More Ikebana!

I have made a couple more Ikebana arrangements, and I will now show them to you! I know you are as excited as I am!


This was my second arrangement. It has Calla Lilies and Kangaroo Paws. There's also some cute pink flowers and a branch with some leaves on it, but I don't remember the names of those. The teacher showed me what to do for the main branches, but I placed the Calla Lilies and leafy branch myself, and she said it was good. Yay!


Because the Freesias and one Carnation weren't done yet, and the branches were growing leaves, I rearranged those pieces of the first arrangement into a new arrangement. I only had the one kenzan, so couldn't have two at once. This is my unofficial but still very much pleasing to me arrangement.


For this arrangement, the flowers were not quite in sync with the blooming, so it was not as pretty as it could have been at any one point in time. The roses were best the day or two after I got the flowers, and the lilies didn't bloom until 3 and 4 days after, when the roses were wilting. I liked this arrangement a lot, and just wish I had a more appropriate bowl. We make these at school using their supplies, then bring the flowers home and rearrange them in our own. I got three interesting bowls from the secondhand store for my arrangements. The only problem with them is that they're about 2/3 the size of the school's bowls, and in arranging Ikebana you tend to base the lengths of your flowers off the size of the container. I didn't want to re-cut everything after it looks so perfect the way it was, especially as the leaf would just be too big if everything else were smaller, so I left it even though it definitely overpowers the bowl.

I'm so glad I'm doing Ikebana. It's really cool to learn a beautiful flower arranging technique that I'll be able to use for the rest of my life, and it's nice to have the fresh flowers in the apartment on a weekly basis. Even Lee likes the flowers, and says they brighten the place up. Plus, I get a certificate for each year I complete, and the textbook is in English so I actually am learning the technical aspects and not just trying to piece together what I can from pictures and the other students.

Bamboo!

We were walking in the store and wondering what these things were. Most of the vegetables here are things you can typically get in any grocery store at home, but some, like these, are odd. Later, we were given a pair of them from the owner of our building. We still had no clue what they were. They kind of look like villains from some sort of Mario game, don't they? They have green shoots growing up along the sides and top, like spikes, and the outside is very fibrous and hairy. At work we asked what they were and how to deal with them, and discovered that they were new bamboo shoots. You have to boil them before doing anything else with them. We decided to make stir fry with them.

First, you have to peel them. This gets rid of, oh, nearly half of the volume of the bamboo shoot. It also makes a rather large mess. The little hairs on the outside tend to come off and go everywhere.


Then, you boil the remaining shoot for at least 20 minutes or until tender. This makes it tender and not bitter, and it ends up tasting like nothing in particular, so perfect for stir fry or other vegetable based meals. We chopped it up after boiling it and added it to some blanched bean sprouts, carrots, chicken, and onions over rice with duck sauce, which was delicious. Now you know what to do if you encounter one of these in the wild.

Last Snow!

I took this picture a month ago, during our last snow of the season. Snowing so late in March made me feel at home again!


Now, everything is in bloom. We will have some pictures of the campus and surrounding areas in a future post, but right now I will show you the rice paddies next door. Lee saw them pulling a plow-type thing with a rope over the shoulder the other day - pretty medieval. The older farmers tend to be very obvious here, because their backs often curve at a 90 degree angle from spending so much time planting, weeding, and harvesting while bent over. The rice paddies:


Things are so interesting here. The rice paddies and other gardens everywhere (there are two sets of rice paddies and maybe 6-8 gardens within 150 feet of the apartment), new and different vegetables and plants, and right now, everything seems to be blossoming and beautifully scented, even the bushes lining the roads. This is a very beautiful season!

Ca Ri Ga Pi

Disclaimer by Lee: Ana is writing like a sugar happy 1950's five-year-old in this post. Short version - she made pie, it was pretty good, and the world inside her mind has changed in a fundamental way because of this. Be warned if you continue further that exclamation points are used and freely abused.

Yay! My first pie crust, for real! I made a Vietnamese curry chicken (Ca Ri Ga) pot pie for dinner, and boy was it delicious! This was my first pot pie, my second ever pie, and my first pie crust. It came out surprisingly well. I used the filling recipe from Wandering Chopsticks, after having tried and enjoyed the non-pie version of the curry, and the crust recipe from the same. Lee was aghast - I was making pie crust and not using his family recipe? Sacrilege!

