Blue Lotus

Tsumami

On Sunday Hideaki and I went to a local cherry blossom festival, which suffered from a lack of actual cherry blossoms; this spring has been cold in Tokyo and most sakura are blooming late. The festival wasn't a complete bust though: they were giving away sake, and we won a bottle!

This is the same sake we bought last year, called Oizumi and made from local spring water. We quite liked it and I was a bit bummed that I wouldn't be able to afford a bottle this year, so we were thrilled to win it.

When you drink in Japan, especially sake, it is mandatory to serve tsumami (drinking snacks). Also called otsumami (and for that matter, sake is also called osake; the "o" is an honorific), these snacks are flavoured more strongly than regular food and tend to be served in small amounts, and are eaten slowly while enjoying the alcohol. Some tsumami, like nuts, are good with nearly any type of alcohol but most are thought to go with a specific type, like edamame (green soybeans) with beer or cheese with wine. For sake seafood is big: think shiokara (fermented squid) or grilled himono (dried salted fish).

The two tsumami shown above are typical. On the right is hiyashi tomato, which literally means "cold tomato" and has a thousand variations; this one is drizzled with fragrant sesame oil and ponzu (citrus soy sauce) and sprinkled with crushed sesame seeds and black pepper. On the left is maguro no tsukudani (tuna simmered in soy sauce), and is one of the best examples yet of my recent drive to save money by using up all the excess food that's taken over my kitchen.

I've had frozen tuna in my freezer since last year, a gift from my sister-in-law from a trip to Miura Hanto (the Miura Peninsula in Kanagawa, famed for its tuna). We ate it at first as sashimi and it was delicious, but there was such a large amount we had to freeze most of it, and not knowing what to do with frozen raw tuna I kind of left it in there until I forgot about it. When I noticed it again recently I was relieved to see it had no freezer burn, and when I won the sake I knew I'd finally found a use for the tuna. It turned out so good that I wish I had a freezer full of frozen fish! If you'd like to try making it yourself, read on: the recipe is at the bottom of the post.

This picture probably looks odd to most Japanese people, since you're not supposed to drink alcohol--especially sake--with rice. Apparently tsumami are just snacks and once you have your real meal (which in Japan always includes rice) you have to stop drinking, since sake is made of rice and you wouldn't serve two kinds of rice with a meal, would you? Or something like that. But the fact is that most tsumami are also really good with rice, and since we really liked the sake we included the tsumami with our dinner and kept on drinking.

From left, maguro no tsukudani, hiyashi tomato, asazuke (quick pickles) of cabbage and cucumber, hiyayakko (cold tofu topped with soy sauce and bonito flakes) and gobo to toriniku no takikomigohan (rice cooked with chicken and burdock, also from the freezer).

And now for the recipe. First I should note that if you should not use really good fresh fish: save the good stuff for sashimi and use either non-sashimi grade fish or sashimi grade fish that is too old to serve raw. It also doesn't have to be tuna: buri (yellowtail), kajiki (swordfish) and other firm fleshed fish can be used as well. Finally, you could simmer daikon, negi (long onions) or other vegetables with it; I will definitely use both next time. Oops, one more thing: the flavourings are highly adjustable: eliminate the water to make the flavour stronger, add more water to make it weaker, and add more or less sugar to your liking. Taste as you go and adjust as you like.

Maguro no Tsukudani (Tuna simmered in soy sauce)

450 grams (1 pound) of tuna, in blocks
1 knob fresh ginger
120 ml (1/2 cup) sake
120 ml (1/2 cup) soy sauce
75 ml (1/3 cup) water
2 Tbsp mirin (sweet cooking sake)
2 Tbsp sugar

Cut the tuna into bite-sized pieces. If it is getting a little old put it in a sieve and pour boiling water over it and let drain. Peel the ginger with the back of a knife and slice thinly.

Add the sake, soy sauce, water, mirin and sugar to a pot and cook over medium heat until the sugar has dissolved. Turn the heat to low, add the tuna and bring to a simmer, then half cover with a lid and let simmer, stirring carefully once or twice and making sure liquid doesn't evaporate. Cook 30 minutes to 1 hour or more; the tuna is ready when it is infused with flavour and softened slightly. If excess liquid remains you might like to remove the tuna to a bowl and simmer the liquid on medium until reduced to your liking, then return the tuna to the pot and stir to coat with the sauce.

Serve hot or room temperature with sake. Will keep several days in the fridge (and will actually get softer after a day or two, so try not to eat it all at once).

Gyoza

One of the benefits of having an unemployed husband is that he has way more time to help out around the house. He now cleans, does dishes, and does almost half of all cooking and other food related stuff. I love the little things, like how he brings me coffee while I'm working, or how he's got my cereal preferences down perfectly. Which doesn't seem like much but it's an amazing feat considering the intricately constructed bowl I prefer: a mix of granola (for crunch), brown rice flakes (for flavour) and All Bran (for fiber) with chopped walnuts, raisins and fresh banana, all layered just so according to how well they keep their crunch once milk is added.

But he can do more than pour cereal: he now cooks actual meals, something he hasn't done regularly in a long time. A recent meal was gyoza (Japanese style jiaozi, or potstickers), something I've been bugging him to make for ages, and although he used store-bought wraps rather than homemade they were just as delicious as I remembered. He also made a sukju namul (a Korean style appetizer made with bean sprouts) and a simple soup with hakusai (Chinese cabbage), carrot and meatballs made from excess gyoza filling. He also made sure there was a cold happoshu in the fridge, because few things are as good with beer (or beer-like beverages) than gyoza and sukju namul.

This was the first batch, perfectly cooked until crisp on the bottom.

Inside the gyoza: ground pork, nira (garlic chives), ginger and garlic. They are dipped in a mix of soy sauce, rice vinegar and hot sauce.

The second batch was finished with a very thin batter of flour and water, which resulted in a paper-thin layer around each gyoza that was pure crunch.

Look at all of that crispy brown goodness!

I plan on pestering him mercilessly until he cooks them again. And this time he better make the skins from scratch.

Yubeshi

This is a package of yubeshi, one of my favourite types of wagashi (Japanese sweets). Yubeshi actually comes in many forms, all of which seemingly have little in common beyond the use of rice flour and soy sauce, with several areas in northern Japan claiming a different type as its own. The kind I like is a mochi-like square flavoured with sugar and soy sauce, covered with walnuts and dusted with a mysterious substance called oburato. It comes from Iwate, Miyagi and Yamagata prefectures.

This yubeshi was bought at a local supermarket and comes from Iwate. This is the first time I've bought it that way: I've mostly had it given to me as a souvenir from people who've traveled up north. I received it very occasionally for years, always really liking it and wanting to go buy more but never being able to remember what it was called. So I was never able to find it for myself until last year when I actually had a student who'd given me some earlier write down the name for me. I sent my husband on a mission to find some, and when he mentioned it at work half of his coworkers claimed it was the meibutsu (famous product) of their hometowns. They helped him locate some at a department store, and when he brought it home I knew I'd finally found the elusive treat I'd been looking for.

