Culturally Influenced Prayers

today Edamame was praying for breakfast and said...
"And please bless grandpa to not be destroyed by Godzilla."


What do your kids pray for?

Nagashi Sōmen

One of the nice things about summer is festival season. It usually is a lot of good food, and a few games for kids(but not many). We really nagashi somen(food category), but it is usually only offered at the Church festivals. What is it you ask? Someone sets up a half pipe of bamboo that starts six or more feet in the air and goes down until about a foot above the ground. Then you put a hose at the top and start sending noodles down. Everyone gathers around with a bowl of noodle sauce and chop sticks, and then we go to town trying to grab noodles. It's a lot of fun, and I was surprised how well Edamame did catching noodles this year.

I was thinking of doing a list of all the different kinds of noodles there are to choose from. It deserves it's own post, but I'm afraid of forgetting.

Ramen = Chinese origin, but with a very Japanese flare. You won't find shrimp and lime here. The flavors are soy sauce, salt, miso, and pork bone. They typically add a lot of different stuff into it like hard boiled eggs, stir fried veggies, pork cuttlets, bamboo shoots, and any variety of things. Edamame likes fish paste rolls called naruto. If it's served cold you add julienned veggies and eggs or ham.

Somen = skinny, capellini like noodles. You eat hot or cold. Add a bunch of different stuff to the dipping soup like ginger, or wasabi, green onions. When it's warm you make a soup with onions, pork, and I add mushrooms

Udon = thick noodles, and usually served warm in soup. You add anything from tempura, fried eggs, pumpkin and veggies to left over curry(my favorite). The wikipedia article gives a bunch of regional variations

Soba = made from buckwheat, served warm or cold. My favorite is mountain veggies on top, Ed likes fish eggs, daddy likes tempura, and BK just likes food. There are way too many ways to eat it to try to list.

Shirataki or Tokoroten = clear noodles made from konjaku plant. It's trumped for having 0 calories. I've only had it in sukiyaki(which is pure deliciousness).

Champon = It's big in Nagasaki where 007 served his mission. I'm not too clear on it, but that's because the few times I've had it, I haven't liked it.

There are some variations, like yakisoba, which is ramen noodles with fried veggies, not served in soup, but with a yummy sauce. Hotto is udon like but specific to Yamanashi prefecture, and it is delicious. One of the schools I worked at went on a field trip to Yamanashi and we HAND MADE it. I've seen and eaten hand made soba.

All I can say is noodles are awesome, and it's how we are surviving this summer. Thank goodness for noodles.

Mac in Japan

As per Margo's request, here is a Japan Cool about how to type in Japanese. I'll try to do another one in the next few days about something called nagashi soumen, but first things first.

First I have to make sure I have the right languages checked and loaded in my system preferences.



Then when I want to type in Japanese I choose one of my Japanese character palettes



Then I use my keyboard



and phonetically(a=a) type in a sentence. If there is a chinese character I type in the pronounciation and then the computer gives me a choice of which to pick.

So for example Clark was talking in his sleep and said

子供の恐竜が良い！

..and this is how I picked the kanji for dinosaur.



That is how I type in Japanese!

Oshiko pack

I was really nervous taking BK to the ER last night, but when I heard
about the oshiko pack I was very very relieved. Today's japan cool is
weird to say the least. I've heard that in the US they cath infants to
get urine samples. All I can say is yuck, what a great way to make a
suffering kid feel worse. Here they used a "pee" pack. What it is, is
a long plastic bag with an opening that is surrounded by a double
sided sticker. Clean the kid, stick it on, and wait. Very little
fuss. I think it is awesome! Thank you for not putting my kid through
more pain.

Though the fever reducing medicine delivery method leaves a bit to be
desired. Hint, it isn't Tylenol through a dropper.

I'll try to get a pic if I can.

