R.I.P. Moogie

One of the problems with going overseas is that life goes on at home, and sometimes you miss things.

Moogie, my kitty of over 18 years, passed away Sunday morning (Saturday afternoon, there). She had had reduced kidney function for a number of years, and it finally caught up with her. I've missed her since I got here, and I'll miss her even more when I get home and she's not there.

I hope we spoiled her as much as she deserved. She was the first cat I had from kittenhood, and she'll always be my #1 kitty.

All cats have their own personalities. Among the other cats that have graced our home with their presence, TD thought she was a human, Clark thought he was a dog, but Moogiechan knew it was best to be a cat. Especially one that had her humans wrapped around her paw.

Thanks to everyone for their kind thoughts about Mugs.

Taiwanese Cooking

Today, I went to an event put on by the local international society. It was near the library in Ogane (which is part of Nasukarasuyama). Some nice ladies from Taiwan showed us how to make won ton soup (ワンタン汁) and mapo tofu (麻婆豆腐). Of course, we had to consume it afterward.

Here is Ms. Hoshi, from the Board of Education. She speaks English very well, and is very nice. She has spent time in the UK, and knew that Nixon is a Scottish name.









The lady in the blue scarf and the lady cooking here were our instructors.













Here are our wontons. For soup, you don't have to be fancy. Just put a wonton skin in your palm, spread with the filling, then close up your hand to seal it up. Fast and easy!

Here is the entire group. Even some guys learned to cook! Besides the Japanese people, there were people from Taiwan, Korea and Mexico. I was the lone American.

There was enough that I got leftovers to take home. The soup is already gone. The mapo tofu was a little spicy, but Rob would like it, I think.

Persimmons (柿, kaki)

Do you know what the fruit in the clip art to the left of my blog are? They are persimmons, which ripen this time of year (in Tochigi, anyway) and are a symbol of fall.

They are also quite good to eat. There is a persimmon tree next to the coin laundry, and the lady who owns both was picking them when I did my laundry on Saturday. The man who was helping her gave me these two. They are soft and sweet. Yum!

If you find them in the grocery store, be sure they are soft. Apparently, if they are eaten before they are soft, they have a chalky taste.

There are lots of trees full of them right now. Some will be eaten as is, and the rest will be dried.

Lunchtime, part II

Here are a few more details about lunchtime at school.

Once everyone has their lunches, one student stands up at the front of the class. Everyone puts their hands together, and says, "Itadakimasu!" Literally, it means "I accept (this food)", but it basically functions as grace.

If there is extra of anything, the teacher will go around and ask if anyone wants any. Some students trade food, or give away parts they don't like. Technically, you're supposed to eat everything, but in practice that doesn't happen. The teachers seem more concerned that all the students have their aprons on, and that everyone who isn't lactose intolerant has at least taken a carton of milk.

At the end, the same student stands up at the front of the class and the whole class says, "Gochisosama deshita!" That means, "It was a feast, " but functions as after-lunch grace.

Then everyone puts their paper and plastic garbage into their milk cartons, and flattens them. These are thrown away, empty rice boxes are put in the insulated boxes they came in, extra food is dumped in the buckets it came in in and dishes, chopsticks, sporks and trays are put in metal baskets. The students that dished up lunch take everything down and load it on the truck to go back to wherever lunch came from.

Then, everyone goes to the water fountains (more of a long sink with several faucets) in the hall to brush their teeth. The faucets turn, so they can be faucets or bubblers.

Lunch menus are published monthly. They list what lunch is, what the veggies are for each meal, what the carbs are (bread, rice or noodles), and what the protein sources are, as well as how many calories are in each lunch.

Lunchtime

Today's entry is about -- you guessed it! -- lunch!

School lunches are delivered to the school each day. I get my lunch in the teachers' lunch room, and take it to wherever I'm eating that week. I eat in a different classroom each week.

The trays, food, chopsticks or sporks, boxes of rice and bowls are brought to each classroom. Some students are assigned the task of dishing up the lunches for the other students. (I think this assignment changes weekly). The students then bring their lunches to their desks, which are grouped according to the plan for that day. It might be by gender, row, blood type, or some other method.

Everyone in Japan knows his or her blood type. Different blood types are supposed to have different personality characteristics. I'm a type O, which is supposed to be agreeable, sociable and optimistic, but vain and careless. You decide if this has any merit.

