Thousand layers of awesome

When I first came over to Japan, I vowed that I was going to have a kick ass christmas, since I wasn't planning on going home (too expensive). Sadly, through a series of unfortunate events, my Christmas plans have pretty much changed into staying in Okayama in order to avoid having to spend Christmas (and New Years) alone. Cause let's face it, that would suck. A lot.

So, because many people who aren't me are heading off or heading home for the holidays, we decided to throw an early christmas party and have a kind of white elephant esque gift exchange. We also decided we were going to make dessert after having dinner somewhere in the city. Our dessert of the evening was crepes, but, not just any old crepe. We were planning on doing a mille crepe.

It's actually kind of funny how I initially was like OMG LET'S DO A MILLE CREPE. It started when my sister introduced me to this anime about kids who wanted to become patisseres or however you spell it. They wanted to be bakers of sweets. Granted, these are middle schooler's we're talking about, but the show, called Yumeiro Patissere, is super super cute. And the food looks really good. You know me. I can't pass up a good anime about food. :)

But one of the first things the main character (Ichigo) has to make (which she has no idea how to do) is a crepe - the mille crepe, to be specific. I saw it and went "OH HELL YES." :D I haven't been able to stop watching it now hahaha.

Now I really want to make another one. But I want to do it in a slightly... less OMG WHIPPED CREAM EVERYWHERE kind of way. I was looking at pictures of them online, and they actually don't put any fruit in between the layers (of which there are about twenty). That explains why it looked so much nicer...

They also use much thinner layers of whipped cream. Like really spartan kind of, just enough to coat it. I think we used a little bit too much this time around, but hey, it was our first time and we were just having fun with it. :) I got really good at making nice round crepes too lol.

But yeah! Imagine the things you could do with it. I want to try doing chocolate crepes! I imagine you just have to add chocolate to the batter and mix well? I'm hoping that's the case. Either way, I'm super excited!

I swear though, crepes are like, the new tortilla because they're way easy to make and I don't have to go all the way in to the import store to buy tortillas, they're less messy, and they're cheaper. Crepes it is! I have this sinking feeling that they're not really healthy though... lol.

I was reading somewhere online that some people put ratatouille in the savory crepes; it sounds intriguing and I want to try it sometime. I predict that this year will be the year of the crepe experimentation!

It's funny, because as a kid, I always wanted to eat crepes when we went out, but they were these like, forbidden restaurant foods because they weren't really like a real meal, they were more like a snack sometimes or dessert, and they were usually pretty expensive because they seemed all fancy like.

Now, my crepes aren't near as perfect as the kind they make at the stands, but they are quite delicious and I don't need to shell out 500 yen for one. Hell, I can shell out 500 yen and get like... 8 of them lol. And damn do they make good substitutes for cheese quesadillas. I'm actually kind of liking Japanese cheese now, because it tastes fantastic on these crepes.

I need more suggestions of what to put in it... I'm thinking maybe bananas and chocolate for the next ones. I've also been meaning to try doing the just plain sugar and cinnamon (kind of like lefsa) with a thin coating of butter just to hold the cinnasugar on. I have very high hopes for that.

In fact, I ate dinner tonight early. I might just have to try making those as a reward for taking out all my cardboard even though my kitchen is super clean right now.

Man, being an adult rocks sometimes. :)

BINGO!

So, in America, when someone mentions Bingo, a couple of things come to mind (for me at least. One, Japanese-American (JA) Bingo around Christmas every year because my family always goes to it. It's fun. There's mass bingo. We get those cards that have the sliding windows. Two, following that, Bingo at like, every JA obon festival in California. I swear to god. At some point in time, they all have a bingo tournament. Three, old people who play bingo. I've always thought of it as a JA game and an old person's game.

Needless to say, I was very surprised when I found it here in Japan, and even more surprised when I found out that it was super popular. I don't quite understand the entire fascination with it, to be honest. I was never much of a bingo fan. I've always hated having to stand up and say bingo. I mean, the prize is nice and all, but I hate drawing attention to myself like that.

In Japan, Bingo is played a little differently. The BINGO is only the name - you don't actually use it for calling out the numbers, which I thought was really strange at first. The number pickers are super high tech too lol. No wooden balls here... the one we had tonight played music and everything. It even had its own mic.

Oh, let me rewind a little bit. Tonight was my bonenkai - year end party - for my Niimi schools. The main event was bingo. Main event. Whaaaaaaaaat? Also, the first week i was in japan, I saw a huge crowd turn out for bingo.... at the grocery store/Polka. That was like, what, seriously?!

Another big difference is the significance Japanese people give to "ricchi" or basically, when you only need one more to win. They get so excited for that! I mean, we do too, but they'll announce it to everyone even more so than when we did it. Or than I remember it at least.

But yeah. The cards most places use are like the ones above - you just punch the holes out of the numbers. Very good Japanese counting practice.


Picture from flickr.

Catch up

Wow, so it's been almost a month since the last time I made a post. Oopsie. What can I say, I got slammed pretty hard in November between work and NaNoWriMo.

