Cooking

hey all,

Pretty decent week so far. On Monday I went into Shinjuku to renew my housing contract. I also was struck by an urge to make BBQ sauce, yet another commodity that is hard to find in Japan. After searching around a bit, here is what I made.

1/2 cup ketchup
1/4 cup sugar
1 medium onion
3 tbs lemon juice
1 cup Dr Pepper
chipotle Tabasco sauce to taste
salt, pepper, chili powder, and cumin to taste
1 tbs corn starch

This is a really simple one. Chop the onion very finely and fry it. Once soft, just mix everything minus the corn starch together in a sauce pan with the onion, and boil it for 10-15 minutes or until it starts to thicken up. To help with the thickening, add the corn starch (dissolved into 1/4 cup of cold water, of course). This makes a pretty decent BBQ sauce. I cut the sugar by half from the original recipe, but it was still a little too sweet. Next time, I'd add some mustard powder and maybe some vinegar.

Yesterday, the cooking spree continued. First, I went swimming for an hour at the local pool, and then my new housemate and I made hamburgers topped with my BBQ. Then we made an apple pound cake, which turned out really well, despite almost burning the house down. We made two batches: one which we tried to cook in my Pyrex bowl in the toaster oven, and the second which we cooked in the pan you see below.

Batter
3/4 cup oil
1 cup sugar
2 eggs
1.5 cups flour
1/4 tsp salt
1/2 tsp baking soda
2 apples, diced
1/2 cup chopped nuts

Icing
1 stick of butter
2 tsp milk
1/2 cup sugar

This one is also really easy. Just mix everything for the batter together, put in a greased baking dish, and bake. I can't really tell you about times, because we used a toaster oven: about 20-25 minutes on 290W seemed to work fine for our half batch. For the icing, just put everything into a pot and simmer it for 20-30 minutes, stirring often. If you have extra apple, add that to the icing as well. Coat the cake with the icing.

Dinner was BBQ beef rice.

Cheers,

Myogi-san, Again

hey all,

Seems like it has been a while, but for once my weekend was really fun. On Saturday, Michi and I made mabodofu, which is a spicy Chinese ground pork and tofu dish. Below is my version of it that I made earlier this week. It is literally just spice, ground pork and tofu, as that is what the recipe calls for. Next to it is my homemade version of ginger ale: Mitsuya cider and whiskey.

400g firm tofu
100g ground pork
2 cloves garlic
chunk of ginger to match the garlic
1 tsp sake
3 tbs soy sauce
1 tsp sugar
1 tbs tobanjan
beef bullion
2 tsp corn starch
seseme oil
salt and pepper to taste

1. chop the tofu into 1cc cubes and boil for 1 minute. remove and drain.
2. finely chop the ginger and garlic, and saute them together with the tobanjan sauce in some seseme oil in a soup pan.
3. add the ground pork and 1.5 tbs of soy sauce.
4. when browned, add beef broth (beef bullion dissolved in 1 cup of water), rest of soy suace, sugar, sake, salt and pepper, tofu, and corn starch dissolved into cold water.
5. heat until it reaches the desired consistency.

Serve with rice. Quite tasty, and a lot spicier than the store bought sauces. If you're not careful while cooking it, the tobanjan sauce will start to smoke a little while cooking, and sear your nostrils and throat.

Michi's version is a lot less spicy, because she insisted on adding onion and chives to it, which really dilutes the power of the chili sauce. Still good, but I like mine better.

On Sunday, we got up around 6:30 and took several trains over to Matsuida station in Gunma prefecture in order to hike Myougi-san again. We went there several months ago, but we only saw about 1/3 of the sights, so we came back.

I decided I'd try my hand at meditating under a waterfall. There were subsequent reports of a hairless, pale ape creature seen wandering around Gunma.

What we didn't get to see last time was this: four large stone arches, called sekimon in Japanese (stone gate).

Showing off the muscles.

The second gate is particularly scary: you have to climb the chained paths to get through it, and by that time it had started raining a little.

