Tina in Japan

More or less =p.

There is a weekly thing at the Minesawa Ryo called ” Cooking Club” where we will meet up every Thursday dinner to cook and eat together with a different theme every week. The first two weeks were successful but the two weeks after that failed ( by failed meaning it didn’t happen). Luckily this week was successful with the Thanksgiving theme . =)

From the Costco run we gathered up: 4 of those rotesseirre chickens that Costco makes ( since from what known, there’s no turkeys here), some green beans for a green bean stir fry, mash potatoes mix, and a pumpkin pie ( wow they had them).

Overall it was from what I can tell successful. For a lot of people who came and stayed the whole time, it was the first Thanksgiving for them since they don’t celebrate it in their home countries. I hope it was satisfactory if not good for them.

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So yesterday for “Thanksgiving Day” Leslie, Nathan, and I went to the closest Costco (which actually wasn’t so close x_x) to get some grub for Thanksgiving dinner later that night. Since Japan doesn’t celebrate Thanksgiving, we had to improvise the best to what is offered to make the closest traditional Thanksgiving meal.

It’s a bit of a drag to get here though. esp. without a car to carry loads of stuff so we’d have to carry everything back, and it’s not a short trip. So I don’t see trips here happening often. =\ There is a delivery option so if I really needed to I could probably do that.

The Japanese Costco was awesome XD It was basically like the Costcos in America except with a lot more Japanese foods and products, cuter items in the children’s section, and of course the American imports were a lot more expensive. Very fun =) There were products here that you couldn’t get at a typical Japanese food store.

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I plan to come again when it’s spring time. I heard it’s particularly even more gorgeous with the Sakura blossoms bloomed.

During the weekend went to Kamakura with a big group. Saw the big Buddha, visited one of the temples, and went to the beach nearby.

I’m having a bit of problems with my camera. I can not work it to take good pictures in low lit places. I believe I worked with all the settings but still no go. Hopefully that will figured out.

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The final stop prior to coming back to Yokohama was seeing the Matsumoto Castle. The insides were like a barrackfortress. The surroundings of the castle was really pretty, and it was really fun to take pictures of outside from the top floors of the castle.

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Part of the Trip to Nagano was making Soba :3. Nagano is known for its food specialty in Soba so this was very exciting. The landlords showed us and we made our own as well. It was basically like kneading the dough like you would for bread. You then roll out flat, stack it up in multiple layers, then cut out “fine” noodle pieces.

The aftermath was tasty, and amusing since a lot of noodles were irregular sizes of thickness XD. We also had Tempura Veggies with our meal.

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During the weekend trip we stayed at “Oyama No Taisho” ( General of the Mountain). It is a traditional Japanese Inn a lot like a Ryokan except being family owned which gave it a much more “homely” feel.

Dinner, Breakfast, and Lunch with the Soba making were part of the stay and were extremely delicious. They also had a guest/karaoke room, bathhouse, and multiple bathrooms at the inn.

Being in the mountains, the Inn was completely surrounded with trees and nature. The leaves were all in the mixed colors of Red, Yellow, Green, Brown, and Orange. They were absolutely beautiful, my camera couldn’t do justice. Even when driving you can see the mountains being off the mix of these colors. It was really quite the site.

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The weekend trip to Nagano with World Wide Wings group was very fun. Four hour drive one way to reach Nagano from Yokohama. I missed being in a car so it was quite nice to juts sit back in a car and be able to look out the window to see the surroundings, which I am not able to do as much on a subway train.

The general gameplan was to go to Nagano to see some sites, make Soba, watch the leaves change color since it’s autumn, stay at a ryokan, lots of other cool stuff.

Onioshidashien was our first spot. Onioshidashien was a large walking ramp with many solidified lava rocks surrounding. The temple in the middle is home to “Asama Kannon-do.” The temple is used to pray for the souls of the victims of the eruption from many years ago in the area.

Very orge themed. Really neat place :3

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Today was the last session for Calligraphy for “COOL Japan”. I’m was a bit sad, I had a lot of fun and I really liked the sensei. Also hit me that it meant 6 weeks has already passed since I’ve been here in Japan. Time is flying by incredibly fast.

The past two lessons we picked our favorite Kanji to practice writing that we put on a t-shirt/cloth/or shikishi art board. I picked “GyuuNyuu” which is Milk. I didn’t want to do anything with a particular deep meaning like ” faith”, “power”, “love”, various elements, you know the whole sha-bang. So I chose Milk cause Milk does a body good. Oh wait, that may be deep.

Here is my shikishi. Crappy Calligraphy, I didn’t like my Nyuu but I kinda like my Gyuu. Since there was some space I asked the Sensei if it was appropiate to draw a doodle or a design on the shikishi and she said it was fine. I drew cows next to “Gyuu”. It worked.

Ee-yay. I think I’m getting better at it since my last trips to Japan. I went to a UFO Catcher Crane Machine Arcade in Akiba and won these four plushes. Two “Usarusa-Kuns”, one “NameShiba”, and a Pig. I’m quite fond of the Name-Shiba ( Green Bean Shiba dog) . So cute and soft :3

“Happiness…is a warm puppy.” This was at the Cashier.  Christina had me remember that was a quote from You’re a good man Charlie Brown. I watched the Peanuts films when was really young so I don’t quite remember them. I should rewatch them someday.

Where I found those rainbow colored Elmos was also a Snoopy town. I remember when I last went to Harajuku the main Snoopy Town store was closed down =(. I discovered on my most recent trip that it just moved in with a store called Kiddy Land and is the 3rd floor of the store. It was a really cute store =)

With Christmas lurking up, a lot of the merchandise was Christmas related. The Snoopies were really soft =)

Watching I think it was “You’re a good man, Charlie Brown” in Japanese on the T.V. there was amusing.