A bunch of things have happened. I climbed another mountain (not near the size of Mt Fuji but a good hike nonetheless. I moved rooms within my house to a much nicer, more fully equipped room. Got my first pay from the new job. Helped put on Vegan Earth Day Festival Kyoto across 2 days this past weekend. Been hitting up veggie joints a lot, hanging with pals, working, cooking, and all that JAZZ. Oh yeah, I went to a pretty sweet jazz concert recently. It went from 12 noon to 12 midnight. 10 or 11 bands played. The last one being my favourite Japanese band “NATSUMEN”. They were amazing – so much energy! God damn!

Anyway, ain’t got too much time and I’m a lazy bastard, so this has been a very forced update, so I apologize, but I don’t.

Music I’ve been jammin’:
Broken Social Scene – Forgiveness Rock Record (new record!)
The Most Serene Republic – Fantasick Impossibliss (new EP!)
NATSUMEN – Never Wear Out Your Summer (not new, but great!)

Peace out.

Catch ya next time with a more detailed update….?

End of my second week here in Osaka and yeah, started the new job. Seems like it’ll be pretty alright. The hours run a little late (until 10:00pm), but that seems like the only major trade-off. Yesterday I went to my friend Chojin’s birthday party/Hanami (cherry blossom viewing) party. We went to an area called Sakurashukugawa and there were Cherry Blossoms everywhere there. Didn’t end up taking pictures, but here’s a tree from in front of my house.








In other news, I started a blog about my veggie life here in Japan. If you’re interested, that can be checked out over here y’all: Kyle’s Veggie Life










I went to Chojin’s new place is Kobe last week and beforehand went to a nice vegetarian restaurant there with Kumi. Chojin was making 2 kinds of liquor at home. One from coffee and one from strawberries!





Catch ya later!

NO! Well, yes, bad thing – painful. But it also lead me to my very first Japanese Doctor’s Office experience.
I messaged my friend to see if she would mind going with me, since it’s a bit of an intimidating thing. Not knowing the protocol at all and so on.

Turns out she was already there! So it wasn’t a big deal to run over there and hang with her and then go in together to see the Doc. He was a nice guy. He quickly dealt with my friend and then me. Stuck a camera in my mouth, so we could both see it on the monitors, asked me some questions, and gave me the appropriate medicines (anti-biotics and anti-inflammatories) to help get rid of my sick soon. Having no health insurance I was expecting a hefty bill, but it only came to about $35. I can deal with that. Having only taken the pills once, I’m starting to feel a bit better already. (That might be purely psychological, but I have no problem with that.)

In other news, I’m gonna be doing some more work as an executive member of the Vegetarian Festival Japan NPO, so I’m excited about that. I’ll be doing some more translation work for the website and at the next event: Vegan Earth Day Kyoto 2010. I’ll also be trying my hand at a commercial of sorts as well as translating some non-Japanese recipes to Japanese (maybe making videos for some of those?).

I went to see a Deerhoof concert on the 23rd, and they were absolutely amazing just as the last time I saw them. As it turned out, one of the vegetarian festival members was also big into Deerhoof and some other bands I love. So we ended up meeting up at the show and then have since planned a couple other shows to hit up in the near future. How exciting. Someone to not only indulge my weird vegan tendencies with, but also my weird musical tendencies.

Music swimming through my head of late:
Broken Social Scene’s new tracks – “World Sick”, “Forced to Love”, “All to All”
Deerhoof
Dirty Projectors
Burt Bacharach – Raindrops keep falling on my head (such a wicked song I’ve rediscovered – the end is amazing)

