More Blossoms and a Rainbow

So yesterday Jenna & I were set to go to Asahi Viewpoint but we ended up just going down to the Coop for groceries because Jenna hurt her knee while running up the hill drunk Saturday night. I don't know the exact circumstances because I wasn't there but from what she said Jeremy & she decided to run up and then she tried to stop, he grabbed her arm to keep dragging her along and she tripped & fell. So anyway she has a big scrape on her knee and because her leg hurt she couldn't walk down to the Coop to buy food & go to Asahi. So I decided to walk down with her ( I needed milk) and then we could walk back up as part of our exercise. Unfortunately I hate walking up that freakin' mountain. It is evil incarnate & I'm always sweaty and gross by the time we get back to the top. Sucks so much.

Anyway I got some more pics of cherry blossoms as we were on our way down the mountain & then when we came back home we had just made it up the drive & were in front of the building when it started to sprinkle. It rained! This big, huge rainstorm started and lasted for about 30 min. Then I heard something from outside my window & it was Eagle, Pierre, Seghir, and Young Eun. Eagle had bought a 13,000 yen collapsable/folding bicycle. Probably the most coolest & yet impractical item I've ever seen bought here. It's bright orange and silver and I got to test drive it. Pretty cool actually but of course I am very short so eagle had to put the seat down to like the very lowest possible setting. After that though the rain stopped (yes I rode it in the rain) and the coolest thing happened. A rainbow came out! Actually for a second there was a double rainbow but the second one was very faint & disappeared after a few seconds. Pretty spiffy though. So here are some pics from that. Enjoy!

Spring, Glorious Spring!

Spring has come to Hokkaido and you know what that means! Almost all our snow has melted (except small leftovers from large piles), the temperature has warmed up to the 50/60 degree range, and green things have started to pop up everywhere! But more than that our trees have started to bloom! Today Jenna & I went out in search of Otaru City park. A place we had heard of but never been to. We were hoping to find evidence of cherry blossoms and scout out locations so that when they were in full bloom we knew just where to go. Various trees around the area have started to blossom but we don't know if they are early cherry blossoms or some other type of tree. They could be plum or apple blossoms, and I swear I saw 2 or 3 magnolia trees here! The trees lining the school's main walk have not bloomed yet & we know for a fact that these are cherry. Hence our skepticism about the other trees. But anyway please enjoy these photos of early spring in Otaru. :)


Daffodils in the Park.


Me on top of the Park's mountain


Jenna in the tree


Birch forest


Cherry blossoms in the sky


Interesting garden on the way to the park


Two blossoming trees near the river, on the way to the park


Temple back view


Spring on the mountain


Me with a view of Otaru from the Park.


Flowering tree outside of Shodai


Blossoms on the way down the mountain from the school


Jenna on the park bench


Me on the park bench


Magnolias

Watch Batteries and Police Offices

So today was a good day for me! Prepare for long windedness. I know the title seems a bit ominious right? Totally not. First off today I had no classes, so I allowed myself the luxury of sleeping in until 10 am. Which was lovely, and warm, and involved good dreams that I can unfortunately no longer remember. But best of all today was cleaning day. Like ultra cleaning day. I think I washed just about every piece of clothing that I own plus sheets and towels. I've been saving up change for weeks. And it's been warm enough the past week 40-50 degrees that I felt comfortable with pulling the clothes line down inside and putting it back up on the balcony. I can't tell you how happy that makes me. The balcony clothesline is about 2x's as long as the one in my room was. Anyway lots of laundry done, floors mopped and swept, etc. Then I was having Jenna & Young Eun over for a Sukiyaki dinner so I needed to run out to the store and buy some more beef because I was afraid what I had wouldn't be enough.

