Missing my friend's delicious Chinese cuisine!

And friendship. And beer time. ;)

Bento! #265: Fried Xiao Long Bao

510 yen for 6 pieces of this 上海名物 / shanhai meibutsu / Shanghai specialty that's sold at this small store in Machida, Tokyo. And about a 15 minute wait?

Don't come to Japan if you are this kind of gaijin.

Check out this video:



If you check out the video on YouTube, there are links to helpful information in the video description. The essence of it is this, but I still strongly encourage you to watch the video. It's not just meant for Westerners; it's for everyone even thinking of coming to Japan. But I hope you can understand English.

"If you can't adapt to different places... If you have trouble with the food... If you can't stand changing their culture... If you feel strange in a different place... Do not come here."

Bento! #148: Taiwanese restaurant lunch set

For only 700 yen!!! I was debating though if I should include this in my "Bento!" series, since it's not Japanese food, but what the heck. It's food in Japan. And besides, this was lunch -- and as you know, bentou means lunch box. :D

Anyway, this is a new restaurant just around our neighborhood, although it's on the main road leading up to school.


View Larger Map

In the Google Street View above (as of today, November 2012), it still shows the very old restaurant that was housed in that same building where this new Taiwanese restaurant is now in, from back in October 2010. The place was an okonomiyaki place (in fact, I have videos and blog articles about the place) called Douhton-Bori. In 2011, they closed shop and then this new place set up shop there; it was a ramen and curry restaurant called Konge Ramen. And now, it's 2012, a new year, a new restaurant. I wish they'd stay longer than its predecessors have, but who knows. Maybe the location is just not good for a restaurant. In fact, now, there have less parking spaces as there is now a 5-story building at one corner of the parking area you see above.

Anyways, all this for only 700 yen!!!

Rural Atsugi

Our professor invited us to a walk around school - a rural area of Atsugi, with plenty of farm land, hills, and all that - and 20 of us went along. We walked for an hour and twenty minutes under a generally sunny winter day. The video below is a 10-minute, super-fast-forward version (8x speed) of the original.

New Inglish

Here's some new Inglish for you.  You know the word "plough"?  How do you pronounce it?  Well, visually it looks similar to "cough," doesn't it?  And so that's how they pronounce it.  "Pluff."

Chanko Nabe

"Nabe" means saucepan or pot. "Chanko Nabe" is the Nabe for sumo wrestlers. Basically one serving is good for 2 to 4 people, but it is meant for just ONE sumo wrestler.



You can also directly view the video on YouTube.

New Inglish Word

Note: Please refer to a previous blog post for a definition of the words Inglish and Engrish.

Usually, PhD students or researchers here need to make a presentation about the progress of their work on a given schedule, but normally some would postpone their presentation a week or more later.  I on the other hand, scheduled for a presentation on November 6, asked to present one week earlier.  So one of the students asked me, "You preponed your presentation?"  I said, "What?"  He said, "Prepone."  I said, "I never heard of that word before."  He said, "It's the opposite of postpone."

So I looked it up on Google.  Did I just not know this word existed in English?  (I'm talking about American English, of course, or even British English.)  So this is the Google search link: http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&rlz=&q=what+does+the+word+prepone+mean%3F&um=1&ie=UTF-8&sa=N&tab=fw.

Apparently, it is not American nor British nor Australian English.  That's why I never heard of "prepone" - because it isn't English.  But it does exist - in the Inglish language.

Weekling

I guess from now on I'll start posting on at least a weekly basis, instead of on a daily basis.  Blogging about how your life has gone on a daily basis takes a little bit of time - precious time you could use to actually live more of that life.  Maybe someone else can just blog about me.  Or not.  Anyways, the past week was marked by post-Fuji tiredness.  "Tiredness is there."

As mentioned in past posts, TPU was closed until last Tuesday.  After coming home from Fuji on Saturday and taking a little visit to Tokyo on Sunday, Monday became nothing.  As in I woke up really, really late and slept relatively early; I only had one convenience-store meal at around 10pm.

Tuesday in Japanese is "kayobi;"  in my case it was "aikiyayobi" - IKEA day.  Left home a little past 11am, got to IKEA in time for queueing up at the IKEA restaurant for lunch.  I had a quite expensive lunch - nearly US$15 worth - but worth it, I guess.  I missed them swedish meatballs with the gravy and raspberry sauce.  I wanted IKEA's usual salmon but instead there was only marinated salmon (more like smoked salmon) which came with a few veggie leaves, and me being a Go-Grow-Glow guy, I had to get a couple of pieces of bread to go with it.  Whew, the bread was expensive.  US$ 1.20 for one, and US$ 0.60 for the other.  And there's a charge for the butter: 20 cents (20 yen).  Dang.  Well, it was all worth it, if only to experience a non-Japanese setting in Japan.  After that, I probably spent at least an hour or hour and a half at the showroom and marketplace.  I didn't really find much interesting.  Actually at the back of my mind, I was like, I'll buy only stuff that I could actually bring home to the Philippines that the Customs wouldn't charge me so much for!  After IKEA home stuff shopping, it was IKEA food shopping.  I bought IKEA-brand chocolate bars - one dark, one milk, and one hazelnut.  I've tried the dark one so far; I love dark chocolate the most and I liked IKEA's.  I do still like Meiji's dark chocolate, though.  Or Hershey's.  Anyways, I also brought home some ready-to-eat meatballs, and ready-to-eat potato gratin.  The potato gratin unfortunately got thawed on my way home!  IKEA itself is at least 80 minutes from my apartment.

Dinner for Tuesday evening was convenience store food, I think.  I also cooked Adobong Manok during the week, which I ate for dinner on Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday.  I ate the IKEA meatballs and potato gratin for lunch on the same day.  My 2nd try of Adobong Manok wasn't as great as the first, probably because I used different chicken parts this time, or maybe I just missed or over-seasoned with some ingredients.  But nonetheless, it was still yummy, as well as the IKEA food.  I didn't mind having the same lunch and dinner menu for three days.

