Chinese Food

I don't care what they say, I will never ever EVER think of ramen as Chinese food. It's a completely, 100% Japanese thing, even if the noodles and the chashu did come over from China thousands of years ago. Seriously. All my students tell me that ramen is Chinese and I'm always like whaaaaaaat noooooo.

It's one of the things I absolutely LOVE about Japan. Handsdown. I think if I'm ever not feeling sure if I like Japan or not (and believe me, there are days when things don't go quite right), I have the feeling that if I sit down to a good bowl of ramen, all things will be better once more.

Today, I didn't feel like cooking so I gathered up my warm clothes (though I forgot my gloves - big dumb mistake I will never make again) and rode out. Originally, I had intended on visiting Chateau and having something like hambagu or omurice or something and get a bit of typing done for NaNoWriMo. I'm a little bit behind, so today was pretty much get stuff done and write day. I need to be at 25k at the end of tomorrow. And I was doing so well too...

But I digress. Chateau was closed when I got there, despite having checked it earlier to make sure there were cars and stuff. Turns out it closes at 5 (I think) on Sundays or something. Lameface. So off I went instead in search of something else to eat. Since it was pretty freaking cold, I decided that I was going to try a ramen place. There was one small place I had tried before pretty close to my house, but there was another place that some of my students actually had recommended (via a presentation).

So I figured that what the hell, why not try to find this place. I rode back towards my place on a different road, past the izakaya place I had been to before (and was also pretty good, but they didn't really do ramen). Finally, I saw it. A little red lantern with another white sign with more kanji I couldn't read. I think one of them was either the kanji for flavor or for Japanese style. 味　和. Well, I don't remember, but it was one of those two. As I rode up, I smelled something... distinctly Japanese smelling and not altogether pleasant. Kinda not so great, actually. But these kinds of things are good signs, no?

Hesitantly, I opened the door. It felt like I was intruding on someone's house. In a way, since they lived (probably) upstairs, I was. This place was super cute on the inside. Loads of knickknacks and magazines and tables and chairs crowded the small room. There was a tiny counter that looked in on an equally small kitchen. I think this place had room for maaaayyybe 16 people at most. It would be a squeeze.

I ordered chashu ramen. There was no menu. Only strips of paper with different items written on the wall above the counter.

Oh. My. God. Best. Ramen. Ever. So far, anyways. Seriously. The chashu in this was all buttery tasting and full of deliciousness. I nearly wept with joy as I ate the chashu. The ramen noodles were a little on the soft side (I prefer my pasta and most noodles a little al dente), but they were still super tasty. :) And the broth. I dunno what she put in there (other than copious amounts of pepper, for which I am thankful for) but holy wow. That stuff was amaaaaazing as well.

I will most definitely be coming here more often, especially as the weather gets colder.

One Potato, Two Potato, Three Potato, Four~

So ever since my mom sent me this nice medium sized thing of Lawry's season salt, I've rediscovered my love for potatoes. If you count only the foods I make (and not the foods that I've been buying for lunch, since that either comes from the convenience store or whomever the school gets their lunches for teachers through), I've probably consumed more potatoes than any other starch this week. That's a lot, considering I love rice.

Today though, I played around with making mashed potatoes (again) and gravy (again). I tried something different this time though; I tried doing a roux. (Special aside, I don't actually know how to properly pronounce 'roux' despite several Speech attempts and listening to other people say it. I keep thinking "roxx" instead of "rue." Another interesting aside, the main character for my nanowrimo story is named Rue and her special power is cooking. Coincidence? I THINK NOT. I didn't actually know this when I picked the name though. Anyways. I digress.)

Something tells me I used way way way too much butter. My gravy taaastess liiike buuuutterrrr.

Oh well, you live and you learn right? I've learned that I cannot eyeball flour and butter to be the same amount. Nope. That stuff needs to be measured.

At least the gravy is still tasty, albeit now really unhealthy and probably can clog an artery or two.

It also didn't help that the mashed potatoes I made *also* had butter in it. I made it with milk for the first time though. Hooray! They actually turned out really nicely. I thought they were too runny at first, but I guess they thickened up upon standing. In the end, I had these really damn good mashed potatoes.

