the quiche is looking good!

I am getting better each time, this brocolli bacon& onion quiche was delish but still need some work on the crust. Anyone got any hints for the perfect pie crust?
No comments required abt pathetic side salad, haha!

go goya

"go goya, go goya, go goya" (to be sung a-la-Ricki Lake "go Ricki" style)

So I braved the goya again tonight. We visited to PILs on the weekend, as we hadn't seen them since the cherry picking trip. They have a grand little vege patch in the area that was where the granny flat that J and I lived in when I first moved up to Tokyo was (they pulled it down when we moved out when I was pregnant and decided I didn't want to bring up a baby with the rats, haha!) They have tomatoes, spinach, okra, eggplant, shishito (not sure what that is in English? are they just green capsicum??) red and yellow capscicums, and the mother of all goya vines running up the house to the 2nd floor balcony!! So we came home with a pile of fresh veges, including one very big goya. After my last failed attempt at goya champuru earlier in the summer, I was not too keen on trying again, but I took on the advise of Illahee and cut the goya really really thinly. Sooooooo thinly that I got cramps in my hands and up my arms from holding the knife for so long - one goya goes a long way when it is cut that thin, haha! Actually, after I scooped out all the seeds and flesh, I salted the goya then poured boiling water over it. I let it soak like that for a few minutes, and I must admit that this time, it wasn't too bad! (despite the fuzzy photo, it did look and taste yummy)

I think THIN THIN THIN was the key for this goya champuru success story. Whenever I thought I was cutting it thin, then I started to slice it even thinner just to be sure.

In other news, K has started telling me pee-pee when she has done a job in her nappy. Sometimes I catch her all quiet in the corner, and manage to get the nappy off and her butt on the potty just in time to catch the no 2 jobs. But she still hasn't done a No1 on the potty yet. But it is cool to see that she seems to understand a bit now about what it all means. We are reading "Hitori de unchi" which means "I can do poo all by myself". It is a flip-the-page book. It goes like this:

"Koro the dog is going 'aarrrrgggghhhhhh'"
(flip the page)
"Oh look, he did a big healthy poo!"

....................Seems to read nicer in Japanese, for some reason.

We both sit there grunting as we read it at bedtime, hehe. (yes, it is her bedtime book choice this month! I keep on trying to throw in a "Hop on Pop" or something, but she puts up a fuss, and knows that she wants the unchi book - let the kid have unchi!

I had hoped to have her toilet trained this summer, but that seems pretty impossible (I am pretty lazy about it all too, I admit). But hopefully we can get serious about it when we go home for Xmas, and come back to Japan with a (near)nappy-free K!

e-mail from dad

My dad never sends emails. Well, that's not completely true. He sometimes sends emails that go a bit like this:

WE TRIED TO RING YOU BUT YOU WEREN'T THERE.
LOVE DAD

Yep, only conveying the main points, and always in block letters. I get a headache reading them! lol.
So imagine my shock when I found this little beauty sitting in my inbox this morning. I didn't know my dad even knew what forwarding meant, or how to do it. hehe. Had to share:

Fwd:<Rural Australian Computer Terminology

A bit of Aussie culcha.

LOG ON: Adding wood to make the barbie hotter.
LOG OFF: Not adding any more wood to the barbie.
MONITOR: Keeping an eye on the barbie.
DOWNLOAD: Getting the firewood off the ute.
HARD DRIVE: Making the trip back home without any cold tinnies.
KEYBOARD: Where you hang the ute keys.
WINDOW: What you shut when the weather's cold.
SCREEN: What you shut in the mozzie season.
BYTE: What mozzies do.
MEGABYTE: What Geraldton mozzies do.
CHIP: A bar snack.
MICROCHIP: What's left in the bag after you've eaten the chips.
MODEM: What you did to the lawns.
LAPTOP: Where the cat sleeps.
SOFTWARE: Plastic knives & forks you get at Red Rooster.
HARDWARE: Stainless steel knives & forks - from K-Mart.
MOUSE: The small rodent that eat's the grain in the shed.
MAINFRAME: What holds the shed up.
WEB: What spiders make.
WEBSITE: Usually in the shed or under the verandah.
SEARCH ENGINE: What you do when the ute won't go.
CURSOR: What you say when the ute won't go.
YAHOO: What you say when the ute does go.
UPGRADE: A steep hill.
SERVER: The person at the pub who brings out the counter lunch.
MAIL SERVER: The bloke at the pub who brings out the counter
lunch.
USER: The neighbour who keep's borrowing things.
NETWORK: What you do when you need to repair the fishing net.
INTERNET: Where you want the fish to go.
NETSCAPE: What the fish do when they discover the hole in the
net.
ONLINE: Where you hang the washing.
OFFLINE: Where the washing end's up when the pegs aren't strong
enough.

