In Training

A while back, I officially put myself on a strict muscle-training program. For my bladder, that is. Yes, yes, I know I go on way too much about toilet-related subjects for someone who doesn't have a baby. But chalk it up to spending much of the first half of my childhood with two brothers, two half brothers, and one father with a particularly juvenile sense of humor who I did my best to impress.

Anyhow, this bladder training is in fact serious business because I'll be--happy dance--traveling to Vietnam soon and I do not want to be spending half my trip searching for toilets. Sure, it's easy for all you camel-like Water Retainers to be snide and superior. But my whole life, it's been this way: what drink goes in almost immediately demands to come out, which leaves me feeling perpetually dehydrated, and so I tend to guzzle beverages like there's no tomorrow... and the uncomfortable cycle goes on. Due to this inferior holding capacity, whenever I move some place new, I always work quickly to hone an insider's knowledge of as many accessible public toilets as possible. I even once contemplated starting a pocket guidebook series of public loos for all the major cities of the world.

Here would be my proposal to the publishers: Lots of detailed maps marking hidden side entrances into establishments, etc., but also invaluable tips that will get that user into the nearest white-tiled haven ASAP. For example, "There is a key for customers, nestled in a basket next to the cash register and closely watched by the dark harpy presiding over the coffee bar. But it is possible to slip off with the key when she turns to froth milk for her cappuccinos (which are dreadful and should not be bought in exchange for toilet privileges--it would be far better to take deep, calming breaths and wait until she's distracted)."

But when I go traveling, it's like being thrown to the lions. I don't know what to expect, who to turn to, and where my bladder might inopportunely rear it's annoyingly little head. Which is why I wish someone else would take my toilet guidebook idea and just run with it already. Note to my idea thief: Start with Hanoi. And hurry.

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Obi Hanging in Shop Window

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A Bit Off

I was saving my blog template when my computer went berzerk, and the next thing I knew, half my template had simply disappeared. So I've had to use an old backup version. This means that there might be slight... differences. I can't really recall what I've added or changed in the past few months. But I know my sidebar and the links are not up to date. So if anyone finds themselves suddenly missing from my blogroll, not to fear, you have not been banished from the blog for making a goofy comment. I apologize and will try to figure out what needs fixing.

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Blood Orange Stink

Is it just me or does anyone else think that blood oranges smell like verging-on-rotten regular oranges?

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Staying Perfectly Still

There's a recurring conversation between my husband and myself that has become as familiar as a song, and which we sing with perhaps more levity than some might deem appropriate. And it always begins with me: "If you die first." We're not morbid people. We don't consider this subject with relish.

But look at this. My husband works 17-hour days, smokes over the screechy protests of his asthmatic lungs, rarely has time to eat anything but convenience store food, and of course has a high-stress job. I wake up to my bran flakes cereal and fresh fruits, walk the dog, do somewhat domestic stuff, then work till my husband comes home--I'm like the freakin' poster child for an overly long life, I tell you. The most stressful thing that happens to me is when the dog steps in his own pee or I insert a wooden skewer into my baking cake after an hour and fifteen minutes and it comes away coated in raw batter.

Of course I know that anything could happen. I could write the book on not making long-term plans for anything, even death. But my life right now has a way of lulling me into complacency, making me believe that I'll float right through the years without feeling more than a few lapping waves. And that's when that stubborn song pops back into my head, "If you die first."

It's actually a pretty short song, most often ending with "I'll pack up and move to Africa" or "I'll be really mad at you." But there are times, like this morning, when I wake up and I do allow it to weigh more heavily than usual. I once wrote that I'm good at settling in foreign places, at not missing what I left behind, at accepting new and different. But the truth is that it was so easy for me because I wasn't settling. After high school, for a really long time, it seemed I never stopped moving. I may have paused for breath for a year or two, but it was always me who left; I was never the one left behind.

