Japan 2013: Babies!

Momo & Aoi-chan

We all slept better last night, although I was up for about an hour around 3:00 am, wide-awake, so I did some of my ravalry stuff & then went back to sleep for a while.

Today's plan was to meet our friend Momo & her 16-month-old daughter Aoi-chan & go to visit some more friends who have a 2-month-old baby. I met Momo a few years ago when she was living in Rochester while her husband, Hiroshi, studied & received his PhD in electrical engineering at the U of R. Our Japanese teacher, Shizuka, had introduced us, & when we met neither of us spoke the other's language very well. This changed considerably when Momo started coming over every week- sometimes with Shizuka, sometimes on her own. I taught them to knit & crochet, & they taught me Japanese cooking. Momo & I did this for nearly 2 years before her husband, Hiroshi-kun, finished his degree & got a job back in Japan, 3 summers ago. I missed Momo so much when she moved home, but we have skyped pretty much every week since then, & we saw them 2 years ago on our last family trip to Japan. About 8 months after that visit, Momo had her baby, Aoi-chan! We resumed skyping when Aoi-chan was 2 months old, & it has been amazing to watch her grow up in weekly doses. Brendan & I made a quick, 10-day trip last summer (without Charlie, which was very hard!) to meet baby Aoi-chan, which was lovely :)

Heading into Shinjuku Station

On our last couple of visits Momo introduced us to her childhood friend, Hiroko-san, who did some sight-seeing with us. In Japan, the childhood friend (osana najimi) is a very special friend, almost like a sibling, & many stay close friends into adulthood. We've enjoyed getting to know Hiroko-san & her husband Daisuke-kun very much. Last summer Brendan & I spent a day with Hiroko-san & Dai-kun & visited their small shop in the Kagurazaka section of Tokyo. Their shop sells hand-made items & naturally-dyed clothes, so of course I really enjoyed seeing it! We also introduced them to the Mameshiba (Japanese cartoon characters) that I've been crocheting, & Dai-kun was particularly tickled by them, & by Brendan's Beanie, too :) Well... about 8 months after our visit with Hiroko-san & Dai-kun, they had a little baby boy! Nozomu-kun is not quite 2 months old & Hiroko is still adjusting to having a new baby around, but they were up for a visit & today was the day!

On the train to Sugamo

Momo's mom lives in the Sugamo section of Tokyo, so Momo (who lives in Atsugi-shi, on the very outskirts of Tokyo- about 2 hours from Shinjuku by train) decided to spend a couple nights in Tokyo with her mom, to make traveling with Aoi-chan easier. She came to our hotel this morning, Aoi-chan asleep in the baby-carrier, then we all went to Shinjuku Station to take the train to Hiroko & Dai's apartment.

Tanabata decorations in Sugamo

Although Hiroko-san was going to cook a nice lunch for us, we wanted to bring some food too, so we did some shopping when we changed trains. The rains started in pretty hard, so Momo thought it would be good to take a taxi from partway to their station (which is about 10 minutes walk from their apartment), so she called a taxi & then we raced to get a train to get there on time to meet the taxi. It was a good idea because the rain was really coming down.

Dai-kun met us outside their apartment building & welcomed us to his home. Hiroko-san was just finishing feeding Nozomu-kun, so he was very happy & content when we arrived :) It was just lovely to see them again with their new baby!

 Nozomu-kun with Dai-kun & Hiroko-san

Aoi-chan woke up quite completely when we got there, & she was definitely the life of the party! She's such a toddler- inquisitive, active, into everything, & adorably cute :) Hiroko-san & Dai-kun were also adorable with their little guy, who sat peacefully & watched the goings-on :)

While we all visited, Hiroko-san & Momo finished the lunch prep, & we all sat on the tatami to eat a smorgasbord lunch on the low table. It was the perfect height for Aoi-chan to toddle around & get into everything :) Momo fed her some baby food bentou, but she was much more interested in getting into our plates, trying to feed us (with the rice serving paddle at one point) & keeping us on our toes.

Momo feeding Aoi-chan

Aoi-chan feeding me

Dai-kun getting some experience with toddlers...

After eating we took turns keeping Aoi-chan occupied while we visited. It was lively & fun! Charlie had brought some finger puppets from home to play with Aoi-chan, so Brendan & Mr. Owl entertained her for a bit.

We had brought a few gifts, including a panda Mameshiba that I'd made for Nozomu-kun & some BabyShiba that I'd made from yarns I'd dyed with natural dyes for Dai-kun. At one point they all ended-up with sleeping Nozomu-kun.

