blatant random silliness

Ukai Toriyama

One of the buildings that is in the area of Ukai Toriyama.  This building is on the list to be a UNESCO World Heritage Site.

On Sunday, we travelled with Culture Group to UkaiToriyama in Takao for a farewell party for Tom and Donna.  Tom is in the band with Denny, and they move Saturday back to the states.  Tom has been a part of culture group for a while now, and really stepped up when Denny and I couldn't come any longer because of Dylan.  I know he will be missed.

Our culture group in front of the restaurant "Toriyoroshi". From left to right, Tadashi-san, Wakako-san, Takagi Tadashi, Denko-san, Naito-san, Tom, Donna, Yukiko-san, Suetsugu-san, Mie-san, Denny, Dylan and I.

Sunday was a nice and clear day (but hot hot hot).  We met Tom and Donna at the train station and met the rest of culture group in the first car of the train heading for Tachikawa (where we changed trains for Takao).  We dressed Dylan in a traditional japanese outfit for boys called a "jimbei".  Unfortunately, he wasn't comfortable in it....we think it was too hot.  Luckily, I packed an extra lighter outfit for him just in case.  I nursed on the train for the first time.  It wasn't too crowded and Denny sat next to me.  It worked out pretty well.  Once we arrived in Takao, we took a taxi to Ukai Toriyama.  I'm not sure of the meaning of Ukai, but Toriyama means "bird mountain".  It is located in a beautiful wooded setting and is a collection of buildings (some very old) and tea houses.

One of the treasures inside the old house Denny took a tour through.

So, yeah, Denny is a bit taller than most Japanese people. *grin*

Dylan and I sat in a nice gazebo next to a little waterfall and had a snack while everyone else wandered through a very old house (that is on the list to be a UNESCO World Heritage Site).  Denny took some photos so I could see the inside too.  Then we took a walk around the grounds over lovely bridges and tea houses to an area with foliage and flowers.  There is also a firefly house that I'm sure is really cool to see at night.  Dylan loved all of the rushing water...there were lots of fountains and mini-waterfalls everywhere.

Denny, Dylan and I after Dylan's snack in the gazebo.

Dylan and I follow everyone across the bridge.  Tasashi-san is right in front of us.  He is the "sensei" of our group.

I love this photo Denny took of me walking across the stepping stones.  It looks so nice in black and white.

At the end of our walk was this firefly house accessible by a boardwalk.

Dylan and I follow Tadashi-san back into the restuarant.

Lunch was in our own little teahouse.  We had a couple of vegetable dishes to start.  And then they brought in small charcoal grills that fit into the table for us to grill our own chicken on.  Everything was tasty, and I'm sorry I didn't get photos of the food...we were too busy baby wrangling for that.  We really enjoyed seeing everyone from culture group and taking part in a traditional Japanese meal.

After his lunch and some playing, it was time for Dylan to have a nap.  Which, luckily, he took in my lap.  By the way, chopsticks are great for eating when you only have one hand.

Such a sweet little face!

From the end of the table:  Yukiko, Naito, Wakako, Tom and Donna.

From the end: Denko (who must've stepped out for a minute), Suetsugu, Tadashi, Mie, and Takagi Tadashi.

The view of the garden from our teahouse.

Dylan perked up a bit after his nap.  Here he is chewing on a fan that Naito-san gave us.

Before too long he was tired again and resting his sweet little head on my leg.

culture group party

WEDNESDAY, July 13

On Wednesday, we finally had a chance to introduce Denny's parents to the trains here in Japan. We took the train to Tachikawa to have lunch and do a bit of shopping. My big purchase of the day was a 6GB microdrive for my Nikon D70. It was the same price as a high speed 2GB compact flash card. (I should note that 2 of my 1GB cards have gone missing, so our Nikko trip I had to shoot mostly in JPEGS instead of RAW...hence the looking at memory cards) I have been quite happy with it. No more changing the memory card. I can fit 1000+ photos on one card. I had a chance to test it with our trip to Kyoto and Osaka the following weekend.

Wednesday night was culture group night. Our friend Mie from culture group offered to dress Sue up in a kimono and me in my yukatta. Sue really enjoyed the experience.....so did I. We wore our outfits to dinner at a nice japanese restaurant.

