Page 4 of 6

Sumo Food: Chanko Nabe

January 15, 2014 / enroutetoawesome / 2 Comments

I know! I’m late! I promised Beans this recipe ages ago, though, so I really wanted to wait for nabe night!

Vegetarian readers are also safe to stay this time! I’ll offer a few options for de-meating the dish as we go.

Those of you who are familiar with Kyuushockers will already know that our school lunches tend to be a bit light on the vegie side of things. Nabe is one of my favourite ways of making up for this; it’s an easy way to get HEAPS of vegies into yourself, without having to work very hard. Kin also approves of nabe because it doesn’t make a lot of dishes; all of the ingredients are popped into the communal stockpot, and you haul out whatever you fancy to eat, replacing ingredients as the pot empties.

Nabe ingredients differ with the season (which is a nice way of saying “with what’s on special at the supermarket/going leggy in the garden”). If you don’t have all of the ingredients in this recipe, leave them out or replace them with something else. Greens are greens, roots are roots; I would only recommend that if you’re having trouble sourcing/affording asian mushrooms, buy them dried or leave them out.

Dashi (Stock)

This is my weeknight dashi; I get a little more elaborate on the weekend. Take a piece of kombu, (dried kelp) around 20 cm by 10 cm and wipe off any white residue with a damp cloth. Soak the kombu in a litre of water for at least half an hour. Hell, leave it in there and go to work; it’ll be fine when you get home. Gently heat the water (skimming occasionally if you can be bothered; I can’t) until it is almost boiling, then whip out your kombu and discard it.

Next comes katsuo. Since it’s a weeknight, I’m using dashi granules, which are available at any asian grocery and, these days, probably at supermarkets as well. They tend to come in a blue packet and will have instructions on the side (even if the instructions are in Japanese, just look at the numbers; you’ll work it out). Mine comes in sachets to be used with 600ml of water; I’m using two and a half and adding 500ml to my kombu stock, so now I have 1500ml all up. Since I’m using dashi granules, the stock will be a little scummy on top; if that bothers you, give it a skim before you go any further.

If you are vegetarian, dried shiitakes make a gorgeous alternative to fish-based dashi; just pour boiling water over about eight of them in a saucepan and leave them to soak. You get mushrooms AND dashi! Kin and I aren’t vegetarian, but shiitake dashi is one of our favourites.

Now that your stock is prepped, you just need to pop it into your nabe pot (a big saucepan will do) and stick it on the hotplate. I then add a shake (probably about 50ml) of soy sauce and about the same of mirin. Tonight, we’re also having a dash of ponzu in there as well, just because we like it. Once it’s boiling, you’re ready to start adding ingredients!

Ingredients

Vary as desired; the dashi is the important bit.

Chicken and/or fish (or extra mushrooms and cottony tofu for the vegos!)
Tofu
Udon noodles (fresh or dried). We’re also having konnyaku noodles!
Flavourings (chopped green onion, grated ginger and garlic chives)
Sliced root vegetables (One medium carrot and about 15cm of lotus root)
Leafy greens (Pak choy, bok choy, chrysanthemum greens and about a quarter of a wombok)
Mushrooms (shiitake and enokitake)

The quantities are up to you. The first time you make it, try a bunch of each thing and see if you need more or less. The best order to pop things into your stock is:

Meat…

Then flavourings…

Then root vegies…

Then go mad and throw in whatever you’d like!

On nabe nights, cooking and eating happen simultaneously, so you’ll only need a very small bowl each, with a soup spoon and chopsticks. You’ll also need at least one slotted spoon and a ladle for scooping out your dinner! When the ingredients you fancy are ready, ladle them into your bowl, devour them, then ladle out some more. Keep topping up the pot until everyone is full. (Needless to say, meat is the ONE ingredient that absolutely cannot be added later, unless you’re going to let the soup boil by itself for a little while). If you don’t have a portable hotplate, you can also prepare your nabe on the stove.

Traditionally, rice or noodles were added at the very end of the meal and then enjoyed in the soup, but Kin and I enjoy our noodles with the rest of the ingredients, so we stick them in a few at a time and haul them back out as we fancy them.

Chanko nabe is warming, hearty winter comfort food that still manages to be extremely high in fibre and nutrients. I love it after workouts and Kin loves it any time at all, especially since he gets the leftovers for breakfast. Nabe is also cheap (because you toss in whatever you can get) and super-fun to serve to guests!

