snow

Saturday night until Sunday mid-day we had snow!

It was so fun to see

I always say that if it comes to a point where we need to shovel it, I'm sure that the novelty of snow will wear off on me

Fortunately we didn't lose power

The images of the Northern part of Honshu especially on the Japan sea side is so scary!

They have had non-stop snow! for over a week!

Did you know that just 10 centimeters (close to 4 inches) of  snow on a rooftop can weigh up to 1.5 tons (3306 pounds), some areas had over 6 plus feet of snow!

So many injuries & deaths because of the snow there 

I think Tokyo had a total of 5 centimeters (close to 2 inches)

The wind was still icy the day after

Mother Nature plans to bring the temps up this weekend then slam us back to cold again

jinx

Friday, it was forecast for some snow.

Me, I just wanted to see some falling snow...but "someone" in our household said that "if it is gonna snow, it should stay frozen"...

How is this poor electrician...at least he had a tarp to block the falling snow. (click on the photo to see the video)

Apparently 7 years back there was another electrician during a snow storm too...

Saturday when we awoke...at least a couple of inches had fallen.

(click on the photo to see the video)

At least it wasn't a lot, where we needed to shovel (not that we have a snow shovel).

It also made for walking to the train station interesting, at least it wasn't slippery and the snow melted by the time we came back.

so...

So, if you are following us on Instagram, you know that we were headed for Akita Prefecture yesterday morning...

We were all onboard and waiting for the plane to back away from its spot.

After a good 10 minutes though, the captain came on and announced that our flight was cancelled due to major snow in Akita...

So we all deplaned and stood in line for refunds, rebookings, etc.

Since we used miles for our flight we weren't sure they would give us back our miles.

Fortunately, in the end, they did credit our mileage back.

We were bummed and on the way home decided to drown our sorrows in some matcha tiramisu and coffee.

I was also bummed because my spic and span kitchen now had to go into action...

Dinner was kim chee gyoza.

Although our travel plans were hampered it really was better that we were safe than sorry.

so...

we got snow!

It was off and on throughout the day.

Satoshi kept shuddering as he looked out the window.

I'm glad we bought enough groceries so we didn't have to venture outdoors.

If you'd like to see two videos I shot, click here and here.

It was also our anniversary yesterday.

17 years...seems long yet short.

I am thankful for Satoshi always putting up with me...Love you always.

Dinner was beef rolls with japanese tartar sauce, watercress daikon salad and a glass of wine.

This morning we had some flurries, and it was also off and on, even as I typed this

Have a good week everyone.

hello february

Yesterday afternoon we had a teeny blizzard that whizzed past our window.

It stopped after a couple of minutes and it seemed like that was that.

This morning we woke up to a light dusting of snow...whoo!

I had said on the blog yesterday, that it was Chinese New Year but was corrected by a friend on social media, turns out I was looking at the date for 2014?!

Anyway, I guess we'll be celebrating the Chinese New Year twice.

In a couple of days we'll be celebrating Setsubun with our ehomaki, I've written about both here. This year's direction is west-south-west.

Happy Sunday!

saturday

Saturday we visited MIL.

When we stepped out of the subway station, we were greeted with this...snow! Lots of it.

We gingerly made our way to MIL's.

A neighbor was making snowmen.

While we waited for lunch to arrive, we snacked on some of the osechi dishes that MIL had.

Sushi arrived at about 1-ish and we all enjoyed it.

It was a nice visit with MIL.

If you are interested on what the neighbor's snowman looked like, here it is.

I'll start posts on Nagasaki tomorrow...stay tuned and have a good week!

v-day

How was your V-day? Ours was good. The day started out with me giving Satoshi chocolates and a card.

In Japan, the guys get all the attention on V-day, if you want to read up on it, I've written something about it here.

As I was returning from the market it began to drizzle and the drizzles turned in to snow!

It ended up snowing the whole afternoon. I loved how the snow fell, it reminded me of white feathers, beautiful!

While it continued to snow, I heard commotion going on outside and decided to check it out, I'm kinda nosy like that.

It turned out something needed fixing, and this poor guy was outside with a plastic sheet overhead.

For dinner, I tried a new recipe.

It was a spicy pork wrapped with cabbage. Of course, I didn't read the recipe properly and ended up detouring a little from the original.