Anyway, here are pictures of several different school lunches.
Hamburg steak, spinach salad, soup, rice, milk and custard. The rice comes in the red box, and is hot. The paper spoon on the rice box is for the custard.
Today's rice has furikake in it.







Remember wrestling opening cheap milk cartons? These have a hole to poke with your straw.

We have fried squid on a stick and a salad; chicken, carrot and potato stew, rice and milk.

Another stew, salad, bread with butter and sugar, milk and yogurt. Note the metal spork, and another paper spoon.

Saba (makeral) and seaweed salad with chikuwa (fish paste), pork and veggie soup, rice and milk. the little packet is furikake, which is spinkled on the rice.


More fish, spinach and beansprout salad; a dish of chikuwa (the round things with a hole in the middle), konnyaku (the grey things) carrots andwieners; rice and milk. I love the wieners, like the chikuwa and can't get past the color of the konnyaku. Konnyaku is basically flavorless, so it can't be called bad-tasting -- I just don't think food should be a grey gel with black flecks in it. The fish is great.
Here is a close up of the fish.










And the other stuff. It isn't a soup, and not really a stew either.






Stew with noodles; breaded and deep-fried quail eggs on a stick, tuna and spinach salad; milk, and a custard tart.


Salad and dressing; curry; rice; milk and frozen lemon jelly. I never cared for curry before -- it was too spicy. But I love Japanese curry -- it's a sweet curry. Compared to Chinese cuisine, Japanese food is sweeter in general. The jelly is like jello, only it's made with kantan, also known as agar-agar. That's a seaweed product. If you remember that gelatin comes from hooves, a jelly made from seaweed doesn't sound that bad, does it? Plus, it doesn't melt at room tempurature. It's actually quite good semi-frozen.

Overall, school lunches have been quite good. They range from 750 to 950 calories each, so many days, I don't need to eat a lot for dinner. They try to get a good mix of things in each meal, which is why you don't see a single vegetable served by itself. I pay Y5100 each month for lunches, so that's a good deal.

Nikko (日光）

Yesterday, I went to Nikko. It's a famous place in Japan that is actually in Tochigi prefecture. It's also easy and inexpensive to get to. I had hoped to see some fall foliage (紅葉 - koyo), but there wasn't much yet.

But there is plenty to see. Tokugawa Ieyasu's mausoleum is there, along with several shrines and temples. Tokugawa founded the Tokugawa Shogunate, which ruled Japan from 1600 until the Meiji Restoration in 1868. He was born in Okazaki Castle, which I've visited before.

To get to Nikko, I went to Utsunomiya, and took a train to Nikko. Tobu Railways also operates an express train from Tokyo to Nikko. Here is some harvested rice, seen from the train.


Here is the JR Nikko Station. It was designed by Frank Lloyd Wright. It started operation in 1890.

The weather was beautiful, but it's a long weekend, so it was crowded. There are a lot of good hiking trails, but you have to take a bus from the train station in Nikko. With the crowds, what would normally be a 45 minute bus ride was taking 3 hours. So I stayed in Nikko proper and walked everywhere. I love my hiking boots! And I'll come back to Nikko for the hiking.

Nikko is surrounded by mountains. It's been a summer getaway for Tokyoites for centuries.












This is the sacred Shinkyo bridge.










Here is a view of the Shoyo-en strolling garden. Another week or so, and the maples will look gorgeous!

















This is Sanbutsu-do. It's the largest temple in the Nikko mountains.

Usually, I think of zen-like simplicity when I think of Japanese architecture. However, the mausoleum and shrines were built to amaze and impress. So, there is a lot of ornate detail.




















































Have you heard about the "See no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil" monkeys〔三猿）? They are a carving on one of the buildings in Nikko.













Another famous carving is the Sleeping Cat (眠り猫）. You have to pay extra to see this carving, and go up to the shrine behind it.

As an aside, I am voting by absentee ballot this year. I have my ballot, but I need to have an American witness that I voted my ballot without anyone doing it for me. The only other two Americans that I knew in Nasukarasuyama have since moved. So, I brought my ballot along with me, since Nikko is a touristy place. I managed to find a nice American (Thanks, Elizabeth from Ohio!) to witness my voting and sign my envelope so I can send it in this week.
Here you can see how crowded it was.