What are your go-to dishes in winter?

Gem

Cheep Cheep: Budget Roast Chicken

January 6, 2014 / enroutetoawesome / 0 Comments

This week’s recipe: Roast chicken and stuffing, roast vegetables (with super-crunchy potatoes) and steamed greens with basil and parsley.

Hopefully any vegetarian readers have already fled; if not, please be warned: Today’s post is not for you! If that first shot wasn’t enough to put you off, the ones below definitely will! Why don’t you try this blog or this one today instead?

Kin is very eager to practice his food photography and a couple of other people have suggested we include a regular recipe section. I’m not sure how well I’ll manage it; I’m not a trained chef or dietician and I don’t really intend to become a food blogger. That being said, I can boast of one skill that I’m not convinced all food bloggers possess: I am capable of producing decent mails on a daily basis. You probably won’t see perfectly swirled berry tarts or bowls of glossy pasta with one salmon egg and a single piece of cress balanced on top, but you will know that the dishes you see here can be cheaply reproduced and are usually manageable on a weeknight timetable. Also, unlike most food photographers, Kin actually has to EAT the dish once he’s finished photographing it, so he has a vested interest in maintaining flavour, rather than appearance.

Roast chicken is one of my favourite weapons in my personal war against the “real food is expensive” brigade. One small chook with stuffing will give two people a massive dinner, a couple of decently hefty lunches (think sandwiches or chicken salads), wings for snacking and a carcass to make into soup. I defy you to get that out of KFC. Roasting a chicken is also super easy! The only slightly tricky bit is the stuffing, but if you make it the day before, there’s no hassle involved.

Today’s stuffing is a fairly basic one; the main flavours come from onion, bacon and this little champion here:

That’s sage, one of the nicest herbs I know for flavouring meat. With care, it will grow into an attractive silvery-leafed shrub. With abuse, it will grow into stunted, silvery-leafed sticks, but will still survive to flavour your food, no matter how badly you treat it. I like that in a plant. Dried sage is also easy to find in shops and the flavour is decent.

Breadcrumbs provide the bulk of your stuffing; you’ll need about four slices with the crusts cut off (we use wholemeal, but it isn’t important). If you have a food processor, toss your bread in and blitz it to crumbs. If not, cut it bread into the smallest cubes you can. Place it in a bowl, and season with pepper and salt. Add any herbs you fancy finely chopped or processed; tonight our pots have provided parsley, thyme and a little rosemary, but if you don’t have fresh herbs, don’t go out and buy them. A shake from a jar of dried herbs will do nicely.

Heat a tablespoon of oil in a frying pan (med-high) and drop in about three leaves of sage. Let them frizzle and crisp for a moment, then reduce the heat to medium and toss in one finely chopped brown onion and two – three rashers of bacon, also trimmed and finely chopped. Cook, stirring for three minutes, or until onion is soft and translucent. Dump this into your breadcrumbs and mix it around with a wooden spoon. See if, when you squeeze the mixture in your fist, it keeps its shape. If not, try adding an egg, a little milk or some melted butter to bind it together. Once the mess is moist enough to hold a shape without being sticky, it’s ready to go.

Get your oven preheating to about 190°celsius (a little up or down won’t matter). Give your (thawed) chook a good wash with cold water, including inside the cavity. Dry it off with paper towels or tea towels if you plan to wash them right away. Then, trim off any fat you don’t fancy, shove in your stuffing and secure the cavity with toothpicks. Lightly oil and salt the outside (if you want to) and put it in the oven, breast side down for thirty minutes.

I also include a head of garlic during this first part of the cooking time (garlic needs very little time to roast) for use in soups and sauces through the week. Just stick it in the fridge and it will keep almost forever.

For a weeknight dinner, I don’t do anything very elaborate with the veg; I usually toss them in a small amount of olive oil and season them with garlic powder and chopped rosemary. Ditto the greens; today’s are a combination of broccoli and beans, steamed for two minutes. After two minutes, I add spinach, flat leafed parsley, basil and a tiny wodge of butter and steam the lot for one more minute.

Potatoes, however are a serious matter. For super crunchy spuds without a lot of oil, peel, chop and then par boil them (starting from cold) for ten minutes until the outside is soft. Drain your potatoes, then toss them in their sieve to break up their outsides. Then tumble them in your oil and seasonings.