Did lots and lots of hanami (cherry blossom viewing) during the few weeks they were out in april (had 5 hanami parties).
Went to a Spanish bar of an acquaintance of mine I met through someone I met at a cherry blossom viewing party. (I’m teaching his daughter English starting this week.)
Been getting very berry busy lately. I’ve been taking on more and more private students. Business is good for Kyle’s Traveling School of English.
Got treated to a tempura party at a student’s house, and there’s supposed to be another one (tempura/sushi/whatever) next weekend. All my students are crazy nice to me.
Oh yeah! Went to Tokyo and Yamanashi for a week. Saw lots of friends. Good time. However, the night bus was terrible. As usual, I wasn’t able to sleep a wink. That’s a liggity-long 9 hour ride.
Had a dream that Obama came to my English school and I taught him an English lesson. It didn’t occur to me at that time that he kinda knew English already, but it was exciting nonetheless.
Last weekend I went camping in Northern Kyoto. It was pretty good. It was different but at the same time not sooo different. Felt like I went camping in an alternate dimension. But I guess, I’ve been living in an alternate dimension for about half a year now.
This weekend I’ll be going to Wakayama with a couple people I don’t know (the daughter and daughter’s boyfriend of a cafe owner whose cafe I teach at quite often). Don’t ask me why. But apparently we’ll go and see some fireflies, maybe I’ll do some Catching Fireflies. And we’ll go to an Onsen (hot springs) and eat and drink and stay at their friend’s place. We’ll see what comes of this crazy adventure….

So I peeled those sweet po-tats, chopped ‘em up, boiled them til soft enough, drained the water, mashed ‘em (this part is very important to not forget), added a little margarine (soy margarine), as well as some basil and stir and finish cooking. To round out the meal, I enlisted some curry powdered (and other spices-ed) tofu and then did up some bok choy with a light wink of sesame oil. It was a really nice meal, I think. The sweet potatoes were pretty sweet! Very soft and delicious. My friend in the house who’s also vegetarian tasted some and enjoyed it.

On a-slightly-nother note, yesterday for something to do I checked out a small market across from the station called “Lucky” that I never really knew was there. I had heard about it’s existence recently and someone said it’s expensive. But I thought I’d check it out anyway. To my surprise, they had many things to interest me. There, I found a “vegetable-only” curry mix! If you see pigs flyin’, now you’ll know why. In Japan, basically all curry has beef or some kind of meat extract. But I checked all the ingredients and, indeed, as it says on the package, it’s been made without using any meat at all. Hurray.

Other interesting finds of note:
Hummus mix
Falafel mix
Tabouli mix

In general, more international items. However, of course, those things mentioned are really expensive. But it’s interesting to find them there, nonetheless. One other thing I found……chickpeas!!!!! I found these in Umeda (one of the big city centres of Osaka), but it’s about 40-50 minutes away by trains, costing about $10 round trip, thus I would only buy them there if I was in the area. And even still, it’s a pain to carry that around if I’m out gallivanting with people. So yeah, this place is 10 minutes away from my house, and the chickpeas are cheaper there too! It looks like I’ll have a very hummus-y future here.

Tomorrow I’m going to a Cherry Blossom viewing party with peeps from my house at Osaka Castle!

One can o’ chickpeas, check.
One non-vehicular lemon, check.
Garrrlic, double check.
Something resembling tahini, that I found at the grocery store, some kind of sesame paste, regardless….checkity-check.
Cumin, salt, shichimi (Japanese 7-spice), cute mini-food processor. Yup.
Process the shit out of that stuff! (the good kind of processing)

Keep changing ratios of ingredients, see what it needs.
Annoy studying person who’s sitting at the dining room table with noisy processing of food, over and over to perfection.
Eat with brown rice bread (since Japan is just SOOOOOO advanced that they think they’re better than the pita).
Share with housemates.
Receive compliments upon compliments regarding how amazing hummus is from people who’ve never had it before. Welcome to culture, Japan!
Oh, and also turn red and turn away embarrassed when your American housemate with a history of hummus having says it’s perfect. All on the first try, guys. Come on. What’s up with that??
Write a cleverly titled post on your blog detailing how amazing you and your hummus are. Done. Thank you.

Hey guys, what you been up to? It’s been far too long, right?

I don’t have much time, but I figured I should get another post up here so that this thing doesn’t feel too neglected. You know neglect is a form of abuse, right? Thank you, university! In one of my private lessons last week with a middle-aged woman, I taught many a sociological concept – the lesson was all about discrimination, sexism, ageism, prejudice, bigotry, etc…. Haha, I forget how it naturally came to that, but that’s some tough stuff for some to learn about, let alone learning it in a second language. But she did well. I like doing private lessons, and letting the theme/lesson arise organically through conversation. It’s fun.