Sent from my iPhone

Koinobori

The cultural posts are going to increase for the next two weeks. From April 29th to about May 6th is Golden Week here and one of the holidays in that week is Children's Day, or as it used to be known Boy's day. I happen to have two boys under my charge, so it is a big deal around these parts. Edamame is totally obsessed with koinobori. This was fueled further when we saw a fairly sizable koinobori at one of the houses near church. He just stared and asked questions about it until 007 and BK picked us up. He even made his own this morning with all of his ties.




We will soon be purchasing another 'fish' for the koinobori because we had another boy. You get one for each boy. Wikipedia will fill you in on it, but what I've been told(which is different, but both versions are probably right) is that the Black carp is for the dad, red for the mom, blue for the first son, and then add more for each additional boy. Don't worry girls, you got Hinamatsuri/Girl's Day back in March, so there is balance.

This year is BK's Hassuzekku, or first Boy's Day. It's a pretty big deal, so we'll likely have a nice little family party when we're visiting Obaachan and Ojiichan in Chiba.

In prep for golden week I tried taking passport pictures again. If you're not keeping count, this is the third time I've tried. Still too many wacky shadows. Like I told 007, I SUCK!

Weather Talismans and more!

Edamame is an avid reader and really loves this ABC book that we got from someone. I HATE it because it has so many mistakes in it I cringe that he might learn "Engrish". One of the good things he learned though was about 'teru teru bozu'.


I thought they were ghosts, but nope, they are there to ward off bad weather and rain. Kids put them up the day before field trips, etc. for nice weather. I'm excited to make this a little tradition in the house. I'm starting to pick the stuff we want to pick up, and toss the stuff we don't want. I'm still up in the air about what to do on Easter(I'm not a fan of commercialize Christian holidays, but how much of it is culture?). Anyway, fun to hang in windows, umbrellas. Tissue ghosts aren't just for Halloween anymore.


Oh, and 'cause I know you want to see me first thing in the morning.

kicks and grins

I saw this cookie and instantly though 'pre-civilized fertility figure'. It tasted dang good too, butter flavored bear cookies...yum, thank you primary president for picking awesome treats!

The radness that is 007

Why is he so rad? The boys and I came downstairs this morning to a batch of waffles, cooked ham and eggs.

Plus he helped the kids do jello cutouts while I talked about my mission in the SLC(jello is the traditional dish of Salt Lake, right?) at the Primary Missionary Activity today.

He's put BK to sleep a couple of times the last two weekends.

He encourages, or at least doesn't discourage, my voracious strawberry consumption.

Plus he is HOT. He runs to take care of himself, lifts weight, does his black belt punches to stay hot. Woo hoo! ...and he's keeping his mouth shut and giving me time to get my hotness back.

Oh, and below is a show that he liked a lot as a kid. The Japanese version of Spiderman. It was an experience. If you have close to 30 min to watch a 70's TV show, do it. I liked it because like everything from Japan from that time period there was a GIANT monster, with light shooting out of it's eyes, wrestling a giant robot that oddly looks a lot like the Power Rangers/ Live action Voltron robot. Hey at least they recycled. The theme song lyrics are pretty cool too. My favorite line from the closing credits song was "I am so alone, I am so alone, I am so alone".

Ohagi

I love Ohagi!

They are great. It is basically glutinous rice, smooshed and the wrapped around red bean paste. There are variations on it, my favorite being the one covered in soybean powder. Edamame digs the one with rice in the middle and bean paste on the outside. Sometimes there is grass in there(sounds gross, tastes good). I know it looks like a turd, but trust me, it is good stuff. So good that when we saw it at the store today I bought three. Edamame remembered it all day(but he has a stinkin' good memory, today he was talking about a curious george episode he last saw four months ago, I'm in trouble).

Oh and still trying to catch a smile on camera, but now I have a pirate picture of Brass Knuckles.

ohhh fridge!

First off, appologies, I'm trying to figure out how to get the archive link back in, but I messed stuff up and it is 10:30 at night, so you'll have to suffer for a day or two with it looking wonky.

That being said I want to share my new object of lust, and today's Japan Cool!


