Spring changing to summer

It's been a busy couple of months since I last posted. Of course, we had a huge earthquake, tsunami, and (continuing) nuclear disaster. I am not in danger here and plan to move to Tokyo when my contract expires at the end of July (I'm job hunting now).

In April, the new school year started meaning new classes and a new group of first years. April is also cherry blossom season, which meant beautiful (but brief) cherry trees in full bloom.

Right now is Golden Week, when there are three national holidays in a row (Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday). I'll be back to work tomorrow, though. We have our school festival coming up, which means a lot of extra work for the English Club. The festival is a three-day event -- the first day is a talent show; the second day is an open school event, in which visitors can come and see displays, performances, food booths, etc., from the students; the third day is an athletic meet with all the homerooms divided into three competing teams. On the second day the English Club has its own room, where we have to put up displays and have games and such. Very excited that it's the last time I have be in charge of it!

Finally, in food, here is a kind of traditional Japanese meal. It's grilled dried fish (himono) with plain rice and tamago yaki. Tamago yaki is an egg dish. You mix eggs with some sugar and soy sauce, then pour a little bit into a pan. Once it's cooked, you roll it up to one side of the pan and pour in some more egg. You keep doing this until you have a layered, rolled-up egg. I haven't made it very much (even though I love it), so my tamago yaki isn't as beautiful as it's supposed to be. I'll have to keep at it.

End video:
After the disaster, companies wanted to pull their TV ads because they didn't think it was appropriate to being running commercials. This meant the channels had to replace them with non-profit ads. Unfortunately, they only had, like, five of these in stock, so we had to see the same commercials over and over (sometimes back to back). This is one of them. It's about using the "magic words" ("thank you," "good morning," etc.). The animal names are used for puns. Example: "Sayonaraion" is sayonara (goodbye) + raion (lion). Anyway. It's cuter when you only see it once, instead of five times in an hour.

Graduation (salmon and mushroom soup)

Tonight I made a creamy salmon/mushroom/garlic soup. It was pretty good! I bought a new cookbook and was a little worried because it doesn't have step-by-step photos like my old cookbook, but this soup came out pretty well. (The ground chicken with boiled quail eggs I made yesterday didn't go so well, though. Win some, lose some.)

The school year has basically ended (since Japan is on an April - March school schedule). It will be my last graduation at this high school, and these were the students who were first years when I arrived here, so they are the first (and will be the only) students who I have taught through all three years of their high school experience.

No time to dwell on that, however, since at the beginning of April there will be a new crop of first years, in addition to a lot of new teachers. Japanese high school teachers generally work for the prefectural government, and they must move among different schools every few years. I'm not sure which teachers are leaving, but since the teachers rotate among the grades, the ones I teach with will change regardless. One more term left in Ito!

I close with this video. I wish I could provide some kind of cultural explanation, but I really don't know what's behind this. It's a commercial for thick instant noodles. That's all I've got. Does it make you want to buy them?

Adventures in fish butchering, part one

Sorry there isn't a better picture. I wanted to make it look nice, but... I'm not a magician, okay?

Today, bravely (if I do say so myself), I decided to try cooking fish that didn't come pre-cut. Some fish here come pre-butchered (like the dishes I made before) and some don't. I finally bought some sanma.

My dictionary tells me this is "Pacific saury" in English. However,  I think all the fish I had back in America either came pre-battered and fried in stick form or was canned tuna. So "saury" means nothing more to me than "sanma," but if it helps you imagine the story better, there you go.

I've eaten fish with the head and tail still on it plenty of times in Japan, and when they (I got two) were in the package, it didn't bother me. But when I actually broke the plastic and pulled them onto the cutting board, I just kept thinking, "Those are dead fish. Yep. Dead fish. Touching dead fish. I would not touch dead fish I found them on the beach." But I carried on!

I'll admit I panicked a little, and cut the heads off right away. That seems to have been a mistake. I think I severed something that I should have used to pull the guts out, so removing the guts was pretty difficult. There seemed to be way fewer guts in the pictures in my cookbook.

Finally, I got to the cooking stage, and just kept thinking, "Why does it smell so bad?!" But it looked like the pictures in the book, so I didn't worry too much.

I added some grated giant raddish (that blob that looks like... slightly green applesauce in the picture) and some boiled eggs (that's not traditional, but I had forgotten that I was low on rice).

When I actually ate the fish, it was pretty tasty, although it has a lot of annoying little bones.

And! I realized why it smelled so bad. I apparently hadn't gotten all the guts out. When I was pulling open the second piece, there were some not-so-great-smelling cooked guts. Luckily, cooked guts gross me out way less than raw guts, so I just flicked them to the side and made a note not to chop the heads off so early next time.