On Friday we were supposed to play basketball but the basketball gym was closed, but we were able to play table tennis and so ping-ponging we did.  It was fun, we won a "betting" game (guess whose idea), and it wasn't as strenuous on my yet-to-fully-recover knees as basketball is.

For Saturday lunch, I forgot what I ate for lunch, but I think I still had some of the meatballs and potato gratin.  They are really yummy.  Did I mention they're a bit expensive though?  But I think it's not so bad.  I ate them with rice by the way and that's why they lasted 4 meals.  Oh yeah, I cheated by assuming potato as a Glow/veggie food. :D

Then there was our usual Saturday seminar.  I went to the seminar room at 2pm only to find out that it has been moved to 2:30pm!  And the presentations and discussions took quite a while this time.  We finished at 6:15pm!  For dinner, I had convenience store food again.  Torikatsu and a really huge burger patty.  A few days ago, I had a "yaki" trifecta from the convenience store: yakisoba (noodles, a Japanese-style pancit canton), okonomiyaki ("Japanese pancakes"), and takoyaki (octopus balls, a popular Japanese street/festival delicacy).  "Yaki" means grilled, but here, "grilled" means on a flat pan with a little bit of oil.  Think teppanyaki grill.  "Soba" means noodles, of course.  "Okono" means anything you want, but okonomiyaki that you did not cook by yourself usually just contains some vegetables, usually cabbage and onion.  "Tako" of course means octopus.

And then Sunday.  Woke up early enough and surprisingly a usual 1 hour 50 minute trip from my apartment to Meguro became a 1 hour 10 minute trip - I was too early for the 12 noon mass.  So I had brunch first at a place I am very familiar with - McDonald's.  Big Macs for only US$ 2.00 each!!!  The set though is still around US$ 5.50.  Have I told you I don't really like Big Macs?  I prefer Quarter Pounders to Big Macs.  Can't do without the tomato ketchup and onions.  I also like the pickle.  Then the mass.  My Filipino friends all had to go somewhere, and so I went back to Atsugi.  The first thing I did back at Atsugi was get a haircut. The lady barber cutting my hair asked me something in Japanese, pointing to my sideburns, and I replied yes. I thought she was asking if she can trim/cut it.  Apparently she was asking if she should leave it as is.  Oh well, this is the cheapest barbershop here.  US$ 10.00 for a haircut.  In 10 minutes.  After the haircut, I went to the secondhand store and got me a guitar!  It's a Yamaha CG-150, if I remember correctly.  It's a classical guitar.  This is the first time I will own a classical guitar.  And the first time I'll own a "real" guitar brand - a Yamaha.  But I still love my 14.5-year-old acoustic guitar.  Hmmm, I forgot now what my guitar brand is.  But it is made in Cebu, if I'm not mistaken.  Now I chose this Yamaha because it's the best among the cheapest priced ones.  It's another insurance investment for sanity while I wait for Mara to come here.

The guitar was too bulky, of course, and so I went back to the apartment first, cooled down (high was 34 degrees; cooler than Tuesday's and Wednesday's 37 and 36 degree highs - yes, and I was out during that day!), and then back to Hon-Atsugi with Ali-san to meet up with Okada-san to eat all we can shabu-shabu at Nabezo again.  $19 for a dinner buffet, drinks excluded.  Not a bad price for here in Japan.  And for the ambiance.  We again had beef, tofu, and lots of veggies and shrooms as main ingredients for our shabu-shabu.

I was "wa chuns lah" - very, very full.  But I still had to do grocery shopping.  I went to SATY then and bought 5kg rice, ~8 liters of fluids, around 1.5kg of meat, and some veggies and snacks.  That's around 14kg I carried from SATY, to the bus terminal, and finally to my apartment.  While I was carrying that heavy a bag, I thought, that must have helped me prepare for my Fuji trip - because I certainly did not feel the 12kg weight I carried then.  But, with that comes bad news as well.  My trusty TheNorthFace bag which I bought in Hanoi, Vietnam, has started to given in, probably because of that Fuji trip.  It is still useable though.  And oh I will still use it.  I don't think I'll be throwing this one away.  It was the only thing that was (physically) with me the whole 14 hours climb up and down Mt Fuji.

One Day till Mt Fuji???

I woke up really late today because I stayed really late last night at the office, to finish as much as I can before TPU closes tomorrow!  And today, we'll be doing some shopping for gear and necessities for our Mt Fuji climb.  Supposedly I should be at the office already by 10:30am to help Kim-san move to his new desk - because he's graduating already!  He'll be Dr. Kim soon.  Anyways, Kim-san's current area is an ideal position and so one of the next senior students, Jiang-san, had already "reservate" the area so he was moving there.  Meanwhile, I "reserved" Jiang-san's seat.  So when I got to the office I moved my stuff first.  I knew I was going to be busy today and so I ate my 2nd batch of franksilog (frankfurters, sinaing/rice, and itlog/egg) at the office.  I also started copying files to my hard drive so that I have the option of doing some school work during the summer break while TPU is closed and the electricity is down (hence I cannot access my school PC even remotely).

But wait, when I arrived at the office, there was "bad" news.  The last couple of days we were weary of this typhoon that started from around north of the Philippines and which has made its way to Korea and forecasted to hit Japan from the west.  There was a chance it could make the weather really bad on Thursday and so Kim-san, our Mt Fuji trip organizer and 2-time Mt Fuji climber, postponed our bus reservations a day later.  Yay!  One more day of rest before Mt Fuji.

At around 3pm, it was time to go for our Mt Fuji shopping already.  5 of us went by bicycle.  We first went to the 100-yen store at AT.  My Fuji trip buddies bought flashlights, gloves, sunglasses, and hats/caps.  Next stop was downtown Atsugi where we wanted to buy Oxygen supply cans.  The store which sells them was closed!  So we went to SATY, a mall / department store, hoping to find those O2 cans there instead.  No luck.  Instead, there were some jackets selling for only 500 yen.  Wow, that is extremely cheap!  3 of us bought jackets.  I didn't bring the jacket up to Fuji though because it is not water-proof.  The other 2 did.  My trip buddies also bought sunscreen lotion.  So anyway, next stop was the shoe store.  As expected, I didn't have any shoe size so I had to make do with my Nike running shoes.  3 of my trip buddies were able to buy hiking shoes at relatively cheap, sale prices at around 4000 yen.  Wow.  I have this difficulty of finding shoe sizes in Singapore and in Japan.  I had this problem years ago in the Philippines but thankfully now, there are more people with big feet like me and so they do sell the larger sizes but mostly only for non-formal footwear like sports shoes and sandals.

