Extensions

One of my dreams is to punch a huge hole in our kitchen wall and extend it out a few metres, giving us a bigger kitchen with more bench space and a pantry. Unfortunately it looks like that will have to wait for many years, unless we win lotto in the near future. So in the meantime we have to be satisfied with practicing by punching a huge hole in the side of the chicken house and extending it out a metre or so to give the chickens a bit more roosting space. When we first built the chicken house we planned on having about 5 chickens, but quickly fell in love with them and now want to keep at least ten, hence the size problem.
Today stage one was completed... the wall is gone. I wonder how many weeks it is going to take to get onto stage two... I really hope we will have some more chickens before the end of March, but it may be a little chilly without a wall!

New uses

You may remember a while ago that I bought an octopus ball maker hotplate which has different kinds of plates that you can use for different kinds of cooking. Last night we used the grill plate for hamburgers, but tonight the kids requested octopus balls again so it was back to the little round holes.
Near the end of our feast we ran out of batter so decided to make some "cheese fondue" with the leftover fillings. It worked really well - just throw a bit of cheese in one hole, a bit of sausage, shrimp or octopus in another hole and combine after the cheese is melted. I'm guessing we may be running out of batter even earlier next time... delicious! I wonder if chocolate would also work....
Apologies about the photos... hard to get in focus!

Japanese food

I am often asked what kind of food I cook at home and my usual answer is that I cook a mix of Japanese and "Western" food - perhaps lately with more of an emphasis on the Japanese food. Most Japanese dishes use a combination of 7 basic seasonings - soya sauce, mirin, sake, vinegar, salt, miso and sugar. I like the fact that the flavours are not overpowering, but tasty enough to bring out the best of the vegetables etc. I am pretty good at reading Japanese cookbooks and producing more or less what the picture shows.
The only area I really struggle in is fish. I don't really like fish all that much anyway, but the kids love it and I know I should try harder to cook it. But the majority of fish in the shops is whole and is often still moving. I don't like bones and I hate the smell of fish on my hands so unless I can find some fillets I very rarely buy it, which is such a shame as there really is a lot of fresh fish available near us.
Fortunately my husband sometimes brings home special treats for the kids - like these little beauties. Both kids went crazy tonight over these dried out whole little fishy things. I almost had to leave the room as they were being lightly grilled.... the smell, the sight, everything about them just makes my stomach turn. But the kids had great fun chomping them down... chewing at their heads, grinding on their tails. Now if it was a good ole lamb chop bone I would be happy, but... these fish are just evil!

Trying to snow

This morning we woke up to a small amount of snow on the ground. The sun then came out and melted it all away. It is now trying to snow again, but unfortunately it doesn't look like it will be enough to make it impossible for me to get to my "party" tonight. It is a gathering of parents from school who worked together for the bazaar etc.... I just hope I get to sit next to my friend and not next to the loud, needs to know everything (even more so than me...) mother. I think I'll go and do a snow dance just on the off chance I can get out of it!

Cake pops

Just a quick sneak peak of my latest way to put on weight because I'm sick of funeral posts and the most exciting thing I did today was clean the bathroom.....
Cake pops... cake on a stick, covered in chocolate... yum, yum, triple yum! Emily and Masaki also made a batch the other day, but they seem to have disappeared before any photos could be taken. Next challenge is to make them into much more interesting animals etc. Unfortunately I'm sure there will be many failures before the perfect animal is formed... and therefore lots to eat before anyone sees how bad they are!

And another one....

This morning at 6:30am we got another phone call.... another old lady in the neighbourhood had died overnight. The small community center just across the road from us had been used for the first funeral, completely tidied up yesterday and then.... set up again today for the next funeral. It hasn't been used for a funeral to my knowledge for at least 12 years, but now it will be 2 in 3 days. Most people have the funerals in their houses or more recently at the funeral parlours.
I think I have probably mentioned the "funeral notices" here before, but can't find an entry about it, so I'll write it again. I can remember the first page my grandmother used to read in the newspaper was the back page - ie. the funeral notices. There would be information about when the funeral was - usually about a week after the person had died. Here in Japan there is no time to publish anything in the newspaper, so they just put out big signs - they say who died, who the main family member is, when and where the wake is and when and where the funeral will be held.
The lady had died in the night, this sign appeared before lunch today. The wake was tonight, the funeral tomorrow. Often family don't make it back in time for the wake - speed seems to be essential, something which dates back to when they had no dry ice to keep the body cool in the summer. Our community is very small. It is getting smaller.... here's hoping we have a break from seeing these signs for a few more months (or preferably years!).