a day at the dentists

I am just cracking open my second chu-hai (-196C ume, followed by orange). I had a dentist visit today, so I figure I deserve it (strange logic, I know). I went to the dentist that I found last year, when we were living in Tokyo (close-ish to Shinjuku
). Apart from the fact that he is the best dentist I have found so far in Japan, and he is really good with kids (potential dentist for K) I also had a procedure done there last year, so I figure it is worth going out of my way (about 50mins by train) to see him again. "Father, please forgive me, it is 4 months since my last check-up....." I am on the 3-times-a-year check-up schedule, but it seems that all is going well on my front tooth (I had a gum graft done, to try to build up the gum around one of my bottom front teeth, which was basically going bald for want of a better desctiption). I am guessing that it was all the stress of the move and J's new job that LEAD me to eat miles and miles of sweet sugary things which caused the cavity in tooth L4 (I am just making that up, I don't know what the tooth is nicknamed).So today we braved the rain and a grumpy K to go to my 3pm dentist appointment.

You see, K had a bit of a bad night - she kept on waking up crying and rolling around, like she was trying to find a comfy position or something. She did this what seemed like every hour all night. She obviously got a bit excited around 3:34am, because that is the time she grabbed my mobile phone (from under my pillow) and rang J's mobile phone (which was under HIS pillow). I woke up to a not so happy J telling me that K had just rung him. I thought it was a dream. Anyway, this morning K was a bit crabby, so I rang the dentist to try to reschedule, but all other times I could go were booked, so we went today. I tried to keep K awake until as late as I could, in the hope that she would sleep while I was at the dentist, but when you have an hours worth of transit to get to the dentist, it is pretty hard. She woke up when we were waiting at one train station because of the bloody loud announcement saying that the train station was now no-smoking. Thanks. She did fall asleep once we were on the train again, and I thought we were in luck when she was still asleep as I jumped into the dentist chair. But of course, I should have known better, and she woke up basically the moment the dentist sat beside me to say "let's begin". But she was an ANGEL!!!!!!!! again for the whole 2 hours (yes, 2 HOURS) I was at the dentist, getting a filling (from eating all that yummy stuff) and then a good cleaning down. My dentist did everything on this one visit just so that I wouldn't have to trudge all the way back there again next week. did I mention that he is great (better not say that too much, you might catch on that I have a crush on him, lol!) Next visit - in another 4 months time. I am off to pencil him into my diary now.

onsen shmonsen

J is in the bath now with K - finally. We left home over an hour ago to go to a cool looking onsen not that far away (J saw an ad for it in the Yokohama Walker mag). We all piled out at the onsen, went up to the counter to pay when they said "ooh.." I thought they were gonna start about how cute K is (hehe) but they turn around and say - sorry, only kids over 6years old allowed. AAARRGGHHH. So we load back into the car (K not so happy about getting in the car seat this time) and drive to a local sento instead, but of course it is closed, because it's Monday. AAARRRGGGGH. So we come home. I had to clean the bath (we haven't used it for a while, not at all over summer, actually) then fill 'er up. They are finally bathing now in sakura bath salts. It is almost past K's bedtime, but hey.

Not so pissed off about the fact that the onsen doesn't allow little kids - that is their perogative, but they should have written something about it in the ad. Then we wouldn't have wasted our time going there.

On the bright side, only 5 years to wait until we get to try out said onsen (hehe)

Miyagi Trip (finally)

We went on a 4 day road trip up to Miyagi for O-bon, hoping to escape a bit of the heat. But it turned out to be pretty hot up there too!! And rainy! We took the tent with the intention (haha) of camping out, but a serious lack of camping areas meant that the tent never got to see the light of day. A week later here is the round up of our trip.

Wed August 13th
We left home at about 8:30pm, so K pretty much fell asleep right away in the car.And she stayed that way until 10minutes after we stopped for "the night" at about 4:30am at a service area, when she decided to wake up (just as J and I were finishing counting sheep) so I had to then entertain her in the back of the car (as it was raining outside) for 2 hours.

