Week Four

At A Glance

• Speaking To Children
• Cooking for the masses
• How to eat a zoo in 7 courses

Links

Home
Photo Page
Photo Page 2
Photo Page 3
Photo Page 4
Photo Page 5
Feeling Sadistic? Click Here!
This Week's Social Comment
Last Week
Next Week

Jnr High ranges from age 13 to age 15 but Japanese children being so infantile in their mentalities it was like going to a junior school in Australia. Afterwards I met the ELS teacher who is Canadian. She was very very nice and we talked for ages. Its been almost 4 weeks now and I am only just noticeing just how lonely I am for English native speakers and so it was wonderful to be able to talk freely and quickly to another person. Yay! They also gave me a present! A fan with a stand that hangs on the wall. Yay. It sits in pride of place in my room.

And after all that I went to the 'homemaking room' for tea and cake. Tea was black english tea and cake was tiny (like half a mouthful) sized pieces of cake and brownies. So cute. But so unsatisfying. I need to go somewhere were I can sink my chops into a big juicy piece of chocolate mud cake, not nibble on some wafer of a wisp of a smell of a piece of cake! If it is one thing that Japanese can do well is miniturise something. So that was monday. Nothing much has happened this week. I went to school, I read LOTR and I came home. Am cooking dinner on Saturday to mark 4 weeks.

2) So Saturday rolled around and it was my idea to cook Italian for the whole family. My Jparents both love Italian food and so I thought I would impress them and cook. Hmm. In Japan they have soup pasta, which is like soup noodles only the noodles are spaghetti and the soup is like a watered down tomato sauce. Hmmm, I'm sure its delicious if not a little warped. The Italians are all crying in their sleep.

So I went out and bought all the ingredients from the local supermarket. Suprisingly they actually had Basil and tinned tomatoes (!) but no oregano (sad face). We went home and I set about starting the sauce. Hmm, ok sweat the onions and garlic in some olive oil, ok, can do. However when I added the fresh tomatoes I had bought they immediately fell to mush! I mentioned to my Jmum that there was a lot of water in the tomatoes (meaning its a bad thing because more water means less flavour) and she smiled and said that yes, it was wonderful huh. Huh indeed?! Thank god for tinned tomatoes. In the end we had Napolitana Spag, salad, Pan (bread) and Japanese green tea (huh?). Not a bad dinner even if Daisaku (my Jbro) did find a unexpected piece of chilli in the sauce and spent the rest of the night drinking water.

3) Sunday was spent doing snobby uppercrust things (I love Rotary sometimes) with this guy from Rotary. You know no matter how hard I try I just cannot catch Japanese names unless they are passed by me like 20 times after which I look like a complete fool anyway. Anyway I was told to dress formally on Sunday because I would be going to a tea party and then to a formal dinner. However at the last moment I decided against highheels and wore Mary Jane's instead and regretted it for the rest of the night.

The tea party itself was heaps of fun. I had the first plunger (thereby being almost real in a quasi-hemi-demi kind of way) coffee I have had in a long time. Sooooo Goooood! And they had 'Creap' brand powder creamer. Is anyone else laughing themselves silly? I got to eat this totally cute and yummy Rose Cake, with a little rose on top. Mmmmm! After tea, the Rotary dude's daughter, Mika (who has just married an Australian after 3 years of waiting, cos her father said she had to to prove that she loved him!) took me to NomaUma. For the non-Jap buffs out there, Noma is the area that I live in and Uma is horse in Japanese. They are essentially ponies even though the (totally not animal clued in) Japanese call them horses. Actually they remind me of the shetlands that I used to ride at the Show when I was little, you remember? Apparently they were originally bred for ploughing fields, but like every animal that lives in Japan these days have been reduced to a mere attraction, a object in a zoo. The poor beasts. I seem to bring the rain where ever I go (Andrew will attest to this) and so the heavens dutifully opened and that afternoon let loose the first big Spring storm of the season. Yayness.

After this we actually went to the dinner (phew!) This night was in honour of an Imabari chef that had recieved a prestigious French Cuisine award. Something to the tune of Ex. Con....ier.... something something. Too hard. Just believe me that its prestigious ok? It turned out to be quite a black tie affair with a piano quietly playing in the background and big round tables with white tableclothes and elaborate flower arrangements in vases that changed colour to the music. And me in my Mary Jane's!!!!!! Arrrrgh! Shame Shame Shame!!!!

The menu went like this:

A soba (a kind of Japanese noodle) flour crepe package filled with sweet beans and, get this, sweetbreads! In anatomical words, the cow's bloody Thymus Gland! Get your biology book out cos this will make you squirm. I ate the thymus gland, and enjoyed it, until someone told me what it was! Uuuurgh! This was served with a delightful sparkling wine, very fresh but still a little sweet. Mmmm.

