If it's Tuesday it Must be Cumbustibles

Trash has become the fourth member of our family. On an island this size with so many people there is no room for dumpsters. It stays in your home until collection day. The good news is there are five collection days.
Monday; Bottles and cans. They need to be washed. The labels must be removed along with any plastic bits.
Tuesday; cumbustibles (food and paper without printing)
Wednesday; every other Wednesday is non cumbustibles and the alternate weeks are cardboard and newspapers. The cardboard must be cut and wrapped, newspapers and magazines must be bundled tightly. Milk and juice cartons have to be cut open in a specific way and then washed and dried.
Thurday; Plastic
Friday; food again.
If they don't approve of your wrapping methods they leave it there for you to figure out what you did wrong.
The garbage trucks play cute little songs. (The kerosene home delivery trucks play Russian songs but that's another blog.)
I'll spare you the details of what you do after you walk the dog twice a day.
One house in a neighborhood is designated as the house trash gets placed in front of. They change the house once a year so that no one's property value goes down. Someone from the neighborhood is assigned to keep the area clean.There are lots of feral cats around, you can identify them from the house cats because they don't have tails. People HATE them and try all kinds of things to discourage them from coming near their homes. Ususally they put out bottles of water to scare them. ? There are no trash bins on the streets. If you buy a latte in Tokyo you carry the cup with you until you get home. Mike and I have more discussions about trash than any other aspect of our lives.

Densha だんしゃ

On most days while I am travelling around by train or subway I am the only caucasian ANYWHERE. Sometimes at rush hour in Tokyo I will see another Westerner on a train or in the station. We say hello.
Trains are a way of life here because even if you have a car and even if you know how to get where you are going, there won't be a place to put that car once you get there. Everyone gets on the train, immediately closes their eyes and falls asleep and miraculously wakes up at their stop. Including Mike, except for the waking up part.

They Blinded me with Science

We have made the Giant Leap into the 21st. century. (I have been busy pounding clothes on rocks for the last 7 years I guess). Upon plunging our first two i Pods into our ears, Mike said, "We've just had our last meaningful conversation". Purchasing an iMac is what brought us out of the dark ages. I could be taking these photos with an instamatic using flash cubes and once I tweak them with iMac's photo suite they look like this. Our Nikon camera came with a photo editor that is laughable compared to the mac program. You will never again get a photo from us where we have wrinkles.
Mike threatened to wear a fanny pack with that outfit, what you can't see is the size of the purse I am carrying.
The picture of the woman with the umbrella was taken on our engagement trip to Italy. It was a magical moment in the rain but without photo suite it wasn't very visible.

Japanese women

For the most part, Japanese women strong and strong willed, they just have an "Eastern" way of showing it. Today I saw some beautiful Japanese women.

More Photos From the Festival

Sagami no Oodako

Today we went to a Giant Kite festival in Sagami. There is a society dedicated to preserving this type of kite which began in 1830 to announce the birth of a child to the village. As you can see there are no clam cakes or dough boys at Japanese Festivals. I have included a few pictures for Brian, Allegra and Angelina.

What's for Dinner?

Cooking in Japan is a struggle. We have a Japanese kitchen with no counter space, no oven and three burners on a small gas stove. If I am able to identify food in the supermarket it is only because I know which species have tentacles.
In the soft drink aisle I see this white stuff ( you will be glad to know it also comes in "diet") that I can't bring to my lips. I try at least one unidentifiable food a week, some weeks are better than others.
There is a popular liquor (and I think that is too elegant a name) called sochu.
Sailors in my AA group talk about it with reverence then finish the sentence with, "and that's what got me here".
I have included a picture of something green in a bag, it's not in the seaweed aisle though; no kidding there really is a seaweed aisle which is right next to the dried fish flakes aisle . It is on sale. If any one has any ideas on what it is I'll send you some.
I will devote a future blog to ancho which I love more that chocolate.

We live next to an ancient fishing village called Oatsu. This is where they are "reclaiming the land from the ocean" to build a tree lined walkway. There are tiny fishing gear and bait shops here inhabited by elderly, hard working people. These shops are a dark jumble of things and when I walk Lucky by them at night I can hear televisions behind the aluminum screens which means that these people live in the cramped, fishy smelling room they work out of all day. It's the only place left around here that has any character.

Japanese Food

Despite what you may have read, sumo wrestlers eat only one dish, Chanko-nabe. In fact, when they retire from sumo wrestling they often open Nabe restaurants.
As there is no central heating, Japanese homes have a table (Kotatsu) about the size of a square coffee table with a heater underneath and a quilted blanket over the top. You sit at it with your legs under the table and blanket to keep warm and cook your nabe dinner on the table. Most Japanese people eat Nabe a few times a week, so why are most of them so small and sumo wrestlers so big? Maybe this is a single serving recipe.
If you decide to make this I have extra seaweed, dashi and bonito flakes.

