Dinner with Friends

Tonight we cooked western style for our friends. By that we mean lasagna and a vegetable stew. In the picture are Shinji and Masae Masuda + Nobuyoshi and Kiyoe Yamada (my yoga sensei). It was nice to catch up on old times.

Sushi Party with Shinji and Masae

Our friends, Shinji and Masae(Mr. and Mrs. Masuda) invited us to eat sushi. The components of the sushi are provided at the table and each person makes his own sushi roll to taste. All fresh ingredients of fish and nori and vegetables are sliced and laid out decoratively atop the rice along with shredded daikon and shiso leaf. The rice is flavored mildly with vinegar and stirred in a special bamboo bowl made especially for steaming food. The dipping sauce was soy or teriyaki with wasabi. Believe me, the taste was wonderful--I just can't do it justice in writing. [If our blogspot seems a little focused on food, well, we do love Japanese food!]

Meeting Cooking Class members

What a nice treat to have lunch with some of the members of my former cooking class. We met for a Japanese meal at a restaurant tatami room. There is a picture of the group who met including Vickie, another American here who has also taught them in my absence. The food includes sashimi, eggplant with miso sauce on top, vegetables, and tempera, to name only some of it. We had fun speaking in a combination of English and Japanese.

Michiko's lunch

Today was sunny, cold and extremely windy. My friend Michiko invited me to eat lunch with her. She has a nice vegetable garden and is careful not to use chemicals on the plants. She made a tasty, healthful hot soup of vegetables and her home-made noodles. She served a soy flavored grilled fish, black beans, and green tea; not pictured, she later added some handmade sushi and red beans and rice. The quilt-style "table cloth" is called a "kotatsu" which retains the heat, produced under the table--a traditional way a family eats together

3 Story Mall and sunset

Today was a National Holiday (Foundation of Japan according to Shinto legend). Al had to work, so some friends invited me to go to a new mall about 50 minutes drive southwest of Ota. It is a large mall with food courts and men's and women's shops. There were some children's shops that I enjoyed looking at, too. One was a place to buy, name, and dress a teddy bear (kinda like the Barbie concept). You can see a lot of the clothing and a bear (in a cowboy outfit) hanging on the wall. Another store featured a little girl's dresser ensemble in the window. On the way home, we stopped at a Tatebayashi lake to watch the sunset and birds gather.

The washing machine

Someone asked why we had to have a translator help us with the washing machine. Look at the photo. This is just one part of the control panel. To add to the confusion, this machine washes and dries in the same place... and really works well too.

Tableware

These are a couple of shots from the tableware show at the Tokyo Dome. The show was almost overwhelming with so many pieces of pottery and china. We went by train and metro to the Dome. For lunch ate a "bento" (boxed lunch) there and took our time to view as much as we could in 1 day.

Meeting the neighbors

We have made the rounds of the neighborhood to greet everyone (13 houses). The area leader came with us to make the introductions. After the introduction, we presented small gifts of towels. Our communication was limited because we are still taking Japanese and most of the people do not speak any English. Our next door neighbor, Kiyomi, speaks English well and one other lady said she speaks a little English.

The area leader also gave us a schedule for the neighborhood work day. The first one is tomorrow and it is to clean up the little canal next to the children's playground.

This afternoon, we will go over to Professor Masuda's house to see his new (to us) addition to the house. He has also invited us to stay for dinner.