Michi using her Force powers to hold up the stone arch.

It started raining a little during our lunch break at the 4th gate, and after we crossed the 2nd gate it really started to come down, with some of the loudest thunder that I've heard since coming to Japan. After getting through all 4 gates, we took shelter in a public rest area and called a taxi. I guess we could have tried to wait the rain out, but we had hiked from about 11AM to 4PM, and Michi was tired from the heat and the rain and just hiking for 5 hours in 36C temperatures. If we had waited, we could have hiked back to our starting point, but that would have taken another 2 hours or so, and we needed to get back to Tokyo.

Cheers,

Rikugien, Free Time

hey all,

Things have settled down a little for me. Strange what a day of rest can do for the psyche. Yesterday, I went up to Ageo, my old work town, and hung out with my Michigan friend at his place. We ate some spicy hot dogs and played video games. He decided to pay a small fortune and head back to the US this summer break, so I offered to help eat some of his food so it wouldn't go to waste.

I've done laundry and cleaned my room so far today, and I'll probably study a little Japanese, and then cook some mabodofu from scratch for dinner.

These pictures are from Rikugien, near Ikebukero in Tokyo.

Cheers,

Net

hey all,

What a weird day! I woke up this morning and found that I just couldn't make myself get out of bed to go to the stupid training for my part time job. After a couple hours, I finally convinced myself to go over to their office and hand in all my teaching materials that they'd given me. Officially, I was supposed to work from today until Friday, but I'd really had enough of this company and felt like I was trapped in some insidious net.

I just had to get out of it somehow, so I gave them gave their materials, and sent them a letter of resignation. I guess I could have used the extra money from the 4 days of work that I'll be skipping, but I'd already done the math and I should get by without it.

After that, I went over to Rikugien, which is a public garden near Ikebukero, and just tried to get my head straight. Why can't I seem to find a good company? Why doesn't my own company offer higher pay or other benefits? And then on to the deeper questions: Where did my patience and appreciation go for all things Japanese? When I turn on the TV, I find TV shows where a panel of Japanese people don fake over-sized latex noses and speak really broken stupid sounding Japanese. Why? Because they're making fun of foreigners. There's a McDonald's commercial which features a similar dumb sounding foreigner, and of course I often catch my students doing the "I'm a dumb foreigner" Japanese accent. I love the food, the artwork, and the mountains here. But why am I living in a country that has so little regard for foreigners?

How am I supposed to succeed in the face of this kind of system? I found myself thinking that if I went back to the US, maybe it would be a one-way trip. After all, why come back to this country where I'm loved so little, except perhaps by one person. I guess there are three points that I'd lose out on, since I'm not sure how to answer them. First, if I go back to the US, what job would I do? Second, where would I go? Lastly, what about my girlfriend?

Cheers,

Not All Work

hey all,

I'm sure lately it seems like it's been all work and no play, so I'd like to mention that I got to see Predators with a new roommate on Friday, which was pretty enjoyable. Not very original, but way better than the Alien Vs. Predator movies that were inflicted on the public twice. I'd say that the structure of the movie is also revealed a little too easily. The characters seem to catch on to what is going on way too quickly.

Today after skyping with the 'rents, I and another roommate went over to a sports club. I went swimming, and he used the weight machines. Pretty fun, but I'm so out of shape. I haven't really swam for almost 2 years, so I can't do distance, my flutter kick is even weaker than ever, and I can't even do a lap of butterfly.

Something a bit interesting about Japan: everyone probably knows that in the rest of the world, men tend to favor brief or box brief type swimsuits (commonly called "speedos"). This is also true of Japan, but what surprised me was that I was also required to wear a swim cap. I didn't have one, and had to buy one from the store at the club, which was annoying. I don't have long, permed, dyed or styled hair, or lice, or even some scalp disease that could be passed through water. What good is a swim cap going to do me? None.

