First Earthquake!

I have been wondering for some time when we were going to experience our first earthquake in Japan. The first (and really only) earthquake I ever felt was in Hokkaido on my first trip to Japan. At that time I was told that earthquakes happen so often no one really even notices. It seemed odd, then, that we've been here almost two years with not a single shake.

I asked some Kobe-ites about this and they said that Kobe isn't an especially active part of Japan. Of course, anyone who was living here in the 80's knows first hand that Kobe is capable of tremendous earthquakes, but apparently this part of Japan is not especially quake-prone.

The earthquake tonight was very quick and not very strong. The news (which started reporting within one minute of the event) said we were between a magnitude 2 and 3 quake. It was enough to give everything a rattle, but not enough to tip anything over or shake anything off the table. It was over before Russell and I could even react.

Like well-trained Oregonians, we went and stood in a doorway for a few minutes. But we gave up within a couple minutes. Russell turned on the news and I started writing this post.

I don't ever care to be in a serious earthquake, but as long as they're small like this one, I don't mind.

Kyoto Shim Sham: Part I

Today was probably the most eventful and all together strange day yet of my stay in Japan. At 10:30am I met a group of fellow swing dancers (both Japanese and from other countries) in Kyoto and we proceeded to dress up in kimonos and do shim sham performances around various picturesque areas of Kyoto. We also had an amazing dinner to round out the day.

What is shim sham? For those who don't know, shim sham is a line dance most swing dancers learn. While swing is usually a partner dance, when the music for shim sham comes on everyone lines up and dances the same steps in unison. Its a real pain for beginners to learn, but its lots of fun once you do.

So why were we doing shim sham in Kyoto? One of the regulars at swing night - a lovely lady from Germany - will soon be leaving us for a new adventure in Hawaii. At some point she and some other regulars were talking about how it would be fun to do shim sham in kimonos. They did this once before in Nara, but this time more careful plans were put in place.

I'm dead tired after all the excitement, so I'll have to post more details later. The videos of our performances will be posted to youtube soon, and I'll make sure to link to them in my Shim Sham Part II post. I'll also walk you through the kimono process, some of the highlights of our trip and the amazing dinner we had in the next post.

Until then, here's a group shot of us just after we got dressed. This was SO much fun!

Really Big Mittens: Part END

I can finally report success on the mitten-front. While they did take quite a bit longer than the mini-mock-up mittens, they weren't so hard to do after all.

Unfortunately, I can't report a total success. I was very worried when I made the first mitten that it would come out a hair to small and all my work would be for nothing - so I tended to round up whenever possible. This means the first mitten came out somewhat bitter than strictly needed. Its not so big as to be useless, but it does look a little ridiculous.

For the second mitten I was better informed and knew what to expect. As far as I know the second mitten was right on target.

Both mittens should keep Russell very warm. The knitted liner worked great. The resulting fabric is nice and thick and very tightly woven together.

Really big socks are the next request - though they have to wait for me to figure out a Christmas-gift hat pattern first.

Wish me luck!

Japan Hearts Capybara

One of the harder cute things to explain in Japan is the capybara stuffed animal. A real capybara is an enormous semi-aquatic rodent that lives in South America. I'm not sure how it attained the level of popularity it enjoys in Japan, but somehow it did. You can find them at most large zoos and a number of aquariums. There's nothing wrong with a capybara - they are reasonably cute critters and I can see their place as a curiosity. After all, if you don't grow up with capybara wading through the river in your local jungle, you might not really know how to classify one.

Somehow, though, a clever marketer in Japan managed to make the capybara an instantly recognizable plush toy. While many fad toys pass on quickly, capybara have enjoyed a relatively long success - I can personally vouch for their prominent end-of-aisle position at several stores since we've been in Japan and I had seen them before that.

In the picture you can see the plush toys I'm referring to. Note they come in a variety of sizes and colors.

Of course, once you have an established character in Japan, you are free to dress it however you like. Now, for the year of the rabbit, you can get a capybara dressed as a bunny. I suppose that's not so very unlike you or me dressing as a monkey, so perhaps I shouldn't be so puzzled. They do make for cute pictures - also as would you or I dressed as a monkey.