Top quality yubeshi from a good wagashiya (Japanese sweet shop) is a special thing. It has a slightly chewy texture, softer than mochi but elastic enough to give it good bite. The addition of soy sauce to a dessert seems odd at first, and indeed I've tried a few that were too heavy on the soy sauce and and didn't taste very nice, but restrained use of soy sauce is quite nice and goes with the walnuts well. Most yubeshi is just sweet enough to qualify as a dessert, but not overly sugary the way some Japanese sweets can be.

The sparkly stuff seen above is the oburato, a starchy substance used to encase medicine and wrap sticky sweets. It is most often found in small very thin sheets or tiny baggies, in which powdered medicine is poured before the baggie is sealed and swallowed whole (medicine is still commonly dispensed in powdered from in Japan, and wrapping it in oburato prevents you from having to taste it). A few kinds of wagashi are wrapped in these sheets or sprinkled with a flaked form of oburato; in either case the oburato is completely edible and won't affect the flavour of the food it encases as it has no taste of its own. It is a nice alternative to the powdered sugar used in the west or the rice flour more commonly used in Japan, because it doesn't make a mess and adds a pretty sparkle to whatever it's used on.

Unfortunately, this yubeshi wasn't great. It seems that the supermarket is not the place to buy it, so I'll have to wait until my next visit to a department store (or the next time a student makes a trip to northern Japan).

Alternative Hanami

Note: I wrote this for SunnyPages (article seen here) but I'm running it here in slightly modified form with my own pictures. Hope you find it useful!

Tokyo has no shortage of good places to see sakura (cherry blossoms), but for some reason there are a few famous parks that get recommended over and over again. Not that there’s anything wrong with the well-known hanami (cherry blossom viewing) spots, but I feel it’s time that some of the less famous places got their due as well. So below is my list of famous hanami venues along with some lesser-known places to try instead.

A lot of the alternative spots are a bit off the beaten track, but if you’re up for a little train travel then consider this a good chance to get to see more of the city. Most places have at least a few yatai (food stalls) but prices can be high and lines can be long, so you may be better off packing a hanami bento (cherry viewing lunch box) or picking one up at a depachika (department store food hall) or convenience store on the way. Most spots also allow sit-down picnics and alcohol unless otherwise noted below, but rules vary between parks and are subject to change, and I recommend checking beforehand to make sure.

So read on to discover some new places to celebrate the spring, and have a happy hanami!

Why Ueno Koen is popular: The top hanami spot in Tokyo for 400 years running, people come to Ueno as much for the boisterous crowds as for the 1200 cherry trees; it also helps that Ueno is a centre of history and culture, with historic statues and shrines and a half dozen museums.
Why you might want to avoid it: Massive crowds; annoying drunks; the general shabby and run-down feeling of Ueno.
Where to try instead: For a similar carnival-like atmosphere, these three amusement parks hold festivals to celebrate their cherry blossoms: Toshimaen, Seibuen Yuenchi, and Yomiuri Land. If it’s culture you’re after, try Koganei Koen. It’s bigger than Ueno and has 1800 cherry trees, with fewer and friendlier people; the park also contains the Edo-Tokyo Tatemono-en (Edo Tokyo Open Air Architectural Museum), home to 27 relocated and reconstructed historic buildings; visitors can enter the buildings and view rooms filled with period furnishings.

Why Yasukuni Jinja is popular: The shrine holds a large and lively festival with about 200 yatai set up under 600 cherry trees. It also enshrines the souls of nearly 2.5 million people who died in World War II and other wars; the shrine’s cherry blossoms are symbolic of those short and glorious lives.
Why you might want to avoid it: Among the venerable war dead are over 1000 war criminals, a fact that continues to cause friction with Japan’s Asian neighbors.
Where to try instead: Aoyama Reien (Aoyama Cemetery, also called Aoyama Bochi), where you can honor a different kind of hero: the cemetery was founded in the Meiji Era and contains the graves of many of the people, both foreign and Japanese, who helped modernize Japan.

Why Chidorigafuchi Koen is popular: Some 260 trees line this section of the the Imperial palace moat and their reflection on the water makes a beautiful sight; boats can be rented on the moat for a different view of the flowers. At night the cherry trees are lit up and the view is spectacular.
Why you might want to avoid it: With no alcohol or sitting down permitted, only a walk-by hanami is possible here. And that’s a very slow walk-by, since Chidorigafuchi gets extremely crowded.
Where to try instead: Zenpukuji Koen has 200 sakura trees, a pond with boats for rent, and you can actually have a sit-down hanami.

Why Inokashira Koen is popular: 500 trees gracefully overhand a pond with boats for rent; the funky neighborhood of Kichijoji is nearby.
Why you might want to avoid it: Extremely crowded; the resident goddess Benzaiten is said to have put a curse on the pond that dooms visiting couples to a quick break up; those cheesy swan boats really spoil the view.
Where to try instead: Shakujii Koen and Senzoku-ike are a bit smaller and lack the hip location, but they have similar ponds with boats and are curse-free to boot.

Why Roppongi Hills is popular: The striking juxtaposition of the Mori Tower and other ultra-modern buildings behind the cherry blossoms; the trees are lit up at night to dramatic effect; shopping, dining and nightlife options abound nearby.
Why you might want to avoid it: The crowds; there’s no real place to do sit-down hanami.
Where to try instead: There’s also plenty to do around Yokohama's Kamonyama Koen; and the nearby Landmark Tower and other buildings can be seen behind the park's 2000 cherry trees, offering a contrast no less impressive than in Roppongi.

Why Shinjuku Gyoen is popular: Considered by many to be Tokyo’s best park, with sprawling lawns dotted with over 1300 sakura trees.
Why you might want to avoid it: the 200 yen admission fee; alcohol is not permitted; the park closes at 4:30pm.
Where to try instead: Kinuta Koen and Hikarigaoka Koen are similarly large but are free and won't kick you out before sundown.

Why Rikugien is popular: This traditional Japanese garden contains a single shidare-zakura (weeping cherry tree) that is gorgeous during the day and spectacular at night when it is lit up.
Why you might want to avoid it: Ridiculously long lines to enter the park; forget about getting a good picture because the immense crowds will block your view.
Where to try instead: Hamarikyu Onshi Teien and Koishikawa Korakuen are similar landscape gardens, and though they don’t light their sakura up at night the thinner crowds make both parks worth a visit.

Why Meguro Gawa is popular: 800 cherry trees line the Meguro River centering on the trendy neighborhood of Naka Meguro; lanterns strung on either side of the river illuminate the flowers at night; yatai and special events abound.
Why you might want to avoid it: The crowds; insufferably hip locals; the fact that the river is actually more of a canal, completely encased in concrete.
Where to try instead: Nomigawa Ryokudo and Zenpukuji River are similarly sakura-lined canals with views that are just as pretty and fewer people, especially at Zenpukuji.