Apparently, they require them to prevent hair from clogging filters, but that is really just bullcrap. A swim cap might reduce the frequency that the filter has to be cleaned, but you're going to have to clean the filter eventually, and when you do, it won't be my fault: my leg hair and arm hair is about twice as long as my head hair, and thus more likely to clog a filter. Yet I'm not required to wear a full body suit or shave my arms and legs to swim in the pool. It is only the (very short) hair on my heady head head that concerns them, which is rather stupid but there you have it.

For me, this is just another piece of equipment to be totted to and from the pool, and just another piece of cloth to permanently absorb that oh so wonderful smell of chlorine.

Anyway, it was fun, even if I had to buy the swim cap. I think I'm going to try to make this a weekly ritual for August. I'll be needing something to help structure my time.

Cheers,

PS3, Recipe, Work

hey all,

It looks like my best option is to buy another PS3 here in Japan, transfer my data from one to the other, and then sell the broken one to a recycle shop. I might get around to that in a couple weeks.

For those interested, I finally made a dairy free tiramisu that I don't consider a failure, so here is the recipe.

300 g soft tofu
3 tbs. non-diary powdered coffee creamer
3 tbs. beet sugar (white is fine too)
2 g gelatin
120 cc soy milk
2 tps. lemon juice
1 cup strong coffee
2 tbs. Cointreau
cocoa powder
about 24 lady fingers

1. break up the tofu in a bowl and microwave on low for 3-4 minutes.
2. separate tofu from the water in the bowl, and scoop the tofu into a blender or food processor.
3. add 1/2 the soy milk, and all the sugar and creamer to the food processor.
4. Mix the coffee and Cointreau together in a wide shallow bowl, and add 1 tbs to the tofu mixture.
5. blend the tofu mixture.
6. heat the other half of the soy milk on low in the microwave. make sure it doesn't get too hot, or it will separate.
7. add the gelatin, and stir to dissolve.
8. add the soy milk and lemon juice to the tofu mixture, and blend.
9. dip the lady fingers in the C/C mixture for about 3-5 seconds, and line the bottom of a pan (about 4 in X 8 in seems to work well) with them
10. pour half the tofu mixture on top of the lady fingers, and sprinkle with cocoa powder.
11. dip more lady fingers and cover the tofu as above.
12. pour the second half of the tofu mixture on top, and again sprinkle with cocoa powder.
13. refrigerate for at least 2 hours, then enjoy.

I finally finished my last 6 day work week. That's all for now.

Cheers,

Ugh

hey all,

This seems to be the week for failures. The failed tiramisu recipes, and then my mp3 player volume button broke, and now my PS3 doesn't read discs of any kind. I actually already found a work around for the mp3 player, but there could be one of several things wrong with the PS3. Either there is some kind of file corruption somewhere, for which I'll have to backup my data and reformat everything. Or something is wrong with the laser or lens that actually reads the discs, which will necessitate sending it in to get fixed. At this point, I don't know if I can send it into a shop here in Japan or if I'll have to send it back to the US, and in any case, I don't have the time or the money to mess around with it too much right now.

I also quit my second part time job today. They gave me a really low full time salary offer, and refused to give me Saturdays off, so I'll be completing my part time contract for this month and then saying goodbye and good riddance. As I'm sure I've said before, they did seem like a decent company, but there you have it.

As I was talking it out with one of my fellow ALTs, we decided if I was living with Michi, things would be different. I'd get to see her all the time, and getting a Monday or a Tuesday off in exchange for working on Saturday wouldn't be too bad. That would be MY day, and we could make sure to spend Sunday together. As it is, Saturday and Sunday are all we have, and we don't even get to hang out for every weekend, so our time is even more limited.

On top of that issue, is the fact that I'd have to travel more, do more paperwork, and basically be more responsible than in my current job, but for less pay. I'm already not paid enough, so who would want to do more for even less pay? In any event, I've started another round of job applications.

Cheers,

Recipes and Pictures

hey all,

In case anyone wants to know how not to make tiramisu, here are my two failed recipes.