Spicy Pork Wrapped with Cabbage :adapted from ESSE March 2011 issue : serves about 3
1/4 cup water
1/4 cup sake (rice wine)
1 tablespoon sugar
1/2 tablespoon shoyu (soy sauce)
1.5 tablespoons miso (soy bean paste)
1 teaspoon tobanjan (chili paste)
150 grams pork, thinly sliced
1.5 tablespoons ground white sesame seeds
3 leaves of cabbage, washed

In a pan, put the first 6 ingredients in and add the pork.
Turn the heat up to high and while mixing, let liquid evaporate.
After the liquid evaporates, add the ground sesame seeds, mix well.

With your leaves of cabbage, heat in a microwave (600W) for 90 seconds. Be careful of the steam and remove the hard stem. Then wrap 50 grams of pork.

Cut in half and serve with rice.

NOTES: The original recipe says to put about 50 grams into 1 leaf for a serving, but my leaves of cabbage weren't too big, so I made about 4 or 5 little rolls as 1 serving and served with lots of rice.

The original recipe also calls for the cabbage to be boiled but since I didn't read it properly, I nuked it.

For dessert we had dark chocolate dipped strawberries. I used Rowena's idea and placed some heart sprinkles that I had.

The day after, the sun came out and started to melt the snow.

p.s. yesterday, we visited MIL and she is happy to be at home. She can't sit on the tatami like she used to nor can she go upstairs to sleep, so she is living on the 1st floor of her house for now.

BIL & SIL take turns daily to check on her and bring her food, and once a week her doctor and a nurse make house call visits to help change bandages and such. It was nice visiting with her though we worry about her getting around her house.

Hope your V-day was a nice one, boy the week went by quickly, hope you have a nice weekend!

icy friday

Well, the weather dude was finally right...we had snow overnight! whoo!

Not enough to stay frozen but still snow.

In fact, while I walked in the morning, there was a little hail storm.

Even after living here for 9 years, seeing flurries or "snow" still gets me hyped.

This morning we had our nanakusagayu, hopefully this will prevent any other illnesses to creep in for the rest of the year.

On my walk, I went to Abientot and tried their salsa dog for lunch.

It was good, smoky sausage with a nice snap. Diced jalapenos, carrots & some lettuce all on a chewy baguette...yum!

The weather tonight is supposed to drop to -1C (30F)...I am secretly hoping there will be more snow.

Have a nice weekend!

sakura eggs and some snow

I am amazed by the eggs in Japan.

There are the usual white ones and brown ones. And most times the yolks are bright orange and huge!

Whenever I need eggs, I go to the market and buy whatever is the cheapest.

At this particular market, their cheapest were these eggs...198 yen (about US$1.98) for 10.

I think metric system countries sell their eggs in tens, and only the US sells them by the dozen.

These were packaged in a pink plastic container and had sakura (cherry blossom) written on the outside.

In Japan, all eggs (that I've bought) are packed in plastic, not the cardboard/styrofoam containers like the US.

It is good because you can see right into the container to see if they are cracked. You can't open the container because it is sealed (so no trading off broken eggs).

My rant with the plastic egg containers is that only 1 market in my area recycles the containers. I think if you sell them, you should recycle the containers too.

Anyway, when I took a couple of these out for breakfast one morning, I was intrigued because the shells had a slightly pinkish color to them, maybe that is why they call them sakura??

I think the container says that the feed has some sugar cane and marigold extracts added to them.

It didn't affect the taste, but made for something interesting, don't you think?


Last Saturday morning we had a little snow storm. It lasted all of 5 minutes.

I know, I know, nothing like what the rest of the world is experiencing.

Even though the sun came out soon after and melted everything, it was exciting to see.

Then again in the evening, we had some more snow. This is what the garden area in front of our building looked like.

I should have gotten some shots of the cars in our area, they had quite a bit piled on their hoods.

Again, nothing like what everyone around the world is experiencing, but I enjoyed this.

giovanni's & romy's

Just wanted to share with you some photos which Satoshi sent to me. It apparently has been 11 years since Osaka had 5 centimeters (close to 2 inches) of snow (and I missed it, darn! no really, darn!)

Since I didn't grow up with snow, I love to see it during the winter months in Japan, flurries to snow storms. Satoshi thinks I'm crazy every time it snows or flurries fall and he sees me jumping up and down.

Now, let's warm up with some food...

I had heard about Giovanni's for awhile now, but never taken the initiative to get out to Kahuku. And then there were posts all over the blogosphere.

So on Friday, I talked my family into driving (I was driving) all the way to Kahuku to try Giovanni's and Romy's shrimp. I convinced my mom that we should try both today because "we're only going this once". (Dad and Grandma didn't know what was going on, but happily went along for the ride. Thank goodness the rain let up just enough for us to make the drive out to Kahuku.)

