月別アーカイブ: 2011年4月

Japanese nutrition

A beautiful day today in Tokyo!  After work I decided to go out to lunch and it got me thinking…

I often hear Japanese food referred to as healthy and delicious and it is!  For Japanese people, they are easily satisfied with a meal of vegetables and a bit of meat or fish or even a meal of rice and miso soup.  By paying attention and using the seasonal vegetables and fish, one can have a delicious, fresh meal and above all, a cheap one!  To really understand, learn, and enjoy Japanese food culture, one must adapt to these types of eating habits.

However, recently I have noticed that traditional Japanese food can not always be called healthy especially dishes with soy sauce and miso.  Flavoring with soy sauce and miso isn’t necessarily bad but it has a high salt content.  Furthermore, same as the olden days, the meals tend to lack the necessary amounts of protein.  So I’m told that after the war, along with the economic growth, came high protein meals AND high calories meals.

So it seems that the “healthy Japanese food” that you often hear about seems to be wavering between the good ol’ days of Japanese eating habits while adopting the over abundance of modern Western eating cultures.

Seasonal Bliss/Blues

Within the last ten years, communication with family and friends who live far away has become much easier and much cheaper due to the advancements in technology.  It seems all an American expat needs is a passport, a credit card/cash, a Skype account and a Facebook account.  With technologies like these, one might even feel as though they aren’t even living overseas!  I can check American news, interact with my friends on Facebook and chat with my family on Skype.  It seems like the world has become one in a blink of an eye… that is until you walk outside.

Japan’s beautiful cherry blossom season is just now coming to a close and for Japanese people, and now myself, nothing represents Winter ending like those lovely flowers.  Now I know it’s Spring.  With an average lifespan of less than one week, these flowers represent an old cultural aesthetic, mono no aware or the transience of things.  In Japan, with the changing of seasons comes the disappearance of some things and the arrival of others (aka seasonal food – although it may not completely disappear it often becomes prohibitively expensive).  Cherry blossoms are no different.  Japanese people celebrate them with gusto, eating and drinking under the trees.  When they are in full bloom, people are overjoyed but it too is short lived.  For soon the leaves will fall and one can not help but consider ones’ own life span and how it too will pass, just like the flowers.

However, no matter how much technology advances this cultural aspect of Japan will not change.  So let’s all close our computers and go outside for a walk.

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how can you be sooo cute?!

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look at her little hands, just unbelievable, how can she do that?! so SUPER adorable!

i always call her the name of the person i miss the most, but these few days, i have to stop.

she and him has at least one common point, their nose BOTH soo cute and pretty. and the rest is, the “atmosphere”, always around you, but never disturb you. peaceful, and sweet.

if only every day can be like this.

how can they be sooo cute?!

talk back to the main topic, 99% of the person that left japan, no matter what the reason is, always have one common point, “want to go back”.

everyone’s love for japan, 日本の魅力、irresistible.

just like this kitty, not something you want to see for short period of time, but instead, live in it, be surrounded by it.

令人難以形容的感覺

(now the lovely kitty is sitting right in front of me, she is SOOOO adorable her little white hands … , she almost goes everywhere i go, so sweet …)

due to my short stay in my friend’s place, i have a very close contact with a pet, a lovely half white kitty. while she is a female, but i always call her the name of the person that i miss the most. i sometimes even speak japanese to her.

talk back to the main topic, very soon, i am supposed to go back to tokyo. i cannot imagine the trouble of working. i heard that since any foreigners left so maybe easier to find jobs, but i am not being very positive about this.

but the experience i get from this trip has been an interesting one.

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now, THIS is an surprise …

the feeling we have after the disaster

i am sure there are a lot of people struggle a lot what to do when things like this happen.

(just now when i am typing, a crazy cat that jump onto my keyboard! and for the first time, i got scratched to bleed by this silly violent hyperactive low EQ black cat! lucky i do not have to see her much soon, hopefully! On the other hand, there is a SUPER SWEET PEACEFUL brown-white cat here … what a contrast)

oops, i forget what i am trying to say.

ah, when the disaster strike, all of a sudden, all the adorable and cute things around, with almost no people hosting those lovely shops, with people wondering around what is going on with the days that comes, seems so sad. seems, nothing seems real, nothing makes sense, nothing seems to …

… everything seem a waste.

i do admit, out of the very few countries that i have lived before, japan seems to have the most citizens that seem to have their guard down, for the least, in every day life. on the contrast, u can say, the society seems so safe ですから 。。。

the graphics, the decorations, would become so worthless during survivals. when unexpected accidents strikes, that just seem sooo much more accurate.

that is why, i always find myself indulge in an indulge in superficial and unnecessary stuff, but it is also these type of “appearance”, that can make a country that has so few resources so irresistible.

about time to write again

when disaster happened, it makes ppl forget many daily little things.

in a blink of an eye, already April 14.

about time to write again, if i really decide to continue living there, right?

just about 90% of the foreigners around me left japan, COMPLETELY for the reason of “possible” nuclear disaster. mine is a little different, but i did not have to leave at this moment, but i chose to, “might as well leave at this moment” …

even though, when i was in the Osaka airport, i completely not want to leave.

i also just read briefly of another writer’s blog here, missing friends, and the life there in tokyo.

i completely agree. even though this is already not the first time i had a big number of friends around me, i still miss my friends in the current guesthouse, sooo many of them, 10% of the foreigners stayed there and never even left for 1 day. だんだん、皆も帰って戻って、特に今週、多分 disaster があった前の 50% のにぎやかさかもね〜。

when the earthquake strike, it did shock me, the shaking. but it is ok, cause common sense is telling me, HUGE earthquake only happen every several decades or even 100 years.

no place is perfect, if you find japan sooooo attractive and have so many design you desire and admire, then this cutie country is on the earthquake zone, the plate underneath is not stable.

come on, we all know that even from the most basic geography class, if you think it is NOT possible to happen when u are there, give me a break.

それを知ってるくせに、まだこの国に惚れちゃって、ね〜。

i think what really shock everyone is the “nuclear plant”, 意味さっぱり分からないけど、why it has to happen? why over there? only GOD knows. the fact is, does it really come from GOD, no one will never know.