This One is For My Mom

Mom admonished me today because I haven't had a new post up in a while. Must I remind everyone that the internet is a new and brilliant device and that fifty years ago we would all be waiting on the post and maybe a once a month phone call to the outside world? Yet it's true: I love talking about myself and my life here. So a few random things about the past two weeks.

It's been as slow as molasses here. Actually it's about as slow as the peanut butter fudge I tried to make today. Instead of a solid brick of scrumptious buttery peanutness like this:

mine ended up a 2-layer tray of oozing sweetened condensed milk and half-frozen peanut butter like this:

the lower left-hand corner is where the
sweetened condensed milk is dripping out from under
the peanut butter fortress top

It was still tasty-tasty, so I put it on top of a banana like this:

it looks like a spoonful of poop, but it's PB

It was so terrible I had two.

I am working on different projects around my house, but with mixed success. I  organized all my hair ties and some of my jewelry, as well as my winter accessories, so that my wardrobe room looks austere, but much less messy as before. 

All my gloves are in my black winter hat
and the little hat in front is my cute brown
winter hat w/pom-pom

my pred left some beer glasses - they
work just dandy fine 

A bit of string on the side of the wardrobe holds up my
necklaces now. Can you tell I spend a lot of time
on Pinterest in the winter?

And one other horrible pic I took in the hardware store while I was shopping for shelves and a squeegy 

with which to clean windows. 

Really. 

Japan doesn't think all its slogans 

quuiiiiiiiite through...

I love you Mom! Hi Diane! Emily if you want a post, just let me know!

First week back

After the winter holiday, this week has been a very pleasant easing back into country life with all its attendant trivialities and experiences. I taught two classes at the elementary school. Two of my obnoxious kids did very well in sixth grade and all of my fifth graders out-shown themselves in "what's this?" and the Hokey Pokey, which shocked me to death as I thought they might be too grown-up for it. But I love them and they love me and if I say joyously, "Let's do this!" they jump to their feet and give me the benefit of the doubt for at least five minutes, which was all that was left at the end of class.

Last weekend, I punished myself by biking up some mountains. One day, I went towards Umaji village, that hidden Shangri La in the mountains behind Yasuda. I hear funny stories about Umaji and the CIR only comes out every couple of months to mix with us peons who live below him (Ben, you're a very nice guy, if you ever happen to read this), but I've never been there. I don't particularly feel the need to go there, but at first it seemed like a good goal. Fourteen kilometers straight up! Let's DO IT! But after four kilometers straight up, I said "screw it" and published those pictures from the shrine and roadway.

The next day, however, I went up a mountain in Kitagawamura to the Monet Garden. The Monet Garden is a pretty little affair that is supposed to be reflective of various paintings by Claude Monet during his water-lilies stage. The various paths wind around the mountain up to a lovely little viewpoint from which one can survey the mouth of the Nahari/Kitagawamura river meeting the sea and the towns of Tano and Nahari stretched out on either side of it. Unless you go up in the afternoon like I did, so all you can see is a lot of sunshine in your eyes. Still it was very lovely.

The view from above. That's the river in the middle. On the right side is Tano and on the left side is Nahari.
That over-exposed space in the upper half is the ocean with the sun shining directly on it, giving me a glare-headache.

Please, please, don't tread on the daaaay-sies...

Beside most of the scenes are facsimilies of various of Monet's paintings. I think
in general, they tried to recreate the scenes you find in the artwork. In winter,
the effect is somewhat lost, but the general sense of austere winterly beauty works.

That's the dam and the road behind it is the one I ride on every weekend - it is my favorite ride
because of the trees on one side and the river on the other, but it kind of doesn't go anywhere.

Almost Umaji

The rice is almost cooking in my rice-cooker. Whenever anybody asks me if I can cook, I reply, No. But I can push buttons with the best of them.

Since I have no hot water in my kitchen sink, I am also boiling a kettle on the stovetop so I can do my dishes. I swear, every time I turn around there are more dishes in that sink. I don't know how. I am going to mix up the rice with some beef and sesame seed mix I bought yesterday, then wrap it in nori. And maybe make some soup... oh. I see how that works. Like just now. Experimented with a little dashi (fish stock) to see the taste because I'm going to make miso soup later. Then poured soup base into a different cup, apparently just for the joy of washing it out later. Two new dishes in the basin. One more added to the chore. That makes THREE dishes. In the Basin. @$F%!! But wait. There's more.

Yesterday I beat the cold by taking a wild bike ride through Yasuda out towards Umaji-mura. Umaji is a tiny village up the mountain about 14 kilometers off the main road. I road out about 4 of those kilos and then came back. It was pretty much straight up the mountain at that point. But I took some pics.

the road out towards Umaji. That road goes up and then just keeps going.
It winds around the mountain like an obi around your kimono.
If I had a kimono, I would show you, but I don't. They're expensive.

Here is where the road branches off to Umaji and Sanase, I think.
But don't quote me on that.
The bag of rice was apparently left for the temple, pictures of which
will follow shortly.

I can't quite express the beauty here. It's austere, it's solitary, it's crystal-winter-clear, but it's not
something that happens everywhere or everyday. The sky is icy blue and the wind is like clean
water, freshly melted from an ice-cap, drifting down to drown New York.

The road looking backwards. I was nearly run off the road by logging trucks and
regular people just trying to get through their day. Maybe I shouldn't have
stopped to take so many pictures.

Everywhere on Shikoku, there's a temple or a shrine or just a little statue of some unhappy-looking fellow.

Case in point:

This dude has about 37 cents at his feet.
They are generous givers, his followers.
And he looks pretty pissed to be out here
in the cold. 

Damn! It's cold!

I woke up this morning to a thermostat reading of 7.5 celsius. It is so cold in my house, I have to pile up the blanket that is supposed to live in my lounge on the heating table on my bed. My bedroom is the warmest room in the apartment, but that's not saying much. And they tell me February is actually the coldest month.

After a great trip home with the fam, I find myself once again in the little town that modernization looked at briefly and then blithely marched on by. I can't help thinking my apartment would be just a bit more moderate in temperature if they hadn't turned window into a sliding-glass door with no curtains. It's not unlike living in a fish bowl, except that fish die when the temperature changes this drastically on them. I remember this from Biology. About the trip back: Tintin was a great movie. Not necessarily completely true to the books, but definitely capturing the spirit of our spunky kid reporter. My dog is so totally like Snowy, it is uncanny, except for Snowy being all white and Caboose being grey and white. In attitude and deportment, however, they are twin-ish. The new Sherlock Holmes was decent in its way. One thing I will say for Guy Ritchie, his imposition of modern style on the Holmesian world actually works quite well. No, that's not how Holmes would say it, nor how Watson would act, but it's rather like what they would both do if you view them through our current-day lens. Why not? Entertaining.

My brain is a wee bit addled from the cold. And from the jet-lag.

But I have been back at the office for three days now and I am looking forward to doing anything new and exciting again. It really is a great little gig. I teach one class a week, co-teach one class a week, am a human tape-recorder (for which there is zero prep) three times a week, and come up with awesome topics for my adult class once a week. All of this leaves plenty of time for study of Japanese (3-4 hours a day), researching music scores, listening to recordings, practicing Japanese conversation, taking a walk, practicing piano and/or clarinet, and generally wandering around making a nuisance of myself or hanging with whomever happens to be around. There's a lot of learning going on here. And more to come.