Now I've been looking for my camera for about a week. I took it with me to see Gyung Mi's entrance ceremony (she passed the entrance exams for Shodai!)and took a few pictures. Then I went to Wing Bay to do some shopping and then I came back to the dorm. I remember looking for Amanda's hair clips in my purse when I got on the bus because I was afraid that I had dropped them somewhere so I ended up pulling half the stuff I owned out of the purse before I found them. I must not've put my camera back in or something because when I went looking for it a couple of days later it was gone! I thought 'maybe I took it out and put it on my desk or something' but it wasn't there. And it wasn't mixed in with all my clothes either (sorry I hate doing laundry with that shitty indoor clothes line). I began to be afraid that I had lost it.

While I was cleaning up I found my watch, the battery of which had gone dead in Tokyo so I had shoved it into my carry-on luggage and forgotten about it. I also found some pictures I'd had made in the Akihabara Yodobashi Camera store and all the gifts I bought for the KY folks in Tokyo. So I thought, what the heck let me get it all together and take it to the post office with me when I go to buy the meat. So I did. Obviously.
First stop was the post office halfway down the hill. I was nervous about it because a. I didn't have a box, b. I didn't know if I had to fill out a customs form or even how the Japanese form worked, and c. I was worried they might not still be open. The local branches close early and have weird weekend hours. So usually I have to go to the main branch which is halfway down to the canal and takes about 45 min to get there. However the entire thing turned out to be really painless (except in the wallet area). The lady at the counter was very nice & helped me pick out a box (100 yen) to put everything into, then she packed it all in there for me, sealed it up, etc. And the customs form was (thankfully) in Japanese & english so it was easy for me to fill out. Then she added it all up and I shelled out 3000 yen ($28) for mailing and I was done.

Next stop was the grocery store where I bought an extra clothes line & clothes pins (I have no idea where half of mine went!) and also the beef which was thankfully on sale along with some other items. They were having a 100 yen sale so you could buy milk for 100 yen (not kind I normally buy), and the meat was 100 yen for 100 grams. After that I had a great idea for dessert and went over to the bakery that rents space from Nagasakiya. It's called Nishimura Family Bakery and I bought some strawberry shortcakes from them. Totemo Oishikatta yo.

Then I ran across the street because Mao said there was a watch shop in the building there and they could replace the battery for me. Very efficient and quick service! The man inside had me sit down and I watched him quickly pop open the back, check the battery to make sure it was really dead, and then replace it. Cost me 1000 yen, but that's about how much I paid the last time to get it done at the jewelry shop in the mall. As I was leaving I noticed that the bus company's office was in that same building and I thought 'what the heck, maybe they've seen my camera'. After extensive back and forth (in my case) in bad japanese I was able to determine that yes somebody had turned in my camera but no they didn't have it. Yesterday they had transfered it to the police station. Not the Kouban (police stand) next door to their office but to the actual police station that was halfway up the hill on the way back to my dorm. I was very frustrated obviously.

So I set off in search of the police station. You must understand that a Japanese police station has like... no english. At all. Street signs, store signs, yeah they have english, the police station. Nope. Not at all. So I walk in there, this hot, sweaty looking foreigner who looks extremely confused. I had no idea where I was supposed to go inside this building. Thankfully one of the police ladies took pity on me and we muddled out that I had lost my camera on the bus. She led me over to their 'lost and found' department where i muddled through with another guy about exactly what I lost, and where, and what it looked like, and who I was and where I lived, etc. I had to fill out a weird form. Then the guy asked me to sit down. About 30 seconds later he holds up my camera and asks me if it's mine. Of course it's mine! I just explained in detail about it & even told him how much it cost. Duh. Then I had to fill out another form that said I had received my stuff back. Thank you Japan . Only in Japan could you lose something that expensive on a public bus and have somebody turn it back in to the proper authorities. I am so thankful to whoever found it and turned it in. I hope they have good luck for the next month. Lol.