A quick word on that one, I did finish. :) Hooray! Or well, it's more accurate to say that I hit 50K words. My story is nowhere near finished. I intend on finishing it though. Sometime. Hopefully soon, otherwise it'll never get done. :< I won't go on too long about this, because I get a little embarrassed when I talk about it actually lol. But suffice it to say, it's about a girl who goes to Japan to work, is tricked into becoming part of the yokai world, and must find a way to return back to being just a regular ol' mortal again. Oh, and her yokai power is that her food is so goddamn tasty that people have reactions. Not in the yakitate sense (though kinda) but more like the ratatouille sense. Her food is transformative, shall we say? :)

And then work hit. Oh work. The kids have had their exams and I've been busy making the listening sections for the tests with garageband. It's really really funny. I don't know if I mentioned this before, but I've had to record (for several teachers now) a dialogue with two people speaking (or one time, three). And the teacher apologized for making me have to do that and so on, since when we demo'd the dialogue in class, I basically just pitched my voice really really high for the woman's part, and kept it regular for the man's part. The class thought that was highly amusing. I did too. I think I had to stop at one point cause I was laughing so hard.

I didn't want to do this for the oral exam though. What if the kids missed a part cause they were laughing too hard? Their problem, not mine? Well, thanks to the magic of garageband, I was actually just able to slide the pitch bar down for the man's part, and either leave my voice or pitch it higher for the other part(s). The end result? I showed the clip to the first teacher, and she asked who my friend was. I had to tell her several times that no, all those voices were me. Her reaction was incredibly hilarious to watch because she was so shocked, though I think my face only gave away a bemused look. The same thing happened with all the other teachers who heard the clip. Love them all to death. I think they think I'm a computer genius now, which is so far from the truth. Hell. My computer (my baby) is let's see now... gonna turn four pretty soon. :) Which doesn't really seem like that long when I look at the number, but seems really old when I look at the other computers around here. I'm just praying that it carries me through the JET program. Note to self, save up money so you can buy a new computer when you go back.

I'm thinking of doing a desktop/iPad combo. X3 That way I can still do stuff outside, like type (cause I mean, I have a purse yeah, I'll just carry that around with my keyboard when I feel like typing, or, I'll eventually, like the iPhone, learn how to type fast on the iPad) but I have the gorgeous and beautiful desktop waiting for me back at home. And then, I can be in bed and surf and stuff, and then actually do work at the table or desk or whatever. Save me some money too. Though I do admit, I type a hell of a lot in bed and work from places that aren't normally a desk. I don't actually have a desk here in Japan. So the thought of being tethered to one place is slightly intimidating. But that's what the iPad is for... right? Hopefully, I'm hedging my bets that one will come out sometime in the spring and that it'll be a gazillion times better than the current one. While part of me wants to wait for at least the third gen to come out, (like the 3Gs for the iPhone) part of me wants it now. Part of me says, well, you should have just bought the first one and then upgraded to the third one. But if I get the second and fourth...

That's assuming I'll have enough money for the fourth one. But I digress. Back to work.

The picture, above, is related to the oral exams I've been giving. We've been doing a "make a monster" activity which I really like, cause it lets the kids be creative and it's pretty fun. It works on their listening too. I basically read off body parts (though so far I've only done the face) while they draw them. We've had the class do it as a whole group activity too. Fun times, and some of them are really freaking awesome. :) Woo creativity!

But yeah, unfortunately, with exams, comes grading exams. That's sucked. A lot. I spent the whole day grading on wednesday. I thought my mind was going to explode.

So far though, November was really quiet. I didn't really go anywhere. Or well, I went places that were close to home. I spent a lot of time in Okayama. I went to Naoshima. I cooked. Kinda.

I made crepes! :D Jeana gave me a recipe that's waaay super easy and doesn't require too much. Mostly flour, water, butter, and... salt. Was that it? Probably. It's really simple. So I've been making crepes, and they've kind of become my new "tortilla". I just cook them until they're a little crispy, and add cheese (the Japanese cheese, which I have formerly complained about how much it sucks, is actually quiet good for this) and TADA, cheese crepe. Crispy. :D I had some tunafish too, and I added a little lettuce and mmm, tastiness ensued.

I also bought a new kotatsu. It's super warm. It got rather cold, rather quickly. Like, inside my bedroom is 6 C right now. That's almost freezing. My fingers are so cold... :< I need to order those stupid gloves already and figure out how to pay for them. >_O

I also need to send money back home. -_-; Craaaaaaap I should do that before I spend it all lol.

What else... I've bought winter clothes. SO many winter clothes. And a kitchen island! HOORAY! I have yet to put it together though. That's today's project. I know I'm not going to be living here for a long time, but two years is a while, yeah? It wasn't too expensive either. And I'm starting to get really annoyed at having to sit at my table to chop stuff, cause the tables are tooooooo freaking short to be able to cut properly at without your back starting to hurt.

I can't believe the year end is coming. Holy crap.

I won't be going home for christmas. :< I didn't know I could take off that much time for work... though now that I think about it, the time I can take off is pretty much the time after the 1st, which is when everyone goes back to school. So what would I even do at home anyways?

I might try to see if I can make it out to okinawa for that week or something. That'd be super fun. :) But I might be lazy lol.

I am planning on doing a couple of shorter trips over the winter vacation though. :) That'll be fun I hope!

And February is looking like it's going to be pretty busy... and full of awesome. :D

So that's all for now. I'm trying to kick my butt into writing christmas letters and postcards cause like, yeah, those need to happen. I've been soooo bad at that. So I'm going to try and be better about it today.