Anyways, after that we went back to AT to buy food and drinks for our climb.  Actually earlier today I received my online order of Nature Valley granola bars from Amazon.co.jp.  Plus last Sunday when I did my grocery shopping, I already bought 4L of this Gatorade-like Aquarius sports drink by Coca-Cola, but more similar and more in competition to Pocari Sweat.  So, I only needed to buy another carton of juice and milk which I didn't buy last Sunday because I thought my week is only until Wednesday and that Thursday and Friday will be devoted to the Fuji climb.  Anyways, I saw one pack of Dried Green Mangoes for sale and I bought it. :-D

Actually, whenever I do get a chance, I buy these Philippine-made products (like these dried mangoes and Magic Flakes) so that hopefully they would think there is a market here and so they would continue to import from the Philippines.

And so, that was the shopping we did.  We all went back home of course, and then I had my last batch of BBQ ribs.  Ate it together with steamed pechay.  Then back to the office, to do my last minute work before TPU closes tomorrow.  I stayed quite late at TPU, along with probably 4 other guys.  Literally there was no tomorrow, not until 6 days from now.

Hanabi!

Fireworks!  It is a Japanese tradition to hold fireworks shows usually at their major rivers during summer.  Tonight was Atsugi's turn, at the intersection of Sagami River with two other smaller rivers.  As I mentioned, there was one in Tokyo's Sumida River last week, and tonight also at Edo River, I think.

Before that...  My day started a bit early today, at a little past 8am.  I did my laundry and finished before 11am.  Then I packed lunch and went to the office.  I ate ginisang giniling with pechay and with semi-hard-boiled egg for lunch at 12:30, and then attended a seminar at 1pm, where a presentation was given by the most senior PhD student who is to graduate by end of September.  He presented his research thesis/dissertation, of course, and the intention was to get public opinion, thus this "open" seminar.  At a little past 2pm, the graduating student finished his presentation, and shared some snacks with all of us, while the professors continued to deliberate his thesis.

Then, it was back to the office for most of us.  For me, though, I didn't do any school work - just work.  At around 5pm, me and my "kuya" (Filipino for "big brother," but in this context a more senior student assigned to take care of you) went to see one of the professors who was apparently still busy with his earlier meeting.  We waited until a little past 6pm and scheduled meetings with the professor for Monday instead.  During that wait, my "kuya" and I exchanged stories about our home countries - the Philippines and China.

We actually had to be at Sagami River by ~6:30pm.  But we left our apartment probably around 6:30pm already!

On our bike ride to the hanabi venue, we tried a new route this time.  It was a slightly shorter route, but with a steeper downhill part that ends abruptly in an intersection -- dangerous!  Anyway, we were all safe.  I don't usually ride my bike on very steep downhill slopes (and uphill of course) and so as usual, I walked my bicycle downhill.

Then straight along relatively flat terrain we went, but then at one point we were not sure which direction to go.  We noticed that an unusual number of people were walking in the same direction, and so we thought where everyone was going is were we should be going as well.  We were right.

Then we noticed that people were all WALKING.  So we decided to park our bicycles somewhere and started walking ourselves.  There were so many people already, and some streets were closed to traffic.

Along the streets, we noticed that some people were already camping out on the sidewalk, seated on mattresses or beach chairs, and taking some food and drink, some even selling food and drink along the sidewalks.  There were a lot of police, traffic guides, and crossing guards that helped ensure the hundreds of pedestrians are all safe, and cars are properly diverted.

Then there was a little bit of a choke point where some stalls started to appear, lined up, selling the usual Japanese street food fare at these summer fireworks events like cotton candy, takoyaki (literally "grilled octopus," but it actually one small cube of grilled octopus meat wrapped inside an egg-based ball together with some veggies and mayo - yummy!), yakisoba (literally "grilled noodles;" they look like pancit canton with less sahog and with a sweetier taste - yummy!), yakitori (grilled chicken - yummy of course), furankufuruto (a Japanese-style frankfurter), some shabu-shabu-like street food fare, okonomiyaki (literally means "anything you want, grilled" but in this non-restaurant setting, they look like a sandwich of different veggies between two pancakes - very different from the one you would get at a restaurant), drinks of course (beer, water, sports drinks similar to Gatorade, soda, juice, shaved ice drinks), ice cream on a stick (which obviously you have to finish quickly - not a problem during summer), suteiki (Japanese-style "steak," this time served in square-shaped pieces on a stick), ikayaki (grilled squid), sakanayaki (grilled fish), and I think that's it.  We would find there are many stalls selling the same thing, but I think each stall is owned by one family, and so their fare would have slightly different taste from the other.  So, some would look and taste yummier than others'.

And then those hundreds of people were apparently just the newly arrived.  There were thousands of people, and I would guess there were at least 10,000 people there.  And that's just on our side of the river.  Apparently on the other side of the river, there are even more people, and even more food stalls.  On our way, we heard "booms" already - hints that the fireworks had already started.  Indeed even from far away, we can already see the action starting.

We walked, and walked, and walked, until we decided we were close enough to the action.  Along the supposedly walkway, some people have sat in a row and so we thought joining the bandwagon and sit there.  And sit we did.  Thankfully, one of my fellow students brought some junk mail that we can sit on.

There were plenty of people in yukata, a traditional Japanese clothing usually worn indoors (nowadays, you can find some in hotels), or during summer.  On women, you would think it is like a kimono but it is as you can see less formal.  There is also a version for men.