Study Abroad Highlights

The first round of study abroad students has returned to Japan. Today we got to listen to their speeches about the highlights of studying abroad and their favorite memories.

Here are a few highlights of the highlights:

New Mexico:
White Sands National Park
Playing midnight hide-and-seek in the city central park. (This was mentioned by several people).

Michigan:
An awesome roommate who introduced the student to a local comedy show.

New Jersey:
Jumping out of the second story window of the dorms into snow drifts.
Spending every weekend in New York City

New York:
Not skipping class too much
Being really cold

Oregon:
Going on vacation to Tiajuana, refusing to pay $50 for a taxi ride leading to being handcuffed by the police, leading to paying $50 for the taxi ride.
One of our boys dressed as the cutest Snow White ever for Halloween.
Host families that took our kids hiking, jack-o-lantern carving, christmas tree cutting, etc.
And my favorite story:
Best purchase: A North Face jacket - it kept her so dry she didn't even need an umbrella.

It was really fun to listen to the students. Its so strange to hear them speaking with totally different accents and using elaborate turns of phrase they've picked up. The speeches also get VERY LONG (but in a good way). I can't wait for the 7 month students to come back in March.

Popsiclothes

Yesterday I put a load of clothes in the laundry. I had to go meet someone, so I asked Russell if he could hang the clothes for me when he came back from lunch (we were going together). He agreed.

After lunch, Russell decided he wanted to be out of the house (even though he's been coming down with a cold) so we walked downtown together. We both forgot the laundry.

On our way home that night, we remembered. At this point it was cold outside. Not snowing, but only for lack of precipitation. We got home, thought about it, and decided the clothes couldn't possibly mildew in this weather - we could leave them overnight.

This morning I got up to finally hang the laundry and when I started pulling clothes out to hang, I noticed something was a little off. It turns out they had frozen over night. They thankfully hadn't frozen together too much, but I had to pull them all into a flat position before hanging them and they didn't exactly "hang" on the hangers and drying bar.

Laundry Day

I know I've posted about this before, but for the most part, no one uses dryers here. Most families have a small washing machine (half the size or smaller than typical American washing machines) the only water temperature is cold and all laundry is hung outside to dry. There are dryers at laundromats if you must get something dry quickly, but it usually isn't that big of an issue.

This was one part of living in Japan that I was suspicious of. Having a large washer and dryer seemed pretty necessary to me when I arrived here. I have to say, though, line drying, when you are set up for it, is no big deal. I actually prefer it.

Of course, being set up for it is a major factor. We have two sturdy aluminum rods within arms-reach of our patio door. The washing machine is right next to them (also arms-reach from the door) and there are all sorts of clever clamps and hangers designed to fit over said metal rods to keep your laundry from flying away. We even have a little overhang to give us a decent chance of rescuing our laundry if it starts to rain hard and seems to keep the birds from leaving presents on our laundry for us.

I was thinking about how nice our set up is today as I was hanging our laundry IN THE SNOW. It wasn't snowing hard, but I thought - you know, if I were in Oregon, I would probably see the snow and assume laundry was off. Here, so long as there isn't any worry of the flakes accumulating on my undies, laundry day is on.

Really big mittens: Part III

I've been working on Russell's giant mittens for the last few days. Yesterday, I finished the first one. It actually turned out to be a bit too big. I was worried that it would be too small, so I tended to take every opportunity to round up when I was figuring out the number of stitches I would need.

Even so, the liner worked out well - this little paw bags is going to offer serious protection against wind and cold, so even if its a bit too spacious, it should still do the job. I'm going to start the second mitten today and scale it down a bit. I may remake the first mitten at some point so they both fit better, but I have a feeling I'll be finished with mittens for a while by the time the second one is made.

I put my first tiny mitten next to the Russell-sized mitten for scale.

New Bed!

Woo hoo! We got a new bed!

