Thursday, 11 December 2008
Wednesday, 3 December 2008
Absent
It's been a while.
I moved. Still no internet in the house yet. Lots has happened and I've been itching to write, to tell all.
There have been happenings at school.
A few things, a couple of ideas have crossed my mind.
I've been on a couple of fun outings.
And then there's the sorry tale of how I was cuckolded. Well, I guess strictly speaking I wasn't cuckolded. But it's still a rather amusing tale. It'll have to wait.
I moved. Still no internet in the house yet. Lots has happened and I've been itching to write, to tell all.
There have been happenings at school.
A few things, a couple of ideas have crossed my mind.
I've been on a couple of fun outings.
And then there's the sorry tale of how I was cuckolded. Well, I guess strictly speaking I wasn't cuckolded. But it's still a rather amusing tale. It'll have to wait.
Sunday, 9 November 2008
Thethemodelmasherandme
I got sick and it knocked the stuffing out of me.
The traditional remedy of temporarily over-eating and steering straight did not have the desired effect. Throwing coffee and willpower into the mix seemed to only exacerbate things. So I fell back on on super foods and sleep and it's worked the magic. I'm back.
Friday afternoon in between waves of pounds and skull throttlingly painful headaches (mayeb I'm exaggerating) school finished up and I did a superman, sprang into my suit and dashed off to the Canadian Embassy to open the front door for people, for the most part, with far too much money and far too few manners. Actually that's a lie, it might have been a 60-40 split between the good the bad with the ugly nowhere to be seen. There was one especially attractive lady who strode through the door in ankle boots and a mini skirt and turned out to be the Japan entry for the Ms Universe competition. There were also a few ambassadors and some other smug young twits from Blighty, all swilling back expensive wine and bidding 10s of thousands of yen (er, actually not as much as it sounds) on cases of wine in live auction. It was a fund-raiser for a charity/English and many other language speaking helpline here in Tokyo. I thinkit worked out ok for them. I tucked into the free gourmet scraps on offer backstage in the volunteers room and gazed out on the view across Aoyama-Ichome, the rich district.
Anyway I wasn't feeling top of the world then, but now I'm back, as I said earlier. A parcel arrived from England, containing a masher, amongst other things. I take mashed potatos pretty seriously. And this is one serious potatoe masher. Knowing it was on its way across the world, I've refrained form buying one. And boy was it worth the wait. It's a beaut. All of my strength flooding back, I ground and mashed the life out of half a large sweet potato and several rubbery old Jaga Imo, plain old potoatos tonight. Mash mash mash, the power, the power....
The traditional remedy of temporarily over-eating and steering straight did not have the desired effect. Throwing coffee and willpower into the mix seemed to only exacerbate things. So I fell back on on super foods and sleep and it's worked the magic. I'm back.
Friday afternoon in between waves of pounds and skull throttlingly painful headaches (mayeb I'm exaggerating) school finished up and I did a superman, sprang into my suit and dashed off to the Canadian Embassy to open the front door for people, for the most part, with far too much money and far too few manners. Actually that's a lie, it might have been a 60-40 split between the good the bad with the ugly nowhere to be seen. There was one especially attractive lady who strode through the door in ankle boots and a mini skirt and turned out to be the Japan entry for the Ms Universe competition. There were also a few ambassadors and some other smug young twits from Blighty, all swilling back expensive wine and bidding 10s of thousands of yen (er, actually not as much as it sounds) on cases of wine in live auction. It was a fund-raiser for a charity/English and many other language speaking helpline here in Tokyo. I thinkit worked out ok for them. I tucked into the free gourmet scraps on offer backstage in the volunteers room and gazed out on the view across Aoyama-Ichome, the rich district.
Anyway I wasn't feeling top of the world then, but now I'm back, as I said earlier. A parcel arrived from England, containing a masher, amongst other things. I take mashed potatos pretty seriously. And this is one serious potatoe masher. Knowing it was on its way across the world, I've refrained form buying one. And boy was it worth the wait. It's a beaut. All of my strength flooding back, I ground and mashed the life out of half a large sweet potato and several rubbery old Jaga Imo, plain old potoatos tonight. Mash mash mash, the power, the power....
Wednesday, 5 November 2008
Taking the fish
Back in Yamagata. Only for the weekend mind, but I spent the entirety of that cycling around on my mate Justin's spare bike gawping at the mountains, or staring at them from the back of his lady friend Michi's car. Saturday was a crisp blue day and we could see as far as the first snow to have settled on the Asahi Machi range, way out west.
Saturday night, dinner and drinks with the teachers I used to work with from Nana Chu Junior High School and my replacement, Jamaican Tamara, was really rather lovely. We went to Aramasa, an izakaye (Japanese pub eaterie) we used to go to a lot when i was there. The master is hilarious. He once showed me pictures of him asking for directions to the hospital when he got sick on his holiday to England. I guess he had nothing else to take pictures of.
We had some very typical Yamagata fare, in the shape of Imoni, an autumn taro potato stew. There was also purple chrysanthemums with soy, chunky pork rib meat with negi, a kind of Japanese leek, skewered and grilled and the house special, horse meat sashimi (raw horse meat). Hello tape worms. He also brought out a caraf of Jyuu Yon Dai, Yamagata's finest sake, a very smooth blend that is reputedly very difficult stuff to get hold of. But the headlining act on the table was the fish head, sliced in two down the forehead (do fish even have foreheads?), and served on two massive presentation dishes.
