Tomorrow will mark two months since my 20th birthday, and the day after will mark two months to the day I set off for Japan, and also my first blog post. My dorm contract ends August 31st 2015, so tomorrow (or the day after) marks nine and a half months until I return. Someone could get pregnant and give birth in that time. (Hopefully not me.)
It turns out I’m actually not doing anything this weekend – Kyoto plans with Rachel fell through in the end, which suits me fine actually as it’ll cost a lot of money to stay overnight and I’ve had to pay a lot of expenses this term already. I’ll go for a day trip soon. And I’ve STILL not properly explored Osaka yet, so I’ll try and get that out the way before going anywhere else! Gotta make the bouken plans.
So I’m free both Saturday and Sunday – Rika’s busy this whole weekend as well. So I’m planning to reserve tomorow (Saturday) for important tasks that need carrying out. I COULD ask Theresa to come out tomorrow, but a) it’s short notice, b) I’m doing purpose-shopping ONLY as I have to get a lot done which includes boring shit I don’t want to burden anyone else with. Theresa loves “real” shopping, which consists of long, long periods of browsing. That I don’t mind, but only when I have time. I’m much more of a purpose-shopper, to be honest. Only shopping when I have something I need to buy, finding it, then leaving.
Today in Politics, Carlos-sensei gave out free haircut tokens for this place in Kita-Senri, offering a 20% discount and it’s already pretty cheap at ¥2000 (or less than that, depending on what you want), and I’ve not had my hair cut since May, I think, so I’ll see if I can find the place tomorrow. Carlos-sensei’s reason for doing this is if he gets enough tokens, he can get a free bike or something like that. Japanese point systems are very good here. I’ve not used any of my points cards yet (I have several already, clogging up my wallet). Back in England I have a lot of points cards for places like Subway and the Juice bar in Manchester Piccadilly Station, but they’re only useful for the store you’re at, whereas points here transcend boundaries and getting points at the hairdressers means those points can transcend into getting discounts on bikes… apparently.
Carlos-sensei did something else nice: informing us of English-language tutor opportunities. A lot of these tutoring sessions would be done over Skype, so I could continue them when I come home, and each lesson could earn me as much as ¥1900-¥3000 a lesson, which would be great. He’ll come back with more details next week. I don’t know if I’ll need a work permit for that exactly but I need to try getting one soon. Need to double check how to do that. Sounds like a weekday activity as I either need to go to S-Campus international room or the City Hall, both of which are a drag. Uggggghhhhhhh the bureaucracyyyyyyyy! I am so damn sick of paperwork.
Tomorrow I’ll see about getting myself a haircut (I need to make sure I know the vocab in advance, people have warned me, but Japanese hairdressers are apparently quite used to foreigners so it should be fine). Other than that, I’m thinking of going to the SoftBank in Umeda and upgrading my cellphone to a smartphone, because I can’t take it anymore. I’m thinking Umeda rather than a SoftBank closer to home because they had English-speakers there last time, and are better equipped at dealing with foreigners. I don’t think I’ll be able to carry the conversation in Japanese alone. Also, more choices of phone. Also, if I REALLY have a lot of time, this means I can explore a bit more of Osaka. I’ll see if I can find a UNIQLO, which there should be plenty of. To my understanding, they’re like the Japanese equivalent of Primark. And if there’s something significantly Osaka to do, I’ll do it. But I’m doing Osaka Castle next week I think, so that can wait.
After that, I’m going to go back to Second Street in Onohara and try and buy a little table for my takoyaki maker, as well as an extension cord. If I can find any other bargain electronics there too, that’d be good. I still want a DSLR, though those are expensive. If I manage to upgrade to a smartphone, I think I’ll pass on the tablet, so I can save money in that area. Also if I get a smartphone, the DSLR won’t be as important as I’ll have another photo-taking device to rely on, which is more discreet, but I want a DSLR anyway and I might as well get them in the country they’re manufactured in, as they’re cheaper than way. Particularly if they’re second-hand.
Second Street sells a lot of cool, shiny instruments as well, and it is SO tempting to buy one. But the walls are thin so I’d disturb everyone, and I wouldn’t be able to bring it home with me anyway. *Sigh*.
Anyway, what did I do today?
