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!!



 

Mameshiba!

Hello! It's been a long time between posts! I've gotten very busy over at Ravelry, in the wonderful Nerd Wars game :)  I've been co-captain of the manga, anime, cartoons. comics & web-comics team for almost a year & it's a lot of fun.

One of my favourite things to make these days are Mameshiba. These are characters from Japanese cartoons & their name means "bean dog". They are personable little beans with dogs' faces & ears, who like to share "mamejishiki", which means trivia!

I created a crocheted pattern for Mameshiba in worsted, DK, & fingering weight yarns & have made well over 100 of them since April. I made 60 this summer that I sent to Knit for Japan, which collects all sorts of things for the survivors of the 2011 Touhouku earthquake & tsunami.

I fill all of my Mameshiba with polypellets, so they are like little bean bags, & I always put a small gemstone heart bead in each one, so they all have hearts!

I thought it would be fun to post some pictures of the Mameshiba that I've made!

This is the first little guy that I made, back in April. He's an edamame Mameshiba :)

These are the Amanatto (sweet beans) Quartet :)

Here are cacao & almond.

And all 5 of the coffee beans: Blue Mountain. Kilamanjaro, Colombian, Brazil, & Mocha.

These are 2 of the jelly beans

Here are Ko (azuki) & natto.

In front are 3 green peas & in back are hiyoko (chick pea) & kurodaizu (black soy bean).

This little guy is Renzu (lentil). Since his name rhymes with "lens" he wears glasses :)

This is the Nata (samurai) bean :) He has a mage (may-geh) topknot & a katana sword.

Here are the 60 I made to send to Touhouku last summer. 

I have also been making the Babyshiba, which are made from fingering-weight yarn. They are pretty tiny :)

Here are a bunch, sitting in an ice cube tray. Top row: coconut, banana, nata, edamame, soramame. Bottom row: hiyoko with a lemon hat, daizu with an apple hat, almond with a persimmon hat, ko, & 3 green peas.

Here are 2 coffee Babyshiba.

A close up of banana :)

Cranberry bean Babyshiba wearing an earflap hat.

Edamame with a pod.

To make the pod puffy on both sides, I made a blanket & pillow that fit inside the pod, for nap time :)

And here are 3 green pea Babyshiba up close.

And just for fun, here's our favourite Mameshiba video:

Here are a few more:

Boiled Bean (Nimame)-

Cashew-

Tora (tiger) Mameshiba-

I've used a sticker book to help me with the embroidery.

Online Baby Showers

Sometime last May a member of the Ankh-Morpork Knitter's Guild at Ravelry proposed that we hold an online baby shower for a member of the guild who lives in Scotland & was expecting her first baby, after she discovered that baby showers are not the norm there. I threw my hat in because I love, love, love sending things around the world :)  The main part of the plan was for everyone to make 6"x6" squares, themed to Terry Pratchett's Discworld books, that the soon-to-be mom could sew into a baby afghan. If we wanted to send anything else, we could. The recipient, named Kickin' K at ravelry, had posted some colour & washability preferences, & was quite sweetly overwhelmed by everyone's enthusiasm.

I decided to make a "Buglit" square, which is a reference to an early word Commander of the Watch Sam Vime's son, Sam Jr., says (much to his mother's dismay :). I thought it was appropriate for a baby afghan square at least. I made the square from Knit Picks Swish superwash DK wool yarn that I dyed with procion dyes, & then duplicate-stitiched the buglit part from a chart I made. Unfortunately, I counted the stitches across to fit the words to the square, but forgot to count the rows, so it's a bit off centre. But you can read it!

I also wanted to make a couple hats, for "now" & "later", so I made an infant cap using my own pattern & Knit Picks comfy cotton fingering weight yarn. At the top of the picture is an omamori from Japan, this one particularly for safety in childbirth. They're very beautiful & carried my wishes for Kickin' K, mom to mom. She said later that she packed it in her hospital bag & all did go well for her during delivery... yay!

For the "later" hat, I used the Swish DK again, in multi-colours, to make an earflap hat of my own design. The pattern uses modified earflaps from the Andean Knitting book, with my own hat pattern on top. The little green guys are also from a chart from Andean Knitting, and although I suspect they're supposed to be hummingbirds, I called them swamp dragons, which are creatures from Pratchett's books.

For the actual baby shower they picked a weekend early in June, after Kickin' K went on leave from work, and she let folks know when she'd be online so we could "watch" her as she opened her presents & then posted pictures of the gifts online. I caught part of it & it was so much fun!! Her husband had the earflap hat perched on his head in the picture & it was so cute & funny! Everyone sent the most wonderful things, from all over the world- Australia, all over the US, Germany, Norway, the UK. There were sweaters, booties, & socks, & a plushie turtle & a hedgehog, almost all of it hand-made. And the squares were wonderful!

Not long after, we discovered another guild member was expecting her first child, so we decided to have a shower for her. Sofisan lives in Sweden, so I had the joy of putting together another international package :)

Since the gifts didn't have to be sent until early August, I purchased the omamori when I visited a shrine in the south of Japan in July. I made another Buglit square, this time better-centred on the square. I made another infant cap (she particularly requested things in green) & then the "later" hat is my idea of a "baby werewolf hat" with mitts to match (another of my own designs). This online shower has been on-going, with 2 installments so far, & the presents have been just as fun & creative. I just love seeing what everybody comes up with. Maybe that's why I'm enjoying ravelry so much!