「Super Supporters」カテゴリーアーカイブ

sorry, food again … if the food in the SUPER are all free …

sorry, now, whoever that has enough free time to read my writing, you would have to read about “FOOD”. it is amazing how the FOOD here can just keep entertaining me, or sometimes u can call it 癒す.

i have had SOOOOOOO many countless trouble living here, all the stress and frustrations and failure, however, no matter what the days are, there is almost not one day, i wish, … i can try eating “this” or i wish i can try eating “that” …

i always think, if the food in the SUPER are all free … my GOD, heaven on earth …

amazing consider how LONG i have been in japan but still, STILL i not yet tired of the many different type of food here and i STILL can soooo attracted everytime i went to convenience stores, supermarkets, … whatever …

my 食欲 is beyond your imagination … i mean, crying out loud, it even beyond mine.

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now, let me introduce to you the “instant ramen” that captured my heart before. i “think” the first time i ate it, i bought it in 100yen shop, and i was SOOOOO thrilled how amazingly good this Ramen is and i just wished i had bought more, but too bad, i never found it again.

i kept the bowl, (i cleaned it, no worry) for almost a year, but i still not found it.

then after i moved to here, ONE DAY, i saw a VERY similar thing in LAWSON!

but this time is 218 yen, MY goodness, it almost killed me, since i was SOOO super jobless that time. but i curiosity drove me to buy it.

but for some reason …

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this is the side of it, ain’t it pretty?

but for some reason, … it just not taste the same.

was that i expect too much? or they just changed the taste …?

the noodle’s 質感, just feel different … um.

this week soo many things happened

i think this is like one of the busiest week i ever have my goodness …

i went to interviews, and i also, very very lucky, seems can go to work every day if i want with this new “part-time”, it is called a “part-time” but geez, go to work every single day, but only WED off?

plus i also have 2 other part-times, lucky the university one already told me this month only have just 1 time, but still, next month, professor said there would be work every week … and suddenly, i have a few students that want to see me every week, lucky there is one that i not even require to take trains, what a blessing …

but there is an old student that want me to see him tomorrow, at first i really did not want to, but consider the salary, not great, but really better than nothing … so i offered him to pay HALF the train fee instead of ALL, since i have moved now the fee is outrageously HIGH, and far … 1.5 hour to go. BUT, consider the shit little money that i earn from university, which not pay train fee, which much less per hour … i decide to go …

Machida Gardeners do light painting!

When you live in a guest house, you meet all sorts of people from different backgrounds.  The best is when you discover people with interesting skills… like my housemate. My housemate is an amateur, almost professional photographer. He made us discover light painting , something I didn’t know it existed until last week. Pretty much is this:

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You paint or draw with lights and it is not that difficult. Everybody can do light painting , All you need is…

1. A camera that can hold long exposures and perhaps a tripod. Yes, my housemate has a super camera, but you can do it with non-professional cameras as well.

2 A dark room. Well yea, we don’t  have a dark room, we just closed all curtains in our living room  and it was late evening:)

3. Flashlights! Color flashlights. The more colors you find, the more creative you will get

4. A model, at least 2 people. One that paints and one that takes the picture.

Once you get all these things, you can start creating. So how did we do it…Well, it depends what you want to do. If you want to do something like the picture here, you have to ask the model to not move at all. Then a second person has to move around the model with a flashlight, drawing around the person. Now this second person has to move fast enought to not appear in the picture, but not so fast to actually make a figure with lights.

See the picture below:

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There actually two guys in this picture: one with a red flashlight and one with a white one. They moved fast enough to make different faces, but stopped a few seconds in an specific spot to make scary faces 🙂 Notice we forgot to close the curtains, but we managed to have the picture anyway.

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In this picture there are two drawing around a model who doesn’t move at all. I actually appear in the picture (left). I have the red flashlight and I didn’t move fast enough, so I do appear in the picture a little bit.

Now, you don’t necessarily need models for you pictures, you just need yourself to move fast while drawing and you can get this:

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Well, the picture above was made by my housemate who is a professional illustrator, so if you don’t get this the first time, keep practicing 🙂

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In this picture ” I love Tokyo”, we were two to draw : I was with the red flashlight and my housemate was with the white flashlight. We managed to not appear in the picture 😛

I hope this gives you ideas of how to spend a rainy sunday evening indoors ! Enjoy drawing!

Citizen Tax

I recently received my Citizen Tax request in the mail.  This is the tax you have to start paying after approximately a year of living in Japan (depending on when you came). People have been telling me it is expensive for awhile now but I couldn’t believe until I saw it and HOLY MOLY are they right.  For me, in my city and my income bracket, it is 1,600,000 yen a year (four payments of $400 each every other month).

