Weird Things I Found in the Supermarket

I'm hesitant to post this, because John's parents are coming to visit in under 2 months, and mine less than a month later, and they're all already convinced that Japanese food is weird and strange and they're all going to starve. As we know, and they'll soon realise, most Japanese food is delicious and safe and not scary at all. However, there is some very strange stuff lurking around. Evidence:

I think these are hearts. Or some kind of bizarre innards anyway.

Chicken gristle

Freaky sea monster.

Sea urchin. It'd have to be a lot cheaper than half price to tempt me.

OK, so this was at a sushi bar, not the supermarket, but it's massive octopus tentacle sushi. We actually ate this one (as opposed to all the ones above). It was tasty enough but too chewy and the suckers kind of popped as you bit them. Gross.

My Week: Indoor Pursuits

As you might have heard, it's the rainy season in Japan at the moment. Well, that's what everyone says. This climate chart seems to suggest that actually it just gets rainier and rainier until it's winter again. Yippee. But, you know, we're British. Enjoying complaining about the rain is part of our national heritage! Plus, we've found plenty of indoor activities to keep us entertained!

Izakaya (Japanese bar), take 1. John with fish.

Izakaya take 2, nabe and sashimi

Failing at bowling because it was too busy, but the table tennis was fun!

We're useless at table tennis, but great at photos! 

Purikura time! 

I rearranged our room to clean, and John was very helpful :s

It was going to be a Christmas present, then a birthday one, but I finally finished my sewing in time to send to my Dad for Father's Day!

My amazing mother posted me some cookies!! They were so yum! Just don't tell customs...

Reason 10,000 why I am becoming my mother...I put far too many things in my bike basket then try to cycle home!

Note to Susie...STOP BUYING CARD MAKING ITEMS. They may only be ¥100 each and very pretty, but you have a very small apartment and not that many people to send cards to.

New love, bento box making. Craft plus food plus lots of cute accessories to buy. Heaven.

Me and my favourite little class decorated our initials. Great, until someone decided the paper was confetti. Good thing the vacuum worked!

Putting craft items to good use. Parcels on their way, girls!

My Month: Bits and Bobs and Being Outside

Onigiri. I've been making these a lot recently. Yum.

Storytime at school

Gyoza, ready for the pan. I've been having a dumpling phase recently too!

We went out with our friend Shoko and some of her friends last week. It was 90 minutes of all you can eat BBQ meat and all you can drink. Yum!

We went for a bike ride. The countryside is gorgeous.

I have no idea why there was a random church in the middle of nowhere!

Hirosegawa River

Rice and water everywhere!

Pretty flowers

Firefighter drain cover, mark 1.

Cool firefighter drain cover, mark 2.

A battery vending machine

Taiwan Trip: Food, food, food

I may have loved the Taipei 101, our fantastic hotel and all the amazing hiking, but the #1 reason that I'd go back to Taiwan is for the food. I'd never have put Chinese food that high on my list of favourite cuisines, but after our trip it's rapidly moving up. As usual, we ate more than was good for us, and moaned several times about there only being 3 meals a day!

I found this fantastic blog which has so many restaurants all over Taipei to try, and I'd definitely recommend having a look at it for ideas if you're headed there.

Our food photos aren't great because we were far too busy eating everything! Dumplings were our favourite savoury thing by far, but our absolute favourite thing was the cheap, fresh and delicious fruit. Mango, pineapple and dragonfruit are my personal favourites, and we ate a lot of them all. Mmmmm. No photos, which is for the best because I'm already salivating at the thought and if I was gazing at a photo too my keyboard would be awash with saliva!!

On that delightful image, let the photos commence...

I know I already posted this photo but there you go...

At Shilin Night Market. Crab, garlic greens and rice. Cheap and yummy! But we didn't love night markets here. I think we were spoilt when we were in South East Asia before. The Taiwanese ones  we went to are a bit mad! Plus we might be fairly adventurous eaters, but there are limits and Taiwanese/Chinese cooking definitely goes beyond them!

Dumplings for lunch at the National Palace Museum...

...and we loved them so much that we went for more dumplings at Din Tai Fung for dinner. Din Tai Fung was amazing, we went twice but I still have no good photos because we started devouring the food the second it hit the table! They have branches in Japan too, and next time we're in Tokyo I think I know where we'll be heading! I was sad that there wasn't a branch in Sendai but I think it's for the best that there isn't or I'd be waving goodbye to my waistline!

Beef noodle soup. Tasty enough, but a bit too like ramen for our tastes. 

Shaved ice, covered in mango and strawberry ice cream. So tasty!

