Thursday, April 30, 2009

It's Golden Week for me now, too!

Well, I had half a day of compensatory holiday to use up within two months, so I'm taking it at the last possible moment. Luckily, I managed to get it right on top of Golden Week, so I have five and a half days off in a row now, hurrah!  

A lot of people seem to be traveling within Japan, to Osaka and Tokyo, etc., to spend time with friends. A lot of other people seem to be headed to South Korea, the "new Thailand" for those who don't like being caught up in civil unrest in a foreign country. 

If I had magical golden tickets to go anywhere this week, I'd want to go home for a quick visit, and then maybe fly off to Australia or New Zealand, where I would just miraculously bump into a former professor of mine and hear about a fabulous scholarship at a grad school down there. 

However, I'm saving up for a car-- albeit a used one, since there's no knowing how long I'll be here and I don't want to sink too much money into it-- and so I've decided to stay home this Golden Week. 

Still there's plenty to read, and if the fair weather continues, ample opportunity for long walks. 

Wednesday, April 29, 2009

a spring picnic of sorts

 

Went to a lovely spring lunch down towards the sea today. Except for the bees buzzing about in the plethora of flowers in the garden around us, and the wind blowing out the birthday candles every time K tried to light them, it was an ideal day for it. 

There was salad with tomatoes and boiled eggs, burdock salad with mayonnaise, potato salad with a mentai kick, fresh-squeezed kiyomi mandarin juice and mandarin wedges, two kinds of onigiri (rice balls, actually triangles), a seafood omelette, mushroom soup, a chicken-mushroom stew, and afterwards-- oh, one's poor stomach-- homemade cheesecake with two interesting sides. One was cut fruit and nata de coco in whipped cream, the other was kastera (pound cake) processed very finely into ice cream. 

Let me know if you are ever in the neighborhood, and I will direct you to the wonderful chefs.

Wednesday, April 22, 2009

FOOD! From the "old country."

Doing all that research on Czech, Slavic, Bohemian, and otherwise Eastern European things made me really want to go out to a restaurant specializing in that kind of fare... even though I am for the most part vegetarian. The Czechs, it seems, have little use for leafy things, preferring instead to deck their tables out with bread, beer, and lots of meat. 

(From somewhere comes a sound bite of John Rhys-Davies as Gimli the Dwarf: "Roaring fires! Malt beer! Rrrrrred meat off the bone!!")

Of course, to be fair, I once had a Czech penpal who wrote about being vegetarian and interested in studying Buddhism at uni. That was a long time before I became vegetarian or took classes like "Buddhism and Literature," but a short time before our correspondence, for whatever reason, dried up. Pity.

Anyway-- there aren't any Slavic restaurants in these parts, but that never stopped the originators of the Slavic recipes in their humble kitchens, so I was determined not to let it stop me in mine, either. I decided to make gulas (goulash) - though it was developed in Hungary, it spread through Eastern Europe - and hoska.  I was going to make knedliky (dumplings) for soaking up the gulas, but wanted to get dinner on the table before 8pm, and something in that recipe mentioned letting the yeast rise for an hour or two. Yeah, right. 


I made two braids of the hoska, but my oven is too small, so they just sort of pushed together. They separated easily enough, though, when I brought one to my event to thank the participants for signing up. I've been working on the other one since, and it's quite good, though it dries out rather quickly. 

As for the gulas, I think I used almost the entire mini-canister of paprika for it, which amounted to maybe 3 tablespoons. There's also cumin, chili pepper, coriander, pepper, and salt spicing up some beef, 3 diced onions, a can of tomatoes, a small bulb of garlic (from Aomori, no less), green peppers (piman), and potatoes. I forgot if I put anything else in there... :D

another pysanka



I rather like this one. I made it mostly while listening (and singing along) to some Gordon Lightfoot songs. The back is quite simple:


Saturday, April 18, 2009

Czech folk dancing

The Catholic in Japan had a post about Italian folk dancing, and I thought it was great timing, since I've been looking at some videos of traditional Czech dancing recently. I've got a Czech-themed event coming up, and I had to do my homework!

I agree with the CIJ in that the world would probably be a better place if people spent more time doing this kind of thing than sitting around watching the tube. That said, it's hard to teach oneself to dance or to do it alone. Shall I plot a dance event next?? But I think people would claim embarrassment at having to do such an unseemly, intimate thing, so pretty much everything but Western line dance is out, and I have awful memories of doing that in gradeschool gym class. Still...


Saturday

Oh, how I enjoy Saturdays!

It's not just being able to sleep in, although as someone who really despises early rising it is a big bonus. 

On Saturdays, I clean. 

Now, I know what you may be thinking. Now, JT, you live by your onesie and don't have any little kiddies running around causing havoc; what could you possibly do all week to merit a day of cleaning each Saturday? The answer is... I don't know. Somehow things get tossed about and move from their proper places, dust and crumbs and things accumulate on the edges of the floor, and the laundry piles up. 

I don't have a set routine yet, but I might start with a load of laundry, then move to the kitchen to get caught up on the dishes, wipe down the countertops and stove, floors, and go through the refrigerator to thin out anything past its due date or getting overripe. Then it's time to put all the dishes away and hang up the hot mitts. 

Check all the drains and clean up accumulated mold... eewww... but it has to be done.

Sweep. Vacuum. Vacuum tatami, which is a little bit time-consuming, especially going under furniture. But if you don't vacuum that tatami, you get tatami mites. Then, spiders come to eat the mites, and then mukade come to eat the spiders. So, you see, frequent vacuuming is informal insurance against marauding beasts with too many legs. 

