometimes eating 牛丼 (rice with beef on top), sometimes eating お好み焼き (vaguely like a pancake. Very, very vaguely), and with some random うどん (big, thick noodles in sauce) thrown in every three-ish days usually with some tempura squid for protein. I also occasionally eat たこ焼き, which are fried balls of dough with a piece of octopus in each one. Today was 回転寿司 ("conveyor-belt sushi") where I had raw squid, shrimp, some kind of seaweed, a cream cheese (!) sushi roll, and... stayed far away from the inari-zushi, 'cause I don't do pickled stuff unless it's ginger.

Dinner was $8.40 and I had a crepe at lunch that cost $3.50, but was totally worth it: apple slices with ice cream and "rare cheese", which tastes suspiciously like yogurt.
Looked it up on Google and someone says it's uncooked cheesecake filling. Go figure.
It was definitely tasty.

Here's a random rabbit, because the last few blog posts have been rather picture-scarce.
Anybody recognize the style?
Hint: it's by a hugely popular artist who likes Pokemon probably entirely too much.

Oh, and I think I did the dishes this morning.

Chibi Store

I found a cool little kids' store. It has all sorts of little candies that can be bought for about 10¢, and a wide range of candy under a dollar. For about a dollar, they'll do all kinds of tempura, as well, from what I can tell.
It's not so much a shop as much as a shack that's been hot-glued on his back door, so it's not really a classy place, but it's one of those things that really doesn't have upkeep, and it probably makes kids really happy.
Yum, cavities!

Harvesting All You Can Eat Strawberries

So I went to a strawberry farm during the trip, and I finally got around to putting my two chibi-pano shots together. I like the composite at right, personally, and think it works fairly well.
Anyway, when we went to the strawberry farm, they gave of us these little paper cups that we could put strawberries in. They were your standard paper cups capable of holding about 5 ounces of water, so they filled up pretty quick given the place.
As it so happens, I had a bandanna in my pants pocket. As it so happens, two knots transformed it into a bag.
As it so happens, I was standing in about an acre of densely-packed, ripe, delicious strawberries. Some were so moist and delicious that they exploded when I tried to pull them off the... vine? Anyway, I ate a bunch of strawberries, and brought out this bag.

As I we were driving away, I found out that that we weren't allowed to bring any strawberries out of the greenhouse. They enforced this to the extent that someone tried to walk out with three or four and they wouldn't let her go until she ate them.

The bag weighed three to four pounds, just so you know. Also, as far as I know, there were no signs indicating that you were not to harvest the delicious fruits contained in this greenhouse for purposes other than immediate consumption.

To make me feel better, me and some friends finished them off the next day.

Surprisingly enough, as far as I know, nobody in our whole group got sick.

This Isn't Twitter, But...

I just had menchi curry for lunch. Menchi would appear to be whatever random animals were lying around and they get tossed into a grinder, then deep-fried and turned into something like a croquet. It was less disturbing in taste than it sounds at first.
To contrast that, this quote:
"My favorite animal is steak." Fran Lebowitz

Sempai-Kouhai. Also, Curry.

[Edit: "Sempai-Kouhai" refers to the relationship between people of different rank. People who have been in a club/company longer or who are in a higher grade in school/program are your sempai and you are their kouhai. It is your duty to take care of minutae for them, and their duty to take care of things you can't handle. Also, they will generally pay for meals if they are the ones to suggest eating.]
The title's a bit off, but I had my first experience with the whole older-people-paying thing today. After leaving work, I went to a curry place a teacher mentioned. This was my first time going there, and I accidentally ordered curry that was exactly as spicy as I was hoping for: challenging, but not inedible.
As I was leaving this place, I happened to have the fortuitous timing to run into another one of my teachers. As it turns out, he had just gotten paid, so was carrying a decent wad of cash. He demonstrated this a couple of different times and I saw at least a couple man notes (~$100).
Man rhymes with "gone", for those that care.
Anyway, we went to this Italian place and said he was paying and I should pick out some ice cream, some food, and, please, only one or two drinks. I ended up getting a milkshake and some kind of yogurt-based drink, but I recommended he try a panini, which he did. Once he finished his triple-scoop ice cream with whipped cream on top. And then had some kind of alcohol whose name I couldn't pronounce.
I discovered that he used to be a video game otaku, but couldn't find anybody else who was, and isn't now, but plays go at a high level, apparently. He's going to Tokyo tomorrow for a tournament of some kind, if I understand properly.
Anyway, that was my first experience with that, though I don't remember all of the formal stuff for it, so I can only hope I didn't offend him.
Oh, and the curry was... I want to say it was delicious, but it was curry. It's kind of like a hamburger: it's pretty hard to make bad curry, but it's difficult to make it amazing, too.

