Liam's Marathon, Christmas, Tako Yaki (at home)

Two weeks ago was Colleen's marathon, this week was Liam's. I think his was about 1 km. He also had nice weather for his, but a bit cold.

He gave it a good effort and in the end was able to finish 16th.

There are many KFC (Kentucky Fried Chicken) restaurants in Japan, actually I think it may be more popular here than in the US. In front of each store is a statue of Kernel Sanders. (photo courtesy of Wikipedia). I will get one later with our family.

You can always tell it is Christmas time when the Kernel gets dressed up in his Santa Suit. It seems that every store has this outfit and so every KFC you pass has Santa out front. (photo from the internet)

The day after Christmas our family loaded into the car to get a family photo with the Kernel, I mean Santa. Unfortunately like everything else in Japan the Santa suit is removed exactly on schedule and so the day after Christmas is no longer Christmas and therefore does not warrant a Santa costume on the Kernel. It was already gone by 10:00 am. I was a little bummed because it is likely that we will not be in Japan next Christmas so I missed the opportunity for the family photo.

I found this song on Youtube. We laughed a little at a number of the things that are mentioned in the song so here is a link on here for you to enjoy.

Christmas in Japan song

I did end up working on Christmas day, as a result we had the children wait until after school to open gifts.

This year we scaled back on the gifts. We want to teach the children that life is not as much about having stuff as it is experiences. We got a number of the gifts from a recycle store in town. We go there once in a while to find fun or interesting Japanese things and the children always want to buy from there so we just picked out things they always ask about. They were very excited about what they got. We were also very proud of the children for deciding to forgo their presents from grandma and grandpa this year in order to donate money to help needy children.

Finally last week I explained a little about Nabe, and the portable gas stove we bought to make it. Well there are also a number of attachments for the gas stove to make other things. One of those attachments is for making Tako Yaki. Tako Yaki is a little like a pancake ball with octopus and spice center. Typically they are found at festivals. I have wanted to learn how to make them for a while now, but without the pan it is not so easy. My main reason is that I want to be able to make them in the US when we return and have work barbecues or family parties. Tonight was my second attempt and the result was pretty good. The first attempt was a miserable failure. The directions on the back are in Japanese, but I could basically figure out the ingredients. Powder mix, 2 eggs, and 3 1/2 cups water. No problem......well I found out that a Japanese cup is not the same as the US cup, it is smaller. The mix I made was too watery and would not form. I had to give up and throw it away. In tonight's attempt I was able to correct that mistake (Kate already knew that information for the record) and we successfully pulled it off. I think next time the only change I will make is bigger pieces of octopus for the centers. All the ingredients are available in the states so everyone should be prepared to try these when we get home.....Now I am working on my one handed yaki ball spin technique for when I retire and start my Tako Yaki Imo stand.

Hope everyone has a good week....Merry Christmas and Happy New year.

Nabe, Mochi, etc..

Nabe (Nah-Bay) is a Japanese dish that is popular in the colder seasons. Last week we were able to purchase a Nabe pot and portable gas stove for our table so that we could make it at home. The dish consists of a broth, in our case it was soy sauce based, and then meat and different vegetables are mixed in. The vegetables that take the longest to cook are started in the pot first. Pictured below is mainly daikon and carrots in the broth.

When those items are cooked to a satisfactory level thin slices of meat are added. For ours we also added some kind of seafood ball. Finally the vegetables are piled on in two main stages. The ones that take a little longer to cook are added first and then last are the ones that cook quickly. Here are some of the vegetables we used.

Kate took this picture when it was almost finished. You can see the portable cooker. It helps to make a nice environment for socializing as the food is cooking in front of everyone. Once it is finished each person can take the things they like from the pot to customize their own soup.

This is what our finished product looked like. It was very good, especially when you consider this was the first time we made it. I think it will only get better from now. We have already made a kim-chi based Nabe pot since and it was also tasty.

Last week Liam did a presentation for his school about recycling and garbage. He worked with 3 other boys to prepare and deliver his presentation. Part of the presentation was on garbage disposal, when Liam was in America he and Kate were able to take pictures of how the garbage was handled in our old neighborhood. At the time of our return they already knew he would be making this presentation so they knew what pictures they wanted. He used those pictures to explain how it worked. Below is his story board on American trash.

Each of the 4 boys had their own speaking parts. We have a tape of Liam, but it is 7 min long and so until I can find time to edit it I will have to settle for the picture of him presenting it on the blog.

This is Liam and the 3 other classmates that did the presentation with him.

They all did a great job.

Today we made Mochi with the Takanezawa community center. Mochi is a rice based product that is typically pretty chewy. It comes in a number of forms, another is like a brick that you toast before eating. Mochi is very popular around the new year, but it is recommended that children and elderly be very careful when eating it because it is easy to choke on. It is made by pounding a special rice in a wooden bowl with a wooden hammer. When the Mochi is placed into the bowl it is still quite warm. Today was cold and so you can see there was a fair amount of steam rising from the rice.

The first step is to walk around the bowl pushing the rice down with the hammer to start breaking it down.

Each family got their own rice to make into Mochi, here are Liam and I working on ours.

After the rice starts to break down from the pushing you start hammering the rice with the mallet to break it down even more. The video below shows a little of that.

Colleen was also able to give the hammering a go. Both children were able to swing the mallet and help out. I don't have video, but Kate would jump in and turn the Mochi by hand every so often to help the Mochi break down evenly. With Kate turning the Mochi and me and the children pounding it there was no one left to take pictures. As a result Kate is not in any of the Mochi making photo's.