So in summary, I got a lot of stuff done, a lot of errands run, property was returned, and I got to see the inside of a Japanese police station without being arrested. :)

Crockpots & crackpots

Ok so I've decided that I am going crazy. Like seriously crazy. It all started last week when I went with Jenna to the grocery store. Wait... actually before that. Ok I went out with some people to Teine & ate at a restuarant named 'something something Viking' which was basically a yakiniku (grilled meat)/sushi buffet restuarant. For $15 I could eat as much sushi, salad, french fries, chicken nuggets, etc. that I wanted. But the coolest part is that there is a grill in the table & you can pick out raw meat (different types & amt of fat) and raw veggies and roast them on the grill to eat. This made me really want beef which I haven't been eating a lot of in Japan because it's hard to find lean beef. So afterwards when Jenna & I went to the store I decided that I wanted to cook Sukiyaki which is basically beef hotpot.

Sukiyaki (recipe from Betty Crocker) is basically like this: take some thin sliced beef (or slice thin yourself) put it in a marinade made of sugar & soy sauce and let it set in the fridge for like 2 hours. Then you pull it out, drain the soy sauce back out (hold onto it!) and put the beef in a frying pay with some vegetable oil. Fry it up until it is cooked. Then you take some bamboo shoots, green onions, celery, and mushrooms (I hate them so I used potatos and pre-cooked them with some water in a pot to make them soft) and cut them up/prepare them. Ok after the meat is cooked you mix up 1/2 cup water & a beef bullion cube (dissolved) and mix it in with the soy sauce from before. Then you add it too the beef & put in your veggies. Supposedly you put each type of veggie in a corner & the beef in it's own corner. I put the potatos in the middle & they sort of spread out to cover other stuff. Then you're supposed to let it cook for 10 min. then add some spinach (didn't use) & cook for 5 more. What I did was I basically turned it on low, and let it simmer for 30 min. The meat was tender and delicious, the vegetables had absorbed the flavor of the broth, it was to die for!

Anyways, while I was out buying meat for sukiyaki I came a cross a 2lb. pot roast. I have never seen this large a chunk of meat in a Japanese grocery store before that wasn't already chopped up or sliced, and as a bonus it was American beef. It was freakin' awesome. I knew I had to have it. So I bought the sucker and took it home with me. Where it sat in the freezer for about a week. Then 2 nights ago I decided to cook it, I pulled it out of the freezer & left it in the fridge to defrost. This morning (forgot to set alarm yesterday) I made myself wake up early & chop up veggies for the roast. While I was half asleep and peeling potatos for the roast I heard a knock on my door (It's like 9:30 am on the weekend). It is Gian Carlo with his pet ferret (that is a looong story) on his shoulder asking me if I'll hold onto the little beast while he files down her nails. Apparently he trims them but they still have sharp edges and it hurts him when she has them unsheathed. I'm standing there, my hair looks like shit & I'm half asleep in my PJ's. Who does this? Seriously? I must be going crazy. So I turn him away and go back to my potatos.


Problem I've noticed with this slow cooker: If I use the cook times provided by the crockpot cookbook the veggies aren't getting tender. This recipe said 6-8 hours on low setting for the roast. I had it in and turned on by 10:00 am, when I came back at 6:00 pm (8 hours later) the vegetables were still firm. You couldn't poke through them with a fork. So I ended up turning the crockpot on high for another 3 hours but it was worth it. I had created... POT ROAST . It looked like pot roast, it tasted like pot roast, it was freakin' delicious. And on the plus side I have leftovers that I can eat for tomorrow night's dinner. Yum. Now if only I could find one or two more of these roasts ( I think it was a one off thing) then I'd freeze the suckers and eat them when I was feeling homesick for American food.


