Kinkakuji

Kinkakuji, one of Kyoto's very famous temples, is very near my apartment here in Japan. Jesimee and I visited it today.

After that, we met with our friend, Will, and spent some time at a shrine in Arashiyama, as well as doing some various shopping and eating (of such things as mitarashi dango in the picture). Also, today marked the first snowfall of the season in Kyoto...a delightful surprise this morning!

Korean Festival

Today, as requested by one of my teachers, I attended a Korean Festival with some other classmates. I looked forward to tasting the food, and hearing the music, and was not disappointed.

Korean food tastes fabulous! This was what I ate for lunch. No, I do not know what it is, other than delicious! I think the white stuff may be some kind of pasta thing, but none of us ever really decided what it was other than tasty.




I bought gifts to take back to family, watched some simple judo randori that were just for fun to see who could be the first to take down the other person one time, and then listened to great music, including singing, various instruments, and Taiko drumming. Also, at the end, many people joined in the revelry and dancing together. I quite enjoyed it.

Oh...and the crabs...I have to show pictures of the crabs they were selling. Apparently people keep them as pets, though if you get tired of them I am told you can eat them, but they are way too tiny for that in my opinion!

Food failures

Thankfully, in spite of using a lot of unfamiliar foods and ingredients here, I haven't had too many real phenomenal failures with cooking here. I have tried a couple of things that went less than fabulous, but they were still edible and mostly looked that way.

Yesterday, with friends coming over for both role-playing game stuff and some school work stuff, I thought I would have fun making something we made back in my first cooking class here. Tofu balls were quite tasty and fun looking when we cooked them in the class!

Well, first I put some potato, carrot, onion, and seasonings mix in the rice cooker, as I often do, which at least turned out edible, though not as tasty as usual since I added too much water.

The tofu balls did not turn out to be balls at all, but rather a mush of tofu, spices, and bits of green onion. I did taste the stuff and the flavor was decent, but the mess rather looked suspiciously like something that had already been eaten at least once by someone or something...I'm not kidding. Obviously didn't serve that stuff!! I should have made cookies!

I know better than to try new foods on friends...but having cooked this stuff before, I thought it would turn out fine and tasty. Should have made the lotus root instead! I KNOW that works.

At some point, I will try making these again until I can get them right. Quite tasty, really. I have some suspicions of what went wrong this time, and will likely ask the cooking teacher the next time I see her.

I love a lot of foods here. I know there will be some I particularly miss when I go back to the US. Cheese, however, will be my welcome friend. Very little of it here...and expensive when it can be found. I miss sharp cheddar cheese!

Snacks and a Break from Homework

Quick walk for snacks and a homework break...in the pouring rain. Not surprising here, but definitely enough to use an umbrella for more than just listening to the rain patter on it and having it be fun to carry, which is my normal use for them. I generally like rain to fall on me for a rain walk, but not necessarily for running errands.
Nothing amazing in this post, but here is a photo of some random bits I bought at a Japanese Seven Eleven. The smoked cheese pieces are the same I mentioned the other day. The little candies are the size of Ice Cube chocolate...those who know me well know those are some of my ultimate favorites. I haven't tried this yet to see how they compare.

Everyday Stuff I Eat

(Edit: Those of you who can read kana and/or kanji will realize that I put some of the packages in the photos upside down. I was in a hurry to make this post and just grabbed a bunch of my food to take pictures. Haha...now it is kind of silly, but hopefully the idea is conveyed.)

I have been asked a few times about what kind of stuff I eat and how it is different or the same.　　I eat other types of foods at restaurants and such, just as most people do, but these are many of the everyday foods that I eat or have bought to try.

Rice, made in the happy rice cooker for which I traded some stuff with a friend, who had got it from a friend. :)









Canned fish and my favorite crackers --- easy and quick.









If you know me at all, you probably already know I'm eating Pocky and Pocky-style stuffs. :) I have been eating this stuff for years, but here there are so many new fun flavors and varieties to try.










And dark chocolate:









Hot cocoa mix and chocolate milk mix -- the chocolate milk mix is weird. I don't think I recommend it. I haven't actually tried the hot cocoa yet, but hoping...