But now that I've been in Japan for about five years--an eternity, to me--I'm realizing that I have to stop living like a transient, but I simply do not know how. Always at the back of my mind is the belief that I'll be moving on eventually. Before Japan, I never accumulated more than would fit into two big suitcases, because who the hell else was going to help me carry my belongings into my new life, onto trains, off buses, and up and down a million flights of stairs until my hands were chaffed and shaking from the strain? When I was living in Brooklyn, a call from a friend who'd spotted an abandoned couch outside her apartment had my roommate and I running over and, with the help of a homeless man, dragging that baby elephant (Why are couches so blood heavy?) all the way home. We then ended up circling it suspiciously for days, wondering why the hell someone would throw away a perfectly good couch. Unless it had fleas or something. But we eventually settled into it. And when I left New York, I didn't spare that couch a single thought. But now my husband and I have furniture that we actually paid for with our own money. I have more things than will fit into my two suitcases.

My concerns about tangible goods aside, there's that little problem regarding human relationships. There are people who need a lot of friends and others who are content with just a few really good ones. I fall into the latter category and have been this way since I was a little girl. This suited my migratory lifestyle because it meant fewer good-byes, but it also means that I've gotten increasingly good at forgetting people who were once important to me. And I'm beginning to get tired of finding replacements.

Although I've tried making friends with Japanese people, when your command of the language is as limited as mine, honest to god there's only so much you can talk about and only so far that the relationship can go. I also notice that I'm firmly placed in the "foreign friends" group, held apart from the "Japanese friends" group, the inner circle. On the other hand, to be perfectly cold, befriending foreigners is pointless because I've yet to meet a single foreigner who actually means to stay in this country. They're here for work or they're here for "the experience." Foreigners are not here because they love it and never want to leave. At first I took what I could get, which mostly meant short-term agreements and saying farewell a lot. But I can't be bothered to keep this up.

So now I'm down to a fistful of friends who I see less than seldom. And I have my husband. This is where the alarm bells start sounding. To calm them, all I have are my feeble survival plans. If he dies first, I shall get mad or I will pack up my things and move--probably, I will have to do both. I couldn't stay in Japan, because as much as I love it here, I don't think I'd love it half as much without him. And there's no where to go home to--I've somehow seen to that. Not Singapore, not Vancouver, not Des Moines, nor any place else I've stopped in between then and now. I'm even thinking of taking out that string of towns at the top of my blog because I'm realizing that those places were nothing more than pitstops in my wandering. They are not a part of who I am. I can scarcely remember anything about them now, in fact, because that is how a person like me moves on.

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O-Bento

Struck the motherload of o-bento resources out there on the Web called e-Obento. An o-bento is a complete meal packed in a box, which one might take to school, work, a picnic, an outing, etc., but it's soooo much more than that. An o-bento made by a mother for her child, for example, is both a gauge and a public exhibit by which others judge the extent of her love--it's like the free skating segment of the maternal olympics.

A classic scene on Japanese TV: a child opens up his or her lunch box to a desert-like expanse of white rice and a single red pearl of a kari kari ume in the center. There can be only two possibilities. Either a serious mistake has been made (e.g., due to mom being delirious with--no, make that dying from--dengue fever while making o-bento that morning) or the child is unloved, and must subsequently be mocked or pitied but most certainly taken away by children's social services. The opening and comparing of kindergarten o-bentos at lunch time can become the motivation for fierce competition amongst the mothers intent on sparing their children from early experiences of humiliation. While discussing this subject one evening, one woman confided the story of a mother of one of her son's kindergarten classmates who would wake up at 5am to do things like peel the membrane off each segment of mandarin orange for her kid's o-bento.

After the membrane peeling is done, though, what else is there to do? How much work could really go into a kid's packed lunch, right? Well, when armed with fish paste, seaweed, and a pair of craft scissors, I assure you things can get well out of hand. Take this hermit crab montage, for instance. Grownups eat o-bentos, too, so how about something more understated, but with a nice traditional feel (okay, can someone please tell me how this Hokusai recreation with the eggs was not a total freak accident)? Plain inarizushi--puh-leez, that's so combini o-bento. Then there's the o-bento with so much going on, it just plain looks like it's going to detonate in your face, as you lift the lid--but does win a few points for bravely incorporating old-school favorites like the stale prawn tempura and tako sausage (basically an octopus shaped from a cocktail wiener).

