Let's Celebrate!

I bought another pair of $20 pants! That were originally $80! Oh holiday sales, you're so great.

Other than that, not much has happened. A couple trips to the dentist (stupid inferior J-filling fell out), and some small errands.

Sometime this week I let go all the stress of Figuring Shit Out and just let myself float again. It's nice. Soon I'll feel that halfway terror of floating untethered, and I'll buckle down again. But I just might wait until after New Year's.

Happy Holidays, eat lots for me.

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Dinner at a Japanese Restaurant

Tonight we went out to a Japanese restaurant in town. Nothing fancy. I went there a few months ago with my dad. Here are my thoughts.

Points in their favor:
When we walked in, three asian people, they ask in Japanese how many people. Real Japanese people with a real Japanese kid (exclaiming about the scary goldfish) were eating there. Kirin on tap. Shichimi brought out when necessary. Pretty decent nigiri sushi. They even have natto. Edamame comes with the beer. An actual sushi bar, with the sushi guys making it in front of you.

Points for authenticity, while not in their favor:
They still play American pop music. Acceptable ramen. Japanese menu that I'm afraid to ask for, because I know I won't be able to read it all. The edamame was crap.

Points against them:
Poor ass udon. Lumpy California roll. Dragon roll on the menu. Disappointing gyoza.

I could go on, but in summary, good, but not good enough. Authentic, but the cooking is average. I could take (non-Japan) friends here, kind of order izakaya-style, and have a good time. They can order teriyaki chicken or fried rice.

But during dinner, this lovely topic came up. Here's a (poorly quoted, abridged) snippet of conversation concerning G's hair. I mentioned that it was longer before. My mother doesn't think so, but she never saw his hair in those first few months. Neither has my dad, but he had this to say:

"Yeah, he looks like Mick Jagger."

(Me:) "What? David Bowie, I'll give you that, but Jagger?"

"Yeah, like Mick Jagger" he says.

"Because he's skinny and it looks like he does drugs? Which he doesn't, by the way." I counter.

"He looks English. Is he?"

"His dad is from Seattle, his mom is from Montana!"

"He looks like Mick Jagger."

This whole exchange was hilarious. I even googled to see what Mick Jagger looked like when he was younger. Surprise, he still looks like Mick Jagger. If you squint, he looks like Matt Damon. But his head is still freakishly long. G has a small head! And that's かっこいい！(Really awesome supercool great, according to Japanese people.)

But the only way this photo resembles G is if you put your finger on the face. The hair actually matches, but why my father would know what Mick Jagger looked like in his high school basketball uniform, I don't know.

So thank you, passable Japanese restaurant, for provoking this conversation. Here's your parting shot, decide for yourself.

Can David Bowie even do that with his lips?
Does he even have lips?

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Look at me look at me look at me *TALK* to me.

Oh yeah, and comments are totally okay. The usual rule, no full names. (My name is on some random blog because some other girl asked if that blogger knew me. Good thing it's a clean blog.)

And Happy 1 Year to this blog! Yay! 1 year, two days, 102 posts!

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Rice Post!

My brain is stuck on research mode. After researching apartments and jobs and traffic and weather, my brain just can't let go. I try to distract it with other internet distractions (boingboing! zefrank! gofugyourself!), but it just keeps plunging ahead. I think I started with clothes, and then ended up on food. And the net is full of interesting things about food. For example, someone took the time to explain why fried rice needs to be made with leftover rice. And they even stuck in a few big words. It just struck me as funny, that it needed to be explained. (For once, we hit a topic that I comprehend--fried rice. I guess it's because I've grown up with it. Well, if you tried it, you'd probably consider it bastardized, but it's the way I like.)

On the other hand, I had to look up the difference between salted and unsalted butter, and learned that it all just comes down to control. I'm pretty sure I've looked this up before, back when I loved baking the same cookie recipe over and over and over again. (I'm still certain that recipe was terrible, even though I got requests for it. I guess I'll have to try and replicate it for L some day. She'd tell me if they were horrible, I'm sure.)

The goal for this week? Make molasses cookies. I think I've wanted to make them for a number of years, but I've always been too lazy to figure out what kind of molasses I needed. (Molasses=foreign to me. Back then, I wasn't even sure grocery stores in the suburbs sold it.) Well, thanks to research brain, I'm ready to go. This recipe requires freshly grated ginger and pepper. Awesome. I'll let you know how it goes.

