the first

i have a lot to write about. let's see if i can't get back into blogging on a regular basis.

now, i don't want to overwhelm you (or myself, for that matter). that's why i'm only going to cover one topic in this post.

the topic? chocolate!

in the weeks leading up to valentine's, japan became focused on one thing: chocolate. and i felt that i should join in on the excitement.

you see, valentine's day is special in japan. it's a day when a girl gives chocolate to the boy she likes. typically she makes it herself (store-bought chocolates just lack that personal touch, ya know?). of course, she also makes chocolate for her friends (義理チョコ girichoko - "obligation chocolate").

now, i don't have a boy i like (or a girl), so i decided to just make some girichoko. originally i planned to make enough for all the other teachers at work, but...well, we'll get to that.

making chocolate!

so i found a nice confectionary cookbook at my school library, and i took a picture of some key pages on chocolate making.

here's the recipe i ended up going with:

it's a pretty simple one. chocolate nut clusters.

i didn't have a thermometer, which meant a little bit of guesswork. and i didn't have the patience to cut the chocolate into fine bits before i melted it down, so i'm sure i strayed pretty far from the temperatures i was supposed to aim for.

and not having an oven i had to roast the nuts on an electric stove in a nonstick pan. definitely less than ideal. i nearly burned some, while others remained blissfully raw.

again being lazy, i didn't want to chop the almonds by hand, so i stuck 'em in my coffee grinder. within 2 seconds i had nut powder. oops. i decided to chop the rest of the nuts with a knife.

temperature control with the chocolate was difficult once i added the nuts. the first few globs of nutty chocolate i put on the sheet looked alright, but the chocolate was slowly hardening and becoming more difficult to coax off of the spoon. so the last 10 looked a bit choppy.

well you can see for yourself:

i sprinkled some coconut on top, hoping it would stick since the chocolate was still quite soft. it didn't really stick, but it was a nice thought.

the batch was supposed to yield 20, but because the chocolate was hardening i had less control of the size of each successive piece. i ended up with 15, and had enough ingredients to make another batch. but i needed 40 for everyone to have one. so i thought, better that no one gets them than some people feel left out.

so i just called it good, and dedicated the batch to my friends (who i would have made a third batch for, had portions worked out properly).

it was well received, so i either did something right, or i have nice friends.

and now i can make chocolate (i think)!

just because i eat ramen doesn't mean i can't cook! (sort of...)

now is really not the time to be doing this. i should be writing my speech for a competition i'm in next week. or i should be writing my novel. or i should be taking a nap.

but i'm not one to exercise self-control.

so let's talk about how to take ordinary instant ramen and make it awesome!

1) buy the right ramen. try out different varieties until you find which one you like the best. buying bad noodles just to save 50 cents is silly. but you shouldn't have to pay more than $1.00 for a decent noodle/soup combo.

note: packages with two or more flavor packets are usually a sign of good ramen.

2) buy some extra goodies. this time around i used the following:

豆腐 (tofu). firmness depends on personal preference. just remember that soft/silken tofu won't be easy to pick up with chopsticks.

椎茸 (shiitake). most types of mushrooms will work in ramen. fresh are the tastiest, but frozen or dried will also work.

わかめ (wakame). this a type of seaweed. very healthy, very delicious, and very inexpensive.

キムチ (kimchi). this adds a kick and a contrasting texture. the best stuff is homemade, so i'd recommend making some korean friends.

油揚げ (aburaage). i think the english term for this is "fried tofu skin". it's often used in miso soup. i absolutely love this stuff!

other good fixins: eggs (hard-boiled, soft-boiled, or egg-drop-style), green onions, spinach, strips of meat (chicken, pork, beef), shrimp, soybean sprouts, corn, cabbage, and whatever else tickles your fancy.

note: some of these items can be hard to find outside of japan. your best bet is to find a nearby japanese or korean market.

