my butt's on fire!

well that is what it felt like this morning on the way to playgroup coz they have the seats heated on the train- its not THAT cold yet!! and I am from Brisbane (I never even owned a coat or scarf until I came to Japan) so i feel the cold (though I have gotten more resiliant - my first year working here, I used to wear 5, yes 5 layers of clothes to walk the 5mins to work - one layer for each minute!?) actually today is a lovely day- I am only in a jumper and that is enough. Of course all the people around me are in parkas and long coats - why do japanese people dress for the season as opposed to dressing for the actual weather?
only a week and a day until we head off for our summer paradise, yay! can't wait!

the definition of 暇

making individual origami style "sheaths" (for want of a better word) for toothpicks!!!! made out of supermarket specials チラシ, of course.
this example of having too much time on your hands was seen today at a surprisingly busy restaurant (when do they have time to make all those toothpick sheaths?) at a michi-no-eki halfway down the boso penninsula in chiba where we are spending our long weekend on a drive/camp/make it up as we go weekend away. we are currently asleep (well, J,K and R are asleep anyway) in the back of the minivan beachside bcoz we couldn't find anywhere suitable (free) to pitch a tent! tomorrow i think J wants to do some fishing. either that or surfing with the surfboard i am currently pressed up against! talk abt "sleep tight"! ni-night!

grateful....

couldn't resist this.
I just love the shirt the "onesan" on K's favourite morning tv show was wearing today (bit hard to catch in a photo though...)
Great message for all the kiddies, to remember to always be grateful, I guess?

Grateful Dead

I did this

Saw this on Illahee's blog, and couldn't resist. I got a bit caught up in memories though...or should I say, got a bit caught up because I COULDN'T remember half of the places/times/names etc. So I took a while searching through my photos, asking J about things we have done together to get the details. I ended up going overboard with comments in brackets, but hey, gotta write these things down while I remember them, lol!

1. Started your own blog
2. Slept under the stars
3. Played in a band
4. Visited Hawaii
5. Watched a meteor shower
6. Given more than you can afford to charity
7. Been to Disneyland (Tokyo)
8. Climbed a mountain (Major ones are: Mt Fuji overnight to see the sunrise through the clouds; several on the Incan trail to Macchu Pichu; several in Patagonia's Torres Del Paine national park on a 5day 4night 70km hike; Kumotori-yama, Tokyo overnight; Yakushima, overnight to see the Jomon-sugi pine trees; day-hikes to Gassan in Yamagata, Hakoda-san in Aomori, Mt. Kuju in Oita and Mt. Takao, 857m in Tokyo!!)
9. Held a praying mantis
10. Sang a solo
11. Bungee jumped
12. Visited Paris
13. Watched a lightning storm at sea
14. Taught yourself an art from scratch
15. Adopted a child
16. Had food poisoning
17. Walked to the top of the Statue of Liberty
18. Grown your own vegetables (oooh, cherry tomatoes when I was at uni. Planted them, ate a few then promptly forgot about them.They still pop up every yeat though, hardy fruit!)
19. Seen the Mona Lisa in France (no, the line up was too long to get into the Lourve, so I ate ramen at a nasty shop across the road with a Japanese lady who was showing me around Paris)
20. Slept on an overnight train (too many times maybe!? China: Shanghai to Nanking, overnight; going from Beijing to Ulan Baatar, Mongolia, through the Gobi Desert AND BACK, 3days 2nights, Japan: Kansai to Fukuoka, overnight 2003 to start my job in Beppu, Australia: Northern New South Wales to Albury/Wodonga on the Vic/NSW border, overnight when I was a littlie)
21. Had a pillow fight
22. Hitch hiked
23. Taken a sick day when you’re not ill
24. Built a snow fort
25. Held a lamb
26. Gone skinny dipping
27. Run a Marathon (only mini-marathons, longest 10km, does that count? Also have done mini-triathlons with swim 800m, cycle 20km, run 3km)
28. Ridden in a gondola in Venice
29. Seen a total eclipse
30. Watched a sunrise or sunset
31. Hit a home run
32. Been on a cruise (Singapore-Malaysia-Thailand about a week; Chilean Fjordes, 3 days)
33. Seen Niagara Falls in person
34. Visited the birthplace of your ancestors
35. Seen an Amish community
36. Taught yourself a new language (Spanish in South America while travelling. Una cervesa, por favor!)
37. Had enough money to be truly satisfied
38. Seen the Leaning Tower of Pisa in person
39. Gone rock climbing
40. Seen Michelangelo’s David
41. Sung karaoke (often, and often badly)
42. Seen Old Faithful geyser erupt
43. Bought a stranger a meal at a restaurant
44. Visited Africa
45. Walked on a beach by moonlight
46. Been transported in an ambulance (not for me though, my boyfriend during uni broke his arm - a complicated break at that- in several places while we were skiing at Perisher/Smiggens at the end of a ski season. We had to get the ambulance to drive the 3hours to Cooma, and I missed out on half the ski trip, boo-hoo. By the time we got out of hospital, there were not more skiiable slopes)
47. Had your portrait painted
48. Gone deep sea fishing
49. Seen the Sistine Chapel in person
50. Been to the top of the Eiffel Tower in Paris
51. Gone scuba diving or snorkeling (Scuba-diving (introductory dives) here in Japan - in Oita at fishing port!, The Red Sea, Egypt and Phi-phi island in Thailand; Snorkelling Great Barrier Reef and Galapagos)
52. Kissed in the rain
53. Played in the mud
54. Gone to a drive-in theater (ET with my older brother when I was just a wee tyke still at primary school; a few grown-up drive-in dates when a bit older....)
55. Been in a movie
56. Visited the Great Wall of China (2002; walked 10km along it!)
57. Started a business
58. Taken a martial arts class
59. Visited Russia
60. Served at a soup kitchen
61. Sold Girl Scout Cookies
62. Gone whale watching (hmmm, seen whales while out on the sea, does that count?)
63. Got flowers for no reason
64. Donated blood, platelets or plasma
65. Gone sky diving
66. Visited a Nazi Concentration Camp
67. Bounced a check
68. Flown in a helicopter
69. Saved a favorite childhood toy ("doll", who was a doll and "pinky" who was a doll with a pink dress on. Original names, right!)
70. Visited the Lincoln Memorial
71. Eaten Caviar (only cheap stuff though)
72. Pieced a quilt
73. Stood in Times Square
74. Toured the Everglades
75. Been fired from a job
76. Seen the Changing of the Guards in London
77. Broken a bone
78. Been on a speeding motorcycle (well, it felt like it was speeding when I was only 10years old and on the back of it)
79. Seen the Grand Canyon in person
80. Published a book
81. Visited the Vatican
82. Bought a brand new car
83. Walked in Jerusalem
84. Had your picture in the newspaper
85. Read the entire Bible
86. Visited the White House
87. Killed and prepared an animal for eating
88. Had chickenpox
89. Saved someone’s life
90. Sat on a jury
91. Met someone famous (The drummer from "Greenday", after a concert he came back to my friend's house!!!! We drank beers on the sofa together.)
92. Joined a book club
93. Lost a loved one
94. Had a baby
95. Seen the Alamo in person
96. Swam in the Great Salt Lake
97. Been involved in a law suit
98. Owned a cell phone
99. Been stung by a bee