We have been sleeping on the original double futon that we got on our first day in Japan. If you've been reading the blog for a while, you know that we have been battling mildew and mold for the full two years. We have had the futon directly on the floor - which is fine if you have a traditional room with tatami mat flooring, but not so fine if you have laminate - which is what we have. Every morning for 9 months out of the year, the bottom of our bed was soaked through with condensation.

We had several strategies for battling this. At first, we tried to prop the bed up every morning and let it dry out. That sort of worked, but didn't always get it fully dry. At some point we got lazy and just started flipping the bed over every day so the wet side could get some air. On sunny days, we tried to hang it outside (a highly recommended strategy for both drying the bed and zapping any mold spores with UV light.) Unfortunately, we rarely got around to hanging the bed out more than once a week, and often lapsed longer than that.

Around this time last year, our bed was showing definite mold spots and started to smell bad. I wanted to dump it and get a new bed, but Russell didn't want to figure out how to dispose of the first one and didn't want to spend the money on the new one. Instead, he decided to bleach the bed. One day while I was at work, he put the bed in the bathtub with hot water and bleach. He then hung it out on the back porch to dry. It took about a week to dry sufficiently because it was the middle of winter, but it did get relatively dry. To finish the job, we decided to buy a futon dryer. It consists of a nylon bag attached to a hot air blower. You put the bag in your bed, turn on the hot air and it pushes hot air through the bed until its dry. It worked very well.

SInce then, we have been trying to flip the bed every day and dry it out with the dryer. We occasionally missed a day, but we did pretty well. The problem was that one side of the bed was always face down and the room itself was often dark. Eventually, the mold came back. It had gotten so bad that our bedroom smelled strongly of mildew. It was grossing me out, so I decided to use my winter break to take care of the problem once and for all.

I pulled everything out of the bedroom, washed bedding, washed the walls and floors with a bleach solution, cleaned out all the window tracks and washed the windows, everything. Unfortunately, the bed was clearly moldy again. I banished it to the patio, set out our guest futons as temporary bedding, and went searching on Amazon.

After a little searching, I found some wooden slats that could be rolled out as a very slight lift to get a futon off the floor. They were, of course, designed for exactly our problem. In the cart they went. Then, I looked for a nice futon. There were several cheap ones, and there was also a nice big fat one. I showed everything to Russell, we agreed that the fat one would make sleeping on slats more comfortable, so I placed the order and we waited.

We got a message later that day that the color of futon I wanted was out of stock, which took us a while to decode. Finally, we figured out what the problem was and agreed to take another color (this is all in Japanese, of course, so we're a bit slow).

Last Friday, the futon arrived. The slats still hadn't come, so we just put the futon out as it was. The next morning, the bottom had standing droplets of water on it when I lifted it. I propped it up under our heater and made sure it dried out. The next day was the same. Finally, the slats arrived. I set everything up, we went to bed, and the next morning? No water! The bed wasn't even damp with the exception of a small strip at the very top that had sagged down off the slats and touched the floor.

Success!

Hopefully we will be able to enjoy THIS bed for a long time to come with no fear of mold.

Really big mittens: Part II

I made a second mitten today. This time I tried a new knitting method to make the cuff a little less sloppy and I added a liner. The second mitten was much thicker, taller and narrower. I think all of those are the result of the liner. The thumb was so narrow, I couldn't turn it inside out to properly tuck in the yarn tails.

Tomorrow, the good yarn shop is suppose to be open again after vacation, so I should be able to get yarn and start working on Russell's real mittens. Unlike this time, I will have to be more careful to actually make the second mitten LEFT handed instead of making two right handed mittens like I did this time. Oops.

Knitting really big mittens

Every year around this time it gets really cold in Japan. Well, not really cold. I'm sure most of you are in colder places, but you probably have central heating. It has only been dancing around freezing at night here, but we have no double paned windows, no notable insulation and our heat source is our electric air conditioner on the wall that doubles as a heater.