Demolition mode

This first photo was taken about 8 years ago.... the grass was green, the steps in the grass were solid and not rotting away, the stoned area under the wooden frame thingy was quite a handy place to put a small swimming pool in summer, the railway sleepers all around the garden were perfect for keeping kids off the garden and images of lots of beautiful flowers flowing over the edge of the sleepers were floating around in my head.
Then... the trees grew very big - which is great for privacy, but terrible for growing a decent lawn. The wooden steps rotted away. The kids no longer fit in the paddling pool. The straightness of the sleepers and the reality of not being able to grow flowers in the area are getting on my nerves. The stoned area is too dangerous in the wet and too small to really utilise for anything. So... on Saturday I had had enough and started by ripping out some of the sleepers - not an easy task to do alone. I then somehow managed to get the whole family to help to pull down the wooden frame and smash all the stones (which we originally got for free) and remove them, leaving a big open space to play with. I had big plans to rip out the rest of the sleepers and mark out the new garden today, but (un)fortunately it rained all day so that may need to wait till the weekend.... The plan is to get most of this area paved in some way, but that may be a while away yet. Unless there is a master paver lurking out there that wants a week of free accommodation, delicious food and wonderful company in return for their services!

Another departure

This morning we heard the news that one of our neighbours had died. She was 97 when she died and spent basically every day of her life until today wandering up the road to her garden to weed, pick off caterpillars and harvest far too many vegetables than the family could eat. She would always chat for a bit on her way past our house and was totally "with it", a real character in this tiny hamlet.
She was up at the crack of dawn every morning to go and pray at the family grave and this morning it seems that it was no exception. Only this morning she slipped on the way and fell down a steep bank and was found at the bottom a few hours later by her very worried daughter-in-law who was trying to find her for breakfast. She was one of the lucky ones in this area in that she lived with her family. There are so many elderly living alone in this area and so many fears about what would happen if something happened to them. The traditional Japanese arrangements of having many generations under one roof is definitely changing - not necessarily for the better.....

Location, location, location!

Usually when I plant something new in my garden I buy more than one and plant them in different places and see where it will really thrive and where it will flop. I used this technique with my lemon trees and there is a HUGE difference between the two trees, despite being planted only about 30 metres apart. The tree down by the chicken house is laden with huge, very juicy lemons and the tree up near the road has ZERO lemons on it - in fact it has never produced a lemon in the 4 or 5 years it has been there. My husband is determined to freeze them all (something he saw on TV....) so I need to use some of them to make a few things before they all disappear into the depths of the freezer. This morning yielded lemon honey and crunchy lemon muffins. Yum!

Shaking houses

At the moment our house is shaking reasonably regularly and the shaking is accompanied by nerve racking bangs. No, there are no earthquakes (although that is what I thought originally) and no, the kids aren't stomping around after a bad day (that was yesterday). It is actually the American army practicing their bombing skills in a town about 30 kms away. There is a lot of debate and coverage about the army bases in Okinawa, but the little towns that are used around here for firing practice are less well known. There seems to be many opinions about whether the American army should continue to be allowed to use the Japanese land for this purpose. I'm not going to get into a huge debate about it, but I do question the late night firing practice when people are already on edge about earthquakes etc. Both my children have decided to stay up a little later tonight until they finally call it quits for the night and we get some peace and quiet. The practicing will continue for 10 days.....
There were images on TV of the children in the town all taking taxis to school during the duration of the "occupation" of their town - just as a precaution. There were also images of some pretty good facilities which were built with the money the town receives from the "occupation". I guess there are good and bad sides to everything.
This video is of a different town, but I'm guessing it is the same kind of training they are doing.

This video is of the town near us during the training in 2010. A bit long, but you can flick through to get the idea.

Pulling their hair out

A while ago I drove up to the top part of our road and discovered that someone had hung big bags of something all along the side of the road. I presumed they were using them to mark the road for some repairs or something, but after asking my mother-in-law I was a little surprised by the answer. It turns out that the neighbors were tearing their hair out over the problem of the wild boars coming down from the mountains and destroying young seedlings etc. so they went to extreme measures.
The bags are all full of.... human hair! Apparently the boars don't like the smell of humans so rather than have us all take turns to stand like scarecrows in the freezing cold they decided to use hair instead. I'm kind of hoping they got a supply from a hairdressers and haven't been collecting it for the last 50 years, but with the way people hoard things around here I wouldn't actually be surprised if it was the latter!
I have no idea whether it is working or not, but it is a bit freaky walking up past huge bags of hair... especially now that it is starting to get all matted from being out in the elements and little bits are poking out all over the place. I guess if it doesn't deter the boars it will deter the mountain climbers from straying off the road to pick up rogue chestnuts that the boars have missed!

