Yesterday at Ikebana class there was our teacher, M and myself. We are all housewives to some extent and of varying levels of "experience". Our teacher has been a housewife for 25 years and so is our "Dai Sempai" - or Experienced Older Colleague to translate it rather badly. Then there is me who has been married for 5 years, though the last 3 have seen me in forced unemployment in Germany (so I went back to Uni and learnt German), and then M who is almost completely new to the whole "housewifing" business having lived at home until she got married earlier this year.
So yesterday's topic of conversation was supermarket shopping and cooking meals. Both of these things drive me crazy as I really really dislike having to chose what to eat. Sometimes I cook exactly what I feel like eating and DH comes home and although he eats my dinner with no complaints I get the feeling it wasn't what he felt like eating. Then there is the whole planning a weeks worth of meals and going shopping for the ingredients. I have not yet managed this ever. Mostly because I don't like to think about food when I'm not hungry and when I am hungry I don't necesarily want to eat any of the things that are on the menu for the week.
So my dinner preparation involves opening up the fridge, seeing whats there and concocting something from that- hardly in the running for housewife of the year.
M said she has the same problem and I guess when you have been struggling with cooking and shopping for years (since I was 19 in my case) it is still easier than struggling with it for the first time.
Now my teacher says that she has it all planned out in her mind what to cook, what she will need at the supermarket and if you have seen any of the food on her blog, you will know that she is pretty damn good at it. So I am wondering exactly HOW long this takes before even plebs like me can start to do this.... Oh yeah and see what she made for her entrance this week! My entrance has a stinky canister of kerosene, multiple pairs of shoes, umbrellas, 2 sets of golf clubs, a tool box etc to greet my guests when they arrive at Chateau Shufuinjapan. Just as well that guests are very few and far between at my house!
Anyway, today is the 20th and every good housewife who lives near Tsuruha Drug knows that today is 5% off day. So must get off to the drug store and get a few things.
Thursday, 19 November 2009
This week's Ikebana
We had a break from Ikebana class last week due to our test. I had 3 lots of the same arrangement in my house for a couple of weeks because the chrysanthemums last such a long time and so do sticks.
Today we had a go at the arrangement for the final test of the year which involves daffodils. "Daffodils! How lovely!", I hear you say.
No sir. Daffodils strike fear into the hearts of young players in the big Ikebana game.
When we use daffodils in Ohara style Ikebana, they need to be disected and reassembled to look nicer. This is done by pulling of the white skirt or "hakama" at the bottom of the flower and then straightening out the leaves and realigning them to the appropriate length, replacing the flower and attempting to slide the skirt back up over the whole lot. Loads of fun, made even more fun by having to do all that and the rest of the arrangement in 45 minutes.
Today it took us way longer as it has been ages since we have done daffodils so we needed to start from the beginning. Luckily I didn't break any of my daffodil skirts so it all went fairly smoothly. Unfortunately none of my daffodils were flowering today, I hope they will flower soon though.
This is what my classmate made:
The green stuff is supposed to be "moss", and is painstakingly placed in tiny bushell by tiny bushell.
This is what we had for afternoon tea, which was fabulous as always.
Today we had a go at the arrangement for the final test of the year which involves daffodils. "Daffodils! How lovely!", I hear you say.
No sir. Daffodils strike fear into the hearts of young players in the big Ikebana game.
When we use daffodils in Ohara style Ikebana, they need to be disected and reassembled to look nicer. This is done by pulling of the white skirt or "hakama" at the bottom of the flower and then straightening out the leaves and realigning them to the appropriate length, replacing the flower and attempting to slide the skirt back up over the whole lot. Loads of fun, made even more fun by having to do all that and the rest of the arrangement in 45 minutes.
Today it took us way longer as it has been ages since we have done daffodils so we needed to start from the beginning. Luckily I didn't break any of my daffodil skirts so it all went fairly smoothly. Unfortunately none of my daffodils were flowering today, I hope they will flower soon though.
This is what my classmate made:
The green stuff is supposed to be "moss", and is painstakingly placed in tiny bushell by tiny bushell.
This is what we had for afternoon tea, which was fabulous as always.
Hot chocolate with giant marshmallows and a lovely cake with a name I can't spell but is lots of crepes layered with cream between each layer. YUMMY.
Tuesday, 17 November 2009
Now don't go getting any funny ideas
That I might have one in the oven or anything cause I don't. But I have recently started following this website because, well, it appears that almost everyone I know is successfully procreating and some people are even going back for more by getting on to have their second baby. So as you can see I am kind of surrounded by an ever increasing number of babies! Which means almost constantly being in search of "Congratulations Presents".
I don't mind looking for baby presents at all as particularly here in Japan there is a stupendous range of super cute and I mean cuteness on steroids cute stuff here. But I love this website cause it is really is so cute it's scary.
