odds & ends

Today was actually a nice sunny day, except for the humidity and heat....sigh...

During the month of June here in Japan, you'll notice that most fields get filled up with water and these little plants are planted--which is called taue. The rice harvesting, if the weather is cooperative, should be sometime in September. These are some of the rice fields we have around our neighborhood.

There is a little store & restaurant nearby called Banmai. I've never been to the restaurant, but heard that they serve a mostly vegetarian fare. I have been to the little store on the bottom several times, and they sell organic veggies, fruits and other health food items. Every Tuesday, they have a 10% off all veggies sale. Today, I got some tomatoes, zucchini and a really fragrant peach.

I roasted these veggies for tonight's dinner and we'll have the peach for breakfast tomorrow.

In the past two days, we received 2 boxes of BEER! (Satoshi's favorite drink!)

The month of July is o-chugen season here. O-chugen is a gift giving custom where you give gifts to people, such as company supervisors, relatives to show appreciation for what they have done for you. Since it is very hot during the summer here, a favorite gift to give is usually some type of drink. We got a box from Satoshi's parents and one from a client of his. The next season for gift giving is in December and is called O-seibo.

This week, I started eating this dark chocolate by Green & Black's. It is called Maya Gold, it is a 55% cacao with orange, vanilla , cinnamon and nutmeg. The cinnamon & nutmeg really stands out, and the orange tends to linger in your mouth, but overall it is really delicious. This brand was supposedly the first in the world to make an organic chocolate, and is now owned by Cadbury-Schweppes(C-S)--which I'm not really too keen about, especially since they(C-S) had a really big recall recently for probability of salmonella in their other brands of chocolate.

Hope you are keeping cool where you are!