And then the fireworks.  There were different colors, of course.  And smiley face shapes, heart shapes, maybe some hiragana (Japanese) characters, Saturn (planet) shapes, mushroom shapes, zigzagging fireworks, flower and butterfly looking shapes, the usual en grande finale in some presentations, and I forgot what else.  Having watched two International Pyro Olympics in Manila, these were normal to me already and in fact, lacking coordination with a certain song as background music, to me, was something missing here.  There was some loud speaker on but usually there was just some announcement by some lady after each 1-minute or so fireworks showcase.

By around 8:15 I think we started moving again, with the intention to get out of there before everyone does or else it's going to be a stampede!  Well, no, that won't happen here but well, we just wanted to avoid the sardine-can-like crowd.

On the way out, we tried takoyaki balls (500 yen for 6 pieces), yakitori (100 yen per stick), and yakisoba (500 yen per pack).  Expensive!  Takoyaki is just 400 yen for 10 pieces at the convenience store.  And instant yakisoba is just 100 yen and probably tastes better than the ones we got.  But of course, these are all cooked fresh, and it didn't really matter during this festive event.  Overall, this was part of this hanabi experience.

And then so we found our way out of the crowd and got back to our bikes.  It was probably 9pm already.  And then here they go again.

"Let's pass by the (out-of-the-way, back-deep-in-to-the-multitude-of-people) supermarket first before we head home."  What?  Why not just go tomorrow to the supermarket that is just 10 minutes away by bike from our apartment?  "It's boring to go there."  What is so boring about that?  And so he wanted to drag all three of us companions of his along, out of the way from our route home, and back towards the crowd that we just ran away from.  I think he was just tamad to go again to the supermarket tomorrow, and for his tamadness he wanted to drag us along with him.  "My fellow Indian friend said I have to buy chicken now, for tomorrow, and that the supermarket here in downtown closes at 9:30pm.  So I have to buy now."  Hmmm, I think I see what's going on here now.  Someone is being a puppetmaster, another a puppet.  One is more senior than the other.  Match A & B with 1 &2.

Well, no, not me, man.  I told them I'll go ahead and head straight home.  Hitori de (by myself).  It was the first time I rode by bicycle by myself between downtown Atsugi and my apartment.  It was fun.  It was also the first time I tried the route we usually take going downtown, the opposite way around.  Fun!

But, wait.  I haven't drank anything yet!  On the trip, "thirst came," as these Indian fellow students of mine would say, meaning "I felt thirsty."  And it was a little bit warm.  It's summer, you know.  And so when I got home, my clothes were drenched yet again.  And I drank sports drink and nearly a liter of water.

Overall, this is a very nice day, and very nice new experience.

Closed!

I went home early last night but unfortunately I wasn't able to sleep early...  And I woke up too late again to attend class.  My alarm clock didn't work yet again.  Actually my alarm clock this time was this computer program that runs the official online stream of the Manila-based radio station Magic 89.9 (magic899.fm/ListenLive.aspx).  But argh, that guy who has the router (and with whom we'll share the internet expenses with) has probably moved it around again and so there's no signal in my room.  Last Saturday night, I had this same problem.  I called him up and asked him about it, and he said, "Oh there is something covering the router."  What???  And he expects me to pay the same amount as himself for the internet connection???  Sigh.  There are 3 of us sharing the connection, but I am not willing to pay 1/3 or not even 1/4 of the internet fee.

Now don't worry, the class I missed is not a very important class for me.  It is about something that is totally different from the field I'm studying.  And to tell you the truth, I find it so difficult and so distracting from the real work that I need to do here, so if I can I would really like to not attend that class anymore.  After today, there's two more classes and well, I hope to attend those if only to keep a good relationship with the class professor.

Lunch was nilagang baboy again.  Yummy, but it could've used a little more salt and spice.

We wanted to play basketball today, but the gym was closed.  So we just did some running.  I exercised for maybe 35 minutes straight.  Then shower.  Then home - because I had a delivery coming.

For dinner, I was thinking of having nilagang manok.  Oh, I forgot to mention, the nilagang manok was too salty and too spicy.  Hmmm.  Anyways, I am so not into having this nilagang manok again.  This wasn't appetizing.  This would make me feel less energized.  And so I decided to fry the chicken instead.  Wow, it tasted great!  Ate them with tomatoes.  Yummy dinner.

I realized I have to eat good food as much as possible.  When I was eating cafeteria food almost everyday, I felt the difference when I started to eat my own cooked Pinoy food.  This time around, I'm on an almost all-Pinoy food diet (or at least maybe 60% of the time), but of course not all Pinoy dishes are yummy.  Or some are yummy, but when you cook it differently, it could taste different and not so appetizing.  And so unenergizing, if there is such a word.  Actually what happened for this week was, I got tired of thinking of and deciding on what food I really wanted to eat and therefore needed to cook.  I just selected the dishes which I did not have the week before.  And so I ended up with this line up.

But actually one other motivation I have when choosing dishes I am going to prepare for the week is: avoid using cooking oil (even if it was canola or other vegetable)!  And so that's why I like cooking nilaga, and even the giniling.  And so this is what I ended up doing.  Fried (previously boiled) chicken.  But it was really yummy.

By the way, I forgot to mention that yesterday I received the results of my health check-up.  It is all in Japanese though, except the numbers of course.  So my BP is 130/80 (or "132/78" to be "exact").  My height is 183.5 cm and my weight is 85 kg.  And they calculated my BMI: 25.2.  I'm (still) overweight!!?!?!??  I told my colleagues here and they were all like, "No, you're still fine.  I'm shorter than you but I'm not that much lighter."  Another noticed that I have a "B" mark, exactly on that box/area where my height, weight, and BMI is listed.  He said that he got all "A" marks.  Actually, I really think I'm 185 cm, and if so my BMI is 24.8, still within normal.  I might just be slouching a bit when my height was taken.  It was, after all, mid-day already.  Anyways, this is all good news as it is only more reason to do more exercise!  :-)

I don't like to share this with you just yet, but what the heck.  I like to do more exercise so that I can eat more!  Ehehehe :-D

Ho-hum... Do spices make you gay/bitchy?

