Food, food and more food

There seems to always be tv shows about food on tv here. It'd be really good to be tv presenter/celebrity/comedian here as they seem to do a lot of the tasting!! I love seeing their expressions!! =P They make it look soo good too! Wish I knew where half of the places they went to are.

Made some chicken and mushroom rice in the rice cooker on Thursday. They unfortunately don't sell any long grain rice, so the end result seemed a bit sticky to me. Might try and add even less water next time. It's a very easy meal to make as you pretty much just cook the rice and pop the marinated meat and mushrooms in at about 2/3-3/4 of the way through the cooking of the rice. You give it a good stir when the rice is cooked and let it continue to cook on warm for about 30 minutes.

Went to some Korean restaurant in Sannomiya last night with some of Sam's friend last night. It didn't seem to be an authentic Korean restaurant though. They didn't have bulgogi and the waitress didn't know what it was either! It was good for what we paid. =)

Sam and I continued on to get some dessert. Most of the places closed at 9pm, which was quite surprising for a Friday night. Unfortunately for us it was just after 9pm. =( We went for a bit of a walk to see if this little pancake shop that we stumbled across one day was open. As you may have guessed it wasn't.. Went back towards the station and found a patisserie with a cafe on the second floor called Esprit de Fouquets. Went in and got some cake and tea. I got a blueberry cake, whilst Sam got some cheesecake-tart. I really liked my cake! It had a light sponge cake base, blueberry (had a really strong blueberry flavour) mousse, blueberry jam, some cream cheese and maybe some blueberry flavoured cream. It was surrounded by a blueberry jelly, as well as some little jelly cubes around it. Our cakes came with a biscuit and some surprisingly really tasty soft serve ice cream. I was quite surprised with the tea as it was good strong tea.

Sam's cake with kiwi, current jelly and some chinese citrus fruit.

It's been very cloudy today, as a typhoon is coming through Japan. It's currently around Okininawa as I type. We were going to go visit some temple that is near us after Sam came home from worship practice. It started to rain a little so we decided to come home. The rain stopped not long after. Better to be safe than sorry!

Bought these little mushroom things the other day. It's a chocolate biscuit stem with a mint chocolate mushroom cup. They remind me a lot of a mint slice.

On another random note this crow has started to come sit on our balcony in the mornings. It's still got a little bit of baby fluff left around it's neck. Makes it look a bit funny. =P They're quite noisy though. There are 4 which I have seen around our block apartments.

Arhhh!! Arhh!! are the sounds of what I woke up to this morning.

Choc chip cookies that I baked last week

It's finally autumn!

It's finally autumn! The weather has been beautiful recently! Lovely sunny days with a nice cool breeze. The trees haven't started to change colour yet though. Sam said November will get down to 10 degrees.

Sam had a day off last Thursday, as he went to school the previous Saturday for the Sports Day. We rode up to Costco and bought a huge box of grapes.. they were all good! Sweet and crisp! We bought some Costco cookies, which looked pretty amazing. They didn't taste as good as they looked though. We grabbed something to eat whilst we were there. Sam got a slice of pizza (which is like 2 normal slices) and a twisted churro for me. My churro was a bit to dry in the middle for me. Nothing like the Dulce de leche filled ones from Rockdale! You can get a cup where it is unlimited refill for cheap. I want to try their Hokkaido soft serve. You get a lot for the amount you pay. You could make some tasty floats as well! Made some chocolate chip cookies that night as well. The butter was really airy when I melted it, which I thought was strange. Our microwave unfortunately only has 10 degree increments and I needed 165 degrees celcius. Had to experiment with a few different batches. Forgot to take pictures this time. Sam made gyudon (beef bowl) for dinner.. Mmmm... 

Gyudon

Costco twisted churro

Slice of supreme pizza

Started Japanese class at the HIA on Monday. It's not really what I expected. Most people in the class know Katakana and Hirigana (Japanese alphabet). I'd have to say it would be VERY hard if you didn't know either with the way things ran. There were a lot of people from different countries in my class. Quite a few people were from Indonesia surprisingly. The teacher spoke in Japanese the whole lesson and used a few picture cards. Probably ideal with people coming from different countries and as they say a picture is worth a thousand words! Managed to understand and follow what was happening (thanks to Sam teaching me stuff back in Sydney). Will need to read through the lesson in the textbook prior to class if I want to have a chance of following what she says. She moves pretty quick.

The english club at Sam's junior high school is doing a song for their culture festival. Sam will be accompanying them on guitar, so I've been hearing a lot of 'The lion sleeps tonight' and 'wimoweh'ing. It's a very catchy tune that tends to stay in your head for a while!

Decided to have a bath yesterday. Bath here is soo good as it's quite deep and wide. You can sit and have your shoulders under the water!! =D It's not as long as the bath tubs in Australia, but I prefer this kind. On the wall is a panel where you set the temperature of the hot water, we figured about 42 degrees is pretty good. You can reheat the bath water with the press of a button too! Good if you have a large family.

Sam and I are going to bible study tonight in the city. It's a young adults group and we'll be going through the book 'What's so amazing about grace?' by Philip Yancey. Will be interesting to do group with people from different places!

Bought these num nums at the local bakery. The croissant with the chocolate in the middle is one of my favourites. Not a fan of chocolate croissants in general but this one appeals to me for some reason.. Maybe the large amount of chocolate in the middle??? =P The apple danish was a new product. Had to get it because it was fresh and hot!

Bought some throat lozenges today. Was quite surprised when I opened the box and found sticks of lozenges not a blister pack.