Why Yoyogi Koen is popular: It’s a big park with wide-open spaces and lots going on nearby; dogs enjoy frolicking in the dog run, one of the few places in the city dogs can shed their leashes.
Why you might want to avoid it: The park doesn’t actually have that many cherry trees.
Where to try instead: Kokuei Showa Kinen Koen is an enormous park in Tachikawa with 1500 cherry trees and a huge variety of other plant life; there’s lots to do for humans and dogs get plenty of space as well, with two runs each for large and small dogs.

Why Sumida Koen is popular: 680 trees line the Sumidagawa River near Asakusa station; street lamps and hanging pink lanterns make them especially beautiful at night when seen from the opposite riverbank.
Why you might want to avoid it: No special reason, except that the cherry blossoms look nicer from the river than on land.
Where to try instead: A cruise on the Sumidagawa River. If you’re lucky you can snag a reservation for a yakatabune (traditional pleasure boat), most of which have all-you-can-eat and drink plans, but a ride on the Suijo Bus’s Sumida River Line is more affordable, starting at 760 yen. For a slightly higher fee Suijo Bus offers night cruises to see the yozakura (cherry blossoms at night); 2500 yen gets you a package that includes a drink, snacks and a performance by a troupe of furisode-san (geisha-like entertainers).

So what are you waiting for? Get out there, see the cherry blossoms, and discover a new part of Tokyo.

JapanSoc it!

Early hanami

Since discovering the early blooming cherry tree in our local park, we've been meaning to go back for hanami (cherry blossom viewing) and this weekend finally gave us some good picnic weather. It was still a bit chilly though, so rather than make up a proper hanami bento (cherry blossom viewing lunchbox) we just picked up a few snacks at a nearby take-out place.

It's still not officially hanami season, since most cherry trees haven't started blooming yet, but the early bloomer I'd found last month had already dropped all of its flowers. Luckily the tree beside was also an early bloomer, and although the flowers were past their peak there were still enough to make this a good hanami spot. And because it was early for hanami there was nobody else out celebrating the flowers, except for a dozen or so mejiro (Japanese white eye, one of the cutest birds ever) who seemed to think they were in heaven. They tend to move about so quickly that I've never been able to photograph one, but here are a few pictures of the sakura (cherry blossoms):

Above was our view, and below was our lunch:

Takoyaki (octopus dumplings) from the takoyaki stand across the street, and beer (happoshu actually) from the convenience store. Takoyaki are small balls of eggy batter filled with chopped octopus and topped with aonori (flaked nori seaweed) and katsuobushi (bonito flakes).

The takoyaki stand has recently started selling imagawayaki (a pancake-like batter filled with something sweet, also called obanyaki or taikoyaki), so we picked up a couple for dessert. There are two flavours: custard cream and the more orthodox anko (sweet red bean paste). And if you're wondering why I am including my grass-covered legs in the picture, it's called foreshadowing.

The first time we bought these, a few weeks ago, the takoyaki lady told us that the custard cream one was identifiable by the aonori on one side. We thought we'd misheard but sure enough one of our treats was green on one side. It was so odd that we assumed she'd just run out of some other more appropriate ingredient for differentiating the flavours, like black sesame seeds or something, and had quickly substituted with the takoyaki ingredients she had on hand.

But the aonori was there again this time, so it seems to be a regular thing. I don't like creamy fillings so I didn't try it, but I believe my husband when he says that aonori and custard cream are a terrible match. My anko-filled imagawayaki was delicious, or at least the two bites of it I got were.

And then I dropped it on the filthy ground. Not a surprising thing for me to do at all, and I should have known enough to have brought a blanket or tarp to protect my food. But no, it fell straight onto a pile of last year's grass.

With a couple of bonus dog hairs as well.

I'm just glad it didn't fall onto one of the many ant holes we discovered we were sitting on. Actually I was really tempted to dip my sullied imagawayaki in the ants to get a more impressive picture (I swear the spot above was crawling with ants before I pointed my camera at it--who knew that ants could be camera shy?), but as I'm long past my ant-torturing stage I decided against it. I hope they like the crumbs we left for them.

Next week if the weather is nice we'll try again. With a better lunch and proper ground covering.

More budget cooking

The first rule of budget cooking is to use what you have, and that means not only using up leftovers but going through your cupboards and using all those canned, jarred and boxed foods you forgot about the instant you put them away three years ago. Well, I'm a champion hoarder and based on a recent kitchen excavation I think we could survive for a month without shopping if we had to. I've already been through some of the stuff and am happy to have re-discovered a few ingredients, like beans (and also sadly discovered, after encountering a batch of beans that just wouldn't soften, that they have a surprisingly short shelf life). Another recent discovery is polenta.

I thought I hated polenta, and the opened and half-used package I found at the back of the cupboard was actually used to make tun cornmeal, a Jamaican dish. But I remembered how much I loved the tun cornmeal and figured Italian style polenta couldn't be much different, and decided to try it.

And now all I can think of is "Polenta, where have you been all my life?" Yup, I really liked it and feel silly for not appreciating it before. What's not to like: it's cheap, healthy, comforting and delicious. It's also still a bit of a mystery food, and I had no idea how to prepare it or incorporate it into a meal, so I just cooked it with some sauteed onions and garlic, turned it out in a baking dish to set (similar to tun cornmeal up to this point), cut it into squares and sauteed it in olive oil, then cut it into strips and placed on top of a salad. Odd? Maybe, but I liked it. I also liked it earlier on, when I ate the leftovers that didn't fit in the baking dish straight from the pot, still hot and porridge-like.

My husband is less keen on it, and I think maybe he felt the same way I felt years ago, the first time I tried polenta and hated it. He did like the crunchy bits on the outside, so there's hope.

The polenta salad was followed by fusilli in tomato sauce. I recently bought a huge amount of pasta from Costco, perhaps a full year's worth, and this fusilli is part of that stash. The sauce started with the leftover sauteed mushrooms and onions from the carbonara I made a few days ago and finished with canned tomatoes from Kaldi (Kaldi has better tomatoes than Costco, usually for 99 yen per can but sometimes on sale for 90 or even 70 yen).

I ended up with plenty of leftover sauce, which means I had leftovers within leftovers. I do like to be frugal and reuse things but there's got to be a point where it just gets unsafe, so I knew I had to use the sauce up quickly.

Which turned out to be easy, seeing as I also had plenty of leftover cooked polenta. I lined the bottom of two oven-proof dishes with the polenta, spooned over the leftover sauce, topped them with some grated grana paderno (also bought at Costco, in a huge block that will likely last half a year) and baked them. Is there any kind of leftover that isn't improved by being covered in cheese and baked? Maybe, but I don't want to know about it.

This was actually a lunch for one, and the other dish is in the fridge waiting for a hungry person to bake it. It's a leftover within a leftover within a leftover, so I hope that person gets hungry soon...

814 Yen

Below is the booty from a recent shopping trip to a local grocery store, one I haven't been to in ages (since they stopped carrying lamb). It's small, not very conveniently located, and has unimpressive produce and seafood sections, but they do have a discount produce shelf that is usually well-stocked with slightly aged or damaged produce. This is one thing I love about Japan: the discount stickers get slapped on for the tiniest of flaws, whereas back home produce practically has to actually be rotting before it gets moved to the discount area.