In other, equally exciting news, I've finally found some type of low-fat/skim milk! I have no idea what percentage it is! All I know is that it had less calories (I think that's what they were) and most of the numbers on this carton (which is green) were lower than the numbers on the blue carton. I can drink it without feeling all sick! Hooray. :D Dairy in liquid form re-enters into my life. I'm pretty sure it's not non-fat though, but it might be 1 or 2%? Maybe? At this point, after having drank whole milk, I'll take 2% and be happy, dammit.

I should also, probably, really, go to bed. It's past midnight. I'm not really doing anything productive any more.

Tuesdays are both awesome and long. Awesome, because I get to go to kyuudo. Long, because I don't get back home until pretty much 8pm. And today, I had it in my head that by the gods, I was going to COOK. This was mostly because the meat that I got at half price (3 steak things for ~600 yen! They were kinda small though) was well, half price. I got it on monday. Usually the stickers are on there for a reason.

Yeaaaaah, I'm really hoping they didn't actually go bad. Asides from a little browning, they smelt perfectly fine (and tasted fine). I was only really a day off. ._.; They stayed in my fridge all day. For some reason, instead of thinking today was the 9th, I thought it was the 8th. I thought I had time to freeze it and everything. Nooope. Not really.

So yeah, cooking took some time. I also wanted to do laundry (though I hate doing laundry over here even more than I did back at home in the States). I also couldn't find my camera, so spent a good hour turning my house inside out (there's a pile of clothes on my futon now that I have to clear before I can sleep. Sigh.) before I found it in my Halloween bag. And I was good and washed all my dishes. Didn't quite get around to putting away all my clothes... but hey, it's a start yeah? I even vacuumed a little bit.

But by the time I did everything... it was kind of past midnight. Yeaaah oops. My bad. So much for trying to go to bed early. -_-;

Maybe next time gadget... next time.

Gravy Mashed Potatoes

Hmmm... so I tried making mashed potatoes out of the need to use this bag of potatoes that's been sitting in my pantry for a while. They're milk-less and cream-less, since it was late at night and I didn't want to run down to lawsons for some milk.

You know what, they actually turned out somewhat decent. There's no picture of them, cause they look atrocious, but they're pretty tasty. Instead, I used copious and probably unhealthy amounts of butter (like, 1/4 T or something, whatever is a little less than a cm when you slice it off the chunk) plus a couple scoops of garlic butter (because I was being lazy and didn't feel like chopping up fresh garlic). And apart from not being as creamy, it was pretty decent.

Today though, I had this leftover gravy sitting in the fridge from... a while ago an thought hey, mashed potatoes and gravy here I come! So I added a little bit of water to the gravy and reheated it and nuked my potatoes again and added the two together. Very tasty.

...but then I mixed it a little bit more and the potatoes actually like... combined with the gravy into this new, much more awesome, creamier mashed potato mix. It's freaking amazing now. I was like, holy crap, I have real mashed potatoes that are garlic and gravy flavored rather than just a sad attempt at garlic mashed potatoes and gravy.

Hell yes.

It also just occurred to me that I just made my own mashed potatoes and gravy. Wow. I feel like an adult. And not just that. I didn't make it from packages or anything. I made it from scratch. Holy crap. Who have I turned into? I practically never made mashed potatoes at home. Jeana was the one who did that. If I made them, I made them from those awesome packets you get from costco and add water or milk to. Now, here I am in Japan, mashing up potatoes and using drippings for gravy. WHO IS THIS NEW PERSON AND WHERE DID JESSICA GO!?

My only hope is that when I get back to the US, the persuasive power of many restaurants and convenient pre-assembled dinners does not change me back to being lazy, and that I keep on cooking. Cause eating stuff that tastes awesome, that you like, REALLY made is an amazing feeling.

"Yeah," I can tell people now, "I made these mashed potatoes."

I don't have to add in any more that "Costco/Betty Crocker/X helped though."

...does this mean I'm turning into my mother?

Orphanage Visit

And now for something completely not food related, I swear.

One of the things Okayama AJET does is organize visits to the local orphanage in Okayama City. It's seriously one of the most fun and mutually-beneficial things I've done, volunteering wise in my life, I think. The visit was fun for pretty much everyone, and required only us to be able to make it into Okayama. I completely forgot which day it was on, but it was some time over the weekend. Sunday. It was Sunday, October 24, the weekend before Halloween weekend. So of course, our visit was Halloween themed. One of the dudes organized a bunch of Halloween games for the kids to play and a couple of us brought things like stickers. Oh man. So many stickers.

