'Popin Cookin' Sushi sweet kit

About a week ago I spotted this in the supermarket, and I vaguely remembered watching a youtube video about this product a few years ago. So I just couldn't pass up the opportunity to buy it and try it out!

 Unfortunately for me, of course, the instructions were all in Japanese, so my attempt at making these sweets is largely the product of guess work...

Inside: 1 mould, 1 spoon, 1 pipet, 1 moulding sweet, and many sachets of magic

Somehow one packet of magic with the addition of water turned into a 'rice' ball. 

 This one is turning into an egg omelette 'tamagoyaki'

 You can see the tamagoyaki and some form of meat (maybe 'salmon') in the background in their moulds. In the foreground I am attempting to make sushi shaped balls of 'rice'. 

Aha! Partial success! 

Now to make the fish egg things that go on top of the wrapped sushi. I swear this part was magic. Sucked up the red liquid with the pipet, dropped it in the clear stuff, scoop it out and pop them on the sushi! Well it fascinated me at least.

 And tada, tiny little sweet sushi's, with a penny for scale. Sure they are not pretty and I made a lot of mess, but I had fun and that is the important part.

(I haven't tried one yet, so they might taste gross!)

A very foody day

So yesterday I watched others make delicious smelling Serbian food, which I wasn't allowed to eat :( I also half helped make brownies, which again I was banned from eating! 

Sausage and cheese filled keflice

Making vanilice

All of this was so that the L-cafe would have something to sell at their stall today, at this sort of Japanese festival thingy.  

Selling our 'foreign' foods and drinks

 There was some biscuits which were sold as English biscuits, but had a giant Scottish flag on the packet. I had spent a long time the day previous trying to explain the difference between England, Wales, Ireland and Scotland, and then the UK and Great Britain. I think I ended up confusing myself more than clarifying anything for them. 

These ( kuri manju) were delicious!

I also 'helped' with this traditional Chinese tea ceremony 

Mochi

It gets seriously sticky 

 So mochi is one of my favourite things in Japan, I had googled what it was made from before, and the internet had informed that it was made of rice, but I never imagine this was how it was made... 

The rice is put into this wooden structure, and then attacked with giant wooden hammers. They let the bystanders have a go at hammering the rice (pictured left). And then the real men took over (right). It was pretty impressive to watch as some of them were fairly old, yet they swung the hammers with great force when the younger men had struggle to even lift the hammers out of the googey rice. 

Taking it in turns to slam the hammers down

 After the rice is thoroughly pummelled, it is rolled in what I imagine to be flour, and bean paste is added to its centre.  

They were even lovely enough to hand us all one of these warm, freshly made, squishy beauties. 

Kaba (Hippo) car

With the bean paste, the mochi is normally sweet, but here (below) this gentleman is BBQing the mochi having dipped it in a salt sauce. It tasted very different, but equally delicious.

Having eat loads, it was decided that it would be a good idea to go clothes shopping. As the clothes shops as soooo far away on bikes, we managed to build up our appetite again. 

Hiroshima style okonomiyaki

Osaka style okonomiyaki

We decided to go for okonomiyaki, which is a Japanese savoury pancake/omelette. I had previously tried Hiroshima style okonomiyaki, which includes noodles. But today's version was Osaka style which meant it was not noodle filled. The wonderful thing about okonomiyaki is that you can have pretty much anything you want in it. In fact its name is derived from the word okonomi, meaning "what you like" or "what you want", and yaki meaning "grilled" or "cooked". At this particular place the okonomiyaki was prepared in front of you, on the griddle built into your table! Once it is cooked, the heat is turned down, meaning that your food stays hot. Then you are free to add whatever you want, mayonnaise, sesame seeds, more sauce (I don't know what kind of sauce it is, only that it is tasty), nori (dried seaweed) etc. 

Bonus:

So whilst adventuring today we ended up getting lost and finding an underground bikepark, where people can leave their bikes for extended period of time whilst they go by train to wherever they need to be. But to get down into this place, at first glance there was only stairs, not easy to manoeuvre with a bike. But on second glance we noticed that there  was a slope on one side for you to role your bike down, whilst you took the stairs. Obviously, however, it is not as easy to push your bike back up such a steep hill, and the Japanese being the ingenious people they are had put in a mini escalator just for bikes! Maybe this fascinated me more than it should have, but essentially when the machine sensed your bikes presence the conveyor belt turned on. Then, in theory, you put your brakes on, and walk up next to your bike with minimal effort. However the guy pictured below decided to sit on his as it went up, it sounds more impressive than it was, and I think he was just showing off, but he repeatedly almost fell off, much to my amusement! 

 

A detailed life update

Some of my dear readers/viewers have expressed a desire to know more about what I am actually doing, how I am adapting and settling in. I realise I have essentially ignored the fact that I am at university in this blog, and mainly focused on the funny or bizarre things I have seen or done.