Bonus rice fact! (from the first link)

Apparently, science says rice should be refrigerated an hour after it's cooked! (Or kept above 140F/60C.) One, I don't think my rice cooker kept rice that warm. And two, let's all pause to think of the long journey kyuushoku rice often has to make. No, thank you Mr. Scientist.

And one last thought: I had a Rubio's fish taco combo tonight, and the sodium is killing me. Swollen feet. What the hell? I'm not that old!

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Bake me a cake.*

On relocation: It's really quite baffling to have so much information available to me. Like just now, I wanted to know where the Costco in Seattle was. And two seconds later, I knew. Two seconds! Not 30 minutes of googling and translating and digging through broken Japanese websites. Yes, it'd probably go faster if I were more proficient in the language, but that doesn't help a broken or outdated website.

Current freakout: I can't go back to grad school. I have no letters of recommendation, and no reason for any professors to remember me. I skated by with a letter from my boss that worked in the library. Can google help me there?


*This is post 100. Pardon me for not landmarking it.

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Small goal to tuck away for now

Dear Future Self,
Someday you will have a home that has a backyard, a place where you intend to stay for a goodly period of time, and then you can buy yourself a yuzu sapling so you can make yuzu tea, or a yuzu bath, or even get your act together and make a meal that requires ponzu sauce. If you don't kill it, you can get a sudachi tree too. Because thank goodness, you can buy them in the states. (Hey, if you can't import black pines, and some mikan species (so says my grandfather)...)

PS: Don't confuse yuzu (C. ichangensis x C. reticulata var. austera) with something trendy like a Meyer Lemon, whatever that is.

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Three Snippets

Moon Shadows
Last night was the full moon, and I went outside (in zori and a light jacket at 2am, eat your heart out) to experience moon shadows. It's been a long time since I've been outside in an unlit area for the full moon. Usually it's a look out the window sort of thing--"Hey, isn't it a full moon?" "Eh, sure."--but it was nice to just sit and look at shadows. And it was so quiet! The suburbs are nice like that. I didn't wander around the 'cho at night, I'm sure that was even quieter...except when the frogs were out.

Moving Crap
I've been trying to hash out moving to Seattle (get an apartment first, then a job), and was looking at uhaul rates. $900 for 6 days (it really takes 6 days? I was guessing 3.). Ouch. And then I walked through the house, and tried to figure out if that was enough space. Then I realized that all of my college furniture went to my sister, and the only thing left is my bunk bed frame and an alright set of table and chairs. Oh, and my father's college desk that I used in college. Maybe a small TV. The rest is clothes, books, and computer. Baffling, but such a relief. That does mean I'll have to get a lot of stuff delivered once I get up there, but I can get new things! And I can even justify $900 worth of new things!

Now Retro
Since I spend all of my time at home, my brain has become warped. My parents' dishes look different now. Before, they were just outdated dishes, with a band of olive green that had flowers on it. Olive green to match the avocado green shag carpets. Embarrassingly out of date. Now, I see the dishes through the eyes of those indie people who delight in everything retro, and they don't seem so bad. Inheritable even.

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Five Delicious Foods (+1)

I need to cheer up, or at least distract myself from how overwhelming this relocation/find a job process is. And I'm still on the research phase! To stop my thoughts from snowballing, here are five delicious foods that I like, in no order.

1. Tempura shrimp tails. They taste like popcorn. Sometimes restaurants cheat and hold the shrimp by the tail or something, and then it just tastes like dirty plastic. Sad.

2. Ferraro Rocher chocolates. You know, the ones wrapped in gold that crunch.

3. My grandmother's raspberry jam. Sometimes the proportions aren't right, and instead, we get raspberry syrup. Absolutely not a problem, that just means you have to be more careful with the sandwiches.

4. Perfect medium rare steaks. I had one in at some restaurant and it was beautiful. It was barely warm in the middle, with crusty pepper bits. It was so good I didn't care about the possibility of food poisoning.

5. Choco-peppermint smoothies. At the 50s diner downtown, they used to serve it in a tall fountain glass, along with a tumbler of what didn't fit. They don't do that anymore, which is a bummer.

Now I want a snack. And I feel much better. Goal accomplished!

