Sakura in the Sunshine

After our hanami success at the weekend, today we made the most of a sunny morning and caught the train to Ogawara. It's a small town half way to Fukushima, about 35 minutes by train from Sendai. It is a pretty town, along the Shiroishi River, and during Cherry Blossom season, this prettiness is greatly enhanced by cherry trees all along both sides of the river. You can walk along a sakura corridor all the way to the next station up (Funaoka), and from there you can walk up a hill, also entirely decorated with cherry blossom.

Pure Sakura porn. Enjoy!

Arrival at the river

Because rabbits enjoy hanami too.

Today was gorgeously sunny, but very hazy. On clearer days you can apparently see Mount Zao in the background. It's a shame, but I'll take Pollyanna's advice and be glad about the sun!

What's that, JR? Yes, I'd love to become your new advertising photographer :)

Cute birds, scary boyfriend!

There were lots of pretty buildings as well as pretty flowers

Cable Car going up the hill for the lazy

Sakura sea

Not the best picture, but it does show the trees going down the river as far as you can see

Different colours of blossom

Our Hanami Party

I've been doing lots of spring time wandering this last week, but the cherry blossoms have still been playing hard to get. They're most out not, but not fully, and since we've got a lot more wandering planned for this week, I'll save up my photos and you'll get a deluge later in the week.

But despite the less than full buds, we had our hanami party (along with most of the inhabitants of Sendai!). Hanami literally translates as Flower look, but it generally refers to viewing Cherry Blossoms. There is a national obsession with them in Japan, as many people know, and trees are everywhere. Whilst people obviously enjoy their beauty, to a lot of people, hanami really only means one thing...having a drunken picnic in a park with your friends. People have hanami parties with friends, family and work colleagues, and blue sheets (these seem to be essential) spring up everywhere. The parks are ridiculously crowded, but that's all part of the fun - it's Japan, so people are generally polite, friendly and tidy, even when they're rolling around drunk. Despite the weather being distinctly overcast, and it being rather too cold for a picnic, we thoroughly enjoyed ours yesterday, and I'm almost sad that we're going to Taiwan next weekend so we can't have another one!

Here's a collection of the photos of the day!

Juggler collecting money for the rebuilding effort 

Our food...it's a testament to our collective cooking skills that the bought food was left pretty much untouched while we all devoured everything homemade!

There was a procession of dancers and musicians, just adding to the festival atmosphere

Just for variation!

Date Masamune, Sendai's founder. This costume pops up at everything!

The Japanese half of our hanami group!

Friends, flowers, food, alcohol. All that's needed for successful hanami!

Lanterns sponsored by Kirin Beer, naturally.

My Week: Heigh ho, heigh ho, it's off outside we go

SPRING IS HERE!! Well, it has been. It's now raining again, and that is forecast to continue most of this week. Right when I want to be enjoying my first Sakura (Cherry Blossom) season in Japan. Urgh.

But, we have had a week of gorgeous weather, which we've been enjoying wholeheartedly.

I love daffodils! 

I hate the overhead wires that are everywhere in Japan :( But this river is such a lovely colour!

I found and used a bee venom face mask. Random.

On Saturday, a friend took us to an awesome park. We ate, walked, played badminton, acted like children and enjoyed the sunshine.

Freaky-deaky dogs.

We subtly ignored the (bilingual) signs that said children only. Who wouldn't want to play on a massive bouncy mound?!

Sendai near sunset

Smiles may blossom, or they may not. That all depends on the weather. 

Osaki Hachimangu Shrine

Rurousha, I think this one of your dream eating Baku!

Trees are starting to look a little pink around the edges, but no Sakura yet! I'll be back later in the week!

The Plum blossoms are still lovely though, and smell gorgeous.

Dressed in pink to encourage the sakura on!

A really rather effeminate photo!

Last week, on Friday 13th, a child from school gave me a four leaf clover. There's a luck conundrum for you! 

I hope everyone else is enjoying the spring weather too!

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

The Glad Game

I am a self-confessed old-fashioned children's book fiend. Books like Anne of Green Gables, Swallows and Amazons, Little Women, A Little Princess, all Enid Blyton books ever, What Katy Did and The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe made up a scarily large percentage of my childhood, and when I need cheering up, I still frequently re-read them now.

But, somehow, I'd never read Pollyanna until I downloaded it for my kindle last week. Pollyanna is the kind of character, found frequently in books like these, who you would want to smack in the face if you met her in real life for being far, far too cheery and perfect. However, in the candyfloss world she inhabits, she fits in well, and you can't help but love her.