007 came home yesterday after talking with Hitachi about their new products and he was totally excited about this. Lots of space, really thin insulation(which is how they give us greater space inside), very low energy consumption, and they have a mini freezer that can basically do a super fast freeze for things. You can even put hot stuff in there at it'll freeze it. Did I mention it can hold more stuff?

Ok, so right now I have a ton of extra fridge space(with no insulation, you can use your enterway as a fridge...now that is not just Japan Cool, it is Japan Frickin' Cold), but come summer time, it would be AWESOME!

Yeah, I want it. No, I won't get it for my birthday...though we just did get our insurance money from Brass Knuckle's birth...hmmm.

...and with that, good night!

Engrish

007 was checking out his cell phone bill online and asked me 

"What is the past tense of log-in?"

moi: "Logged in, why?"

007: "That's what I thought, check this out..."

Gotta love this country....oh and I did fuzz out his name, not like anyone could read it, but whatever.

A matter of semantics and dynamics

Two things for todays Japan Cool before I get to making Edamame's fish jeans.

1. I am 9 months pregnant....if you count it Japanese style.  It is always a month ahead of the European gestational counting system.  Why is this cool?  I feel like I've accomplished more and don't have as far to go for some odd reason.  Yeah for using a lunar calendar(which Japan used to use in the past I believe).

2.  Our baby monitor broke a few months ago.  Edamame is old enough that we don't NEED one, but with the colder weather(closing the doors in the house to keep warmth in specific rooms, but it also muffles sound), and Brass Knuckles coming, we need to get a new set.  Here is what I want!

In case you don't follow the link or can't read it, the cool thing about these bad boys is that they give you temperature readings for the room that the baby is in.  Yeah there are cool ones that give have a video, blah blah, I'm not that anal, but it does get REALLY cold in this house, and the upstairs can get REALLY hot in the summer.  I'm not sure what is available in other countries, I just thought this was a rad idea.

Lingua Franca

So just a quick thing, but I thought it was cool.  There is a family in our ward from Peru, their kids were born here, but their first language was Spanish.  They are starting to learn Japanese at school, but it is still pretty new.  Edamame, who's English is much stronger than his Japanese now, and the 4 year old were drawing together during Sacrament and it was so cute to see them communicating in Japanese.  Who'd have thought a Peruvian and American would be using Japanese as their Lingua Franca?  What a world we live in!

Oh, and kindergarden starts when you're three or four here(three year or two year kindergarden)

good for the Yen!

94 yen to the dollar!

Woo hoo! now if only we had money to convert, hey at least we have a nice bathroom instead.

Oh do you want a picture?

Remember this post?  It has pictures of the bathroom we discovered upon coming home.

A run on....bananas???

One of the greatest and yet scariest things about Japan is the sheep culture.  For the last week and a half or so we've had a hard time getting bananas, and the local grocery store even has a sign up that says one bunch per person.  007 just found out why today.  Turns out a TV program did a special about a banana diet and now everyone is jumping onto the banana FAD diet bandwagon.  We've had issues with TV show popularity causing problems before.  We tried going to Costco one weekend and had to wait in line for over 30 min just to get into the parking lot, and we were on the 'secret' road to the store.  We had no idea why, and it turned out there was a big TV special about Costco and everyone and their mother was signing up for membership and going.  Sometimes it benefits us like the TV special about Costco's Vizio TV's which helped Costco sell out and probably helped 007 get his promotion on Monday.

Either way, the lesson is, be careful what you show on TV in Japan, and make sure whatever you show is well stocked in stores.  We'll wait this one out, and go back to not worrying about our banana supply in another week or two.

Eat eyes please!

I love fish, it is tasty, and the Japanese sure know how to do fish.

Today we ate hoshita sakana, basically fish cut open and gutted so that it looks like a butterfly and has been lightly rubbed in salt and put in the sun for a few days to dry out a bit, and then you cook it in your fish oven.  I'm sure they do this in really tightly environmentally controlled way now, but the sun thing was how they used to do it.  It is DELICIOUS!  Edamame loves it, but it turns out his favorite part to eat is the eyes.