The discounted produce was two packs of shiitake for 138 yen each, a few of them starting to go soft but still definitely usable; a package of brussels sprouts for 80 yen, slightly brown on the cut portion (but I've never seen the full priced version, usually 400 yen for the same amount, without brown bottoms); shelled soramame (fava or broad beans) for 100 yen, a bit old but no worse than what usually happens to them in my fridge after a few days, and how could I complain when the same amount is usually at least 400 yen (and still and still need to be shelled); and five ponkan (a tasty variety of mandarins) for 200 yen, half the usual price due to one of them being a bit soft (but again, the same condition as it'd be after a bit of time in my fridge, and it turned out to still be totally delicious). The two iwashi (fresh sardines) were not discounted but were going for 79 yen each, a very good price. All went towards that night's dinner (and dessert, in the case of the ponkan), with leftovers.

The soramame and brussels sprouts were parboiled then sauteed in olive oil with garlic and parsley (bought on sale on a previous shopping trip). The iwashi were sliced into boneless fillets then marinated in ponzu, good extra virgin olive oil and black pepper, then served over spinich, mizuna greens and arugula salad (I prepare big batch of mixed salad greens every week or so with whatever greens are the cheapest). I'm not quite sure what to call the fish: ceviche, carpacchio, sashimi? But it was tasty.

The bones and scraps leftover from the iwashi were simmered to make stock. With the addition of a few chunks of meat pried from the bones, the crunchy bottoms of the mizuna greens, a few  wilted cherry tomatoes and some parsley it became a soup. Not a fancy or photogenic one, but tasty.

The mushrooms were sauteed, along with button mushrooms (usually the most expensive mushroom available but bought cheaply on a previous shopping trip), with onion and coppa di parma ham and then mixed with parsley, beaten eggs and grana paderno cheese and tossed with spaghetti. The result was spaghetti carbonara with mushrooms, as tasty as it was cheap to make. Eggs and onions are always budget friendly, and although this dish can be made with very good--and pricey--reggiano parmigiano cheese and prosciutto or pancetta, making it with grana paderno and coppa di parma (parmigiano and prosciutto's poor cousins) makes it much cheaper. Actually, bacon is the most most sensible pancetta substitute, but I had some coppa di parma that I'd stuck in the freezer a while back when it had reached its expiry date. This was a great use for it.

From this meal, I had enough leftovers to make a few more meals: the sauteed vegetables went into the next day's bento (yes, I now make a bento for myself once or twice a week). I had so much of the onion/mushroom/ham mix that went into the pasta that I removed half before adding the eggs; it became the base of a tomato sauce three days later. And the pasta itself made two small servings for lunch the day before that.

Nearly every single thing used to cook this meal was bought on sale or as discounted damaged goods (like the produce); comparison-shopped for the cheapest possible price (like the salt and onions); a leftover or part of a double use item (such as the fish scraps and mizuna bottoms); or something that I'd been tempted to throw away as it was at the end of its life (like the cherry tomaotes and coppa di parma). It was so satisfying to turn it all into a tasty meal, with more to spare. I'm going to have to be quite a bit more frugal in the next few months, but at the same time with Hideaki home to help out around the house I have more time to shop, which means I'll be finding better bargains. It also helps that we have shelves and shelves of hoarded food. I'm totally up for the challenge of budget cooking, and think I may even enjoy it.

Spring Flowers Part Two

It's hard to choose favourites, but of all the sweet-smelling flowers of spring I think jinchoge (sweet daphne) is the best, with its lovely fragrance that is strong enough to make you stop in your tracks, without being cloying. We have bushes of jinchoge at our apartment's front entrance and every time I come home the smell greets me from metres away, then fills up our lobby, and wafts up the stairs as I make my way inside. As a bonus they are also very pretty little flowers.

Here's a surprise: when I was taking pictures of ume and other flowers in Wako Jurin park last month, the park security guard came by and struck up a conversation. He knows me from my morning walks so we're kind of buddies (unlike the security guard in the adjoining Oizumi Chuo park, who is my mortal enemy), and after a brief chat he told me that some sakura were blooming. I wasn't sure if I had heard right (this was February 18th, a good month and a half before this tree should be in bloom) but he repeated himself, and then he grandly extended his arm in the direction of the alleged early bloomer and said "Douzo". As if he were the Emperor of Japan inviting me to his own personal garden or something.

So I followed his arm and indeed there was a cherry tree in bloom, or it least part of a cherry tree in bloom. Why the buds on this section of this tree decided to pop open early is a mystery and while I was taking pictures several people (generously invited by the security guard, no doubt) came by to marvel at the sight.

Next time I see my security guard buddy I'll ask him if it happens every year or if this was just some freak occurrence. But for now I'll just enjoy this unexpected herald of spring, and hope the rest of the sakura come out soon as well.

JapanSoc it!

10,000 yen

Those despairing posts I've been writing lately? I don't think they'll be repeated for a good long while, because dear readers, my luck is changing:

I am now 10,000 yen (about $100 US) richer, thanks to the point card I use at my local supermarket.

Point cards in general annoy me: practically every shop and service here hands them out, and not only do they take up ridiculous amounts of space (I'd need six wallets to hold every card I've accumulated in the past few years) but they can be very hard to fill up unless you shop at that particular store very very often. This is often made worse by an expiry date, which means I'll faithfully use a card for a year and then the expiry date will pass just before I reach the number of points necessary for a payoff. All of those seconds spent searching for and handing over various cards add up and by my calculations I've probably lost two whole years of my life to these stupid cards.

So I usually throw away point cards as soon as I get them, and now my wallet only holds a handful of point cards that are from stores either proven in their generosity or are very frequently shopped at. The card above is of the latter category, Summit being the supermarket where I do most of my grocery shopping. It's nearby, has good prices and nice staff and it usually has what I need, with especially good produce and fish sections. I've been shopping there since shortly after I moved to the area just over three years ago, and I'd never been able to figure out what exactly was happening to the points I was collecting. The grocery store near our old apartment would regularly spit out 500 yen discounts and had frequent sales for point card holders only, but at Summit there were never any sales for us cardholders and the points just kept adding up. It was starting to feel kind of silly, in a Pavlovian sort of way, me faithfully using the card on every shopping trip without any apparent reason. Until this Sunday when my checkout lady informed me that I'd accumulated 10,000 points and to please report to the service counter to collect my 10,000 yen.

I assumed I'd misheard but Hideaki was there and he heard it just fine, so we headed to the service counter and watched another lady place my receipt and a 10,000 bill in an envelope and hand it to me. She was polite and all but it just seemed rather normal to her, like she handed out free money all the time. The normalcy of it all gave the event a surreal feeling, because to me it seems like when you win a large sum of money there should be a bigger deal made, like maybe the service counter lady should have put on white gloves before handing me my money, and held it up to show that it was a brand new crisp bill, and congratulated me before having a  security guard escort me out. Bells should have rung, confetti been released, announcements made on the intercom, pictures taken, maybe a parade...