Japanese Sumo Wrestler's Recipe - Chanko Nabe Recipe

Chanko-nabe is famous as a sumo wrestler's dish. A variety of ingredients, such as meat, fish, and vegetables, are cooked at the table in a large pot.

Ingredients:

14oz. (400g.) chicken, a cut that has less bones
7oz. (200g.) pork
4 salmon steaks
8 scallops
1/3 head of chinese cabbage or regular cabbage
2 Japanese leeks (white part)
3.5 oz (100g.) bean sprouts*
8 shiitake mushrooms
2 packages enoki-dake mushrooms*
1 bag shirataki noodles*
1 block tofu 2 10cm. sheets of dried konbu*
10~20g. bonito flakes (katsuobushi*)
8~10 cups dashi* broth soup
2 tablespoons (30cc) soy sauce
2 teaspoons (8cc) salt
2 tablespoons (30cc) sake
2 tablespoons (30cc) mirin*
2 eggs
7oz. 200g cooked rice
ponzu sauce as needed
nabe pot (or any pot will do)
small dishes or bowls for dipping sauce.

Golden Week

This is the week to stay away from Japan. It's called "Golden Week", It's almost two weeks long and three of their major holidays fall during this period.Very few Japanese people are working , everyone is outside playing baseball. Parks are lousy with six year olds pitching to their fathers. If Matsuzaka can do it...
The majority of Japanese people are not religious, so there are no real religious holidays that I am aware of. They are however, highly superstitious and every move they make has a superstition attatched to it. I recently went to a Temple where you had to breathe your problems into a piece of clay and then dash it on a rock to try to break it. Easier said than done; it's a good thing I had a hard time coming up with a problem.
One of this week's holdiays is "boys day", I think boys fly kites while their parents drink sake on that day. Another day is sumo- baby-cry day, you take your under one year old baby to a shrine where sumo wrestlers try to scare it, it's reaction tells the gods something who then try to protect it for the rest of it's life.

When the Going Gets Tough the Tough Go Blonde

Today's post was going to be about work but Nozomi-san and Maiko-san didn't like what they were wearing. Maybe on Thursday they will be camera ready. Japanese women are the most style conscious of any place we have visited. During the kimono era you wore your wealth in your accessories and today almost every Japanese woman has a collection of expensive designer handbags. The women I see on the street look as though they take time and thought in choosing what to wear; they are a modern version of the 1950's, everything matches, it's clear they don't just "throw anything on". They carry designer handkerchiefs , they are the kind of daughters my mother would have wanted but without the Japanese part.
I asked Mike if I had exploited Junko in the blog yesterday and he said, "Just give her some shoes". He did. Mike McCarten said that.

Our Tsuri Koen friends

We live next to a fishing park, our building is the narrow, light colored one on the left hand side. A man and his pig live in the park. He takes such exquisite care of that pig, every morning he carefully chops up fruit and vegetables for the pig while the other park residents supervise. The pig is a very popular park personality but even more popular this year because it is the Year of the Pig. I think we should leave Lucky with the guy when we travel because I know he will be well taken care of. We are watched over carefully by the park residents and if they haven't seen one of us for awhile they will ask where we have been when they next see us.
For me, the most interesting person living in the park is Junko, her English is better than almost any Japanese person I have met. She told me she was married to a sailor once. By 3:00 she smells pretty heavily of booze but early in the morning we can have nice talks. She is busy most of the day taking care of her things, washing her clothes and hanging them on trees. She dresses stylishly, she has pink rain boots and when it's cold she wraps herself in a leopard print blanket and lays reading on a bench in the sun. I want to ask her to lunch but Mike has concerns about that.
We got a notice yesterday that the city is going to "reclaim land from the ocean" they are going to fill in 20m x 500m in front of our house.

Seoul

The other night we were in a hotel in Seoul watching a movie ("Bobby", it was pretty good) when I heard fireworks, I said to Mike, "come and look at the fireworks" and he said "Where are we?" I thought "Oh boy, it's starting, by July I am going to be feeding him strained peas". He said he sincerely had no idea where we were since he has been to 11 Asian countries since Jaunuary. (Are there 11 Asian countires? Can he name them?)
The most interesting thing about Korea is the DMZ.
Oh, Mike ate ocotpus that was still moving, you need to chew it right away or it uses it's suckers to attach itself to the inside of your mouth.
The photo here is the changing of the guard at the Josean Palace.