He agreed that the crust I used was correct for this particular use. It is rich and pastry-like, so it is excellent if you're looking for a thicker, more buttery crust. I think I'd still go with his family's recipe for most fruit pies. I used this recipe for a chocolate pie as well (no pictures, it went too quickly!) and wow, was it amazing. My family typically gets boxed pumpkin and chocolate pies for Thanksgiving - never again on my watch! This pie was so amazing, and actually really easy to make. I hadn't ever made my own pudding before, and it worked well.


We made some rice to go with it, because as filling as the pie was, we wanted to have leftovers for the next night! Ca Ri Ga pie a la mode.

Interesting Traditions

Sadly, we were able to attend a Japanese wake. It was a beautiful Buddhist service at a funeral parlor. There was an enormous quantity of flowers and food to appease the gods, asking them to come and listen to the prayers of the people. Here, a wake is not just people coming and paying their respects, but a whole ceremony. Two priests lit incense and chanted, and for some of the chants, other mourners joined in. The chanting was very beautiful and soothing. One of the family members of the deceased made a emotional speech in Japanese, saying that his mother-in-law was always very motherly, looking out for her family, and waiting for the most convenient time to pass so that everyone was able to attend the wake.

In attending a wake, you are expected to give money in an envelope with a black and white ribbon, and you receive a gift for attending. Many major events in life here have specific envelopes and specific amounts of money to give, and you typically receive a gift worth about half of what you've given. At this particular wake, many, many people attended because the family is very well known and loved. To make it easier, you were given a booklet to choose the gift you wanted instead of a generic gift set.

No pictures, as we felt that photography would be inappropriate.

Hanami Time!

Cherry blossom viewing is known as Hanami, and it is on! People typically have picnics to go see the cherry blossoms along the rivers here. If I hadn't twisted my ankle a couple of weeks ago, we'd have gone with some friends, but missed out on that one. We did, however, go to see the cherry blossoms at Kenroku-en, the famous garden downtown.


Cherry blossoms are a really big thing here. For one week, the garden is lit up and open for free at night so everyone can come see the blossoms. We went Wednesday, because we were busy for most of the rest of the week, and dead tired when we were home. You can't imagine how many cherry trees there were, and how huge some of them were. It's simply amazing how many trees there are; they're everywhere! The trees are so beautiful, and the scents? Oh how I wish you could put scents through the internet. Walking amongst the trees, the scents of the cherry blossoms, mimosa trees, and this one bush that doesn't have visible flowers but smells simply amazing are heavenly. If you're thinking of visiting Japan, definitely find out when the cherry blossoms will be blooming wherever you're going. Unimaginable!


As it was dusk, we weren't able to get many good pictures. I took about 50, and only got 12 good ones, and a couple of them really aren't that great. They should give you some idea of what it's like. As always, head over to Flickr for more, they're the last 12 in the Kenroku-en set, the ones that are all pink.

Happy Easter!

We had a party here Holy Saturday, a going away party for probably the closest friend I have had so far. There were almost 40 people here, and it was a very good time. I didn't think to take pictures of the crowd during the party, but I did get a shot of all of the shoes in the entryway and out the door:


I just joined the Ikebana (Japanese flower arranging) club, so every Wednesday, I will be getting new flowers to arrange and we will have fresh flowers in the house weekly. It's a good deal, and is a really cool skill to have, so I'm very excited about it. As I am a first year student, I get the first year student flowers, and have to arrange them in a very, very systematic way, which is good for me. Technically oriented flower arranging based on set angles, where each piece is some fraction of the next, based off of the size of the vase you're using? I can do that. This week, we had a couple of pink carnations, some yellow fresias, two branches, and a fern, very festive in a spring and Easter way. It's looking a little beat up at this point, from carrying it home and resetting it here after arranging it at school, but the flowers are more open:


I'm inordinately proud of myself for this. I keep telling Lee to go look at the flowers, another one has bloomed, or another leaf has popped out on the branches, but he's not as awestruck by them. Arranging flowers is just one of those things that I tend to put in the "I can't do it" category because it's just too artistic and not structured enough - but I did it! And it ain't half bad, if I do say so myself.