Put your potatoes and other baking veg on a tray together (tonight we’re having pumpkin, onion, carrot and finger eggplant). Once your chicken has been in the oven for thirty minutes, turn it breast side up and put it on the lower oven shelf, with your tray of vegies on the top shelf. Also take this time to pour off and store and juices collected on the tray; you’ll want them for gravy or soups.

After half an hour, add your soft vegies (this is when I actually add the eggplant), like tomatoes, zucchini or capsicum. Wait another half hour and your dinner is done!

Once you’ve done your prep, this meal will cook quite happily without your supervision. You can have a bath, do some cleaning, entertain guests, whatever you’d like. If you’re the forgetful type, though, make sure you set a timer. You can also be really lazy if you want and just throw in all of your vegies at the one hour mark soft ones included; just don’t blame me if you end up with salsa!

Gem

P.S. I tried to keep the word count down, so I might have left something out. If you have any questions, just send me a message and I’ll clear it up.

Settling in to 2014

January 4, 2014 / enroutetoawesome / 1 Comment

By Gem

By the end of this year, we won’t be here any more!

The start of a new year has really brought it home to us; our time in this little apartment, in this little town is going to end in 2014! This place has become so much our own it’s hard to believe that, this time next year, it will belong to someone else. Time is suddenly a limited commodity.

But the start of a new year in Japan is a difficult time to manage any sense of urgency. New Years in Japan is like Christmas in Australia; it’s the time when the whole family get together and then just kind of sit around. For a week, the country shuts down, while people eat, gossip and walk to local shrines to pray for good fortune through the year. It’s not a time for exciting trips or big projects, but for kotatsu-snuggling, cups of tea and big bowls of mandarins.

Not to mention New Year cakes!

And other lovely things!

Right now though, we’re still in Nagahama and we still have things to do. On Monday, Japan restarts itself. Our evening classes will resume, our friends will return from their home countries and we will be back at our schools, doing our best to slide some English into stubborn little skulls.

At Kin’s school, there will be a continuation of the dramatic investigation into the identity of the elusive Dick Phantom; one of the boys (we assume) has developed a taste for penis-based graffiti. The Phantom spent the final months of 2013 creating elaborate, phallic extravaganzas over every wall and piece of furniture a kid that age could reach. These works don’t show a lot of dedication to accuracy, but, particularly toward the end of the year, a real focus seems to have been given to scale. We can only imagine that his scope will expand in 2014.

I never really feel I’ve left my school, as half of it seems to live in this building. The very, very small first-grader with the very, very big eyes has finally worked up the courage to ask why I seem to spend so much time here. Her eyes got even bigger when I told her this is where I live!

Although Kin and I enjoyed the Japanese-style New Year, in time-honoured Western fashion, we have made a resolution or two; or rather, have reviewed how our Tanabata wishes and our everyday goals are going.

This is one of Kin’s tanabata goals… or sort of. He never got to start those glass-blowing classes; the college filled up before his enrolment was processed! Instead, he’s been spending his weekends up to his elbows in clay and is having a wonderful time. His very, very earliest work (above) has just returned from the kiln.

Kin never made it to cooking class either but, on the domestic front, is now single-handedly responsible for the running of our household (a development we will share at a later date) and is getting better at it every day. And on the artistic front, with blue plastic document sheets, sticky tape and a stanley knife, he produced a photographic soft-box that make today’s pictures even nicer than usual!

And me?

As you can see, I didn’t learn to braid my hair; I cut it all off, instead! In my defence, though, this has made it a lot easier to reach my goal of learning to swim properly and I HAVE successfully poached an egg, so I think I’m still ahead of the game. I also finished my first knitting project!

Kin’s scarf is so long that he can (and does!) wrap it around his entire head to keep the wind off his face when he rides to work. I’ve started a scarf for myself, now and once that’s done, I’ll be ready to get a little more ambitious.

Learning to draw underwent a lengthy hiatus during our illness, but during this week of shutdown Japan, I’ve picked it back up. Kin is excited to share his skills with me; I think he’s too optimistic, but I’ll keep trying.

We’re ready for you, 2014. We might end the year in New South Wales, but we’re starting it in Shiga, and we’re going to enjoy every single day of both!

Gem

Happy New Year!

