I never realized how long ago my last post was...unfortunately due to my current schedule, I really don't have much time. Anyway, before things pile up some more and I end up making this blog dormant, I'd better post something....rather everything that had happened since.
What is my current schedule?
Mondays: 1 pm meet with my language partner (A Chinese classmate in my sub-zemi. I teach her English, she teaches me Japanese) 2:20 pm 社会文学の日本語, a class where we read essays in the social sciences written in Japanese 4:10 pm Play badminton with Park-san (a Korean classmate)
Tuesdays: 10:35 am Nakano-sensei zemi (アメリカ研究）3:00 pm Meet with Host-mom ４：２０ pm Lee-sensei zemi (My sub-zemi, we are currently reading Philosophy in Japanese...I can't understand a thing)
Wednesday: 12:55 pm 口頭表現 (Japanese Speaking Class) 2:35 pm 文章表現 (Japanese Essay Writing Class) 4:30 pm language partner
Thursday: 10:35 am Nakano-sensei zemi (フィリピン研究） 5:30 pm meet up with Cheska and Hanna for dinner
Friday: 10:35 am 文法上級(Advanced Japanese Grammar 1) 12:55 pm 上級読解(Advanced Japanese Reading Class 1) 2:30 pm Park-san badminton
One of the longer holidays in the first semester is Golden Week (GW). For this year, me, Angel and Dinah (Indonesian friend) decided to go to Odaiba. It is a reclaimed island in Tokyo, with became a popular resort-like, artificial port. Points of interests: We decided to walk the Rainbow Bridge (570 meters). I got pictures of the view. At the end of the day, we decided to eat at a Bulgarian restaurant which Angel ate at before. On the table were, traditional Bulgarian salad (which had lots of feta cheese on top), a salad sampler, bread, Angel's dish (the one in a bowl, tasted like caldereta), and my dish a mix of kebabs (supposedly made from spinach, but the Japanese version was a mix of meat and spinach. Me and Angel also shared a nice bottle of Bulgarian red wine which tasted great. We ended the meal by ordering yogurt (which Bulgaria is known for. But I decided to order a very unusual flavor....try Black Sesame and Spinach. I found the combination weird, but according to the waiter it was popular to the Japanese. The taste of black sesame was strong and somewhat overpowered the spinach. Another interesting thing was that Wicked the musical will be held in Japan starting this month. So they had a light garden in front of the theatre.
By the next day, me, Hanna and Cheska spent the day in Shin-Okubo, which has a "Little Korea" to eat Yakiniku. I usually look forward to these times, coz we get to try new things! We went to a restaurant recommended by Hanna's friend. We had the restaurant's recommended fair, which is the meat near the bone. The difference between Korean and Japanese Yakiniku is that the Koreans start with the whole piece of meat, intact cut the pieces with scissors and later into bite-size portions. While the Japanese begin with pieces already cut. We also had yoke which is raw meat marinated in sesame oil and a raw egg. Something like steak tartar. I've seen this in a lot of variety shows and some actors hate it like hell. I was at first hesitant, but it tasted great...the sesame oil really complemented it! I wanted to try the dragon fruit sherbet as well. Also tasted great. We walked around and saw an interesting sidewalk stand that sold tapoki and a dessert. Cheska wanted to eat the tapoki. I had a try of it during a festival in Kunitachi with Tricia and her friend. I liked it. Tapoki is basically mochi in spicy sauce. I liked the flavor of the one in Kunitachi. Thinking it would be spicy as well here in "Little Korea" I prepared myself. Unfortunately, it wasn't spicy at all...rather sweet. :( Quite a disappointment.
For the Kunitachi community, I volunteered to teach a cooking group how to cook Filipino dishes. Specifically, chicken abodo and sapin sapin. I also wanted to introduce to them tsokolate, but because of time constraints, we canceled it. :( I decided on adobo because the ingredients are fairly common and could be found in any grocery store. Plus, adobo is a versatile recipe, which gives the ladies room to experiment. As for sapin-sapin, I wanted to showcase color. The idea was to introduce Filipino flavors and cuisine to the Japanese. Thankfully Cheska also attended and answered some of the questions for me (since I'm still not fluent in Japanese). What is interesting to note is how the group "Japanized" the dishes. Oh incidentally, some of these pictures will be published in Cook magazine for June! Make sure to get yourself a copy! haha!
About two Thursdays have passed and we've been eating a lot of delicious dishes. On one Thursday, Cheska had a hankering for wagyuu (和牛) yakiniku. The special thing about it is the marbling. (How is it different from Kobe beef? I'm not sure since I haven't eaten it yet). Incidentally, I found a restaurant in Tachikawa that serves it. So we went and ate! It was delicious. Normally, when it comes to grilled meats, my preference is charred. But the proper way to cook wagyuu is to grill it only for a short time! After dinner, we went to UFC and I channeled into a "Toad" order of Green tea latte.
On another day, we decided to try Haitian cuisine (or rather the Japanese interpretation of Haitian cuisine). The specialty was dry curry (as the name suggests). I had the squid ink rice with stewed beef while Hanna had the pork stew. Interesting flavors, however not as spicy as I'd expect. But since I don't know what real Haitian food tastes like, I can't really judge.
On another day, we decided to go to Tama Center. Unfortunately, Hanna couldn't make it because of her tight schedule. So me and Cheska ended up exploring it together. We got tired midway and had a pre-dinner snack of takoyaki. After which we discovered a peculiar restaurant which served "Asian dishes". We started with a tofu appetizer with an interesting topping. Cheska ordered this raw octopus and kimchee dish (forgot the name). Tasted great, especially the spiciness, which was pretty un-Japanese. I wanted the taste of Southeast Asian spiciness, so I ordered Indonesian bihon...which tasted like....curry. Oh well, it turned out to be a pleasant meal though!
Things I've been eating. Pumpkin ice cream from Asahi-dori. A latest fad for eating ramen called tsukemen (Cheska has also posted something similar in her multiply blog). With tsukemen, the ingredients are served separately, and eaten the way the person likes it!
Fast forward to last Saturday. Me, Dinah and Park went to Yokohama. Dinah had free tickets to the newspaper museum and invited me to join her. Park, wanting to go to Yokohama also joined. One interesting activity in the museum was a booth that taught us how to do furoshiki. For lunch, we went to Chinatown and happened to come across a restaurant recommended by VVV6 (one variety TV show here). I had the spicy fried rice, while the three of us shared a spicy shrimp and peanut stir-fry, as well as a bokchoy dish and beef with green bellpeppers. After lunch, we went to Akarenga (Red Brick buildings) which had a festival of on city from northern Honshu. (forgot the name). We had interesting ice cream flavors. Park had persimmon ice cream, Dinah had edamame (green bean) and I had carrot. The most delicious surprisingly was the edamame. We then walked aimlessly and discovered a museum which hosts the memorial of Yokohama's opening as a port. The museum was supposed to have closed at 4 pm, but the curator told us it was okay. By the evening, we had dinner at the nearest mall. Now it was Korean food. We had bulgogi in a unique korean stone bowls. (Think sizzling plates in the form of bowls to keep the bowl warm). Anyway, this ends this very loooong post.
No comments:
Post a Comment