Freezing!

I understand now, why Japanese people like to bathe at night.

It's because in the morning in the winter, the pipes sometimes freeze, and then ohnoes, you have no hot water (and sometimes no water at all).

I've been bad; I haven't posted in ages and ages. I haven't worked on the newsletter. Bad Jessica. But it's because I've been working on studying for the GRE and studying Japanese in what spare time I have. Like seriously, I feel like I'm doing as much studying here as I was at home! My week days aren't exciting. I get home. Go on my computer. Get sucked into the black hole of warmth that is my kotatsu. Occasionally crawl underneath the kotatsu for full body warmth. Remember that oh, I haven't cooked dinner yet, and oh, maybe I should eat before 10 o'clock. Study a little bit. Fail to do that because I'm on facebook or watching a show or a movie (or playing my DS). Regret not studying and attempt to study for a little bit. Decide to not feel as bad because usually I study at school or on the train for a little bit. Think about how I should go to bed or wash the dishes. Do the former, but not in bed. Wake up at ungodly hour of night. Crawl back into bed. Sleep. Wake up for work. Go to work. Repeat.

That's pretty much what my week days look like. Exciting, no? Occasionally, I'll even stop at the grocery store or something. Usually, that's on a monday because I'm already out of the house/away from my house, since I dislike having to ride up the hill to my house more than I have to. But the kotatsu... wow, my electric bill is going to be high, but it's so so so lovely to stay under (for the bottom half of my body anyways).

You know, the funny thing is that I'm actually going somewhere EVEN COLDER than here and Niimi at the end of the week.

side note: I can't believe it's February already! I'm going to sapporo on Sunday! O_O This is going to be my first really really big trip (since I don't count going to Chigasaki as a big trip for some reason). Yaaay snow! I'm excited. X) i'm also still debating whether or not to bring my laptop.

Let's Cooking! (Omurice)

Today was full of all sorts of awesome, a nice way to the end of an otherwise crappy week. Firstly, I went to my handicap school up in the mountains of Niimi. There was snow, and not the icy, "oh crap I'm gonna slip and break something" kind, but powder snow that had freshly fallen. It was absolutely gorgeous, and I spent a good twenty minutes frolicking (yes, frolicking) out in the HUGE yard area that was just a large soccer filed sized blanket of mostly fresh snow. I was like a small child getting to play in the snow for the first time. I think I did everything a kid would do, short of making a snow angel cause that would have made everything wet and cold and sad. It was kind of amazing. :) I haven't had that much fun in a while; and I'm not just talking any kind of fun, but that kind of childish abandonment of any adult concepts where you can spin around giggling and then turn around and run off with a laugh. Quite refreshing, really.

On top of that - here's more proof I'm a kid - our kyuushoku (school) lunch (which is normally very not bad, but other places have lunches that sound like all sorts of awful) was spaghetti. I nearly started jumping with glee. It was pretty decent lol.

For dinner tonight, I made omurice with the leftover rice I had from the night before. My only regret is that it wasn't that much rice so I didn't get to have that much. But oh man, it was awesome. And it was... well, I don't know if it was healthy. but it wasn't particularly unhealthy?

I'm writing the "recipe" here so I don't forget it. <3

Omurice!
Use as much rice as you want. I eyeballed it, so there's no set amount. However much you want to eat/however much is left.
A handful of frozen veggies from a bag, ie, however much you want to eat in your rice. I guess for me it's like, a quarter or a third of it.
One hugeass clove of garlic, or two cloves, minced.
Sriacha, to taste
Lawry's season salt (a dash).
Ketchup.
Oil for cooking.
2 eggies seasoned with salt and pepper.
Cheese

Cook the frozen veggies. By cook I mean warm up in a pan. Add the rice once the veggies are warm (about two minutes or so). Add garlic and lightly coat the rice in lawry's season salt (or another season salt) and stir around for a little bit, making sure to break up the rice. Then add ketchup and sriacha until your rice is evenly coated and red. Cook this for another minute or two, closer to two than one. Mostly it's just to warm up your stuff. Oh, I also add pepper cause I love pepper.