However, that’s not what I’m griping about.  It’s expensive but it’s tax.  It’s supposed to be expensive (well, always more expensive than we’d like).  My gripe is with the fact that they sent me this information yesterday and the first payment of $400.00 is due on the 30th.  Umm…. Can I get some time, please?  They sent it so suddenly.  Just like the average person can just throw down $400.00 with no warning at all.

My irritation is compounded by the fact that I knew it should be coming so I went to the City Office in February and asked about it (when will it start? how much will it be?) and the guy told me in perfect English (no lost in translation on my part) that in fact I DID NOT have to pay the city tax.  I sort of suspected he was wrong but figured they would give me some warning…. I’ve been pretty good with a budget for the past year so I have the money but at the same time, I have already done my budget for this month and I have a trip coming up in August that I’m saving for.

If I would have been given a bit more information about it beforehand, I would have been able to adjust my spending accordingly.

So I suppose all you unsuspecting souls out there, take this as a warning!  Early June, the tax man is coming!

citizentax

WHAT IS GOOD ABOUT A GARDEN IN TOKYO? Umeshu and Kaki jam

I am a lucky person … why? Because I live in a house with an awesome GARDEN in Tokyo! Not many can say that. I live in a house with plenty of green and I love it!  That is actually one of the main reasons I chose Machida Garden. Look at this:

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Now, I am not really a gardener. Having goods things require major responsibilities and having a garden like ours demands time and patience. In addition to that I am afraid I was not born to grow my own veggies and a cactus doesn’t last much in my possession 🙁  So how can I have an awesome garden in my house without it becoming a hopeless jungle?  I have the luck to have housemates that love gardening! They take good care of the garden and I may say I enjoy having people like them around. They are a French couple that enjoys working on our Japanese garden in exchange of a discount in their rent with Oakhouse.

So I get to enjoy the benefits of a garden without being an expert: In our garden we have a plum tree and a kaki tree. And what did we do? We did Umeshu last weekend. Yes, The kaki season is over, it was in November and we had plenty of kakis to make jam until we got sick of it:

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However picking the Ume (plums) last weekend reminded me of the good time we had last November and that it is nice to have a garden and have something to do with the fruits in all seasons.

In Japan there are a couple of things you can do with Ume. You can try to do Umeboshi, which is like a pickled plum that you can eat with rice. Some people hate it because it is extremely salty and sour, some people love it, I personally looooove it! Nonetheless our Ume were very green to make Umeboshi and with my housemates, who are not as Umeboshi fans as I am, decided to make Umeshu.

Umeshu is a sweet liquor made with steeping Ume, fruit alcohol and rock sugar. If you are interested to make this liqueur, you need:

a. 2¼ lbs of unripe green Ume plums. If you don’t have a plum tree like me, you can buy them in the supermarket, they look like this:

b. 2 lbs of Rock sugar (or kouri zatou 氷砂糖 is Japanese). Rock sugar is preferred because it melts very slowly, however if you cannot find it, you can also use granulated sugar.

c. 7½ cups of Shochu or another flavorless distilled alcoholic beverage.  (any white liquor with 35% will be fine. No worries, at the end your Umeshu will be 15%)

d. Very important: a sterilized glass jar that you can hermetically close with a plastic lid. You can buy the jar in any big supermarket store  (especially during this season) or in Tokyu Hands. Most supermarkets will sell the DIY Umeshu kit if you feel you don’t want to search all ingredients separately.

e. And the last thing you need is: PATIENCE – You will not enjoy your drink right the way. Once you have followed all steps, you need to store your jar for 6 months to have real Umeshu. If you really want it to have a strong taste, store it for 1 or 2 years!

NOW, once you have all ingredients:

1.Clean the Ume! Remove the dead skin, any “bruises” and the stem. The stems are small and deep, so use a toothpick or your pinky fingernail to dig them out.

2. Once your Ume are clean and dried with a towel, place a layer of plums in the jar, then a layer of rock sugar, then a layer of plums, then a layer of rock sugar. Continue until all the plums and sugar are used up.

3. Pour the alcohol in the jars until there’s about an inch of alcohol over the top of the plums.

4. Put the lid on the jar securely and store the plums in a cool, dark place. Shake the jar occasionally to help the sugar mix with the alcohol. Like I said, after 6 months, the umeshu is ready to drink. However, this liqueur is better with age, so you may notice a different flavor after a year or two.

FOR MORE INFORMATION CHEK OUT THIS LINK:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZlBNdRKNhJI

ENJOY!