Okay. Some things I’ve been up to lately. Incomprehensibly recounted. Go!

Two friends, in this sorry excuse for a Real World experience, were about to move out. One was moving back in with her family in a nearby city. The other was going back home to Germany. We all had a farewell party for them, consisting of going to an izakaya (japanese style restaurant/bar), then a few remaining people went to karaoke following that. My first time karaoke-ing during this stint here. Good times.

A few days later came the time when the peeps were really moving out. The German had to leave at about 5:30am, which was only a few hours later than my bedtime of late, 2:00ish. So, I thought why not stay up and say goodbye. The other leaving girl stayed up too for the same reason, while the German had to get a few Zzzz’s. He’s a real nice guy, and was the first person I met/talked to in the house, so it was sad to see him go. But I guess, especially in this revolving door of a house, that’s going to be a frequent occurrence.

Anyway, get to the excitement, right??? Right! So, after bidding farewell, I was in the kitchen with the other girl (who was making some riceballs) scrambling some curried tofu for breakie when a big rumbling decided to rumble. To my sleep-deprived mind, this was just due to a train passing. But wait, there are no trains THAT close. My friends, I can now say, I survived my first earthquake in Japan. My friend was freaked out ’cause she still remembers the big Hanshin/Kobe earthquake of ’95 which was actually really bad (while this time it was just a little sugar frosted quaker). No-damage earthquakes = good times.

Later that day, following some much needed rest, I decided to make some kind of curry. I’ve never made curry, and I had no idea of how to make curry. But why should that stop anyone!!! So, I chopped up some onions, tomatoes, sweet potats, carrots, tofu, etc.. I started shaking my bottles of curry powder, garam masala, cumin and turmeric like a mad man. And voila. Head-first-maybe-curry! It was quite delicious. I also added a little trick I learned from Sarah, by adding in a bit of wasabi! Not too much to make it spicy or overwhelming, but just to lend it’s talents to the taste. Good job, man, you came through.

Also recently, I hit up Osaka Castle Park last week with a fellow English teacher at my school, and we checked out some bands there. It was quite fun. One band was quite the spectacle. They had a group of maybe 20 or more people with them dressed up gothic-ly, with faces painted white, along with army men, school children, etc all doing choreographed movements to their crazy metal music. And throughout the day, when they weren’t actually performing, they’d have some of these people in all black and facepaint walking extremely slowly….with huge clocks on their back. Huh?! Yeah! Okay, I can deal with that!

One band in particular I really liked (joy), and ended up buying their CD. It was a beautiful day, and for lunch we ate our subs in the park! That’s right, there’s a couple of ‘Subways’ here. They’re hidden away, but the sub I had (veggie and avocado) was not too shabby. A good day all in all, and apparently every Sunday they do this kind of thing there.

The following night, I met up with a couple friends in Kyoto. First we went to an English pub, which was OK, but the alcohol is expensive of course. So we decided to hit up a liquor store, get some stuff, and then chill by the Kamogawa river. I must say, having open liquor in the streets not be illegal is pretty liberating. Haha. However conflicted I felt about it.

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So now it’s time for an installment of Things that Japan loves (besides OBAMA)!

Japan loves…..
HEAT! – hot springs, baths not showers, heated toilet seats, kotatsu (a table that’s heated underneath to warm your legs)
NOODLES – going along with the heat theme, it’s all about the noodle soups here (ramen, udon, soba, somen)
CONVENIENCE – convenience stores wherever you turn, the trains are ridiculously so (always exactly on time, frequent)
CUTENESS – happy cartoon characters at train tracks warning of the danger, Hello Kitty, Disney (even guys like Disney here), everything/everyone strives for being cute
POLITENESS – it’s kind of crazy polite, you enter a store – even to walk through it as a shortcut on your way home – and you’ve got people greeting you, thanking you for gracing them with your mere presence, bowing to you left and right; at the cash register, following the 2-3 seconds it takes to put your item in a bag, they apologize for making you wait. A housemate of mine is working at some kind of clothing store, and he is mostly there stocking, or folding things, but he has hopes to work the register at some point. Anyway, he must learn all the most polite language (not just polite, but super-polite, to which there’s no real equivalent in English), learn the right ways to bow, greet everyone who enters the store, walks by, or even thinks about one day visiting the store. Not so crazy, right? But all the workers also needs to do their smiling drills each day! My housemate was told he needs to improve his smile more, he needs more practice. He was told he should sit infront of the mirror daily, smiling to himself, to get it just perfect. No thank you!