I put together a frame of small photos from our trip as well as a larger framed photo for Suetsugu-san and Kayoko-san as a thank you. Everyone helped me pick just the right image. The consensus was for this photo taken at Nikko Tamozawa Imperial Village:

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On Thursday we rode the bus into downtown Tokyo to the New Sanno Hotel. We left Sue and Ward's big luggage there as we were heading to Kyoto on the Shinkansen the next day and when we came back we were staying at the New Sanno the night before they left. After the trip in and back we relaxed and prepared for our shinkansen trip on Friday.

origins of sushi, part 2

At culture group last night, we renewed our discussion of sushi (see the original origins of sushi post for where our discussion started). Suetsugu-san brought a powerpoint presentation about the origins of sushi. Very interesting.

Sushi originated in the mountainous area of Southeast Asia (the areas of Myanmar, Laos and Vietname). It was a way to preserve river fish or other animal meat using rice. This way of preservation went to China, then came to Japan together with rice cultivation.

The word Sushi is a japanese word meaning "sour". The definition of sushi is basically "fish + rice + vinegar"....vinegar is either added or produced during fermentation. In Narezushi, vinegar is produced during fermentation. This process can take up to a year or more. The starch in the rice is changed to sugar and then to acid and is transferred to the fish to preserve it. "Nare" means "adaptation", "takes time to get adjusted". In Hayazushi, vinegar is added to the fish and rice. This is a quicker process. "Haya" means quick.

The flowchart of the evolution of sushi looked something like this:

Nare-zushi
To make nare-zushi, the oldest style of sushi, you would layer rice and salted fish and rice and salted fish in a wooden bucket-like container, then seal it up. The photos Suetsugu-san had, showed this process of layering. When the rice became sour, fresh rice would be added. As the fermentation process happened gases would build up..so there was an outlet for the gas to escape. This process takes up to a year or more.

Funa-zushi
Funa-zushi was made with river fish and rice. Funa-zushi is a type of nare-zushi. It was popular (and still found today) around Biwa-ko (Biwa Lake) near Kyoto and Nara. This type of sushi was made during the Nara era (around 700). Rice was used for fermentation but discarded at the end of the process and only the fish was eaten. This process takes up to a year or more. Also takes a lot of rice. As the rice is completely fermented it changes into a creamy paste and the smell is like some blue cheeses have.

Nana-nare
Nana-nare means "half-fermented". This style of sushi originated in the Muromachi era (1450-1500). Basically, the process would be stopped as soon as the rice became sour, and the fish would be eaten.

I-zushi
Thinly sliced turnip and slated yellowtail are layered interchangeably. Koji is added for fermentation. This sushi is sometimes called the Japanese version of Korean kimchi. Koji is steamed rice, wheat, beans, fusima or huka (bran) mixed with koji bacteria. It's used to produce dake, soy sauce, soybean sauce and miso. It is also sometimes called malted rice. A version of i-zushi is Akita Hatahato-zushi that is traditionally prepared for the new year.

Sugata-zushi, Boh-zushi
Kyoto is famous for this type of sushi, also known as saba-zushi. The saba (mackeral) is taken out of the rice in the middle of transition from fermentation to adding vinegar. Vinegar is added to the fish and the bone is removed. The fish is thinly sliced. The rice is steamed and mixed with veingar, salt and sugar. Rice is made into bars and the saba is put on it and tightly wrapped. The saba-zushi keeps for 3 days in summer and 7 days in winter.

Unohara-zushi
In unohara-zushi, okara (bean curd refuse) is used in place of rice.

Ii-zushi
On top of the rice with vinegar, fish meat and other ingredients such as egg are put. A sushi box is used to press.

Nigiri-Zushi
Nigiri-zushi first apperas in literature around 1820. It is a relatively new version of sushi. It is said that Hanaya Yohei in Ryogoku made nigiri-zushi popular using fish caught in Tokyo Bay. Nigiri-sushi is a ball of rice topped with raw fish. At that time tuna was popular and not expensive. After WWII, nigiri-sushi became very popular and the by-word of sushi.

Katairi gomoku-zushi
A sushi-box is used to press this kind of sushi. Rice and ingredients are layered and press for 4-5 hours. This sushi is famous in Nagasaki.

Chirashi-zushi
This typ eof sushi is easy to prepare at home. It's ingredients are thinly sliced fish, eggs and vegetables.

Inrou-zushi
Also known as inari. Inrou is a small holder for medicine. It was mainly used in Edo era dangled from an obi belt. One of the shapes of inari is the inrou shape. Inari-zushi is a popular inrou-zushi first created around 1830 in the Nagoya area. Sushi rice is placed inside of a deep fried bean curd. In western Japan other ingredients are added also.