First lesson was cancelled, so Politics was my first lesson. We had a test, and I revised everything I was told to revise which included the three pacifist principles, the three non-nuclear principles, the three non-proliferation treaty principles, but I must have missed that I also needed to revise the four defence principles, so I got everything else right but that. At least the answers to the four principles sounded familiar, so it’s not like it was wholly new information.
Before Carlos-sensei gets into the actual lesson (we talked more about the nuclear reactors, focusing on radiation today), he always likes to read the news, which I find helpful. Today he mentioned something going on in Turkey (not related to Japan, but I don’t mind – it was political one way or another), which is that the Muslim-oriented government is censoring sex education (covering pictures of genetalia with pictures of fluffy ducks and cute polar bears… I’m not exaggerating) and rewriting the textbooks to contain Islamic principles on sex rather than how it works in real life. (Oh snap.)
Islamic countries aren’t the only places that do this kind of thing, of course. There are schools in the state of Arizona that actually RIP OUT pages in textbooks with information concerning contraception and abortion, etc. Never mind the fact that some of the backs of the pages they rip out are about how the sperm functions. Guess kids don’t need to know that shit, just as long as they can’t abort their kids! Yay!
For God’s sake.
(Literally, haha.)
Look, if you don’t agree with abortion or contraception, whatever, okay, that’s your personal stance, but the facts are the facts whether you like them or not, which people need to know so that they don’t grow up completely misinformed, not to mention exposed to a much higher risk of teen pregnancy, and these are textbooks issued by the federal government. You can’t just rip out the pages of the textbook you don’t agree with, even if it’s frowned upon in your state.
After Politics, I printed out a couple of pictures of myself in the CJLC computer lab, to include in my letter to Nana. Me eating okonomiyaki, me at the Japanese barbeque, and me in Universal Studios.
After that, I bought more octopus and chopped green onions for possible takoyaki with Rachel, and got my own ladle and whisk for future takoyaki use. I’ve been using a fork to beat the eggs with until now, but if I’m going to make any kind of flour-egg mix regularly I might as well use a whisk. It was much easier to beat the takoyaki mix, this time.
I also got some adhesive stick-on hooks to hang my clothes up in my room with, because it’s now too cold and too windy to risk hanging my clothes outside. I keep waiting too long to do my laundry – I’m not sure when the last time I did it was, maybe two or three weeks ago (a habit I picked up from university last year due to having to pay to use the washing machines/dryers every time), but it also had a lot of heavy clothes in there like jeans and jumpers as Mum always told me to wash that kind of clothing in moderation.
The wash didn’t turn out too well, and they never do… I suspect the detergent I have may indeed turn out to be mere fabric conditioner, after all, or maybe too many clothes means the washing liquid didn’t diffuse itself quite so democratically. Or maybe too much, so instead of the top 1% being clean and the rest filthy, everything was just kind of mediocre.
Wow, did I really just use my laundry as an analogy for capitalist and communist states?
Neither sounds like a good reality. I’d rather ALL my washing turned out spick and span. But I guess the reality is in order for that, you either need more funds (washing up liquid) or less people (clothes) in order for general quality of life (the result of my laundry) to be better.
After that, I got to work tidying my room, because it was a frightful mess. This unfortunately ate up time I could have spent finding a small table/ extension cord, but Rachel didn’t seem to mind in the end.
She only had to write a page for her home university assignment, so she ended up spending a lot of time helping me cook, instead. We tried to make the azuki bean burgers together.
Spoiler alert, it wasn’t a COMPLETE disaster, but it was a disappointment.
The azuki beans were a substitute for black beans/ kidney beans, as neither are very commonly sold in Japan. The ones I bought were in cans without removal tags, so we required a can opener (which I didn’t have, and had to borrow), and the azuki beans had sugar in them, so they tasted way too sweet. We decided to rinse them a few times before adding them to anything else, in an attempt to wash away some of the sugar.
I tried opening the cans without a can opener at first, but it was kind of impossible and I didn’t want to slice my fingers off (which I ended up doing later anyway), so I searched until I found something that looked like a beer bottle opener, but turned out to be in fact, yes, a can opener. A really-hard-to-use can opener, but a can opener all the same. No wonder I couldn’t find them in the ¥100 store – I hadn’t known what they looked like. I’ll know for next time.