But it was just business as usual so Hideaki and I walked out of the store all cool-like and normal, and when we were out we jumped up and down and hugged each other and behaved in a way that would suggest that we'd won the lottery.

In fact, 10,000 yen is not that much money, and compared to Canadian style supermarkets with their coupons and amazing sales, 10,000 yen for three years of faithful shopping is nothing. But I like Summit and would shop there anyway, so this really was a nice bonus. And more importantly, it happened on the day before my husband's first official day of unemployment, at a time we were feeling rather pessimistic and worried about the future and unlucky in general. And although the money will soon be gone and will not solve any of our problems, it had an amazing effect on our spirits. It reminded us that nice things do happen, and bad luck turns in to good, and that everything is going to be OK.

It also gave us something to talk about. Which is important, because we're going to be spending a lot of time together over the next little while and I predict we'll be running out of topics soon. And after hours of intricate negotiations we've figured out exactly how we're going to spend it. Stay tuned!

JapanSoc it!

Spring Flowers

How could I have forgotten the pictures I took of these lovely flowers last month? February was a busy flower month at the local park, with ume (Japanese apricot), roubai (wintersweet), mansaku (witch hazel) and even sakura (cherry blossoms) all in bloom. These flowers here are roubai, which literally means "wax ume" due to the waxy appearance of the petals; the English name refers to its early blooming season and the sweet smell the flowers release.

This is mansaku, another sweet-smelling yellow flower. Actually, it also comes in orange (as seen above) and the fragrance is much more subtle than roubai--I find it similar to kinmokusei (sweet olive, an early autumn flower). The flowers are a bit odd, starting with buds of tightly curled petals which unfurl into long wispy spears.

 

These flowers are on the far side of the park, a place I rarely get to these days, but I'm sure they're all gone by now. It's hard to feel sad though, knowing that cherry blossom season is just around the corner...

JapanSoc it!

Back to food

There hasn't been much food around here in recent months so I think it's time to show you what I've been eating lately. And lately it's been lots of stews and nabe (hotpots), which are warming, easy to make and usually can be stretched into several meals: perfect for cold weather and a period of my life when I'm busy and not really into cooking.

We'll start with the gyusuji nikomi (stewed beef tendon) above, which was simmered for hours until tender in soy sauce and sake along with daikon, shiitake, negi (long onion), shirataki (konnyaku, or devil's tongue jelly, noodles), and eggs. Served with rice and chopped okra mixed with katsuobushi (bonito flakes) and soy sauce, this was a healthy meal: beef tendon is so extremely flavourful that we only ate a very small amount of meat but enjoyed its rich flavour in the food it was simmered with.

It made a few days worth of leftovers. Here tofu and stronger seasonings have been added, making it good for eating with rice. And when the solid ingredients were gone we ate neko manma, a slightly naughy indulgance. Neko manma literally means "cat food" (manma being baby talk for solid food) and it refers to the dish that results from mixing the leftovers of a meal together, which is then fed to the cat. It's usually rice mixed with miso soup or the liquid from stews like the one above and happens to be an absolutely delicious way to finish a meal, but it is bad manners both to mix food and to add stuff to rice (people here have a weird thing for the sacred purity of white rice and would drop dead with shock if they saw a westerner pour soy sauce directly onto her rice). So even everybody loves eating this way, they all know it's bad manners and continue to call it cat food. Even when there's no cat and they have every intention of eating it themselves. Anyway, try neko manma for yourself, but do it at home--this is not something to do in company.

Here is oden, a stew of daikon, and any number of other foods, usually fish or tofu related. The bowl above includes egg, hampen (steamed fish cake), yaki chikuwa (a steamed and grilled tube of fish paste), yakidoufu (grilled tofu), chikuwabu (a chewy tube of wheat gluten), konnyaku (devil's tongue jelly), and daikon. There was plenty more in the pot and this is just a small sampling of oden, but you can probably imagine that it's warming and healthy. But it's also far more satisfying than many healthy foods thanks to all the variety (and also thanks to the delicious broth, made with kombu and katsuobushi and flavoured with sake and light soy sauce). It can be a very budget-friendly food, and this meal is especially so: the daikon greens were sauteed in sesame oil, flavoured with soy sauce and sesame seeds and added to the rice, and a side dish was made by simmering the daikon peels with the kombu (kelp) and katsuobushi (dried bonito) used to make the oden broth. The greens and used kombu and katsuobushi tend to get thrown out in modern Japanese households, but taking the time to turn them into something edible is so rewarding.

Here are the ingredients to one of the many nabes I made this winter. Hakusai (Chinese cabbage), salmon, ground chicken mixed with garlic, ginger and other seasonings (to be spooned into the broth as meatballs), thinly sliced pork, grated daikon, shungiku (chrysanthemum leaves), atsu-age (fried tofu), negi (long onion) and shiitake.

Here are some of the ingredients ready to eat, cooked in kombu dashi (kelp stock) at the table. The good is added to the broth and taken out to eat litle by little, with the stock being monitered: extra stock will be added when it gets low, and periodically the foam that rises to the top will be skimmed off (the pot above is due for a skimming).

With some nabe the food is plucked from the pot, placed in a bowl and eaten as-is, but we usually add flavourings. In the bowl is grated daikon and ponzu (soy-based citrus sauce), and the food gets dipped in that before eating. Eventually the stock becomes so tasty from all of the ingredients that little extra flavouring is needed, and when the ingredients have run out udon noodles or rice is cooked in the leftover broth. In our house this is usually done the next day or the next day after that as we like to stretch the nabe into a few meals. We also cook extra ingredients in the nabe and serve them the next day as a kind of stew, so when you see the huge amount of ingredients in the pictures above and below don't assume we ate it all at once--we're not total pigs.

Another nabe, a bit classier but featuring many of the same ingredients. The hakusai, shiitake, tofu and pork are the same as usual (they show up for practically every nabe at our house), and there are a few special ingredients, including a mystery green (there are so many types of leafy greens in Japan that I haven't even tried half of them, and totally forget what this new one was) and enokidake mushrooms.

Kuzukiri, noodles made of kuzu starch. They are flavourless but are very good at absorbing flavours and have a nice jelly-like texture. They are pre-soaked before being added to the nabe and left to simmer for several minutes, and when they're ready they must be eaten quickly before they turn too soft.

Fresh oysters. This is not my favourite way of eating oysters but they add such a wonderful flavour to the broth.

Buri (yellowtail) sashimi. I sliced it myself with my knew knife, and while I wouldn't call this an expert job it's the best I've done so far. The sashimi can be eaten as-is or dipped in the nabe.

And there it is ready to eat. The sashimi to be eaten up that night, but the other ingredients lasted for another meal.

The next day udon and egg were added to the broth to make this rich udon soup. I almost like this better than the original nabe.

And that's a brief summary of our recent dinners. There is still a month or two of nabe and stew weather and I intend to make full use of it, and at the same time I'm looking forward to lighter spring fare. Hopefully you'll be seeing more yummy stuff on this blog.