Clear up the clutter, tie up the trash, put the books back on their shelves-- and organize the egg-decorating-tool explosion on my table. Do other laundry loads in the meantime.

Ahhhhh, one feels so much better, and there's still some daylight left for reading or praying or taking a walk. 

Monday, April 13, 2009

Sunday, April 12, 2009

Alleluia! HE is risen!

Happy Easter, everybody!!!! :D

The Easter Vigil last night and Mass this morning were amazing. There were flowers everywhere in the church and it was beautiful. It was a little bit unfortunate that there weren't very many of us there last night, and I was surprised, because the church had been packed for the Christmas Midnight Mass. However, it was pretty full this morning. Afterwards, everybody received a boiled egg and there was a small lunch party. 

Last week I posted a photo of a pysanka that had just finished its bath in the black dye. That was before I melted the wax off of it. ^^  So, you start with an egg. Use a fruit knife or a pin (if you're very patient) to gently pick out a hole in both ends of it. The smaller the hole, the longer it will take to blow out the contents, but the more aesthetically pleasing it is, too. Shake the egg and maybe use a needle to stir up the insides. Then, making sure you don't have any chapstick or hand lotion on, you just put your mouth over the top hole and blow, blow, blow. 

They sell neat contraptions nowadays, things like the "Blas-fix," which do all the egg-emptying for you with no real lung power needed on your part. Tempting as these gadgets are, I think it's better to blow those eggs the old-fashioned way. Builds character. 

Up until this year, I always used a flat-headed pin stuck into a pencil as a stylus for what is called the drop-pull method of egg decorating. You mainly use exclamation-point-like elements in your designs. You have to keep going back to the candle for more melted wax, and it's hard to control the width, so you can't get too detailed with drop-pull. 

This year, I used some kistky, styluses with a funnel at one end for melted beeswax, to draw heavy, medium, or thin lines on the eggshells. You have to have a design in mind first; then, going from lighter colors to darker, you put the egg through a series of dye baths, drying it thoroughly and applying more wax in between. When you've finished the design, you hold the egg close to the base of a candle flame and watch the wax melt and drip off... 





Actually, I had hoped to have a lot more eggs finished by Easter, but... got busy. Oh well, I'll still be decorating for a while, so I'll post those pictures as they come along. 

Although this tradition of egg-decorating predates Christian times in some places, the symbolism of the egg as returning life remains, and with Christianity comes its symbolism as the empty tomb. The empty tomb being proof of the Risen Lord, all the more reason to decorate and display it. 



Rejoice, heavenly powers! Sing, choirs of angels!
Exult, all creation around God's throne!
Christ, our King, is risen!
Sound the trumpet of salvation!

Rejoice, o earth, in shining splendor,
radiant in the brightness of your King!
Christ has conquered! glory fills you! 
Darkness vanishes for ever!

...

This is the night
when Jesus Christ broke the chains of death
and rose triumphant from the grave.


For Fr. Z's great translation of the Latin and rendering of this awesome song, go here
(for the text in English and Latin, check out wikipedia here)

Sunday, April 5, 2009

Palm Sunday

Well, it's Palm -- Passion -- Sunday 2009.

At Mass, Fr. reminded us that this Holy Week is not last year's Holy Week, and that we've got to focus and prepare ourselves anew to consider with repentance, thankfulness, and joy the mysteries of our salvation. 

Afterwards, we held a meeting to go over some of the details of the Triduum, and when we got to Holy Saturday, Fr. said we're going to go all out (again?) this year and put flowers everywhere, read all eight readings, and try to get the church to really pika-pika suru (glitter and sparkle) like a bride for the Easter Vigil. Yay!!!

Incidentally, since there aren't that many parishioners to begin with, I get to do one of the readings-- the fourth, from Isaiah. 

I've been busy, when I could manage it, with some of my own preparations...




But anyway, here we are in the home stretch of Lent, so I rented The Passion before coming home today. I wasn't sure at first if I really wanted to see it again, because I had listened to a homily where the priest said of Jesus meeting the weeping women of Jerusalem, that Jesus rebuked in them a purely sentimental sorrow for His Passion, without attendant compunction and repentance. "Weep not for Me, but for yourselves and for your children."

After thinking about it, though, it's all too easy to forget what Our Lord endured, and this movie really brings it home in a way that doesn't permit you to just go back to business as usual. I think that setting some time aside, not only for the movie but also for prayer and reflection, is a worthy pursuit, particularly for Holy Week. 

Mt. Redoubt

See what's brewing over the Alaskan horizon these days... 




Yikes.

Thanks to UL and GS for the photo. 


Wednesday, April 1, 2009

Driver's Licensee!!!



Thanks to the Lord, a lot of practice, and probably the huge numbers of high school students currently out to get licensed, my friend A and I passed our road test yesterday morning and are now the proud holders of Japanese driver's licenses!!!!!!!

It was rough going, though. I must have spent more than ten hours in that practice car, saying ドアよし、シートよし、ベルトよし、ルームミラーよし、左ミラーよし、右ミラーよし、ギアよし、ブレーキよし、エンジンよし...左後方よし、右後方よし and all the rest of it. I could drive that course in my sleep. And I was a bundle of nerves for the test, when a police officer came and called us up, told us which car to get into, and sat quietly making a few notes while we drove the course. 


This is just a parting shot of the course where we spent so much time (and yen!). But I'm really thankful I had a foreign license, because starting from scratch in a Japanese driver's school can run you $3000 pretty easily.