Oden/おでん

Oden is a typical dish in winter time in Japan. It’s easy to make and delicious! To make it better, you should simmer a variety of ingredients together and simmer them for a long time.( I kept simmering them for 4 hours this time.) Extracts from each ingredients seep into broth and that tasty broth seep back into them again.

Mochi-kinchaku my no.1 favorite!

Egg;no.2

Hampen/はんぺん;no.3 a kind of fish cake

It's served in an electric hot pan/ホットプレート to keep them hot

Like a single woman

I went see a movie ‘Public Enemies’  with one of my friend yesterday. How refreshing to go out without my husband and kids! It’s nice to be with them, of course, but it’s a different thing to hung around shopping mall, have a nice lunch, and talk about our Johnny Depp with a female friend. It’s not popular to have a sitter to look after your kids in Japan, so I had to ask for a help to my mother when I wanted to go out. My husband has never changed a diaper of kids and doesn’t know how to spend the time with young kids all by himself, so I had not been able to go out without a worry so often so far. Now kids have become bigger and they can stay with dad (without me) all day long. It makes me feel so free!

Needless to say, Johnny’s John Dillinger was fascinating! I don’t know it’s appealing whom aren’t so much fan of Johnny Depp or Christian Bale, because the story is quite simple like a mob film, but I think the appearing actors and the actress (Marion Cotillard) did great job. They portrayed the each character very vividly.

Johnny Depp had been over here for a couple of days to promote that movie.
Nahomi Matsushima who is a TV talent from Osaka and also a big fan of Johnny has made funny interviews every time Johnny came to Japan. This time, she tried to make a substantial interview to Johnny, because it was her sixth time to meet him. However, in the middle of the interview, after she told that she had gotten marriage lately, she lost peace of her mind, and went blank. Finally, she started to ask Johnny to question about herself!! She is so cute. I can imagine how she got nervous in front of him. She said she couldn’t feel Johnny after the interview in only a few hours. She thinks it was because she talked with Johnny via interpreter so she wants to speak English and have conversation directly with Johnny next time. Johnny answered that he also would try to learn JAPANESE!! He’s so nice guy.( I know I’m enchanted..)

Crazy display

I saw this display at a nearby hardware store. They stack the bunch of packages up to almost the ceiling.
Which one would you want to pull out? I kept my distance from them. How could you make up if that tower of packages had collapsed by your choice?
It’s a package of kagami-mochi for the new years days.

The violent acts in Japanese schools

This chart that I found on the newspaper the other day shows the number of violent acts in the Japanese schools has been increasing sharply. (The black line shows the amounts. The light blue line=middle school,  the dark blue=high school, and the gray=elementary school) What’s going on in schools? Why are they so impetuous?
It reminds me of an incident happened several months ago.

Several months ago, Tatsu(my 9-year-old son) had a quarrel with one of his classmates. That boy  has a reputation for touching their teacher’s teaching materials supposed not to touch while their teacher is absent from the room. Tatsu , as you know, is a person who can’t ignore such a thing, so he started to point a finger at the boy. However, the boy disregarded Tatsu. Tatsu kept reprimanding him, and finally the boy said ” I’ll kill you!”. Tatsu answered him, “Do it! If you can!” and Tatsu ended up being hit and cried. Tatsu was so shocked and got upset. I guess he got upset about his provocative attitude that he didn’t necessarily want to have. He was disturbed by his careless word against that notorious boy.

Their warmhearted veteran teacher, who is around fifty years old, took both of them to another room and let them talk frankly about what they were thinking. According to her, Tatsu expressed to that boy how much he was disappointed and hurt very emotionally. She said his touching speech made the boy conscious of his actions. The boy started to cry as well!! After that, they made up.

That evening, I asked Tatsu how he felt about the boy. He said that he didn’t have any bad feeling towards him anymore, and he accepted the boy’s apology as sincere.  Before this incident, I had persuaded Tatsu not to be involved with, or not to nag at those misfit types and just ignore them. Because I’m afraid of him getting bullied. Tatsu can speak his mind very clearly and logically. It’s nice during the peaceful moment, but you know, he speaks his mind too much sometimes. However, I reflected at this time that I had discriminated against these misfit kids unconsciously, and tried forcing Tatsu to think  the same way.