"Losing Kei" continues it's blog-hopping

(my goodness, I blinked and turned around and the next thing you know it is Wednesday morning - how did that happen?!?!Hasn't even been *that* busy a week.....speaking of which, K was a near angel on the train to playgroup yesterday, actually, she has been better when we go out recently too. Must be *my* attitude to it has loosened up!?!?haha)

So over the weekend, I got K to pull a name out of the hat, or in this case, the rice-bowl:


And the new home for Losing Kei is:


Congratulations! I'll drop you a line to get your deets.
Hope you enjoy it!

I'm red

Spending the whole day wasting time, I succumbed to the crayon test.

You Are a Red Crayon

Your world is colored with bright, vivid, wild colors. You have a deep, complex personality - and you are always expressing something about yourself. Bold and dominant, you are a natural leader. You have an energy that is intense... and sometimes overwhelming. Your reaction to everything tends to be strong. You are the master of love-hate relationships. Your color wheel opposite is green. Green people are way too mellow to understand what drives your energy.

What Color Crayon Are You?

Hmmm, red IS my favourite colour, how freaky. And I do OVER-react to everything, lol. There might be something in this crayon test after all.

failure and 焼き立て success

A quick trip to Donkey Hote for some butter this morning (to re-make the cake) ended up in me somehow spending 5000yen....on "essentials" (a-hem) I came back with cooking oil, 2*konbu tsuyu, 3*butter, 1*margarine, 2kg of brown rice, AND a new pair of pjs, 5 pairs of socks and 2*onesies for K that we bought at the Nishimatsuya on the way home (since I was out in the car anyway, may as well make a day of it, right!?)

We got home about 11:30am, so I quickly threw some rice in the cooker to have a simple lunch of natto-gohan (K's absolute fav! she loves Natto; and Vegemite for that matter!). There was some rice in a plastic bag lying around that I think was the left over from the rice J took camping - he cooked it up at the campsite, so I didn't know, but when I opened the rice for lunch, I realised that it must have been 新米 because it was super soggy, as I had added the normal amount of water to cook it in. Ooops! Failure!!!