I have found no crockpot information on the web that would help me with my vegetable problem. This has actually happened more than once. I'm think that I will have to start: a. cooking for a longer time at higher temp all the time, or b. pre-steaming the veggies to soften them up. Which sort of defeats the purpose of my crockpot, because the whole point of it is that I can fill it up within a 1/2 hour in the morning, go to class & come back to a nice hot meal around 6:00 pm. Although I did find out from several different crockpot forum websites that the newer crockpots cook at a higher temperature than the old ones do because more people are starting to put frozen meat & veggies into the crockpot in the morning. The higher temperature ensures that the meat is defrosted & cooked by the time they get home. Only downside to this is that if you don't HAVE frozen meat to put in there your stuff is finishing faster than it's supposed to and burns on the bottom/sides of the bowl. The only way to combat this is to have a crockpot with a shut-off timer (i.e. sophisticated crockpot) or to hook up an old fashioned electric timer to an existing crockpot (i.e. old or basic model). This is totally bogus, they should just have a seperate setting for that & then you wouldn't have any problem. Like a switch you flip if you need the extra heat. (This is why I'm crazy btw, I am obsessed with crockpot production). Ok ok I will let you go for now. And yes Kyoto II is in the works and should be posted in the next few days.

Trip to Honshu: Kyoto Part I

Ok so I finally gotten around to writing about our trip to Honshu (main island of Japan). I'm going to do this in installments because it would take forever to do the whole thing. Also there won't be any photos at the moment because I've decided to sign up for Adobe photoshop's new online FREE photo editing service to make my pictures purty and until I'm done with 'em you can't see 'em. But if you want to check out Photoship Express for yourself you can do that here: http://www.photoshop.com/express/landing.html?promoid=CBTVJ

Ok so our journey! I booked our flights at the beginning of January on ANA. Mostly because ANA has an english part of their website but also because I'd flown on them before & liked the service. We were flying into Kansai Airport (Osaka) and flying back home from Haneda (Tokyo) so I could only book one way flights. The flight to Kansai cost 10,000 yen each ($100) and the flights from Haneda were 13,600 yen each ($136). If your buying a flight in Japan you can only really book them about 30/40 days in advance. Very strange but there it is. Also the sooner you book the cheaper it's going to be. So if you know your flight date basically a month before it (exactly) you can book your flight & get a cheap rate. You can also fly on Skymark, AirDo, or JAL. Skymark has an english website, AirDo does not but if you can get the help of somebody who can read kanji you'll be alright. JAL as far as I have been able to tell DOES have an english site... you just can't buy tickets on it. At all. You have to use the Japanese part of the site or see a travel agent. Most Japanese seem to use a travel agent when they go on vacation, they help them book train tickets, plane tickets, bus tickets, hotel stays, etc.

If you REALLY wanted to you can also take the train down from Sapporo. However be warned this is a LOOOOOONG commute. About 16 hours because once you hit Niigata you can't use the Shinkansen anymore & have to transfer to a regular train. They're working on building a shinkansen to Hokkaido but it's gonna take about 5 more years to be finished. Plus if you book a flight early enough it's cheaper to fly than it is to take the train.

Because we were only flying domestic & not transfering to an international flight we didn't have to get up at 5:00 am to get to the airport. Instead Arzu & I got up about 8:00 and we were on our way to the airport about 9:00 am. We didn't bring much in the way of luggage (I left the monster suitcase at home!) so we took the bus instead of calling for a taxi. The train was a bit crowded but what can you do? It was Friday morning and this was the first rapid train to Chitose :P. Our flight left at 12:00 pm and we were, in my opinion anyway cutting it a bit close. I had to stop in their gift section (huge btw) and purchase a couple of omiage for my friends in Kyoto & Tokyo.