Now, I had reservations about how Tamara would cope at Nana Chu. More so, how she'd get there in the first place. I rode a bike every day, over rutted ice banks and through deep snow in winter and under oppressive temperatures by summer, 8km there and 8km back on the commute. Tamara can't ride a bike. But on this showing, she's doing just fine. I hadn't heard the Caribbean saying that people will take the bones for themselves and throw the meat of a fish to the dogs, such is their passion for it that they'll suck those bones dry of marrow. Which is exactly what she and the lovely Yoshida Sensei set about doing.
I thought the fish was done with once we'd eaten as far as the jaw line, but they continued. Tamara ate both eyes, spitting out the hard, 'eye of the eye' that collects in a hard little ball when an eye is cooked. The best bit, she claimed. I'll stick with chicken medallions thanks. Then she and Yoshida Sensei shared the jelly around the eye sockets and scraped clean the meat from the bones, and cracked them open and sucked them clean as a primitive whistle.
Thankfully my appetite wasn't affected and I happily devoured 4 donuts (I know, as disgusting as the fish demolition job) in a post dinner sugar search.
Saturday night, dinner and drinks with the teachers I used to work with from Nana Chu Junior High School and my replacement, Jamaican Tamara, was really rather lovely. We went to Aramasa, an izakaye (Japanese pub eaterie) we used to go to a lot when i was there. The master is hilarious. He once showed me pictures of him asking for directions to the hospital when he got sick on his holiday to England. I guess he had nothing else to take pictures of.
We had some very typical Yamagata fare, in the shape of Imoni, an autumn taro potato stew. There was also purple chrysanthemums with soy, chunky pork rib meat with negi, a kind of Japanese leek, skewered and grilled and the house special, horse meat sashimi (raw horse meat). Hello tape worms. He also brought out a caraf of Jyuu Yon Dai, Yamagata's finest sake, a very smooth blend that is reputedly very difficult stuff to get hold of. But the headlining act on the table was the fish head, sliced in two down the forehead (do fish even have foreheads?), and served on two massive presentation dishes.
Now, I had reservations about how Tamara would cope at Nana Chu. More so, how she'd get there in the first place. I rode a bike every day, over rutted ice banks and through deep snow in winter and under oppressive temperatures by summer, 8km there and 8km back on the commute. Tamara can't ride a bike. But on this showing, she's doing just fine. I hadn't heard the Caribbean saying that people will take the bones for themselves and throw the meat of a fish to the dogs, such is their passion for it that they'll suck those bones dry of marrow. Which is exactly what she and the lovely Yoshida Sensei set about doing.
I thought the fish was done with once we'd eaten as far as the jaw line, but they continued. Tamara ate both eyes, spitting out the hard, 'eye of the eye' that collects in a hard little ball when an eye is cooked. The best bit, she claimed. I'll stick with chicken medallions thanks. Then she and Yoshida Sensei shared the jelly around the eye sockets and scraped clean the meat from the bones, and cracked them open and sucked them clean as a primitive whistle.
Thankfully my appetite wasn't affected and I happily devoured 4 donuts (I know, as disgusting as the fish demolition job) in a post dinner sugar search.
Thursday, 30 October 2008
Shorts: Direction
I got a new watch for my birthday last year. Well, I say new. It was from a mate who later told me he got it from a mate whose girlfriend works in the liquidation business. She's comes into a lot of electrical products and freely distributes them for knock-off prices to her friends, although they're not always brand new. That and my last birthday was actually last December, so I suppose when you take the two together, it's not such a new ole' watch after all.
One of the kids was twisting my wrist or playing with my watch and when I looked down, I noticed he'd accessed some new screen I'd never seen before. I forgot to mention, it's a digital watch. The new screen showed a compass and displayed at any point which direction I was facing. Then it would fix that direction if you stayed still a second or two, and you'd have to enact a sequence of complex button pushes to return to a fresh compass.
Ever since I've been obsessed with it. I've been checking my direction everywhere. Which way I'm heading on the train. Which way my apartment faces, which way the school faces, which direction I'm headed as I walk along.
One of the kids was twisting my wrist or playing with my watch and when I looked down, I noticed he'd accessed some new screen I'd never seen before. I forgot to mention, it's a digital watch. The new screen showed a compass and displayed at any point which direction I was facing. Then it would fix that direction if you stayed still a second or two, and you'd have to enact a sequence of complex button pushes to return to a fresh compass.
Ever since I've been obsessed with it. I've been checking my direction everywhere. Which way I'm heading on the train. Which way my apartment faces, which way the school faces, which direction I'm headed as I walk along.
Shorts: Mices
I bought new mouse. The old one was slow and it took several swipes to drag the cursor to the other side of the screen. It moved in fits and lurches. I saved the old one for a day when I'm really angry at something. Then I'll take that mouse, and swing it by the cord, and crash it to a concrete ground somewhere (shouldn't be difficult to find a patch here) and smash it to eight zillion pieces.
But for now, I'm happy enough just using the new one. Except it's so damn quick I keep overshooting and getting the wrong thing. Like upgrading from an Astra to an Austin Martin. The power.
But for now, I'm happy enough just using the new one. Except it's so damn quick I keep overshooting and getting the wrong thing. Like upgrading from an Astra to an Austin Martin. The power.
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