So here goes, and feel free to ignore this post if you don't care ;) 


In the beginning

When I first arrived I was overwhelmed, jet lagged, confused and more than anything I felt lonely. Can you imagine being flung into a foreign country where you do not speak the language, and no one seems able or willing to speak your language? That was hard. Suddenly everyone you meet is handing you paper written in Japanese, (or 'Google translate's' version of English) telling you that you must do this, buy that, meet this person, go there etc. But all you want to do is lie in your bed and sleep. For the first couple of days, as soon as I was done attending meetings or tours, I would hurry back to my bed and curl up. Obviously this did not make meeting people any easier. But, what you forget whilst wallowing in your own sorrow, is that most people are in the same boat, or at least a very similar boat, one fuelled by culture shock and exhaustion. Eventually once you clamber out of bed long enough you begin to make friends. With that, you begin to explore, and the more you explore the more comfortable you feel. It is like someone is slowly turning on the lights in what was once a dark and unknown place.

Breakfast

As time has gone by, that ridiculous pile of paper has slowly reduced.

Bedding ✓
Sign up with the university ✓
Get a bike ✓
A bank account ✓
A phone ✓
National Health Insurance ✓
Placement test ✓
Sign up for classes ✓
Attend said classes ✓
Get other insurance (life insurance, fire, hitting others with your bike insurance) ✓
Sign up for trips ✓
Get a job ✓
Sign up for scholarships ✓
Tidy your room and make it feel like a home ✓
and so on...

Each item is like a weight off your shoulders, allowing you to relax further into your new life.

I have talked about some of these things before, but quite a few items on this list are very different from England. I plan to talk about banks and ATMs in a future post, because they are so different and kind of fascinating (or at least I think so).

Insurance
As you will probably know, most of the world does not have an NHS, so here you have to directly pay for your health insurance on a monthly or yearly basis. After a student discount it costs around £20 a month, and as I understand it, as a foreigner it is not optional. Essentially the insurance means that if you are taken ill, the insurance company will front 70% of the bill, whilst you must still pay around 30% of the bill. On top of this, the application form was entirely in Japanese, so I didn't have a clue where to even start. However, luckily for me my tutor here is lovely and actually filled it out for me, which I was incredibly thankful for!

You can even go diagonally!
This is terrifying when it is busy!

I mentioned before the excess of bikes here, coupled with the lack of any sort of system (or at least none that anyone follows), and the crazy riding skills of the Japanese, the pavements here are a scary place to be. Even worse are the cross roads, at each corner waits at least 10 bikes (at the rush moments between lessons), and as soon as the lights change colour and begin to chirp (yes the lights here chirp), suddenly there are bikes coming at you literally from every angle, all competing to get onto the small pavements. It is amazing that more people do not get hurt. Due to this, unorganised chaos, there is a serious need for insurance to cover you incase you hit someone with your bike.


My 'job'

L-Cafe

At this university there is a place called the L-cafe or English cafe. A little deceptive as it is not very English, and most people continue to speak Japanese in there, but nevertheless, international students hold language lessons in there on a regular basis. I figured this might be a good opportunity for me to earn some pocket money, whilst also giving me the chance to make new friends and gain a new experience. As a result I am not signed up to teach three lessons on a weekly basis. I am to hold conversation classes, essentially me attempting to encourage English out of students, and correcting their grammar, and I am to hold pronunciation lessons. I guess this is because I might be the only student on campus with an English accent, and those wishing to go to England want to imitate the way I speak, as essentially everyone is taught American English. This has resulted in me practising how to enunciate more clearly, for example pronouncing my T's in wa'er (water). So we shall see how that goes.

I bet you cannot guess which drawings are mine...

Classes
For my Visa to be valid I must take 7 classes or 10 hours a week of studies. I take 4 Japanese language classes, and have three other classes. One of my classes 'Study of Japan' looks amazing, as it is essentially a school trip every week, visiting High Schools, a Tatami factory (Japanese style flooring) and shrines, with the addition of a week learning how the traditional tea ceremony works. So far, with the exception of the language classes, my lectures/seminars have been fairly easy, so I am not complaining. Though as some of my classes are with Japanese students as well, the class is there to essentially challenge their English abilities, and as such the sensei's have hinted towards additional work for us, the international students.

Typhoons, critters, lint rollers and 'interesting' emails...

The bikes still standing have just been picked up by their owners.
(Image courtesy of Petra)

So some of you may have heard 

that there was a typhoon in the Japan area, but luckily for me it did not come near Okayama. The only problem for us was high winds, causing the hundreds of bikes neatly lined up across the university to topple over like dominos with every gust of wind. I saw many bikes sprawled across the floor, with the remains of their lights, locks or baskets scattered around them. My bike however is apparently made of stronger stuff, even though I found it flung into the middle of the path, it seems to have survived its battle with the forces of nature.