DDR!

I had some people over for DDR last night, which was pretty fun. I think Hamid (the shorter guy - he's an Afghani, I think) is the only one has played before, but he mostly tries to button mash. He brought over some Vodka and Anna (the American girl in front) brought some sort of rum and they had a few drinks.
Anyway, that was fun, but they wanted to do karaoke, so we were going to go hit a karaoke bar, but the prices were lame given our timing, so I mentioned that I knew a nearby okonomiyaki place.
We all went there, had some okonomiyaki, talked for an hour or so.

I think a bunch (~40?) of the study abroad students are going to go bowling later today. I don't really know how to get involved with that, but I'm going to try.

Oh, I picked these up. They're pizza-flavored Munchies. But with popcorn instead of... pretzels? I guess.

I'm going to be a little late for judo, but I wanted to get this up (...she said).

An Attempted Hiking

I tried to go hiking today, but I couldn't find the place. I did manage to get lost in some kind of massive park. And then there was a tourist trap. And a shrine. Or a temple. I can't ever keep the two straight, but I understand it's difficult for Japanese people, so I don't feel too bad about it.

While I was wandering around in the temple-thing, I saw a woman walking with her son (who was pretending to be a ninja) and a man walking with his wife. At first, I thought Wow, he's pretty old for her. I mean, she looks like she couldn't be any older than 25. Then they started talking to each other. Now, that might not seem that strange, but Japanese people, I've noticed, don't just talk to people they don't know while they're wandering around. At that point, I realized that the man's "wife" was his daughter, who was probably about 14, and the woman with the boy was his wife. Which makes much more sense. The guy's hair was greying, but as you can tell, I have no ability to judge the ages of Japanese people.
"She's... between 14 and 25. Probably."

I asked the guy about the metal plates in the ground and he said they mark property lines, or at least agreed with me when I tried to say that. Mystery solved, I guess. Kind of anti-climatic, no?

Had some strawberry ice cream and a croquet that was delicious. It was a dollar, too. Got lots of neat pictures in the park, but only took a few pictures in town. I have a couple panoramas to assemble, thinking about it.

Oh, and on Friday, I ate lunch with one of my teachers and a teacher I hadn't met before as I'm not in any of her classes. Despite that, I've heard about her a number of times; a bunch of the male students are taking her class because she's the hot, I think. I've heard from at least three different players that she's the hottest thing since soup, or something similar.
In any case, the three of us had lunch together and I failed to comprehend my food. It was one of those pick-up-the-noodles-and-dance dishes that I always worry about.

Odd Omelet

I completely forgot to take a picture of it, but I totally made a chupaqueso-let this morning. I made a chupaqueso shell, then dumped egg on it and wrapped it up. It was decent.

Well, it is Pickled...

I put some ベニショウガ on my rice this morning, and as I was doing that, I thought to myself I better use this stuff up. I'm surprised it hasn't gone bad by now.
...
And then I realized that I was talking about pickled ginger. That had been kept by itself in an airtight container in a fridge. And was opened about a week ago.
Needless to say, I'm not worried about it going bad anytime soon.

Not an Okonomiyaki, but...

This morning, I was about to put some rice on before I got in the shower so I’d have something for breakfast and thought Eh… I’ve eaten rice for breakfast for the past week and a half straight. I’ve got some eggs, I’ll do something with those. and hopped in the shower.

15 minutes later, I’m standing in front of my one-burner range, checking my frying pan (フライパン “frai pan” in Japanese. Creative, aren’t they?) and getting out utensils and stuff.

‘Kay, I gots me a knife, a frying pan, and some turners. Fridge. Let’s see… eggs… Oh, cabbage! Hey, some ベニショーガ (red pickled ginger) and… cheese… eh, whatever.

Having acquired base ingredients, my eyes wander over to the four spices I have available: pepper, peppered seasoning salt, roast garlic chicken seasoning, and pepper.

For those of you that didn’t know, I’m somewhat fond of pepper.

So, mix the base ingredients after chopping them up so they’re decently sized, add about a tablespoon of fine-ground pepper, dump the whole thing into a frying pan with a little oil on that’s been sitting oh-so-patiently.

Wait. Wait some more. I have a lid for this frying pan! Put the lid on, so I feel more cook-riffic.

Wait. Wait. Flip. Wait. Flip. Flip. Hee, this is fun! Oh, right. Cooking. Wait. Wait. Flip. Hee.

I had intended to take a picture of the finished product, but I ate most of it. I took a picture of the remaining eighth, though, and you can see it looks like I deep-fried a pan full of vomit.

Yum.