Eventually, I will get my album of this up. The kids were really really really cute. And wow. So much energy. If that's what teaching at elementary/preschool is like, I don't think I would have the energy for that. I think we spent a good hour minimum running around. Actually, we probably spent more time on that since the first hour we were there we pretty much played several games of tag with the kids (all independent of each other. It was more like, a kid or group of kids chose you to be 'it' and you chased them). At first, a bunch of us were super shy (others dove straight in) but eventually, I think everyone was involved in at least one game of tag. And seriously. I haven't played tag since like... middle school at least, and quite possibly elementary school. I forgot how much continuous running tag requires too. I was tired after several rounds.

We also played variations of tag, including "stuck in the mud" which was hilarious simply because there were us huge adult people and these tiny kids, and it required you to dive through people's legs to unfreeze them...

Some of the larger dudes made a tunnel. I kind of shied away from unfreezing anyone lol, cause I was like, ummmmm no not happening. There was this really adorable little kid who was sitting on the sidelines and would run out and unfreeze people. Super duper cute. :)

What else did we do... let's see...

There was a game that, I swear, was exactly like sharks and minnows except for not in the pool. That was fun. So much running. So much confusion at first lol.

We played 'telephone' or 'chinese whispers' with halloween too. The second round we got all tangled up in our section, but, as we discovered, it became hard to pass on. But man. It was funny. I might have deliberately "misheard" whatever the kid sitting next to me said, especially since I knew what the word was supposed to be...

The game we ended on (and when we finally got to pass out all 209348235 stickers we had brought) was with Heads Up 7 Up. It had a different name, but I forgot what that was. I had a small girl sitting in my lap. X) I was like YAY when that happened. It felt so... maternal lol. Even though I have no sense when it comes to taking care of or really, what to do with kids. I am not a good babysitter cause I have no idea a) how to hold babies b) how to get kids to stop crying and c) what to do with crying kids. Eventually, at the end we just started handing out stickers left and right. Some kids were *literally* covered in stickers. One kid's arm was covered in stickers. It was one of the cutest things I've ever seen.

The other fun thing about the visit is I got to see a whole different side to a bunch of other people that I usually don't get to see, since whenever we hang out, generally it's not work related (or even if it is, it's not teaching). It was a more playful side to everyone, because well, most of the kids were really young (like elementary age I think; I'm bad at recognizing what age people are or what level in school they are if they're younger than high school).

That day might have been raining, but it rocked kinda hard. Like those kids are fantastic. There weren't many older kids, but there were a whoooole lot of younger, crazy, high energy, super genki little ones. It made me kind of wish I taught younger kids too. It seemed like they had fun. We had fun. I've never run that much in my life for that long hahaha.

I will most definitely be going back on the next trip.

Churros

Completely unrelated to Japan is the super tasty Mexican dessert known as the churro. Thanks to a little wiki-chain (Mister Donuts -> Fast Food restaurants Japan -> FF Restaurants USA -> Taco John’s -> Churros) I now know that churros, despite us calling them Mexican desserts, actually comes from Spain (according to wiki anyways, but the articles cites no sources). Normally, without sources I would be in a considerable amount of doubt, but I would actually guess that they came over to Latin America and the “New World” with Spanish explorers. Supposedly, churros themselves came with Portuguese explorers from China originally, stemming from the Chinese donut (aka, youtiao). Because they did not know the proper technique for making the Chinese donut, they used their own, creating the five pointed star shaped churro we all know and love. According to someone on wiki, anyways.

Another website actually says that it was invented by shepherds as a food that could be easily cooked in a pan or even over a plain fire. From there it spread to Latin America. This website supports that idea as well, since they say that frying the bread was the only way to prepare their bread since “the microwave had not been invented yet.” Um, what happened to baking bread as a method of preparation?

Actually, this would be super interesting to figure out where it really came from, mostly because I love learning about where things originated (must be the Japanese side of me) and I love food.

Interesting food for thought though, even if it doesn’t actually cite any sources.

Oh, and through a google search, churro is also, apparently, a type of sheep. And supposedly the people who make the churro are called churreros.