So after rinsing the two cans of beans, we mashed them in the bowl, and we then added two red onions, finely chopped, as well as some parsley, chilli powder, black pepper, garlic, and a pinch of salt. I don’t usually add extra salt to food, but we wanted to neutralize the sweetness of the azuki beans here. After that, we gradually added about 2 cups of flour. Rachel was the one who got her hands dirty; I was the one sieving the flour over the bowl. We had to keep adding more and more flour; the recipe dictated 1.5 cups would have been enough but it was still way too sticky even then . Now I think about it, it was probably because the azuki bean cans were sold in 460g quantities rather than 400g ah, NOW I understand why it took forever to get the flour quantity right.
That amount of mix could be split into four big burgers, or five medium sized, or six smallish ones, depending on how you wanted to split it. I now think if we’d made smaller ones, they’d have turned out better.
We used Rachel’s low-fat cooking spray at first, but it didn’t work very well as the first two burgers burned quite easily on both sides, yet remained raw and gooey on the inside, which wasn’t very nice. We then used my zero-cholesterol light oil, which worked a little better, and we turned the heat down. Those burgers turned out marginally better, though still a little undone in the middle. At least we wouldn’t get food poisoning from them being under-cooked, as they didn’t contain any meat, egg or fish. But it still wasn’t pleasant. The lettuce, mayo and tomato helped a little, and the bread rolls were good, too (hilariously tiny compared to the size of the burgers… I ended up using skewers to hold them in place, Nandos-style). But the burgers being under-cooked in the middle completely ruined it for me.
Rachel, like me, has a bit of an addiction to ketchup. But I’ve actually discovered since coming to Japan, I’ve not had any ketchup whatsoever. I practically can’t eat without it back in the UK, kind of like cheese, but I’ve avoided both whilst coming here. I’ve even passed them in the supermarket a few times, and so far I’ve chosen not to have it. My sister would be proud of me. For some reason, my ketchup addiction really pissed her off.
Saddened by the disappointing outcome of the vegan burgers, we decided to make takoyaki, as I had all the ingredients, and Rachel actually hadn’t attended a takoyaki party yet. I got to be the master explaining all, though I disgraced myself a little by burning a few of the first batch. I didn’t taste the burned stuff, and it was only a little. The second batch turned out better, because Rachel finished with her assignment for the day (having complete about three quarters of it) and helped my turn all the takoyaki over. It’s really hard to do by yourself, as it takes a lot of time and means some of the takoyaki do get burned.
I burned my fingers again, to add to the cut I got on my thumb from chopping tomatoes, earlier. I’m an okay cook who doesn’t tend to burn their food (other than today, obviously) but I do end up burning myself quite a lot. It’s a price I’m willing to pay.
This is actually the first time I’ve majorly failed at cooking something here. Well, it was my first time attempting burgers of any kind, and I have learned from the experience. Unfortunately I still taste the gooey mess on my tongue whenever I picture it, so I’m not too keen to make bean burgers again any time soon. I think I’d be more willing to try with black beans or kidney beans rather than sweet azuki beans, anyway. But actually, the parts of the burger that were done actually tasted pretty nice. It was just the undone bits that ruined it for me.
Still, we had a really good time. Rachel brought some snacks over to share, and I made us some breakfast tea. It would definitely have been too much to go so far as making pancakes, too. But next time, I’ll be going to her place, and we may get to making that vegan cheesecake. We’re about evenly matched at cooking, though maybe that’s unfair for me to say, as it was mainly me directing it today and we failed, so maybe I am indeed the worse cook of the two. But I did succeed in making a nice, smooth takoyaki mix, and correctly predicted how far a certain amount of takoyaki mix would go. It made exactly two batches, again.
I think the general rule is 1 egg + 1 cup takoyaki flour + 1 cup water = 1 batch takoyaki mix.
I’ve gone overtime again, but this took a reeeeeally long time to write. I’d better go to bed now, as I have a busy day tomorrow! Not thought too hard about what to do on Sunday, but I’ll take a leaf out of Rachel’s book and just throw myself into a bouken. See you tomorrow!
naiveinnippon 