Author: Angela

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New Year, New Bags (and a giveaway!)

~ This giveaway is no longer accepting entries.  Scroll down to see who won! ~

Happy New Year and あけましておめでとうございます everyone!  In addition to wandering the streets of Tokyo in the middle of the night, I’ve decided that what 2011 really needs is a new stock of bags in my web shop.  Hooray for 2011!

Maybe you resolved to be a bit more organized?  Or want to treat yourself for surviving 78-straight hours of family?  Well, it’s your lucky day year!

And what better way to start a new year than to give things away.   That’s right dear readers, in honor of the Year of the Rabbit 卯 I’ve whipped up two (let the record show that I wanted to make 2,011…) polka-dot, sashiko-clad, bunny-lined zipper bags that are just hopping mad for some new homes:

If you’d like a chance at one, leave me a comment by 12:00 midnight EST USA time on January 4th (that’s 2 pm, January 5th Tokyo time).  Maybe tell me your predictions for 2011 (Zombies take over the world and finally rid us of teen vampire movies?  Yay!), or perhaps something you’d like to see on this blog (more ramen photos? OK!), or just a little note to say “Hi, friend.”  I’ll use the random number generator to select TWO winners, lucky you!  And you!

Fine print: One entry per person/e-mail address. The winners will be selected using random.org and announced as an update to this post, so come back here for the announcement.  Items can be shipped worldwide.  Good luck!

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And the winners are… commenters 15 & 9!  Congrats to Nick and Bridget, and a special thanks to everyone for their comments, predictions, and notes!  Keep an eye on Saké Puppets for more giveaways – this was much too fun to do only once!  You can also check out my web shop to score a bag of your own.  Happy Year of the Rabbit!  Best, Ang


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1/1/11: A Day in Pictures

To friends new and old and family near and far, Happy New Year!  あけましておめでとうございます！

First it was a champagne toast and countdown to midnight with new friends, then off to Meiji jingu shrine 明治神宮.  Fortunes were told and hot, sweet rice milk was glugged.  New Year’s Day had us strolling the neighborhood to Zenpuku-ji temple 善福寺 for hatsumode, our first visit of the year.  Welcome, 2011!

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Christmastime in Twinkle Town

Merry Christmas everyone!  I just needed to share, here is what Christmas looks like in Japan:

Roppongi Illumination is pretty amazing.

Christmas cookies, very delicious.

A picture of people taking pictures.

Our Christmas view.  Squint and you can see Mt. Fuji.

Fried Chicken, a Japanese Christmas tradition.  Mmmmmmm.

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Christmas Crafts

Did you think I’d let a holiday go by without any crafts?  I think not!

A few years ago I started Homemade Christmas, an ambitious plan to sew or bake or stitch some element of all the gifts for my family for the holidays.  I always meant to start in September, but never got going until after Thanksgiving and then without fail would spend Christmas Eve in my room with a headlamp and an embroidery hoop.  Spoiler alert — I didn’t make any gifts for Christmas this year.  I’m a little disappointed in myself, actually.  I’ve been busy making things for other people, and with an early December deadline for shipping to the States, I didn’t have my 2 am Christmas Eve sewing miracle to count on.  Sorry, family.  This year you’re getting random Japanese curiosities instead.

But the crafter in me just couldn’t let the holiday pass without a little sparkle-adorned felt for the occasion.

Take note, Santa.  And what is that adorable Christmas village, you ask?  Even Tokyo looks quaint in wooden miniatures.

The Lego angel is on my desk all year long and I think finally feels at home with some Christmas company.  I’m sort of loving his Godzilla-esque presence over those buses.

I didn’t stop at stockings.  Maybe I’m crazy, but I somehow feel it’s not Christmas unless I’ve made something for someone, so I whipped up a few ornaments to give as gifts.

A few of them even got star tree-toppers.  I’m in love with these 5-hole buttons.

I think the ornaments look rather cute on my tree branch.  No $500 Oregon pine for me. (Seriously.  That is no exaggeration.)  The beauty of a corner nook in a small apartment — I really only need 1/4 of a tree.

Today is the Emperor’s birthday, a national holiday in Japan and the beginning of our long weekend of leisure.  I’m looking forward to all the fried chicken and eggnog in my future.  What is everyone else cooking?

Merry Christmas!

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Raw Egg Pasta Sauce

Since I’m now a working woman, my daily routine as a Tokyo Housewife is no longer.  That is a gentle way of saying our apartment is a complete mess, I may have let my kanji study slide, and I now fail regularly at keeping food in the cabinets.  These days, more often than not I’m finding 7 pm roll around with nothing planned for dinner.  And then I realize I ate cereal for lunch and I’m starving and ready to gnaw off my hand.

So what’s a housewife to do?  I pester Dan.  Here is what one of our chat conversations looked like this week:

Me: would you like pancakes for dinner?  that is not a trick question
Dan: i’ll eat whatever you cook
Me: well, i can cook pancakes, mushrooms, a little bit of leftover rice, pasta with no sauce, eggs (again)
Me: oh, and there is avocado 🙂

Please forgive me for loving emoticons.  I could blame Japan, but really, those smiley faces have been in my repertoire for years.  (You should see the emoticons available on my cell phone — given the chance, I could compose my autobiography using only those things.)  So, with that list of random ingredients, I decided to throw everything (well, almost) into the pot, cross my fingers, and hope for something edible.  Dan mentioned he’d heard about eggs in pasta, and a quick Google search confirmed it exists.