1.
3 egg yolks
300 g soft tofu
1 cup coffee
1/4 cup Cointreau
1/4 honey
24 lady fingers
cocoa powder

Blend the tofu, egg, honey, and 2 tbp of the coffee/Cointreu mixture. Dip the lady fingers into the C/C mixture for 5 seconds, and line a suitable dish with them. Pour half the tofu mixture on top of the lady fingers. Dip more lady fingers into the C/C, and cover the tofu mixture. Top with the rest of the tofu mix, and cover with cocoa powder.

Delicious, but the tofu mixture is far too loose and watery.

2.
6 egg yolks
3 tbs. sugar
1.5 cups coffee
2 tbs. Cointreau
300 g soft tofu
24 lady fingers
cocoa powder

Beat the eggs and sugar until pale and thickened, then add to tofu. Blend and add 2 tbs. of C/C mix. Dip and line pan with lady fingers as in previous recipe. Pour tofu/egg mix into a small sauce pan, and heat until less watery. Pour on top of lady fingers. Repeat as above, and cover with cocoa powder.

Edible, but the texture is a little too clumpy, and the flavor is slightly off.


Below Right: Me at Michi's second house from several months ago. Left: some priests meditating below a water fall. For some reason, this is a stereotypical...way to increase spiritual power? I'm not sure exactly how to phrase it, but the idea seems to be that meditating under a water fall somehow increases your mental power, so it has been a staple of samurai literature for several hundred years.

Cheers,

More Bad Cooking, Trip

hey all,

I've finished my second of three 6-day work weeks. Tomorrow, the cycle starts again: Monday to Saturday. Yesterday (Saturday), I did my demo lessons again. The first lesson went really well, but the second lesson was only so-so.

Today, Michi and I went into Okutama (Western Tokyo), and climbed Mitake-san. The forecast was rain in the afternoon, so we got up really early and climbed it, ate lunch, and came back to central Tokyo. Luckily, the rain was delayed (I can hear the patter of rain outside my window as I type this.).

After that, I tried again to make my dairy-free tofu tiramisu, but have again failed. The soft tofu just seems to have too much water in it naturally, and then adding egg yolks just compounds the problem. I found a youtube video of a Japanese woman making tiramisu with tofu, so next time I'm going to follow that recipe.

Cheers,

Cooking Failure

hey all,

I tried to make dairy free tiramisu today, and totally failed. I used tofu in place of mascarpone cheese, but kept the eggs, alcohol, chocolate and espresso. Somehow, the tofu-egg mixture became really watery. I think I must have added too much of the espresso/alcohol mixture to it, and I skipped the step of beating the egg yolks and sugar together until thick. (I don't have sugar, so I used honey it's place) Next time, I'm going to follow the original dairy recipe a little closer, and see how it turns out. I actually found Lady fingers at the local variety foods grocery store. Again, they don't have graham crackers, mascarpone cheese, hamburger buns, or any of a thousand other items you could find at a regular store in the US, but they have Lady fingers for crying out loud.

I'm feeling slightly more upbeat today, despite the failed tiramisu. I cut my hair, and bought two work shirts that were on sale for half price, and got to spend a lot of time at work studying Japanese. Real studying: not just reading that book of my in Japanese. I have a study book for the level three Japanese test, and so far I've gotten about 80% of the questions right. I'm only about 1/6 through the test, and I'm pretty sure I'm taking too much time to answer the questions, but still.

Cheers,

Part Time

hey all,

I skipped yoga today as I met with my Michigan buddy and I didn't watch the time too closely. It looked like I might be late, and I'd rather not show up late, so I didn't go. Besides, it is really hot and I always sweat during yoga, and I'm already sweating a lot.

So now I can tell everyone about my part time job. It is in a large shopping mall near where I live. I use the staff entrance and sign in, get an electronic tag so I can pass through the security doors, and everything. The classroom is located across from the kids toys section of the store. In our down time, we stand out front and make balloon animals, which is really tricky. I can actually only make a sword and a brontosaurus right now.