3) preparation. know what you're doing. some things do well in boiling water for long periods of time, but most things don't. try to time when you add the ingredients, so that everything will taste it's best. DO NOT, DO NOT, DO NOT overcook the noodles! here's, let's look at how i did it:

add a large bowl's worth of water to the pot. throw in the dehydrated goods (wakame and mushrooms) and turn on the heat. cut the aburaage:

throw it into the pot. the water should be close to boiling.

while waiting for a rolling boil, cut the tofu and put in the bowl (the one used for measuring water earlier):

once the water is boiling, throw in the noodles. with a pot full of the goodies, the noodles might not submerge. don't worry—we'll flip 'em. extra points if you can do it with cooking chopsticks. flip those noodles:

different noodles have different cooking times. generally the best taste/texture is achieved by cooking just to the point when the curls have all become nearly straight. if you're unsure, it's better to undershoot the cooking time than overshoot it. the noodles will continue to soften even after removed from the heat.

pour everything over the tofu in the bowl. tofu is safe to eat as is—and it helps cool down the ramen to perfect eating temperature. as does the kimchi. finally, add the soup base and mix well. add extra water from the faucet if too much boiled out. if you've done it all right, the ramen will be delicious and just cool enough to eat really fast without burning yourself. it may look something like this:

ok, so my food has never been much on the presentation front. :-/ but it was super tasty! and really cheap. taking into account the ingredients and amounts, the whole meal cost under ¥225 (about $3.00).

have ramen ideas of your own? i'd love to hear 'em! happy bargain cooking and leave a comment!

GO-ゆっくり

ゆっくり ("yukkuri") - my new mantra. it's japanese for "slow", "slowly", or "relaxed". i generally think of it as "take it easy" when used this way:

a: what'd you do yesterday?
b: just took it easy. i've been so stressed lately—it was nice to just relax.

about two weeks ago, on my way back from kyoto (details on that) i stopped in tokyo to hang out with a friend for a few days. i was really travel weary and in no mood for shopping, sightseeing, clubbing or any other sort of normal fun city activity. so we just had a yukkuri day.

here's an outline of the day:
• mild sleeping in
• made general plans for the day
• set off at some point
• two-hour lunch (we had myanmar food. sooooo good!)—long for conversation, not over-eating
• stroll around waseda campus and nearby gardens
• 90 minutes of daytime karaoke
• shopping for dinner and ice cream ingredients
• few hours of shiritori (a japanese word game) over dinner
• home made ice cream!
• shower before bed

food is a must for yukkuri-ization. savor it! if you're with company savor the conversation too. good things shouldn't be rushed. strolls are great too. unless you're out for a power-walk, i think most people are very yukkuri with their walks already. enjoy the scenery. drink the air. clear your mind.

don't misunderstand though! yukkuri (according to me, anyway) is not the same as being lazy! if you stay at home all day mindlessly surfing the internet, watching movies, and what-have-you you're not being yukkuri. you're simply not doing anything at all.

yukkuri is doing and enjoying.

yukkuri is letting your day unfold.

yukkuri is living and being there for every moment.

of course, i tend to get a bit silly with it. i'm yukkuri in the bathroom (at least at home i am), and i think my body thanks me for it. i'm yukkuri in going places (as often as i have the luxury to leave early enough). but sometimes that's just my excuse for being slow to get ready, when in reality i'm dawdling.

i don't like rushing and being rushed. yukkuri could be the best thing ever. i just need to learn not to be lazy and procrastinate.

like that'll ever happen. ^0^

my 101 in 1001

thanks to my friend sara, i've been inspired to create a list of 101 things i want to accomplish in the next 1001 days. i'm officially starting today (june 24, 2011), which means i will finish by march 20, 2014 at 11:59:59 pm.

be forewarned, a number of the items on my list might be considered tmi ("too much information" for the layperson). here we go:

1- visit china

2- be vegetarian for 30 days (again)

3- blog weekly (0/144)

4- vlog monthly (0/34)

5- learn to play 10 new songs on the bass (0/10)

6- do the splits (front-ways)

7- do a street performance (dance or music)

8- read 50 books (0/50)

9- get rid of all my facial hair

10- translate and subtitle a japanese drama series

11- write and direct a movie

12- host a dinner party at my house (3+ guests)

13- learn how to make 10 classic drinks (0/10)

14- read 5 japanese novels (0/5)

15- record an album

16- visit australia

17- go inside a pachinko parlor

18- write a letter by hand

19- wax my legs

20- bike to mito

21- learn 5 new recipes for every meal (0/15)

22- read the qur'an

23- appear on japanese tv

24- amass a savings of 1,000,000 yen (approx. $12,000)

25- take a yoga class

26- start/join a band

27- be "out" at work

28- bring a sketchbook to the zoo and draw animals

29- memorize the lyrics to 20 japanese songs (0/20)