Thursday August 14th
When J woke up we drove to the nearest town, stopped again and we all had a very average breakfast of soba noodles at a 道の駅.
Today we went to Kesennuma city, to the Ice Aquarium, which I had seen on TV recently. It was bloody cold in there - they have the aquarium in a walk-in freezer, basically, and hand out thick coats to wear as you are going around. It is only really tiny, thank goodness - only took about 3 mins to walk around it, because did I mention it was cold in there?!? Not really worth it, but hey, you get that. It was still raining and K was getting grumpy after this, so we stopped off at Aeon to get some sushi packs for lunch, which we ate in the Aeon carpark then drove on to Onagawa, another sea port, where we set up camp (well, parked the car)for another night.

Friday August 15th
Let R and K run around the sea port in the morning to burn off some pent-up energy, then drove down the Oshika Peninsula. It was a lovely drive - nice coastline. We stopped at Oshika Town for lunch at this little place. J and I both had uni (sea urchin) rice bowls and they were delish!! Oshika (Ayukawa) is an old whaling town, so there was a whale museum there too, but at 700yen entrance fee, we decided to skip it and drive further down the peninsula in search of a camp site to relax at for the day. Found a park at the end of the peninsula that had these gorgeous orchards growing in the wild
I had to really control myself not to pull out a few to throw in a vase!

Unfortunately the beach that J camped at when he was a wee lad with his parents was no longer there, and the only other campsite an expensive "auto camp site" so we stopped off at the roller-slider for a bit of a slide with R and K (they lurve their slippery dips) before heading towards Ishinomaki, then Okumatsushima in search of a better campsite.....only to be dissapointed that there was nothing better, in fact, the closer we got to Matsushima, the less chance we had of finding a campsite, as apparently you are not allowed to camp anywhere in the Matsushima region. Even the youth hostel wouldn't let us set up camp on their lawn, so we got ourselves a dorm room and stayed in the youth hostel for about 4000yen each for the night.

Saturday August 15th
We set off early to get to Matushima, the main attraction of this trip. It is known as one of the top three panoramic spots in Japan. Hmm, I am not sure if I agree or not. It was nice, but I think I have seen more beautiful spots too. I don't know, maybe Matsuhima just didn't do it for me. The town is located on a bay of 260 islands of various sizes, which all have pine trees(matsu) on them, hence the name. The thing to do there is take a sightseeing boat cruise around the islands - 50minutes for about 1400yen. We stopped off at a 7-11 about 1km from the main town area, and I asked for a discount ticket for the boats....well, they showed me the computer ticket selling machine and rushed me through to the boat cruise, so I bought the tickets there for 1260yen - only to find out we had bought tickets for the most obscure boat that only had 2 departures each day, so we had to fill in time before our 10am boat ride, only to find ourselves the only passengers!! At least it worked out well because it meant that K could run around as much as she wanted without having to worry about other passengers. lol.




After the boat ride, we went to the Kanreitei Tea house, which had such a good write up in the tourist books. But I was VERY dissapointed by this. Yes, the view was very quaint,

but the tea they served (at 700yen with a small zunda mochi) was terrible. I am no tea expert, but I have done tea ceremony for a few years(BK), and always look forward to being able enjoy a matcha, but they always dissapoint me. Green tea really needs to be prepared properly to taste nice. This means warming the tea bowl, and definately not using water out of those electric pots because they are just not hot enough. Very very dissapointed (sigh) and I wouldn't recommend anyone going there. Even J's iced macha was bad - it had lumps of green tea floating around in it. Oh, and the thing that amazed me the most - you had to actually put your own tray away - they had 4 different plastic containers to put the tea bowl, plate, tray etc in seperately. That is like blasphemy. The tea bowl is supposed to be one of the most important (and usually expensive!) parts of the tea ceremony, chosen to show your hospitality for your guests. I couldn't believe that any one who actually knows anything at all about tea would be fine with stacking the tea bowls up in a plastic container. (end rant, lol)



After sightseeing we headed off to our pet hotel, booked especially for R! It was up in the mountains, so really quite cool, the first nice cool weather we had - seems Miyagi had a bit of a heat wave for the first few days we were there. Here she is (photo is on the side, can't turn it, sorry) enjoying herself. The pet hotel simply means that she is allowed into our room, as opposed to being stuck alone in the car again. She also got some doggy champagne and cigars when we checked in (no not really haha). The ofuro here was nice, so J and K went in first, then I went in by myself, then later on K and I went in again. We also had a nice morning bath. Being cool outside meant the ofuro was just right!