After this was came the bread. Black bread. Apparently the chef dude used bamboo ash as one of the ingredients and decided to make the bread uber Japanese-ish. Hmmm, tasted like... bread.

The next course was, well for lack of a euphemism, Turtle Soup. Actually, when I asked if it was really turtle soup they said that it was and it wasn't (my dinner partners that is). They described it as having a shell but not as hard as normal turtles' and an elongated beak like mouth and in their words 'i, i, it bites.' 'It bites you say, is it a snapping-turtle?' 'It bites.' Hmm. So, its a soft-shelled, bird beaked, psuido-turtle that bites. I think, in my limited knowledge of turtles and such, that the fabled beast is a Terrapin. What EXACTLY a terrapin looks like I'm not sure but I have a loose idea in my mind and if anyone knows or could tell me, please do. Anyway, the meats quite nice and tastes somewhere between chicken and fish. This was served with a wonderful, young french white wine that slipped down nicely. Mmmm.

The next course was a Lobster dish. OOOOH divine. I DO love a good lobster. The next course, course number 4 was a vegetable package, woven (yes, woven, like as is in material) from strands of leek and cabbage. Inside was turbot, a fat and very delish bottom feeding fish. But on top, oh, on top was perched pure gold. Not really, but much better.

REAL STURGEON CAVIAR!!!!!

OH MY GOD!!! I never thought that I would ever in my waking life get to taste REAL caviar. Actually, to the best of my knowledge, exporting caviar is illegal outside those countries immediately on the Caspian Sea (where the sturgeon fish is caught silly) and I do know that Australia and America has an import ban or something to prevent it getting in. This has everything to do with the fact that due to caviar's prized position on international palates, the poor sturgeon fish, and its lesser and slightly less tasty cousins have been fished almost to the point of extinction. The fish itself I have heard is very yummy, but its the eggs that you want and many unthinking, uneducated (heathen!) fishermen take only the roe and discard the still breathing, mortally wounded fish back into the depths of the Caspian Sea. And since it is the mature fish that produce the eggs, the fishing practice has a double whammy packed inside. So, hence the ban on export and import. The eggs themselves are packed in brine and steeped and then pressed into cans to be sold in Russia, Uzbekistan etc. and the black market. How Japan got a hold of some I will never know. So know that you understand the history you will understand why I almost cryed at the dinner table while sampling this rare, rare treasure. It tastes salty (well it would) but doesn't pop in your mouth like lumpfish roe. The 'caviar' that you all have claimed to have eaten is actually lumpfish roe, a lesser member of a similar species. Tasty, but not luxurious. And the caviar has a sorta sour taste but not like anything I have ever tasted. I don't actually have enough words to describe what it tasted like (shock horror, for those that know me) but it was like black night in a bubble, heaven in a sphere. So damn GOOD! OOOOOH! This course was served with a glorious french red wine. It was definately well stored and very very smooth. I could taste oak barrels and french chateaus. Mmmm. (hic)

The last course was a meat dish, chargrilled beef (tasted like home) and, get this, venison! Deer. (beep)ing Bambi! I ate a Bambi! Is there no animal sacred in Japan, no creature safe from the cooking pot? Now, don't get me wrong, it was divine (it tasted a little like that distinctive beef jerky flavour) but also so evil in its origins. I felt like the hunter that killed Bambi's mother! I could see that big doe eyes looking at me and saying (in the words of Gollum): MUUUUUURDERER!!! Oh, so sad. But so full. Anyway, this course was served with a really good sake made in Matsuyama (ok, skip the huh?s and get the atlas) by the Rotary dude's wife's family. It looked like vodka but was smoother and sweeter and slipped down without that telltale vodka burn. Sooo very good. But dangerous, because you wouldn't know you were getting drunk until you were (hic) well, drunk.

Now, dessert rolled around and this was strawberry sorbet and with a uber thin slice of pineapple, dried to be like candy, a small chocolate sponge with that delish real french chocolate icing, and a little fleck of gold leaf on top. Ooooh, felt like a little princess.

Anyway, after ALL of this there was a lucky door prize (well like 20 actually) drawn and my Rotary dude host won straight off the block. Two bottle of Chilean wine (I kid you not), one red, one white. These he gave to me as a present (OMG!) and I took them home. They will be the special part of my 18th birthday celebrations, even if the legal age in Japan is 20 (don't laugh). So that was my night. I didn't get drunk, but I did return more relaxed than I was when I left. On a whole the night was amazing and part of my special memories bank, even if I did wear Mary Jane's!

Hope you had a great O week, and look after your livers all of you! mmmwa!