Typhoons

My base school's culture festival was this last weekend. It happened to nicely coincide with the typhoon that blew through western Japan and Shikoku - like, literally, it went straight through Shikoku, then up to Okayama and Tottori areas. In the whole of Okayama, apparently, Takahashi was hit the hardest and got the most rain. Yippee. The river rose something like, 10 feet; it was almost right underneath the bridge here. A couple of bridges, not in Takahashi, got swept away.

Pretty freaky when you think about it. Typhoons are pretty much hurricanes in the pacific basin - to be specific, it's "a tropical cyclone in the pacific north west between 180 and 100 degrees E." Here's an interesting fact for you: Japan doesn't name its typhoons like how we name our Hurricanes. This typhoon, for example, was simply "台風１２号" (those are the kanji for typhoon, or "taifuu" in Japanese). However, news reports from the internet and stuff were calling it "Typhoon Tyson". I guess Japan is just like "meh, get these all the time. What's this, the 12th one? Alright dudes. Let's bunker down. You know the drill."

One of my JTEs also observed that a lot of the really destructive typhoons have female names. I wonder what he was trying to say. -_-

This typhoon went straight over my prefecture though, coming from the south to Shikoku, then up through Okayama and to Tottori. A bunch of prefectures around the area had lots of flooding due to the storm - so much that they closed roads, there were landslides, and they stopped the trains for an entire day. A lot of us were worried that businesses weren't going to be open, but it turns out I was wrong in that aspect (thankfully). One of my friends in Takahashi came and rescued me from my house and we went to eat lunch at the 24 hour place. The entire area outside my door was flooded! It even flooded where the bikes were, so my back door step looked like a small lake.

It was freaky to see the river that high though. It made me really thankful that I live up a hill for once. I figured too, if the canal outside my place overflowed, I could just go up to the school and pray there wouldn't be a landslide.

Hm. So I'm going to go on a random tangent about food. For thinking-aloud's sake, I'm going to type everything out here. This is for buying a meal at the conbini (pasta) versus making it myself at home. Since I'm curious to see which actually costs more - making my own food, or buying conbini food.

Now first, let's talk about portion size. Obviously, making your own will yield much more than the conbini will; I actually, sometimes, will buy the pasta plus another thing (like a sandwich or riceball) since the pastas are just so... tiny. I mean, they're probably the size of one portion (not like our american portion sizes) but then, you'd probably augment your pasta with soup, or salad, or both. So for the sake of comparison, I'm going to use two of these pasta things. Each costs about 300 yen, so altogether, it's like 600 yen for two. Not too bad.

Second, let's talk about what's actually in the pasta itself. It uses rigatoni noodles - which you can't find in the supermarkets out here, not in Takahashi anyways (and not at Polka... dunno about youme town, but that's a good bike ride away). So I'd have to go in to Okayama to the import store. But let's not take transportation too much into account, since I go in to Okayama at least twice a month (or, usually, more). Plus, I could probably use other noodles and it'll be just fine.

The pasta has broccoli, bacon, cheese, and uses your basic tomato spaghetti sauce. I think that was it? If I was back in the states, there would be no question that a home cooked one would be cheaper, plus probably wouldn't take too long to make. Here in Japan though... liking import foods can get a little pricey.

Broccoli here is expensive. For a single head of broccoli, it's around... 200 yen for a single head of broccoli? 198. This is for a small to medium sized head of broccoli. I would probably use two of them to make a casserole (if I was back in the US) but in the pasta, it's kind of like a garnish... so one head should be plenty.

Bacon (the sad, limp kind) is meat, so that makes it more expensive... I haven't bought bacon here for ages because it just makes me sad. Plus I'm not overly fond of it. Let's say it cost between 200 and 300 yen for a package of 4-5 strips of bacon. And then the cheese. Now, there's not so much cheese that it'll use up a whole (or really, not even most) of the bag. But A bag of cheese cost about 400 yen for a smallish bag of shredded mixed cheese.

The spaghetti sauce, if I'm being lazy, I can get from the import store in the Ragu or Bertollie or however it's spelt brand. Those cost between 300-500 yen (I don't remember). You do get a giant can though, which is nice considering the price you bought it at. Of course, you can make your own spaghetti sauce since it's not too hard to do - canned tomatoes run about 100 yen for the cheap brand, and I already have basil. I haven't been able to find a general kind of 'italian herb' mix, but basil and garlic usually works fine for me. So making it cost about the same as buying it from the store, after you take into account the prices and everything. Making it is probably slightly cheaper, but not tooo much to the point where it's more efficient to make than to buy. I suppose you could also just be lazy and buy those bags of sauce they sell at the grocery store too; those are cheap, running from 150-200 yen.

Right, so the pasta costs around... 1300/1400 yen plus the cost of the noodles, which, for those, are at least 250 yen, so like, 1500/1600 yen. This yields way more than a single serving though; I'd say at least three - maybe four if the portion sizes were smaller. THen you could take them and stick them in the fridge and eat pasta for another two days.

So it's roughly 200-300 yen cheaper to make the pasta myself, if the prices for the ingredients are accurate. So it is a little cheaper. However, you don't take into account the money you spend for gas to cook the food, and water to cook and to clean up after. I don't think I need to mention it takes longer and requires more forethought and planning, whereas the conbini meal just depends on if you're there before it's sold out or not.

That being said, I'm willing to pay for laziness so that I don't have to ride my bike outside the house to buy fresh food sometimes haha. I'm so lazy~

I did though, bike out to youme town yesterday. It's the further larger department/grocery store place, and they have a vegetable stand outside of it that closes around 6 and sells vegetables for really cheap! I think I could actually make food cheaply with those vegetables - I would just have to use those veggies. They're way cheaper than the regular vegetables (and fruit) I've found in the supermarkets. Like this giant eggplant? Only 60 yen. Two red bellpeppers? 120 yen. YESSSSS. That's cheaper than ONE red bellpepper! One is like, 200 yen at my grocery store. Yeah though.

The weather has been so nice because of the typhoon. Yesterday was so nice, I took a spontaneous bike ride. I actually rode past youme town at first - all the way out to Nariwa. It's absolutely gorgeous out there. Like, wow.

Sometimes I really do love living out here in the rural countryside. It's seriously gorgeous, even if there are a bajillion bugs constantly waging a war to get into my house and into my mouth when I walk.