Life, cooking, and travel

 Ha! And you didn't know this was a food post...

Here's my meal from last night.  The couscous salad and Japanese Eggplant is mine. I had a lot of fun trying out the eggplant. It's grilled in the small broiler in my stove, and then topped with grated ginger, soysauce, and a bit of sesame. I feel there is something missing from my dressing, so if you have ideas, let me know!

The couscous is dressed with lemon (I found them on sale! Also made sugar mint lemon water with the rinds afterwards, and it was delicious), black pepper, carrots, cucumber, and nira (a kind of flat Japanese green onion).

I ate it with two new ALT's in Takeo, and it was an excellent and relaxing evening.

 

Aaaaaand this is dinner tonight!

The zombie couscous salad returns! (and was not conquered)

I made hummus for the first time in over a year! It was amazingly delicious!

Ron added lentils (amazing!) and homemade broccoli ham macaroni. 

Next, our little friend at dinner. Isn't he ADORABLE????

I loved watching him chase the little bugs. He's my hero! Eat those mosquitoes, buddy!

Last, two pictures from my trip that I actually took! Yay! 

I liked taking a picture of a person taking a picture of a person taking a picture of a person taking a picture. Love you guys!

Sister's visit

For the past two weeks my sister and her friend have been out to visit
The first week we did a bunch of stuff around Takeo and Saga. It started out slow-- the girls enjoyed shopping at the YouMe Town, a mall just down the street from me, and seeing all of the Japanese produce everywhere. Then I introduced them to Okamura-san and Tatara-san with a kimono lesson, which Ashley in particular adored and wanted to try again, and perhaps buy a kimono. We also took koto lessons, and Ashley adored them and wanted to try again, and perhaps buy her own koto. (Perhaps I sense a clone in the making?)

Another nifty thing I did was bring Jessie and Ashley along to my ginei (吟詠）performance. It was my first performance! (A month after I started taking my lessons! I'm sensing a trend from my teachers...) I ran out of breath in the middle of the song because my lung capacity is shot after taking 6 years off of clarinet, but it was fun nevertheless. I really enjoyed the lunch afterwards, where we talked with a lot of the other singers and then had a free-singing. Basically, the good singers showed off their awesome songs. I really REALLY adored this old Japanese wedding song that one of the old men sang, and want to hear it again (unfortunately, I haven't been able to find it on youtube yet). Another woman sang this really adorable, more European-sounding song about tulips and other flowers. I recognized the melody, but couldn't put a title to it... it felt like a dance from Mozart's time. Jessie and I sang "Simple Gifts" together, and it was excellent singing with my sister again.

The highlight of their stay was a road trip of southern Kyushu. Since I wasn't taking many pictures and since Daniel put in a lot of time making a post about it, I will link to his description of the trip.
http://dhattem.blogspot.jp/2012_09_01_archive.html
He did an excellent time showing the highlights of the trip.

peace!
Mary

Parent's Visit, Kyoto: Kawai Kanjiro's house (a potter!)

I have finished my post second post of Kyoto pictures, so you can see the complete post here.
I got through about half of the photos mom took, so expect another post of about the same length sometime in the future.

In the mean time, here are photos of the potter's house. I will add text throughout the week, and make a new post informing you when the process is done.

: )

Parent's Visit, Part VI: Parent's pics of Kyoto

In this post, my parents and I set out for our Kyoto trip.

These pictures were all taken by my mom. It started early, while we were waiting on the platform for the train, and daddy was feeling goofy. Love your beautiful face, Dad Darling.

The Shinkansen trip was also rather fun. I claimed a window seat, because I get oh so motion sick on the Shinkansen. However, having my mother and father there helped my motion-sickness tremendously (or it at least distracted me from it, which counts just as well).

After getting off at Kyoto, our first stop was at the San-jyu-san Gendo (三十三間堂), which is known for housing 1,000 Buddhas and for being the longest wooden building in Japan.

The grounds around the building were rather pretty, if a bit austere and strict. The flowers were quite gorgeous, and lightened the atmosphere (the day was overcast and kind of dreary, but these pictures and the flowers are cheery).

 

The San-jyu-san Gendo is known as the longest wooden building in Japan, and a few hundred years ago they used to have archery tournaments that set up the archers on one side of the building and the targets on the other side. I'm not quite sure how long the building is, but it's loooong, and no photograph captured it well.

There is a story of a record-winning archer who shot a crazy amount of arrows (either 1000 or 8000, I'm not sure). Basically, he was shooting an arrow every sixty seconds for the entire day. I do not want to know what his shoulder felt like for the next month after that.

The gardens towards the front of the building were quite pretty, and I especially loved the orange-red porch that followed the outer wall of the complex.

This yellow flower bush was quite interesting. We didn't get a great picture of it, but it's little flower heads are comprised of lots of tiny yellow and white flowers bunched together, and since none of the greenery had yet come out, it was quite striking.

This ancient and huge bonsai was also quite impressive.

After the San-jyu-san Gendo, we went back into the city in search for our ryokan ( 旅館, Japanese-style inn). We got a bit lost, but I found that my investment in a smartphone started paying itself off with it's GPS and Googlemaps.

On the way back, we saw a MASSIVE torii.

Huge!

Then we went home and slept. We stayed at an inn called Yuhara, and it was a very pleasant night.

Next day, we went to the Ginkakuji (銀閣寺)！ Yay!
This is the Ginkakuji from my mother's camera lens.

While at the Ginkakuji, I encouraged my parents to get mattcha at the little shop. I am glad I did! It was delicious, and very nice to sit and sip tea at such a beautiful location.

 

Then we moved on. Our goal this day was to start at the Ginkakuji, then walk down the Philosopher's Path, an old, famous road in Kyoto that starts at the Ginkakuji and makes it way slowly back towards our inn, passing by lots of temples and shrines on the way.

Mother really loved all of the house gardens along the walk.

We had lunch at a famous, rather old (I think 300 years old) noodle shop called "Omen." (men means noodle, like in Ramen.)

This is the shop sign where I bought a pretty little haori, or traditional silk coat that's worn with kimono. It was a used kimono shop, so my haori is old, a little stained, and rather small, but I can still wear it around the house, or cut it apart and make a cute jacket out of it.

 

These decorative cabbages are fascinating!

 

Mother liked the map signs they had outside of temple complexes. A lot of them were rather impressive pieces of art, hand-painted onto the wood.

 

 

 

  

More pretty manholes!

And, just so you aren't induced into thinking Kyoto is comprised entirely of temples and shrines, it IS a big metropolitan city.

When Mom first arrived, she saw the city and went "yuck." Then she saw more city, and got rather put out, saying, "Ugh. I don't think I like Kyoto. This is not what I thought it'd be at all. I don't like Kyoto."

... then she got to the temples and shrines, and was like, "Oh, I LOVE Kyoto! <3"

;)

Anyway, yes. Kyoto city-scape:

 

Now we go to the Kiyomizu-dera, where we didn't take many pictures because it was a shrine/temple and it's not very polite to take pictures at holy places (but a lot of tourists, Japanese tourists included, took pictures anyway). We did take a few pictures on the outskirts of the temple, so I'll post those as a wrap up to this post.