30- engage in a gyoza-eating competition

31- pass jlpt level 1

32- legally change my name

33- take one picture a day for 30 days in a row

34- make an animated short

35- learn 15 pop dance routines (0/15)

36- find and meet with a therapist

37- visit shikoku

38- visit okinawa

39- make my own kimchi

40- drink beer in a bowling alley

41- watch "buffy the vampire slayer" in its entirety

42- NaNoWriMo

43- learn the prefectures and capitals of japan

44- do an all-day photo shoot

45- take in a bath in something aside from water

46- develop my own series of english, japanese, and chinese lessons

47- make a friend online and meet them in real life

48- literally meet someone for a cup of coffee

49- convince a friend to visit me in japan

50- buy an apron

51- have a sleepover at my house (2+ guests)

52- go to and use the public library

53- go to 20 new bars (0/20)

54- memorize 10 monologues in english and japanese (0/20)

55- buy an area rug

56- memorize the names and numbers of the first 151 pokemon in japanese

57- make a snow angel

58- survive a summer without turning on my ac

59- write a comedy routine

60- wear sunglasses at night

61- experience love

62- do a scavenger hunt

63- learn to play the ocarina

64- draw/write a graphic novel

65- buy something just to smash it

66- eat an entire meal upside down

67- draw my self portrait with crayons

68- sleep in the storage closet under my bed

69- decide what kanji i would use to represent my name

70- organize an enkai

71- get a part time job completely unrelated to teaching

72- dress as dr. girlfriend for halloween or some other costumed occasion

73- make an avocado milkshake

74- find out how many licks it takes to get to the center of a tootsie-pop

75- get rid of the boys (like you cared to know?)

76- eat a block of cheese in one sitting

77- play hide and seek with people my age

78- watch the best picture winners/nominees from 1996-2010 (0/56)

79- sing a david bowie song at karaoke

80- be homeless for a week

81- go 30 days without facebook

82- go 12 days without the internet

83- design the floor plan of my dream house

84- swallow a piece of gum

85- develop the habit of brushing and flossing daily

86- write a ransom note using letters/words cut out from magazines

87- roll down a grassy hill

88- be someone's slave for a day

89- write 70 poems (0/70)

90- fly a kite

91- win a staring contest

92- visit south korea

93- learn how to sew

94- pick up a chicken

95- make a savory vegetarian sandwich with at least 5 ingredients

96- give a high five to each of the following: a policeman, a cook, and a store clerk

97- eat fresh wasabi root

98- ride my bike while completely drunk

99- swim a mile

100- volunteer

101- lose my virginity to someone i care about

and you thought my blog was slowly dying!

random bullet-point-post!

• i was recently informed that the correct way to pronounce david bowie's last name is BOW-ee (as in "people bow in japan" not "bow and arrow"). i trust the informers because they're british.

• new 5 minute long vlog tour of my apartment in japan. youtube link on the left.

• showing up to an enkai (japanese dinner/drinking party) uninvited is awkward.

• i've only been here a month, but utah feels like it was ages ago.

• being a foreigner in japan is in many ways similar to being a non-mormon in utah. maybe i just don't like to fit in?

• maintaining two identities is annoying. i'm wondering if i can get away with having everyone call me sami, even at work...

• a proper meal!

• i want to learn how to shop for groceries correctly. i tend to buy whatever, and if it's fresh it goes bad before i can remember to eat it (tofu excluded).

• roundtrip flights to most places in the u.s. are around $3000 this summer. i don't think i'll be making it back for a visit anytime soon.

• i had this wonderful unwritten list of things i wanted to start doing everyday, but then i never got in the habit of doing any of them. they are: stretching to improve flexibility, studying japanese, practicing good hygiene, working on a more female voice, and reading for pleasure.

• the flaming lips.

• i'm trying to learn how to think in metric. the only one i've managed so far is kilometers (1k = a 10 minute walk).

• that might have been a lie. i think i've got a system for celsius too (below 5 = cold, 5-15 = chilly, 15-25 = warm, above 25 = hot).

• tranny party in tokyo next week! i'm so there!

• i've officially started up beer club here. thus far i've been the only one in attendance, but i have faith that i'll find some lovers of good beer soon.