Going a little too far

I'm all for healthy food and I love tofu - in fact I just opted to have a bowl of tofu topped with salad and meat rather than a bowl of rice topped with salad and meat. But some things are just not meant to be "healthy". For me chocolate is one of those things. Chocolate is one of those treats that you eat knowing it is not so good for your physical health, but oh so good for your mental health. So when I saw one of this year's valentine gift giving options I was more than a little surprised. Tofu Chocolate.... it just isn't right! I haven't tried it, but I am tempted just to prove to myself that some things really shouldn't be mixed. Has anyone tried it? Perhaps you can tell me how bad it is without me having to buy some (which would be very fortunate as it seems to be sold out on all the internet shops!).

Reminiscing

Enough baking posts for a while... but still on the food theme... Friday was "setsubun" - the official day before spring begins (I don't think the weather gods have quite realised this) and the kids and I were talking about how much fun it was at kindergarten when the teachers used to frighten them to death (you can read more about what setsubun is and what they did here). I think the only thing they do at school related to setsubun is to eat the dried soybeans that come with the school lunch on that day - and my kids hate them so they don't even do that. At home we each had one of the huge sushi rolls - you are supposed to face the lucky direction for each particular year and eat the entire roll without speaking. My son and I didn't even try, but my daughter faced the "lucky direction" for the year (north north-west) and ate silently for the first 10 seconds or so before giving up. It seems to have worked a miracle on her though as today she was incredibly helpful, even going as far as doing not only ironing her own apron etc., but her brother's and mine too. Perhaps we should eat these huge sushi rolls every day!

Last day of baking before a morning of deep frying....

This morning I managed to produce the requested muffins and cupcakes, but gave up on the madeleines. I personally don't particularly like them and they are a pain in the bum to make so I opted to make vanilla cupcakes instead and promised to make madeleines tonight if they thought they were necessary. Fortunately the cupcakes were cute enough for them to agree that madeleines were unnecessary so I get a "night off" tonight. I ended up making 48 chocolate muffins, 36 pumpkin muffins and 36 vanilla cupcakes. That is plenty for a school with only 50 kids in it! Now I just have to be at school by 7am tomorrow for a morning at the deep fryer and it is all over for another year. The things we do for our kids!

Another few hundred cookies

By 7am I had finished another 100 cookies... by 9:30am I was at school with a total of 530 cookies ready to help make some jelly and get some help to get all the cookies into bags. I ended up making 5 different kinds in the end - chocolate chip, chocolate fudge, chocolate mint (can you see a trend...), anzac, and pinwheel.
Tomorrow I have to make about 80 cupcakes and 40 madeleines..... after making the kids Japanese lunch boxes and before I go to school to help make donuts, steamed bread, popcorn and set up all the things people have donated for the "bazaar". I'm off to bed very soon!

99 down....

Sunday is the yearly mochi making, musical presentation and most importantly the "bazaar" at school. You can read about my first experience of it here. I am guessing that it will all be exactly the same this year. The big cookie bake began for me tonight - I decided to bake one kind before the other two "helpers" arrive tomorrow morning. Japanese people seem to think that there is only one basic kind of cookie that you can make so each year I try to add another kind just to show them what else can be done. These ones are chocolate fudge, there are chocolate chip and pinwheel rolls ready to be cut in the fridge and I'll make our current family favorite, mini anzac biscuits first thing in the morning(Mike, I finally found a recipe that doesn't run all over the tray if you want it!). I think the aim is to make about 100 bags in total with 5 cookies in each... I made 99 tonight so if my addition is correct it means I have about 401 to go tomorrow morning ....
Then Saturday is cupcakes, muffins and madeleines which I am making by myself then taking to school to get everyone to help put them in bags.
Sunday is a 7am start at school - I am in charge of deep frying the chicken nuggets. I can't wait for Monday!

Here we go again....

My husband had the day off on Tuesday so the big plan was to get the chicken house all fixed up and ready for some new occupants once the weather warms up. (Un)fortunately the chance to collect some wood came up and whenever free wood is offered we tend to drop everything and go and get it so the chicken house hasn't progressed at all. We have quite a good system going for our firewood now - we try to get these two big parts of the shed full by the end of the spring so that we have enough wood for about 2 years... in theory! Each section fits 6 rows and we are onto the 4th row of the first one... I'm guessing we will dip into the second section this year, but we shouldn't run out unless the winter doesn't end until about May!
I (half) joked with a friend the other day that I would give up my children before I gave up my fire and more and more people are putting fireplaces in here in the countryside. Unfortunately most people don't think much past the installation. I was drooling as we drove past all the huge firewood supply places in New Zealand, but of course there are no such places in Japan so the chainsawing, splitting and stacking begins all over again..... any volunteers welcome!