Once this is done, transfer this to a plate. Now to make the top. Crack the two eggs into a bowl and add pepper and salt and mix like you're making scrambled eggs. Add a little more oil to the pan for cooking. Tilt the pan away from you and pour the egg in so that it kind of pools at the bottom. Use a chopstick or something not metal to stir around the egg so that your egg cooks but still forms in a nice shape. Stirring it occasionally lets you stir up the cooked egg at the bottom so that uncooked egg can take its place. Alternatively, you can do the "pull up and tilt so the raw egg goes underneath it" method. Stop when it looks like most of egg is cooked and it's set. Then, either using a spatula or mad cooking skills, flip the egg/omelette onto the other side and let it cook for like, another twenty seconds. Turn off fire. Coat rice on plate with cheese and shape. Cover in omelette. Drizzle ketchup or sriacha (or both) on the top so it looks all pretty.

CONSUME.

Brrrr It's Cold (In Here)

I said there must be some playas in the atmosphere~

Please don't hate me for making that reference. I already kinda hate myself for it. But haters gotta hate. :<

I've been really bad about typing/journaling/making newsletters/blogging lately. At the start of the new year, I told myself, "Self, it's a New Year. You should write at least one post a week."

And have I done that yet?

No. No I have not. So I'm going to try to be better about that. And not just posts like this one about how "oh, I'm bad about posting" but actual stuff. Starting now.

I've never lived in a place this cold before. Even when I was out traveling, I don't think Shanghai or Hong Kong ever was this cold when I was there during TSS. Other than that, I've lived in the bay area or San Diego. Sometimes I visited Tahoe, and I was in DC when it was snowing, but it's never really felt as cold as this. It's definitely... interesting, to say the least. My electricity bill is SUPER expensive. It's stupid. But how else am I supposed to stay warm? I've been using this reasoning to justify paying for my trips into Kurashiki or Okayama; at least then, I won't be paying to keep my house warm.

I'm sure forgetting about my kotatsu and leaving it on does not help at all.

Oh, speaking of that, I forget that before I came to Japan, I had no idea what a kotatsu was. Basically, it's a table with a heater underneath (that never gets hot enough to actually burn you really, with most models) and a removable top (so that you can put a blanket underneath it).

It looks a little like this picture:

Note, that's not actually my kotatsu, but I don't have any good pictures of it right now. Maybe I'll put some up later or something. but it keeps your bottom half/legs sooo warm and sometimes I like to crawl in underneath and lay on my belly with my head poking out. So freaking warm. It's quite lovely. I might get a better, thicker kind of carpet/blanket thing to go underneath if I keep doing that. I've fallen asleep under it quite a few times as well haha...

Right now I'm huddled under a blanket with three layers, sitting at my kotatsu. I'm thinking of crawling in sometime soon, cause it's what... about 7C in my house. Cold. T-T

Hm, also today, I got to use the observatory at my school for the first time. Yeah, my school has an observatory on top of it. It's actually in quite a good position; the school is on a giant hill, so it overlooks most of the city. The view from the observatory is absolutely wonderful, just as good as if not better than the view from the hike to Bitchu Matsuyama Castle since there are no trees to obstruct the view. The observatory has a giant telescope and can rotate (!) and they finally got it fixed. I noticed that the observatory was open when I was wandering around campus, so I wandered over to where the observatory was and the sensei in charge was kind enough to let me look around and told me to come back at quarter to six, when it actually was darker.

So I did, and wow. It was so cold! BUT IT WAS SO COOL. They had fixed the telescope and were looking at Jupiter; you could see Jupiter even during dusk because it was so bright. When I looked at it through the telescope, you could actually make out a couple of salient features, as well as the four Galilean moons (Io, Ganymede, Callisto, and Europa). I even had a student tell me in English about this. :) It was sooooo amazing. I was practically dancing as I left the observatory. That's probably one of the coolest things I've done in Japan, and it makes me like my base school that much more.

Seriously, if they split my position up again into its two original ones... Niimi and takahashi, I'd have a damn hard time picking where I wanted to live. I used to be bitter about having to commute to Niimi all the time since the trains suck and it takes an hour and a half to get to Okayama (and there are so few trains to begin with). But, I love being at Kenko no mori and Niimi South campus, AND they have kyuudo. I love going to kyuudo club. The kids there are so awesome.

On the other hand, Takahashi High school isn't that bad. The teacher are really cool. I know more of the teachers there. I'm part of cooking club. Most of the kids are nice. There are monkeys. Wild monkeys. And an observatory.

It would be a difficult choice. Thankfully, it's not one I have to make, though admittedly, when I first got here I was really frustrated with having that many schools and being split between two cities.

I'm alright with that now though.