January 1, 2014 / enroutetoawesome / 2 Comments

By Gem

What a year it was and what a year it will be!

There we were in January 2013, huddled in our new(ish) Japanese apartment, sick, isolated, wretchedly cold and watching cloudy grey skies dump another few feet of snow on our already-buried bicycles (not to mention our defunct kitchen herbs). Venturing outside was frozen torment, while staying inside was chilly, miserable and soggy! The only place to find relief from the cold was the bathtub, but even this wasn’t safe. Both of us were so ill, the hot water made us horribly dizzy and, on at least one memorable occasion, almost knocked out a struggling Kin (who was running a spectacular fever at the time).

Here we are, in January 2014, in the same apartment in the same town, with the same grim skies dropping the same white stuff on us in big, crunchy drifts. We’ve even had very near facsimiles of the same viruses! But in 2013, we gradually learned things we needed to know to work with the situation. And this year, we’re warm, happy and having a great time!

We learned how to dress. Such an obvious thing to Northern Hemisphere folk, but a total mystery to two clueless Australians, whose usual response to winter is to simply pop a coat over their regular clothes. Here, we had to learn how to add layer upon layer before we stick the coat on top, then carefully plugging up all of the gaps with gloves, woolly scarves, mufflers, big socks, hats… you get the idea. It’s a complex process and we were starting from scratch, adding one element at a time, desperate to escape the horrible, face-freezing, bone-hurting cold outside. This year, our apartment is toasty warm, thanks to Kin developing sealing techniques with foam tape and our discoveries of various active heating methods, involving location changes, sunlight, cooking warmth and a small, very well-researched kerosene heater. Our most valuable plants are enjoying above-zero temperatures in a sunny space indoors and, importantly, we’ve learned that it is impossible to get around in snow without boots. Now that we know about boots and about which back roads regularly see the snowplough, isolation is no longer a problem.

The rather laboured point I’m trying to make here is that, during unhappy times, it isn’t always your situation that’s the problem. Once you’ve learned how to deal with a situation, a lot of the problems will vanish. Last year we were suffering. This year we aren’t. All that has changed is what we know and do. And the reason I’m making this point now, is that the internet is currently full of joy and optimism regarding the New Year (which is great!) together with happy certainty that this year everything will be different (which is NOT!)

This time next year, Kin and I will have left Japan behind, to return to Australia. On the outside, everything will be different. But when you look at our basic situation, nothing is going to change. We’ll still be married, so we’ll still spend each day experiencing the rewards (and demands) of life with another person. We’ll still need to earn money, maintain our home, nurture ourselves and manage our growth. And we’ll need to learn the skills and the information necessary for us to be able to do those things in the manner that we choose.

Were you suffering in 2013? What do you need to learn so that you don’t have to suffer any more? If you have no money for things that you need, perhaps you need to learn from a financial advisor. If you are miserable in your job, perhaps you need to learn work skills that will allow you to leave. If you are surrounded by people who are unkind to you, perhaps you need a counsellor or a sympathetic friend who will help you learn that you deserve kindness.

There is no need for you to suffer this year. You have the right to be happy. It is GOOD that you are full of joy and hope; a new year has just begun and wonderful things ARE going to happen in it. But that’s because we’re going to make them happen.

Don’t say to yourself “This year, things will be different.” Say “This year, I will be different!”

2014 is going to be an amazing year, because all of us together are going to MAKE it amazing! We will be positive! We will set goals! We will love and be loved! What will you learn?

Bring on the new year!

Gem

We’re Sorry!

December 29, 2013 / enroutetoawesome / 2 Comments

After a one-month hiatus, we are back Enroute!

We have been sick-sick-sick, which first made us slack-slack-SLACK and then, as we kept catching one disease after another, gradually worked up to a horrible sort of deep fatigue and existential misery, where, while both of us had enough energy to plod through our jobs, neither of us really felt that life was ever going to be worth living again.

Of course, we were ALSO doing this against a backdrop of Christmas and festival-based activities, which meant that we were constantly hauled out into the cold to do wonderful, sleep depriving things while we just wanted a quiet lie-down, so we felt like the only sniffly miserables in Japan. Well… most of it was still really great. But it still would have been nicer if we’d been healthy!