Some of my personal favourites are:
The Produced Locally coverall (Is that what those things are? I'm not quite up with the Mummy lingo). I especially like the little story about "jumping on the bed".
These super cute Owls are a hoot! (I know sorry, its late).
What baby wouldn't want to drink out of one of these bottles? Heck, I'm thinking about getting one for me! Only it would dispense iced coffee. I wouldn't even have to interrupt my lying down whilst reading to drink.
And this one goes out to my friend who loves elephants: Cute baby in Elephant hat.
OK that's enough cuteness for one day.
I don't mind looking for baby presents at all as particularly here in Japan there is a stupendous range of super cute and I mean cuteness on steroids cute stuff here. But I love this website cause it is really is so cute it's scary.
Some of my personal favourites are:
The Produced Locally coverall (Is that what those things are? I'm not quite up with the Mummy lingo). I especially like the little story about "jumping on the bed".
These super cute Owls are a hoot! (I know sorry, its late).
What baby wouldn't want to drink out of one of these bottles? Heck, I'm thinking about getting one for me! Only it would dispense iced coffee. I wouldn't even have to interrupt my lying down whilst reading to drink.
And this one goes out to my friend who loves elephants: Cute baby in Elephant hat.
OK that's enough cuteness for one day.
Friday, 13 November 2009
More Tricks from Japan: Cold Hands and Feet?
So now I am all on a "share my latest tricks" thing, today I turn on my lunch time TV show and they just happen to be starting right then a segment on one of my biggest annoyances which is "Cold Hands and Feet".
I get terribly cold feet especially at night when I have to sit at my desk for long periods of time and then go to bed and have to warm them up on K, who is always toastie and is very galant and lets me touch him with my blocks of ice feet.
Now apparently there are two kinds of "Coldness" problems, the most widely known is "Cold Hands and Feet", the other is "Cold Internal Organs". To figure out if you have either of these, touch you tummy with your hand. If your tummy feels cold and your hand feels warm you have the later problem. The other way around is the "Cold Hands and Feet". No noticeable difference means you have neither.
If you have cold hands and feet they recommeded eating ......
......
.....
cucumber. Also similar vegetables like Goya or bitter melon and some other kind of vegetable melon looking thing I don't know what it's called. Apparently something in these kinds of vegetables help to widen your veins enough to get the blood flowing more easily to your extremities.
For those with "Cold Internal Organs", they recommended eating......
.......
......
rhubarb. Rhubarb isn't very popular here in Japan and on the show they actually started chewing on raw stalks of rhubarb!!!!! I have only ever eaten it cooked, with lots of sugar -yum!
For those of you with access to "hokairo", those heat pads you buy that you stick on your clothes and magically stay warm for 12 hours or so. For cold hands, slap one on your back between your shoulder blades below your neck. For cold feet or "internal organs", put on on your lower back.
And the piece de resistance (I know bad spelling), is the "Miso Foot Bath!!!!"
2L of warm water with 20g of miso disolved into it is supposed to be more effective than just using hot water. Pop your feet in for 10-15 minutes.
A full body miso bath is not recommended because of the whole "mould" thing....eew.
So tonight I used goya to make goya champuru which was really good and I did feel my feet were warmer than they have been all day.... or I could just be imagining it. : )
I get terribly cold feet especially at night when I have to sit at my desk for long periods of time and then go to bed and have to warm them up on K, who is always toastie and is very galant and lets me touch him with my blocks of ice feet.
Now apparently there are two kinds of "Coldness" problems, the most widely known is "Cold Hands and Feet", the other is "Cold Internal Organs". To figure out if you have either of these, touch you tummy with your hand. If your tummy feels cold and your hand feels warm you have the later problem. The other way around is the "Cold Hands and Feet". No noticeable difference means you have neither.
If you have cold hands and feet they recommeded eating ......
......
.....
cucumber. Also similar vegetables like Goya or bitter melon and some other kind of vegetable melon looking thing I don't know what it's called. Apparently something in these kinds of vegetables help to widen your veins enough to get the blood flowing more easily to your extremities.
For those with "Cold Internal Organs", they recommended eating......
.......
......
rhubarb. Rhubarb isn't very popular here in Japan and on the show they actually started chewing on raw stalks of rhubarb!!!!! I have only ever eaten it cooked, with lots of sugar -yum!
For those of you with access to "hokairo", those heat pads you buy that you stick on your clothes and magically stay warm for 12 hours or so. For cold hands, slap one on your back between your shoulder blades below your neck. For cold feet or "internal organs", put on on your lower back.
And the piece de resistance (I know bad spelling), is the "Miso Foot Bath!!!!"