I was so tired yesterday but still I had trouble sleeping.  So today I woke up a little late, had grilled salmon and steamed pechay for lunch first and then off to school. Work, work, work, then I went home only after 9pm, for my adobong manok and steamed pechay dinner, again. I didn't return to school again for the day. Did I say the adobo was just perfect? It was a jackpot. I hope to sleep earlier today and be early to school tomorrow. :-)

So, did that sound very much like yesterday except for no basketball yesterday.

So instead, let's add some SPICE by way of a spicy story.

So I'm new here in school starting this school year's Spring term in April, which actually starts officially around the 1st of April.  There are three of us newbies, the other 2 guys being from southern India.  They arrived maybe 2nd of April.  I arrived 16th of April.  So I'm like the newest of the new students.

Now, there is a total of 5 students here from southern India, 2 of which are actually a married couple.  There is 1 student from Bangladesh.  I think all 6 can speak the Hindi language.  There are also 5 students from China, 2 of which are actually a boyfriend-girlfriend couple.  There is 1 researcher also from China, 1 researcher from Taiwan and 1 researcher from Hong Kong, and all of them (8) people can speak Mandarin.  There is 1 Korean student, and 3 Korean researchers, all who can speak Korean of course, but also Japanese quite fluently.  Lastly, there is one Vietnamese and one Italian researcher.

Anyways, my 2 Indian "batchmates" and I will be here together for 3 years.  So at the beginning I consider them as my buddies around here as we all on the same footing.  The older, married batchmate, probably cannot take new-to-the-taste food, and so he goes home for lunch and dinner and eats by himself everyday.  So there is the younger batchmate, who is probably 10 years my junior.  At first, we would invite each other to eat lunch together, together with another relatively young Indian guy.  There was an Italian short-term researcher here when I first came here, and together with the Italian researcher, we all ate lunch together with some Japanese students and another gaijin (foreigner).

The Italians and the Japanese and the other foreigner had future lunch dates of their own, because what would happen is we would already go to lunch but they would have lunch a little later.  As for me, I was warned about some locals befriending you so as to practice their English, but once their English or your Japanese is much improved, they will ditch you just like that.  And so we were left to just me and the two Indian guys.  At one point, the more senior (by school years) Indian guy had a business trip and so it was just the two of us, the younger batchmate and I.

To tell you the truth it was quite difficult to get a conversation going.  He would usually be quiet, and even more so when those other nationalities are there.  One time, we had lunch with the Japanese and the Italian, and well I was making conversation with the two of them.  This young batchmate was dead silent the whole time.  Uninterested.  Sure, what we were talking about is something new to him, but it also was to us.

Anyways, things happened here and there and one day, at around 12:00 noon, I came up to the two Indian guys and asked them if we can go for lunch already (because on previous days we go to lunch at 12 noon, to avoid the "traffic" and rush of people at 12:30).  They said, "a little later."  So "okay," I said, and waited back at my desk.  We're in the same room, by the way, where all 13 PhD students and 1 researcher have our desks.  It's not so big.  1:10pm came and I was wondering, aren't these guys hungry yet?  So I come back to them and said, "Shall we go now for lunch?  We should go now, because the cafeteria closes at 1:30pm."  They're like, "We already ate lunch.  We thought you already ate lunch!"

Yup, I didn't hear the word "Sorry."  As for me, wanting to keep the peace, I just said, "Oh okay, it's okay."  And so I ate lunch by myself, an hour later!  If only I knew.  I thought, it might have just been a misunderstanding, although I thought if I were in their shoes, I would have passed by my desk to ask me if I already ate lunch or not.

On succeeding days, my batchmate and I have class until 12:30pm on Thursdays and Fridays, and so usually I would still invite them to have lunch together.  Hey, we're all foreigner students here, right?  We could learn about each other's culture and stuff and talk about our situations as foreigner students.  But no.  And then I noticed that they're not inviting me to lunch anymore.  At one point, they were like totally avoiding me already!  As in my batchmate-classmate in the 'til-12:30 class was avoiding eye contact with me right after class, and then go straight to meet up with his boyfriend Indian guy and have lunch together.  I was like, what's going on?  What did I do?  Lots of things happened since that first time they did not invite me to lunch, and well, I don't really know what caused all this to happen.  Do they feel insecure?  Or, fine, there's not so much "chemistry" (because mostly I start the conversation and they don't probably have any interest in other people or are ready with questions to ask or tools to interact), but to me I would at least exert some effort.  But no.

Well now, my attitude is, I have offered them my friendship and they have rejected it.  This is how they want it, and so this is how it will be.  We are but professionally related.  I don't need them and certainly I won't willingly offer them help unless asked to by our professors. They are not my friends.  But, of course they are not my enemies.

If you were wondering, I did not confront them about it anymore, (with the intention of confronting them diplomatically, of course) because well I think their culture is not like that.  These people have issues and instead of opening up to the challenge, they group together and wallow in their sadness.

So why am I even talking about them?  Like I said, we're just adding a little spice to this otherwise one-paragraph of a blog post. :-D  There is one other spicy story I have reserved for you in a future "boring" blog post. :-)

Wa pao la

That is what I said after eating... Shabu-Shabu! :-)

Anyways, almost the usual Saturday except I got up really, really late.  But I was able to finish my laundry and hang them up for drying.  Then lunch, the last of my cooked meals for the week, nilagang baboy.  Then I went straight to the "regular" Saturday seminar, by bicycle of course, because it is not so easy to walk just yet.  My ankle feels much better though, thanks to the good, long sleep I enjoyed last night.  Thank you, Lord!  I think what happened was I tied my shoes too tight after the injury, and that may have caused the pain.  I didn't notice any significant swelling so maybe it wasn't a sprain?  Yikes!  Well, I don't know.  Today it feels like there's a very minor sprain somewhere inside.  As mentioned I still can't walk straight, but I can walk now.  And even do brisk walking.  But riding the bicycle is not a problem at all.  Plus it's just two minutes to get to school by bike then the short walk from the bicycle parking area to the seminar room (or to the office), compared to a 5 minute walk, completely on foot.

