More Interesting Foods

First off, here's a picture of our pantry in its current state:


We don't have a fridge yet, as we're waiting on reimbursements and my first paycheck to do our real furnishing, so we've been going to the store daily for food and not getting much that needs refrigeration. I can't reach the top shelf there, so I need Lee to get things up there for me, at least until we get a stool. He's napping right now, while I wanted to take pictures of new and interesting things. In addition to what I'm going to show you, I realized something. See those things on the top shelf? Can't tell what they are? Here's a close up:


Those would be the dessert-y items we have here in the house. That's chocolate chip cookies and our fourth box of chocolates we got for neighbors, but since we have only three, it's extra. Lee has I do believe, purposefully hidden the desserts away where I have to ask him to get them for me. And there's still no Cherry Pepsi in Japan! My sweet tooth may just shrivel up and die from inattention.

On to the new and interesting food items. First off, we have butter. This is your average, every day butter. Or at least we think so - we know all the other products in the vicinity were butter substitutes, and this is the only one that said butter only on it. You have no idea how thrilling it is to be able to read something and understand what it is instead of having a crapshoot for dinner. Anyway, butter here is not in stick format. It is packaged like margarine or cream cheese usually is in the US. It's in a big foil-covered rectangle about the size of the box. Not totally bizarre, but something I thought I'd share with you.

Next up, we have bread. The bread here is quite fresh and moist, and does not seem to have much in the way of preservatives in it. It's also completely square. The breads are all the same size loaves, though you can get thinner or thicker slices. The bread comes in 4, 5, 6, or 8 slice formats, all about a dollar each. 1/3 the bread for 1/3 more cost than at home, but most things are more expensive. I can hear you now - What is that small thing near the bread? Well, fear not, trusty reader, for all will be revealed in due time.

The small container near the bread is something we picked up because it was on sale. It is chocolate peanut butter. In a prior post, I was lamenting the lack of cost-efficient peanut butter and jelly sandwich supplies. This small container normally costs $1.28, but was on sale for $0.66 today. All of the peanut butter flavors of this brand were that much, but all but the chocolate were already gone. We decided to pick up one of the last four chocolate peanut butters, just to try it. It is much more chocolate-y than I had anticipated. I had it on a piece of bread toasted on the skillet, since we have no toaster. It tasted like chocolate and the butter I used in toasting the bread, but not really like peanut butter. I was saddened. We'll have to go to the foreign foods store to see if we can get a normal size peanut butter, even if it is double what we'd pay at home.

The last item I'll be sharing with you today is a rather every day food item, but in an interesting package. This is a miniature can of Sprite - about 3 oz. I could not let such a wonderful item not be blogged about, so we got one. It is normal Sprite, but much smaller. Here is with Mr. Hamilton. Sure, I could have used a ruler or tape measure, but I think this was better.

Hanko and Glamour Shots

Couple of images courtesy of my fine scanner.

First up we have our hanko. Around here signatures aren't legal marks, and that goes for Americans too. People use seals or chops called hanko in place of signatures. The school had hanko made for us before we even got here in anticipation of us having to sign leases and things like that. Mine is on the left, Ana's on the right. They tell us the characters are sort of translations of our names, but my name can be written with one katakana and there is a heck of a lot more than that on there. I haven't checked it against the dictionary yet - it could say rude things and I'd still have to use it. Might not want to find out.










Next up is a scan of an ad that has already run in the paper here since our arrival. They've apparently been taking a lot of pictures of their newest American female engineering professor and they're all 'Hey, look what we have!' about it. Around Ana are the American and Kiwi engineering teachers and the foreign members of the English department of KTC. I did patch this together out of two smaller scans, you'll see the line down the middle. To get better copies of the photos, left click on the picture to get a large version, and then right-click on the image for the option to save it to your computer.