• the espresso stout:

• teaching english is fun, but teaching japanese is more fun!

toss the ramen, save the friendship

my roommate lives off of beer, whiskey, and ramen. i wish i were exaggerating. he's pretty good about drinking his beers to the last drop, and he can be counted on to take care of other people's wounded soldiers. he'll suck whiskey bottles dry. but after he eats ramen, food remains. i don't mean to say he habitually wastes half of the ramen he cooks. no—he makes double recipes but only uses one flavor packet.

me? i don't like letting food go to waste. so i've been picking up these packets he leaves behind. i think, "i could use them in stir-fry, rice porridge, as a soup base..." and i have. there's just one big problem: he eats one or more double recipes a day. so they've been piling up.

this represents the difference between how fast he produces leftover packets and how fast i can use them. at least for the first few months.

though i stopped collecting new ones (except to replace ones i use—which has kept the total static for a while), i've held on to these flavor packets all this time. that changes today.

i've realized that i hold on to a lot more than just flavor packets in this relationship. i hold on to debts, the times i've felt cheated, the hope that i can change him—none of which are healthy. so i'm going to throw out those ramen seasoning packets. i'm going to forget that all of my beer disappeared while i was at work last night. no, really! the only way this friendship can live is if i let the past go, start fresh, and don't try to make my friend into something he's not, nor expect him to become that way on his own.

i should stop being a doormat, you say? i shouldn't let people take advantage of me? well, i don't have to. and i don't plan to. i can get mad about his stealing shit from me—i just can't hold on to the rage or resentment that usually go along with it. believe me, i have some strong words for him about my 5 hand-picked-from-the-liquor-store beers (not having a car, i can't really get to the liquor store very often).

time to be more assertive!

fancy dinner party

here are the promised details of sunday's dinner party (click to enlarge):

unfortunately i forgot to take pictures of the food >_< but it was quite tasty. the pasta fresca recipe was of my own creation, inspired by a farfalle dish that my mother would often make (made with sirloin instead of sauteed veggies). i didn't make the salad, nor did i buy the bread, but that's the beauty of a dinner party!

the day after, i made a big pot of japanese style curry for myself. luckily i documented this meal!

i began by sauteing some yellow onion, potato chunks, and mushrooms. once browned, i added water to finish cooking everything all the way through. a few minutes before everything got to the desired level of doneness, i added a brick of soft tofu (cubed of course). i then added my seasonings, turned off the heat, and mixed until it looked like this:

i then poured it over a bowl of my yummy rice.

and here's the final product:

it was super delicious!

and last night, i experimented a bit. i had been wanting to find a way to use all these extra ramen seasoning packets i've been collecting. then i thought, "ramen seasoned potatoes—why not?" so i boiled a potato, drained it, pan fried it, added a ramen packet and some water, reduced it, and voila! zesty soy saucy potatoes.

it went quite well with rice and kimchi. but sadly, no pictures for this one (-_-)

see ya next time!

pre-holiday udpate

i somehow got out of the habit of blogging regularly, so here's a kick-start! (and as you'll notice from the link in the previous sentence, i'm now titling my links just like my pictures)

in my last post on food i left out a very important picture:

this was my pineapple rendition of mumbo jumbo, of banjo-kazooie fame.

ok. back to the whole "i haven't posted in a while" topic. given the month-long dry spell, i have a lovely set of things i can write about. and for your reading pleasure, i will write about all of them. right now. GO!

the first weekend of december, i roadtripped with cool kid sara to southern california to take the jlpt (japanese language proficiency test). the test was a bit harder than i had anticipated. at this point i'm giving it about a 50-50 that i passed (apparently it takes two months to grade a scantron #facepalm).

wait...i thought i was good at japanese? did i not study hard enough? lemme think...i did study, right?

exhibit a

right, right. i dinked around on read the kanji, mainly because it charted my level of awesomeness with characters (see all the colors?!).

exhibit b

well, yeah they're comic books. but they're in japanese! that's studying!

exhibit c

it's listening practice!

ok, so maybe i didn't really study per se. sigh. however! even if i didn't pass, at least some good came out of the whole experience. like the road trip. which gave me new hope that there are in fact good things to say about LA. traffic, of course, is not one of them. but little tokyo is! check out this cool map:

we ate at the deliciously wonderful, though hardly hole-in-the-wall, curry house. (and if you're interested here's the menu.) we didn't have this awesome map at the time, so we mostly hung out in weller court (the upper left block on the map that is cut through diagonally by onizuka street), which also housed kinokuniya, a japanese book store.