But the average lunch was well and trully made up for by the yummy banana cake that I did make this afternoon (supposedly during K's nap, but since we all got woken up before 6am when J left to go to Narita for his 2day trip to Hong Kong, and then K and I actually fell back asleep and didn't wake up until nearly 9am, with a phone call from J saying he was about to get on the plane! haha). Success (thanks to using butter that had been left out for a while before mixing)!! Although I did cut the amount of sugar I put in by half, and found it to be a bit plain tasting(K didn't seem to mind the less sweet cake), so I sprinkled the freshly baked banana cake with cinnamon sugar for me to make up for it. Went down lovely just now with an afternoon glass of cold milk for us both. Ooh, it would be nice with some vanilla ice-cream too, hehe. I can see me gaining another 3 kgs this weekend polishing off the cake now!!

success and failure

Saw this recipe (in Japanese only, sorry. If anyone wants an English version, I can put it up, but can't be bothered with it right now, lazy me!!) for "Chicken soboro on steamed pumpkin dumplings" on daytime tv the other day, and it looked so nice, I managed to scribble most of it down. I made it up last night and you know what? it turned out just delish!

I don't know if the photo does it justice or not. They steamed the pumpkin dumplings in the fry pan, after rolling the mix into balls and wrapping in glad-wrap. It was so cool!

I made the pumpkin dumplings without nuts for K and she just gobbled them up too!

Thought I was on a roll, until I attempted to use up the excess bananas we bought (got a bit carried away when we saw them on the shelves and bought 3 hands the other day...) in a banana cake using this recipe..... If you check out the first comment on this, it says what to do to avoid what happened to me, which meant that I had to chuck the butter/sugar/egg mix out because I didn't cream it and mix it properly. I would have started again, but we had no more butter. I used to be an ok cake maker too, and now I am stuffing that up, lol. Oh well. Might try again tomorrow.

Also bought some apples cheap so I want to make stewed apples tomorrow. Seems like I have got a busy day ahead of me.

bleughhh!

is that how you spell the word for "my goodness what was I thinking? 'japan' and 'winery' do not mix!"

I am not a wine expert but the wine we tasted at the winery in Yamanashi was pretty bad. We actually ended up buying a bottle of south african red wine at the supermarket for about 800yen and it was way nicer.

This round up of our camping trip was stuck in my keitai draft box for the last few days(as I fell asleep in the car on the way home writing it, haha), but am finally getting it posted!yay.

So, sat night's camp food was delish - whole chicken stuffed with frozen えびピラフ cooked over coals in the dutch oven. There was yummy vege & chicken & bacon soup; sanma and oysters and other random stuff I can't remember. And the photo is a bit crap, but you can just see the boys preparing something in the dutch oven!


K crashed after a big day of playing with the goats and sheep in the paddock - the camp site we stayed at was part of a farm! She spent the whole time patting the goat on the nose saying "good girl", and feeding it dead leaves, which the goat was not so impressed with. She also made friends with one of the other campers, 3year old (turning 4 in Dec) A-chan, who kept on trying to pick K up "抱っこする" . She was a good kid though, and it seems that K really likes playing with お姉ちゃんs.

After K went to sleep, I went back to the "party tent" to polish off the red wine, however a few glasses and I was ready to curl up with Nora in the tent.
Here is our campsite: car, our 3-man blue tent and the "party tent" looking out over the valley and mountains of Yamanashi.


Unfortunately, K woke up SCREAMING at about 11pm, and there was NOTHING I could do to console her. She I ended up grabbing her and two sleeping bags and heading for the car, where I thought at least if she was screaming all night, the other people at the campsite would be able to sleep. We didn't get much sleep, and it was FREEZING. Found out the next morning when the sun came up that J had left the front driver's side window open.　No wonder I was cold all night *sigh*.

Sunday we decided to go to the onsen around 11am. But K fell asleep in the car on the way there, obviously from lack of sleep and waking up at 6am (her normal wake up time is 7:30am). So I missed out on the onsen, as I stayed in the car with K. We did come back, just the two of us in the afternoon for an onsen while the boys prepared Sunday night's dinner of curry, penne pasta and more sanma (one of J's friend's works at the fish markets, so gets really good fish cheap - he always brings it along for our camps). K was pretty tired by about 7pm, so we put her to bed early, I finnished off the rest of the wine, and a few chu-hais, ate more food (yummy chicken marinated in rosemary!) and then crashed at about 9pm. It was not as cold as Saturday night, so we all slept well.

Monday morning after breakfast was clean-up time, and we left the camp site at about 11am. Again, K fell asleep pretty much straight away in the car (no lunch!) and then so did I. We got home by 2pm, did several loads of washing to get the charcoal smell out of all our warm clothes and then I ran down to KFC for dinner! I reckon I must have eaten about 3 whole chickens over the weekend...and put on about 3kg because of it.

But it was a good camping trip in the end, probably (well, almost definately) our last for the year. We only had 3 this year anyway - 3days over Golden Week, our mini-road trip over O-bon (where the tent never saw the light of day as we stayed in the car) and this one.

山ありyamanashi

thats where we are now、 山梨! and there are plenty of mountains!we arrived at about 10:30 this morn (yes, that means we left home at 5:30am - we swang by friend's house b4 getting on the highway) Have set up tent and are now at a michi-no-eki getting supplies b4 hitting a winery! I am waiting in car with a napping k. J gets his turn to wait next while i do some serious taste testing hehe.