I only had two classes on Saturday and they didn't go too well. They went OK, but I don't think OK will really cut it with this company. I'd like to do better lessons, and they want to help me do better lessons, but at the same time there is pressure to make the lessons really good (so the parents will be impressed and the kids will have fun and keep coming back, thus making money, etc), which I don't like.

The lessons themselves are like this: we do a greeting, a warm up (some songs and dances, or maybe Simon says for the older kids), then a Hello song. There are different versions for different ages, so you have to memorize them to demonstrate them for the kids before they can sing them. Then there is vocab intro, which where you just teach them the new words for the lesson. After that is game time. You do a bunch of games to get them to practice: listening to, saying, and reading the words. Then some phonics practice and then you do a goodbye song.

Not too bad, right? Except these are demo lessons, so I had a 3 year old together with a 5 year old, and for my second lesson I had two 1st graders (maybe 6 years old) together with a 5th grader (about 10 or 11).  So how do you make sure that the 3 year old is having fun and the 5 year old is not bored because the lesson is too simple? I sure don't know.

I'm feeling pretty mixed up about what I should do about my work situation. I could ask to only do part time with them and just work Saturdays, or I could stay with my current crappy company, or try to go full time with the new place. For the last option, there is this fear that I won't be able to live up to their expectations, which makes me shy away from joining them, but I do think they are a better company than my current one.

That's all for now. Cheers,

My July 4th

hey all,

Today is the 4th of July! I haven't been home in about 1.333 years. As much as I complain about things in the US (the obesity problem, the stupidity problem, the why-can't-I-find-some-decently-priced-delicious-food problem), I really do miss it. I miss seeing my family and friends, I miss being able to walk into a regular supermarket and finding food items from all over the world at reasonable prices. I miss the wide open spaces, big stores, and big houses.

In celebration of the US, Michi and I made hamburgers, or tried to. Her mother had given her some hamburger that was left over from making something else, but there were already chopped onions mixed into the meat. You see, to the Japanese, a "hamburger" is really what I would consider a meatloaf patty: it has onions, egg, and possibly bread crumbs mixed into it. Maybe 80% of the time, it will be served as is: just the patty with sauce on it, then veggies on the side, no bun. I have actually never seen a hamburger bun in a grocery store anywhere in Japan, so if you made them at home, you'd have to use regular bread.

In the interest of trying to save the purity of the already onion-violated hamburger, I refused to add egg to it, so when we fried it, the patties began to fall apart, and by the end they looked more like taco meat than hamburgers, but hey. We had to use regular bread, another concession to Japan's 99.9% ethnically Japanese population.

They tasted good (actually, quite excellent), but failed to give me that, "Ah, a little taste of home" feeling.

To analogize, one of the things that Japanese people usually can't believe is when I tell them I don't really care whether my soup is pork, salt, or soy sauce flavored. These are the main three flavors of soup, especially soup served with noodles. To me, they all taste about the same. I think, to the Japanese, anything foreign tends to get lumped into fairly broad categories. Hamburgers get grouped with meat loaf, waffles and pancakes get grouped with birthday cake, peanut butter gets grouped with chocolate sauce (I'm not even joking about this: this is how they think). I can somewhat understand this, since I'm doing something like it with their soup flavors, but we're still talking about soup here. Waffles and birthday cake are totally different. Peanut butter has a totally different composition of protein, carbohydrate, and fat than chocolate sauce.

Anyway, I'm probably freaking out a little because I just finished a 6 day work week, and I have 2 more 6-day work weeks coming up...I just realized that I haven't even described my how my first day of work at my new job was. My brain is running on fumes at the moment, so I'm going to put that on hold for a day or two. Tomorrow, I'll be doing yoga after work, so hopefully I can chill myself out a little. Wednesday, I have more training for my new job, so maybe Tuesday I can write up my first day experience.

Cheers,