Current feelings about recontracting: 65/35 staying/going

(Fish) heads

〜♪Fish heads, fish heads, rolypoly fish heads, fish heads, fish heads, eat them up, yum〜♪! ♪

I've had several interesting discussions on the topic of heads that are still attached to the creatures we eat. In Japan, the majority of people are perfectly fine with not only fish that still have their heads attached, but also, for small fish, eating said heads. If I remember correctly, it's a delicacy of sorts, or the famed "best part of the fish."

But, based on the reactions of my friends here in Japan so far, American and British alike (though granted one is a vegetarian), fish heads fall under the category of "kinda gross. Do not want." Personally, I don't really like to eat fish heads (or small fish!) but if it's still attached to the fish I don't really mind. I just pick my way around it. But I know plenty of people who feel kinda queasy and sick when they even see the fish head. I blame my immunity to this on growing up with a Chinese family; big dinners usually had some sort of whole fish (that I usually did not eat lol).

This topic actually came up because someone asked me about being served a whole pig, head included, in American culture. Other than Hawaiian luaus though, I couldn't remember a time when we had non-Asian food that had something resembling a head. I couldn't. Most of the non-Chinese food I had never had a head at all. Even fish that we caught ourselves were generally beheaded by the time that we ate them.

Oh wait! I lied! It wasn't someone asking me about being served whole pig. It was because the meal I was eating had these tiny tiny fish that looked a little like worms, and I felt the urge to explain that it wasn't the presence of a head that grossed me out (though it did a little bit) but the fact that the whole body was there to eat and stuff. And THEN we started talking about heads.

The most interesting thing that I found out though, was that the Japanese people I was talking to told me that for them, while fish heads were fine and dandy, animal heads, like cow, pig, chicken, duck, and goose, were really disgusting. I was kind of shocked by this, especially because one of the quintessential "chinese food store" symbols in Oakland was the duck or geese hanging in the window, all brown and defeathered and tasty looking. And I was asked that if, for turkey or chicken roasts, if people were ever disgusted by the fact that you could really see the body of the animal.

I asked a second Japanese person and found the same thing; fish were okay, but animals and birds were a nono. "Fish aren't animals," he explained to me. Having the heads on the animals made them seem more alive (and thus, gross). Nevermind that in Japan, some places give you freshly killed things, and images and motifs of live creatures mean that it's really really really fresh. hell, some places even give you things (albiet, seafood only) that are still alive.

Japan is weird. Not in a bad way, of course, just different. :) It really makes me wonder why this is the case though.

あけましておめでとう！

Happy New Year! :D

It's been a while since the last post I made, but, I have a very good explanation of it, kind of. It's funny, because I haven't actually had any classes to prep for or do since classes finished pretty early for the winter vacation, and I don't teach any extras over the break. Yet, I've managed to find ways to keep busy (most of which, generally, aren't facebook, though, I will admit, I've spent probably more time than I should at work on facebook!). I've studied up on my Japanese, and I've been reading and also studying for the GRE. I haven't signed up for a test date yet, but I will soon. I need to buy an up to date version of the GRE book. >_< Of course, it's going to be slightly out of date soon with the if my scores aren't very good.

Oh yeah, btw to anyone who's applying to grad school, they're changing the test to a different format. It's freaking out a of people, but I'm not super worried about it. I'm just worried about the test itself in the first place! lol.

My new years resolutions of this year? a. Eat better and try to balance cooking and eating out. Save money, but also set some aside to travel with. I'm thinking 50/50 on that one. :)
Also, I want to try to write in this more often (and keep up the once a month newsletters). Exciting things might not, or rather, will not, happen everyday, but I'll try to write more about pictures and stuff. ^_^ that should be fun. I have a whole ton of pictures.

Over the winter break, I didn't have very many days off. The winter break holiday in Japan is the 29th through the 3rd; anything else and you have to take days off. Otherwise you sit in the teacher's room (or office if you're a municipal JET, aka elementary/middle school JET and you work out of your board of education versus JETs like me who are prefectural JETs. In our prefecture anyways, because we're prefecture JETs, our Board of Education (BOE) is located kinda far away so we work out of our base schools).

However, I did manage to make the most of it. :) We visited Kyoto, Osaka, stayed in a capsule hotel, and I went up to Chigasaki (near Yokohama & Tokyo) for a bit and stayed up there for new years. It was pretty awesome. I'll write about that and Tomo no ura in the future, but I should prooooobably go to bed lol.

After all, I'll have a bunch of free time on my hands tomorrow.