The essence of Pollyanna, for those who don't know, is the Glad Game. The idea is to find something in everything to be glad about, no matter what it is. During the course of the book, she advises an invalid to be glad that everyone else doesn't suffer like her, a servant to be 'gladdest' of all on wash day because it won't come again for another week, and she herself is glad when she loses the use of her legs because she can be glad she once had them. 

Like I said, in real life she'd get a slap for being so chirpy.

But, the essence of it is just to be appreciate what you've got instead of complaining about what you don't have. Like, right now, instead of being cross that it's raining again, I can just be happy that it's much warmer, or that I didn't have that far to bike home today. Instead of being annoying at our stupid apartment, I can be glad that I live with John, I'm in Japan, that we're not that far from Sendai, and we only have to live here for a year.

It's pretty cheesy, but I'm genuinely finding it makes me feel happier and more content with the world. To quote another of my beloved children's books, "There is so much in the world for us all if we only have the eyes to see it, and the heart to love it, and the hand to gather it to ourselves... so much everywhere in which to delight, and for which to be thankful." (Anne of the Island by L.M. Montgomery). The Glad Game helps you to have the 'eyes to see it'.

And anyway, it's SPRING. Even in Sendai now. That's an easy thing to play the glad game with.

You're more than welcome to give me the slap that Pollyanna deserves, but why don't you try playing the Glad Game too?!

(PS - For anyone who knows what this means, by writing this post, I JUST LOST THE GAME. You're welcome. For anyone else, welcome to the club.)

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. 

Food Adventures: Cheer us up Brownies

As I may have mentioned before, I love to bake. And I hate not having an oven. However, I'm finding that with a bit of creativity, it's still easy to make yummy cakes, even in Japan. And so far, the mixture that seems to be least fussy on cooking times/temperatures seems to be Chocolate Brownie. I'm guessing it's because it's tastiest when it's a little gooey, and so the changeable rice cooker temperatures don't affect it as badly as they do a Victoria Sandwich cake, cupcakes or biscuits (although, you can make all of those fairly successfully in a rice cooker too, they just aren't quite as good as when they're made in an oven, and certainly aren't as consistent.)

So, I thought I'd share my favourite Chocolate Brownie recipe. I think we got this recipe out of a Beaver (in England, they're young Scouts) annual, about 15 years ago, and my Mum and I have been making it frequently ever since. It's really chocolatey and gorgeously gooey, while still retaining a good cakey-ness. It's also so easy and, as I mentioned above, pretty foolproof. 

The name 'Cheer Us Up Brownies' was coined by a friend of mine, when he added the recipe to the book my friends and family gave me for my 18th birthday. Judging how much they managed to cheer up a couple of very wet and bedraggled English teachers last night after they'd walked home in the storm, I'd say it's a pretty accurate name. Who can be sad when there's a chocolately mess to be devoured?!

If you want to make it into more of a dessert, serve them warm with cream or ice cream and some sort of berries (raspberries are best if you can get your hands on them). John and I just usually munch them as they are straight out of the oven  rice cooker. Don't expect them to last long.

Ingredients

(If you're using an oven, I suggest doubling the amount below. If you're using a rice cooker, this amount should be about right, but maybe cook in 2 batches if you have a really small one)

50g margarine or butter

50g dark chocolate (if you live in Japan, the best is to be bought at Daiso, 2 50g bars for your ¥100)

50g self raising flour OR 50g plain flour plus 1/2tsp baking powder

100g castor sugar

1 egg

Optional extras:

If you like your brownie really REALLY chocolately and gooey, add a tablespoon of cocoa powder and a splash of water.

If you want to be super indulgent, you can add 50g chocolate chips/chunks.

Some crazy people like walnuts in their brownie. They suggest 50g is a good amount. I suggest 0g is better.

Method

Melt the chocolate and marg/butter together. Microwave fine, just use a low/medium heat and stir frequently.

Stir in all the other ingredients, plus any/all of the optional extras you fancy.

Then, 

For those lucky enough to have an oven:

Pre-heat the oven to 180°C/Gas Mark 4/350°F

Grease or line a baking tray, either about 7"x7" (15cm square) for the amount above or about 7"x11" (15cm x 22cm) if you followed my advice and doubled it. 

Bake for 20-25 minutes, or until a knife stuck into it comes out almost clean.

For those of us with rice cookers/bread makers:

Lightly grease the cooking tin. Pour the mixture in and cook until a knife stuck in comes out almost clean. On my machine, I set it going on rice cook, leave it through the cook and steam phase, then repeat. After 2 cycles it's perfect. I guess it'll vary with different machines though.

It might not win and beauty contests, especially when you have to kind of pour it out of the rice cooker bowl, but it tastes damn good.