At mid-afternoon we decided to leave the Yamaguchi family in peace, so Dai-kun walked us to the station & we took the train back to Sugamo with Momo. When we transferred from the Mita Line to the Yamanote Line, Momo pointed us in the right direction for our train back to Shinjuku & we spent 10 minutes or so getting back to Shinjuku Station, & then a bit longer finding our way to the right exit to where our hotel is. Shinjuku Station is big!!!

We got home around 3:00 pm. We had bought some food for dinner on the way home, so we got some drinks in the hotel shop & put everything in the mini-fridge. By 4:00 pm we were zonking out, so we closed the curtains & decided to take a little nap...

...& woke up at 9:00 pm!!! This is not the best way to deal with jet-lag, unfortunately. We blame it all on the babies...

Tomorrow we get to see Momo & Aoi-chan again!!!

Japan 2013: First Full Day

Brendan & Beanie at Starbucks:

We got to Tokyu Hands around 11:15, & so we decided to meet at the escalators outside Yuzawaya (my fave craft store) at noon, with the guys heading to look at watches for Brendan & maybe bow ties, too. We had decided that it's time to replace Brendan's analog watch with a digital one, since digital time just makes more sense to him. And it would be even more fun to find one in Japan as a souvenir he can use every day.

So we synchronised our watches/iphones & I headed-off to the 11th floor of Takashimaya, where Yuzawaya is. If I seem to be using Tokyu Hands & Takashimaya interchangeably, it's because they sit side-by-side in the same huge building & share escalators on the south side of the Takashimaya department store. Takashimaya is a traditional department store, with a large part of the goods there being clothing. Since most Japanese clothing doesn't come close to fitting my Western-shaped body, I'm far more interested in the Tokyu Hands side of things... & Yuzawaya, too. Tokyu Hands sells just about everything, but my favourite floors are the ones that sell stationery (pens, pencils, post-its, origami paper, stickers- these may sound boring but not when they're from Japan, where cool & cute rule) & accessories for electronics & other toys :)

Yuzawaya probably compares most closely to JoAnn Fabrics in the US, but it's soooo much more. There are bolts & bolts of fabric, but also small packets of traditional Japanese fabrics & kits to sew all sorts of things, from cute cell phone straps to wall hangings or seasonal displays. There are aisles & aisles of findings, buttons, supplies for every craft know to humanity, & of course, yarn & patterns books. I love Japanese crochet books so much! They are always charted, so it's really easy to figure out the patterns with my level of Japanese reading skills. The patterns are either really cute or really stylish. I also love tawashi books. Tawashi are "eco" reusable scrubbies that are usually crocheted. They are often cute & shaped like animals or sweets. They are great small projects, & luckily I found another good tawashi book, so I got some yarn to go with it so I can make some projects for Nerd Wars, the Ravelry game I play, while in Japan. I also found a few more good pattern books, particularly one on Estonian-style knitting & crochet! Very interesting & colourful. I also found a Noro brand yarn that I've never seen in the States (Noro is a very fancy & popular Japanese yarn company) so I picked up a couple balls of Melody yarn. As I was looking around I found so very cool findings- cell phone straps (just the straps) in silver & gold, which I've never seen at home, & some tiny clasp-purse findings to make coin purses.

About the time I went to check-out the guys found me :) They had looked at watches & wanted my input, so after  checking-out we went down a few floors in Tokyu Hands & looked at some Casio digital watches. Brendan chose one with a matte black band that has a light & stopwatch function, so we got it for him & then went to look at electronics accessories. Charlie & I like to get earbud sets when we're here because they are soooo much more comfortable than the ones that came with our phones. They are also easily lost & broken, so we stock up. We found some cool ones that come on a reel, so you don't have to wind them around a holder. We also got Brendan a new iPhone 4 case, since his was shredding from hard use. He chose a slimline grey case, & we nearly plotzed when we found Mameshiba pluggies for the earphone hole. Yay Mameshiba!!!

Brendan's new iphone look :)

Next stop was lunch. The top 2 floors of Japanese department stores are usually restaurants, & we found a soba place to have lunch. Since it's summer, we had zaru  soba (cold noodles served on a woven bamboo plate, which are dipped in broth & then eaten) with sides of vegetable tempura. Yum!!!

Where's Beanie?

Instead of dipping sauce, tempura in this area is served with flavoured salt. The soba is also served with a pot of the hot cooking water, which  you add to the leftover dipping broth & drink.

