And I decided to change it. It will still exist as a placeholder for a few months, but I'll delete it after a little while. I'll start posting all kinds of recipes and commentary on the food here. Look forward to it!
http://japaneats.blogspot.com/
Tuesday, February 26, 2008
Thursday, February 14, 2008
I miss insulation.
It's cold here. Not real cold, just low 30's. Wisconsin has had at or below zero with windchills below -20. The difference is that the US knows what insulation is. Andrea asked her teachers one day, because we found out that in Hokkaido, where it has similar weather to Wisconsin, they use insulation because of how cold it gets, her teachers responded it was because "Our houses are built for summer." What?! insulation is only good for winter you say? Explain why people use a thermos to keep their gatorade cold then. Freaking crazy people here, let me tell you. No matter, it's 38 in our kitchen right now, it'll heat up once the sun hits it, just in time for me to make dinner.
I've managed to figure out how to make a good variety of dishes that I didn't know how to make in the US. Or at least not the way I have to make them here. Meatballs for subs/pasta with homemade tomato sauce, cheese/meat ravioli, homemade macaroni and cheese, even crepes. I can also make lots of other simpler dishes based on white sauce because they sell cans of it in the store. It can essentially replace "cream of" soups in any recipe. Gratin sauce in a can works too. I'll have to figure out how to cook without it inthe US when we finally move back.
Speaking of, price for this are just so bad, they haven't moved in the last 3-4 weeks except for going up a few dollars. I need to get back with STA travel, because they might give us $1000 off at least andrea's ticket. They had basically the same prices as eeryone else as well. We'll wait a few more weeks before we decide what to do. Hopefully that will save us some dough. Plus we need to get some real times out of Andrea's school for the 8th of August so that we know what time we can leave. We can catch the last flight out of Tokyo at 530 and get back to wichita at 9pm so we have a whole extra day to crash from the jet lag.
Back to the grind, chores are calling.
I've managed to figure out how to make a good variety of dishes that I didn't know how to make in the US. Or at least not the way I have to make them here. Meatballs for subs/pasta with homemade tomato sauce, cheese/meat ravioli, homemade macaroni and cheese, even crepes. I can also make lots of other simpler dishes based on white sauce because they sell cans of it in the store. It can essentially replace "cream of" soups in any recipe. Gratin sauce in a can works too. I'll have to figure out how to cook without it inthe US when we finally move back.
Speaking of, price for this are just so bad, they haven't moved in the last 3-4 weeks except for going up a few dollars. I need to get back with STA travel, because they might give us $1000 off at least andrea's ticket. They had basically the same prices as eeryone else as well. We'll wait a few more weeks before we decide what to do. Hopefully that will save us some dough. Plus we need to get some real times out of Andrea's school for the 8th of August so that we know what time we can leave. We can catch the last flight out of Tokyo at 530 and get back to wichita at 9pm so we have a whole extra day to crash from the jet lag.
Back to the grind, chores are calling.
Saturday, February 9, 2008
Back in Fuji
We got back on monday, I'm just a little slow. Lyndsi sent the pictures she took, so I posted those up yesterday. We got there at 8 am, we took a 6:30 flight >.< Had to leave the hotel near the airport at 5. It was a good trip though. There was about 12 inches of snow on the ground there. It never warms past 30 degrees and it snows at least a little just about every day, so it adds up. At least they didn't need to truck in snow for the festival this year. We actually were not there for the festival days, it started on tuesday. It was cheaper to go from sat-mon so that's what we did. We still got to see a bunch of the statues and ice figures. While it was colder, it was less windy there than in Korea, so we weren't as cold.
We stayed at the sheraton in sapporo and let me tell you, it was fantastic. They have free buffet breakfast almost every day. They have a bell-person bring you bags to your room before you check in, and they're all really polite. Many of them spoke english very well, so it wasn't a stuggle asking for information or checking in/out. Definitely stay there if you decide to visit sapporo. It's about 10 minutes from downtown by train and about 2 minutes from the train station.
Really really awesome trip. I ate my first ramen at a real ramen shop, and got to see real snow. The gyoza there were fantastic too (obviously not the frozen, poisoned ones from china). It was an odd experience, but at least I finally did it. Check out the pictures, the sculptures were cool.
We stayed at the sheraton in sapporo and let me tell you, it was fantastic. They have free buffet breakfast almost every day. They have a bell-person bring you bags to your room before you check in, and they're all really polite. Many of them spoke english very well, so it wasn't a stuggle asking for information or checking in/out. Definitely stay there if you decide to visit sapporo. It's about 10 minutes from downtown by train and about 2 minutes from the train station.
Really really awesome trip. I ate my first ramen at a real ramen shop, and got to see real snow. The gyoza there were fantastic too (obviously not the frozen, poisoned ones from china). It was an odd experience, but at least I finally did it. Check out the pictures, the sculptures were cool.
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