As soon as he sees the fish he asks to eat the eyes, and asks repeatedly, and has to look at the fish head over and over and over again until he is sure he has eaten all of the eyes.

Gross.

I'm glad morning sickness stopped and I can cook fish again though.

Oh, and awesome potty training moment.  After lunch I took his very wet diaper off, and just let him run around in his pants for a few minutes.  I had plans to re-diaper him in a few, but before I could he said 'pee pee mommy', and viola, potty time.  Why is this cool?  Well up until recently unless he was 'naked boy' from the waist down, he couldn't tell.  Thomas underwear is going to be awesome incentive now!  Also this means we can go out in public without going commando.

Tanabata

Today's Japan Cool! is about Tanabata. It is called the star festival, and held on the 7th of July. The reason is that two lovers Orihime and Hikoboshi get to meet on that one day. They were introduced long ago by Orihime's father, and fell in love, got married, and promptly stopped working. Everyone was so mad that they were separated by the Milky Way, but her father had mercy and lets them meet once a year.

To celebrate we decorated a branch of bamboo that we got from primary at church. We actually got two, but Edamame thrashed one in half before we left, so we got another. You're supposed to write wishes on the paper for them to come true.

I forgot to take pictures, so we used our photo booth to take some.






Of course with any Japanese festival there has to be food associated with it as well. Somen(thin wheat noodles) is the dish of choice, but in variegated colors, like pink and blue and white. I was looking for something else besides just somen and didn't find anything, but I did find this AWESOME blog post by someone who went all out for Tanabata. Remember it is the star festival, so lots of stars. Even if you can't read Japanese, it is neat to just look at the pictures! We settled for miso soup with clams. Edamame didn't want noodles, and I was grubbing for some clams. I felt bad that 007 wouldn't eat it, but I've discovered that I need to eat what I crave. One of the huge benefits of being pregnant in Japan is that I tend to really dig Japanese food while I'm pregnant, makes it easier being here than anywhere else. I digress, the soup was GREAT, easy, and simple to make. Oh, and Edamame totally dug the clams. He was excited from the time I put them in the cart at the grocery store. We watched them move in the sink while we were soaking them in salt water to clean them out. It was a lot of fun to eat.

Now after a nice 4th of July weekend, have a great Tanabata too!

Anpanman!

I said I'd talk about Anpanman, and now is the time! Plus, I really don't want to wash dishes or fold laundry, though I am contemplating blog design changes, oh la la! So now for, JAPAN COOL!


Anpanman is this cartoon superhero who's head is made from bread, not just any bread though, a roll filled with sweet bean paste. This was an very yummy Japanese treat until the advent of chocolate, and truthfully is still enjoyed by many, including me. What makes him even cooler is his plethora of bread and food friends who fight together against Baikinman. Baikinman litterally means Bacteria man. Yep, shoots Anpanman with his gun, and *gasp* Anpanman turns moldy, and is down for the count until one of his friends can get a replacement head from the baker JamOjisan. Anpanman gets a new head everyday. Wow!

Anpanman is instantly recognizable to ALL children here, including mine, who hasn't even seen a single episode.

He of course has a wicked rad theme song. Yes, the subtitles are normally there so that kids who want to read or sing along can. Sorry, I don't know of an English translated subtitled song.

Then of course, what would a cartoon be without merchandising? Anything from play vending machines, doctor sets, kitchen, vacuum, cotton candy maker(makes real cotton candy), and my favorite, a kaiten(conveyer belt) sushi restaurant.



Heck, Anpanman even has his own museum! One of them is right here in Yokohama. We'll have to go one day.

Ok, that's it for Anpanman. I better do something productive, even if it is sewing my niece's birthday present. What better way to recover from last nights tacos than lounging in front of the boob tube sewing.

