Packaging, my accommodation, Okayama and other observations.

This just a post of things I have noticed, or that have no place else where in my blog, but I want to share anyway.

The Japanese love packaging!! I mean it, it is beyond crazy. You probably know that gift giving is very important here, which I shall talk about in a future post I am sure. But what stands out the most is that how the gift is wrapped and presented, is often more important than the gift itself. This love of packaging has also inevitably bled into commercial products. Whereas in England, and as far as I can tell most of Europe, there has been a push in recent years to cut down on over packaging products, in Japan this is definitely not the case!! 

My late night snack of camembert and ritz was hindered by ridiculous amounts of wrappers. Having grown up being told that packaging like this kills polar bears, it has been hard for me to see the advantages of it. Each slice of cheese is wrapped, why on earth would that help? But living on my own, as I do, I have reluctantly accepted that actually this is pretty practical, for one thing it stops me eating everything in one sitting, and equally it keeps my food fresh, preventing soggy ritz (which no one wants) and mouldy cheese.

I thought I would also add in a few pictures of my accommodation, I will take better ones later, but this scene was beautiful at the time with the sun low in the sky, but in hindsight it does not photograph so well.

 Below you can see the rice fields next to my accommodation, which if I lean really far out of my balcony I can just about see.

And here is a picture of Okayama centre, I can't believe that before I arrived I was told this was a village -_-

Today, whilst in town I saw this ridiculously fluffy pony, he was so damn soft! And when the owner noticed me trying to photograph the pony, he proceeded to place a plushie pony on top. I don't know why, but nevertheless I wanted to keep him. The pony, not the owner. 

A legitimate medical problem in Japan, Strawberry Nose.

Ohh and last but not least, I was genuinely shocked when I first saw this, and have since seen it quite a few times. Anyone can go into jewellery or cosmetic shops and buy disposable piercing machines. Coming from the land of OTT health and safety, this blew my little mind. 

Festival and shopping

So last week we got an extra 3 days off from university for the campus festival. I didn't really know what to expect, but essentially there was a lot of food, and a lot of dancing. It was pretty interesting to see how people acted differently here. Under normal circumstances students do not come up to me and talk to me, but because they were trying to draw people to their stalls, we were constantly being hounded down to eat whatever food they had to offer. Students were more than willing to just shout random English words at me to get my attention. I had more than one person just say "I love you" for no apparent reason besides to get my attention so I would buy the food at their stall. I had to learn how to say "maybe later" in Japanese just to get people to leave us alone. And when I did return to one stall for food, the girl screamed at me (which is apparently a positive thing here), but startled me nonetheless! 

Stalls all tried different tactics to get our attention, one which was selling just chips had the below sign, the McDonald's clown is slightly terrifying, and the 'M' legs are just random!

After all the excitement and food of the festival we were off to the outlet mall in Kurashiki for a bit of shopping, which also meant I had to get my first train since I arrived in Japan, which was a lot less stressful than I envisaged.

Mitsui outlet park is actually built on the site of an old Dutch theme park, Tivoli Park. Pretty much all that is left of the theme park is the clock tower. The picture below is taken from the train station looking towards the outlet park.

I keep seeing these pants everywhere, because apparently it gets cold enough to need giant fluffy pants here...yay?

I also took a picture of 'something'

Apparently Christmas has arrive already, from what I could tell there was a little stand where kids could control the lights and sounds the tree made...

Bruce biscuits!! Found in a French shop? Where I also found the Queens face on biscuits...

Interesting earring packing 

My first Japanese McDonald's 

Mmmm teriyaki chicken burger. Actually a large here is so much bigger than a UK large meal.

The tower from the other side as we left. Upon the hour I am told that little characters come out of the clock, though I really don't know what they do.

The results of a hard day shopping, and yes I even managed to buy mince pies in Japan, in November!! Yayyyyyyyy!

Halloween

A belated post, because I have already become lazy in my updates.
Please take a picture of Bruce demolishing a pumpkin as my way of apology! 

Much of the world celebrates halloween, but for each country it takes a different form. For some the focus is on trick or treating, sending children off to knock on strangers doors and demand 'candy', for other countries the focus is on celebrating the souls of the dead. 

But for Japan, Halloween is something of a relatively new concept, and is largely linked with American pop culture. As a result it is not such a big deal here, and most Japanese people do not celebrate it at all. 

There is no 'trick or treating', which I guess is understandable it is a bit of a weird ritual. 

There is more of a fascination with American sweets, a lot more than in England, and FYI candy corn is disgusting. 

Pumpkins are frequently green, and I did not see a single carved pumpkin whatsoever!

Although you can buy pretty much anything in pumpkin flavour, however i think this is less to do with October 31st, and more to do with autumn (fall) as a whole.

I did not particularly see any decorations available to buy or displayed. And those I did see were definitely not scary. 

As for costumes, Japanese girls definitely dress cuter/sexier than European girls, but there is still no cleavage.

Whereas guys who I saw dressed up in town had really put effort into it, and some of them were seriously terrifying. Though many guys just opted to dress as women. 

Chubby monkey?
Yeh that is terrifying! 

Japanese Indian food

About a week ago, and for the second time since I arrived in Japan, I went for Indian food. 

 One thing that is easy to forget, whenever we eat 'Indian', 'Chinese' or 'Japanese' food back home, it always has somewhat of an English twist to it. Many of the foreigner dishes we love in England, simply aren't available in their original country and would be unrecognisable  to natives. I guess a large part of it is that chefs have to consider the taste buds of their diners, and what ingredients they have available. 

As a result, Japanese 'Indian' food, is very different from English 'Indian' food, and I guess miles away from real Indian food. For example the curry is served with Japanese sushi rice, and there isn't a korma or vindaloo in sight.

It isn't all bad news, whilst the curry choice was limited, my naan options were impressive! Cheese naan, almond naan, and my choice peanut butter naan bread :D I am also told that in another restaurant, there is chocolate naan!!!

 All in all, it is pretty delicious, even with a Japanese twist, and I already have a loyalty card :)

Bonus: a shop that caused me to giggle like a little Japanese school girl on the ride home 

 and my post dinner snack, heart shaped purple pocky! Would definitely recommend 

'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!