Sunday August 17th

Had a bit of a sleep in, enjoyed a leasurely breakky and bath, then drove off to see Mt. Zao, but got halfway there and turned back since there was fog about as thick as those o-baka-charachters on Japanese tv, so figured we wouldn't be able to see much there anyway. Also, I got very VERY car-sick on the windy road up there. I never used to get car sick, but ever since being preggars, I guess my body has changed. I get it a lot now. (boo-hoo) Stopped off at a cool little farm that was free to pat the rabbits and goats and sheep. K enjoyed it so much - she is definately not afraid of animals. There was also a cheese factory there, so we spent 30mins sampling all their cream cheeses 20 times over before buying nothing and leaving.

The car ride home was LONG. We got stuck in 2 big traffic jams, the first one 5mins after J decided thatit was time to change drivers as he was sleepy so I got to crawl along the highway at 15km an hour....for over an hour. Fun fun. The second was closer to Tokyo, but just as long. K did a fantastic job for being stuck in a car seat for most of the day, chucking an understandable wobbly at about 6pm when we still had over an hour and half to go to get home.

And finally, last photo is for Gaijin Wife - thought she might like to see that we somwhow ended up in Kunimi!! hahah!


I am buggered now - talk about mammoth post. It has only taken me over a week to get this done, mainly because K really hasn't wanted to leave me alone and gets pissed off whenever I sit at the computer, and because the computer has been playing up a bit recently and making everything twice as long to get done. Congratulations to anyone who read this far - hope I didn't bore you too much, lol!

r-chan's first ever ryokan!

After a day sightseeing in Matsushima we are staying the night in a doggy hotel! R is soooo happy at her first ever hotel stay- she normally gets stuck in the car (which is why we only ever go north in summer)
we havent been able to set up camp on this trip, so we spent the first 2nights in the car, and last night at a youth hostel (haha, at our age! there were mainly families there anyway- not a backpacker in sight). We reserved tonight's doggy hotel for tonight on one of those last minute dot com sites.
J is in the onsen now with K, and I am spending some quality time with R, something we dont get to do much AK(after K). ooh, they're back! my turn in the onsen!

buta bara, natto & obon

buta bara: (definition 1) last night's dinner. Followed recipe to a t, only to get a "this has too strong a sake taste too it" (@@~)sigh. i think i've lost my kitchen mojo - the rice was マズイ, too カタイ for the second time this week!!Its not like I am doing anything different with the rice - just throwing it in the same old rice cooker.
(definition 2) what seems to be going on around my waste. I was embarrased the other day when I was walking R, with K in the ergo carrier- I looked down and saw not one but several rolls of flabby tummy waving at (think:jelly on a plate)me through my top. the strap on the ergo really accentuated it, lol! I guess it IS true that your metabolism slows down after 30. maybe i should lay off the 八つ橋 お土産 from J's trip to kyoto
natto: apparently k's latest fav food. yet for some reason apples still dont make the cut. go figure
obon: 5am&we are currently stopped at a parking area somewhere in Sendai. Apparently i thought 2 tired adults, a 16month old and a dog in one car for 4days was a good idea!?
but the cool thing is that K says 出発! everytime we start off, which is pretty cute.
just had some very average soba for breakky, now we are off to a frozen aquarium - shuppatsu!

nudy run

I am giddy with excitement - they are finally cleaning the staircase! It is worse than disgusting, a layer of dust about 20cm thick adorning it. The guy cleaning it has been sneezing for the last 15minutes! I guess the staircase gets the same status as the gravesites, only being cleaned once a year for obon.

Am actually so excited I am gonna do a nudy run up and down the stairs once they finish. Thank goodness I didn't ever get around to cleaning the stairs myself (gee would I be mighty pissed off about now if i did!), OR writing that "anonymous" letter to the landlords saying "Please clean the stairs, signed, your tenants （住居者一同）"

just me then?

so, am I the only one on the planet who didn't know (think about it) that putting boiled up tomatoes in 90deg water in blender is not a good idea? The kitchen looks like I just took part in a massacre, and am blending up the body pieces. Hope we don't have any visitors today.... I may be taken away in the back of a paddy van if I can't get this cleaned up - it's ALL over the place, hehe.

so guess what K's lunch is today..... tomato sauce pasta (scraped off the walls, floors, sink, my ear, R's tail....)