I am sooo sorry for the delay

This happens if one is not a blogger by heart. Anyway, a lot of things have happened since Febuary. Firstly, my second wagashi. It is called uguisugashi for the bird it is shaped-like. Unfortunately because I left for Toronto , I skipped one class on making sakura-mochi for spring. Oh well! :)

Speaking of Toronto, I stayed in a serviced apartment along Yonge St. (if you check the street name, it is Guinness Book's Longest Street). I enjoyed walking around. Unfortunately it was twice and something 3 times colder than Tokyo. Didn't have proper shoes, so slush and shoes = wet and stinky socks! Was tempted to buy new weatherproof ones there, but decided against it. My jetlag was terrible though, I woke up around 12 noon and went to sleep around 3 am. :( As for food, if you follow Food Network, you'll be familiar with Wolfgang Puck. Incidentally a branch of his restaurant can be found inside the Toronto airport. I just bought, of all the boring things, a oriental chicken salad. Don't get me wrong, the salad was great. But being "Karl" I should have been more daring or at least unusual with my choice. :)
I went home for a week to help my professor with his conference in Ateneo. As a "reward" I was able to go home (to Iloilo). I pretty much bummed around Iloilo. However, what really surprised me is how big (tall) my nephew (little goblin) Seth became. Quite an energetic kid, and looooves to babble! His smile is really cute! (egad! I sound like an ojisan *ojiisan) haha!


I returned to celebrate my 28th Birthday with friends. However, I decided to have a picnic instead of spending sooo much money in a restaurant. Plus the cherry blossoms bloomed early in Tokyo. We went to Koganei Park, one of the places to go for Hanami (Flower-viewing). Gifts from my friends: A Class gave me a photo album of us since last year! c/o Derya. Cris (New Zealand), gave me a book on New Zealand food essays. Am (Thai) gave me a wallet. Reija (Taiwan) gave me a peppermint scented candle and some special chopsticks! (funny thing is there were 5)

Last week, I took a part-time job doing interpretation for a group of 22 filipinos. There and then I realized how bad my Tagalog is, how bad my Ilonggo is and how bad my Japanese is! :) Oh well! Aside from this, I realized how HARD interpretation is, especially if the speaker to be interpreted does not care to pause for the interpreters! :) I am going back there tomorrow (Ibaraki-ken). But as a bonus I was able to ride a bullet train (the slower ones) for free. And obviously, with a long (1 hour) train ride, includes ekiben! I had kamameshi bento!
Just as an "epilogue" of sorts! Thanks for the two years of great friendship! Especially to Nomi and Angel.

It started to snow and would not stop!!!

I finally experienced my first snow...which became my first snowstorm...which became a very cold week! I didn't know how to deal with it, since I've only seen it in movies. So I went out, frolicked, and obviously got wet...haha! But anyway, I took some pictures throughout the entire snowy period. My favorite is the picture outside Tachikawa Church where there is a statue of the BVM and Jesus, snow covered...seems a bit nice coz the snow looks like angels embracing the two.

During the snowstorm, it so happened my adviser had scheduled an event and we were supposed to help him out. What did I do? Shovelled snow (shovelled being the operative word). Actually pushing snow to the side, which sounded fun at first, then wet when we were doing it, and finally the next day, my back hurt a bit. :)

For Chinese New Year, I visited Bac-san in Yokohama and then went to Chinatown there. Yokohama University was HUUUGE. Probably the size of UP Diliman. Their cafeteria felt almost like ours in Hitotsubashi, except that it also has a salad bar and an italian section. Our cafeteria only has a Noodle place, Rice Bowl place and a Western style place. Unfortunately, Yokohama University is in the "middle of nowhere" (figuratively) as opposed to Hitotsubashi which is in the middle of Kunitachi city. After lunch (where I was treated by Bac), I went to Chinatown to see the hubbub of the Chinese New Year Celebrations. Unfortunately, it wasn't as lively as I'd imagined it would be. There was a "lion dance" where the dancers seemed to lack vim and vigor. However, I did take some pictures.

As for food, I purchased a sweet dessert called "Anmitsu" from Tachikawa. Ideally the base is plain jelly made from agar and topped with anything plus a super sweet sugar syrup or red bean. The one I got was a "specialty" of the place which included persimmon, chestnut, red bean paste, a huuuge bean and mochi topped with black sugar syrup...sickeningly sweet.

For my ekiben series, I decided to get an ekiben from Yokohama. I got the basic which is shumai ekiben. The interesting thing about it is that it had a mechanism or sorts which steamed the shumai while I was bringing it home. (according to the lady, I had to consume it before 6 hours after purchase, else all I get is cold shumai).

Finally, I had asked Arai-san to teach me to make some Japanese sweets, and for recording purposed I took pictures of each step. (Sorry, I am a bit lazy to write everything down). But this is a pretty easy one, ingredients: a kind of seaweed, sugar and water.

New Year, Shin Nen kai, etc.