In the exhausting leadup to Christmas however, both of us began to notice small stirrings of something approaching an actual zest for life. Not massive, and never for very long, but it was definitely there. Then, after a glorious sleep-in on Christmas day, and a bit of time to spend together, it happened: We got our genki back!

And now, there’s no stopping us! Clear chested, strong limbed, and breathing through our noses, we are ready to face the world again!

Actually, that’s not altogether true; while Gem is here, cheerfully typing in first person plural, Kin is dying yet another death of a thousand cuts (all of them apparently to his tonsils). But he was healthy yesterday, damn it, and anyway, the winter holiday is finally here, so he’s tucked up under the kotatsu with a hot latte and a ten kilo box of mandarins (which is about all he asks out of life most of the time). It should take no time at all for him to feel better.

This gap period has been good though, as (prior to Kin’s relapse) we’ve been able to take a bit of distance from the blog and make some decisions about where we want to go with it. From a place for Gem to whine about her lunch, it started to develop into more of a journal and a then into a public way to hold ourselves accountable for plans we’ve made and actions we’ve taken (if you know you’re going to tell the internet about an argument with your spouse, for example, you tend to argue that little bit more reasonably!)

So we’ve made a few decisions about where we want to take ourselves and that means that some changes are going to be happen, possibly structural, definitely cosmetic and with a few content-fixes as well. That means things are going to disappear and reappear around here for the next month or so, while we get ourselves organised.

Some of the changes will be:

– Kyuushockers moving to a blog of their own. While we’re grateful to the kyuushoku followers for getting us to post on anything like a regular basis, just looking at that long roll of horrible lunches in the middle of the lovely memories we plan to treasure is frankly depressing. Sad to say, 98% of the traffic will probably go when the Kyuushockers do, but for semi-enthusiasts, regular updates will still be posted on Facebook. To those who were just here for the food (HA!) it was lovely having you, and Gem will see you at Kyuushockers!

– A new (but not very different) domain name. The Christmas gift of the domain “enroutetoawesome.com” (a not-so-gentle nudge from Shallow to get our arses back in gear) has allowed us to pretend we have our own little corner of the internet to figure this blogging thing out. Now we just have to work on getting the shagger to link up properly with Facebook.

– Re-writes, re-vamps, re-designs and a general wash and brush up to all areas of the site, with a slightly more sane approach to content. Up until now, both of us have just been flinging up whatever takes our fancy, whenever we feel like it’s been a while. Now, though, we’ve actually thought about the direction we want to go, what we want to share and what we’d like to achieve. That means ripping out most of the current stuff and shoving it back in where it fits better or getting rid of it altogether. 2014 is going to be our year for relevance of content! Of consistency, regularity and… Stop laughing! We mean it!

Okay, maybe we won’t have everything worked out right away. But bear with us and we’ll get there. Beginning with posting more than once a month and not missing major calendar events…

Merry Aprez-Christmas, everyone!

Gem and Kin

(Assorted respectful gestures of affection.)

Welcome to English Day!

November 28, 2013 / enroutetoawesome / 0 Comments

By Gem

The day that ALTs from all over Shiga come to chat and play games with our sixth graders, giving them a chance to meet people from a variety of nations and, hopefully, give them a chance to use their English in a social-setting. The kids spent several weeks making decorations and preparing little speeches and interviews for their guests, while Nanook took them through some small-talk conventions and discouraged them from yelling “BUTTS!” when there was a gap in the conversation.

As well as Nanook and I, the children were going to meet Prozac, Tank, Angel, Sailor and both Timbuktus.

The original Timbuktu was having a difficult English Day. Kin, as part of his long-term campaign of harassment, had recently decided to rename her. (Kin is actually quite fond of Timbuktu, but her anti-gay attitude infuriates him; in earlier semesters, they could talk reasonably about these things and for a while he had her converted, but since then he’s worked less at their shared school and she got a new homophobic preacher, so she’s unfortunately regressed. Q-tip, who attends the same church, has thankfully not picked up this attitude.)

“I’ve decided,” announced Kin, flinging an armload of sketches onto his desk, “From now on, I’m going to call you “Bigot”.”
Timbuktu, who is a gentle spirited person despite the inner nastiness encouraged by her church, cringed, certain she knew why, but still unable to resist asking.
“Well, with the new JETs here, we have two Timbuktus. Both of you are about the same height, so we can’t do “Big and Small Timbuktu”. You’re both from the U.S., so I can’t differentiate by nation. BUT, only one of you is a bigot! So, I can call you “Bigoted and Not-Bigoted Timbuktu, only yours turns into “Bigot” for short! It’s perfect!”

