A new beginning in Shizuoka

Hello from Shizuoka! 

We`ve been staying in Iwata-shi, Shizuoka for a week now and I`d like to show some pictures on our moving activities. During my long hiatus (2 months!), I got a new job in Shizuoka, tried to complete my works at lab before leaving, had farewell lunches/dinners with friends and colleagues, and...dealed with boxes, bubble wrappers, and cellotape. I could not believe that despite the tininess of our apartment room, we had like bazillion things to pack. It seemed as if things mysteriously kept coming out from every part of the room.

Let me start with the first D-day. The day when we sent our things to Shizuoka. It started with two trash trucks coming to our apartment to pick up our trash. For some reasons, we needed to throw away our bed, washing machine, tables, and some other stuffs. We would be much happier if we could find anyone who wanted them for free, but we couldn`t. So we just had to call the trash pick-up service and paid for 13,000 yen (about 130 USD). Quite a price for trash, eh.

Anyway, the trucks came early in the morning and there was our bed getting crushed within seconds by the roller.

And my (second-hand and veeeeery) old washing machine was taken by the other truck. It always sounded so loud when I used it that I always thought I run a helicopter with my laundry inside, but still I felt sad to see it in the truck.

And since that day until now, our life is practically washing machineless since the new one will only be delivered this weekend. There`s a huge pile of dirty laundry in our house now and I try to pretend that they don`t exist. 

Then, the next truck came later in the day to pick up our stuff and send them to our new address.

Those two bicycles were our lifesavers during our first few days in Iwata because I`ve sold my baby Giorno and my husband`s bike came only few days later after our arrival there.

Anyway, after emptying and cleaning the room, we had to leave too. The second D-day it was.

I know I`ve never mentioned anything except that we lived in a tiny apartment. Just imagine two studio rooms combined and that was our home. This is one of the rooms. It was our bedroom/TV room/my computer room/dining room. The other room behind the doors, which was even smaller, was his computer room and our closets. We never invited guests to our house because we don`t want to scare anyone with the view, lol.

Now, as a tribute to my mini kitchen, which absolutely was and still is the important part of this blog, I want to introduce it to all of you. It`s definitely designed for one person, although two can still fit in as long as standing still is the only activity involved.When I was cooking there, I didn`t need to move my feet a lot. Just one or two steps away and I got what I needed. Reaching up and bending down were what I did more often I guess since everything were practically around me.

This is my very first own kitchen where I started to cook some real food. It was just some simple menu at the beginning, but things got more creative and serious after I got married. All the food I posted in this blog until the last one in summer 2012 were born here. It was in this very room where I first time realized that one uses all his/her senses simultaneously during cooking. The sight, smell, hearing, touch, and of course, taste. It was a tiny little kitchen, but it means big to me. I think I grew up in this room. And for that, I`m very thankful for what I`ve had. 

Anyway, life moves on and so had I. We headed for Sendai station to catch our 6:30 AM shinkansen to Tokyo.

It was my first one-way ticket from Sendai. No return ticket. I felt all weird and sad because I always thought of Sendai as my home and not going home there was just weird and seemed unreal.

But again, I needed to move on. And when the Hayabusa came in, it helped. I forgot about feeling sad for a while and took out my camera. I love taking pictures of shinkansen. I think Hayabusa has odd-looking front part, but I`m always amazed whenever I see it.

So we hopped on, sat, and looked through our window saying goodbye to Sendai. It was a beautiful bright morning with a lot of sunshine. I guess it was not a gloomy sad farewell scene after all.

After arriving at Tokyo station, we transferred to a different shinkansen line going to Nagoya direction.

And when you travel to that direction and the sky is bright (and you`re lucky to get the right seat), you`ll see the Fuji-san on the way entering Shizuoka area.

No, I didn`t randomly pick up some pictures from the internet. I took this picture using only my (slow) point-and-shoot behind the window and still it looked unbelievably graceful. It was very hard for me not to sticking my nose on the window and quietly screaming WOW!

Oh, did you know that Shizuoka is the largest green tea producer in Japan? I guess I need to learn more about tea from now on. 

The travelling had to end and life has brought me to this new family-typed home and kitchen. It has far more space for everything and this time we`re going to have a proper dining room. Or at least that`s what we`re planning for.

My husband and I will start working about 10 days from now and until then we`re busy opening boxes (again with the boxes and tapes!), dealing with lots of paperwork, buying new furniture and stuff, etc etc. Now everything seems a lot more real than before.

There are still not many pictures I took since we came here, but here is one I took during our way to a store.