Japan Cool!- Sparkling Cassis

I thought it was high time to bring back Japan Cool. Of all the weekly posts that I did, this was definitely my favorite. I may have felt more socially responsible with the environmental post, but I'm just not educated enough to keep it up, and there are plenty of other people who are. Let me stick to MY specialty. In case you're wondering, it is complaining about Japanese pre-natal care(jerky doctors!) and sharing the cool stuff I find here. Without further ado, let's share my most recent find....

Sparkling Cassis from the Muji store.

It is not alcoholic, no worries for me, my mormoness, or the new baby, just carbonated. On our aforementioned trip to the mall yesterday Clark started asking for food. It was around snack time so we popped into Muji and looked for some tasty treats. We ended up with soy sauce flavored fried rice crackers(ended up being WAY too sweet for me), carmel corn(woo hoo!), apple juice, and Sparkling Cassis. For those of you who don't know what cassis is, 'cause I know I didn't, it is a syrup made from black currants. It was SUPER DUPER FANTABULOUS! If I could choose any drink to truly crave, this would be it. It was really really nice, and not overly sweet. in general the Muji store is a great place for good finds. They sell everything from food, to beds, to maternity clothes. The name literally means, non-name brand goods. I hear a muji just opened up in NYC Soho, so if you are ever there, by all means, GO! If you ever decide to visit us, I'll take you. Our store here is small, but I've seen bigger stores. It is wonderful. If you are feeling really adventurous, go shopping on the UK Muji site.

Ok, I'm done!

World goods for worldly people...and other tales from Tokyo

guess who is totally like daddy?


I'm doing a combo 3-in-1 post for Japan Cool!, Clarkomatic update and a tale of our most recent venture to the Capital of Japan.

It all started because we were doing a primary activity at the JMTC where the kids got to learn about being a missionary. The JMTC is about 10 min by car(45 on foot) from Grandpa's hip pad in Tokyo, so we decided to stop in for a visit, make the whole thing a two day trip and take it easy, instead of a very yucky Saturday for all of us. It was nice, and Clark had a lot of fun toddling around the apartment and playing the the flying monkey toy Grandpa has. He even tried picking up the kettle bells, and succeeded on the 4 kg one! We also got a chance to introduce Kumi to pumpkin pie...muhahahaha. We also got to go to the international store(which has a lot of stuff from Costco....hmmm) and I saw a sign there that said 'National Market, world goods for worldly people'. I dunno if it is just my religious part, but worldly doesn't seem to have the best connotation. Oh well. On the way there though, dad and I got to talk a bit about electric cars, which is today's Japan Cool!



We were checking out hybrid cars on the interweb, because we'd like to own one one day. Turns out the Toyota Prius is the best, and Honda gets only slightly lower gas mileage. So we know what we'll get. What was disgusting was the American made hyrbids were boasting 28 in city/ 36-38 highway gas mileage. WHAT!?!?!?! I was getting that with my 2000 VW Passat. What is the point in owning a hybrid if you are getting crappy mileage like that? I mean I would hope that the eco-conscious American public isn't so easily duped when you put a hybrid sticker on a car and give it last decade's gas performance in Europe/Asia. I mean seriously people, that is just horrible. A hybrid SUV getting 12mpg...WHAT?!?!?! Anyway, I say buy Japanese....or use a bike.


Ok, enough complaining, lets talk about Clark. Like I said he can say stuff like cracker, apple, bubble and he has started saying amen(men, ah-men). He likes folding his arms at random times especially while eating or in the car and making me pray over and over and over again. I get inventive with the prayers. He also cut his lip for the first time at the playground today. WOW it bled a lot, but he got distracted by the pigeons relatively quickly. He now says bo(bird), and sometimes bo(boshi-hat), beh(bear), and a few others. Oh and lately, if he wants me to go to another room with him or go walking with him, he'll come to me say 'go, go', grab my hand and start walking.

I'm really tired, lets end now =)


Oh, but a quick shout-out to grandma! Thanks for the moccasins, they are sooooo wonderful! They keep his feet warm on our FREEZING cold floor. He loves wearing shoes inside the house, so he's a very happy kid.