Deciding not to argue (in the interest of the illustrations he was currently producing for her) Timbuktu made her weary way to Nagahama Elementary, taking the chance to plead with me as we put up posters and stuck balloons on the wall.
“Can you do anything, Gem?”
“Nope.” I grinned a bit too, but compared to Kin’s, my grin is nothing. “We’ve got gay friends visiting again soon, and you’re going to embarrass everyone if you don’t get this out of your system.”

Timbuktu knows when she’s beaten, so she just set her shoulders and prepared for an afternoon’s chatter with dear little innocents.
…whose first question to her was “Do you have a girlfriend?”
“What?! No, I… Gem, what are you teaching them over here?”
“Don’t look at me,” I smirked, surrounded by my own little gang of journalists. “I haven’t taught these kids since February. Now, what were you asking me, Taro?”
“Where are you from?”
“Minna, shiteru! You know this! Where am I from?”
“………ehhhhhhhh……”
“Guys, come on, I taught you for almost a year. Kazoku ni atta! Where am I from?”
“America!”
“No!”
The kids shuffled a bit and whispered frantically to one another, while I glowered around the circle.
“Don’t say America! She gets really pissed off if you say America!”
“Where else is there?!”
The group searched their folders, rolled their eyes desperately around the room, then, noticing the last ALT they had spoken to, lit up with new confidence.
“Canada!”
“No!”
“Igirisu?”
“NO!”
“The… The USA?”
“That’s America again!”
Over their protests that there WASN’T anywhere else, I only just heard Timbuktu snigger.

Prozac, meanwhile, was having his life-choices evaluated by three earnest-browed girls in cardigans.
“How old are you?”
“I’m twenty six years old.”
“Do you have a girlfriend?”
“No, I don’t.”
“Do you have a boyfriend?”
“No, I don’t.”
…awkward pause….
“HOW old are you…?”

While Tim was wondering if she needed a stronger moisturizer.
“How old are you?”
“I’m twenty two.”
“NO WAY!!!!”

Deeply unhappy with the direction our lives were taking, the children fretted, tutted and advised us to change our ways.

Sailor’s group commiserated with her on her failure to find a husband (“Kids, I’m twenty eight!”) and wondered aloud if, at this age, she would ever manage to catch one. Mine expressed doubt as to whether my decrepit ovaries would ever be able to kickstart themselves when Kin and I finally decide to reproduce. Prozac’s desperate assurances that he just needed to meet the right person were met with skepticism so great it bordered on disdain. At our ages, the children felt, we were already halfway dead, yet none of us were doing anything worthwhile with the limited time left to us!

Basically, it was your typical, everyday conversation with twelve-year-olds. It was a relief when the interview section was completed and we moved on to activities. Each of us had prepared a game or dance, all of which went down well with the kids and we gradually got them to forget what miserable failures we all were as people. After collecting our autographs, the kids gave us each an origami crane covered in English messages and we all exited the gym.

Cheerful, despite a remaining trace of uncertainty regarding our life choices, we teachers retired to the meeting room to devour Pocky and minestrone-flavoured chips.

“It could be worse,” pointed out Tank, on his seventeenth stick. “Last week my second graders asked their teacher if his wife is cheating on him.”
“My third graders learned to say ‘SEX!’ from someone,” added Sailor. “And when they learn a new word, it’s all I hear.”
“Mine just learned how to say ‘Poop’,” confirmed a gloomy Tim.
“If only mine learned ANY English,” sighed Prozac. “My first graders spent our last lesson having a farting contest. The winner got to fart in anyone’s face.”
Pocky froze between packets and mouths as we all waited.
“I was too tall,” he added, and everyone relaxed again.

Aren’t children just a joy? Does anyone else work with the little darlings? What do yours come up with?

Gem

As ever, all drawings were produced by Kin. Don’t tell him I used these ones though, because he doesn’t like them much!

Goodness Gracious!

October 30, 2013 / enroutetoawesome / 0 Comments

By Kin

T-shirt design finished!

The “client” is the rest of the JETs in Shiga; it’s a contest for the prefecture. We had to try and come up with something that really symbolised Shiga.