Bread, which I really like, but it is somewhat expensive and the texture and thickness is quite different than most bread in the US. Some people don't care for it, but I do as long as I get whole grain or wheat bread. I do not like the white bread here, but I'm not a huge white bread fan anyway, unless it is hot, fresh homemade white bread. Japanese bread comes in a package with five thick slices in it, no heel pieces, and costs about double what a medium-priced loaf of bread in Washington state costs right now.









Snacks, of course. I'm planning on taking these hiking this weekend.









Lemon drink powder. I love this stuff.









Yogurt, which isn't much different here except that there are flavors such as green tea that I really don't see in the US. I've had strawberry, blueberry, and apple.









Spaghetti, which those of you who can read kana can easily see this says. If you buy sauce it comes in pouches...and tastes sort of like a slightly upgraded version of Spaghettio's sauce. Kinda weird. I have to admit I like my own homemade sauce better.









Cheese is quite expensive here. I don't know if this particular kind is good or not. I bought it to experiment in making a pizza with a friend who has been pretty busy so far, but I also brought some stuff with me from the US to put on the pizza. Anyway, I miss having readily inexpensive access to cheese a lot probably the most of any food. I am quite fond of cheese.









Tofu: Inexpensive protein that goes in almost anything without changing the flavor much.










Mochi, it's a tasty business. Mmmm. Hard to explain if you haven't had it. It's squishy, and delicious.









Milk, juice, and gingerale...yeah, imagine that. Well, Kagome is much less expensive here than in the US -- a happy bonus as I really like that stuff. The gingerale is not the same --- even though it is the same brand I buy in the US, it is not at all the same. Slightly different taste, and unbelievably a slightly different texture...or something. I'm not sure, but it is definitely different!









Random vending machine juices. The kind in the purple can is my favorite drink I've ever had in my life, I think. It has the texture and thickness of half-set Jell-o and tastes lusciously and richly of Concord grapes.









Breakfast cereal. Well, corn flakes, since there isn't much other to choose from that is in what I consider a reasonable price range. Not much cereal here anyway. I would like to try some of the granola I have seen if I can find some at a little better price, or on sale. These come in plain, frosted, and chocolate. Pretty nice texture and flavor for corn flakes --- well, I only got them the other day and have only tried the plain ones, but they were much better than I expected, not being a huge corn flake fan.









Some other snacks that I saved the packages for so I can remember to go get more! The mult-colored crackers I expected to be salty, but they were actually sweet, well, with a bit of salty flavor, but not at all what I thought. I like both of these.









Well, I also eat random fruits, vegetables, noodles, and such, but other than lotus root I don't have any unusual sorts of those things to photograph right at the moment. The rest are things similar to what I use at home such as potatoes, onions, cabbage, carrots, broccoli, green onions and such.

Lotus Root: Delicious!

Ok, so it would have been nice if I had saved some of the cooked ones so I could take a picture, but they were quite tasty!

I wasn't sure I even wanted to eat these things when I first saw them, but after being introduced to them in my cooking class, they have become quite a favorite. When fried, they have somewhat the texture of a fried potato, but not quite. They have a sort of sweet flavor to them, but not like a sweet potato at all. Delicious! Pretty, too.

Edit: Here is a picture of some we fried in the cooking class, but these are done more like potato chip texture. These tonight had more of a texture of fried potatoes rather than chip style, and you could still see their shape a bit better.

Cooking Class

Edit: I tried labeling the photos, but apparently I still fail at blogging because no matter how well I arrange it in the composition window, when the blog publishes the comments are scattered all over the place. I hope to learn to utilize this correctly soon, and come back and label these. The photos are of tofu being strained, grapes being peeled, konbucha powder, shaping rice, prepped eggplant, frying tofu balls, edamame which is soybeans picked when still green, fried eggplant with shrimp and scallop, and autumn salad with sesame dressing.











So periodically, up to once a week through early December, I get to attend a Japanese cooking class with a very talented lady here in Kyoto. Today's class consisted of various dishes using a kelp powder seasoning call konbucha, which tastes delicious, by the way. I wasn't all that excited when I first heard this is what we were doing and saw the basket of strange looking vegetables, but WOW!!! All the food tasted fabulous!

There were even 2 different kinds of mushrooms that were part of two of the dishes. Not being a mushroom fan, I wondered if I would like those, also, but unlike the mushy texture of some cooked mushrooms I've not enjoyed, these mushrooms had an enjoyable texture and flavor to me.