Merry Christmas from Kobe

First, a Christmas warm up. A few weeks ago, we had our last Sunday Swing lesson of the year (more next year!). We had an especially large group for the lessons and afterwards, we went do lunch together. On our way back to the train, we remembered that the German Christmas Festival was going on at the Sky Tower. (That's the place with the circular observation deck and terrifying escalators that I went to with my dad last spring.)



The festival is at the ground level. There were tons of treats from Germany. Some, like mulled wine and gingerbread, were holiday favorites of mine - others (several German-style doughnuts, for example) were new to me. We basically ate everything we could get our hands on - or rather, I did and shared around so as to save room for more. We all had a lot of fun. You will note my co-worker Janet (who introduced us to the Osaka swing group) wearing a seasonal Santa cotton candy (aka fairy floss) beard. Most of the group also enjoyed the rickety Carousel.


On Tuesday before Christmas, we had our school Christmas Party. There were a number of really good performances put on by students and some awesome hand made treats. These pictures are of the food (homemade chinese potstickers and madeleine cakes) and some of my students singing "We Wish You a Merry Christmas." They did a great job. One felt a little more fearless when well concealed by a Santa beard. She was quick to point out that she was a VERY cute Santa.


On Wednesday, we head a Christmas Swing party. Everyone wore Santa costumes. Unfortunately, my phone can't take pictures in the dim lighting, so I have nothing to show. If I can get a copy from someone else. I'll post it later. It was a lot of fun.

Thursday was a national holiday here - I think it was the emperor's birthday? In any case, we had no school. Russell and I had planned to have a Christmas party, but in the end all but one friend cancelled or couldn't make it, so we changed to a low-key nabe-party. We spent most of the day Christmas shopping and cleaning after a nice sleep-in. Unfortunately, our last friend also had to cancel due to a dental emergency - so there was no nabe after all.

Christmas eve I had to work. We had another Christmas party planned for some other friends, so I raced home from work to help Russell with cooking and cleaning. He had almost everything covered, though, so I had time to put up this highly questionable Christmas tree and wrap gift exchange gifts.


Almost everyone cancelled or decided against this party also (there seriously must be something wrong with Russell and I). The one couple that didn't cancel were late due to work delays, but they did come and we had a lovely dinner. I bought a roast chicken on my way home from work and russell made dressing, mashed yams and Waldorf salad. He also made the annual favorite: eggnog. We have our technique down this year - no floating cream blobs. This nog was smooth and delicious - especially when one chooses to ignore what goes into it.

The gift exchange, unfortunately, was a little lame - four people isn't quite enough to make that work, but the gifts THEY brought were great! Russell and I made out like bandits. :D
Russell got a stack of twelved boxes of a candy that is apparently a fairly nostalgic chocolate. It comes in a box with a cartoon bird on the front. The trick, which our friend let us in on, is that one of the lid flaps sometimes has a symbol stamped on it. If you get a stamped flap, you should save it. Once you have 12 stamps you get something good. Along with the twelve boxes of chocolates he included a stack of 8 stamped flaps. Four more and we get a prize! He informed us that this was every Japanese child's dream. We have eaten about half of the boxes so far and found no further stamped flaps... this may take some effort.

My gift was a zhuzhu pet - for those not aware of this new-ish toy trend, zhuzhu pets were the big Christmas gift to get last year (according to CNN, so who knows...). The toys are battery powered hamsters and roll around your house, switching directions and designed to get themselves out of trouble when they run into a wall or another obstacle. They also make all sorts of little sounds. While the noises do make it impossible to keep the hamster on for more than 5 minutes, they are pretty cute. I never would have bought one for myself, but I'm looking forward to letting him run around the office on Monday.

While our party may not have been the boisterous event we had hoped for, it was fun. We wished our guests a Merry Christmas and sat down to watch pirated Christmas specials. I had horrible memories of that Rudolf stop action special, but watching it now as an adult was totally different. I had forgotten the story completely and it had Russell and I laughing almost the whole way through. I didn't expect to say this, but I am now a fan. We also gave up waiting for Christmas and opened our gifts early. Russell got an ipod to replace the one he washed and I got a video camera. Students be warned.