I take these increasing numbers of violent acts as indicating the number of ignored kids.  People ignor the misfit kids because they don’t understand their minds. Uh..I’ve said a commonplace thing..but they are ignored by adults, teachers and peers. So, I guess that’s  the reason why they are so busy in texting each other.  Nevertheless,  I got used to seeing kids, even girls, chattering in the park at MID NIGHT, or eating HOT INSTANT NOODLES IN THE TRAIN and LEAVING the bowl there. Am I supposed to chastise them in public? I don’t think so. It’s up to their parents, I believe.  

Why are their parents  so dull???  How come can they abandon their responsibility as parents??  They really don’t know what their kids are doing outside the home??

冷蔵庫 the new fridge

My fridge broken down suddenly the other day. It’s natural because I’d used it for 13 years since I got married. I expected that would happen near future so I had already had an eye on the Hitachi new model, which has ‘the vacuum chill box/真空チルド室’ .  You don’t need any plastic wrap or lid to keep fresh meat or fish inside the box because it’s vacuumed space! Really?? I don’t know, but it sounds futuristic, isn’t it? However, that fridge was short of stock at that time, so I had have to wait it for 6 days without a fridge!  I was shocked and at a loss a bit, but anyway it was fine. I could make it by going shopping at every evening and got a little, and kept the left-over on the balcony at night. ( It turned out I bumped into a mink at my balcony!  maybe,  a mink.. it’s dark at midnight and I found something small but long and white ! )

Anyway, the new fridge with the vacuum box!!  I was so excited when it arrived and tried to open the door , and SHOCKED AGAIN!! The door won’t open fully, because the cupboard next to the fridge hampered it… OMG!!
You know, the Japanese apartment is so tiny, especially, the kitchen is maybe as small as your bathroom!

SO, Nothing but I could do was to replace that cupboard with the smaller sideboard. That means I had to put out ALL of the cups and dishes from the cupboard and move the cupboard and then I turned the all dishes back again!!! Grr… It took LONG time to open the door of my new fridge!!

Anyway, now I’m so happy to get my new fridge. It’s BIG! 520L! (Is it rather small in your kitchen?)

Thank you for your concern about my kids. They have got well and back normal! Take care of yourself, too!

The H1N1 has come to my home….

Tatsu was diagnosed as the H1N1 flu yesterday. I had supposed that would happen sooner or later, for his classes have been canceled due to its epidemic from last Wednesday.
He had a bad headache yesterday, but now he can smile and keep talking as usual. It’s good barometer whether he’s fine or not.

The doctor we met said that Momo must get it from Tatsu in no time, because that flu is so contagious and he gave me extra tamiful for Momo in advance.
We are supposed to isolate Tatsu from us, but I don’t think it’s worthwhile in my tiny space. Just one big cough of him spreads all over the house.. I boil water in the biggest pot I have and put it on the table to increase the humidity of the room. I heard that the flu virus can’t live in a high humidity. It’s nothing but make me feel better, though.  It might be too late.  Actually, I had his left-over hamburger and his soda with his straw the day before yesterday!!

The Umbrella bag/かさ袋

Today, it’s raining. Very cold rain…
In a rainy day, you could find a special stand for the plastic bags at the entrance of the supermarket like this.

You’re supposed to put it on your umbrella during shopping not to drip water drops on the floor. It is used only for that. When you leave the supermarket, you can throw it away in the trash can. (Mottainai!)
One American had said to me before that it looked like a condom for an umbrella. Oh my…I had never thought that way before, but since then every time I put on a plastic bag on my umbrella,  I remember that word, and makes me uncomfortable to do it!

Anyway, do you bring your umbrella with you inside  the store or leave it in the umbrella stand?

 

My kitchen tools

Here is some of the tools from my kitchen. Are they unfamiliar with you?

1) A special pan for takoyaki . This is not popular all over the Japan, but only at Kanasai area, they have these pans commonly in the kitchen.
2) A square pan for tamagoyaki/Japanese omelette. See the You-tube video I attached below, and you can see how to make tamagoyaki.

3)It is called surikogi(the stick) and suribachi(the bowl). They are used to grain sesame seeds until they become sticky and oily. They add some ingredients into the sesame paste and dress boiled vegetable.
4)Makisu is used for making Makizushi/sushi roll.