Maki-zushi
Maki-zushi are what most Americans think of when they think of sushi. Maki are sushi rolls...such as the California roll. This is the newest form of sushi.

And so you have Suetsugu-san's presentation on sushi. It's very interesting how in different parts of Japan, sushi has a different meaning than what i means here in Tokyo or in the west.

After the sushi discussion we switched to a wholly western food....s'mores. Our japanese friends had never had them before...and they really really liked them. Yum.

origins of sushi

We had an interesting discussion last night in Culture Group about sushi.  Denny posed the question "how old is sushi?"  Tadashi-san and Suetsugu-san answered that they thought sushi came about during the Edo period...about 400-600 years ago.  Suetsugu-san went on to say that he thought because of the lack of refrigeration during that time period, that the original sushi was cooked and/or stored in vinegar to keep it fresher.  I asked if there was any story or myth about the beginnings of sushi....that is there homework.  So, hopefully, I'll have more information next week on this topic.  It was interesting to hear everyones favorite and least favorite sushi. Tuna won with the most people calling that their favorite.  Tomago (egg) had a vote, as did Akagai (ark shell) [I've never heard of this one...may just order it sometime to see what it is] and Uni (sea urchin).  My favorite is Saba (mackerel) which got a great reaction from our japanese friends.  They said that saba can go bad quickly, so most sushi chefs store it in vinegar to keep it fresh.  And that most people who like saba are sushi experts.  Which is highly amusing to me...being as that I haven't tried THAT much sushi in order to be called an expert.  Most of our japanese friends had no least favorite...a couple dislike boiled shrimp sushi cause its the cheapest and not so great.  Denny and I both have intense dislike for Uni (sea urchin)--it kind of smells like a fart and doesn't taste good at all (in Uni's defense, we've only tried it once...and only because it was on a sushi platter....evidently, it's a really expensive sushi and is best tried when it's super fresh).  We also don't like some non-traditional sushi items that are used in rolls...Natto (fermented soybeans) and Ume (pickled plum).  Our friend Cassey who has lived here for 7 years likes both of these...she says its a matter of having lived here long enough that you develop the taste for it.  We'll see.  What's your favorite sushi?  least favorite?

ready for the ocean

We are so excited about our trip this weekend.  We are going to the Izu Peninsula to go sea kayaking! I've been making random lists of things we need to take for the camping part of the trip.  I actually found my old Girl Scout mess kit to take along.  We haven't had a weekend away together (just us, no company, no band members) in a long, long, time.  Our friends Jen and Raul are coming on the trip as well, so we have some people to hang out with, but we are all couples so we understand the couple time as well.  Very cool. Last night we went for Sushi at our favorite sushi place–Santa Sushi with our friend Cassey.  She has a new cameraphone so we both stopped to take photos of dogs and flowers and things along the way.  Culture group was nice last nice.  Suetsugu-san has offered to be our tour guide this summer when we take Denny's parents to Nikko.  He is going to put together a plan to present to Culture Group so that he can get their input.  And he considers this training for him, so he doesn't want anything in return. We are so amazed at his generosity.

a japanese easter

Last night at culture group we decorated easter eggs. None of them had ever experienced it before...and we had a great time showing them an American tradition. It was really cool to see everyone's unique decorating style, whether it was lots of stickers, using sponge paint, or simply drawing on the egg and then coloring it.

The egg above was drawn by Naito-san. It reads "bunny is pounding rice cake on the moon". I'll have to pay attention next time there is a full moon here....they see a rabbit on the moon (as opposed to the man on the moon)."

japanese sounds

Back to sleepy again. *grin*

We just returned from the Ome Fireworks Festival. There is absolutely nothing like watching a fireworks show with thousands of Japanese people. They tend to view the fireworks with a childlike innocence and they ooh and aah and clap throughout the show. And a Japanese ooh and aah is very different from an American ooh and aah. Their sound is more like a short e.......like eeeehhhhhhhhhhhhh....starting lower pitched and then raising up as it goes on. They also do mmmmmmmmmmmmm with the same type of pitch sound. Denny and I giggled at this quite a bit (we've noticed these sounds before tonight, but when you are in that big of a group, it makes you giggle).

Denny with Mie, Wakako and Yukiko.

