The Cold

A couple of weeks ago I had a cold. It started out, as most colds seem to, with the mild impression that something was not right, and by the end of the first day had progressed to the point where I *knew* that something was not right and that it probably was responsible for the pounding headache and the increasingly sore throat. Unfortunately I spent the first evening out with a friend and didn’t get back to my place until late, at which point I felt like death. The next morning being my day off and also, coincidentally, the flea market at Kitano Tenmangu Shrine in Kyoto that I used to frequent on study abroad, I had made plans to meet my host mother and spend the afternoon with her. Instead of canceling and staying in bed I, of course, decided I felt markedly better and went out anyway. I still felt sick but I had a lovely day with my host mother and got home at a decent hour very much ready to sleep. The cold was, naturally, just getting warmed up.


There are few things more frustrating and lonely than being sick and alone in a foreign country. On the frustrating front there is attempting to find and purchase cold medicine, disinfectant wipes and throat lozenges when it takes a long time just to read the package and make sure that you’re not accidentally buying diet pills, candy and shoe polish. On the lonely front there is trying to cook and clean up after yourself when all you want to do is sleep, all with the burning suspicion that if you were to be suddenly bedridden it would take the school a little while to realize you were missing.

On the 5th day of my cold I started coughing even when not trying to go to sleep and was thus forced to adopt a measure seen on Japanese people of all ages during cold season: the mask. I have perhaps mentioned them here before, but face masks are worn by sick people in Japan to keep from spreading germs from coughing etc. They are not technically compulsory or anything, but social pressure is a law unto itself. Heeding advice from J I made sure to buy a men’s mask (apparently the women’s ones are very small) and wore it for a whole day at school. It was awful. I hadn’t been able to put my contacts in that morning and so every time I breathed into my mask it fogged up my glasses, and my nose was still running, making the inside of the damned thing feel like some sort of germ incubator. It was like wearing a steam room on my face. Every once in awhile I would have to pull down the mask, blow my nose, disinfect my hands and then replace the mask, which was of course damp inside and thus felt wet and cold by the time I got it back in place.

I downed grapefruit juice, went through all of my Theraflu, half a bottle of what turned out to be entirely ineffectual children’s cough syrup and used up more packets of tissues then I want to think about but in the end the only thing that worked was spending the entirety of Sunday in bed. Afterwards I was still a little sniffly and still coughed at night, but the worst was over.

Next time I’m just going to stay in.

But what does she eat?

“What do you eat?” is a question that I get from friends both American and Japanese, so I figured I’d give a go at explaining a little bit about the culinary aspect of my life.


Because I live alone and on a budget I cook most of my meals at my apartment in my kitchen. I knew that this would be the case when I was looking for a place to live, so it is no coincidence that I chose an apartment with a decent-sized kitchen with three gas burners (several places I looked at had only a single, rather corroded-looking electric burner) and some counter space.
Breakfast:

The most important meal of the day to be sure, but usually also the simplest and most boring. Outside of the occasional natto (fermented soybeans) on leftover white rice breakfast tends to be unremarkable, often bread with jam. When I first moved here I attempted to use the gas fish griller installed just below my stove as a toaster. I found that while it would toast bread if tended extremely carefully, it would also light bread on fire if left to its own devices for the barest moment. I no longer use it as a toaster and content myself with uncooked bread.
Lunch:

I bring my lunch to school every day, sometimes even on half-days where I don’t have class until 1:30. Lunch is leftovers from dinner, unless I accidentally don’t cook enough and then I have cup o’ noodle ramen, sometimes augmented with a hardboiled egg brought from home.
Dinner:

So, what do I cook myself? I have a rotation of about 6 dishes, though every once in awhile I think of something original (original is not always good, however, so some things never make it into the rotation). I strive to cook things that use very few ingredients, most of them cheap, and always like to have white onion, mushrooms, rice, pasta, miso, soy sauce and mirin on-hand. The thing about cooking in a foreign country is that some things you are used to finding cheap are expensive or limited in variety, such as balsamic vinegar or French bread, and some things that you are used to finding simply aren’t there at all, such as tortillas or peanut butter. I make a lot of Japanese-style dishes simply because the ingredients are available and relatively inexpensive compared to imports.

Most of what I cook falls into one of three categories: fresh rice dishes (Such as curry over rice), leftover rice dishes (Such as omelet rice, see below), and pasta dishes (Such as tomato pasta with chicken), all of which I eat with a side salad of whatever lettuce is cheap and sliced apple with sesame seed dressing.

Now, for a bit of fun, I’ll give you my recipe for Kimchi Omelet Rice:

Ingredients:

½ white onion

1 handful enoki mushrooms

Sliced ham

Kimchi (Korean spicy pickled cabbage)

1 cup day-old white rice

1 egg

Mirin

Soy sauce

Scramble the egg in a bowl with a drop of soy sauce and some mirin. Pour the egg into a pre-heated non-stick frying pan, tilting the pan until the egg forms an even layer over the bottom. Cook until the top starts to solidify, then remove from pan carefully with a spatula and set aside.