So far, I've been fine this winter, but I spend most of my days at the University and when I'm at home I spend all my time under our kotatsu (heated table). Russell, on the other hand, works at his desk, which excludes the kotatsu option. Once the cold hit, his hands and feet got really cold, and that makes work unpleasant and both typing and guitar playing a real challenge. For Christmas, I bought him some velcro wrist cuffs with heat pad inserts, but those haven't seemed to catch on. I managed to catch the Eddie Bauer end of year sales and stocked up on long underwear, but even X-large size gloves aren't big enough.

I've been happily knitting hats since the weather cooled down, and I had a bad feeling I knew what Russell was hoping for. I looked everywhere, but couldn't find gloves in his size. Finally, I offered to try knitting him some gloves. He was excited by the idea of custom gloves, but I wasn't sure it was going to happen. I know how to knit, purl and decrease. That's it. I can make nice hats with that information, but the glove patterns were far more complicated.

I hunted around online. Russell suggested I make mittens instead of gloves. That seemed more doable, so I started hunting in that direction. I finally found a post with a self-described "simple mitten" pattern. What caught my attention were the detailed instructions for customizing he patter to different hand sizes and instructions for knitting in a warmer lining. This all sounded really good. Even better, was the practice tiny mitten that could be made quickly to practice all the stitches.

I went out and got smaller knitting needles yesterday and spent the evening working my way through the tiny mitten pattern. I had to fall back on YouTube tutorials to figure out how to do a few of the directions, but nothing was too hard once I knew what to do. I learned how to increase, how to slip stitches and use slip stitches for an different kind of decrease, I learned how to pick up stitches and how to make an afterthought thumb. I am not too modest to crow a bit about the results. I'm quite proud of myself.

Today I plan to try making a left side mitten and practice knitting in a liner. It sounds easy enough but it adds one more thing to think about. Ugh.

Once I get the hang of the liner (or give up on it all together) I will figure out how to adapt the mitten pattern for Russell's giant paw. You can see from the picture that I have a ways to go.

Happy Bags

Russell and I decided we had been housebound long enough yesterday, so we went out for a long walk. Since we were hungry, we followed our noses to Sannomiya (downtown) since all the local restaurants are still closed for the New Year break. Sannomiya was pretty hoppin'. Half of the stores were closed, but the ones that were open were doing decent business. We noticed that the Happy Bags were appearing once again. A Happy Bag is a New Year tradition where the stores clear out all of their old merchandise and make little mystery grab bags for set prices. You don't usually know what is inside - if its clothing they usually tell you the size and otherwise you cross your fingers and see what you got.


Once I had pointed the Happy Bags out to Russell (who hadn't noticed last year) we started seeing them everywhere. The draw of a mystery bag is pretty strong. Unfortunately (or probably fortunately) neither of us fit into Japanese clothing, shoes or slippers and we aren't interested in plastic jewelry or knick-knacks. We really did want to find a Happy Bag that would suit us, though, so we started browsing shops with items we might actually want. The one shoe store with my size had sails but not Happy Bags, the book store could be fun, but there was a little too much room for a miss there.

Finally we decided to check the video game store. Sure enough, they had Happy Bags with one known game and two used mystery games inside. It was a little pricey considering the high likelihood of unplayable video games (I was imagining princess fashion games, poorly designed car racing games, or the one game we already have) but we were excited to try our luck and we have found that games are good Japanese practice, so we went for it.

What did we get?

The known game was Trinity Zill O'll Zero. We hadn't heard of it, but Russell seems to like it. He says its a moderate action game. The two mystery games were The Godfather II and Dragon Ball: Raging Blast. We don't know anything about these two games either, but the ratings online were reasonably good for the Godfather II and a little better than mediocre for the Dragon Ball game. Not bad. They should keep Russell busy for quite a while. Definitely worth the price.

The known game was

Happy 2011!

Unlike last year, this year Russell and I decided to stay put for New Years. Last year we discovered that Japan does not celebrate New Years like other countries we are familiar with. Traditionally, there is no count down party or New Year's date. No New Year's kiss or champagne. While these things can be found in Japan, it isn't what most people are doing.

So what are most people doing?