(+1) Stuffed sole with whipped potatoes. Awesome. It's even good microwaved a few days later. On Friday, we went to some bar and grill on the Chula Vista Marina. (The South Bay Fish and Grill to be exact.) My dad ended up with something crap--mustard crusted salmon, which was a bland piece of salmon with a crust of mustard. With shitty white rice. Like someone decided to whip the rice to make it fluffy, and instead turned it into rice mush. It probably had butter in it. ::shudder:: But mine was good, and that's what counts.

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How's November Treating You?

Hey guys, how's it going? Today I actually managed to sit outside for a long period of time, instead of just popping out to check the mail or take the dog out. Here's the view from the backyard:

Just your typical late November day at home.

No clouds. At all! Not a single one:

I wish I could sleep in that color.

And I want to move where again? And it's snowing up there? What do you mean it's colder than Japan right now? Jeebus, I must be crazy.

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This is my America 2 [/]

And it's not haunted either.

My mother has a collection of Japanese dolls. She has...six of them. As I child I thought they were all a family (this was the mother). In middle school I used one as a model for a sketch I did. I think they're pretty neat, but as a child it never occurred to me that other people didn't have Japanese dolls in their living rooms.

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Fluffy hat I don't need! [/]

But it's so fluffy!

I went into Moohoop twice before I bought this hat, okay? They were having a sale. It wasn't on sale, but I've always wanted recently decided that I wanted a fluffy brownish hat. Does this qualify as a toque?

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Seasonal Vegetables... [/]

Can you pickle something if it's already halfway preserved?

...should be eaten when in season. This is from one of my family friends/uncles. Apparently, his cucumber vine is still producing. Hmm.

(Pictures will be boring until I pull myself together and actually leave the house, just to warn you.)

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Central Valley Sunrise [/]

Just south of the spinach outbreak areas. (I assume.)

We started the drive back to SD at 4:30am. Around sunrise, I woke up to see my dad trying to take pictures while driving. It's good to know I'm not the only one that does that. Maybe I can even blame it on genetics.

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Frightful. [/]

The picture doesn't do it justice.

My grandparents teach ballroom dancing, and they have a lot of instructional videos. This is one of the most disturbing. I feel bad for the woman, because I'm sure she's trying very hard to keep smiling while being balanced on a bony old man hip, but still. ::cough::

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Trees with Rights

Way better than a row of palm trees. [/]

This oak tree is old. And in San Jose, old trees have rights. If the trunk is more than so many inches in diameter, you can't cut it down without permission. I think it's great, because I like giant trees, but my grandmother complains about how messy it is. It's got character--I've seen raccoons in that tree, and there are a couple rusty horseshoes nailed to the trunk. As a kid, I was disappointed that it didn't drop acorns (only oak galls--light white balls that are...caused by wasps? Well, thanks google.) but now I'm just happy that it's still there.

The house is a two story, super old farmhouse. I love the house too.

King of the neighborhood.

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Hello Turkey.

I slept through most of Thanksgiving, thanks to my cold and the jet lag. Apparently we had a 22-pound turkey, but I missed the carving party. Here's where I came in:

Turkey, you're so delicious. [/]

Nothing special happened at Thanksgiving. Just good eating. We don't seem to do drama anymore these days, thank goodness.

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This is my America.

My second day back was manual labor day. The persimmons needed to be harvested. No problem, right? That's what I thought, because I was thinking of the small, pruned trees I saw in my town. Well, my grandparents have a tree that's about 30 years old, and while it's pruned, it has definitely taken advantage of the elbow room.

And my dad did most of the work. Poor guy.

This is maybe a quarter of what needed to be picked.

Kaki butts! [/]

I can't decide if my family picks them later then the Japanese, or if this is just this particular variety. I just know that I like my kaki crunchy, not slimy. I guess I should find a recipe for overripe persimmons.

Remember that guy who invited A to go out picking persimmons at his house? Well, he did it to J too. I wonder how many friendly foreigners he's collected...

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Travel Tips.

Hey guys, when you leave for good, don't fly out of your home airport. It caught me by surprise, but I should've known. From that plane, I could see my apartment, my schools, my grocery store, the way to town...and then I started seeing everyone else's schools, and where they lived...It was too much. I'm used to a bus ride past anonymous scenery, and I like it that way. Seeing all those places from so far away was like saying goodbye again.

