Snow and Salads

We've had a few snowy days here - nothing like other places in the country, but pretty exceptional for Seattle.

On another note, Mike made a great salad last night. Recipe from one of our new favorite cookbooks.

I resolve . . .

To never do this again. Until next year.

the final part of the courseshivering BEFORE the race

The race and trip n' dip were great fun, even if they did leave me chilled for the rest of the day.

San Diego

Last weekend we took a quick trip down to San Diego to visit my family. This was quite a whirlwind trip, but we did manage to squeeze in two beach walks and a calm afternoon at a very nice café (with free wifi, no less). Here are the obligatory beach pics:Friday night we cooked a nice dinner for my grandparents, including Mike’s famous bruschetta.Saturday day, I spent a little time photographing some of my grandmother's prize-winning plants.Saturday night, we headed to Carlsbad to visit with good family friends - and eat the best pizza and lemon bars [those were home-made, but I do have the recipe] on earth!

The Great Sweater update

Baby Emma’s sweater is finally done! It took a little bit of a push during the second week of break, but I did it! Hopefully, soon, I'll be able to share a picture of baby Emma in her sweater.

This means that in the time it has taken me to knit a baby sweater, Amy has knit her amazing shawl, PLUS this coat (plus a zillion other things as well, I’m sure):

That’s right, the woman knit herself a coat! And I thought a baby sweater was an accomplishment. . . .

My next project is a heather gray professorial sweater-vest for the soon-to-be professor in my life.

Cakes galore!

Just before New Year’s I bought this cupcake cookbook. The book has wonderful decorating ideas (it’s actually written by a design professor in California), but I’m not so sure about the recipes.

For example, for New Year’s I made the champagne cupcake recipe. I made it as a cake, though (using the champagne cupcakes recipe, but putting it in two round pans), which shouldn't really change anything. But, it tasted, in all honesty, like white bread. Which is to say: nothing. Not that it was bad, but it was a bit heavy and lacking in taste (other than "sweet"). The icing, on the other hand, was awesome: what’s not to like about home-made buttercream with 6 tablespoons of champagne mixed in?

The next day, I decided to just focus on the decorating. I made the snickerdoodle cake from the Cake Mix Doctor and then decorated it. Originally, I wanted a teddy bear design, then I thought of a lion, or an alien. But I ended up stealing an idea from a parenting magazine for a critter like this.

This cake was for Scott’s birthday. Can you tell which one is Scott?

Kate's fancy new camera

Kate has been taking some really beautiful pictures with her fancy new camera. If you want to see her newest creations, you can always look on the right side of our blog, right under the phrase "recent cool picture." You can also click here, and look to the right (you can click on the picture to enlarge it).

The whole "photo of the day" album can be found here.

Good eats

We have really been eating well recently. Earlier this week Kate made scones au gouda vieux et poires séchées, which were amazing.


Also, on Wednesday I got to visit one of my favorite stores in the whole world, Pacific Food Importers (PFI). This store sells olives, cheeses, and dried foods in bulk, and they also carry many interesting foods from all over the world.

On Wednesday night I used dried porcini mushrooms that I picked up at PFI to make fresh egg pasta with a garlic/olive oil/mushroom sauce (this was the second time I used my new pasta maker).

Yomiuri has the best human interest stories

The title of this story is "Otaria the Sea Lion practices writing new years greetings." As usual, the picture is the key.

The Michigan Report

We’re back from the not-at-all snowy state. Honestly, I found it much less cold than winter visits in previous years – perhaps there really is something to this global climate change whatnot (actually, it really bothers me when people conflate weather and climate as I’ve done above, but, whatever, tolerance is the spirit of the season, right?). Anywaaaaay, here are some photographic highlights from our week.

The latkes

The men

The men-orahs

And the M&Ms

Dr. Farls

Us

Now we’re back in Seattle where we’ll do a little relaxing (and a little work) before school begins next week. Today we took a walk with our friends Scott and Meh.