all of this was over-shadowed by a later drive down to san diego the following day, when we went to book-off:

for the uninitiated, book-off is an amazing used book store that has a very large selection of $1 books (¥100 in japan), the most important of which are comic books. i bought $40 worth of books (some were from the higher priced sections):

i'm currently reading at a rate of 2 volumes per week, working on gto (see exhibit b). so with any luck, this supply (and the 10 not-pictured volumes i already owned) will last me until it's time for another road trip.

continuing with the good that came out of the jlpt experience, i discovered the wonders of evernote and livestation. just to show you how cool evernote is, here's a screenshot:

i have a note open entitled "studying for the jlpt" with the tags ブログ and 日本語 ("blog" and "japanese"). whenever i think of something i want to blog about but don't have time to write a post immediately, i make a note in evernote. since i've started a trend with the above picture, let's take it a step further (this is random and unrelated to using evernote).

ok, lemme see if i can get this right. this is a screenshot of my blogger window, which contains a screenshot of evernote, in which the open note contains a cropped screenshot of my read the kanji progress chart. pretty cool, huh?

*completely different topic warning*

my home brews turned out ok. mostly. the first ones i opened (about a week and a half after bottling) were rather sweet, tasting more like cider than beer. they were very drinkable, just not very beer-y. it was lacking in maltiness, hop flavor and aroma, and body. the brews that i let condition for a few more weeks had a more subdued sweetness, but were otherwise the same.

the results shouldn't be too surprising though. the west coast pale ale batch is half booster (a packet of fermentable sugars), which essentially waters down (or alcohols down?) the malt and hops of the wort.

the beer, dubbed "ben's breakfast blend", won't need too much work to be a solid beer. replace the booster with another can of hme (hopped malt extract), and the flavors should be more or less balanced.

in 6 of the 20 bottles, i added an extra spoon of sugar (NB: sugar is added during bottling to carbonate and raise the alcohol level of the beer). after 3 weeks of conditioning they tasted the same as the early batch, but quite a bit more alcoholic. unfortunately, i didn't get them all in time:

this is the ceiling of my closet. i kept the brews in my closet to minimize light exposure. the extra sugar brews were more alcoholic and more carbonated. until i discovered glass shards on my floor and this in the ceiling i hadn't appreciated just how much more carbonated they were. 4 bottles exploded about 36 hours ago, leaving my closet full of glass and my clothes soaked in sugary beer. (-_-)

i think there were more things i was going to write about, but i'll leave it there for now.

ciao!

i gets excited when i talk about my foods!

sometimes, i play with my food.

food is a very important part of my life, and yet, i frequently settle for buying/eating garbage. in an ideal world—one where tanuki exercised self-control—i'd eat healthy, and i'd eat delicious.

for example, i could be eating this:

tonjiru (豚汁 - pork, veggies & miso soup)

instead of cooking something awesome (see above), i usually follow this unfortunate pattern:

i live with 5 guys. some of them wash their own dishes. some of them don't. as such, the natural state of our kitchen sink is too-full-to-fit-a-cup-under-the-faucet. i'm gonna go ahead and blame my poor eating habits on circumstance.

no, really! i feel justified because when i was living by myself in japan during the summer of 2009, this happened:

mabo tofu (麻婆豆腐)

frequently.

so. as an incentive to eat better, i want to start including food more often in the blog, in a series i will call tanuki food. it may include recipes, pictures, and sound clips of how much i'm enjoying what i'm eating.

seriously.

30 days of no meat

last night i won a bet. i downed 50 chicken mcnuggets, large fries, and a large drink in under an hour (it only took me 35 minutes). the shitty feeling that followed inspired me to declare myself vegetarian for the next 30 days.

the rules:

• no meat (including but not limited to: beef, chicken, pork, turkey, fish, shellfish, or any flavoring derived from animal meat)
• yes milk (and its derivatives)
• yes eggs

honestly, i was thinking of going vegan for 30 days, but i have a carton of eggs in the fridge that i really ought to use in the next few weeks, and i don't want to be wasteful.

also, i'm gonna start including pictures with every post. as a rule. and there will be mouse-over text. as a rule.