They actually have churros here in Japan, though I haven’t been able to find a decent one like the ones back at home. The ones here… aren’t crunchy at all. They’re this kind of soft, donut like thing that, while tasty, doesn’t have the juxtaposition of crunchy on the outside, soft on the inside like churros do. And they had a glaze; no sprinklings of sugar waiting to drop nicely onto your pants. Those were just the churros at Mister Donuts though. I have the suspicion that if I go to Disneyland, I’ll be able to find a nice proper churro.

Badger badger badger badger

MUSHROOMS MUSHROOMS

So I'm at my agricultural school in Niimi today. It's FREEZING here! I think the weather said it was like... 12-8 C. ._. I mean, that's how cold it got in San Diego at its COLDEST. I'm going to freeze, hahaha...

But I did a little bit of exploring today around the school. Guess what I found?

A PONY.

AND DUCKS. AND CHICKENS. Though these were the fluffiest chickens I've ever seen haha. I don't know if they were being raised for food or for their eggs.

But they also come around to the teachers room and sell things that they grow at our school. So far, they've come around with GIGANTIC grapes, GIGANTIC mushrooms, and today, regular sized mushrooms but for insanely low prices.

It's a shame I don't like mushrooms more.

They had a bunch of different varieties too. There were shiitake mushrooms, but also hiratake mushrooms that were this gorgeous steel blue/grey color. I wanted to buy them just for the color, but what was I going to do with a whole tray full of mushrooms?

Maybe I'll end up liking mushrooms by the time I leave here.

There are like, a billion different mushrooms they sell at the grocery store. Some of them are really really really expensive. Matsutake are generally the most expensive; some can get up to 10,000 yen (about $100). Craziness.

The kids also came around with nametake mushrooms, which were this beautiful caramel color. And, they had shiitake. Seriously, grand shame I don't like mushrooms.

Thankfully, this fascination with mushrooms has been enough to dispel this feeling of homesickness for thanksgiving holiday food. Some people would argue that it's these foods - turkey, ham, pumpkin pie, cranberry stuff - that makes up the core of what is considered 'American food'.

I'm probably one of them. Yeah, burgers are American I suppose, and garlic fries, but turkey... oh man. I miss turkey. And delis. And ham. And pumpkin pie.

I also miss driers. I think if I had to chose one thing I could have brought from home, I would have brought a drier with me. I hate having to hang dry my clothes. :< They end up all stiff, and they don't always dry super fast. Plus, I don't want to hang my clothes outside for all my students to see... so I hang them inside, where they dry more slowly. I miss warm, just out of the drier clothes. Sigh.

Dearest Sensei

Dearest sensei,

What gives? Last week you were on board with this idea of having a dialogue for Halloween. You even asked me to make a sheet and stuff, and were excited when I showed you it. But today, you came up and asked for the other worksheet I had prepared earlier, photocopied that, and then informed me that for today's lesson, we were doing the normal listening warm up and then the numbers worksheet.

Uhhh, that's not what we talked about last week.

So forgive me if I'm mildly annoyed that you did not tell me about this last week, and that you decided to switch plans last minute rather than tell me no. I don't really care that you told me last minute and decided to change plans (okay, well maybe I care a little). But the biggest reason is that you told me to do more work and prepare things, and I DID, and THEN you changed it AFTER I did all of that. Not cool dude. At least don't tell me to do things if you're planning on changing the plan last minute to something way not as fun.

Love, Jess

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I don't even get to give the kids candy. :< That hella sucks for them, cause my other two classes are totally getting candy. Man, I wonder if he's pissed at the kids or something to change like this.

At least I get to give the kids Halloween stickers. Lord knows I have a billion of those to get rid of.

But! I won't let this ruin my week since it's a Monday and all. I mean, I still have all week. Halloween is this weekend. Then NaNoWriMo, aka, the descent into insanity, starts.

EDIT::

Well. I am properly mortified. So it turns out, that this whole rant... was untrue. He DID want to do the Halloween thing. There was a miscommunication, where I thought he had said that we were doing the numbers worksheet first. So I didn't think we were going to talk about Halloween, so I didn't bring any of the pictures or anything. Imagine how embarrassed I felt after he said we were going to do that and I didn't have pictures. I forgot to bring the candy up with me the second time too, so I had to run down to the teachers room TWICE in one lesson. That was embarrassing.

Sooo yeah. The lesson was pretty fun, even if for half of it, I listened to a tape recorder and my sensei speak English phrases from the book.