5)A measuring cup
6)A set of measuring spoons
Looking the cooking books from foreign countries, I often find ‘tablespoon’ or ‘tea-cup’ for measuring. I wonder it’s inaccurate since you have various sizes of tablespoon or tea cup! In Japanese books, you can see, for example ‘one cup’, that means one cup of 200 ml measuring cup. Also, ‘one big spoon’ means you’re supposed to use that biggest spoon of the set you can see in the pic. Having these two tools are quite natural for the Japanese. Of course, when I can’t find those in someone’s kitchen, I can use any other cup or spoon and measure by sight.

7)O-shamoji/ a spatula for steamed rice. It has hubbly surface to prevent it from being messy with rice.
8)A spoon for eating boiled kani/crab. I don’t think it’s common tools but my husband has had it before we got married. Crab is comparably expensive meal in Japan, so we have used the spoon once or twice up to now… 

His name is Gyoro-chan. He is the machine to shave a block of ice and make frappe in summer. His eyes moves right and left while he’s shaving ice. I’ve kept him since I was a child.

I have these high-tech tools but I don’t use them regularly. Because I hate to read their manual and moreover there is no vacant electric outlet in my kitchen. You could finish whipping cream with your hand and a whisk while you’re looking into the manual to find how to whip the cream! How short-tempered I am…

Do you have any unique kitchen tools for some specific meals?

One year has past.

One year has past since I started to write this English blog.
This is my first post. I remember it took me about 1 hour to finish such a short post.
Thankfully, I have continued writing. I can’t find so much progress on my sentense strucutre, but I have been able to write much faster than a year ago. I didn’t expect so many people visit my blog, and leave their comments. Thank you so much.
(I’ve finished this one in 5 minutes!)

When and where do you take off your shoes?

Yesterday, I read an interesting short essay in the newspaper, written by the writer Fujiwara Tomomi (HE,  not she!). It was the title of his article that caught my eyes. That said, “Only the Japanese who were wearing shoes.” You could imagine easily that the Japanese take off their shoes inside the house as it’s their custom. But how come, as he said, only the Japanese kept wearing their shoes at the party held by a French man living in Tokyo. I summarized his article below.
Before reading my summary, do you know what ‘Agari kamachi’ is? The Agari kamachi is a kind of step to enter the living space from an entrance in Japanese houses. Commonly, you’re supposed to take off your shoes before you step on that Agari kamachi. It’s easier for you and me to show you some pictures of Agari kamachi to make it clear.

This's a very traditional one.

This type is common in modern houses.

 

　

 

 

 

 

 

It happened at the party where I was invited by the French living in Tokyo. I found the several Japanese among of many foreigners there. The Amid of merry atmosphere, I was startled to know that every one except me were not wearing their shoes, while I was in my boots perfectly! However, taking a good look at them, I found that other Japanese were wearing their shoes either. I whispered behind my fan, “We are supposed to take off our shoes here..” to one Japanese beside of me, and rushed to the entrance hall and there I found a bunch of shoes were lined up insidiously. Why? We are so accustomed to taking off our shoes that we never make such a rudeness? The answer is clear. Because, there was no Agarikamachi in that house. The Japansese unconsciously make their decision whether to take off ther shoes or not depend on the existence or nonexistence of the Agarikamachi. We never wonder about it at a hotel room or an office room to where the floor is extending flatly from the corridor. Also, once we found the Agarikamachi, we will take off our shoes without any doubt.
That Agarikamachi has now been disappearing from modern Japanese houses. They call this movement as ‘ barrier-free/バリアフリー’. I wonder this movement would be accelerated more and more, and finally the Agarikamachi had gone away? Could you imagine the Japanese live in their houses wearing shoes in the future? I don’t think so. I believe the Japanese would never stop taking off their shoes in their private space. The Agarikamachi is not merely a step but it’s the border between outside and inside of the house, and they believe that border has some cultural meaning in their lives. If the Agarikamachi would have gone, we might lose that something in our mind either. I want to know what the something is.”

 

From the article by 藤原智美 in The Yomiuri newspaper of the 4th of Nov.

I do take off my shoes in my room, and anywhere if it’s possible. I guess he had that mistake because the Japanese people tend to think that the westerner don’t take off their shoes until they go to bed. (Is it true?) And the Japanese are too carefull not to cross other’s custom while they are invited to the foreign culture.
How about you? When and Where do you take off your shoes?