I would definitely come back here later with better equipment and more time to spend. 

Enjoy the spring, everyone!

Snowy January

Our day started when I opened the curtain and saw this through our window. It is one to zero degree (Celcius) here and we`re having a freezing snowy holiday.

I don`t usually get excited when the snow falls, but since it seems like we won`t have snowy winter this much again (or probably, at all) in Shizuoka, I quickly changed, grabbed my point-and-shoot, wore my rain boots (yes, those are all I`ve got) and headed outside to the winter wonderland enjoying every steps on the fresh layers of snow flakes.

This is where we usually get our daily groceries.

This lady was not the only person who was brave and skillful enough to ride a bicycle under this kind of weather. I barely could walk straight with the snow going inside my eyes, let alone riding something!

When I walked home thinking about making soup for dinner, I realized that I wanted to share a list of dishes I`ve made that might be good for cold days, although you can find them through my Recipe list. Some of the recipes, especially the old ones, don`t have measurements for the ingredients (yet I still call them "recipes"), but hopefully the images can still give you the ideas for making your own version of soup.

Here they are!

Chicken braised with miso and tomato

Kimchi soup

Spicy miso soup

Cabbage and egg soup

Turmeric beef soup

Fish head soup

Gyoza soup

Spicy vegetable soup with rice cake

Spiced chicken stew

Oxtail soup

Green curry with chicken meatballs

Tomato hotpot

Mushroom pot pie

 

 Onion soup

Now get your spoon and have a happy slurpy soup day!

My recycling debut in 2013

Hello 2013! 

My first post in this new year has nothing fancy at all, but I`d like to show you about our domestic holiday (if there`s such a thing). Other than some grocery trips or occasional shopping at the city, this holiday we have no adventurous trip, which certainly means no outdoor photographing either. But I`m not about to complain here as I can actually make use of the long holiday to rest after the hectic weeks last month and to prepare myself for a job interview next week (crossing all my fingers here). My husband is also facing his busy weeks preparing for his Master`s defense this month. So, things like sitting in front of our computers, typing, reading, sighing, drinking coffee, or asking him "how do you say this in Japanese?" like hundred times a day (obviously, this one is me) have mostly become our routines these days. 

Now, because the temperature in our room in winter is about 6 to 10 degrees Celcius, I need to figure out ways to keep me warm during my  "home office" routine. I have this cute little friend filled with hot water inside, a warm and fluffy pair of shoes, a heater under my table, and layers of sweaters wrapping me tight, so my feet and body have no complaints at all. 

There was only one big problem I had. My  hands seem to be left out in the open cold air and typing becomes a hard work since my fingers sometime get stiff when they`re too cold.  

I know that this isn`t like the innovation of the year because obviously you can buy this item easily everywhere. My husband even have his own with warmers inside connected by USB to the computer. But I`d like to share this one-step recycling work anyway because apparently, I`m not afraid in embarrassing myself with my lack of craftiness. 

So, the story is, I always lost gloves every, single, year, and it`s not like I`ve lost the whole pair, but always one of it. I ended up with many unpaired gloves only to finally tossing them away just because I couldn`t think of anything I wanted to do with them. But not this year, apparently. After finding out about his high-tech oh-so-warm gloves, I wanted ones too but I definitely don`t want  cables hanging around everything. So I did some digging in my closet and (so far) I found two unpaired gloves. So I just cut the tips open and yaaay, now I have my "typing gloves"!

I needed to make sure if I could type with it well, and hey, it works great! My hands are warm and my fingers can work on the keyboard just fine! My fingers can even flip open the book pages without problems. Just wonderful. How come I didn`t come up with this stuff years before???

Naturally, I want both hands to be warm, so I cut open the other glove that I found. But, I prefer the first one than this one. Because the second glove is much thicker and bulkier, typing with it isn`t effortless and it feels a little heavy on the hand.

Now who cares if you wear unpaired gloves at home? Certainly not me ;)

If you`re thinking to make use of your old gloves for working at home too, start from the the thinner ones first and see how you like them. Needless to say, sewing the tips around would be the right thing to do (which I don`t, oops) so they don`t stray away and wander into your coffee :p

Stay warm, my friends!

p.s. The cup is not for an ad, but it happens to be my favorite coffee cup ;)

Eat. Work. Ride.

Happy (belated) Thanksgiving! 

I hope you all enjoyed the celebration with good food and surrounded with your beloved ones.