Washing day

Today was one of those beautiful winter days when you feel like spring is just around the corner - at least until you see the forecast which is for snow for the next three days! To take advantage of the beautiful weather I washed a couple of loads of washing and all the blankets, duvets, pillows, cushions etc. were put out for a bit of sun bathing.

I like to use what we have rather than buy new things all the time and our method of hanging washing is no exception. Most people in this area seem to hang their washing on coat hangers on big long poles - but the poles are quite expensive and so are the braces to put them on. So I use our guttering instead. It quite conveniently has a little hook kind of thing under it which fits a coat hanger perfectly. The additional height means the washing dries that little bit faster too.
When we have to hang washing inside we also take advantage of what we have and use the little hollow which is common in Japanese houses just above the doors to hang the clothes hangers from. The fire means they dry overnight. I know that in the past the hollow was used by samurai to hide their swords, but I think our use of it is far more practical!

Only if you have a few spare minutes....

Warning: do not click on this link unless you have a few spare minutes... or want to avoid doing something that really needs doing for half an hour or so!

I think I have posted about the great "Cool Math 4 Kids" site before, but if I haven't and you have children (or actually if there are any adults in the house that like logic kind of games) I really suggest you check out the games section - very addictive, but lots of fun. The latest one that we all love in our family is Snail Bob 2 - fun ideas and not too difficult that you can't get through all the 25 levels in half an hour or so..... Watch the snail's reactions as it gets eaten by eagles, squashed by heavy objects or boiled up in a caterpillar's cauldron.....

Driving to work

When we were in New Zealand I kept thinking how great it would be if Japan used round-abouts at some of their intersections. It would save so many traffic lights and improve a lot of the traffic flow (after the initial problems of people getting used to them.....). And then I got back to Japan and drove to work.... and remembered why there are no round-abouts here! The videos don't really show the narrowness of the streets very well, but a lot of the roads around here are like this - just wide enough for one car to drive through. They are TWO-way streets! There is generally no parking allowed on the side of the streets here - although not many people seem to know that and a trip down these "streets" often results in backing up at least once or tooting politely to whoever is gossiping with the locals and blocking the road. This particular road is being widened at the moment - which has meant pulling down many houses and rebuilding them further back. Apparently they had to do it as no ambulances or fire engines could make it down the streets! Progress in a way, but I guess there is still a way to go till round-abouts make their debut here....

Purple .... something.

I have a vague memory of buying a seedling of some kind of purple vegetable last year. Today I happened to glance under the butterfly net and discovered that it has grown perfectly! Not a caterpillar in sight, nice tight, big head and definitely purple! The only problem is that I can't actually remember what vegetable it is... I'm guessing it is cauliflower, but it could be broccoli. In the end it probably doesn't matter - any veges at this time of the year are appreciated as to buy them in the shops breaks the bank right now.

As predicted there were problems on the road today as people didn't prepare properly last night.... despite no actual snow it took my husband 1 hour and 10 minutes to get to work today when it usually only takes 30 minutes. He took the back roads so I'm guessing if he had taken the main road it would have taken him almost twice as long - traffic moving slower than a snail for at least 20km. Emily's teacher also arrived at school close to 2 hours late.... perhaps over-reacting is better than under-reacting!

Over reaction... again!

Last year I wrote about school being canceled due to a typhoon that never actually arrived. Today we almost had the same kind of situation due to a "heavy snow" warning. It seems like the whole of Japan is having a really cold snap and last night a message was sent around from school via the area phone tree (as opposed to the class phone tree or the PTA phone tree) that there may be another message sent around the area phone tree in the morning to say that school would be cancelled or delayed if the snow that was forecasted actually eventuated. The hamlet leader was out in the dark at 8pm spreading bags and bags of salt on the road to prevent them icing over so we could all get to work in the morning. I couldn't be bothered preparing for my 8am class because the heavy snow would surely prevent me getting to work - despite all the salt on the road.
And then we woke up to.... a tiny sprinkling of snow on the lawn.... no message via the phone tree, lots of salt left all over the road (great for rusting the bottom of cars....) and no classes prepared. Oops! There is another snowfall forecast for tonight so perhaps if we all presume it won't happen we may actually get a decent dump!