I think the creamy-egg-in-pasta idea was suddenly less scary because in Japan, I’m not afraid of eating raw eggs.  My new chef friend told me that the date on the egg carton – usually a week after purchase — is for when you need to refrigerate the eggs, not throw them out.  They are that fresh.  So, I went for it.

This is our kitchen, maxed out for space yet again.  Thank goodness we only own two pots.  I sauteed some エリンギ eringi mushrooms (if you are curious what they look like whole, you can peek here) and cooked up the pasta.  When the pasta was done and drained, I threw in the cooked mushrooms, two eggs, the avocado, salt, and a splash of milk.  And some black pepper.  And… it was delicious.

OK, so maybe this is the least convincing photo ever, but you have to believe me.  I was amazed at how good this was, considering I took (almost) every last bit of food left in our apartment and threw it all together.  In the past this plan has not gone so well (translation: anchovies and tomatoes).  This time, triumph!

Anyone else out there willing to try the Raw Egg Pasta Sauce?

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My Heart Belongs to MN (Or, Musings on Lutefisk)

Minneapolis has been on my mind a lot these past few days.  No doubt the recent news of a gigantic snowstorm that dropped 17 inches (a half-ish meter) of powder in my parents’ yard has something to do with it.  (If you haven’t yet seen this video, you should check it out — it’s pretty incredible.)

I love snow.  I sometimes brag that, as a Minnesotan, I can naturally master the cold, but it’s all a lie.  I don’t like the cold (it is currently -2 degree F there now.  That is -19 degrees C.  Ouch.)  But you can’t have snow without it.  And I really miss the snow.

A friend shared a video of himself riding his bicycle to work in Minneapolis the morning after the storm — at 6:00 am the streets were totally quiet, and the crunch of packed snow under his tires and boots went straight to my heart.  The quiet of a post-snow darkened landscape is amazingly serene.  One of my favorite things to do in the snow is to just walk around in it.  Wearing Sorels in slightly plowed streets you can achieve premium crunch — the snow is packed just enough, yet you can keep your ankles dry (because really, once you wet your ankles it’s all downhill from there).

In the wake of my snow fantasy — yes, I know it is a snow-filled dreamland since I don’t have to shovel the driveway, pay gazillions to heat my house, or deal with wet ankles — I came across this MPR video about lutefisk, another ingredient to a true Minnesota winter:

This video put a huge smile on my face.  It is extremely well done and captures a charming sliver of Minnesota pretty accurately, in my opinion.  A few things to note while watching:

1. The explanation of flaky vs. snotty is spot-on.  I love how she assumes everyone knows what good walleye should look like.

2. Everything at the buffet is the same color.

3. The champ’s button — it says “Uff da.”  Exactly.  And his granddaughter is the definition of hard core.

4. I feel like I know every single person in this video — is that so wrong?

A few years ago my family gave up preparing lutefisk for Christmas dinner.  It is surprisingly expensive, perhaps because we opted not to lye-it-up ourselves.  My family finally admitted defeat. It was just too much money and effort to devote to a plate of wiggly stuff that most of the people at the table didn’t really care for anyway.

Though I know it might be dangerous to declare this in front of all my Aunts who I know are reading this (hi, Aunts!), if the tradition ever came back ’round, I wouldn’t be opposed.  My tastes have changed in recent years, and considering I now consume wiggly raw sea creatures almost daily, I might have a new opinion of the stuff.  That bottle of squeeze butter got me a little excited.

Just as long as you can provide a side of snow.

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I Drink Your Pancake

This is a hotcake milkshake, and it is a bad idea.

A mix between pancake batter, maple syrup, and whole milk, I picked this up from a vending machine near our apartment.

I spend most of my time gushing about awesome food, telling friends and family back home how Japan “just gets” food. I know it gets on everyone’s nerves.

Anyway, this is just to show that this country doesn’t always get it. Sometimes they can be just as clueless as Denny’s.

Unless… companies purposely make ridiculous products to get chumps like me to try them, following the thought process of, “Ew, gross. I wonder what it tastes like.”

Rats. Japan gets me.

Oh look, cold curry risotto.

 

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New!

New items are now posted in the web shop!  I apologize for the cyberquiet on the blog this past week.  Here’s what I’ve been up to:

My fingers have been busy.  Actually, they’re still stitching away (and loving every minute of it).  Though it might be tight in terms of Christmas shipping, I hope to keep the ball rolling and add more items throughout the week.  Thanks for looking!

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Holy Etsy, Batman!

Wow! Thank you, dear friends and readers — because of you, my Etsy web shop is nearly sold out!

I couldn’t be more excited/thrilled/astounded! Perhaps I need to lay off the caffeine this morning (and the exclamation marks), but I wanted to send out a big THANKS for the support, and let everyone know that more is on the way! I’ve got more lined up to post, and a busy weekend of stitching ahead of me. So check back, and again, thanks!