Local Food Watch

I can't document everything strange that we eat, but...these were given to us by a neighbor. To our taste and understanding they were glutinous rice balls covered in sweetened bean paste. Strange, but edible. At least for me, Ana's taste buds cried 'wtf mate' and she was done before she even got through to the rice.















Ana wanted something dessert-ish and I was at the store and saw a huge bag of gumdrops - individually wrapped because the Japanese individually wrap everything. We bought some crackers a while back and they were wrapped two at a time.















Then I opened one up and got the sneaking suspicion that these might not be gumdrops - seemed viscous but liquidy. That and it said "jelly" on it.















Turned out to be individually wrapped jello-like thingies, except the flavor is really weak. This one was orange, but instead of being orange like orange juice or orange soda, it was orange like watered down orange gatorade. Which more like water with a hint of orange than orange itself. Not a winner. I'll eat them at some point but I hope the other flavors are better. And this was what I managed to pick out of the whole candy section. Foodstuff identification failure. FIF for short.

Meeting the Neighbors

We brought a lot of little gifts with us when we came, knowing that there are many people you are required to give gifts to upon or shortly after arriving. One traditional transaction that takes place is gifting all of your neighbors as part of your official introduction, and sometimes they gift back too.

We've been busy and sort of putting off officially meeting the neighbors - it isn't the kind of thing that would thrill me in English, and in Japanese there was the possibility of it being pretty awkward. However, one of the neighbors broke the ice for us and came up to say hi and give us some bean cakes that will be discussed in another post shortly. I think I caught about three words of what she said.

After that, we figured we might as well go and meet the rest of them and hand out the gifts, as it was a national holiday and we thought people should be home. First we spent a while with the dictionaries and grammar books and made a cheat sheet to practice off of, and that worked pretty well for conveying our introduction to them, but some people then sort of figured we could speak Japanese pretty well after hearing us and went on at a mile a minute shortly thereafter. This is despite our assertion of 'Nihon-go dekimasen' which we said at least once for every person we met - means literally 'Japanese language I cannot' but theoretically is proper in Japanese. Anyhow, it was definitely a little awkward but they seem nice enough and we successfully followed the form of the thing as best I can tell, so yay us.

Natadera

We had a lot of firsts this weekend. First time to downtown (technically second, but I'm not counting going in a taxi to City Hall to fill out paperwork), first time getting caught out in a pouring rainstorm, first time on a train in Japan, first time in a religious place in Japan (Natadera), first time trying black sesame ice cream, first time taking the bus...lots of firsts, and all in one day.

We found out that Catia, an English teacher at KTC, was going out to a town called Kagaonsen on Saturday to see the sights, and went along.

We were to meet Catia and another friend of hers at the train station in the morning. As Friday had been hot and Saturday was shaping up sunny, we dressed lightly. Twenty minutes into our hour plus walk to the train station it starts pouring rain. Thankfully, we were passing in front of a 100 yen store (dollar store) at the time and bought two umbrellas for two bucks. The umbrellas in Japan can be very small and for $1 you get an umbrella that is comically undersized for Westerners in an actual rainstorm, so everything below about waist hight got soaked. This was not pleasing, but we successfully navigated all the way through the rather ritzy downtown area (saw Gucci stores and similar) to the train station.














They had a sweet clock / fountain thing. Train station in the background.














There was some confusion about trains and platforms but we asked a Japanese person to read the characters on the ticket for us and they pointed us at the right place. The train had some cool features - any given row of seats can be rotated to face the other direction just by stepping on a pedal and giving it a push - so the four of us could sit face-to-face and chat as opposed to sitting in rows. To find open seats we had to go to the last car, past the smoking zone, which was gross. Unfortunately, the rear of the train was, unbeknownst to us, lacking in doors, so when we got to our stop we couldn't get out before the train started moving again. We had to take a local train back from whatever that town was to Kagaonsen.

Once in Kagaonsen we noticed their fine giant statue thing, and grabbed lunch at the supermarket before getting on the bus to go to Natadera.

