Halloween

Seems like halloween is pretty popular here in Japan. I've seen lots of props and LOTS of halloween packaged candy. Reminds me a bit of Christmas back in Australia where they sell things waaayyyy in advance. I did some Christmas decorations at Costco though when we went last week. Saw these halloween kit kats at our local supermarket. They're pumpkin pudding flavour (whatever that is)!! O_O!!! Bought some and just tried one. I wouldn't say it taste like pumpkin though.. can't describe what they taste like. Hmm..

I am getting used to riding my (adult) bike. Haven't really ridden a bike (no gears) since I was a kid and I was always able to put my feet on the ground. I get really scared when I can't put both me feet on the ground when I am sitting on the bike. So we have lowered the seat as low as we could so I could at least tippy toe with both feet. Still get scared when riding near people/ objects and takes me a while to get going.

Anyway.. while I was riding home today the were 3 preschool kids walking up the slope towards me. There was a little boy pushing a bike, the other boy and girl were holding hands and walking. The little girl said konnichiwa to me and it made my heart give the biggest smile!! She was really cute too with her round straw hat, fringe and two low pigtails.

Public Holiday Monday

Monday was a 'national' (public) holiday - respect for the aged day. Sam cooked some scrambled eggs and bacon, which we had with some toast. The toast didn't really go as it was a bit sweet. Definitely missing having some good breakfast in Sydney.

We headed out to Shinnagata to see the 'life size' 18m tall Tetsujin-28 monument. It was built as a symbol of recovery from the Great Hanshin Earthquake in 1995. It is very cool! There were some street lamps with Tetsujin heads on them too. We walked over to see some giant shoes outside shoe plaza. They weren't as big as I was expecting (I was expecting to see some shoes about the size of Tetsujin.. hehe..)

Must-do Tetsujin photo pose

Tetsujin lamp posts

Random bunny road barriers

Showing the way to shoe plaza

The big red shoes

We popped back on the subway to go see the giant buddha. Saw this awesome looking place covered in vines on the way. The buddha wasn't very interesting I must say and found it kind of scary.

Awesome house

Giant buddha with his creepy eyes

Stopped at a Family Mart (convenience store) to get something to keep us going in the heat. Walked out with a pair of Crunkys (the name always makes me smile =P). It's ice cream with a chocolate and biscuit outside. Nowhere near as a good as a Gaytime or Maxibon. We got coffee ice cream ones. The coffee flavour was a bit strong for me but Sam liked it.

  Coffee ice cream Crunky.

Next we went to Harborland. Headed over to Mosaic Plaza where they have some cool shops! We saw two ladies dressed up in Halloween gear. One was singing whilst playing the accordion and the other would walk like.. a doll? The singing lady was funny as she would occasionally sing 'take a picture' when she saw people with cameras.. =P We grabbed some Korean lunch and started heading home as I wasn't feeling very good. =( Would like to go back at night time to see some of the night lights and explore the area a bit more.

Popped by the Motomachi Daimaru on the way home to pick up some num nums. Sam got a pistachio cake and I got some caramel one. Sam's one was a pistachio mousse, some cherry inside on a almond-meringue base. Mine was a caramel mousse with cream on a sour cherry cake base. It needed some kind of crunch like some peanut brittle or praline to make it even better.

a fun weekend

Yesterday I went along with Sam to his school's sports day. It was HOT! There were some seats set up for family, with some under a cover for the elderly and the rest in the sun. I was lucky to get a seat but it meant spending the whole day in the sun, which left me with a funny sunglasses tan. O_o ! I had a towel that I was able to put over my shoulders and my head to protect me from the harsh sun, as well as a good old fan. Poor students had no hats or shade!

The sports day started with the students marching out in their classes behind their class flags. They did some warm up exercise to some music ( I had only seen it on a Japanese drama.. didn't think they actually did it! =P). The classes in each grade competed against each other in some events. All students participated (not like in Aus.. =P). They all did a relay race and one other different activity. I found it quite funny that everytime they came out onto the field they came out jogging/marching to a certain tune. They also did their sports to music too..

The classes with their class flags

Warm up time

One person sits on the tire whilst 3 people pull you up and around a witch's hat where the boys would put
a flag in the top and the girls would take it out. They did this until everyone had been around the cone.

After everyone in the team had gone around, one member of the class had to
climb up to the top of a pole of bamboo and put the flag in the top.

Afterwards all the boys came onto the field. They firstly did a handstand, then they started doing more complex things in groups leading up to do a pyramid. The big pyramid at the end the boys tried three times before they managed to successfully finish the pyramid! The first try they were very close, with the boy at the top just having to get a sign off his shoulder to hold up then they fell. The second time they didn't get as far. It was very moving to watch.. and all the parents were shouting "Ganpatte!" (go for it/keep at it/do your best) on the 3rd try. 

The big pyramid

All the girls then came out and danced to a few different tunes.

After lunch the school marching band did two songs, then the sports clubs did a lap. This was followed by a relay race between the sports clubs. The teams used different things to pass on as a baton such as a volleyball or a judo mat! This was pretty fun and interesting to watch. Some of the club members were soo fast! The teachers participated in these relays. There were a few more different relays then a huge tug of war between families/friends vs the 3rd years. The parents won both times. 

Boys volleyball team - having to hit it to the captain to finish the crossing line.

Kendo club members

Judo club

Setting up the rope for tug of war

We went out for dinner today and had katsu in Seishin-chuo. The outside parts were very crispy and crunchy. You could get rice, miso and cabbage refills (although you get soo much I don't know how people manage to eat more cabbage or rice). We had a little walk around the area and looked around in one of the supermarkets. We found and bought a few goodies. 

Our friendly visitor

Cookies and cream panda pocky

Pocky with matcha cookie chunks

Hint mint! You need this mint! A gesture of kindness.. Whahaha..