The figure on the right of my design is a Tanuki (or Raccoon Dog; they look nothing like this, but the figure is modeled after the common Tanuki statue you see everywhere in Japan, especially in Shiga.

See?

A Tanuki statue has to have a few key elements:

1 – A hat, to protect against trouble or bad weather

2- Big eyes, to perceive the environment and help make good decisions

3- A sake bottle that represents virtue (HA! – Gem)

4- A big tail to provide steadiness and strength until success is achieved

5- An oversized scrotum that symbolises financial luck (no, we don’t know either)

6- A promissory note that represents trust of confidence. In this case, I made it blue to represent the pension books that Japanese workers keep; a JET’s accumulates like any other worker, but when we leave Japan, it gets paid out and it is massive.

7- A big belly that symbolises bold and calm decisiveness

8 – A friendly smile

9 – A walking stick because…. well, all the statues have one, so I included it.

And yeah, number five… believe me, compared to some of the statues I’ve seen, those balls are TINY.

The statues themselves, while they’re ubiquitous all over japan, are all made here in this prefecture in a place called Shigaraki, we’ve been there and it was simply incredible (see the above photo).

As a weird coincidence, relative to the lake, the tanuki is actually standing over where Shigaraki would be.

Lastly the big blue shape is Lake Biwa. A Biwa is sort of like a lute and they named it that because they either:

a) Had some weird-arse biwas back then

b) Had never seen the lake from above.

It’s the largest lake in Japan and is simply massive.

I’m kinda worried I’ve overstuffed the design with Shiga factoids, but ahh well. The prize is a free T-shirt if I win, so it’s not all that big of a deal.

What about your area? What says “home” to you?

Kin

(bro hug)

A Lazy Autumn Weekend

October 27, 2013 / enroutetoawesome / 0 Comments

By Gem

Yesterday, we waved farewell to the other Shiga JETs, as they set off on their Halloween adventures in Kyoto and Osaka, and we’ve been living vicariously through our newsfeeds as they party on down (in costume) across two cities and three prefectures. It appears that a good weekend has been had by all, with only minimal vomiting (which is nice).

The two of us, however, are not the most active of beasts, so we decided to take advantage of a weekend when no-one would be attempting to lure us out by lurking in our apartment and embracing the Lazy.

It has been wonderful.

We’ve enjoyed the sort of breakfasts that you simply can’t whip up in under fifteen minutes on a weekday morning. We’ve dug out scarves and gloves from summer storage to help keep out the new nip in the air. We’ve aired our futon and other bedding while there’s still some sun to do it in, as well as catching up on pre-winter cleaning tasks.

I’ve planted the very last crops we’re likely to harvest before the cold really sets in; new spinach, lettuce, coriander and rocket seedlings, as well as some Asian greens and chrysanthemum seed that I don’t really expect to do much before the snow falls. Still, it’s good to hope.

Kin has worked on his T-Shirt design for JETs in our prefecture (yes, that is a scrotum; google “tanuki” and you’ll understand).

We’ve rugged up and gone for lovely walks (before the temperature gets too low), and enjoyed the Nagahama sights.

We’ve caught up with beloved friends in Australia and sent lots of long-awaited emails to our wonderful families (aided by rather too much red wine in the evenings). I’ve also dug out the scarf Kin has been waiting so patiently for and have added another couple of feet to it. We’ve had a couple of full-day meetings, so I’ve had plenty of time to get my speed up. I think he’ll finally get to wear the thing this winter!

…and then start complaining that real wool is itchy and never put it on again, I bet.

We went to Hard Off (our local second hand store) and bought a lovely new (ish) nabe pan for delicious winter hotpots. Our old one was looking a little ill and had an unsettling crack in one side that was getting longer and longer every time it was used! I also bought this wonderful book, full of simple sewing patterns that Beans can hopefully help me work out when I’m back in Australia. I can’t sew at all, but I’m definitely ready to learn!

Goodness me, looking back at all of that, it looks as though we’ve had a very busy weekend! Somehow, though, there’s still been plenty of time for Kin to play Pokemon and for me to catch up on Downton Abbey (and my ironing, damn it).

A few more of Kin’s shots can be seen on our Facebook page.

We may or may not be back in the social whirl next week, but whatever happens, we’re both so grateful for this downtime together. It’s lovely to be lazy!