New Year was pretty dull for me as Japan celebrates it with a subtle tone, that is to visit a Shinto shrine or Buddhist Temple and pray, buy new charms, etc. Unfortunately, I live near a famous shrine where a lot of people go, unlike small shrines where you have old priests or monks who make udon or amazake (sweet sake) and give to shrine and temple visitors. Oh well! On Ditch and Johann's birthday (6th January) I decided to walk from Kunitachi to Fuchu (around 40 minutes away) to look for some stuff Ditch asked to buy (plus go to a used bookstore there). Anyway, in Muji, I bumped into Iida-san (VTES player) and told me that the shrine in Fuchu is about to end its New Year events, so I decided to go there, got my 御神籤 (Omikuji) or fortune and got (中吉) Middle Luck, yay! Custom is to tie it to any place in the temple (so that it comes true?)

Later on, A Class decided to watch a movie and decided to go for National Treasure. Dina told me about a "secret" discount in Fuchu for Foreign Students (from 1800 yen to 1000 yen!) So we went there. Popcorn was FABULOUS, unlike Tachikawa where they served stale popcorn! After the movie, we went for dinner and I ordered a stew dish (perfect for cold weather) (sorry, forgot the name). For dessert, Derya gave us benimo sweets she and her boyfriend got from Okinawa. Benimo reminds me of ube with a tamed flavor. (JOY!)

Finally, last Thursday, Am (Thai) invited me and a couple of friends to her host mom's 新年会 (New Year Party?). We had two types of nabe, seafood and meat bonanza (i.e. pork, beef, chicken, etc.) Another perfect food for winter weather. (Bliss!) After the meal we had a game with prizes and this is what I got! yay! :)

pre-New Year adventures and treats!

What did I do during Christmas eve? I spent it with my VTES friends here in Tokyo playing VTES. Haha! Lots of fun! Won my first round with Katya's classic combat Assamite (1.5 vp) and Johann/Tin(?) Anarch Toreador Antitribu (4 vp). Got second place entering the finals, but lost with my Trujah deck. In the end, got 5th place and won myself a brand new alarm clock! yay! lol!

On the 27th, had dinner with Serizawa-san and Shimizu-san and her boyfriend. Was a potluck dinner, and both wanted me to cook something Filipino. However, when one says Filipino food, it usually equates to either adobo or pansit or lumpia (all of which I didn't want to do because they I wanted to introduce something different). Wracked my brains, checked the various magazines and cookbooks I have and then inspiration hit me! Why not 家庭料理 (homestyle cooking)! More specifically, my favorite food, tortang talong! However, I wasn't sure if either had dietary restrictions, so I substituted the giniling with ground chicken. I also baked the torta. I also made imperfect sapin-sapin (given that there was no ube here). They ended up liking it and Shimizu-san asked me for the recipe for the talong because she wanted to cook it for her niece! (yay! another means of Filipinizing a Japanese!) Serizawa-san ended up very drunk, so I had to bring him to the train station. On the way, the road was filled with Japanese college students bringing drunk friends home as well! haha!

Today, I went to the Winter Comifes. But for a different purpose. Went with Hayakawa-san (I play VTES with) and his friend and went to circles who either translate VTM or make scenarios for VTM. Bought myself Boston by Night in Japanese for 500 yen! Yay! (At least it gives me another reason to go to Comifes (since most doujinshis are ecchi! lol!)

I am currently reading 駅弁マンガ (Train bento) and had a hankering to get one. So decided to go to Tokyo Station and bought myself one. I had lots of choices, between bento from different parts of Japan. But the "otaku" in me couldn't resist the Pokemon ekiben! So bought it for 1000 yen! And here are the pictures. Food was nothing special though as opposed to the others which features a product of the location where the bento was made. But at least this is a start for me! For reference (Nowd might be interested!) here are the pictures.

Merry Christmas!!!

First of all I would like to wish everyone a very Merry Christmas!!! What have I done so far: Last October, Carol from Singapore (we met in Australia) came to Tokyo and will be studying in Rikkyo for a year. We promised each other that we should meet and I give her baked goods. hehe. We met at Roppongi and went to the Mori Art Museum which had an exhibit on Contemporary Artists, i.e. Manga artists. After which we treated ourselved to 茶そば (Green Tea Soba). I ordered the Ebi-fry one, which was (a) expensive, (b) had two large batter-fried shrimps. :) Very appropriate for a very cold autumn evening.

I also was invited to make Japanese Sweets in a class by the ladies I teach English to. We made two sweets, a baked sweet (which tasted like mooncake, except that the filling is a bean-egg filling) and a seasonal sweet (Kaki or persimmon). Looking at the real things, you'd think it was easy. But, actually doing it is another thing. As you can see, my baked sweet is overbaked..should have been "golden brown" and not "grizzly bear brown" while my persimmon, doesn't look like it at all. (I didn't put much food coloring as I was supposed to) oh well!

The next pictures come from the New Japanese theatre where I watched a Japanese play. The theatre specializes in straight plays, ballets and operas and inside the theatre there was a beautiful gallery of ballet costumes. One is from Aida and the next one is from Cinderalla. The play was interesting, though I didn't understand everything. It was a collaboration between China, South Korea and Japan. Pretty interesting though!

Winter = Nabe (鍋), so for my meals I've been eating a lot of nabe. First one is a Hiroshima-style porridge with oysters and the second one is a Thai-style Tom Yum nabe.

As for a new toy, I had Nowd buy the newly release EEE PC by Asus. (Thanks Nowd) Very cheap, very small. Pretty happy with it and am getting used to the Linux OS installed with it! :) The last picture will show you how neat and tiny it is. (to those who are familiar with my Dell Laptop)