"Translating Rice"

Today’s project, Translating Rice, (originally titled I Woke up at Six and it’s Saturday)is done after about a half hour over a hot translator… That really doesn’t work with translation like it does with cooking.
Edit: In fact, it sounds like I met a hot bilingual chick… Too bad, though, as I didn’t.

Anyway, here’s a shot of the troubleshooting guide on the rice bag with my translation notes.

There were a couple things I wasn’t able to translate (and I just asked a Japanese guy and he had no clue), as I’ve only got my electronic dictionaries (mine are from 2000-2002), my laptop (running the full EDICT2, but without all the input options of JDIC), and my DS (for kanji).

That really is quite an arsenal, but they mostly cover the same things, just with different levels of portability. My e-dictionaries are very pocketable, as is my DS, but they have small dictionary sizes as they’re pretty old. In the DS’s case, the dictionary size is limited by the amount of data they can stuff on a cartridge. I usually can find a translation eventually, but with short words in hiragana, it’s sometimes difficult. It’s kind of like having a two-letter acronym.

	Sticky	[シンのあるご飯]	Stiff or dry	No shine	Irregular
Wash rice	Using too much power when washing rice (You crush the rice)		Not enough washing (Still has husk and flour powder)	Not enough washing (Water is not clear)
Adjust water	Too much water		Too little water	Too little water	Do not level before boiling (Rough and sinks)
Soak in water	?	Pre-boil heat too high (Should be less than 45C/113F)
Adjust heat				Heat is strong (Lower boiling heat)	Heat is strong (Lower boiling heat)
Let stand	Sitting temperature too low	Did not sit long enough (Let sit for 10-15 minutes)
Stir	Not enough stirring (Let steam escape)	Call a priest		Not enough stirring (Expose to air)	Not enough stirring (Mix the whole thing)
Retain heat	Container's temperature is too low		Stored too long (Up to 12 hours) Need at least 4 cups	Stored too long (Up to 12 hours)

As the one cell that’s religious, well, that’s what you get if you put in ぼくし(priest) instead of ほぐし(stir). My rice has turned out like this on a couple of occasions. One time, someone snuck some kind of mushrooms into it. Bleh.

In other news, I found this word while trying to find a definition for シンのあるご飯 that I expect some people will appreciate.

同語反復 【どうごはんぷく】 (n) tautology

You know who you are.

Bookstore?

There’s a bookstore down the street from me. Or at least, I thought there was. Except that when I was going in, I noticed that there was a sign saying something about “18 years old” (「18歳」) and I started to be a little suspicious. To go in, you have to go through this little two-turn maze that is kind of like the little half-wall in many public bathrooms.

Once you go past that, there are three vending machines, one with magazines, one with magazines and DVD, and one with DVDs and, I think, panties. I’ve heard stories of the panty vending machines, and I’d been hoping to see one while I was here, just for the… actually, I don’t know why. But it was on my list of things I hoped to accomplish, so there you are.

I didn’t take a picture because it was surrounded by softcore porn titles and I’m trying to keep this at least mostly not-NSFW.

As it turns out, there is no actual bookstore. It’s just the vending machines and a locked door. And some sex toy advertisements. The prices were pretty bad, as you might imagine, ranging from $10 to $50 for a DVD.

Anyway, the better part of this story is that I found an okonomiyaki place about a three-minute walk away from my apartment. It’s sort of like a pub, so it’s only open later in the day, but they have reasonably-sized okonomiyaki. It’s not nearly as big as Mr. Young Mens, but it’s also not a train ride away.

Two pictures, both from my phone, and you can really see the limitations of the camera as it jacks up the sensitivity to counter its pathetically small aperture. The increased in sensitivity is where the noise and random discoloration comes from. Also splotchiness.

Cream Bread

So I think I've mentioned that I like melon bread. Probably.
The first one I tried wasn't actually plain メロンパン, but was a custard-filled variety with the same basic shape. As you should know by now, I have a weakness for pastries, doubly so for those filled with tasty, custardy goodness. The last few posts (feet excluded) have been pretty bare of pictures, so here are some pictures of my クリームパン("cream bread"). The outer wrapper's big words transliterate to "Kobe Custard Melon", written in roman letters below it.
Big surprise, yes?
Now then. From the thumbnail, you can't really tell that the whole thing is covered with a coating of large-grain sugar, but it is. And it's delicious, as things covered with a thin coat of sugar often are. And last we have the filling. It's rather more concentrated in this クリームパンthan usual, and you should have no problems seeing it even in this thumbnail at right as a lump of gooey goodness.
Needless to say, they are delicious. Oh, and they cost ￥105, which comes out to just about a dollar.

My Trick

In case anybody hasn't picked up on it, I'm writing the posts at home in Word, then coming to somewhere with a 'Net connection and posting them with the time I wrote them. Posting only takes a couple of minutes, while a good-sized blog post takes from a half hour to three hours to actually compose. For this post, I'm in a ramen shop, having ピリカラぎょうざ(~"spicy meat dumplings") and some plain white rice.