Most people stay at home and have quiet time with family, from what we can tell. There is an annual, star-studded music show on NHK (public television), some people choose to hike to a high point to watch the sun come up the morning of the First, and almost everyone makes their way to a shrine to pray for the coming year and to get fortunes and charms. Some people line up to be at the shrine right after midnight, others take their time and head over later in the day. Otherwise, though, I think it is fair to say that New Years in Japan is largely marked by food. There are soba noodles for dinner the night before and Osechi (auspicious foods in a box) on new year's day. There is Ozoni - a traditional soup and throughout all the end of one year and the beginning of the next, mochi (pounded rice cakes) are a must.

So what did we do?

We probably weren't spot on traditional, but we did our best this year, especially as far as the food went. As I posted before, we ordered our Osechi box several weeks ago. It was delivered promptly at 1:00 on the 31st, so we were ready to go. The box said to store it somewhere below 10 degrees C, and since our refrigerator was far too small to fit the box (even when empty) we decided to keep it on the back porch. We had been getting a sprinkling of snow on and off, so we figured it was plenty cold enough.

With our Osechi safely stowed, I started making preparations for our New Years evening. We were planning to have a quiet evening at home, but I was worried about having enough food because I was pretty sure the grocery store would be closed on the first - and maybe early on the 31st. I towed a couple bags of groceries home, including mikan (mandarin oranges) and fresh soba noodles. Actually, we had come home from a nabe party at a friend's home the night before. It was so good and I had learned so much about nabe-making that I decided to make soba nabe for dinner. (Soba, by the way, are buckwheat noodles - dark brow and delicious).

Once I got home, I cleaned the house and set up a futon to act as a couch (I mean, we were planning to spend 3-4 hours watching the music show on NHK, so a little preparation seemed appropriate.) There were mikan in a bowl on our kotatsu - something we had learned from our friend the night before. Apparently eating mikan and sitting under a kotatsu (heated Japanese table) in winter conveys a feeling of pure happiness for all Japanese people. Or so we were told. Its not hard to imagine. I would venture to guess this would extend to all humans if all humans knew what a kotatsu was.

For dinner I set out to make soba nabe. I got about an inch of water boiling in our little pot, threw in a local variety of fresh tuna fillets and scallops along with some chunks of potato and carrot. Once the potato was starting to soften, I put in some roughly chopped shiitake mushrooms and sugar snap peas. I also decided to pour in the broth stock that came with the soba noodles to season the nabe. Once everything was well cooked, I put in the soba noodles and let them boil a couple minutes. We each had a heaping bowl of the stew. It was really delicious. Mixing small quantities of more than one fish really makes a difference in the flavor. The soba stock gave a nice flavor, too. In the past our nabe was either really good, or really bland. We've been wrestling with overcoming blandness, but we have some good tips now.

Full of soba noodles (as we were supposed to be) we sat down to watch the music show. There were a variety of famous singers from many different genres. There were traditional singers, rock stars of years past, idol groups and current chart toppers. They rotated between individual performances and group medleys. Between each song the hosts would make comments while the crew manipulated the set into a new stage for the next act. It was very cleverly put together. While some elements would reappear in new sets, no two sets were the same. Its always interesting to hear the singers live, too. The idol groups are amazingly bad singers before the technicians get to the recordings. The more traditional singers and older stars usually know what they are doing, and occasionally one of the young talents will actually be able to sing. That's always nice.

At midnight we had our shot of brandy for my Grandpa Pieterick and watched the news report from all the shrines around the country. It had snowed all day in many parts of Japan, so there were a lot of beautiful scenes and very cold people standing in line. After watching the news for thirty minutes or so, Russell and I decided against going out to our local shrine just then, and instead opted to go get into our warm bed.