At least though, at my airport, I got to meet the father of a student. He checked my luggage, and introduced himself. And I got to buy a bunch of silly udon souvenirs that I wouldn't have looked at otherwise.

And you know what? The Narita Airport Sanuki udon shop isn't bad. I didn't get udon, but the soba was pretty good.

Eating that last meal alone sucked. But it was delicious. [/]

By the time I got on the last plane, I breathed a sigh of relief. That particular journey went taxi-bus-plane-bus-plane, and I was convinced that I would screw it up somehow. But I didn't. After some crazy turbulence, three movies, and some pretty bad airplane food (dude, ANA can do better than that), I arrived at SFO, slightly sick, a few days early for Thanksgiving.

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I got some culture too! [/]

By sheer luck, a ticket to the Yoshida Brothers concert opened up, and I snagged it! Originally I didn't want to go, because it was my last day in Japan, but I couldn't resist. It was pretty great. Shamisen rock. Once I figure out what albums have the songs I like, I'll start investing. I found myself distracted by the reverberating clacks made by the (uhm) plucking pick. Is that normal? Intended? Unavoidable? The backgrounds were pretty neat too. Culture Night productions made me really aware of what ends up on that back screen.

I ended up sitting next to two girls who were speaking in Spanish. (Or maybe Portuguese.) They were Asian, so it was unexpected, but it was interesting seeing what it look like when I'm chatting with L. People kept checking to see where the gaijin were. Fooled you suckas!

L and E. Swell people. I can even roadtrip with them!

Afterwards we went to Sea Dragon, which, as E pointed out, was a nice circular way to tie up my trip. (G surprised me with a group dinner there my first Saturday in town.) I had my karikari chicken, L lapped up the oily bits, and then we splurged on creme brulee. Now that's a great last dinner.

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Kids, Cones, and...uhm...Crooners.

Look out, the photos are back. Here's a small recap of my last Saturday in Japan. First we went to Meet the World. It was great, we played a game called Smother the Small Child.

That kid was really really cute. Too bad for you!
(Smother the Small Child is photo [/].)

I was assigned the kindergarten, first, AND second grade classes. WTF! All the other classes had like five foreigners each, and we had 5 between like 80 kids! Bah. It was still a lot of fun. Some people had never worked with kindergarten kids before, and it was a real treat for them. Me, I got to tie a towel to a kid's face. Three kids in fact. It was a blast.

Afterwards, I decided to go to the museums because I hadn't been in three years. The Benesse is the same, although I swear there are more plants in the weeds exhibit. We also went for a stroll in art house area. We saw a shrine with cat statues, and a lot of white cones. At the port, there were a whole bunch of cones, which looked totally normal until it got dark. Then they lit up. Brilliant. Sometimes they even ran patterns. I've never been so in love with a group of traffic cones.

And just out of sight, a new pumpkin! Weird. I thought one was enough.

The port's been spiffed up since I last visited a year ago. They even had an indoor waiting area, where the DS club played MarioKart and Japanese people watched them. No really, check out the woman behind them.

And later, I schooled them all at Tetris.
Because those are the only games I'm good at.
Aw.

Afterwards there was a musical meeting and then we went to dinner at Dear. I made it to Dear twice! That means TWO lasagnas! Hooray! And then a bunch of us celebrated Tree's birthday...by going to a different izakaya for drinks! No, we couldn't find people so we just went to a different bar to kill time...it was a pretty random group of people, but it was quality. Lots of good conversations. And I got to hang out with D four times! Every Single Weekend! That's how many times I see him in one year!

And then we went to karaoke, where we decided to get our own room, so we could actually sing songs. I mean seriously, that group was rockin it hard. Look at tamborine man. Look at the (real) welshie. I think the birthday girl was up dancing next to me. Apparently she had such a good time that she couldn't talk for a couple days. Now that's a good time.

The three tallest guys in the prefecture. J looks...normal sized. Wow.
And this is photo [/], because I took it after midnight, and was pleasantly hungover the next day.

And then we went home. I've been lucky that big events have coincided with my last weekends. I got to see a lot of people I hadn't seen in ages. People I didn't even get to say goodbye to the first time around. The best goodbye? It's a one-two punch, poorly paraphrased:

"Oh don't be silly. You know you'll be be back next month."

Followed by:

"For the record, I don't think you'll be coming back." (To be fair, that wasn't the real goodbye.)

I love my friends.

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