My disappearance for almost one whole season has made me think that my blogging days were over. Joining into a new research project and increasing my part-time works are what keep me busy like a bee. Not the queen, of course. Now add to those works a regular headache that comes every time I encourage myself to be more serious (and not stubbornly picky) in finding me a job for next year.So, I really apologize to my blogger friends because I haven`t visited their blogs for these past few months, but I promise I`ll drop by more often.

Do I still cook? Yes. And an incredibly fluffy souffle cheese cake is what I wish to share with you next time. Do I still take pictures of food? Err...yes...and no. Yes for lovely food I have outside. Like this beautiful sashimi rice bowl containing piles of tuna, salmon and the roe, shrimp, octopus, and sea urchin with a dollop of wasabi on top. Ah, just lovely.

But no for my cooking rituals. Not that I won`t take pictures again, but maybe I need to take a break for a while.  And in the mean time, this is actually what I`ve been doing after works and during weekends. Here is me riding a 4-cylinder Honda CB400 at my driving/riding school, which I`d totally recommend to those of you who live in Sendai and are interested in getting driver`s license. I need to complete at least 17 hours of training sessions before taking the final test to get the license and I`m still like half-way from finishing everything.

Have I told you that I got my car driver`s license in summer? Well, if I haven`t, I did. Yaay! 

But, as buying a car for me seems to be a long term plan, a motorcycle would be a better option for me. I`m perfectly happy with my current 50-cc scooter, which is apparently not a "motorcycle" according to the motorist terms, except that it`s difficult not to exceed the 30 km/h speed limit for 50-cc vehicles when riding on a big road along with the faster cars and sometimes the bigger motorcycles too. That`s why I`m planning on upgrading my commuter to 250-cc motorcycles and for that I need a new driver`s license, again. Now here`s the tricky part for me. What I want is being able to ride a 250-cc motorcycle, but the system in Japan requires me to practice riding on a 400-cc motorcycle and get a license with that. I couldn`t find any better chart to explain the driver`s license categories in Japan, but I hope this Wikipedia link can help you understand what I`m saying.

This handsome Honda weighs about 200 kg. I, on the other hand, weigh one forth of that and I (and the instructors) have lost count on how many times I dropped the bike, especially on my first days of training. And I still sometimes do until now. Dropping the bike must sound awful to you, but believe me, trying to lift it up is the hardest part for me. The second hardest? Putting it on the center stand. I`m not sure whether it`s because my lack of muscle strength (and height maybe?) or my ability in excelling the technique. Anyway, if it wasn`t for its weight, I would ask Santa to bring me this CB400 for my Christmas present as I`m seriously in love with it.

Now here are some videos during my practice showing some parts of the motorcyle riding skills that are going to be scored during the test. Riding a motorcycle in a straight direction with fast speed is easy, even for me on this 200- kg bike. It is, however, super difficult to ride slowly and maneuver it in a zig-zag direction while keeping it balanced. You`ll see in the video that I need to work harder in improving my skills.

Cone weaves. 

I need to weave through a series yellow cones under 7 seconds. If I touch the cones or put my feet down during an actual test, the test will be terminated. 

Quick stop. 

Within a quite short distance, I need to speed up to 40 km/h and brake the bike so it stops before the second white line. I think my speed was still not enough, but my front tire passed the line. I`d definitely fail if this was a test.

Slow ride on a narrow track. 

I need to ride on this very narrow track and finish it at least within 7 seconds, which means speeding up is not an option no matter how tempting it seems.

Slow turns on multiple curves. 

I`ve got bruises and muscle pain from the fallings and bike droppings, but the part that made me utterly frustrated and literally sob is this one. Working on the throttle, clutching, back braking, turning, and counter-weighting simultaneously is what it takes to pass the curves without putting down my feet. Or worse, falling down. After tons of failures and two extra sessions only on this part, I`ve finally made some progress and I really really hope I won`t mess up during my test later.

I can go on and on when it comes to my motorcycling practice, but the bottom line is, riding is so fun! Riding also makes me sweat and it`s like 7 degrees C outside. Another bottom line: I would probably stick with anything less than 200 kg even if my future license allow me to ride the bigger ones. And speaking of future license, please wish me luck so I can pass the test before the snow falls hard.

Thanks for reading and I hope you enjoy preparing for the holiday season!