The next morning we slept in and then made pancakes. The pancakes were especially important because I had managed to find strawberry rhubarb jam at a local shop. Rhubarb is nearly impossible to come by here, and I had long given up on strawberry rhubarb anything. I was so excited I bought a jar for all my co-workers too. The jam lady was a bit taken aback. I saved my jam for Christmas morning to have on pancakes with yogurt. It was delicious. We spent the morning videotaping ourselves swing dancing in our pajamas. Those videos may not get posted.

Why NORAD tracks Santa

I found this link through BoingBoing. Many of you may already have seen it. I hadn't every thought to deeply about NORAD's participation in Christmas, but the story is awesome.

http://www.noradsanta.org/en/whytrack.html

Pocky Day

Just a quick post before I forget. I need to make sure we all have this on our calendar for next year. I was informed by my students at school that November 11th is Pocky Day.

Pocky, for those who don't know, is a kind of Japanese sweet you can get just about anywhere. It is basically a cookie-stick dipped in chocolate. The chocolate can be any flavor you want, though the traditional Pocky are chocolate and strawberry flavored. Pocky is a cult classic with teenagers in the US who have fallen in love with Japanese animation and comics. It travels easily, its fun to eat, and its pretty tasty.

Since the shape is a long cylinder, Pocky has apparently been adopted as the mascot for November 11th (11/11). As you have probably guessed, next year, (11/11/11) is MEGA Pocky Day. You won't see this again in your lifetime, so make sure your 2011 calendars are well marked and you know where to get Pocky in your neighborhood.

You're welcome.

Goodbye 2010

One of the more charming end of year traditions in Japan is the bonenkai (忘年会) or "forget the year gathering". This is a chance for any group of people who can claim a reason to know each other to go out and drink together in December. Of course, work groups do this, so do clubs and social groups. Groups of friends, neighbors, anyone takes advantage of the opportunity to go out and party.

Last night, Russell and I were invited to the swing bonenkai. One of the head people for the swing group found a restaurant in her neighborhood and invited us all to come out on Saturday night. Only a small group could make it (many were already booked for other bonenkai) but it was a lot of fun. The restaurant she chose was a Korean restaurant and it turned out to be a real find.

When we walked in, there were already two other large bonenkai groups going. The tables had been lined up into three long rows with a party at each row of tables. We wound our way around our own table and ordered drinks. Our fearless leader offered to do the ordering for us, which suited us all fine. In short order, two portable grills were being set up at our table. The owner came over, slapped a couple thick slabs of pork and a pile of kimchee and garlic on each grill and let things cook for a while. He came back later to flip the meat, and once everything was starting to brown, he snipped the meat and kimchi into bite-sized pieces.

At this point the responsibility for the meal shifted to us. We had a basket full of lettuce leaves and sesame plant leaves. We had to take a leaf, put a bed of bean sprout salad on it (to insulate our fingers from the meat), then add a piece of meat, some kimchi, spicy sauce and bird chilies if we wanted and then we rolled our creation up and chowed down. It was absolutely delicious. I would say this ranked among the top meals I've ever eaten in my life. Everything was so good.

Once the grills had been picked clean, the owner came back with white rice, some green onions and more spicy sauce. He mixed everything together on the grills to pick up the drippings and bits of over-grilled meat that were stuck to the grill pan. The let the rice cook until it was crispy and golden brown. Another delicious course. After that we got to try pajeon- or korean pancake. This is a vegetable pancake not unlike okonomiyaki, but it is much thinner with more chewy dough to it than vegetables. If you know what mochi is, it has a similar consistency. Of course, also delicous. Along side the pajeon came some plates of liver sashimi. I hadn't ever had raw liver before, but that was good too. It came withe a sesame dipping sauce and was really quite good. Finally, we got some sort of vegetable stir fry. At this point we had been at the "bonenkai" part of the bonenkai for quite some time and weren't really able to focus enough to know what was in the stir fry. It was vegetables and meat - and had it come before everything else, I would have been in love with it. After all its friends, though, this was the least stand out of the group. Poor little stir fry. It deserved more attention.

