O-cha is Tea

The tea of Japan is green tea, but it comes in a zillion different varieties. When I went to Japan in 2011, I knew sencha was the regular old green tea, which was not always completely green, but definitely tea. Then there is "matcha", which doesn't really have a "t" in the middle, so much as a tiny pause/tsu before the cha part. I knew matcha was the good stuff, the tea ceremony stuff, the GREEN stuff. The tea that is put into soft serve ice cream, cake, sauces, candy, good stuff. So, I went up to the store clerk and asked desperately for matcha.
"Matcha? Do you have matcha? Matcha."
What I ended up with was genmaicha. I only figured it out with I got home and found weird little brown specks in with my dried green leafy parts.

This was not matcha! This was not powdered, clearly, but what about the taste? I tried it and it was so far from sencha or matcha that I dismissed it as terrible and put it away. I found out this "genmaicha" had brown rice in with the tea leaves. Rice tea? That's madness!

 But it's been in my pantry for a while, and might as well give it another go. I was a little inspired by this guy, a Japan foodie and tea lover. He makes all sorts of ooh-ing and ah-ing over such unknown-to-me tea as fukamushi, which is like extra roasted sencha but in a rich, flavorful way. Maybe I need to broaden my tea horizon if I'm visiting Japan next month. I give it another go.

The directions clearly state that you need a kettle and ....spoon...and....probably water... Why can't Rikaichan work in real life?

I enlisted the assistance of an expert tea drinker and friend, and we went with not-quite-boiling water poured into a tea straining apparatus.

Quickly, it is becoming tea!

Into the mug it strains pure tea goodness. Or liquid death. Which is it?

The reality is, it does indeed taste like rice in a subtle green tea way. It wasn't that bad, actually, but it did seem to be a bit soup-like in flavor. My friend suggests pouring it over tea, and I plan to do so soon.

1,000 Yen Machine

One of the oddball encounters during my 2011 group trip to Japan was a quirky vending machine.

Yes, for just 1,000 yen you could get...something! Perhaps an iPod! Perhaps socks! As I recall, the people who actually tried this out wound up with a tiny half towel or the socks...

The Garden of Words

46 minutes, but it packs a punch. Not in a Trigun blazing guns or Girls und Panzer tank driving girls kind of way, but in a roooooomance way.

Boy meets woman, woman drinks beer with chocolate, boy dreams of being a shoe designer and yet is completely heterosexual. The age difference is an interesting element in this romance, and I have a thing for anime with any arts/crafts/hobby element, even though the shoe thing is not an essential part.

Anyway, tight story, and the high school guy is pretty rock solid cool in a I-can-tell-you-I-love-you-without-breaking-a-sweat kind of way.  Just look at him eating omrice with a grown woman like it was just another day.

I like that in the end, there is a disclaimer about the park. It’s a fictional story, but a real park, so they felt you needed to know that the beer-and-chocolate thing is strictly prohibited.

In conclusion, I think this movie should be called "In the Garden of Feet."

Turning Japanese by Cathy Yardley

Turning Japanese

The go-pursue-your-non-English-teacher-career-in-Tokyo concept is the dream of many Japan lovers. Lisa is half-Japanese, so we don’t have the language barrier, but she’s still an outsider foreigner. And who doesn’t want a fictional insider’s view of a manga studio?

 Lisa won a manga contest, so this year long internship in Tokyo is a dream come true. But of course, now that she’s on the bottom rung of the group, life is not all genki maids and mecha guys. She traces lines all day, nothing that requires any imagination, and not too much skill. Her homestay life with a Japanese family is pretty dismal with an obnoxiously loud shut-in gamer boy and a party till the wee hours teen girl. Sleep is iffy.

But she pulls herself out of her hole of despair, setting out to do an original manga project that puts her at odds with the office talent. She is not letting herself be the nail that gets beaten down- she’s carving out her own life, and causing her back-home fiancé to wonder where she’s putting her priorities.

Truthfully- I thought this book was going to be crap. I thought it was going to be all dreamy Japan fantasy with no reality and little cultural understanding.  It surprised me how well it stood up. I can’t say it’s in the top 10 Japan-set books of all time, but definitely worth a look.

I Try to Make Wagashi

One super mega traditional Japanese food offering is wagashi (和菓子), and if you do a search, you'll find hordes of it's-too-pretty-to-eat mounds shaped into flowers and bird nests and artful masterpieces.
We found these at the Tsukiji Fish Market:

They range from wow to OMG, how many hours did they spend on that thing?