This site has almost three years' worth of o-bento ideas, kids, so scramble over and marvel at the infinite ways in which egg and fish cake can be manipulated. But please know this: In my four to five years living in Japan, I have never actually seen anybody make/eat o-bentos like these, so don't think all Japanese people are o-bento making fools. Just a few of them.

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Link Alert: Recipe Collection from Japanese Pâtissiers

Quickly wanted to post about this wonderful site I very luckily stumbled upon called Cake Chef. First things first: It's in Japanese. But I think there's enough English and French strewn about that most people could navigate well enough. The site features famous pâtissiers in Japan who have trained in French technique. And the best part is that they each share a special recipe of theirs with you, and take you through the recipe step by step, with pictures and video clips. If you wanted to actually try the recipes though, you'd have to be able to read Japanese.

But there's still fun to be had, for those just wishing to nose about. For example, haven't you ever wanted to see how an Opera is assembled? Or how about goggling the Tarte au Fromage Chocolat (that sounds so good to me). And then there are the little tricks you can learn, merely from looking at the pictures, such as how to add texture to the top of a mousse cake.

Although the recipes on Cake Chef do tend to be a little fancy-shmancy, with more creams and mousses than I'd ever care to actually taste in real life, that's kind of what makes the site fun. I mean, who really wants to see the photo/video recreation of, say, a bran muffin, right? And there is a good mix of more simple recipes as well, such as clafoutis, cheesecakes, and loaf cakes--I am definitely going to try the Caramel Banane one of these days.

Oh, I also read on the website that miam is a child's way of saying delicious, so perhaps that's where the name minimiam came from?

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What's on Tonight

Doesn't matter where you live, if you've got TV, there's going to be stupid/weird stuff showing from time to time, right? Well, in Japan, the weird/stupid stuff is... limitless. Here's what I saw, in just one hour of evening telly:

1) A bunch of comedians forming an impromptu brass band and trying to perform a fairly complex piece while running side-by-side on a giant treadmill for five kilometers.

2) A bunch of comedians taking turns being spun on some weird spinning machine until they're so dizzy they can't see straight and then being made to walk a narrow platform on either side of which is a pool filled with water heated to 50'C (and, to be humane, I guess, a really small kiddy pool filled with crushed ice in front of the scalding pool of water).

3) A pilates instructional program featuring twin redhead instructors who speak in unison in Japanese and have matching pigtails.

4) A show in which numerous dog owners are "kidnapped" while out walking their dog to see what Fido will do when it sees its owner being stuffed into a minivan and driven away. Complete with moving, dramatic music when a dog gave chase.

5) A reenactment of a controversial incident in the 1976 Olympics using Barbie and Ken dolls controlled in traditional bunraku style.

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Minimiam

When I was a kid, I was such the sucker for miniature things. I still remember watching a documentary about an insomniac who spent his nights painting unbelievably detailed landscapes on long-grain rice with a single horse hair and feeling like my nine-year-old heart was about to explode with happiness and want (oh, how I coveted that rice). I soon outgrew this bit of madness, as it did not fit with my increasing dislike of knickknacks. But I suppose there is a part of my heart that still melts, just at the corner, when I see a neat and tiny version of something: baby shoes, petit fours, bonsai (not "BAHN-zai," my husband corrects me, bristling with irritation at the way my West Coast-Midwest accent slaughters the familiar word).

And now, thanks to a post by shaz of nook bistro, I've just seen something that surpasses microscopic paintings on rice grains: minimiam, itty-bitty plastic figurines arranged on regular-size food in some very funny compositions. My two favorites are the mountain climbers scaling a Mont Blanc (complete with confectioners' sugar flurries) and the soldier who detonates a grenade on a pomegranate, resulting in smoking, exploded fruit and a number of toy soldier casualties. The creators of minimiam are photographers Akiko Ida and Pierre Javelle, who do a lot of work for food magazines and cookbooks.

Unfortunately, the minimiam website is a bit of a pain to navigate, so if you don't have the time or patience to fiddle around, you can view most of the pictures on these two pages of the blog that shaz originally linked to. But then you miss out on the titles and some of the photographs.

So which is your favorite?

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