Mado Garden Extended

Last year, I blogged about me having some plants in my window.  My own very mado (window) garden.

Well, you’ll probably (HAHA) be happy to hear that it’s going great and has extended to outside my window (aka, literally outside) as my room was starting to look a bit like a jungle.

I don’t know why (maybe it’s because I’m getting old or perhaps because I have no children or pets) but having plants in my room to care and look after is sort of fun. When I first began it was more for decoration. Having a little green in the room always gives it a little life (pun intended)!

However, recently my plants have moved outside and now I am caring for a tomato, eggplant, green pepper and basil plant.  I’ve had a couple failures in the past with some of the plants however slowly but surely I can see that I am improving. There is something about eating vegetables that you have cared for and raised (although I’ve only eaten the basil so far!). I imagine when you are eating them you have a feeling you can’t get from eating any other food.

It’s also fun to think about all the meals I can cook with them when they are ready.  I’m excited!

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Sometimes Japanese make weird inventions…

One of the things that makes this country interesting is that here you can see some crazy things you normally won’t see anywhere else on earth. Yes! Japan is the birthplace of some wacky stuff. And… even if you don’t personally see them, you won’t get surprised when you are told about their existence in this country because…hey! it’s Japan and you can expect things like dancing robots  or used- schoolgirl -panties’ vending machines (I have never seen them, but I have heard so many people talk about them, I got to check them out)

One crazy invention I came across with (sent via facebook by a friend) is … the cat ears that move according to your “mood”. These ears are actually “connected” to your brain! :

Check out the video : Necomimi

Another crazy invention that  I actually did see was the …..”Menstruation Machine”. Yep, wacky invention indeed! Now I was in a conference about art in Tokyo the day of the earthquake last march. Just after a couple of minutes the creator of this machine, a girl named Hiromi Ozaki, started to explain how this machine works, the eathquake started… in a conference room in an 11th floor in Ginza (but that is just another story). The machine makes men feel the pain and the whole thing about what we girls experience every month. Not very pretty to see, but yeap, it exists! And boys, you can try it on! ( I do remember her saying that it only fits Japanese man and that she had to create a larger size for American men)

And the video: Menstruation machine

Now what about high tech toilets in Japan? Let’s not go far and find complicated stuff. When you live here for a while, it becomes normal to sit on the sophisticated toilets with complicated array of buttons on the side, ranging from the temperature and force of the water that will clean your bottom to the “Sound princess” ( the button that we girls use to camouflage the ‘unladylike noises’ with flushing sounds). Admit it!!, how many of us Gaijin are baffled by a Japanese high tech toilet when we first see one? 🙂 Not to mention that there are some that are self cleaning!

I could write about a lot of  inventions the Japanese have done.. the list is not exhaustive, specially the wacky ones, but here are some that just failed to do the purpose or never really took off, you judge (I even dare you google them, it’s hilarious):

The baby mop (no, really!!! a baby mop?)

My favorite: The helmet that will keep your head from tilting while you sleep and displays a tag with your station name so people wake you up when you get there:

there is also this one, the tripod,because not getting a seat doesn’t mean not being able to sleep:

Anyway, I have never seen these last 3  inventions, like I said , they never took off, but they are funny!!!

and there are more and more…. check them out in the internet 🙂

A French Restaurant in Tokyo…..

I adore Japanese food (no question about that), but when you live here for a while, from time to time you just want  to eat something else that is not-Japanese…just for a change.  I was a little “homesick” the other day and I had this crazy desire to eat French food  ( I am not French but I did spend  7 years of my life there). I discovered this great restaurant in Omotesando called Le  Pré Verres. The food is just great! The atmosphere is just like in Paris: the decoration, the food and even the music (they made the effort to put French music all times). About prices….well, I went during lunch time (Restaurant rule in general: lunch time is always cheaper than dinner time). Expect to pay around 1,500 yen for a lunch menu: it includes the starter, main course and dessert. Be ready to pay more if the ingredients you ask have a supplement, even more if you ask for some wine. (But the quality of the food is worth it!)