2L of warm water with 20g of miso disolved into it is supposed to be more effective than just using hot water. Pop your feet in for 10-15 minutes.
A full body miso bath is not recommended because of the whole "mould" thing....eew.
So tonight I used goya to make goya champuru which was really good and I did feel my feet were warmer than they have been all day.... or I could just be imagining it. : )
Thursday, 12 November 2009
Things I have learnt this week
It's been a while since I have done a housewifey post. Not that I have been doing much in the way of housewifing recently but I have learnt a couple of tricks, thanks to my faithful friend the telly. One thing I have to say is that if you want to get the best tips, you need to watch day time television, which also means being subjected to the commercials. It appears that apart from myself, the only people who watch lunch time tv are "old people". The advertisements are all for: health supplements, adult diapers, wigs and health insurance for the elderly...but also for that face wash stuff "Proactive" that is for people with bad skin ?!? bizarre...
Anyway, here is a brief summary of my latest tricks.
Trick #1: Making floppy green vegies fresh again.
You know how lettuce or other leafy vegetables can get floppy if you don't get around to using them fast enough, submerging them in a bowl of warm water for about 5 minutes or so will make them crispish again.
Trick #2: Making your bath more effective
Keep all those orange/mandarin peels, put them in one of laundry netting bags and chuck it in the bath. The oil from the skins makes your body temperature rise more during the bath and then stays that way longer after the bath. Good in winter. In summer you can put some baking soda in the bath (well people in Japan take baths in summer though people in other countries probably don't so much) which makes you feel cooler after you get out. I personally like these ideas as I can't use bath salts because my skin is very sensitive.
Trick #3:
Get bike chain oil stains out of your trouser leg by using .....oil! Cooking oil that is. Rub some on the stain, followed by some dish washing detergent soap it up and then rinse the stained area with warm water, followed washing in the washing machine.
I had an incident the other day when I went to work on my bike and on the way home forgot to stick my trouser leg into my sock and it ended up getting caught in the chain. Thankfully trousers were black so not so noticeable but the cooking oil trick did seem to get most of it out.
Trick #4:
Cooking pasta on a gas range costs lots of money, esp when you use lots of water. If you are cooking spaghetti, use a large frying pan that has a lid, you can save a lot of time, gas, water and money by doing it this way. Also boiling the water in an electric kettle first will cut your overall energy bill (sorry this relates to Japan - I am assuming energy prices are similar throughout the country), once the pasta is bubbling away in pan, cover with a lid and turn off the gas, leave it for same amount of time as stated on the instructions, it might need a minute or two longer but actually you don't need to boil pasta for the entire cooking time. If you are cooking pasta in a pot as usual, the same idea applies. I imagine this also works well on an electric range since they retain some heat even after turning the element off.
Anyway gotta go or I will miss today's tips. If you have heard any great housewifey tips recently, let's hear'em!
Anyway, here is a brief summary of my latest tricks.
Trick #1: Making floppy green vegies fresh again.
You know how lettuce or other leafy vegetables can get floppy if you don't get around to using them fast enough, submerging them in a bowl of warm water for about 5 minutes or so will make them crispish again.
Trick #2: Making your bath more effective
Keep all those orange/mandarin peels, put them in one of laundry netting bags and chuck it in the bath. The oil from the skins makes your body temperature rise more during the bath and then stays that way longer after the bath. Good in winter. In summer you can put some baking soda in the bath (well people in Japan take baths in summer though people in other countries probably don't so much) which makes you feel cooler after you get out. I personally like these ideas as I can't use bath salts because my skin is very sensitive.
Trick #3:
Get bike chain oil stains out of your trouser leg by using .....oil! Cooking oil that is. Rub some on the stain, followed by some dish washing detergent soap it up and then rinse the stained area with warm water, followed washing in the washing machine.
I had an incident the other day when I went to work on my bike and on the way home forgot to stick my trouser leg into my sock and it ended up getting caught in the chain. Thankfully trousers were black so not so noticeable but the cooking oil trick did seem to get most of it out.
Trick #4:
Cooking pasta on a gas range costs lots of money, esp when you use lots of water. If you are cooking spaghetti, use a large frying pan that has a lid, you can save a lot of time, gas, water and money by doing it this way. Also boiling the water in an electric kettle first will cut your overall energy bill (sorry this relates to Japan - I am assuming energy prices are similar throughout the country), once the pasta is bubbling away in pan, cover with a lid and turn off the gas, leave it for same amount of time as stated on the instructions, it might need a minute or two longer but actually you don't need to boil pasta for the entire cooking time. If you are cooking pasta in a pot as usual, the same idea applies. I imagine this also works well on an electric range since they retain some heat even after turning the element off.
Anyway gotta go or I will miss today's tips. If you have heard any great housewifey tips recently, let's hear'em!