Presents

Before Christmas I gave you a sneak peak of one of my "projects". Now that Christmas is over I can show you the whole thing! This year we decided not to give Christmas presents, but when you have a 6 month old niece you really need to do something so I decided to make her a cloth book. There are some great ideas on the internet which I mixed in with some random ideas of my own and somehow managed to get something together in time. I would like to thank Jacqui, a fellow kiwi living in Japan, who made me the bag to put it in.... I just didn't have the time or the skills to do it! Thank you Jacqui - you can check out her website of great bags here!

The kids decided they really wanted to do something for Megan and Nathan's wedding so they spent a few hours putting little lollies into bags, sealing them and packing them away to use as "wedding favours".


Another project I worked on was to make a visitor's book for Megan and Nathan as a wedding present. It ended up being used as a wedding message book, which was great! Now I just need to make another visitor's book and as there is another niece/nephew on the way soon too I guess I should start thinking about another cloth book too......

New Zealand Trip Part 4

I think I have mentioned before that I am not really a big fan of weddings. Tom and I had a party here for friends when we got married (which we made all the food for) and in New Zealand my family put together a last minute garden wedding which we turned up to and enjoyed without doing anything...
However... the main reason we were back in New Zealand this year was to attend my sister's wedding and I would have to say that it was really enjoyable. It started about 2:30pm (ish....) and we left at about 10:30pm. There were about 70 people there and it was held in a fantastic private garden. After the formal ceremony bit was done there were games for the kids (and big kids) to play - lawn bowls, croquet, swing ball etc., a jazz band to listen to, there was wine to sip, nibbles to nibble and great conversation to enjoy while the couple were off getting photos taken. Eventually "help yourself dinner" was served and the evening was finished off with a great quiz. My husband was more than a little impressed by the casualness of it after attending so many Japanese weddings... Unfortunately I can't access my husband's photos right now so here a just a few from my camera and from the professional camera person too (who I would highly recommend... Anna Cargin). Congratulations Meg and Nate-dog!

New Zealand Trip Part 3

One of the good things about the children growing up is that they remember things from previous trips to New Zealand. There were a few things that they really wanted to do again this time and I think we managed to fit most of them in. There is still a trip on my uncle's yacht that we missed, but I'm sure the weather will cooperate next time we are there!
A few random things we did in the new year were.....

New Zealand Trip Part 2

After a relaxing time with my mother's side of the family we headed to my father's in Christchurch and arrived just in time for a big earthquake - a great welcome! We had quite a few during our time there - but none as big as the first day. Christmas was great - very relaxed with people coming and going all day.
We then collected my husband from the airport on the 26th and spent 4 days on the road seeing parts of New Zealand that were new to him (and for the most part me too!). The first day was spent with family at the pools in Hanmer - absolutely perfect weather and great fun for the kids (and bigger kids....). We then headed off for a night each at Richmond (just out of Nelson), Blenheim then Kaikoura before heading back to Christchurch. We had no real "plans" so it was great to be able to just drive and stop whenever we felt like it - going for some nice bushwalks etc. Unfortunately the weather packed a sad in Nelson and we had continual rain for the last half of the road trip- meaning we had to cancel our highly anticipated whale watching.
I really should go through my husband's photos and get some of the better ones, but...he takes so many that I can never choose. Instead here are a few highlights from my camera.

New Zealand Trip Part 1

I can see that I am never going to have time to do a detailed entry about our trip away, so I'll just post a few photos of the main things we did - looking back it is amazing how much we did over the 3 weeks. The first "stage" of our trip was to my uncle and aunt's wonderful house in Takamatua (just out of Akaroa on Banks Peninsula, Christchurch). We were so lucky to have Mum, Big Kev, Nanna, Pop, Emma, Hannah and Mike and Bec join us for some or all of this part of our trip. We spent the days trying to keep warm (it was "summer"....) and generally having a great time doing things like...

Returned

My new "weather station" is informing me that it is 2 degrees outside (up from minus 2 when I woke up), but a cosy 20 degrees inside. I have to go to work in 20 minutes. I am not looking forward to it!
We had a great 3 and-a-bit weeks away in New Zealand - after a few wintry days we really hit the summer weather and it was fantastic! I think one of the big pluses for me was that my family was willing to travel to where we were, rather than us having to travel to them so it turned into a really relaxing holiday with people coming and going and a short road trip for us in between. I'll catch up on our holiday in the next few days (or weeks...) but for now just a big thanks to all those who traveled to see us and of course those who didn't travel, but did so much to make our trip a great one. It was our first trip back in 4 years and my first Christmas in NZ since I came here over 15 years ago. Very sad leaving, but hopefully it won't be so long until the next one!