Anyways, after the seminar, went back to the office, did a little teeny beany bit of work, while Skyping with Mara. :-)  And then off to Hon-Atsugi we went!  By bicycle!  As I've mentioned before, it's about a 30-minute bicycle ride, but it's not so boring because there's two of us on this trip so we could chat a little bit.  At the restaurant, called "Nabezo," our two more senior colleagues who got there by bus were just waiting for us.  So there was 4 of us at Nabezo.  Then we started ordering, and the food started coming!

Because one of our colleagues didn't eat pork, and there was no seafood or chicken on the menu, we only had beef as meat.  Tofu was another source of protein, but mostly it was veggies, veggies, veggies.  Did I mention this is tabehodai, i.e. eat-all-you-can?

So there was me, the Filipino, and I was with one Japanese researcher, and two Chinese.  We learned how to say "I'm full" in our respective languages.  So I taught them "busog ako" or "ako ay busog."  And I learned...

Wa pao la.
Wa chan la.
Wa chans la.


Respectively, those are Chinese (Mandarin) sentences for:

I'm full.
I'm more than full.
I'm practically dead because I ate too much.

Actually at one point I thought I was like, wa chan la.  But after some time, I became just wa pao la.  The trouble though was, we had a 30-minute (or so) bike ride ahead of us.  Uphill.  Well, it wasn't a problem.  We were very happy about the food, though my Chinese colleague said that this time he did not eat that much because if he did, he would find it difficult to sleep early enough.  It is summer, though.  The temperature was not so bad as it was already around 8pm, but it is still summer.  Humidity!  And the daytime high was 34 degrees.  I was like soaking wet when I got to the office.  But it was all still worth it.  I like trying new food and new places, and interacting in such an international setting, sharing stories, words/sentences, and so on from each other's hometowns.

By the way, so while I saved 520 yen for a roundtrip bus fare to and from Hon-Atsugi for this Shabu-Shabu escapade, the Shabu-Shabu price itself was... 2000 yen.  It is a little bit expensive, but for an all-beef meatfest, which they say is all-Australian beef, I think it's still not bad.

Interesting

Ah, a break from the consecutive busy, not very interesting days.  As I mentioned, I slept quite early last night, and woke up quite early today, around 8am in fact.  I did my laundry - and finished my laundry at around 10am. I was thinking, should I go to the grocery already?

I got the bicycle, but I ended up in school.  And I didn't leave school anymore until the seminar, which was an interesting one.  Delivered by a current University of Tokyo professor who was formerly a UN officer, it was about disaster risk reduction, which is the trend now versus yesteryear's disaster reduction, which he explained was very different from disaster risk reduction.

Anyways, the seminar ended around 3:15pm, and I was debating again whether I should go the grocery already?  I thought about it and thought about it, and next thing you know, it was 5:30pm already.  Our meeting time for our "group date" was 6pm in downtown Atsugi - a 30 minute bicycle ride.  So what the heck, grocery shopping can wait till tomorrow.

And then wow, the food was good.  It was Indian food, all-you-can-eat, and I haven't ever eaten that much since I came to Japan.  There were samples of Tandoori Chicken, Samosa (a kind of potato empanada dipped in ketchup), Fish Fry which was really good, Cauliflower Fry which was also surprisingly good, and then the all-you-can-eat nan, this other bread, Indian rice, and 4 kinds of curry - ebi (shrimp) curry, chicken curry, keema (mutton) curry, and vegetable curry.  Yum-mee.  We were told it's drink-all-you-can as well, so I had a couple of beers.  Turns out it wasn't drink-all-you-can for beer.  I should have just tried the Lasi.  And the Mango Lasi.  There's always a next time.  I heard that at that restaurant, it was only eat-all-you-can because our Indian colleagues arranged it so, and that there needed to be at least 10 people.  I think there was 17 of us.  Fun!  I really love the bread (nan), especially the garlic nan, and the keema curry!  Of course the Indian way was to use the hand, and maybe I and every one tried doing that but it wasn't so comfortable so thankfully there were spoons and forks and knives. :-D

After dinner, some went home and some wanted to go out for some more drinks, and so I went out for some more drinks.  I didn't know Atsugi had such cozy places for just relaxing and chatting with friends over some drinks.  I also got to speak with some Japanese, and supposedly I was to exercise my Japanese, but I ended up exercising their English. :-D  Anyways, because I was getting sneezy with beer, I had what they call a "Kiwi Sour" drink.  It's basically Kiwi (fruit) with "Sour," which was kind of a Japanese alcoholic thingy.  It wasn't so strong.

By the way, I learned that "draft beer" is nama bi-ru in Japanese.  Here's a joke for all ye Pinoys: Use nama bi-ru in a sentence.... Di ka nama bi-ru e! :-P

Japanese written language help

This is another interesting tool to help you out with your Japanese written language skills: http://www.furiganizer.com/.  Furigana basically means small text that "translate," typically Kanji to Hiragana so that it's easier to read for people who haven't had the time to study the 1,000+ Kanji characters out there.

Anyways, Friday was the usual.  As usual.  Class in the morning: though this time I wasn't 100% into the class, because after Thursday's meeting with the Professor, I thought I had much to do - in my structural wind engineering field - and meanwhile this class was about environmental wind engineering.  It could be useful in the future, but not now.  It is a very difficult subject matter to internalize.  Then again, I remember: no pain, no gain.  Lunch again was at the by-the-pound cafeteria, and dinner was the last batch of my nilagang baka.  And then basketball as usual, wherein no one won the "betting," but we won the no-betting match which was a 3-on-3, which was as international as it gets: 2 mainland Chinese, 1 Taiwanese, 1 Korean, 1 Japanese, and 1 Filipino.  Well actually before, instead of the Japanese it was an Indian.  And even before that, instead of the Taiwanese it was an Italian.  Cool.