Giovanni's is known for their scampi, so that is what we got. For US$12 tax included, you get 12 shrimp cooked in its shell with lots of garlic and butter (plus an extra paper plate to share). The garlic and butter flavor really comes through and matches really nicely with the spicy sauce (kind of like Tabasco) that they give.

Then about 2 or 3 minutes from Giovanni's up the road is Romy's, their menu is a bit more extensive than Giovanni's.

We ordered the butter & garlic (#1)(so we could compare it to Giovanni's) and the fried shrimp(#3) (each US$11.75 + tax).

Romy's Butter & Garlic shrimp were huge and had lots of flavor, it matched nicely with the spicy shoyu sauce that they gave. It was different from Giovanni's but good in their own way.

The Fried Shrimp are peeled shrimp and are fried in egg roll wrappers. This is served with a gooey sweet chili sauce. Of all entrees, this was the easiest to eat. Jaden has a recipe on her blog similar to this.

Giovanni's gives a LOT of napkins because eating the shrimp will get messy. (Definitely not somewhere to go on your first date!) We ate our plates from both places at Romy's, they had a little sink to wash your hands after you're finished eating.

Talk about finger licking goodness! Both places are good (messy, but good) with their own flavors and followers. Definitely worth the drive out there.

Giovanni's
83 Kamehameha Highway (from Waikiki---on the left, just past the old Kahuku Sugar Mill)
Kahuku, Oahu
Phone: 808.293.1839

Romy's
56-781 Kamehameha Highway (from Waikiki---on the left, a little past the Turtle Bay Resort)
Kahuku, Oahu
Phone: 808.232.2202

snow!!

Today we had a slight blizzard, it actually started from last night. The weather had forecasted the high as being 5C(41F) and the low -2C(28.4F), yes you read correctly, -2C!!

When we woke up this morning, the apartment that can be seen from our lanai had a good amount of snow on the top of its roof.

Unfortunately, today was garbage day, so I had to go down to put our garbage into the area for pick-up. It was white all over and still snowing at a pretty steady pace.

When Satoshi left for work at about 8:30am, the area outside of our door had started to accumulate some snow.

Today was also my last crochet class of the year. Although the class starts at 1:00pm, I decided to go to Umeda early for lunch.

Since it was still snowing, I got dressed and headed out at about 10:00am. I was surprised because there was about an inch (2.54 cm) of snow outside of our door area. And the steps were nicely covered. I SLOWLY made my way down the steps (we have no hand rails!!) and to the station.

There was a lot of traffic on the bigger roads and some cars didn't have chains on their tires. The train was running a little behind schedule due to the snow too.

While I was excited to see so much snow, I was also a bit scared because there was so much snow.

They say that this weather may continue through the weekend....I guess we'll have a "white christmas" this year...

This is a project that I finished today, it is clip-on earrings and a ring. I have another project to finish but that will be done "next year".

Have a very Merry Christmas everyone!

not sunday, snowday

Today we woke up to....SNOW!! Ever since we've moved to Japan, it has never snowed enough to keep frozen on top of the roof of a car or on the street, we've only had flurries that melted as soon as it touched the ground.

Today we went to see the movie, "Otokotachi no Yamato". It was based on historical information about the largest battleship in the world during that period. The movie was really good, but the crowd -- mainly elderly people, talked (really loud) during the film and a lot of people were opening plastic packages of food during the movie too...sigh...still, it was a good film.

After the movie, we decided to have lunch at Momofukutei. We've gone to this restaurant in the past. It is named after the creator of the Nisshin Cup Noodle, Momofuku Ando. I think they use noodles made by Nisshin, but everything else is their own. They have two kinds of ramen, a shoyu based one and a tonkotsu one. The tonkotsu base is made from simmered bones of pork and chicken. I had the shoyu based one, the soup is made from chicken broth, so it was very light and tasted great! The hot soup really hit the spot! We also bought some bite sized gyoza (pot stickers). This restaurant also serves rooibos tea, which has lots of anti-oxidants and is supposed to be caffeine free.

Today's dessert was Bitter Chocolate ice cream made by The Obroma, it was a very tiny cup, but it was REALLY good dark chocolate!!

Keep warm everyone....have a great week!!

Momofukutei
2-10 Masumi-cho
Ikeda, Osaka
Phone: 072-750-3129
Open: 11am-11pm (UPDATE: this location is now Ippudo Ramen)