There is plenty of nature around, too. These cryptomeria (a cypress called Japanese Cedar) tress are TALL!


























Let no-one accuse the Japanese of taking religion too seriously.















Here are some more pics for your enjoyment.

Gadget Hunting

It's getting cooler here. I've started using my heavier blanket and drinking hot beverages. I bought a kotasu. It's not a gadget per se, but a very useful Japanese item. It's a low table, with a heater underneath. The top is removable, so you can put a futon (quilt) over the table to keep the heat in. Then the top is put on top of the quilt, so you still have a hard surface. I have a light quilt underneath, like a rug, but I haven't gotten the other quilt yet. My friend may have an extra to lend me. Since they are warm, cats like to lie under kotatsu, so there have been some designed so the infrared from the heater doesn't hurt cats' eyes. This is a picture of the complete set up...it's not mine.

Saturday, I went to Tokyo again. I went to the Tokyo Station area, Shinjuku and Ginza.

I wanted to look at DSLR's (Digital Single-Lens Reflex cameras). Panasonic has introduced a new format that isn't really a DSLR, since it has no mirror. But you can still change lenses and whatnot. Also, there is a geotagging accessory for the new Nikon, which will add longitude, lattitude and altitude data to your pictures.

First, I went to Tokyo Station because Maruzen bookstore is nearby. It has a large foreign book section. I found two graded reader sets for reading basic Japanese. Each has five books, and a CD of the stories being read.

In the same building JAXA (Japan's NASA) has a shop with a display. There is a space suit set up so you can have your picture taken "in" it. A nice lady there took my picture and gave me a picture of Tokyo taken from space.

Then, I went to Shinjuku. This shirt was in a shop in the Station. If it hadn't been ¥3000, I might have bought it.

My first stop was Kinokuniya bookstore, which also has a large foreign book section. At the station, I was checking my map to see which exit I wanted when two high school boys offered to guide me there. I could have found it myself, but I could tell that they wanted to practice their English. They were both very nice, and had recently spent two weeks in Australia.

My next stop in Shinjuku was the Nikon showroom. The L Tower Building is accessible from the station without going outside. Nikon is on the 28 floor. There is a very nice view all around the floor. There was a nice photo gallery -- the current show was pictures taken along the Silk Road. There is also a nice view inside the showroom -- lots of beautiful cameras! I played with the D90 for a bit -- compared to my little camera, the autofocus is FAST! It's bigger than the Olympus E420 I was originally looking at, but the menus are well laid out, and the camera feels solid but not too heavy. Of course, it's in a higher price range than the Olympus.

Herere two pictures of Tokyo from the 28th floor of the L Tower Building.



I had hoped to eat at an English Pub called the Hub, but it doesn't open until 4:00, and I wanted lunch now. So I found a spot in the station that had a hamburg steak, fried egg and bacon. I asked for an Akiaji beer to go with, and was surprised to get a 22 ounce bottle, instead of the smaller one I was expecting. Oh well.


Here is what the market looked like in Shinjuku Station. In the bottom section, Yahoo is the fourth company on the left, up ¥300 for the day so far.


Then I was off to Ginza, which is famous for top brand shops like Chanel and Louis Vuitton. Mitsukoshi and Matsuzakaya department stores are here as well. The two companies were founded in 1673 and 1611, respectively. This is a picture of Mitsukoshi. This picture was taken at 5:00 pm and you can see it's already turning dark because daylight savings time is not used here.

Also here is Sony's showroom. I read on the website that the building design was inspired by Frank Lloyd Wright's Guggenheim museum in New York. But this building is square. On the inside, it's kind of a spiral. You look at one section, point-and-shoot cameras, then go up 4 steps to the next section, laptops, then up more steps. You can see anything made by Sony, including the stuff that is sold in Japan, but not in the US. There is also an overseas shop which sells models compatible with other countries' electrical and TV systems.

There was a display about a kabuki play that was filmed by Sony, so it's showing on the screen outside the building.

My last stop was Itoya -- a 9 story stationary store. Granted, the footprint is nowhere near the average Office Max in the US, but the selection of Japanese pens and other fiddly bits makes up for that. Some people love stationary/office supply stores, others don't see the attraction. I'm in the first group. I've had to get a bigger pencil case, because I keep finding neat pens and pencils.