Chop up the onion and kimchi and brown together in a pan, adding the ham and mushrooms after. Simmer with soy sauce and mirin before adding rice. Stir over medium heat until rice is seasoned and warm with the same basic texture as fried rice. Scoop the rice mixture into the egg omelet and serve. If it turns out a little dry you can drizzle ketchup over top, though it is not usually necessary.

I have this for dinner almost once a week. If you find you’re interested in any other extremely simple recipes then let me know! Some can be more easily replicated in the ‘States than others though…

The Osaka Exhibition Park

Goodness but it’s been a long time since I last posted! Let’s see, what was I going to write about…

On Saturday, May 7th we had a school trip to the site of the 1970 World’s Fair in Osaka. After the fair ended most of the pavilions etc. were demolished to make space for an extensive and very nice park with a couple museums and other attractions which is now called the ‘Osaka Exhibition Memorial Park’. I accidentally called it the ‘Osaka Explosion Park’ once and was quickly corrected.

I had never been on a fieldtrip like this before, but while we were required to come our only obligation was that we had to show up for the class picture at the end of the day. This left us all about 5 hours to wander around the park grounds and museums at our leisure, so luckily the weather was nice. The park has several areas dedicated to specific types of plants, such as a lavender field, a hill covered in hydrangeas (which were sadly not in bloom) and a camellia garden, as well as wading pools, a suspended walkway over a forest-like area and large open areas for games or picnics.

One thing we discovered pretty quickly was that all of the museums required an entry fee in addition to the park entry fee, which was a little annoying, but after wandering through several gardens in the full heat of our clear, sunny Saturday afternoon we decided to just choose one of them to kill some time and get into some air conditioning. We ended up paying student admission to the Osaka Museum of Ethnology, which turned out to be extremely interesting. The interior of the museum was divided up by geographical region, starting in the Americas and ending up in Japan, and contained a wide variety of national costumes, artwork, religious items and even a fully-furnished yurt. It was *really* cool, and my only regret is that I didn’t realize that it was okay to take pictures until about halfway through. One thing that I found especially interesting was that the Japan section dedicated significant space to the Ainu, a people native to Japan but not considered racially ‘Japanese’. I guess their aim was to show a piece of Japan’s ethnological makeup that would be unfamiliar to most visitors, but I’m certainly no expert on the subject.

By the time we assembled for our class picture we were tired and very ready to go home, and I at least was sweaty and footsore. As soon as we were dismissed the whole group headed for the exit, saying goodbye to ‘Tarou’, the sun tower that stands near the gates (I think it looks like a chicken or maybe like one of the gods from ‘Princess Mononoke’) and hopped back on the monorail for home.

A Donut of a Different Colour

Well! For all my promises of upcoming updates I certainly have kept you all waiting! Since moving into my apartment I have slowly but surely added to my furniture collection, and am by now pretty much squared away. J has been staying with me almost every weekend and it is nice to have someone to speak English to. Together we have seen two shows at the Takarazuka Grand Theatre and one at a theatre in Osaka. One of the shows that we went to see in Takarazuka was what they call a ‘Shinjin Kouen’, a sort of understudy performance where the actresses who have been in the troupe for 6 years or fewer fill all the roles in a one-act version of the troupe’s current play. I had never been to one before, so it was an exciting opportunity. While the actresses were necessarily less skilled than their main-performance counterparts, every person onstage was bursting with enthusiasm, clearly giving every line and dance move their all. The energy was contagious and more than made up for the occasional mistake or sour note.


The reason that I could go to a play in the middle of the week was that this was what they call “Golden Week”, a 7-day period where several national holidays converge. Because there are so many holidays some schools and even businesses shut their doors for the whole week, which makes it a very popular time to travel. I, unfortunately, only had the actual holidays themselves off, which meant that I had last Friday, my usual Sunday, Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday off with class as usual on Saturday and Monday. On Wednesday J and I dressed up in kimono and hakama and met a friend of J’s at a park in Tenouji, which was quite beautiful even if it was a little hot out. Afterwards we had lunch in a nice café near the station and then J and I went in search of a special donut shop in Shinsaibashi. Lately Krispy Kreme has opened several locations in Japan, including one in Shinsaibashi, but the donut shop that J and I set out to find was far more special. Instead of being fried, these donuts are steamed and use traditional Japanese ingredients to make Japanese-style donuts. After some wandering around and fighting with J’s iPhone we finally found the place and calmly waited in line for about half an hour before ordering at the counter and getting our donuts. I had a cherry-blossom flavoured donut with glutinous rice and walnuts in it topped with black sesame seeds, a steamed strawberry cake filled with strawberry cream, and a roasted green tea iced latte. J had a cherry-blossom flavoured one like mine only with actual cherry blossoms on top as well as an Okinawan brown sugar donut with candied citron peel in it topped with apple. They were beautiful and delicious, absolutely worth the wait and even worth the 200yen apiece. I think what I liked best about them, and about Japanese sweets in general, was that they were not really very sweet at all; the flavours were subtle and would have been eclipsed by too much sugar.

After looking around a couple of the stores in the area we headed back to my apartment where I made a simple dinner (a post about cooking will follow) before getting some much-needed rest. Tomorrow I have class again, and starting next week it will be back to business as usual.