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

Apparently, I failed at getting entries up while I had free internet in Hiroshima. Oops. Everyone was pretty wiped at the end of the day, and I spent my valuable time all on... you guessed it, facebook. Stupid stalking timesucker of a website.

I'm at my school right now, the one in the mountains, and I gotta say... it might have thundered and lightninged yesterday morning, but today is absolutely gorgeous. It's crisp, cool, and beautiful. My favorite kind of weather. It reminds me a lot of the bay. <3

I got to hang out with the high schoolers today. That was pretty fun, albiet a little on the boring side. I watched them make paper. I got a gift (hooray!). We ate lunch. I didn't drink my (whole) milk. I played wataiko and zenitaiko with the kids.

Zenitaiko is actually really interesting. It's a traditional type of performance taiko, except you're not actually hitting anything. All you're hitting are the sticks you're carrying, the ground, and sometimes yourself. My palms were sooo sore after that. But they're basically sticks that have 5 yen coins on the inside so that they shake, and you smack them together and rattle them and -coolest of all- flip them. Yeah I'm all sorts of awful with that.

It's fun talking to the teachers though. I'm learning more and more japanese words every day. I probably should uh, be more enthusiastic about teaching the kids English words, but I can't help but want to learn Japanese words for things while I'm here. I feel like we're doing more of a trade; I'll teach them the English word, they teach me the Japanese one.

I didn't expect this to bug me so much, but there's this one teacher who -swear to god- is always on the laptop at school. It's kiiiinda annoying because that's the one I want to use. And she is on it every single time I have a break. It's like arrrggg can't we share? I mean, I can go on some of the other ones, but that one is the least awkward to go on. I don't know if I'm in the way for these other ones, and sometimes I feel like I'm on the wrong computer, or like, the comptuer is really really really slow.

Last night I had a house party. :) that was pretty freaking sweet, but man, was there a lot to clean up after. THankfully, my friends are awesome and helped clean up. <3 the people I know!