We met three friends from culture group--Mie, Wakako and Yukiko at the station and they lead us up to the top of a hill where the fireworks display was happening. Wakako had secured seats for us in a VIP area. They brought us each a box dinner with onigiri (rice shaped into a triangular shape with a seaweed wrap), little square sandwiches, yaki-tori (chicken on a stick), purin (a custard pudding), suica (watermelon). It was drizzling rain, so we had our umbrellas up (as did most everyone else). We were right under the fireworks...it was like sitting on the front row at the movies...our necks are a bit sore now (I joked with Mie, ""are we going for massages afterwards?""). We got to the fireworks about 7:30 and they had been going on for a little while before we got there. It ended at 8:45. It was a very impressive display....Denny and I both agree they were the best fireworks we'd ever seen. They had three areas that the fireworks came up from and the center ones were always so huge they seemed to take up the whole sky. They had a lot of moments where they were shooting from all three locations at once...and they did some really cool things with this. We'll have to take the video camera and hope it doesn't rain next year. At the end they had a long thing that stretched from one end of the field to the other and it lit up and changed from red to green to white with sparkles falling down.

Fireworks photos.

I mean to look this up when I posted the photos from the Fussa Tanabata Festival this morning, but forgot. So here is the background on the Tanabata Festival:

This is a festival in which children and young women find much enjoyment. Fairylike in its fantasy is its legend: That on the eve of July 7 Shokujo, or Weaver Princess Star, is supposed to meet Kengyu, or Herdboy Star, on the bank of the Amanogawa (River of Heaven), or Milky Way, for their annual tryst. Veda is the Princess Star, Altair, the Herdboy Star - the stars known as Lila Aquila. the legend back of this meeting is that the celestial princess, daughter of the celestial king, a most skillful weaver and the embodiment of industry, while engaged in weaving cloth for the king's garments, fell in love with a handsome lad, a cowherder, and as a reward for her diligent industry the king allowed them to marry. But so much in love were they that the princess gradually neglected her weaving and the herder allowed his cows to stray, which so experated the king that he finally separated the coupld forcing them to remain on opposite side of the Mily Way, and permitting them to approach each other only one a year. But there is no bridge over the Milky Way and the princess, on her first visit, wept so bitterly at the impossibility of meeting her husband that she roused the sympathy of a Kasasagi (magpie) who assured her that a bridge would be contrived for her. This was done, the magpies with wings spread forming a bridge on which the princess crossed. but, further says the legend, if the eve of July 7 is rainy the magpies will not form the bridge and the celestial lovers must wait another year before meeting.

Although the modern celebration of Tanabata varies widely according the localities, a common feature of this festival is the display of bamboo branches decorated with long narrow strips of colored paper and other small ornaments and talismans. The paper strips are inscribed with poems expressing the wish for fulfillment of romantic aspirations, young firls firmly believe that when they observe the festival earnestly, they would gain skill in weaving and sewing. The decorated bamboo branch is tied to a pole and placed in front of the house. At the end of the Tanabata festivies, the bamboo branches are thrown into a river to be carried away, thereby dispelling misfortune, or are placed in rice paddies as a meas of repelling insects or as a thanksgiving offering for what is hoped will be a bounteous harvest.

pickup lines

Last night was our weekly culture group. Sometimes we get into some interesting discussions there....because there are words in English that we have to explain to the Japanese people in the group. Like a couple of weeks ago, one of the girls in the class wanted to know what ""hootchie"" meant (Keith had mentioned a ""hootchie mama"" before, but wouldn't tell them what it meant). One of the men had his electronic dictionary and typed in hootchie and it came up with ""hootchie coochie"" which is a type of belly dancing...and of course we all cracked up at hearing that. So we launched into a discussion of slang words...like ""pimpin"", ""bling"" (and bling-bling), ""hoopty"", and so on. So very amusing trying to explain what these words mean.

So last night, they asked how Denny and I met. And he was telling the story and then said what his ""pick-up line"" was. They hadn't heard the term ""pick-up line"" before...so we had to try and explain. What was so very amusing was that one of the men was writing down pick-up line in his little notebook so he wouldn't forget. So we explained that a ""pick-up line' is what a guys uses to try and get a girl to go out with him. Then they wanted some examples, so we tried to come up with some--like ""whats your sign?"" and some of the sillier ones like ""are your arms tired? cause you were flying around my dreams last night"". So then, a little later they asked Denny why he went to Georgia and he said, "" because that's where she was (pointing at me)"", and the fellow who had been taking notes said...""ahhhhh....a pickup line!"". *grin*

And a side note...today is our 4th anniversary. Planning on getting dressed up and going somewhere nice to eat today.

Oh, and the new Edie Brickell album is really good.