Hina Matsuri

We interrupt this broadcast to bring you pictures of cute kids and pretty food; hopefully it will be a nice change from the whining of the previous posts. Thank you for your many kind and sympathetic comments. They really helped cheer me up, as did hibernating at home (where bad things never happen) for a couple of days. And today the sky is blue and the sun is shining and I'm so over my crappy February and its leftovers. It's going to be a good day and a good month and damn it, I'm going to live happily ever after.

So March 3rd was Hina Matsuri (Doll's Festival or Girls' Day) and on Sunday we were invited to my sister-in-law's place to celebrate. I'm not too sure what Hina Matsuri is all about, since it's a festival aimed at little girls and I was already a big girl when I first came to Japan, but here's an explanation if you're curious. Anyway, the day involves food so understand it or not, I'm happy to celebrate.

I had forgotten to charge my camera's battery (February leftovers at work) and somehow my phone, which is perfectly capable of taking decent pictures when it wants to, was not cooperating. So even with mounds of awesome food, an adorable four year old niece, and a fancy display case full of Hina dolls, I ended up with just these two pictures.

Above is Marya looking devious in front of a table full of food. The main savory dishes served for Hina Matsuri are chirashizushi (sushi rice scattered with various toppings, in this case including salmon roe, scallops, carrot and sliced thin omelet) and hamaguri (clams, in this case served in clear soup), and other than that anything that is cute and child-friendly. Above is koyadoufu (freeze-dried tofu) topped with namafu (raw wheat gluten); strawberries and camembert cheese; datemaki (sweet rolled omelet); and roasted vegetables. If only the chirashizushi and clam soup pictures had turned out--they were gorgeous.

This is Girls' Day though, so sweets are really the main event. First there's amazake (a sweet drink made of fermented rice), then arare (tiny sweet rice crackers), and then my favourite: sakuramochi. Shown above, it's steamed mochigome (glutinous rice) stuffed with anko (sweet red bean paste), wrapped in a salted cherry leaf and topped with a preserved cherry blossom. Store bought ones usually use food colour to get the mochi bright pink, but these are home-made with natural colouring and thus the pink is very subtle. These are so much better than store bought.

I'm not sure if it's usual to buy presents for Hina Matsuri, but we'd missed Marya's birthday in January so we gave her something. We had been totally stuck on what to get her and were wandering through the toy store when we came upon an entire aisle dedicated to Sylvanian Families. I was surprised and delighted as I remember Sylvanian Families from when I was a kid and didn't know they were still around. Wait, scratch that, apparently I remember them from my early teens and my best friend did not have the entire collection that made me so jealous: Wikipedia has just told me Sylvanian Families have only been around since 1985. And not only that, but they are from Japan! Alright, my faulty memory is no big surprise, but Japan? I never would have guessed. I don't know where I thought they from--Sylvania? But I never imagined they were from Japan. What's next--am I going to find out that Monchichi and Transformers come from Japan too? (Kidding, but I swear to god I just googled the Cabbage Patch Kids to check their provenance.)

Anyway, it seems that Sylvanian Families is still big here, and we ended up getting Marya a school bus along with a couple of little students and a driver: not quite the whole collection but a nice start and well timed as Marya is starting junior kindergarten next month. She seemed to like it, and I hope her parents--who prefer toys made from sustainably harvested wood and organic cotton--forgive me.

Well, I'm done here. It's time for me to go out and have a wonderful day. I hope you do too!

Oh god, not March too...

See the ripped jeans, mask and can of happoushu (imitation beer product)? They're so not me. Neither is the look on my face (that you can't even see underneath the stupid mask), which is pissed off, or frazzled, or upset, or whatever that strange emotion is called. Oh wait, that's it: "stress" is what they say. I think. How would I know? I'm an easy going kind of girl, and have purposely chosen a lifestyle that is very low in stress, and indulge in a variety of hobbies and pastimes that are excellent at erasing what little of it does come my way. But thanks to the crappy events of last month my system is breaking down. March is so far no better than February.

So let me tell you about my crappy day yesterday. It was a day off, and my plan was to have a relaxing morning at home before walking to the gym (it's a long walk, nearly an hour, and thus counts as half a workout), stopping at my local post office on the way to open a postal savings account. And then after my workout I'd walk to a certain supermarket that has a free shuttle bus, letting me pick up some groceries and take the bus home for free. A simple plan, one that seemingly couldn't go wrong.

But if you live in Japan you'll already know my plan was doomed, as we all know that nothing ever goes right at the post office. Postal workers here have a way of making things six times more complicated than they needs to be (it's in their contracts), and my local post office in particular has one lady who absolutely refuses to understand my Japanese and also refuses to believe I can understand hers, causing her to communicate with me in a mixture of baby talk, random English words (at least I think it's English) and wild gestures. But I was pretty sure she only worked in the mail section and not in the banking section, and besides, how hard could it be to open a damn postal account?

Plenty hard, it turns out. And even though wild gesture lady did indeed stick to the mail section and the two ladies I had to deal with didn't belittle my Japanese abilities, it took an hour and fifteen minutes--and a lot of aggravation--to open the account. There's no point in going into details, but I'll just share one highlight: at one point the tiny post office became quite crowded, and that was the point at which one of the ladies chose to come out into the waiting room to talk to me, rather than call me up to the counter as is the norm. She had to maneuver around 10 or so people to get to me, and when she did she loudly listed the reasons why she didn't want me to open an account with my signature (foreigners are actually perfectly able to open bank accounts and the like with their signatures instead of the usual hanko, or name seal--a ridiculous item that deserves a post of its own). After all, I'm married to a native, which makes me practically Japanese, and really, only "regular" foreigners are allowed to get away with using their signatures. And oh look: my address is such-and-such, which is just around the corner, so it would just take a few minutes to go get my hanko. Or my husband's hanko. I do handle all of my husband's finances, don't I? No? Well, aren't I worried that if I die or get into an accident my husband won't be able to access my account?

And so on, until all the other folks in the post office knew everything about me, including my address. I actually wasn't completely against using a hanko, but at their first attempt to persuade me to use one they had said that strictly I didn't have to--they just wanted me to. And since they were being such dicks about everything and I knew didn't actually have to use a hanko, I was compelled to stand my ground on that one point. So it got done, but it took an hour longer than I'd planned, and I lost my chance to walk to the gym.

Which was just as well as the wind had picked up considerably and it wouldn't have been a very nice walk. Plus it is now the peak of hayfever season, and being outdoors in the wind would make my allergies even worse, even with protection (a giant pair of sunglasses and dorky surgical mask are quite effective to a point, but by the end of a long walk my eyes are weepy, nose runny and body covered in pollen, no matter how much I've covered up). So I caught the bus and when I got off I realized that the post office visit had made me too tired and hungry to work out properly. With few choices nearby I settled on Mister Donuts, because they have, strangely enough, a small selection of Chinese food: ramen, nikuman (cha siu baio, or steamed pork buns) and the like, and a nikuman and hot cup of oolong tea were just what I needed. But it turns out that this particular Mister Donuts doesn't carry Chinese food, and not only that but they were sold out of every savory item they had (they usually have meat pies, curry buns and stuff like that). Not craving sweets at all, I chose the least sweet item they had: a rice-flour doughnut dusted with kinako (soy bean flour) and a coffee.