Talking about international, you can see how more unfortunate others are in some respects.  Some people have lived all their lives in generally closed societies, for example, marrying only within their own large clan, or not being able to go out of their country or watch a lot of movies, or shows, or news events, or even international sports events that are not in their country.  And so as you might imagine, they are not very open to many new things.  It is difficult for some of them, for example, to eat Japanese food (even those that are not contrary to any religion, like the fish/seafood and vegetables), to learn even just a little Japanese language, to use chopsticks, to be a friend to people other than their own, to go out and explore Japan (and there is much to explore) by themselves, to understand that there is such a thing as postcards and not just greeting cards, to be considerate of others in terms of their own personal hygiene habits that they've grown up with, and the list goes on and on and on.  I nor anyone can't do anything about them, of course.  It is all up to them to open up and really go international, instead of bringing their closed, little society (little compared to the global society) with them to this international setting.  But what could they do - or anyone - brought up "shy," to be coming from such "closed" societies.

Anyways, there are one or two stories I will tell you guys about in a future post.  Until then, my Friday story continues:

So as usual, after basketball, I go straight home to eat dinner.  But I was so tired this time from the basketball.  And right after dinner, I felt so sleepy and so I fell asleep!  That was around 9pm or earlier, I think.  I was so tired, I fell asleep with two of the lights on (the kitchen and the main room lights)!  Also, this time around, my knees are feeling better - but there's a little pain in my ankles this time, pain that I haven't felt since I ran a 10 km "marathon" in 2008 (which I haven't done since ~1992).  I am now and back in 2008 nearly 50 lbs (22 kg) heavier than I was when I first ran (twice) back in the early 90's (I was still in high school, and was still 14 or 15 years old).  Is this what growing old means?  Ha ha!  I didn't think this would come this early, at least not the physical aspects.  I know 50+ year olds who are more fit than me, and I thought I could be like them. I can accept that I can't jump as high as before, but feeling all these things is something I didn't expect.  Of course, this is a product of being an engineer in the Philippines (a.k.a. very busy) and having practically no exercise in the past 5 or 6 years.  This time, I'm hoping to make this a regular thing, and hopefully get some of my "groove" back.  I'm not expecting I'll be as athletic as I was like 6 years ago when I was already at my sports prime, but I'm just hoping to get some back.

But wait, there's more!

In Nihongo class, I learned that the Japanese system(s) of writing - Kanji, Hiragana, and Katakana - only came into existence here around 700-800 A.D.  Kanji of course being adopted from China, and Hiragana and Katakana being derived from similar sounding Kanji.

Basically the Japanese didn't have any form of writing prior to visits to mainland China in that period...  Much like the Philippines?  Although of course we do have our own traditional writing system (check this out: http://www.omniglot.com/writing/tagalog.htm), but our culture is that we don't really like documenting or writing things down.

Having gone to China (Hong Kong, Shanghai), Japan, Taiwan, India, Vietnam, Thailand, and Singapore, I thought there are a number of these Chinese, Japanese, Taiwanese, Indian, Vietnamese, Thai, or (local) Singaporean that could pass as a Filipino - until you hear them talk.  I realized this is the one physical definition of "Filipino," that he/she speaks Filipino.  I realized here that, unless I tell people so, and for as long as I can speak good Japanese and with the proper accent, no one would think I'm not Japanese!  I find it funny that one time I was in the US, I answered the phone with a somewhat American accent, and then it was a Filipino on the other line who was like trying to exhaust all his English language skills (with a very distinctive Filipino accent) to try to converse with me - who he thought was not a native Filipino speaker like himself!  So anyways, what I'm saying is, it's really your language that defines your nationality.  If you can speak like a native does, people could actually "mistake" you to be a native.  Or consider you as brother.  But I do find it annoying that some people think they know English very well, and are very boastful of the fact that it is even one of their national languages, but make very basic grammatical mistakes like...  "Too much tired is there."  What????  Well of course I understood what that means but, come on, man.  The originators of English supposedly taught you English.

Hum again

Hmmm.  Things are starting to get boring now.  Nothing new or amazing today again from the usual stuff, except that in Nihongo class we're now studying Katakana characters, and today we had our 2nd quiz.  I'm thinking to take a new direction with regards to my blog post topics, to spice things up.  Ah, yes.  Spices.  They can certainly change things.  Like how people "smell," or at least that's what some people say.  What I think is, if you don't bathe or shower, you smell.  If the temperature is cold, fine, no need to bathe/shower everyday.  If the temperature is quite warm (like nowadays), please take a shower because for sure we will all sweat, and only then will the difference between what we eat will come out.  Now, there is absolutely nothing wrong with sweating; we shouldn't be ashamed of it.  It's a natural process.  But anyways, relatively unfortunate for Filipinos who pride themselves of "not smelling," unlike others, only because it's generally warm in the Philippines and so we bathe/shower regularly, (by the way, pride is always bad; "Love is not proud," says the Bible) there are some who are really out there and, I don't know if they even know it.  One other guy around here thought that we should have an air freshener here in our room.  Nope, that wasn't me.

Okonomiyaki!

This day is the usual Thursday.  2 classes, 1 is Nihongo class.  I had lunch this time at the other cafeteria, the first one where you order by dish, not by the pound.  Well actually you can order a lot as well, but my bill was just 608 yen, much less than my usual 800 yen (minimum 700 yen, maximum 950 yen) at the by-the-pound cafeteria.  Not as much though, not as full, but fulfilling none the less.  Thank God for the blessings.

At Nihongo class, we learned how to read the calendar.  Not as straight forward as in English, but okay, something new learned today.

Then this evening, at 6:40pm, the PhD students and a few of the researchers met up at the TPU front gate to go to this restaurant, for the farewell dinner for the short-term researcher from Italy, Francesca-san.  The restaurant is Dohton-Bori, an Okonomiyaki restaurant.  It is just 10 minutes by bicycle from TPU.  There were 17 of us who went there.  Basically it's like "barbecue" or hot pot style where you cook the food yourselves on the table.  I thought it would be like one big table for all 17 of us, but we were split into so many tables with 4 people max per table.  Anyways everyone had a multi-course meal.  On our table, we were 4 very hungry men.  We had 3 kinds of okonomiyaki, then we had this... mokyujiyaki?  And yakisoba.  And gyoza and...  fried rice (forgot what it's called), similar to chao fan (Chinese fried rice).  Anyways, the fried rice was black fried rice - it had squid ink.  Felt like the Spanish paella.  The okonomiyaki is basically like omelet.  Two nights ago we visisted one of our Indian fellow students and he was preparing dinner, which was also much like omelet - lots of onions, and garlic sauteed although they mix it with the rice before serving.  Anyways, everything tasted good at Dohton-Bori.  Even the biiru. :-D  Total bill per person on our table: ~2500 yen.  That's 1500 yen for the biiru! :-(

Anyways, daytime high today was 29 degrees!  I love it!  Others found it too warm, so they turned up the air-conditioning - which was too cold for me.  I wonder when will I get used to the cooler weather.