Another nice thing about group parties like this in Japan is that everyone just splits the bill evenly. No one worries about figuring out exactly what they owe. Our total for the feast and all we could drink came out to about $30. Seriously. While that's more than I would pay on my own for dinner, for something like this that seemed like nothing.

Around this point in the evening, we discovered that Korean food was only round one. We did lose two members of the party but gained two or three more at the bar next door. We continued drinking and ordered some appetizers to share.

The specifics get a little hazy at this point, but a good time was had by all. We were serenaded by one of our Japanese members with "Happy, Happy, Joy, Joy" ala Ren and Stimpy. We also discussed Christmas classic specials from America (all of which Russell and I have managed to gather together for our coming Christmas parties. We had a good night. We managed to catch one of the last trains home and were in bed by 1am.

Today I was feeling the results of the night before, but I had to go to work, even thought it was Sunday, to get some textbook writing done. Thankfully, it only took a few hours, so I spent the rest of the afternoon preparing for Christmas parties. I now have a rather large number of ginger cookies, an adorable Christmas outfit for the Christmas swing party on Wednesday and several Christmas accessories for the students to wear at the Tuesday Christmas party at school.

Should be fun!

(Oh, Russell has all the photos from this event on his phone, so I will update the post with visuals at a later date).

And then, there's always more food...

I decided to combine two of my November stories together, since, oddly enough, they are related. The first one is okonimiyaki with the band, and the second is Nabe - our new favorite dinner.

At some point, Russell and his Kobe band members (the group he was playing with in the earlier post) decided they wanted to have an okonomiyaki party. The drum player lives in Osaka and the bass player lives in Himeji, so we are in the middle in Kobe. Plus, it made sense to have dinner close to the rehearsal venue. Of course, we are always happy to have guests over.

There was one problem, though. Our previous attempts at okonomiyaki - those recorded last year at this time when Russell's sister was visiting - hadn't gone so well. The food was delicious, but its hard to make okonomiyaki in a small, rounded fry pan. Its really much nicer if you have a flat surface that you can get around easily for flipping. The drummer said she would bring her okonomiyaki hotplate, but in the end it was deemed too heavy. Russell and I decided it was time we had a hotplate - especially since it seemed likely to increase our house party potential.

Russell went off to band practice, and I headed to the big electronics store downtown. There were quite a few options. There was the basic, cheap, plain hotplate. Unfortunately, its only settings were on and off, and I had specific instructions to get something that could be adjusted. It was also possible to get hotplates that had interchangeable plates. There was a flat plate for things like okonomiyaki or hot cakes, there were plates with grill ridges for yakiniku (grilled meat), there were plates with half circle indentions for making takoyaki (octopus balls), there were bowls that could be used for nabe, and there was every combination of those plates in between. I needed the flat plate and I really wanted a nabe bowl, too. I searched around and the only combination I could find with both of those options was the full four plate option that was on special. It was a bit extravagant, but it wasn't too expensive and it did expand our range of dinner party options significantly. Plus, the temperature was totally adjustable.

I went ahead and bought it - though getting it home was another task entirely. With three heavy metal plates and a big stoneware bowl, the resulting box was HEAVY. The person helping me at the shop put double plastic handles on it and wrapped it in bubble wrap. She also triple checked that I could make it home and did not look convinced. In the end, I did make it home, but I had sore muscles and bruises for the next week. My choice did prove to be a good one, though, and has been used regularly ever since.

Its maiden voyage, of course, was as an okonomiyaki pan. It had come up at some point that Russell's bass player was a rock-solid okonomiyaki chef. He had apparently developed his talents as an underclassman in charge of feeding the upper classmen in his high school karate club. We have it on good authority that one does not want to disappoint one's upper classmen in a karate club. After band practice, the band went to the grocery store and got everything they would need. When they got to our place, the bass player got right to work. He was a clearly good at what he was doing. He was working fast, cleaning up after himself (shock!) and even providing regular appetizers for us while we waited like a bunch of impatient baby birds.