The 5th Santa Claus Marathon

141 Santa Clauses and 2 dogs run through the Kamogawa district of Kyoto (a story from the Yomiuri Newspaper, with picture).

The Catch-up report

My birthday was really nice – and a bit like a perpetual party.

Last Sunday, we went to Pacific Science Center to see the Dead Sea Scrolls Exhibit. The exhibit was pretty cool, but very, very crowded. Buy those tickets in advance, and buy them for a weekday. The scrolls themselves were interesting, and I also enjoyed all the other artifacts (coins, clothes, pottery) that were presented along with the scrolls.

After that bit of culture, we walked around the Science Center. Kris checked out the display on camouflage.Nearly invisible, no? Then we hit the IMAX theater for the Egypt movie. The movie had beautiful scenery, and I’m a total sucker for the IMAX films, but it also had a weird sort of explanation-of-the-curse conceit. And Omar Sharif. And not in a good way, either.

Then we headed to dinner at the fondue restaurant. I love fondue! Seriously. I mean, what’s not to love about melted cheese and melted chocolate? So yummy! Here’s a shot of us and then one of the dessert plate (the lighting was a little weird, but we’ll get to that issue below).On my actual birthday, we just played it low-key with a dinner of fried rice at home. Note the flowers on the table (from my mother) and my holiday decorations in the windows (I’ll try to get a daytime shot of those, too).

Saturday night we had a little party at our house, both to celebrate my birthday and to welcome the nomad scholar home. It was a bit of open house, and lots of people came and brought lots of yummy treats. Mike made our traditional birthday cake from this book.
So that’s been the past week, in words and pictures. And about those pictures . . . for my birthday, folks around me pitched in to give me a brand-spanking-new-fancy-dancy camera. So, hopefully, the pictures around here will get a lot better (that is, except for the bad pictures due to operator error). I’d like to do something like the picture of the day, but I’m not sure how that would work with blogger or that I’d truly be able to post a picture every day. Anyway, I’m super-excited about the new camera, but I think there’ll be quite the learning curve with it. I’m planning to study up over break.

Classic

I have pictures and stories to post about Mike's first few days home as well as about my birthday, but that will all have to wait. Instead of a looking-backward post, this is a looking-forward post.

My grandmother no longer has the energy to bake all her traditional holiday cookies. So her four daughters and assorted grandchildren have taken over, each baking one of the types of cookies and then mailing them out to all concerned parties.

This year I’m in for honig kuchen à la Oma, or something that approximates gingerbread.

This is the recipe I was sent:

Heat together one cup each of molasses and honey. Cool. Beat 3 cups of

sugar with 4 eggs. Combine and add 4 teaspoons cinnamon.( mum wrote tbs. but

we all think that she meant teaspoons), 3 teaspoons( same issue_ cloves,

some salt (/) and assorted spices ("depending upon what you have on had and

how you feel"). Add round tsp.( this time she got it right so we all

wondered if maybe she really meant tablespoons before) soda and 1 tsp. cream

of tartar( "if you have some- I rarely do"). Stir in enough flour till your

arm is dead and the stuff won't budge anymore. Cover and wait a few days

till you've recovered since you need all your strength to quasi roll out,

cut into forms, and bake in moderate oven after you have brushed each cookie

with honey water ( made with honey and water) and pressed a piece of almond

in center of each.

Note_ I wrote down 8 cups flour, 3/16 inch think roll out, 350 degrees for

7 minutes after talking to her.

Good luck.

Um, yeah.

So I am unsure if I should just go with this recipe or make some substitutions to a more standard gingerbread cookie recipe, like this one or this one.

Welcome home Mike, or the Diet of Worms

Mike has been back in the U.S. for a few days now.

He just caught the end of the big snow here last week (check out some of the pictures linked to the article, too). I wish I had better pictures of the snow, but during the best picture-taking days, it was either too icy to go outside or I found myself without my camera (you know, like during my 45 block walk home on Monday night. Sweet!). So here are some pictures that I took on Wednesday afternoon when Mike and I were out for a walk.