Hakone! and Filipino Food

As mentioned today's trip was to start at 9am sharp, or else they can leave without you.  So that meant the latest I should leave home is 8:30am.  Thank God I woke up to my alarm at around 7:15am, and was ready to go at a little past 8:00am.

So I decided to go with the other PhD students who are going there by bike.  Yikes!  After Friday's intense basketball (it was a total of 45 points, not 40 as I previously mentioned) game, I regret having to do this, except for the sort of bonding with the other students.  Anyways, as mentioned before, going to Hon-Atsugi station from TPU or my apartment is not a problem because it is downhill.  Going back was the problem - you're tired from whatever you did and then it is uphill.  Of course we just walk the bike, but still it's more effort.

The good news though is, I saved 260 pesos (around $5.20) today by riding the bike, for a 4 km (3 mile) total round trip journey.  Yay!

Anyways, we got to the meeting place at 8:40am - better early than late, of course.  And then the organizers told us that we were leaving at 9:30am because they had to wait for someone.  What?  I thought the idea was to leave at 9:00am sharp and that we won't wait for latecomers?  Oh well.  Not everyone is on time; nope, not in Japan.

Actually because we left late we had very little time to go around by ourselves around Hakone later during our "free time."

We got there around 10:30am and the first activity was doing this traditional "wood curving" (that's what it said on our invitation letter - not "wood carving" and not pottery as I said in an earlier blog post)...  Actually the more appropriate term is wood mosaic pattern making, I think called YosegiZaiku.  So we have these different colored wood tiles, from different types of wood, and they are either diamond-shaped or triangular (each being one-half of the diamond-shaped ones), and then you make a pattern, for beginners it's usually to make a coaster (one you put your beer mug on) or something.  Interesting.   Then once you've decided on your pattern, you glue your tiles together and then clean it up with wet tissues and sandpaper and voila.  For more advanced wood mosaic pattern makers, or whatever they're called, they make box decorations and stuff.  Check this out: http://ginkgraph.net/articles/products/hakone-yosegi-zaiku.html.  The boxes themselves are way too expensive (like many things here).  The cheapest, smallest one would be more than 2000 yen ($20, PhP 1000).

Anyways, right after that was barbecue lunch!  Basically there's this big basket of food - veggies and meat - and we were to cook them on the hot plate.  It is practically like fried, more than grilled - we used oil a lot.  But basically we all ate a lot.  Two or three in our group do not eat beef, so they only ate the lamb and shrimp (probably there was just one shrimp per person), and then one doesn't eat pork.  And so I had lots of beef and pork.  Ehehehe.  And veggies, of course.  There was pumpkin, eggplant, and lots and lots of cabbage.  There was also soba - by "barbecuing" it, of course it became yakisoba.  Yum.  There was one palmful of rice for each of us, but it didn't matter. :-D

Anyways, right after lunch, we all went outside and noticed there were stilts which many of tried to maneuver but it was more difficult than it looked!  Then after that at around 2:05pm there was this part called "Communication class."  And, well within our own groups, we tried to practice communication.  YUP.  One of the organizers warned us saying something like, "We will have this communication class because the Japanese are not very good at communicating their opinion, so if you have something bad to say don't say it." So...  Anyways, it would be great if we were mixed with the other groups.  Anyways, our group were the only graduate students.  The rest are freshmen college students.  Half of them are Chinese and half of them are Korean.  There was this one guy from Malaysia and I think at least one girl from Taiwan, but the guy is Chinese-Malaysian and they both speak Mandarin as well.  Other nationalities there include 1 Filipino/me, 2 Indians, 1 Bangladeshi/Bengal, and 1 Italian - all from our group.

Anyways, the first activity was talking more about our own names.  Well, okay, it was interesting to hear of the other guys' names' origin.  Of course I told them "Aquino" is a Spanish word, which I think means "hero," and that it is quite common in the Philippines - we now have 2 presidents with the same name.

The second activity was to pick 3 letters from our names, and then write some phrases which could be good advice for maintaining good interpersonal relationships.  One local suggested "Wake up early everyday."  Yup, that is very important for good relationships.  Wake up early.

And then next activity was bouncing a newspaper (crumpled) ball on a newspaper "net" which we control ourselves.  Very fun.  Yup, very very fun.  Anyways, we had very little time to go around Lake Ashi (or Ashinoko).  We were near the northern tip and, well the lake is huge and we were not able to explore much of it.  Actually to do that, it would be nice to take a boat ride or this duck-shaped, pedal-driven gondola.

By the way, the official title of the trip is "2010 Foreign Students cultural exchange workshop."

Anyways, I think we got back to Hon-Atsugi around 6pm.  We got our bikes and made a pit stop at Atsugi Trellis.  I bought me a "wok pan" - sort of an in-between a wok and a frying pan.  Worked well for me.

I got home maybe around 7pm.  And started boiling the pork at around 7:30pm.  I finished cooking at 10:30pm.  "It took that long????" you might ask.  Yup, it took that long to cook 4 dishes.

I made Nilagang Baboy, Postek Tagalog (hehe, I just invented that word for Pork Steak, to parallel with Bistek Tagalog for Beef Steak), Picadillo, and Taplog (Tapa and Itlog - no sinangag).  I also cooked rice, of course.  Anyways, I was so full from the tabehodai (eat-all-you-can) barbecue lunch, I wasn't yet so hungry until I finished cooking.  I just had one small pizza (frozen) for dinner.  After cleaning up, I slept right away.  I didn't pass by the school at all this day.  I was so dead tired, and my knee is feeling it the most.