The result was delicious. He grated a bunch of mountain yam and threw that in to make the okonomiyaki more fluffy. Mountain yam is this funny vegetable that we get here. Every time I have seen it, it has been grated up. The grating turns the tuber into a kind of white, mucousy slime. Its totally unappetizing. It doesn't have a strong taste - I think the main draw is the texture. There are a number of slimy foods in Japan - things like okra, natto (fermented soybeans) and mountain yam are a solid corner of traditional japanese cooking. Of course, all of them are extremely healthy, and they do grow on you after a while. The mountain yam slime also has the benefit of trapping a lot of air during the grating process, so the resulting goo made the okonomiyaki super light and moist. Typical okonomiyaki around here tends to be much heavier.

Once it got down to eating the bass player and drum player took turns flipping the resulting vegetable pancakes. In the end, however there was a little more batter left than expected. The resulting okonomiyaki stretched out to cover the entire hot plate thoroughly. Its made flipping a real challenge. The final flipping responsibility was given to the drummer, who decided it might be wise to cut the okonomiyaki in half and only flip half at a time. That's what she's up to in the picture. It worked pretty well, and in the end all the feast was eaten.

We are lucky to have such skilled friends.

About a week after the okonomiyaki party, I was talking with some co-workers, and they were telling me how easy it was to make nabe. I now had a nabe bowl that went with my hot plate, so I decided to give it a try. My co-workers told me that all I would need was some fish and vegetables. I put it all in the bowl. add about a half inch of water and let the whole thing simmer down into a kind if stew. I bought salmon, two kinds of mushrooms, carrot, greens, sweet potato and some fish-based meatballs. I threw everything in the pot ( took less than 10 minutes) waited 15-20 minutes, and we were feasting on steamy fish and veggie goodness. It was delicious, healthy and fast. All things we like in a new recipe.

We had so much fun that we tried again the next day. This time we tried different mushrooms, potatoes, different greens, a white fish, and kimchi. The kimchi really made the nabe. It was lightly spicy and the salt (something we never add on our own) really made the soup nice.

It now became hard not to have nabe every night. We were worried we would get tired of it, though, so now we save it for one or two nights a week. Sitting around our heated table with the blanket over our laps and a a hot pot of vegetables in the middle of the table is pretty awesome. Especially now that the temperatures are dropping. This was definitely one of our better purchases.

Osechi order is in

Last year, Russell and I didn't really know what to expect for New Years. We knew everyone had time off and was going to be with their family. That was about it. Since we had had vacation time to burn, we decided at the last minute to head into Tokyo. It was our first trip north and neither of us had been there. I can't remember our reasoning, but we decided to start trekking home on New Year's Eve. We ended up spending the evening in a hotel in Nagoya. As you may remember from the post last year, New Years is not a party holiday in Japan. It is a quiet day spent with the family visiting the local shrine, praying and eating auspicious treats.

This year, Russell and I are better prepared for New Years.

We learned at some point that families eat "osechi" at New Years. What is osechi? I still can't give a thorough explanation (more will come, I'm sure) but from what I can tell, osechi are a variety of traditional foods that bring different kinds of luck to the eater. For example: Hoping for money in the coming year? Eat a special chestnut yam mash (it has 金 in its name, which alone means "gold"). Hoping to have children? Eat a certain kind of fish egg. General health? Sweetened black soy beans. You get the idea.

While the classic housewife would carefully slave away creating lavish renditions of these annual treats, many modern families now opt to buy a box of the treats. Orders are taken as early as November and prices are - ahem - a little steep. The cheapest box I've seen was about $60 for one person. It seems that about $100 - $150 was the rate for a good osechi box for two. We did see 4 person boxes reach as high as $1,000 (we saw two of those...).

We talked to some friends to see if this was the sort of thing we should make for ourselves or just buy. Since we didn't really know what we were doing, everyone agreed that buying was the best option - at least for the first year. The local high end department store was recommended as a good place to procure osechi.

We found the seasonal osechi corner and started browsing our options. Keep in mind, this is not something you eat until new years. Unlike Christmas pastries, you don't start eating boxes of osechi for weeks before the big day. Instead of displaying actual osechi boxes, the department store had highly elaborate plastic models on display. They really were beautiful. At first we didn't know where to start. Then, we noticed that each box was labeled for the number of people it served and the regional specialties it represented. And of course, we were keeping en eye on price.