Wednesday, 11 November 2009
Really Funny Story Show
Today was an awful day weather wise here. It rained non-stop all day and it rained quite hard. I was again thankful that I didn't have any plans outside of my house today so I let K take the car to work instead of dropping him off and was therefore a kind of prisoner for a day. So I decided to give myself the day off. As in the day off from house work. Instead, I spent a while watching TV, got bored with the repitition of two particular news broadcasts that were replayed over and over on every channel. So I decided to watch a show that K recommended I watch when I had some time called 松本ひとしのすべらない話。Basically a bunch of comedians sit around a table and roll a dice with their names on it. The name that comes up is the person who has to tell the next funny story. Very simple kind of show. I usually can't really follow what they are on about as they talk so fast and use a lot of manly Japanese and Kansai Japanese, but today when I put on the subtitles and I could understand 80% of what was said! *pats self on the back*
Have a watch here before it disappears:
For those of you who don't speak Japanese, have a look and see if you can guess what the first guy is talking about...:) I will post a short summary tomorrow.
Have a watch here before it disappears:
For those of you who don't speak Japanese, have a look and see if you can guess what the first guy is talking about...:) I will post a short summary tomorrow.
Tuesday, 10 November 2009
My boring Tuesday
Gosh, how did it get to be Tuesday all of a sudden? and Tuesday is nearly over! I am feeling rather chuffed that I have enough to keep me occupied these days that it means I sometimes have other things to do rather than sit in front of my computer and think about something to post on my blog, which was pretty much my life for my first few months back in Japan.
Today was fantastic weather so I decided to bike the 6 km into town and back for work instead of doing my regular park the car at a supermarket and walk. Since I wasn't sure how long it would take me I left 10 minutes earlier than I needed to and got there in less than 25 minutes which is quite good considering one does occasionally have to stop at traffic lights. When I got to work I discovered that my boss hadn't showed up yet to unlock the office and so I sat outside and looked a bit like a homeless gaijin, sitting on the edge of planter box (so not the done thing, but benches in public spaces are nowhere to be seen here) and got stared at by passers by for about 20 minutes until she finally showed up.
After work I rode home again and managed not to get stopped by the police though they looked like they were up to something that may have involved our local pachinko palour, and nobody knocked me off my bike going down our main road which is so narrow that barely 2 cars can pass each other, which is still a lot wider than the actual street we live on where 2 cars definitely can't pass each other at all. So it was a great day all round really!
That is until this evening, when I developed a raging fever of 37.1 (ok, not really that raging as far as fevers go but I did feel like I was temporarily on fire) so now I am sitting here with one of those fever reducing patches stuck on my forehead, looking like a right prat, but feeling cooler. Perhaps I breathed in too many airborne bugs on my super athletic outing. Damn exercise!
Other good news for today was that the police have finally caught that guy who has been on the run for almost the last 3 years after a female British English teacher was found murdered in his apartment. I won't go into how mortifying it was that he escaped in the first place, but at least he is now in custody, despite having had plastic surgery several times, the most recent probably being his downfall.
Sorry for boring post! Sleep well!Have a good day!(depending on your time zone)
Today was fantastic weather so I decided to bike the 6 km into town and back for work instead of doing my regular park the car at a supermarket and walk. Since I wasn't sure how long it would take me I left 10 minutes earlier than I needed to and got there in less than 25 minutes which is quite good considering one does occasionally have to stop at traffic lights. When I got to work I discovered that my boss hadn't showed up yet to unlock the office and so I sat outside and looked a bit like a homeless gaijin, sitting on the edge of planter box (so not the done thing, but benches in public spaces are nowhere to be seen here) and got stared at by passers by for about 20 minutes until she finally showed up.
After work I rode home again and managed not to get stopped by the police though they looked like they were up to something that may have involved our local pachinko palour, and nobody knocked me off my bike going down our main road which is so narrow that barely 2 cars can pass each other, which is still a lot wider than the actual street we live on where 2 cars definitely can't pass each other at all. So it was a great day all round really!
That is until this evening, when I developed a raging fever of 37.1 (ok, not really that raging as far as fevers go but I did feel like I was temporarily on fire) so now I am sitting here with one of those fever reducing patches stuck on my forehead, looking like a right prat, but feeling cooler. Perhaps I breathed in too many airborne bugs on my super athletic outing. Damn exercise!
Other good news for today was that the police have finally caught that guy who has been on the run for almost the last 3 years after a female British English teacher was found murdered in his apartment. I won't go into how mortifying it was that he escaped in the first place, but at least he is now in custody, despite having had plastic surgery several times, the most recent probably being his downfall.
Sorry for boring post! Sleep well!Have a good day!(depending on your time zone)
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