Traditionally, they are filled with red bean paste and eatted up with a traditional bamboo stab-it device that I don't know the name of. Actually, "wagashi" is a pretty broad term, and it comes in a fairly wide variety of forms, including those little red bean pancake things, I think. If you check out Cookpad, you'll see a lot of the home cook'n variety are basically plain old red bean wagashi or a sweet potato variety that look a little less impressive, but still have that old Japan taste.
I grabbed the first recipe I saw and went to work.

Okay! I need:
150 grams of dried beans
Buncha sugar, but not in an American way
little bit of salt
water
agar agar - 4 grams isn't much

And then, and then...okay let's try Google translate...

It doesn't say to soak, but I a bean soaker by nature, so I start there.

It seems like the red kinda bleeds off, doesn't it?

Whatever, I drain and start the cook'n.

Go beans, go! Trivia: "To boil" = 沸かす (wakasu) or maybe 沸騰する (futtou suru)

Okay, the beans seem fairly mushy after a while, probably 20 minutes or so. I let it sit, because it so frick'n hot. 15 minutes later, I guess it's time to "subject the beans and broth to the mixer" or whatever. Die, beans, die!

I guess it looks okay...

Now it looks like we have to return it to the pot to boil up with the sugar and agar for a couple minutes. Okay. Oh, and, not that you care, but I actually got an excuse to open up that sugar I bought from Mitsuwa last Fall.

Some people say it tastes different. The reality is, it's castor sugar instead of granulated sugar, and maybe it's more like the texture is different? Whatever, it's special and I don't care. And then we add the tiny bit of agar agar, the stuff that is (correct me if I'm wrong) made from seaweed of some sort? Slightly more vegan. Not that I'm vegan, but I kind of appreciate the more edible nature of plants.

It kept flipping between 3 and 4, so good enough.
Add in the pot, and boom!

I prepped a container...

It doesn't say anything about plastic wrap, but I think it makes it easier (if slightly more wrinkly in texture...).
And I was so glad to be done...

...that I forgot the "poured in type from the strainer 3" part. In other words, if I wanted silky smooth wagashi, I needed to strain it. Crap. Well, that TOO BAD! *sulk*

It was still good. I brought it to a party, describing it as red bean jello, but I think next time I'll call it a vegan red bean brownie. Maybe that will spiff it up for them. And next time I WILL STRAIN IT!

Japanese Penpals

Japanese Penpals

Trying to study Japanese? May the gods of language have mercy on your soul. No, haha! It’s not that bad. Until someone explains how many kanji there are and how many readings they have. Then you decide to go for Spanish, just like everyone said.

Hola desu.

No, no, wait! You can do it! And one of the major cornerstones of language leaning is using said language. Practice it. Sure, you can use a journal. But when it doesn’t talk back, it’s just disappointing.  Better idea- getting a real life Japanese person to bounce your sad little Kindergarten sentences off of. Even if you don’t want to practice Japanese, and you just want a penpal from Japan, great- all the better for them to practice English.

The key is to find Japanese sites, not English/American ones. That way you stand out better and are more likely to get a million replies to a penpal request.

My go-to penpal emporium, Japan Guide:   http://www.japan-guide.com/local/?aCAT=2

Japan Guide has 2 sites- this is the one for friends, not romantic conquests. Go to the other one for that. Here, you can find penpals from around the globe. Even Slovenia. Search by gender, language, occupation, age, and hobbies. Looking for a Japanese engineer lady in her 40’s who loves to ikebana on the weekend? Well, that’s too bad, there are none. Don’t be so picky.

On the other hand, there seems to be billions of office workers who like travel and movies. Many of them have sketchy English. Many may say they can teach you Japanese, but unless you’re an advanced Japanese learner, you may want someone a little more English savvy to bounce your questions off of. Some folks are seeking to Skype. Some just email. Some snail mail. Remember snail mail?

Has anybody tried any of these below?

http://www2u.biglobe.ne.jp/~kice/jpal/

http://www.pfc.post.japanpost.jp/english/about/

www.hipenpal.com

If you want to boost the number of replies you get, add some Japanese to your intro．おはようございます！　よろしく etc etc.

And on the topic of language sharing, I can’t forget to mention Lang8. Review to come. It’s less personal, but very effective. Some people post journal-like entries in their other language. Some post stories. Some just toss out a direct question.