They also have a restaurant in Paris, in the the Latin Quarter (I didn’t know that, it is a shame I didn’t discover that while I was there, however I heard it is hard to get a reservation there, so feel lucky you will experience that in Tokyo). The story goes like this: two chef brothers, the Delacourcelle brothers, started the difficult task to feed  happy customers in Paris. After having a great success there, they decided to transfer all these cuisine values to the metropolis of Tokyo (not long ago). Do you want to venture and taste a bit of this French cuisine? Go to the 4th floor in the Gyre building in Omotensado ( the building that has the MoMa design shop). They open from 11:00 to 23:00 (Lunch L.O. 14：30; Diner 22：00)

For more info about the menu, prices, map access, etc visit (website in Japanese, French and English) :

http://www.lepreverre.com

And here, one of my favorite desserts, “Glacé du persil” or Parsley ice cream!!! with strawberries

BUNRAKU -Japanese drama played by puppets

Last Sunday I had the pleasure to assist to a Bunraku show in the National Theater in Tokyo. This theater art is not as known as Kabuki or Noh, but it very well deserves some attention from the Japanese traditional art lovers. AND….Even if you are not into theater at all, it may be interesting anyway to check out this form of theater for the colors, the singers and the puppets, yes….the puppets: Bunraku is a type of traditional puppet  art theater.

I have never been to a Kabuki play, but from what I understand, Bunraku has adopted a lot from Kabuki. However, it has characteristics of it own. The stories in Bunraku are most of the time,like in Kabuki, TRAGIC!. The show I saw was broken down into 3 parts: Part one was only 15min long and it was a dance  of two Kamuro ( young courtesans). The second part had nothing to do with the first part, it was a tragedy about a Samurai family . My guess,  it was just one scene of a long story of vengance probably adapted from a Kabuki play. The third and last part was also  completely different from the first and second. This time, it was a sad story  of a long lost love. If you are worried about getting “lost in translation”while watching the show, no worries, before each scene, there is a narrator that will explain the story so you know which scene is being played. Can’t speak Japanese? No worries, for 650 yen more (and 1,000 yen refundable deposit), you can get an English audio that will explain/ translate whatever it is happening.

The puppets  are quite unique. They usually wear elaborate customs. They are half the size  the human body, and it takes three puppeteers to manipulate one single puppet. The HUGE difference between Western puppets and  these puppets?  The pupeteers do not try to hide when  they  manipulate them. They dress in black covering all their body, even their faces. You may see as well on stage one of the three man who is not covered in black: This guy is the puppet master. Puppet masters are recruited into this form of art from a very young age. The average age is 15 years old. After this age the person is considered to be too old to learn. It  takes about 10 years to master just the puppet’s feet movements. Unfortunatly, the low pay and the rough discipline that these guys have to endure is not very appealing to young people today. Therefore  the future of this art is uncertain: Only 4 young men have enrolled to become masters in the last 2 years.(How long are we going to be able to see this type of show??)These puppets masters are however, amazing to see. They move softly, maneuvering their puppets with a great flow. Most important, their faces do not show ANY kind of expression. They let the emotion flow to their puppets’ movements and not their own bodies. You can almost forget he is there!  So how do we know what is going on in the story ig he can speak and he is expressionless? If the puppet master is in charge of the puppet movement, the story teller is the one who will express it all!!!  The story teller is the guy who sits next to the musician, and he has the task to do all  voices of the story. He will transmit the sadness, anger, joy and frustration of the puppet.

Now, what are the drawbacks of this beautiful show? If you want to see the puppets closely, you have to “fight” the good spot. The most expensive spot is 6,500 yen, but this will not guarantee you will be seeing all the puppet’s facial movement’s ( yes, some of them can move their eyes!!). This is not for everybody, a show can last 4 hours to 6 hours. You got to come to this show with “open minded” and ready to seat 4 to 6 hrs, it is not a movie!!! You will certainly get hungry! Bring your own food ( I did) or your can always buy the bento boxes they sell on the spot ( you have a 25 minute break between long scenes). Like in the opera, you will need binoculars if you want to see more details! I forgot mine!!!  ( But they always have a puppet at the entrance to welcome you, so you will get to see  at least one

from close distance)

Bunraku is more popular in Osaka than in Tokyo. In Tokyo you can get information, tickets and see a show at the National theater. More info:

http://www.ntj.jac.go.jp/english.html

http://www2.ntj.jac.go.jp/unesco/bunraku/en/

Japanese Bunraku

Here’s That Rainy Day

Here we are… entering the infamous rainy season (Japan actually has five seasons despite their eagerness to tell you about their four seasons!).  Rainy season is a time that many people in Japan hate. The temperature is rainy and because it rains (what seems like everyday) it is always wet and humid.  Laundry hanging out to dry never does and your clothes can easily acquire that most disagreeable moist smell to them.

So, it’s not really a great season in Japan but it does have a good point to it.  For during this period, the range of umbrellas and raincoats are endless.  Ones with really useful features and those with colorful patterns. With the variety of goods available, one could easily enjoy themselves during this season.  So it may seem like this season wouldn’t appeal to anyone, but if you look around at the store fronts, you will be able to see the one thing that many people look forward to during this season.