Note the giant golden statue and our two cheap umbrellas.

Natadera is a temple complex with very nice gardens and impressive terrain. I've put up just a few pictures on the blog - see the full set here.


































Some of the paths and tunnels looked to have been hand carved out a looong time back and were actually kind of sketchy from a safety perspective - would have been easy to slip off a precipice or two.

We wandered around for a couple hours until it was time to get on the last bus back to the station, but while waiting for the bus we tried out black sesame ice cream from a place right in front of Natadera. Despite the picture and the questionable coloration, it was quite sweet and mild. I think they could have gone heavier on the sesame too - reminded me of peanut butter ice cream and has a good sweet/salt thing going on.

















We took the train back without major drama, and then had to figure out the bus system to avoid having to walk back in the dark in the rain. Catia briefed us - in Kanazawa you take a ticket when you get on the bus, and pay when you get off by putting both ticket and exact change into a thingie that collects them. I think you could underpay and get away with it as I don't think it reads the ticket, but the fee was reasonable and not walking back was good.
Day was adventurous and educational, but not relaxing. And if Natadera is indicative, they have serious gardens here.

Festival Weekend

It's a festival weekend. Or something. It's the KIT Festival, though we didn't go because we were tired from yesterday's trip (more on that later). It's also a national holiday (or something) and I get Monday off of work. I have to work next Saturday and both days the weekend after due to an Open House and the KTC Festival, but I get the Monday after the Festival off too. They have strange schedules here.

Anyway, back to the point of the post. This morning, we're hanging out and not really doing much of anything, when we hear a commotion outside. We look out the window, and lo and behold, there is a parade. Why there would be a parade today, down our street, we have no idea. However, there was a parade with people in costumes and a dragon. Also a little dude with a big stick and crazy hair. He was fighting the dragon (I think). I got a picture of the procession from our bay window, but didn't go down to see it as I was still in my robe. I tried to get a video, but my memory card was full from yesterday's trip to Natadera. Anyway, the dragon:


I still have no idea why this happened, or if it will happen again, but there you are.

A Random Post

Things that would make me happy in Japan:

Brown shoes and belt. I have 2-3 pairs of brown pants, but no matching shoes and belt combo. I’ve never been in a position where I’ve had to wear clothing quite as professionally as I do here – I have to actually tuck in my shirts and wear belts and all that.

Peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. I suppose I could get some. It costs $10-$11 for enough supplies to make 9 sandwiches. That’s one jar of peanut butter, one jar of jelly and three loaves of bread. Three loaves of bread with six slices per loaf. They’re not that big on baking here. The jars of peanut butter and jelly wouldn't last much further than those three loaves either. I’ve been warned away from trying to buy uncut breads here. A coworker thought she was getting a lovely loaf of French bread for some egg salad sandwiches. She has everything ready to go, cuts the loaf open, and finds chocolate inside. You tend to find chocolate or beans or something in breads. These people just don’t understand sandwiches.

Wild Cherry Pepsi. I love me a Wild Cherry Pepsi. They have normal Pepsi, normal Coke, plain Mountain Dew, some random melon, grape, and orange flavored drinks, and ginger ale. The machines at school also now serve 7-Up and Sprite. I’m scared of the orange one since you can get hot orange juice, so I think it’s just carbonated orange juice. Though I love orange juice and Sprite, especially if you add some tequila…Since I don’t like the sodas they have, this is both a good and bad thing. I won’t be drinking any, which is good, but if I just really want some, I have to order it from the Foreign Buyer’s Club in Kobe. Maybe the local foreign foods store has it. Do you know how weird it is to go to the foreign foods aisle in the store to get spaghetti?

Things that I’ve learned in Japan that I could/should have learned beforehand:

I love Earl Grey tea. Never tried it before, it always creeped me out. It’s delicious.

/random post.