Tokyo Banana Tree

It`s late now, but my eyes are still wide opened and I`m too awake to be sleepy. So, I guess I`d better use my energy to post something here because I happen to have something unusual to show you. One thing got my full attention when I came to Japanese stores was the vast options of baked goods and food specialties that are meant for souvenirs. But what impressed me most was the visual presentation. The food itself looks already delightful on its own, but the packing brings it to a higher level in aesthetic department. It`s obvious that in Japanese culture, you enjoy the food with your eyes before you actually eat it. And when we want to bring them as souvenirs or presents, the visual gorgeousness surely add up the whole happiness for both sides. Although environmentally speaking I`m not too keen on the individual packaging, especially for the bite-sized cakes or cookies, sometimes I think it comes in handy under some circumstances.

So, the coffee table in our laboratory is often filled with some food specialties brought as souvenirs (called "omiyage or お土産" in Japanese). As usual, they`re usually pretty and neat. But this one was very interesting that once I saw it, I brought one home because I knew I just had to take some pictures of it.
If you come to Japan, chance is you`d hear about Tokyo Banana and you`d probably won`t leave Japan without bring some home with you. Alright, I`m a little exaggerating here, but the point is, it`s super famous. It`s actually a banana-shaped banana sponge cake with bananaey custard filling. But recently, with the opening of Tokyo`s SkyTree, the Tokyo Banana maker released Tokyo Banana Tree with Choco Banana custard filling...with leopard printing on the cake!

I`m definitely not into leopardy stuff (because honestly, I`m so much more into cows!) and I really have no idea how the leopard connects with the banana or cake. If you have some info on it, please share with us here because I`m so intrigued right now.

Is this art giving you some new ideas for your next kitchen projects already?

Done with the outside. Now the inside.

The thick custard had a quite strong accent of banana, although I wish the chocolate flavor stood out more. But generally, you won`t disappoint anyone with presents like this :)

Now I`m getting hungry and I think I want to grab a banana (the fruit, not the cake) before going to bed.

Nite nite!

A night to celebrate and share

Today is kind of a special day for me because....it`s my birthday!
For my birthday this year, we had an almost spontaneous celebratory dinner at Higashiyama BBQ （ひがしやま焼肉) and we really enjoyed our whole evening there!

We ordered this Korean namul or vegetable dish that consisted of gosari (bracken fern stem), bean sprout, spinach, and julienned daikon.

And of course, the Star of the night: the beef.

The beef was incredibly tender, but the beef tongue, which appeared on the picture above as small chunks, were a big hit too!

It`s amazing to see how health-conscious my husband is becoming now as he only ordered the small portion of rice (same like me!) and had a small amount of beef. By small I mean like 3 thin pieces of beef and 5 small chunks of tongue. We were in a BBQ restaurant and that`s all the meat we had!

Other than the health-concerned reason, though, we actually reserved some space for the next treat: Korean seafood and garlic chives (nira) pancake or usually called as chijimi in Japan. There were like 9 pieces of it and we started getting full before finishing the last 2 pieces.

Now, for the birthday girl me, the restaurant provided this dessert for free! Judging from the picture on the menu, the regular size of the dessert is probably 2 or 3 times bigger than this. Since it was only two of us, I specifically asked them to make it smaller and I was glad that I did because this was the right amount for us! What`s inside? Roll cakes, ice cream-filled cream puff, marshmallows, frozen fruits, whipped cream, and strawberry syrup. Saying those words makes me feel guilty, but under the name of annual celebration, we enjoyed them a lot. 

Other than being free, it came with sparklers too!! I think both of us were so excited to see the sparklers on the dessert that we shamelessly kept saying "COOL!" when it was served on our table. It turned out that we got to get photographed with this dessert+sparklers by the waiter as a birthday present from the restaurant. Free dessert and a photograph. Double cool, right?!

So this is the birthday present to bring home! A birthday card with a postcard-sized photograph of us and the dessert. Thank you!!

Just a little introduction for those who are not familiar with Japanese calendar, in Japan, in addition to the regular calendar system, another year-naming system based on the year number of a Japanese imperial reign or era is commonly used in daily life. Currently, we are in the 24th year of Heisei era. So, as shown above, my birthday this year is written as:

平成２４年(Heisei era-year 24, meaning year 2012) 

６月(month 6, meaning June) 

２２日(day 22)

Finally we left the restaurant feeling very full and happy! Next, before heading home, we strolled around a bit near the Sendai station to play with the night shots. The weather was good, the wind was almost absent, and the sky...oh...just look at the sky!

 

Here is a picture taken by my husband. No matter how many times I came here (and I`ve been living in this city for 7 years!), I`m always amazed with this fantastic view of taxis lining super-neatly! If you come visit Sendai Station, you really have to see this spot yourself, although it`s probably hard to miss as the location is pretty much right in front of the station. 

What a wonderful night we had! Now I`m a year older and happier. And hopefully healthier.