The weekend was good. On Saturday I worked. On Sunday I met up with a friend for lunch which we had at a hidden away little vegan restaurant in Kyoto. Good stuff. It was basically in someone’s house. With cats hanging out. Interesting. But very good and reasonable. Then I went with him to do some shopping for things to bring to Canada. Following that we went to see his friend’s tap dance recital. Then to a cafe together. Then to meet up with a different friend and the friends of his who I’d met before when we went to the southern island of Shikoku. It was good seeing those guys again. We had Okonomiyaki. With the exception of Sunday, I’ve cooked every day since last Monday. Something different everyday. It feels really good to be doing it. And a couple of times I’ve stumbled upon deliciousness I had yet to experience in this life. Bonus.

Today I first met with a prospective student, whom I had met at the American teacher’s farewell party. I met with him at the station, and then he asked if it’s OK if we go to his house to talk about conditions of the lessons. So we hopped on a bus, he paid for me, which was nice of him, and we got to his house (which is where the lessons will be). We just had a normal conversation for a while, and then we got to the matter at hand. We decided on a day of the week and time for the lessons. It works out for me pretty conveniently, as on that day I have a lesson shortly after our’s (in the same general area).

Then he asked me about what kinds of food I like, so innocently I talked about food for a bit. Conveniently, the American teacher he had previously was vegetarian too, so the student was no stranger to it. He left the room, and then proceeded to ask his wife to make some Udon for us (after I told him how I went with friends to Shikoku for Udon). Haha. I was quick to politely decline, as I had to go shortly to meet with another student. But he said there would be enough time, no problem. So I was fed quite well! Following the meal we ate, there wasn’t enough time to eat the Cherry Mochi (a kind of japanese sweets) I was given, so along with another kind of mochi, the man’s wife packed it up for me to take with me! Haha. Now, not only was I fed well. But, normally I charge a certain amount for one-hour lessons, and I previously had told this man how much it was. And I wasn’t expecting any payment today, since it was just a meeting to discuss the lessons we’ll begin on Wednesday. But he gave me an envelope with money in it, asking if that much was OK. I was surprised and said “no it’s okay really, we didn’t even have a lesson today, i don’t need it!”. He still insisted though. And he paid even more than the price I had told him last time! I told him “But it’s only X-amount!” but he said “No, Y-amount is okay!!”. Haha, craziness.

Then I rushed off to my 2-hour lesson. The student is just great! She brings a short essay each time for me to go over and correct, as well as grammar exercises from a textbook she has that she has me go over as well. And she is very eager to speak. So, my lessons with her are always enjoyable and go quite smoothly!

That lead me to return to my home station, do some grocery shopping, and come home. I hung out with a friend in the house who’ll be moving on Sunday. So we just sat and talked for a while, which was really nice. Then I tried a new kind of sandwich I’d thought up. I quickly, lightly fried a slab of tofu in a pan, with a little bit of curry powder. Cut up some tomato and onion. And put those between the slices of bread along with some avocado, a little more curry powder and a light drizzling of honey. Now, there was a small problem. Japanese bread is usually double the thickness of NORMAL bread. Haha. I anticipated this and foolishly thought I could skillfully slice one slice into two. But that didn’t work out at all. I just kind of mutilated the bread. But I stopped halfway through, so it was still kind of intact. I said, whatever, and tried it with the two thick slices. My first bites were all bread and it was a little bit of a struggle to get my mouth around it. But. It. Was. Amazing!!!

I’ve never been prouder in my life than I was today.

I even thought about buying some regularly sized slices of bread tonight and doing it up right-like. It’s definitely going to be a go-to. It was very quick and easy, nutritious and delicious. It was nutrilicious!!! No jokes.

OK

Sorry, about that. I’m done patting myself on the back now. But it kind of hurts…..

Oh yeah!