So I went up to the second floor and sat down amid a crowd of noisy teenagers--it seems school had just finished and the doughnut shop was the place to be. My attempts at eating my doughnut seemed to amuse them, as anyone who has eaten something covered in kinako will understand. Just like powdered sugar, it falls off and gets everywhere, and trying to brush it off your clothes only rubs it in. Annoyed, I gulped down my coffee as fast as I could and left.

It was seriously windy by that point, and the hordes of illegally parked bicycles encircling Mister Donuts had mostly been blown over, leaving just one clear path going in the direction opposite of where I wanted to go. A sensible person would have taken that path, but I, wanting to save three seconds, decided to step over one of the downed bicycles. It would have worked out just fine, except that as I was in mid-step a sudden gust of wind knocked over the bike next to me, causing the downed bike to shift. In changing the direction of my step, so as not to step on the newly shifted downed bike, I lost my balance and fell on my hands and knees, ass in the air.

This wasn't a crowded street, but there were enough passersby (who promptly ignored me) for my fall to be embarrassing, and as I was willing a giant hole to appear beneath me and swallow me up a miracle occurred: a man asked if I was alright. He didn't actually slow down as he walked past, and obviously he had no intention of actually helping me, but just for saying something I wanted to hug him. I didn't even mind that he was laughing (laughing with me or at me, I couldn't tell and didn't care--I'll take what sympathy I can get). So I got up and turned around to make sure I hadn't damaged the bike, and as I did so I noticed that the folks lining up for doughnuts inside were staring at me. And then I looked up, and saw all the bratty teenagers on the second floor were not only staring, but laughing, and this time it was most definitely AT me.

Why I should care what a bunch of high school kids think about me is a mystery (I certainly didn't when I was an actual high school student). But it really bugged me, and it bugged me that it bugged me, and I was dusting myself off and attempting to pull myself together when I noticed a hole in the knee of my jeans.

Not a big deal for a normal sized person, who could just go out and buy a new pair, but these happened to be the only decent pair of jeans (and thus pants) that fit me properly. Oh I have plenty of jeans, but they're all floods, or too tight, or too low-waisted, or, being made for a small tubular Japanese body, a weird mix of too low-waisted, too tight in some places, too loose in other places, and way too short in the leg. But these jeans fit perfectly, having been bought in Canada after an extensive search several visits ago, only to never find them again on following visits (my weirdly shaped body makes it hard to find jeans that fit well even back home). And now they were ruined. Oh sure, fashionable people wear fashionably ripped jeans all the time, but that's not a look I'm into at all. Nor am I into patches, so I guess I'll be wearing skirts until I either loose weight, get my legs shortened or take a trip home to Canada and track down another pair.

OK, big deal. I like skirts. I knew a nice hard workout would make me feel better, so determined to be calm and cheerful I continued on to the gym, where I gave the check-in lady a big smile (or an eye smile, since I had my mask on) and handed her my Passmo (an IC card used for trains and buses, and definitely not for gyms). And when I finally found the right card and got to the change rooms, I glanced at a mirror and saw that not only was I covered in kinako, but a big chunk of my hair had blown up over my hat and stayed there, which looked absolutely ridiculous and made me wonder exactly how long it had been like that. The mask only made me look more stupid, but at least it's normal here and to any onlookers that day it would have been the least strange thing about me. And it did hide my dripping nose.

Everything went fine at the gym, I had a great workout, a nice soak in the sauna, and emerged feeling wonderful. I arrived at the supermarket just as the last free bus of the day was leaving, which wasn't a big deal, and the store was sold out of almost everything I wanted to buy, which also wasn't a big deal, and when I went to the regular bus stop I saw I'd just missed my bus. Also not a big deal and I noted the time of the next bus and went back into the store to keep warm, coming out just before my bus was expected. Ten freezing minutes later I realized I'd read the weekend schedule and that while waiting in the supermarket I'd missed two buses, and by the time the next bus came--late--it was the peak of rush hour and the fifteen minute ride home was spent standing crushed against bony salarymen and heavily laden office ladies, who all seemed to have eight purses and seventeen very sharp elbows each. One of my hands desperately held the strap above to keep me from falling into the elbows and bags as the bus swerved madly, the driver going at maximum speed to get back onto schedule, and the other hand held my gym bag and a full bag of groceries, which caused my muscles, already worked to their limit at the gym, to nearly give out.

I finally arrived at home, battled, bruised and torn, where my husband was waiting for me. One of the benefits of working for a company that was about to go under was that there isn't a whole lot of work to do, so these days he gets home early. And what a treat it was to come home to an apartment that was lit, warmed up, and contained both my husband and a hot dinner (he had just heated up leftovers, but still). I felt better instantly.

The only way the day could have ended better would have been with a beer. But a beer-like malt alcohol type beverage wasn't a bad substitute. You see, in my new status as a poor person I am not allowed to drink actual beer, which costs upwards of 250 yen per can. I must drink happoushu, the poor woman's beer, which is in a different tax category than regular beer due to low malt content and thus quite a bit cheaper--as low as 100 yen per can. I actually prefer real beer and usually don't mind paying extra for it, but there are times when you don't drink beer for the flavour, and happoushu certainly gets the job done just as well as real beer. I chose Suntory's Rich Malt because the can's design looked the most beer-like and it came in a tall-boy, and perhaps it was just because I really, really needed a beer, but it tasted pretty good. If this is what being poor tastes like, maybe it won't be so bad after all.

I'm hoping the awfulness of the day was just leftovers of February, like some kind let lag of crappiness or a hangover or something. March isn't going to suck too, is it?

JapanSoc it!

PS, I just wanted to update this to add: Look how frigging good my hair looks! I mean, there are stray hairs and split ends and stuff, but it never ever looks this nice. I swear I was trying to mess it up to look all windblown for the picture but apparently this was as messy as it would get. Why is it that on a regular day it takes me hours to get my hair to look nice but the one time I want it looking bad it ends up looking better than its looked in months?

February is the oddest month

If April is the cruelest month, then February is the oddest. February 2009 was both odd and eventful, and although some good stuff also happened, I'm really glad its over. Here are some highlights of the month:

-- Wiarton Willie, Ontario's official Groundhog Day groundhog, saw his shadow on February 2nd, predicting six more weeks of winter. Which doesn't mean much to me here in Japan, except that I now know to never, ever bring Groundhog Day up in an English class again. Trying to explain the holiday a week later to a group of lower-intermediate level women was one of the hardest things I've done, and elicited some strange questions (including the same question they've asked about Halloween pumpkins and Easter eggs: "Do you eat it?"). It ended with them completely confused and me realizing that it's a really, really stupid custom.

-- Meanwhile, February 3rd passed without any Setsubun celebrations here at Casa Nakazawa. I was too sick to go buy a sushi roll to eat while facing this year's lucky direction is (I don't even know this year's lucky direction), or thrown soybeans around the house. Not being superstitious this didn't really bother me, until a few days later I remembered that the one year since we got married that we didn't celebrate Setsubun turned out to be the worst year ever.