We went to Modern Toilet, a bathroom themed restaurant. The food was average, the decor and theming was brilliant!

John and his dinner

Poo ice-cream for dessert!

Anyone else's tummy rumbling?!

PS - Rurousha, you can tell the Hero this post is a give to him from me :p

Our Japanese Easter

Japan doesn't do Easter. At all. Unlike Christmas, which they seem to have embraced wholeheartedly (except, you know, that side issue of it being religious), there is nothing anywhere about Easter. I wouldn't even have known Easter was on the way if it wasn't for people from home asking me what I was doing for it.

Since neither John nor I are religious, Easter is pretty much all about Easter egg hunts and stuffing yourself stupidly full of chocolate. With help from a few parcels from home, we managed to fulfil both of those criteria. And, because the Easter Bunny/Jesus still loves Japan even if they don't love him, Easter Sunday seemed to mark the start of spring in Sendai. Ever since last Sunday, it has been warming up, flowers have been flowering and the world feels friendly. More about that in several hundred more future posts.

Chocolate from home. Thanks Mum, Terry and Stacey :D

Trying to get John in a party spirit by scaring him to death with party poppers first thing in the morning! 

We then made the most of the first day of good weather by cycling up a massive hill. Because we're stupid.

A shrine to your pets, I think.

We then went swimming, and afterwards had this lovely view across Kuzuoka and Kunimi in West Sendai. 

Now it's spring, living in the countryside doesn't seem so bad.

The shop in Sendai that sells taiyaki only sells cream and red bean paste ones all the time, and then sells a third other for a week or so at a time. I only like chocolate, and they haven't had them for about 5 weeks. Easter marked the start of chocolate week. It made my Easter.

I'd wanted to eat at Aashiriwaad Indian ever since I read about it on this blog. The service is slow but the food is awesome and good value. We might have gone for a second time yesterday :D

Food Adventures: Seeing Double

Apparently our motto this week has been 'why eat something once when  you can eat it twice?'. We've been repeating meals all over the place. At the end of every tasty meal we have, John always says 'I want moreeeee'. This week we've satisfied that craving but just cooking the same meal again the next day. Well, if it ain't broke, don't fix it.

We've been making smoothies repeatedly recently, because our local supermarket has had a crazy moment and starting selling strawberries at an actually affordable price. So we've been having banana, strawberry and orange juice smoothies every morning, to make us feel better about the fact that we've been eating welsh cakes or drop scones for breakfast.

For dinner, we had pizza two nights in a row.

After my successes with making pita bread, I wanted to try making pizzas in a pan. I combined a few recipes I'd found on the internet and, success!, a delicious pizza, no oven required.
To make enough for 2 of us, I..

mixed 3/4 cup of wholewheat flour, 3/4cup of plain flour, 3g of yeast, a pinch of sugar and a pinch of salt in a bowl. Add enough warm water to make it into a slightly wet dough. Knead until you get bored. Cover and leave it under your heater unit (or somewhere else warm) to rise.

When it's doubled in size, or you get hungry, split into 4 even sized balls. Leave for a few minutes. Heat a pan up on a medium heat, very lightly grease. Squish out one bit of pizza base to the thickness you want, put it in the pan and top with your choice of toppings.

We used Barbeque sauce (Made by John. When I asked him for a recipe he said "2 big squirts of ketchup, a lug of soy sauce, 1/2tsp of sugar, a slightly smaller lug of vinegar, some paprika. Taste and change to your liking"), chicken, mushrooms, pepper (all pre-cooked) and sweetcorn. John had jalapeños on his too. Put the cheese over the top, and put the lid on the pan. Leave until the cheese has melted. Repeat with the rest of the dough, to make 4 small pizzas.

So, so, so YUMMY! I was dubious about the dough cooking, about the bottom being too crispy, and about the toppings not being hot enough, but it really works. And was so good, we just had to make it again the second night because, um, we had to use up the rest of the ingredients. Or something.

Pizza night 2

Then, after leaving Japanese food well alone for a couple of nights, it was back with a vengence to make sushi! We haven't actually made any since we came to Japan, it's so cheap to buy that it barely seems worth it. But, having made some at a friends house earlier in the week (there'll be a blog about that at some point), I wanted to make it again with John. And it was yum. So we had that again a second day too. There's nothing like a varied diet!

Table of yumminess. Sushi fillings: crab, prawn, egg, cucumber, lettuce, mushrooms. Served with miso soup and edamame. 

I'm so proud of my tamagoyaki (the egg omlette). I made it using this recipe, and it was tasty and successful.