Current Ailments

My body hates me right now...here's what's going on with me:

Sore throat, tight lungs & stuffed nose from too much clubbing in Tokyo
Scab on left knee and bruised hip from a fall during Ultimate practice
Left knee pain from wrenching it on a slide about a month ago
Sore neck, lower right area...no idea why
General lack of sleep since my Korea trip

On the good side, that horrible stomach condition I suffered from the last day or so of Korea seems to be gone and I'm pretty sure I don't have pig flu.

Quick Trip to Osaka

Went down to Osaka to see my friend Shiho off at the airport (she's moving to Canada for 8 months, then possibly San Diego) and hang out with my friend Tsukasa. Before we met up, hung out in Umeda's Yodobashi Camera and picked up a new strap for my camera bag as well as some pretty darn good ramen at Chabuton. If you're from LA and have heard of Chabuya, this is the same people.



When I hung out with Tsukasa, we didn't do much, just lots of walking, talking and eating. Here's some pictures of food :)

Korea - Day 1

Wow, a whirlwind 5 day trip in Korea resulted in some new clothes, some fantastic new friends, about 1000 pictures and a stomachache. Here's some highlights and some pictures

Day 1: arrived sporting the surgical mask that's all the rage in Asia because of the flu. Met up with Mark's friend Nancy at the airport and she escorted us into town and to dinner with her friend Mary (both of these girls are from Cali, btw, Nancy is someone Mark knew since HS and Mary is from Tustin, just a short drive from my parents' house). We had some damn good pork, self-serve but best eaten when thrown into a lettuce wrap, topped with some kimchi and hot sauce, and random other side dishes. We started drinking pretty much right off the bat, starting with a bottle of soju. Damn that stuff is smooth. Great food, and freakin' Nancy ended up picking up the check. Something about Korean custom to treat the first meal.

Headed back to Nancy's place to drop off our stuff and change, then it was off to the clubs. Unfortunately there were no cameras allowed in the first spotk, Q-Vo, but it was I think 10 bucks to get in, and that came with 2 drinks. Drinks were cheaper than the typical club in the western world (or Japan for that matter), with a beer available for under $5. Shots were the same price, and cocktails were maybe $6. Got fairly tipsy and danced our asses off. I'm pretty sure when we left, people were sad :)

First food stop of the night, around 3 maybe?, at a stall that served what I call "spicy rice fingers." They're basically mochi-like strips floating in a burning red sauce. One or two are good enough to get an idea of the taste, but I ended up eating way too many because I didn't want to waste them. Had a corn dog too.
Club number two, S Club, did allow cameras and that's where these shots are from. The first spot was apparently a white theme, so that's why you see everyone with white on...I didn't have white and it was hot, so I rocked the wife beater. Again, much dancing, and this time when we left, a guy actually asked if he could follow us to the next spot. Told him we were going home.

Second food stop, maybe 6 am, definitely after sunrise. Chicken noodle, which is basically exactly what it sounds like, provided something to soak up the last of the alcohol and get us ready for that drive home. There was a weird guy in there who kept saying how crazy he is, but we just chalked it up to the beer and took off.

Taxis in Korea are cheap. Less than half the price of Japan. You can get all over the place for little money, especially when you cram 5 people into one. I think the taxi ride that night was like 20 minutes and only cost about $4 total. The won is something like 1200 to 100 yen, and $1 is less than 100 yen.

I passed out in the cab. I drooled on myself. I snored. I feel like I really provided an accurate picture to Nancy and her friends of what being my friend is all about. Alcohol, food, dancing, dumb jokes, and passing out.

Lack of Updates

Man, I've been busy lately. Here's a list of stuff I hope to have posts up about in the next couple of weeks

Weekend trip to Shikoku
Hanshin Tigers baseball game
My impending 5 day trip to Seoul
More food
Frisbee politics
Money

I would probably have a had another few posts in April if it weren't for my ill-advised decision to download Heroes of Might & Magic 2, a game that consumed countless hours of my youth as a teenager...and now is doing the same when I'm chilling at home after a long day. Instead of Facebook, blogs, and sports, I'm running around maps with mythical creatures, casting spells and claiming resources. Man, I haven't felt this nerdy in a while...feels kinda good :)

Anyway, I'll do my best to stay away from the swine/whatever flu and come back with pictures, stories, and a bigger belly.

Ninja Village

Last weekend, 13 of us foreign doods piled into 3 cars and headed for Iga ninja village in Mie Prefecture. When we got there, we rented ninja outfits and some of us (me and Jim) bought extra swords and ninja stars. Even though JJ and Gareth were giddy and jumping all over the place early in the morning, it took the rest of us until we had those outfits on before we could fully act the part. Once we got started, though, it was on. Hiding behind traffic signs, pointing our swords at people in cars, stalking children and old women...good times.

We visited an old ninja house, and the guides pointed out hidden doors, stairwells, viewing areas and weapons storage. All in all, pretty neat. They had a museum with explanations of weapons, tactics, and outfits, and obviously had a gift shop for purchase of phone straps, stuffed animals, and other cutsey Japanese type stuff.

We caught the ninja show as well, where some guys put on a demonstration of the different weapons, blew darts, threw ninja stars, fought, made jokes, and basically entertained the hell out of us. Afterwards you could throw 5 ninja stars for 200 yen...so obviously most of us did this 2 or 3 times. They put a target on a tatami mat and leaned it against a wall...some folks couldn't even hit the tatami, with the stars flying over, under and to the side of this huge mat. That was pretty funny.

Afterwards we climbed the walls of Iga castle, took all kinds of pictures with strangers, and basically just screwed around before heading off to return our gear. One of the funnest days I've had in Japan period.

Teacher Movement/School Changes

For those unfamiliar with the way things work in terms of staff in Japanese schools, here's a primer based on what was sprung on me this year.

• School year ends in late March
• Teachers are selected (not sure on what basis, sometimes it seems random, sometimes it seems like they asked for a transfer) to change schools or even positions (a teacher becoming a vice-principal, that sort of thing)
• The teachers leaving are announced near the end of March
• On April 1, the new teachers move to their new schools
• Also on April 1, all teachers are officially assigned their jobs for the year

I have teachers transferring from one of my schools to another of my schools, most teachers changing grades, and an overall change of administration at my favorite school Youdo (principal and vice-principal both changing). My favorite vice-principal (Yoshimoto @ Yanase) retired, and I have yet to see what's happened at all at Ookura.

This combined with the changing of my base school from Ookura to Yanase, the switching of days from M, T from Yanase to Ookura and vise versa, and the requirement of the government this year for 5th and 6th graders to have English every week has me wondering how the year is going to turn out. Every school goes through it, and thousands of JETs have done the same thing, but it's always different when it happens to you.

Either way, all I can do is try to do my job. I never really get in tight with the teachers anyways, since I spend most of my free time playing with kids or doing personal crap in the office, and most of their conversations are either boring or beyond my Japanese comprehension. Mainly the latter.

Following a True Pioneer (Woman

If you haven't heard of Ree Drummond's blog http://thepioneerwoman.com/ and enjoy self-depracating, honest and down-to-earth silly writing, check it out. I started reading it maybe a year and a half ago and still check in fairly often. The author is an LA-born (same here) USC grad (same here) who loved eating a variety of ethnic cuisines (same here) and has moved into a lifestyle that's more country than chic (again, same here). Sure, she's a white lady who moved to the midwest to get married and I moved to Japan to teach English, but there's still some weird correlations between how a person goes about adjusting to a lifestyle that's far less convenient, but somehow more fulfilling than their old one.

Anyway, I thought I'd follow one of her recipes for the hell of it. Since it's tough to get things like fresh cheese or real produce without spending an arm and a leg, I opted for a simple meat sauce recipe (here)...still had to make substitutions though. The list of ingredients is

2 15oz cans of whole tomatoes (I used one cut, one whole)

2 cloves of garlic

1/2 an onion

2 lbs of hamburger (I used about 350 grams of mixed beef and pork, or less than half of what the recipe originally calls for)Thyme
Fresh ground pepper (nope, store bought shaker stuff)SaltFresh grated parmesean cheese (I used Kraft)Rigatoni (I used fuscilli since there's only about 5 kinds of dry pasta available here)

Basically, you can see the kinds of subs I made. Part of the reason is that the ingredients are probably far more expensive here than they are in the US...the meat alone cost me over $5, whereas less than 1 lb of ground beef in the US wouldn't cost that by far. I also paid over $1.50 each for those cans of tomatoes, and a small bottle of thyme was over $2. For the hell of it, I threw in a couple of chopped green peppers because they were sitting in my fridge and I figured I might as well have something green in there. I also threw in some hot sauce for punch.

You can see the steps I took here...cooking for an hour was kind of annoying since I started after 8 and was STARVING, so I cut the total time down to 40 minutes. It turned out well, but I think real cheese, more meat, and a longer cooking time would spruce it up a bit. Also could use some red pepper flakes...it ended up far more bland than I think it should have (may have taken out too much of the fat as well as underseasoned). All in all, though, I thought it went pretty well. I also have a TON of the sauce left over since I'm cooking for one, so I can toy with the sauce bit by bit as I eat the leftovers. Tonight, it's going over pasta AND tofu :)

Fitness goals

So I looked at my body fat percentage today for the first time in about a year and while it's down to 18.8 from 24.5 when I was in LA, it's still not at the sub-15 level that was my New Year's Resolution last year. I'm down to aout 74.5 kilos, which is just under 164 lbs, but that doesn't mean anything if it's all flab. This country and my lifestyle cause me to lose weight without necessarilly dropping only fat, so it's my new goal to be around 15 by the time my birthday in June rolls around. Maybe that's unrealistic, but there's a few reasons why that's my deadline:

Summer = the beach and beach parties...and girls :)
Tajima Ultimate - Ultimate Frisbee tournament in our area that I'm learning how to run as well as participating in. Our team is looking like it'll be small, which means less subs, which means more running around for me. Time to get in REAL shape.
New clothes - none of my shorts, outside of athletic ones, fit anymore. This means I need to buy new stuff, and I want to make sure I only have to do it once.
I'll be turning 27...what better time to get in the best shape of my life?

I'm sure this interests very few, but it's said that publishing your goals helps you achieve them and I'm want to make sure I have no excuses. This may mean less beer, but I'll try to make sure it doesn't mean less ramen :)

Speaking of which, the other day, JJ and I had a kaedama challenge. We basically ordered noodle refills until we couldn't eat anymore...we both stopped at 4 (5 total bowls of noodles) and declared it a draw.

Random pictures of stuff I make for dinner

Peppers and tofu in some mabo tofu mix with ground pork, poured over sliced tomato and rice

Corn, tofu and veggie gyoza in beef curry over rice
Soba with raw tomato and lightly pan fried tofu and peppers
Peppers and tofu in spicy curry w/ rice (love curry :D)
Ground pork, tofu, peppers, corn over rice

I eat a lot of noodles as well. Summer was all soba and somen, now I eat udon and various shapes of Italian pasta: rigatoni, macaroni, spaghetti, etc. Most of the meat I eat is chicken breast or ground pork, but I've recently started playing with salmon. Try to avoid beef at home because I eat it out more often than other meats. I also eat most of my veggies raw.

Care Package

So my mom sent me a pretty sweet care package last month and I thought I'd share it
Here's the contents:

• Snowboard goggles (I bought them online and shipped them to LA...cheaper overall than buying in Japan)
• 1 full set of thermals
• 2 pairs of thick socks
• 1 Taco Bell Beef Bowl (eaten)
  
• 1 huge bag of mixed nuts
• 1 small can of nacho cheese
  
• 6 packs of 100 calorie beef jerky (eaten)
  
• 1 cup of Easy Mac (eaten)
• 12 corn tortillas (expired, but eaten)
• 5 different kinds of Spanish/Mexican rice mix (2 eaten)
• Taco Bell taco seasoning (used on ground pork and eaten)
• 1 can Taco Bell refried beans
• 1 can green chiles
• 1 can Frito bean dip
• 1 package instant refried black beans

I've been working on the food while trying to not let it dominate my diet. I've managed to eat fairly fresh since getting here, and have been keeping the processed foods to a minimum. That said, those first couple of tacos (more like enchiladas since I just put spanish rice and meat into tortillas) were awesome, especially with the Tapatio I got from my co-workers and the Filipino hot sauce from my buddy Mark.

BTW, that space that everything is on is basically my cooking area. To the left are 2 offset burners that are next to a wall, and to the right is my sink which is the end of my counter.

Edit: forgot to mention the egg clock. It's behind the goggles...sorry Danielle :)