-- February 3rd was a far better day for Krista (my best friend since kindergarten!) who gave birth to a healthy and adorable baby boy. Welcome to the world, JWL!

-- Lux Interior, lead singer of one of my all-time favourite bands, died in the early hours of February 4th, just missing the 50th anniversary of The Day the Music Died. He did check out in time to coincide with the anniversaries of Patty Hearst's kidnapping and Liberace's death, which I guess is the next best thing.

-- The next day I had an online chat with my cousin, a high school teacher in Vancouver, who at the time was holed up in her office with her students while her school was under a several-hour lock-down (after reports of students entering the school with guns). I was really scared for her until eventually it became clear that she wasn't in danger and she was just dealing with boredom, but unfortunately I'm not really experienced in consoling or entertaining people in this situation. Luckily she seemed to chatting with other people, and I hope they were able to come up with something better than repeated Oh My Gods and questions about how she was handling the bathroom situation.

-- Random strangers were more human than usual this month, which was a nice treat.
One day I almost walked up a down escalator and a girl walking beside me, who managed to get on the correct escalator while watching me try to board the wrong one, actually smiled at me then laughed when I laughed (and in a laughing WITH me kind of way no less). Which doesn't seem like a big deal but I live in Tokyo, where people typically exhibit all the warmth and personality of robots and never ever interact with each other. So when I do embarrassing stuff in public (a sadly common occurrence) the usual reaction is to completely ignore me, which somehow makes it even worse. On extremely rare occasions I'll get a smirk, but always in a laughing AT me way (and even then I'm grateful because at least it's a valid form of human interaction).
On another day I was on a crowded subway with Hideaki when a crazy man came by and started talking to us. He was the enthusiastically happy kind of crazy and Hideaki talked back to him, which led to a little chat. He eventually moved on and started talking to an older salaryman type guy, who also, amazingly, talked back. Mr. Happy Crazy seemed delighted to have so many conversation partners and moved back and forth between Mr. salaryman and us for a while, talking politics and grinning non-stop, before saying good-bye and exiting the subway, off to who knows where. Again, it doesn't seem like much, but I have never once seen a (sane) Tokyoite talk back to a crazy person. The proper reaction to being accosted by a talkative crazy is to look the other way and pretend nothing is happening, or to walk away, or (if on public transit) to feign sleep. Mr. salaryman became my hero for the day, for daring to not be a robot (same goes for the crazy guy).

--Out on a walk, Hideaki and I came upon two boxes of stuff with a sign saying "Go jiyuu ni omochi kudasai" (please take what you like). This is a fairly unusual sight, but not unheard of as it's one of the few ways for people to get rid of good stuff that they don't want to throw in the garbage. The boxes contained a lifetime of treasures from Japan and South East Asia, mostly in the form of vases, statuettes and other decorative objects, and sets of sake cups and flasks. A lot of the SE Asian stuff was made of pewter, which is rare here--so rare that shirome, the Japanese word for pewter, is unknown to most Japanese (thus a few of the boxes were marked "Malaysian tin"). I wanted to take it all, but since I'm currently trying to de-clutter it didn't make sense to come home with a bunch more stuff, so I settled on the four pieces above. Hideaki wasn't crazy about the wooden Balinese carvings, saying that they don't go with our decor, but I shut him up by pointing out that we have no decor (nobody in Tokyo does--who has the space?).

A lot of the things were in their original boxes, most hand-labeled in both Japanese and English. It all appeared to be at least a few decades old and the vases and sake cups were obviously well-used, and it made me wonder what the story behind this stuff was. I figured it had belonged to a world traveler who had recently passed away and whose children were charged with cleaning up his or her house; there were a few boxes of souvenirs that the children didn't want but couldn't bear to throw away, and wanting to get it over with as soon as possible came up with the idea of giving them away to passersby. It made me sad, but I figured that these objects were proof that their former owner had led a full and interesting life and that taking them was a good thing, or at least better than letting them end up in the trash.

-- A week later we got rid of a few boxes of our own stuff, but instead of giving it away we brought it to a local second-hand shop. We didn't expect much, since "recycle shops" as they're called here are notoriously stingy, but were paid just over 5000 yen for what was, to us, a bunch of junk. Score! We regretted not snatching up all of the free stuff from the week before, figuring we could have made a tidy profit, but being $50 richer and having a little more room in our apartment is good enough.

-- I managed to confuse another English class when we spent a few lessons learning about Rock 'n' Roll. The lessons were based on an article that came with their textbook covering the history of rock and its offshoots. It was hardly a comprehensive guide to rock, but I was amazed at the number of musicians and bands (and entire genres, like Motown, rap, reggae and punk) that they'd never heard of. Little Richard, Chuck Berry, The Platters, The Temptations, James Brown, Stevie Wonder, Bob Marley and Run D.M.C.? Nobody knew them. Two (out of a class of four middle-aged women) knew the Rolling Stones, Diana Ross, and Bob Dylan. This wouldn't be so strange if rock and its offshoots weren't at all big here, but certain American and British rock bands are tremendously popular. In this class, for example, everyone knew and loved Elvis (who is called "Presley" here) and the Beatles, and they also knew Michael Jackson and Madonna. I guess Micheal Jackson is on to something: if you want to big in Japan, you better be white.

--My parents went on their annual vacation to Jamaica, along with my sister and two of her kids, the lucky bastards. I was also invited, and I'd saved up enough money in recent months to have afforded it, but our computer has been acting up so I decided a new computer would be a better investment than a vacation. This is what I got:

A brand-new aluminum MacBook. I love it but it's my first Mac and is going to take some getting used to. I got a very good price, thanks to kakaku.com, and had enough yen leftover to buy a mini fridge, which I've been wanting forever due to our main fridge's constant near-bursting fullness. I don't know why I can't make do with one fridge like everybody else does, but at least it's a quirk that I come by honestly, since for as long as I can remember my family has had at least three fridges (the main one in the kitchen plus, at the bare minimum, a beer fridge and a giant freezer in the basement/garage/spare room). I can't wait to fill the fridge part with booze and the freezer part with discount meat bought at those wonderful sales that I've never before been able to take advantage of due to lack of space.

-- Almost right away I regretted my new purchases and realized I wouldn't be filling the fridge with rare and precious wines anytime soon, as a few weeks ago Hideaki learned that his company was bankrupt. And not just bankrupt, but so out of money that it couldn't even last another month, and this will be his last week at work. On the bright side it made me a little less bummed about not going to Jamaica, because it would really have sucked for him to be alone with the bad news. Sleepless nights are so much more bearable with company, and I was glad to be there for him.

We've been through this before and know it's not the end of the world, and we also know that there are many people who are far worse off than we are. But that doesn't make the situation suck any less, and it's hard to be optimistic when Japan's job market is in the worst shape it's been in in recent memory.

I guess that's what happens when you skip Setsubun. Next year I'm throwing those beans for sure.