In a way, I'm paying for a 'Net connection. And food. That helps to take some of the ouch out of the $5 lunch I just ate.

Chikaku Ramenya?

Judo club is in about an hour, so it's once again time for ramen.
Yum.

Bento-ish

So I went out wandering today. I had meant to go to judo club, but I got the starting and ending times mixed up, and got there as they were finishing, which was disappointing, as you might imagine.

There’s another practice on Monday, so it’s not a big deal, but I still feel stupid for mixing them up.

Oh, and I bought a lunchbox, a thermos, and a pair of collapsible chopsticks. The pile cost me $30, but will allow me to pack food from home, which should save me money in the long run.

Exam day

I don't feel like I did too horribly, but I don't think I could answer but about half the questions. My kanji weakness was mostly at fault here, and I found very few vocabulary that I couldn't understand.
Ramen shop for the win.

Egg'd

I made breakfast this morning and was waiting for it to cool to an edible temperature when I noticed I had left my camera out from trying to get pictures earlier. So here’s what I eat in the morning.

I’m thinking I’ll do eggs or something to go with the rice every other day or so, and just do plain rice on the off days. Keep in mind that when I eat rice on its own, I add soy sauce and green onions, so it’s not just sad, lonely rice. The eggs pictured have a little pepper in them, but this was a very low-sodium breakfast, and the taste certainly attested to it. I figured I’d give un-soy’d and unsalted food a shot.

I have my placement test today. I don’t think I’m going to do well. Ms. Aika KUMADA warned us that some people wouldn’t be able to answer a single question, and I there’s either a one- or two-year (I don’t recall which) language prerequisite for this program.

Also, I was going to buy a bike yesterday for ￥16,800, but Bethany told me about a bike shop by the school that I had forgotten about. I didn’t know they had bikes there available for as little as ￥5,000, so I’m going to hit that place up on the way. I may still buy a bike from the place in the mall for more, but that’s $110 difference. I’m wary, though, ‘cause the last bike I bought for cheap had pieces falling off within two months. I’m sure some of remember my green bike of no pedals, a non-working rear brake, and soforth.

It will be helpful for this next section if you know that converting JPY yen to USD dollars is approximately done by covering the last two zeroes and ignoring commas. Thus ￥1,000 becomes $10. Easy.

Bikes here have more gadgets than American bikes. They also all look like they’re from the 1950’s or something. Very, very few bikes don’t have a basket, mud guards, a headlight, a platform over the rear wheel, and a built in lock under the seat that locks said wheel. The bike I was looking at has a light that’s powered by a magnet and uses an LED instead of an incandescent bulb. From what I’m told, the little cog that powers the light on most bikes rubs the tire down pretty quickly. It also uses a drum brake on the rear wheel instead of V brakes (the ones that crimp down on both sides) on both, though it still uses those on the front tire, along with a spring that prevents you from applying too much braking to the front tire. I think it’s called the “Shimano power modulator”. I haven’t seen diagrams, but I suspect it’s basically a spring in a can the size of パリパリチーズ (if you don’t know, don’t ask: it’s weird).

This brings me to my next topic: helpfulness of Japanese employees. I was talking this old man that works in the bike shop by the mall and, in addition to answering questions (my questions, by the way, are phrased in very broken Japanese, which means it gets complemented by about three people a day) for more than fifteen minutes, actually recommended that I go to the other bike shop because they have more bikes.

Bizarrely enough, they wanted my address to buy a bike. I was hoping it would go like this:

Will:このみどりの自転車をお願いします。
(I’d like this green bike.)

Clerk: はい。十六千八百円です。。。はい、二万円をいたいています。四十千円をおかりします。
(Yes, that is $160. I’m receiving $200. Your change is $40.)

Will [to the old man]: いろいろなことにどうもありがとうございました。
(Thank you very much for your help.)

Will: [exit stage, front door, with bike]

But this is Japan, so there’s paperwork to fill out. Doubtless they want to know how many people I’ve killed in the last month, whether or not I’ve been abusing drugs too frequently, whether I’ve had a measles shot in the past ten years, and what my first girlfriend’s cat’s favorite food was, along with a second set of paperwork to file if you’ve never had a girlfriend, and further paperwork if your non-girlfriend didn’t have a cat, or if he didn’t like to eat anything at all.

I hate paperwork.

Anyway, I really should be studying for the placement test. Not practicing kanji for the past four months is going to have hurt me quite a bit, I suspect.

Included is Bethany posing while making yakisoba and the girls camping the kitchen while making said yakisoba.

メロンパン

I think I have a melon bread addiction.