After lunch the guys went back to the hotel & I did some shopping in the stationery department at Tokyu Hands & then went down to the basement of Takashimaya, where the grocery store & prepared food kiosks are. Oh, & bakeries too :) I got some yummy snacks & drinks for afternoon snack time & then went back to the hotel, too.

After we rested for a while (& had snacks :) Charlie & I decided to take a walk to find a shrine that seemed nearby on the map. Shinjuku is a sea of highrise buildings, so we were curious to see how a shrine would fit into this urban place. On the walk there I saw this street sign, showing the direction ti Ikebukuro, which I thought Brendan & some of my Nerd Wars teammates would enjoy, since the awesome anime Durarara takes place in Ikebukuro. 

It only took about 15 minutes to walk to the Hanazono Jinja, on MeijiDori (Meiji Street). It was well-tucked between modern buildings, but there were old trees sticking out from between the buildings that made it easy to spot. It's a very tiny space, but the shrine is very beautiful.

We put our go-en (5 yen coins) in the box & said our prayers, then looked around a bit. There were workmen setting up what looked like kiosks on the grounds, & when we got back to the hotel we googled it & discovered that every Sunday they have a market there. On the walk home we stopped by the food kiosks in Takashimaya's basement to look for some dinner. We found some yummy pastries at a panya (bakery) there for breakfast tomorrow, but had a hard time finding anything without meat in it for dinner (Brendan is veggie), so we went for Italian (!) in a restaurant in the building our hotel is in.

Where's Beanie?

On the way back to our room we stopped in the hotel shop to get some beverages to have with breakfast & I found a wonderful example of Japanglish in the "Pungency" milk tea bottles in the fridge there.

We are now relaxing by watching funny Japanese tv shows & getting ready to turn in for the night. I am hoping fervently for an uninterrupted night of sleep!!

And tomorrow we get to see babies!!!

Japan 2013: Getting There...

We are here, blog-friends!!!

Getting to Japan from Rochester, NY takes a long time! Around 9:45 am on July 2nd we boarded a plane to Detroit, which got there ~50 minutes later.

We found our usual haunts in the Detroit airport, including the Sora Japanese restaurant, where we had lunch (just to prime ourselves, of course :).

We boarded the plane for Narita about 2:45 pm & it took off around 3:30. Our seats were near the galley (& a bathroom) & had the usb plug-ins- hooray!! Electronically we were set. Honestly, with the electronic interventions, the long flight is soooo  much easier to cope with! Our first flight to Japan, in 2007 (Brendan was 11 then), was pre-ipod/ipad/iphone & it seemed to take so much longer! Back then we packed a few paperbacks that we all wanted to read (Artemis Fowl was popular :) & then ran out of reading material halfway through the trip. Now Brendan & I are packing 50+ books on our iphone Kindle apps, & Charlie has the resident kindle in tow (with all of Terry Pratchett's Disc World books on board). Now nobody runs out of reading material!

But I digress...

Along with our electronics there were loads of movies to watch while we flew. Brendan went for Iron Man 1&2,  Charlie went for nostalgia with "All the President's Men" & "Driving Miss Daisy" (& he started "Hairspray" as well :), & I was so please to see "Rise of the Guardians" & "Coraline", both of which I'd really been wanting to see. They fed us well & continually, too :) They do not stint food-wise on international flights... I found myself barely able to keep my eyes open around 11:30-ish (Brendan was already conked-out) but, as usual, that was as far as it went. No sleep :( Charlie didn't either. Which made it soooo hard to get it together when they served us breakfast at, for us, 3:00 am. I cannot face couscous that early in the day (Brendan & I both had vegan meals) so I had faux-cheese crackers instead (don't leave home without them!).

We landed around 5:30 pm local time, 4:30 am body-time.

Customs & Immigration went quickly & we found our Friendly Limousine kiosk & bought our tickets for the bus that would take us right to the hotel, which left at 7:10. So we hung out in the "meeting point" until it was time to go out into the pleasant evening for the bus (first time in a while it wasn't raining when we arrived, since this time of year is the rainy season here).

The bus trip from Narita Airport to Tokyo takes about an hour & it was fun to see the night-time sights, like the iconic ferris wheel on Odaiba in Tokyo Bay, & the increasing number of skyscrapers the closer we got to Tokyo.