The finished product is very gooey and sticky. We broke it into smaller bits with our hands so that we could take them home and freeze them. There was also bean paste and Kinako (a soy based powder) to give the Mochi extra flavor, we ate what we could at the time and then we were allowed to take the rest home to eat at a later date. I was able to freeze most of it to eat at a later date.

Sunday evening we went to a party on the 5th floor of an apartment complex. It was a potluck style dinner as well as some fun games. While we were at the party Colleen was able to sit and make traditional green tea. This tea is made from a powder and mixed with a whisk. It is a very thick tea (almost creamy) and has a very distinct flavor. The strong green tea flavor has grown on me since we have lived here, I even like the green tea flavored ice cream now.

The entire family was able to have a good time hanging out and socializing. I think Liam liked dressing up a little and I know he enjoyed the food.

This is a group photo of everyone from the party.

Hope everyone has a good week....

Colleen's school Marathon, Pottery firing..

This week Colleen had her school marathon, Liam's will be on the 22. For Colleen's grade they run 800 meters which amounts to 2.5 laps around the school playground. She participated in this event last year after we arrived. To start the children do warm up exercises. This year Colleen was one of the leaders for the warm ups so she stood at the front to guide the others. She has really started to fit in with the other children and now even raises her hand to answer questions in class along with the other students. It is amazing to see the progression both children have made in just one year.

After the warm up the children line up and prepare for the start.

Once they get moving the children string out pretty quickly. Colleen said she was doing really well until her shoe fell off. She had to stop and put it back on before continuing and so she lost some time, she is the girl running in the left of the picture below.

In the end she was able to finish in 26th place, even with the shoe problem. She was very happy with the end result.

On Sunday we went back to the community center to finish up the pottery we started a few weeks back. The weather was perfect at about 50 degrees and sunny. To start the day a fire was started in a big fire pit lined with Oya stone. Once the fire was up and running the pottery we made a few weeks back that sat in a building to dry was placed on the perimeter of the fire pit on top of the Oya stone.

After about two hours with regular turning the pottery was warm to the touch and so it was moved inside the fire pit, but still on the Oya stone perimeter.

The pottery sat on the perimeter warming with regular turning for another 2 hours. They got to the point that you could not touch them by hand as they were too hot. Then they were placed on the coals of the fire, no longer on the fire pit perimeter.

Once all in the pit a large pile of pine branches were loaded on top of the potter, and then a huge pile of tall dried grass (like ornamental grass). The fire got pretty hot quickly as the pine and dry grass went up in flames. We could hear some popping noises under all of the brush as it burnt.

After all the brush burt down we could examine the pottery to see how the fire had affected it.

The end result was not so good, out of 20 pieces all but a few were damaged by the fire. Some so severely that they could not be saved. Apparently the popping noises we heard was the pottery exploding in the pile of burning brush. I think if air or moisture is trapped inside the pottery it expands under the heat and makes the popping noise, almost like fireworks.

Liam enjoyed helping to look for broken pieces within the coals. The men got a kick out of hearing him speak in Japanese to them.

In the end we faired pretty well. Colleen's piece had very little damage and our other pieces could be salvaged with a little glue. It was a great experience to see exactly what it took to make pottery so many years ago. To refresh your memory here is the pottery that was excavated that we modeled our pottery after.

I hope when they were making it they were able to get a little better success rate then we did. I snagged a picture of our finished pots and you can see them below.

For an afternoon snack we made Yaki Imo. That is the baked sweet potato that the truck drives around and sells. We used the same fire that the pottery was baking in to cook the potatoes. To start we took the potatoes and wrapped them in news paper.

Next the potato with news paper was dipped in water. This step keeps the potato nice and moist while it is cooking.

After they are dipped in water we wrapped them with aluminum foil to protect them from the direct heat.

Then threw them on the coals that the pottery was baking in..

Once finished the potatoes were broken in half and served to be eaten like an ice cream cone.

They are very tasty, the children love them, and they are good for you.....

That finishes this weeks post...have a good week.

This week was very busy at work and I had to take the Japanese Language test, so Kate helped me out and did this weeks post....enjoy..

June san and I went to a very traditional Japanese restaurant in Utsunomiya this week.

They served many different small dishes to each of us... I wondered how I would eat all of this and was surprised how easy it was....I must admit though I was full.

Delicious!

The meat on this stick is beef tongue...it is the only thing I couldn't swallow. It may have been just because I knew what it was.... but it was pretty tough and chewy.

Dessert...yummmmm

This week at school Colleen had a special day. There were a number of different activities and I was able to go in to see her. Colleen's self portrait from Sport's Day....It was hanging on the wall with a poem she wrote in the gym. They had little festival and concert of there own for everyone to enjoy.

The kids all dressed up, sang and played the pianica. They prepared all week. They broke into groups to each prepare games. Her team chose a bowling game. They took PET bottles and filled them with stones and then made balls out of tape. They made origami prizes for everyone. I was lucky enough to be able to play and pick out a special origami. It was great to see all of the creative games the kids came up with and the team work.

Colleen waiting on the side to let the bowler pick their prize of choice. :)

Saturday we went to the Shionome san's for dinner. Of course we had a wonderful time! We were able to try some delicious new dishes , a new Japanese game and definitely laugh a lot.

I'm not sure of the name of the game but you spin a top with pictures on it, then depending on the picture it lands on you must drink out of that cup. There are three different cups. A large Tengo (red figure with long nose), a smaller older woman's face with a hole in it that you have to plug with your finger while you drink from it, and a nice small cup. The kids enjoyed their juice and water. :) It would be fun to bring one of these home.

Thats all for this post, have a good week..