Gem,

Butterflies and Flowers: Nagahama Kimono Festival

October 18, 2013 / enroutetoawesome / 6 Comments

By Gem (A more complete album of Kin’s pictures can be found on our Facebook page.)

On October 12, Nagahama once again celebrated its long silk-weaving history by hosting the Nagahama Kimono Garden Party in Kurokabe Square

Every year, a thousand glamorous butterflies dress in their most beautiful kimono (both modern and traditional) and descend on the town for their chance to eat free ice cream, win lottery prizes, and be relentlessly photographed. And photographed. And photographed!

One of the nicest things about this festival is that, unlike most kimono-related occasions, you get to wear any sort of kimono you like. Traditional Kyoto, modern Kimono Hime vibe, formal, informal, anything goes.

Most gorgeous were the young women in furisode, the brilliantly coloured, long-sleeved kimono traditionally worn for Coming Of Age. I believe that I, along with the other matrons, carried myself well in paler robes with simpler designs. But the furisode girls’ showy designs and spectacular hairstyles definitely put us in the shade!

Fortunately (unfortunately?) even if I weren’t in furisode, an Anglo-Saxon in Japanese formal wear is unusual enough in a country town that I still attracted plenty of attention. I did mention there were photographers, right?

A LOT of photographers. And when you have that many photographers, it actually gets a little hard to deal with. Of course, when you’ve dressed up to feel beautiful, it’s lovely to have other people think you look beautiful as wel

But not, actually, as lovely as you’d think. The photographers were like seagulls at a picnic; as soon as you toss a crust to one (Hai, shashin OK,) the whole flock spots it and before you know it, you’re surrounded by thirty lenses and your friends have disappeared.

I don’t think anyone was as relentlessly pursued as this little one, pictured here trying to hide from the solid mass of photographers surrounding her. Fear not, this photo did not add to her woes! Kin’s work is very subtle.

Poor Kin, who absolutely HATES being photographed, was also a popular target, thanks to his blonde hair and red hat. Luckily, he had his own lens to hide behind, and managed to fight back nobly.

Of course, like any festival, the kimono ladies weren’t the only attraction. Kurokabe is popular with tourists at any time, and many local organisations were also out showing off, like the local antique gun club (weapons manufacture is another local specialty…yay?) and a group of Imperial Guards in badly-fitting uniforms.

This gentleman was a noble-looking exception to the rest of his cohort, and we suspect this was mostly to do with his age. The rest of the “guards” were scruffy looking young men in their teens and early twenties, who were FAR too scrawny for their jackets, while he was probably more the age group who first commissioned the uniforms (and had the income to pay for them).

These guards were also not the only uniformed warriors present on the day! We were fortunate enough to run into another Nagahama celebrity having a snooze in the sun.

Our commitment to living locally was wonderfully rewarded by this festival. Rabid photographers, beautiful ladies and firearm enthusiasts (not to mention giant beers and samurai cats) make a combination that will definitely live on in our memories.

Again, for a more complete album of Kin’s photographs, please check out our Facebook page. Meanwhile, what amazing events are happening in YOUR area? Let us know!

Gem

August was….

September 3, 2013 / enroutetoawesome / 1 Comment

Hot, HOT days!

Fireworks on the weekend.Stepping lightly on history (at Nishi Hongan-ji in Kyoto)

Lunches at home (no kyuushoku!)

Underwater adventures at Ishigaki.

Our wedding anniversary; and the most nicely decorated rissole sandwich we’ve ever seen (not to mention those ginormous beers)!

August was sandy shoes and sunburnt bottoms, scraped knees, sleepless nights, wasp stings, far too many drinks… and lots and lots of fun! There have been adventures with new friends, not to mention an adventure or two with just the two of us! It’s been social, wonderful, very, very steamy… and we’re both a bit glad that it’s over!

Roll on September and the beginning of autumn!

Gem and Kin

En Route to Awesome

Page 4 of 6

Sumo Food: Chanko Nabe

Dashi (Stock)

Ingredients

Cheep Cheep: Budget Roast Chicken

Settling in to 2014

Happy New Year!

We’re Sorry!

Welcome to English Day!

Goodness Gracious!

A Lazy Autumn Weekend

Butterflies and Flowers: Nagahama Kimono Festival

August was….

Recent Posts

Archives

Categories