It was very pleasant to check-in to our hotel, the Century Southern Tower in Shinjuku, where we've stayed for 3 visits now. It's right across from the Takashimaya Times Square, a giant department store complex that's on the south side of Shinjuku Station, the busiest train station in the world. Normally, we wouldn't be caught within 20 miles of the busiest station in the world, but Shinjuku is a great home base for visiting lots of places in Tokyo, particularly if you avoid rush hour :)

Our room looks out over Takashimaya Times Square.

So, after getting settled, wrestling with wifi & 4 electronic devices (iPad, & 2 iPhones worked, laptop didn't, sigh) we headed for bed around 9:00 pm, after way more than 24 hours awake.

Brendan slept like a log- lucky duck!! Charlie & I did wake occasionally (I kept worrying about the laptop/wifi situation, sigh), but neither of us felt like we had to actually get up until 6:00 am-ish. I did some Ravelry work on the ipad & Charlie listened to music on the iPod mini that he'd brought. We got up-up around 8-ish to cloudy skies over Shinjuku.

Charlie & Brendan showered, I sorted the laptop situation, & then we got ready to go to out favourite Starbucks in Tokyo, right down the way from our hotel. We all ordered in Japanese (Charlie's been practicing!!) which resulted in big smiles from the folks there :) Oooooh, those soy lattes were good!!!

And so, with the rain heading our way, we're getting ready to head over to Takashimaya for shopping, food, & fun!!

Japanese Curry Rice Photo Tutorial

Hello! Today I'm going to go through the steps to making Japanese-style curry rice. I make a vegetarian version, using Quorn Chick'n Tenders, but I'll also explain how to make a non-veggie version :) My family adores this quick & easy meal. It only takes about an hour, from the time you start washing veggies, to make.

For the ingredients, you'll need:

1 large onion sliced into slivers (I used half of a ginormous onion)

3-4 cups of potatoes, cut into 1" cubes (I used tiny, colourful potatoes this time)
       I buy organic potatoes, so I only peel them if they are greenish or particularly dirty

~3/4 cup of carrots, cut into 1/2" pieces

~ 1 cup of frozen peas

~ 1 cup of frozen corn

1- 12 oz. (340 gm)  package of Quorn Chick'n Tenders, still frozen
        If you want to do this with meat, you'll need an equivalent amount of beef, pork, or chicken cut  
        into 1" cubes

~ 8 cups of boiling water

1-2 tbsp of canola oil for sautéing

hot, cooked rice, about 3/4- 1 cup per serving

4 squares of curry roux

These are 2 different brands of curry roux that can be found at your local Asian food store, or online, Asian Food Grocer is a good place to start. All brands come in hot, medium, & mild. According to friends from Japan, it's customary to mix 2 different brands to make your own "signature" flavour, but you don't have to.


To start, I fill my teakettle & put it on to boil. Also, since you serve curry rice on rice, start the rice cooking,

Wash & chop the potatoes & carrots. Then I chop the onion.

Next, in a 6-quart-ish saucepan (the largest one before the dutch oven size :),  add the canola oil & turn the heat on high. When the oil is hot (give it about 60 seconds) add the onion.

>If you are working with real meat, add the meat to brown it as soon as the onions are soft. You may want to pour off any fat after the meat is browned. Proceed to veggie version, next step.

Veggie version: after the onions are soft, add the potatoes & carrots. Stir them occasionally to keep from singeing. Cook for 3-4 minutes on high, until everything is hot again.

Add frozen peas & corn next. Stir them in & cook for another 3-4 minutes.

Then add the Quorn tenders & do as above.

Remember that teakettle? It should have boiled by now :)  Add boiling water to the saucepan until it covers the veggie mixture & is about 1 1/2" below the edge of the pot. Cover & allow to come to a full boil (don't let it boil over!).

 Then turn to low & let it simmer for 15 minutes. Don't let it go so low that it doesn't simmer energetically.

Nearly Done!!

Mind the rice, too...

Get your squares of curry roux out. I have 2 squares of Vermont Curry & 2 Squares of Golden Curry here, both mild :) I like to chop them in 4ths again, because they melt faster into the stew that way.

At the end of 15 minutes everything should be tender & edible (make sure meat is cooked through, though). Add the curry roux to the pot & stir well until it's melted into the broth.

The whole thing will thicken magically into a lovely brown sauce with yummies floating in it. I turn it on low & let it simmer slightly for a couple minutes, to meld the flavors.

Then, serve hot over cooked rice. Eat with a spoon! (that's what they do in Japan). This recipe makes 2 meals for my family of 3 (teenaged son & husband & me), plus a couple of lunches for me during the week :)

Meshi agare!!