The next morning Russell's friend Yuma came over to make Ozoni for us. Ozoni is another favorite New Year's food. Its a soup but different regions of Japan make it differently. The only constant ingredient that we know of is mochi (pounded rice cake). In our neck of the woods, Ozoni is often made with a white miso soup base, from there, though, any particular family's recipe is up in the air. I can't remember if I posted about our first try at making Ozoni. It involved red carrots, salmon, chestnuts, white miso and, of course, mochi. The Ozoni Yuma made for us had browned leeks, regular carrots, mountain yams (whole, not grated), and thinly sliced pork (paper thin - nothing pork-choppy about it). Once all of this had simmered together for a while, he stirred in the white miso and then dropped in chunks of mochi. His girlfriend's family had made the mochi at home in their mochi-maker. Yuma referred to it as "illegal mochi" because it wasn't made in the traditional way (pounded with mallets). It was still pretty darn tasty, though, much better than what we get at the grocery store. The mochi gets all gooey and sticky when it gets hot. It has a very strange texture and is very filling. Some people don't like it, but Russell and I both love it. This particular Ozoni was rich and amazing. We had two servings and then a third serving later that night for dinner after our guests had gone home.

I mentioned that the Kansai area (our area) generally uses white miso as the soup base. We also learned that the Kantou area (Tokyo area) use a salt stock base - no miso. We asked Yuma's girlfriend what her family does, and she said they only put in cabbage and soy sauce. "What!? No mochi?" "Oh, well, of course mochi too." We asked Yuma what people usually do after eating Ozoni on New Year's day. "Drink!" We had another round of the golden sake he had so kindly brought us. It had actual gold flakes floating in it. Very, very fancy.

After the feast, we set out some of my mother's Christmas cookies (which had arrived just that morning thanks to an incredibly kind-hearted mail man) and then played Angry Birds and Euchre. Both were a big hit. There may be more Euchre in our future. Russell was very pleased that he and Megumi annihilated Yuma and I. Yuma and I were less pleased. Nicole and Gwen may just as well have been here, they were spoken of and thought of so frequently during the afternoon.

After Yuma and Megumi left, we were starting to get hungry again so we brought in our Osechi box. We had been looking forward to this for weeks. As I promised, I took many pictures. Osechi is an impressive undertaking. The foods themselves don't seem too difficult to make, but there is a huge number of very small quantities of treats. Our Osechi box had two levels.

The top level had: some sort of sliced ham, sweet omelet rolls, mochi balls (that look like striped hard candy), cooked fish, salmon roe, oysters, sweet chestnuts in yam paste, mochi dumplings wrapped in leaves, fried chicken chunks, grilled crunchy fishies (eat 'em whole!), some sort of candied fish chunks and cooked shrimp in the middle.



The second box had:cooked celery, cooked chestnut sprouts, cooked mushrooms and spiraled konyaku (its made from yam, its 0 calorie because it can't be digested and its the consistency of hard set Jello - no strong flavor). There was also burdock root rolled in bacon and cooked, pickled daikon, walnuts in fish and chili paste, black (sweet) soy beans, a bunch more cooked vegetables ( carrot, bamboo shoot, lotus root, seaweed ties and burdock root), some fish cake, two massive black soybeans tucked in a corner and two crunchy yellow spears of fish eggs.



So anyway, lots and lots of stuff. Many, if not most of those things have superstitious meanings. I only know a handful of them, though. I know the black soy beans are for good health in the coming year, the sprouted chestnuts are for new beginnings, the yellow, long, fish egg spears are for fertility in the coming year, the chestnuts in yam paste are for money in the coming year and the shrimp are for long life ('cause they're all curled over like very old people - seriously). The other items - I have no idea.

I had heard mixed reviews on Osechi. Some people look forward to it above all other things, others think the traditional foods are less than appetizing. We found everything to be delicious. I personally don't care so much for the salmon roe (the texture just weirds me out, though the taste is good) or the crunchy fishies. A bit too fishy for me. Everything else was delicious, though. It was all even better than I expected. I definitely want to learn how to make my own Osechi next year so I can continue the tradition for years to come.

We spent the late afternoon pigging out again and then fell over where we were and napped until dinner time. We polished off the last of the ozoni and golden sake and that's where you find me now. Fat and happy and trying to be a responsible blogger. Russell is practicing guitar.

And a very Happy New Year to all! May you have good fortune in 2011!