Cooking Class

Recently, a lady in my office invited me to join a cooking class with her. Normally that isn't something I'd be interested in, but I'm trying to be open to new things while in Japan, so I said sure, and it's been a lot of fun. Our first class was last month, and we made chox a la creme, a French pastry that's popular over here. Yesterday was our second class, and we made a more traditional Japanese dessert.

This is mizuyoukan. I had always seen it at grocery and convenience stores, but never knew what it was called. This is a pretty common occurrence for me in Japan; I eat a lot of things without knowing what they're called or what they're made of.

Mizuyoukan, as it turns out, is made mostly of water, sugar, and red bean paste. You boil it all in a pan, ice it down, and then freeze it like jello. It's a nice summer sweet, and the red bean paste makes a very unique flavor--at least, I'd never eaten anything like it before coming to Japan.

The sensei owns a bakery in town, and we'll be going there next month to make ice cream.

Hina Matsuri

Girls' Day, or the Doll Festival, is a holiday held on March 3. (Yes, I'm a little late with this post.) It's pretty simple. Girl children will have a set of dolls given to them by their family, and the dolls are put on display for that day.

The doll sets can be very expensive, and many of them are passed on through generations. Here are some my ikebana sensei was setting up at her house during Friday's class.

Here's the whole set:

A close up on the emperor and empress' little house:

The emperor and empress themselves:

And all the other guys:

Sensei's set was really old but in very good condition, and I felt really lucky to get to see it. My only question is why everyone has to go to work and school on Girls' Day. Don't we girls deserve a day off? ;)

A little taste of home

As you may know, the Japanese McDonald's is a little...different from its American counterpart. The servings are smaller, they have their own toys, and the menu is different. But while usually the menu is different because it's more Japanese, sometimes the difference is that it's trying to be more American.

Exhibit A:
The Miami Burger. It's part of a series of American-themed burgers the Japanese McDonald's has been putting out. There was a Texas burger, an Idaho Burger, and coming soon is the Manhattan Burger. The box says it all, really: "Big America." Is it referring to the fact that American burgers are bigger than Japanese ones? That America as a country is bigger than Japan? Or that Americans are big from eating lots of burgers? I don't know, but I love it.

But the real question is, "How does it taste?" I had one for lunch, and it was really good. Although, to be honest, I'm not really sure what's very "Miami" about it.

Those are tortilla chips in there. I think the "Mexican Burger" might be a more appropriate name.

But like I said, it tasted good. And since I'm a Floridian, eating a hamburger named after a city in my state while on the other side of the world was a pretty cool experience. It definitely made my day--and my lunch. :)

Nagasaki Lantern Festival

Last weekend I hopped on a bus to Nagasaki for the annual lantern festival there! The festival actually originated in China and celebrates the Chinese New Year. And it does so with lots and lots of lanterns!

Seriously, there were so many of them. I don't think I'm going to talk much for this post. I'll just picture-spam you.

We got there in the afternoon, so the lanterns weren't lit up yet, but they're made into such awesome shapes and with all these bright colors that they're cool to look at, lights or no.

Of course, once it did get dark enough for them to start lighting up, it looked amazing.

There was even a drum performance! Which I am told was Okinawan, not Chinese, but it was still cool.

My camera just doesn't do it justice, honestly.

I wish I could have stayed there longer, but the bus left at 7:30, and I kind of had to be on it. ;) But what time I did have was a whole lot of fun.

Happy Year of the Rabbit, everyone!

Bounenkai

Bounenkai (忘年会) means "year-end party." Last year for my office's bounenkai we ate at a nice Okinawan restaurant in Fukuoka City, spent the night in a business hotel, and then went on our way. This year was different, and I liked it a lot more. (Not that last year's wasn't fun. This year's was just amazing.)

This year we went to Yufuin and stayed in a ryokan, the traditional-style Japanese hotel. This is the building where we ate:

To get from there to the building that held our rooms, we had to cross this:

It went over a small canyon at the bottom of which was a river pretty much covered in snow.

This was my room. I shared it with three other ladies in my section.


Inside, all the standard conveniences were provided:

a TV,

kotatsu,
and bath.

And yes, you're seeing that right; the bath was outside. Well, one of the baths was. There was one inside too. There was also an onsen, the hot springs/public bath.

The men's onsen is behind the blue door, and the women's the red. There were two baths behind the women's door: an indoor one and an outdoor one. The outdoor one was absolutely gorgeous. It was lined with rocks, beyond which was snow, but you didn't need to worry about the cold because the bath was so hot. I went at night, and I could lie in the water and see the full moon over the dark mountains. I wish I could've stayed in it longer, but the water was so hot I had to get out.

Here's the steam rising from behind the onsen. Like I said, it was hot.

It was just a really pretty place.

We had dinner there, a really elaborate meal with multiple courses. Here's just a sample of all the stuff I ate:

I was painfully full by the end of it. And breakfast the next morning was almost as big.

After that we walked around downtown for a while, ate a big lunch at another restaurant, and then finally came home.

It was a really cool experience. We got there at night, and walking between the buildings, with the forest and the snow and the Japanese architecture--I knew right away that it was going to be a good trip, and it didn't disappoint.

I wonder where we're going next year. ;)

Merry Christmas

Merry Christmas!

I won't be posting anything new for a while since I'm home for the holidays, but I thought I'd finish off the year with some photos of Christmas decorations in Japan. So enjoy!








And of course it wouldn't be Christmas in Japan without KFC!

Sumo!

A couple weeks ago I went to a sumo tournament--and forgot my camera. I had to make do with my phone camera, so the images aren't of as high a quality as I'd like, but anyway.

When we first got to the stadium where the tournament was being held, we hung out in front of the building for a while with the people waiting for the wrestlers to arrive. The matches actually started at eight in the morning, but the lowest-ranking guys wrestle first. I got there at around 2:00, and the "big-league" guys hadn't started yet. The final match with the yokozuna, the highest-ranking wrestler, ended the tournament at around 6:00.

Anyway, there were sumo wrestlers everywhere--even one on the bus with me. I just found something really funny about watching them get of little taxis and stuff.


Here's a picture of the sumo ring, taken from the ground floor hallway. As we were walking through the hallway, we passed more wrestlers getting ready for their match--there was no special section for them or anything dividing them from us, which was pretty cool.

Before the top division of wrestlers began their matches, they paraded out to the announcer-guy calling their names. There were a whole lot of ceremonial aspects to the tournament, which I thought was really neat.


And of course there were advertisements! What sporting event would be complete without a McDonalds ad? Not sumo! Apparently McDs was sponsoring the whole tournament or something, because when we walked in we were handed free McDonalds fans.

It was a really cool day, overall. The matches weren't like what I expected. There's no set "start" time for the wrestlers to slam into each other. They spend several minutes staring each other down in a sort of psychological warfare type thing, during which they can both start, or one can snub the other and walk off into the corner, for them to try again a minute later.

There's still a lot of rules and stuff I don't understand, but that didn't stop sumo from being really fun to watch.