Also, here’s a bird that hangs out in the tree near our apartment.

We’ve been to a few of our favorite restaurants and coffeeshops and we’ve seen some of our good friends.

Mike has also enjoyed having the use of a full-sized kitchen, stocked with all our fun toys. Tonight, using the pasta machine I got him for his birthday, he made fresh pasta.

Very yummy!

Liveblogging Narita: 130 lbs of Living and Cribbage

I am sitting on a desk at Narita International Airport in Chiba prefecture. Once I gave up the key to my apartment, I didn't have anywhere to go with my mammoth bags, so I took an earlier bus here. Now I have several hours before my flight boards. Kate and I had a long computer/phone conversation via skype, and then we had a text chat party with one of our Canadian friends who still lives in Tsukuba. Technology is pretty neat.

My bags both weighed in right under the acceptable limit. In total, I checked over 130 lbs of luggage today. I think the bulk of that was the weighlifting set that I just bought.

On a completely unrelated note, one of the major things that I learned in Japan this year is the card game cribbage. This is a fantastic game. It is quick, there is a lot of strategy, and there are ways to get points called "two for his heels" and "one for his nob." My most frequent playing partner was one of the Canadians, who would yell at me if I played too slowly, but I have also started playing for free online. In fact, I think I will go and play an online game right after I finish this blog entry. Anyway, my Canadian friend has proven reluctant to sign up for online cribbage, but if any of our readers are interested in playing, sign up and we can schedule a game!

My bags are packed, and...

Tonight marks the end of my stay in Tsukuba, Japan. I have now been to Japan four times, beginning with a six week Youth for Understanding trip in 1994. This was my first experience blogging about my adventures, although in 1994 I kept an old-fashioned diary on the advice of my Grandma Bert (my Grandma was not one to give much advice, so when she did give advice, I took it). This evening I was going back and reading some of our old posts, and I am really glad that we have this record of our year.

This was also my first time in Japan when I did not take any classes; instead I was entrusted to carry out my own research. And while I had a supervisory professor in Japan and one back in the US, they almost completely left me alone to do my own thing. This was really nice, but it was also daunting, and a bit overwhelming. So, what did I accomplish academically?

• I wrote two dissertation chapters.
• I conducted 23 research interviews, all but one in Japanese.
• I met with 5 professors and academics at other locations to discuss my research.
• I presented on my research three times, once at my university and twice at conferences.
• I read many secondary sources in English and Japanese.
• I read a large number of Japanese government reports over a period spanning 20 years.
• Japanese newspapers are archived in monthly volumes called "shukusatsuban." I read, or at least scanned, 127 shukusatsuban.

Now I'm ready to finish writing my dissertation and get on with my life!

I am obviously extremely excited to see Kate, since it has been almost five months since we last saw each other. However, leaving has been a bit bittersweet. I have found myself doing a lot of bowing and saying "osewa ni narimashita" which means something like "you have taken care of me" (and implies that I am very indebted for that). Last Sunday I had a potluck party to give away my things, and that was a chance to say goodbye to some of my friends, and on this Saturday night there was a sayonara bowling party for me and two French friends who are also leaving tomorrow. I also had assorted goodbye events with various groups of friends, including a sushi dinner tonight with "the Canadian team," and a Tokyo lunch yesterday with my host sister. I had a goodbye lunch with Nagu and his parents, which was very sad. At the end his dad shook my hand, and then he wanted to shake my hand too. Nagu really likes electronics, and he actually took some photos with my camera. They are pretty funny. I will post them soon, but my camera is now packed.

So, this is the last "fish for breakfast" post from Japan in 2006. I will have to discuss it with my co-blogger, but I have a feeling that "fish for breakfast" will continue indefinitely. And if that is the case, then I also have a feeling that another "fish for breakfast" post will be written in Japan sometime in the not-too-distant future.