End verdict: edible, but slightly incorrectly butchered. Not too bad. I am, however, curious whether the second fish, which I packed as my lunch for tomorrow, will have any guts in it. I guess it will be a nice lunch hour surprise!

Bonus video:

I'll close with a commercial. I like this one because it features Japanese high school cheer boys (it's traditionally boys, not girls, who cheer in Japan).

Tokyo Sky Tree

Tokyo Sky Tree is a new broadcasting tower being built in Tokyo -- because there are so many skyscrapers around Tokyo Tower that it can't give total digital broadcasting coverage. The Sky Tree will be the highest structure in Japan when it's finished at the end of this year.

There's a nice time-lapse video I found on Youtube of the construction so far:


I went to the closest station to take pictures of the Sky Tree. When you first step out, you actually can't see it -- you can only see the building at the bottom because you're too close. But once you back up enough, you can look up at the tower. I think they're developing the surrounding area, but when I was there, the only things to see were the Sky Tree and... people taking pictures of the Sky Tree.

 I also took some pictures of it from Asu Kannon, a famous temple in Tokyo.

You can tell it's popular, because the partially-constructed Sky Tree is starting to appear a lot on TV -- like the ridiculous crime sitcom above.


I also made some fish. I don't know how to stay what's it's called in English, but I like it because it has pretty red scales. And it was tasty.

Good / Annoying Commercials (and Fish)

This is the fish I made for supper. I thought it would be a disaster, but it was shockingly edible! And I don't care what the judges on Top Chef say, I think the bloodline is the most delicious part.

Anyway, with little introduction, a few Japanese commercials I love and/or hate. (No, that's not a mistake -- it's possible to both love AND hate these commercials.)

LOVE:

One of the less-weird Meiji commercials. I want to play a chocolate bar.


This was a year-end advertisement (hence the praying). That bear should be creepy, but I love it.


HATE:

The jingle is actually kind of catchy, but sometimes this actress's voice sets my teeth on edge (wait for the end for full effect). If they changed the spokesperson, it could move to the "love" category.


It doesn't seem to fit, since it's not a jingle, but I hate this.



LOVE / HATE:

This is a famous singer, but lately it seems like she only makes music intended to be used for cell phone commercials. If you can't tell, this song's lyrics are, "A winter fairy is melting a snow man. A winter fairy is melting a snowman. A winter fairy is melting a snowman. It's a melting snowman."


I loved/hated the same singer for a summer cell phone ad. The lyrics, you can probably figure out are, "Ring a ding dong ring a ding ding dong. Ring a ding dong ring a ding ding dong."

Well, it's 2011

Well, it's 2011. I haven't posted anything in this blog since 2009. Oops!

Well, I'm going to try again, but instead of just spending a lot of time posting about my life, I'll probably be writing more about Japan in general.

... I don't really have much for this post, so... here's what I'm eating right now:

It's nikujaga (肉じゃが). What you see there is pork, potatoes, onions, carrots, and green beans.

I've decided to become a better cook, in case I some day have to make food for more than myself. I've managed to build up a repertoire of about five dishes that I ate on a rotating basis, but at the new year I actually went out and bought a Japanese-language cook book so I can try to stretch my abilities.

So far, so good.

Summer Vacation Part 1 -- Anjinsai and Mt. Omura

August is the one month of school vacation in Japan. Teachers still have to go to work, but unlike during the rest of the year, there's flexibility to use some time off.

Here are a few pictures of things I did in Ito during August -- going to Anjin Festival and Mt. Omura.

Anjin Festival (Anjinsai) has all the Japanese festival basics -- lots of people wearing yukata (summer kimono), food stalls with many variations of "meat on stick," and fireworks. So I used it as an excuse to wear my yukata (which otherwise just sits prettily in my closet), ate a hot dog on a stick and two churros, and sat on the rocks by the river to watch the fireworks.

^ Lanterns (designed by local school children, I think?) lining the walk by the river.


^Fireworks!


^A blurry shot of the crowd. It was actually really packed.


^Fireworks reflected on the water.


^ My feet, waiting for the fireworks to start.

Mt. Omuro is a mountain (inactive volcano?) in Ito. There are two mountains with chair lifts in Ito -- Mt. Omuro and Mt. Komuro (O=big, Ko=small), but I'd only been to the top of Mt. Komuro, so I decided I'd try the big one. It's... grassy. And you can hike around the rim. In the inside dip is apparently an archery range. I had not been aware.


^Mt. Omuro from the parking lot. It doesn't really look that big, does it?


^ The lift going up. They kindly mow a path of grass so you aren't kicking it as you go.


^ A slightly hazy view from the top.


^ People practicing archery in the middle.


^ Some statues along the path around the rim.

Part 2 to come later, with a couple of non-Izu destinations.