We found the flight counter & got in line, Arzu was driving me crazy by insisting that we needed to turn our baggage in first & then pick up the tickets but I knew better. So we stood in the annoyingly long line and then I went & picked up our tickets and was told the CORRECT baggage line to stand in so our luggage would end up on the right plane. Now unencumbered by luggage we raced back downstairs to grab a quick burger at Moss Burger (they're disgusting btw) and then race back upstairs to get through security. I love buying my flights online in Japan because you can pick the seat you want to sit in. Best thing EVER. Now I can make sure I get an aisle seat all the time and not have to fuss with people to go to the bathroom. So Arzu & I got an aisle & middle seat in a row of 3. The airplane sucked, whatever model it was didn't have individual air vents and the plane was sweltering. Even the stewardesses were sweating! The creepiest thing about this airplane though was that it had the projector screen... and the screen was directly linked to a f***ing camera on the underside of the plane. I totally could've done without a front seat view of the plane taking off. We slept the entire way to Kansai.

When first arriving at Kansai we grabbed our stuff & headed out into the terminal and straight over to the starbucks that was directly next to the exit doors. I guess starbucks knows people want coffee after a zombie ride in an airplane. Then we left and headed to the train station. Trains in Japan are very strange. A piece of advice: if the train name has the words 'express' or 'limited' in the name it's gonna cost more than local or rapid . This is where we fucked up. We ended up getting reserved seating tickets for the Express but only bought the Rapid seat tickets. So when we got on board we had to pay about $7 extra for the Haruka Express to Kyoto. As I've stated before (and will probably do again) reserved seating is the best thing ever invented. You get a guaranteed seat with extra foot room & they have a nice safe place to stow your luggage so it isn't under your feet, blocking the aisle, or taking up another seat, also random people don't stand in the aisle and bump into you when the train moves like in normal cars.

It took about 40 minutes to get to Kyoto station and Arzu slept through it. I however took the opportunity to enjoy the passing scenery since I'd not seen any of Honshu before besides the airport & the interstate. The houses look much different from the ones here in Hokkaido & the grass was greener there, they had trees with leaves, some were flowering, and there were even a few palm trees!

Kyoto Station is HUGE. If you've never been there before I recommend it. It's got 12 floors at LEAST and is interesting all on it's own from an architectural standpoint. Most of it is open air with a tunnel effect going through it so that they get a cooling breeze in the summer through the whole station. But what's REALLY cool about it is the escalators. You know that saying 'stairway to heaven'? Yeah. They were talking about Kyoto Station. The stairs & escalators just keep going up and up and up. I got vertigo on about the 9th story from looking down at how far we'd come up. Craziest thing ever. There's also all these restaurants, shops, little mini gardens and other stuff like benches, sculptures, etc. And if you go to the very top they have the 'Skywalk' which basically a long glass enclosed hallway that goes from one end of the station to the other and gives you a great view of Kyoto. Best of all? It's free.

Our hostel was about 3 blocks from Kyoto station which makes it really convenient for transportation purposes. The place we ended up was called 'Budget Inn' and it was really a nice place. If you want to check it & it's sister hostel Tour club you can access it here: www.budgetinnjp.com

The place was clean, nice & quiet on a Japanese side street. We were meant to be booked in an all female 6 bedroom dorm but there were 2 guys in there when we arrived. One was Irish (and hott!!!) and the other was American. The American guy snored like a BEAR. Even worse than my dad used to when we would all go camping together. He woke me, the Irish guy, and a French girl up at about 3:00 am that first night. After that I bought earplugs and it was all good. The 6 of us shared a bathroom & shower, there was also an extra sink and a hairdryer we could use. Staff was quite friendly to us & helpful. There were sample iteneraries you could look at, copies of Lonely Planet, $5 a day bike rental, and they gave you a map of local resturants & convenience stores. They also had a great 'lounge' room that had a TV, sink, and fridge. But the best part was that it was set up Japanese style so they had a huge low table, zaibuton cushions to sit on, tatami mats, and the door was a real shoji screen which was cool. We were bushed the first day so after we checked in to the hotel we went back out and got some food at a local chain restuarant and then headed back to the hotel to get some sleep.

First 'real' day in Kyoto is coming up in "Trip to Honshu: Kyoto Part II".

(I know I know it sounds so cheesy doesn't it?!)