We finally settled on a two person box in the Osaka tradition. It had all the osechi musts that my Japanese teacher had taught me about. We took a ticket from the display with the name and number of our choice. We then payed for the box at the osechi table and arranged for it to be delivered (between 4 and 6) on New Year's Eve.

I'm really excited. I promise there will be proud pictures to come.

Out of Order

This one is a REALLY old story now... If I hadn't run across the picture of the sink, I probably would have forgotten all about it.

You may remember that during the Osaka Lindy Exchange I had to run home on Sunday morning to attend our school festival and eat lots of food in support of our school clubs. (It was a good think I was spending every other moment of the weekend dancing).



After the festival, the students and staff helped tear down all the tents and put the cafeteria and other areas back in order for school. The Monday after the Exchange, I walked to work as usual. When I got to work, I went to the bathroom to change into my work clothes. I didn't get more than two steps in and abandoned that venue for changing clothes. It was absolutely disgusting.

There was mud (maybe not just mud?) smeared all over the floors and sinks, there were muddy, waterlogged toilet paper rolls stacked in a pyramid on the sink counter and there was an "out of order" sign on one of the sinks. I changed in another bathroom and assumed the janitors would get to our bathroom that morning.

Just before classes started, one of my coworkers came into the office with a shocked look on her face. The conversation went something like this:

"Did you SEE the bathroom?"
"Yeah, pretty gross, huh?"
"How did they manage to break a hole in the sink?"
"Wait, what?"

I went and took a closer look. Sure enough, there was a large hole in one of the sinks.

The rumor I heard later was that a lot of high schoolers from the marching bands were all muddy after performing in the rain. Apparently they decided to wash off, but couldn't figure out how to get the mud off their feet. They ended up trying to stand in the sink to get the mud off, and, well, you can guess how well that went.

Of course, I also heard that they never found the person who broke the sink - so I don't know how the person got pegged as a high schooler. I also don't know where the pyramid of toilet paper rolls came from.

Very mysterious.

I do know our bathroom became a code red, and within an hour everything but the broken sink was cleaned and sweet smelling again. The sink was repaired a week or two later.

Beer Belly

For once, Russell and found ourselves with an open weekend. Saturday we cleaned up the house and then started looking for something interesting to do. Russell remembered that he had seen a blog about a microbrew place in Osaka. He suggested we go check it out.

This was actually a pretty significant find. We've been here for almost two years now, and while there are three major brands of pale ale on the market, we haven't really been able to find anything else. There are pubs with import beer (starting at $7 a pint and going up from there). There are also a few major brands that make a "dark beer," but if we really want good beer, we have to go home to Oregon.

The promise of an actual microbrewery was hard to pass up. We set out to find it. According to the blog, the actual brewery is in Minoh - kind of a suburb of Osaka. It is run by three sisters who were given the brewery by their father. They make very small batches but they really experiment with flavors, too (not just reproducing international favorites - though they do some of that, too.) The only problem is that this place is Very small batch, so you have to grab it while you can.

We were advised by the blog to skip the brewery and go to one of the pubs Minoh beer runs if we actually want to sample their beer. We looked online and found their two pubs - both called Beer Belly - right in downtown Osaka. In fact, we walked right by them when we went to the art museum a year ago. Russell and I headed back, now better informed.

The bar was small but cozy. The menu had a variety of beers from Minot and other local Japanese microbreweries. There were at least 14 beers on tap and at least 4 of them were stouts. There was a WIPA, a dark porter, a cabernet ale, a yuzu pale ale, and a number of others. Everything we tried was excellent - and not just because we were desperate. The food was good too. At some point I realized that there was malt vinegar on the bar, so of course we had to order french fries. We also got to watch the bartender grilling oysters for one customer and making fresh beer (stout) batter for fish and chips.

I'm kind of bummed that we don't live across the street from this place.

For more about the brewery, there is a really nice write up on this blog