Silver Week 2015

This year, Silver Week turned out to be a five day weekend.

As it was in the second half of September, the weather was absolutely lovely! Sunny, high 20s and not humid at all! Perfect!

Keeping that in mind I spent my Saturday and Sunday morning out at the beach!

Sunday evening I attended ヨシダヒロキ's live-- he came to Takamatsu again!  It was as usual really nice and he had a number of new songs to perform and he used his new loop machine for some of his older songs as well, so it gave them kind of a new feeling. Unfortunately, he had caught a little bit of a cold, and so some things were a little difficult for him to sing that night.  Also, being Silver Week, there weren't so many people who attended.  A total of 3 of us came.  Aww!! But that gave us more time to talk together.  After the live he sat down with me and the other woman who came and we all had a nice chat together.  Also, he had been asking what we were doing with the rest of our Silver Week and when he found out that I was heading out to Kansai the next day, he suggested that I come to his live the next night as well if I had time, and he'd send me a message the next day to check if I could come or not.

The next day, as I said, I headed out to Kansai, although I wasn't able to leave quite as early as I hoped to because the buses were all full up.  Then, it took an extra hour to get there due to all the traffic.  Ah...wasted half of my day.  By the time I finally got there, I had time to check into my hotel and grab something to eat.  Then since there wasn't much time to do any of the other things that I had planned, I headed out to Sannomiya to go to the live.  It was a really nice live...this time it wasn't just ヨシダさん, but he was also with 2 other people, both of which I have seen before.  One was クボタアツシ, who I met for the first time last month -- he's a solo guitarist and he doesn't really sing at all...but his guitar style kind of reminds me of the guitar style in "August Rush".  When I said that to him, he said that he was really happy that he reminded me of that because it's a good movie.  The other person they did the live with was FASE. I haven't seen him since spring vacation, so it was definitely nice to listen to his music again after a long time.  After the live I had a short little talk with ヨシダさん and some nice conversation with FASE (he told me about how he was heading out to Tokyo the next day to do some street lives) and with クボタくん as well...his personality kind of reminds me of a little kid..in a cute/adorable kind of way.  It was also nice because they both remembered me and started the conversations with 久しぶり！which basically translates to long time, no see....or that kind of feeling anyway...makes a person feel good!

クボタアツシ, ヨシダヒロキ, FASE

The next morning started out really interesting.  While I was waiting for the elevator, there was small family who was also waiting...a mom, her daughter and son (who were both elementary students...grade 6 and 3 respectively).  At that point the boy had been looking in the other other direction, but he turned around and saw me and then multiple "wows" just fell compulsively out of him. After 4 or 5 he bowed and said こんにちは and ASKED me if I'm a foreigner (do you know how rare that is??? Most people would just straight out state that there's a foreigner) and then followed that up with more "wows".  I have to say, it was really difficult not to laugh, but it definitely put a smile on my face for the rest of the day.

After filling up on breakfast, I decided to head out to Himeji, as I've never been there before and I wanted to check it out.  From Osaka, it takes about an hour to get there by train. There is a really famous castle there and it's a World Heritage site, and it has been closed for renovations the past couple years, and only re-opened this spring.  However, they also only let a certain amount of people in every day, so it's kind of an exclusive thing.  Unfortunately for me, when I got there, the line to merely get to the ticket office was a 2.5hour wait! Crazy! But I guess that's what happens when you go during national holidays. 

Himeji Castle

Since that day was rather hot, and there were other things I wanted to see and do, I decided it wasn't really worth the wait to try to get in, but I'll try again some other time.  So, one of those other things was going up to a mountain where there are supposedly some nice temples and things and I guess they also did some filming for "The Last Samurai" up there as well.  However, to get there you have to go up a ropeway, and the lines were equally as long.  Ahh....another time.  It's difficult to enjoy with so many people around anyway.  So, I decided to walk around the Himeji Station area for a little bit, and I happened across a street live.  This time it was two separate groups who were all singing and dancing and talking together for that day only.  There was a pair of guys who called themselves 'No Limit' and another guy who just goes by 'Tatsuya'.  Their dancing was really amusing, and apparently the one dance they did is a really famous one.  They also interacted with the people watching them a lot, which is also really nice to see.

After that I took the train back as far as Kobe, and then I took a stroll from the Harborland down to Sannomiya, wandered through a few shops, then hopped back on the train to Osaka.  Once I got to Osaka, I got a few more street lives at Grand Front, and then headed out to pick up some food and my luggage for the trip back that evening.

I ended my long weeked with one final day out at the beach...again beautiful weather, and because it's September now, the beach has become basically a private beach.

Pretty good long weekend, even if it didn't go exactly as planned.

Japanese Cooking Session 日本料理セッション

This past weekend, I spent a couple of hours learning a tiny little bit about Japanese cooking from the experts...some older Japanese women!

This session was set up through work connections -- one of my co-workers happened to ask about a certain Japanese vegetable, and what you can do with it, and it turned into our boss asking her mom to hold a cooking instruction session for some foreigners.  Apparently, her mom is one of the leaders of the women's group at JA, an agricultural place (sorry, I don't really know how to describe it well...).  Anyway, a total of three of us from my workplace came as well as four other foreigners who knew the girl who originally asked about it.  A nice size, I think.

Anyway, while we were there we learned how to make kinpira gobo -- a kind of salad with carrot and gobo (a long root vegetable), some special rice with mushrooms, carrots and konyaku, tempura (actually SOOOO much tempura...that probably took about half of our time...we made so much!!) and such things.

So while they told us many things (and not going to lie...I probably can't remember them all...and the recipes we made were for more people than I'll ever be cooking for), I'll let you in on one interesting secret....there is sugar in almost everything!! Surprise! Also, when making the tempura batter, after mixing it up, we added ice so that it would get really cold. Apparently, doing this makes the tempura taste even better.

It was timed so that we finished everything around lunch time, so that we could eat when we were finished (and we also got to take home some of the rice we made as omiyage...they made about 20 servings worth)!

The finished product...plated nicely and ready to eat!

So in the above picture, we have... (from far left bottom corner, around the outside into the middle...) the rice I was talking about (I seriously love this kind of rice!), kinpira gobo, pumpkin (really simple -- just mixed with some soy sauce and sugar and a touch of salt, then boiled), Japanese potato salad (sweet potatoes, cucumber and ham), cucumber dish, miso soup, and in the center: shredded cabbage and pumpkin, gobo, chikuwa and sweet potato tempura. Everything was delicious!

It was really nice to learn about it (and they offered to teach us sushi next time if we want).  However, they refused to take any money even though we had agreed to split the cost of the ingredients amongst us prior to the event.

Also after this session...I want Japanese knives for cooking!! The way they cut is amazing!!

**UPDATE** We ended up having an article written about us and a photo published in their (JA) newspaper. Here it is: