How YOU doin'?

Hey! Where's everybody been? Just kidding. Since I set up this blog, told everyone about it, and then preceded to abandon it for almost 5 months, I thought I'd better write something lest this page get sucked into never never land of the internet.
So, where I've been is at work. Yes, I got through my first semester at my new uni job. All in all it's pretty good; great boss, OK students, nice colleagues, and way cool subsidised apartment.

I can see the mountains from my front window, something I always find comforting. Unfortunately, I've come to realise that you can't really get to them without a day's cycle which leaves you too knackered to climb round in them. But I'm working on that. It takes time to find out all your options when you move to a new place and I'm patient.

Being able to cycle to work, the shops, and the local watering hole is a great plus round here. It's made me a bit lazy though. Back in Osaka, my commute consisted of long, fast-paced walks to the trains, and loads of stair climbing in the stations every morning and evening. Now I can see that the lack of exercise has caught up with me when I wasn't looking. I was so busy and stressed with work, that must've been sitting all day and shovelling the cakes in and not even realising.

This called for drastic action. I put myself on my own vegetarian version of phase one of the South Beach Diet. Since I've been in Japan, I've been making an effort to try and eat a little fish, so I'm eating that too. I even got desperate enough with the monotony of fish, vegetable, fish, vegetable... to make an attempt at eating chicken. I WON'T be trying that again. It was totally traumatic and has sent me into a rage of being my former self. I've been delving into websites, blogs, and cookbooks, basically anything I can read about healthy vegetarian eating. It's all starting to come back and is as blinding as if it had just hit me in my face. I guess I was so caught up in work that I didn't notice what was happening to my clothes (i.e getting tighter and tighter), and then in my desperation stopped at nothing to rectify the situation quickly. Basically, I forgot who I was!

I'm working on reorganising my kitchen so that I am encouraged to cook healthy, delicious meals again rather than just see the difficulty of a small kitchen and run for the crappy Japanese takeaway joints. And, contrary to popular belief, in Japan they DO eat a lot of crap food. Mostly processed, fried stuff, with lots of 'hidden' sugar and salt just like the rest of us in the modern world. There are a few healthier things on offer in restaurants, but in general, healthy food has to be cooked in the home. And, also like the rest of us, some people are good at this, and others just get the convenient stuff. Super markets often have two full isles of two-minutes noodle packets (instant ramen)and I see poeple buying them by the trolley-full! And vegetables are eaten as a small portion to go with whatever meat you are eating. I full plate of luscious steamed veggies is pretty much unheard of.

I've also started exercising regularly. I walk/jog and or do yoga everyday now, and have been able to see the difference by keeping an exercise diary.When I look back at a couple of months ago, I can't believe how sedentary I was!

Current project is making my own tahini. I've only got a motar and pestle so it takes me a couple of days worth of grinding the sesame seeds. But, I did it once before and the resulting babaganouj was awesome! Ahhhhh, getting back to slow food.

Teaching about travel

In about forty minutes I will teach my first "Travel and Study Abroad" class. The students are mostly in their second, third or fourth year of uni so I'm hoping for a bit of conversation and discussion. It's been fun getting together the materials for my first class. I've got a world map for them to locate the places they want to travel to, some 'getting to know you' activities so they can meet each other and feel comfortable in discussions (This can be very important in Japan as the students tend to be quite shy), some relaxing background music, and some of my old journals to show them. I'm hoping to get them on the journalwriting bandwagon by showing them what a rewarding experience it has been for me. And, no, I'm not going to let them read the details! I'll just show them that sometimes I write, and sometimes I sketch or stick in photos or tickets and other mish-mash I've picked up. It's been really cool for me to look back at them, too.
Well, I've got to start lugging all this stuff to the classroom now.
Shanti

An onigiri for every occasion

Onigiri time has become as much a part of my day as tea time. I love these little filled balls of rice! Usually I eat them to tide me over in between meal times but sometimes I use them as a filler when my lunch is too small.
Up here in Niigata, I noticed that the convenience store people always ask me if I want my onigiri heated up. Must be a 'cold place' thing. It doesn't sound good to me as I've only ever had them cold. But, I recently went to a local restaurant where they brought us fresh shiso (a Japanese herb) and umeboshi (pickled plums) onigiri that were warm...delish!
This link goes to a BBC food site. It's been about 8 years since I left Britain now and there was very little if any Japanese food there then. So it is kind of interesting to me to see onigiri discussed in detail.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/dna/h2g2/A1043119

Final profile photo

Got bored trying to post last photo on my profile so here's the new one. Shame you can't see it well on my profile page. At least I figured out how to shrink the file thanks to Cheeseboy.

Off and running in Niigata Prefecture

The move has finally been made to Niigata. Despite being April, it was snowing for the first three days after arriving. Pi Dog is pooing himself that every flat has got a snow shovel outside and we can't get warm at night with a duvet AND down sleeping bag when it should be plum blossom season (That's Japanese for 'beginning of spring'.).

But things are really cool so far. The flat is amazing for someone who hasn't lived many places that were very cosy since vacating the parental abode about a thousand years ago. It's got three rooms, a kitchen, bathroom, toilet and entryway. So it's a veritable mansion compared to our last place that was only one room. We have been swinging numerous cats just for the hell of it.

The other two teachers are OK in my book since we'd got down to some serious wine drinking by about day three. We've even been round the bosses house already for food and wine. I think I like this place!

Pi Dog (Hereafter refered to as 'Cheeseboy' due to various antics that ensued on that first fateful wine night.)is still looking for work in this small town, poor sod. The good thing is that everyone, I mean EVERYONE, has been looking around for him. He's had a few good leads so far and we're hoping that something will happen this week... for both our sanity.

We're back on the ol' free-internet-bandwagon temporarily. But so far, it seems to be pretty reliable here. I'll try and blog more when I've got a bit of a routine going. I don't start teaching until Wednesday so I've been just swanning round like a lady of leisure recently.

Only two shaking episodes so far!

Shanti

Paneer photos

Posted my photos twice but they didn't show up so here they are...

Making Paneer

The question of the day is...
Why have I never done this before?

Last weekend I finally decided to make my own paneer. It was awesome and I'm going to do this frequently now, I hope.

First I boiled up a litre of milk. You have to be ready because the milk starts to rise quickly in foam form as soon as it's ready. I was forewarned (therefore forearmed!) about this and chose a pot that was way bigger than I needed since I didn't trust myself to turn off the heat in time.

When the milk started to make a break for the top of the pot, I turned off the heat and started squeezing in fresh lemonjuice. I tried to be careful, but the end product had a few elusive lemon pips that popped out when I was slicing. Thought it gave a real 'homemade' effect.

I stirred slowly as I was squeezing in the juice and, lo and behold, it started to curdle (Soooooo cool!). It was totally curdled by about two or three minutes.

At this point most people would pour it into some muslin cloth, but being in Japan, it was easier to find these blue net things that they sell in the "supa" to line your sink drain with and catch stuff before it goes down. Sounds bad, but of course thay were new, and so, clean. So, in it went with a bowl underneath to catch the whey. The whey is meant to be a healthy drink but neither I nor Pi Dog was keen.

So, next I used a Laken metal water bottle filled with water as a weight and my ramen bowl as a receptacle and in effect rigged up a cool press. I left in the press for a few hours (enjoying the pictured Flake Noir from an import shop in the mean time)then wrapped it up and put it in the fridge.

A couple of days later I sliced and fried it and threw it into a pan with some peas to make an awesome muttar paneer.

It was sooooooo worth the effort in this land of no cheese OR curry. Chomp!

Shanti
Shanti