Not my picture obviously 

Those of you who have me on facebook may have heard that I have become a bug removal expert. I seem to constantly find stink bugs in my room (pictured left), so named for its ability to release a pungent odor, as a defence mechanism, or if you simply try to move it. However I have become rather skilled at removing them without alarming them. Though I will damned if I know how on earth they are getting it! Even when I had not opened my door/window for a few days, the buggers still manage to ninja in. On top of this I have also been confronted by a cockroach, big enough to hear scuttling across my floor, also too big to be caught with a glass. As I refused to kill anything unless I have to, my attempts to capture it resulted in me frantically tipping the contents of my bin on the floor, chasing the creature with said bin, and then once captured, getting down on all fours and slowly pushing the bin across the floor, out into the corridor and outside onto the fire escape where I released it. Ohh on top of  all that, this was also the first time I saw the individual in the room opposite mine, I think this display may have affirmed a crazy British stereotype for him.

I know what you are thinking,
and yes I am wearing a monkey suit... 

As my bedroom, dining room, living room, kitchen and study are all one room, which share one floor, I feel it is quite important to maintain the cleanliness of that floor to some extent. Every method I have tried up until now (mopping/wiping) have taken far too much effort, but today whilst in the 100 yen (63p) shop I was confronted with a brilliant product. It is essentially a giant lint roller, which I can now use to roll across the floor, with the sticky paper collecting all the dirt. Once I am done, I can remove the paper, bin it, and save the roller for another day. Genius.

I mentioned in previous posts that I recently got a new phone, and have since discovered that Japanese people do not use texts (it costs extra). Instead everyone uses emails and applications such as 'Line'. Somehow my phones email address ended up on a spam list within a day of me getting it (I suspect the phone company may have sold the email addresses, seeing as at that point even  I wasn't sure what my email address was). As a result I am constantly getting spam emails both in English and Japanese. The English ones seem to be trying to sell me stocks for whatever reason, and I was curious to what the Japanese ones said. A friendly Japanese guy was showing me how to use the Line app, and so I took the opportunity to ask him to translate the emails for me. As he read the email, he started to look worried and said 'this...this is private', whilst looking incredibly embarrassed, and just about managed to explain that my spam email was of a rather adult nature, but was far too shy to explain any further. He looked almost upset that I had asked him to translate it for me, and simple stated 'please delete this and please don't reply to it'. I felt so sorry for him that I had stuck the poor boy in such an awkward situation, but I still really want to know what it said! 

Bonus:

 

Oreo hot chocolate. Yes, it is as tasty as it sounds :D 

These rather nifty items are clips to seal food products once you open it or put it in plastic bags. However these ones allow you to slide the little black bits so you can indicate the use-by date of the products. Less than £1 for 9 of them, pretty neat ey?

Korakuen Garden, one of the three most beautiful gardens in Japan.

 So yesterday we visited Korakuen Garden in Okayama, which as a student of the university we get free entrance into! 

Okayama is famous for its fruits, in particular its peaches, so of course I had to try the peach ice cream!

Because I, in my humble opinion, think these pictures are pretty, for this post I shall make them giant sized :)  

A distanced shot of the castle, which I shall visit at a later date

Children feeding the giant koi that inhabited the pond on the island in which the gardens were situated.  

View from up the stairs

Incredibly peaceful in this building, you cannot really tell from the picture, but the stream ran through the middle. Everyone removed their shoes and just listened to the running water.

A crane landing as evening began to fall. 

A little wikipedia and pamphlet knowledge if you want to know more:


"In 1687, the daimyo Ikeda Tsunamasa  ordered Tsuda Nagatada to begin construction of the Korakuen. It was completed in 1700 and has retained its original appearance to the present day, except for a few changes by various daimyo....In 1884, ownership was transferred to Okayama Prefecture and the garden was opened to the public. The garden suffered severe damage during the floods of 1934 and during World War II bombing in 1945, but has been restored based on Edo period paintings and diagrams."

Bonus picture, apple pie latte and Krispy Kreme donut :D 

Day 12

At some point I plan to dedicate a whole post to some of the weird and wonderful foods I have seen or eaten since I arrived, I seem to have already stockpiles quite a few pictures! 

This is a kit to make jelly sweets in the shape of sushi!  
How could I resist buying?! 

Grapes the size of small plums, 1p for scale.

Anyway this post isn't to be about food, it is a small picture heavy update

Slightly heart shaped leg bruise from my bike

Traditional Japanese houses

A park near my accommodation,
with mountains in the background :)

Now a few more products I have found, for which I can provide no explanation... 

In other news, I signed up to a ridiculously overpriced contract in Japan, with it I get a very fancy phone, which apparently comes with a talking sheep application. But of course he is in Japanese, so besides the fact that the character presents me with cake every so often, he is of little use to me :(

I have learnt that no matter how expensive your contract is, it never includes texts, so everyone communicates via email, which is new to me. Furthermore, my phones email has already got on a spam list somehow (I suspect the phone company sold our email addresses), which means I am constantly getting weird texts about buying stocks   o.O  

Also one feature Japanese phones seem to have that English ones don't have, or at least modern ones do not, is an antenna. Watching films and TV on your phone is so popular here that they force TV deals onto you when you buy the phone, and the phone comes with a massive antenna.

Put all my pictures up to remind me of home
 and the awesome people back in England 

The TV I found

I was incredibly happy today to buy a kettle! Not so happy that I have now created a serious fire hazard with all the plugs in my kitchen :/

Bonus picture of Dave the tortoise and his lego house...