Day 38 in Japan - Last Day of Summer...

Something much more important than Japan happened today - our good friends from Melbourne, Adam and Mel, had a baby girl! Her name is Sophie Anne, and I actually cried when I saw the photo at work today. Actually, I have happy tears coming even as I am writing this now. Congratulations to all involved! It certainly made my day, and put some of my fears about the upcoming teaching year into perspective.

My most-seen view in Japan.

This is garbage collection on a burnable trash day
(Tuesdays and Fridays for us).

Today is the last day of summer here - the last day of freedom and the last day of limbo. I'm actually quite glad that the wait is almost over, but I am also completely terrified about the next few days. At least by the end of this week, I'll have a few classes done, and a better idea of what I am actually in for in the next 11 months! But for now, it was just a last day of preparation, planning, translating, sorting calendars and... honestly... Facebooking. The listening test I recorded is going to be broadcast over the school's PA system, so I got the joyous task today of sitting at the CD player, repeating the "test" track I recorded to get the levels right over and over while the other teachers ran around to all of the rooms to check that all of the speakers were working OK. I've never loved the sound of my own voice, but after 20 solid minutes of "Testing, 1,2,3. Testing 1,2,3" I think I loathe it more now that I ever have before.

One of the teachers brought in all of the tomatoes he had
harvested from his garden. They were really sweet and delicious.

Today was my first day of deliberate language study. Apparently the cool thing to do here is go to Starbucks and sit there with your books for a few hours, so that's what Sam and I did. We practised Kanji (I'm getting better), and then I read him my speech for tomorrow in Japanese. I am more watched here than I realised, because another ALT in the area messaged me and told me that "a little birdie" told her I was practising in the Starbucks. I was totally blown away that someone who knew her could have seen me, put two-and-two together, and let her know. When I practised my speech to introduce myself to the students, I think I accidentally introduced myself to the whole of Okubo - HI OKUBO!

Studying at Starbucks with the cool kids.

I'm pretty nervous about the talk tomorrow, so I'm going to try for a decent night of sleep. Sam tells me that I've been practising Japanese and talking to the teachers at my school in my sleep. It's obviously stressing me out a little more than I had realised. Maybe time to have a few more nights at home? Nah, I'll just get bored and stressed if I do that.

Food highlight of the day: Choco banana Pocky - "Pocky" is pretzels covered with chocolate, but this was fancy pocky! Pretzel sticks covered in banana mouse, then drizzles with milk chocolate. Thankfully there are only three in a pack, because I haven't been running yet this week!

Day 37 in Japan - Kendo visit

As today was Day 37, and I only have 365 (ish) days here, my time here is officially already 10% over! When I realised that I started to look up air ticket prices to other places in Japan - feel like I haven't made the most of my time so far.

Summer days at a Japanese High School.
The baseball team and the soccer team and the handball team are training here.

So today was my last non-teaching day at Akashi Shimizu. I decided to make the most of the beautiful summer weather and a bit of freedom by heading along to watch the kendo club train. These guys are HARDCORE! They have been training 6 days a week (and a few Sundays) for 3 hours a day over their whole summer holidays. Last week they went to a tournament and said that they did OK. There are a few ni-dans in the group, and the guy who is the best kendoka is a ni-dan at only 16! I think that is impressive, but the teacher, Mizuno-sensei (who is an English teacher who is hilarious) barely cracked his superserious experssion the whole way through. They have one guy who fights in Jodan (where rather than having your shinai - sword - pointing at the other persons throat like normal, you raise it up over your head like you are about to bash them on the head. Then if everything goes right, you bash them on the head).

MIZUNO-SENSEI is a badass! His hakama (pants) fit him perfectly,
he looks cool, and he doesn't sweat, even when it's 40
degrees in the gym. He's so cool.

The video shows Kote-Men-Dou cut practise - that's the places you can hit to score points. The hand/glove (kote), the head (men) and the body (dou). When you hit any of these legal points, you have to demonstrate that it was a deliberate cut, by hitting the ground with your foot, and showing your ki-ai (spirit) by making a spirited noise.

After the break, putting the bogu (armour) back on. 

Don't you hate it when you can only keep one cock? Solution!

Closing ceremony. By now, it was 44 degrees in the gym and they had been
practising for 3 hours with only one stop for drinks.

So after being impressed with the toughness and kickass-ness of the kendo boys, I kept wandering around the school, only to find a group that could match the kendo boys for raw masochism. The rugby boys, who play on a rock/dirt surface for a few hours a day. With tackling and face grinding and eye gouging and and everything else that rugby entails. here is blood and sweat and mud and generally all of those things end up in the same wounds. Seriously ouch.

Rugby on dirt - haven't decided if it's stupid or really cool.

Not too much else of consequence to report on - I recorded the listening test for Akashikita huddled under a doona to muffle out the sound of the air conditioner in the background, cooked chicken burgers for tea (chicken mice is decently cheap here), and Skyped with Mum and Dad.

Food Highlight of the Day: Chilli flavoured potato chips - you know the chips that are cut like hard little French fries? Yeah, them, chilli-flavoured. They are delicious, and don't have too much of the sweet soy tasted that a lot of the chip flavours here have. Very nice hors d'oeuvre. 

Day 36 in Japan - Showing off our new home

Today we got a decent and much needed sleep-in before a lazy McDonalds breakfast/lunch (I hate the word brunch and refuse to use it except when declaring my hatred for it). Sam and I took Andrew on a big walking tour of Okubo (well, the bit around the station) and he continued our Japanese lessons. It was really brilliant having a cultural coach with us at the restaurants and places that we actually go to. He explained signs, menus, ordering systems and even pointed out a few of the excellent places around that we had overlooked. We discovered Cafe Gusto and Saizeriya - two super cheat eateries around here that we can go to for a quick and fairly Western-style meal when we are feeling a little homesick (or in my case, pizzasick). We also played a bit of the taiko drumming game at the arcade, but Andy and I failed and then got our arses handed to us by this boy who had to stand on a bucket to reach the drums. Shameful.

The destroyer of our egos.

And speaking of shameful, we saw a Japanese boy band performing at our local shopping centre while we were out walking. They were doing a charity gig to support Japanese free TV or something. I have no idea who they are, but in my head, they are like the ageing rocker boy band on their way to obscurity and resenting the shopping centre gig in this tiny little place. Their dead eyes support my theory, don't you think?

We ended up wandering through shops, restaurants, department stores, supermarkets, the hyakuen store and a few eateries for hours and hours. After dinner (Saizeriya, an Italian-style restaurant with very cheap wine), we took ourselves out for more karaoke at our super close karaoke place. It seemed a little dodgy going in, but it turned out to be pretty good - 1900 yen for 2 hour nomihoudai (remember, that's all you can drink) and karaoke with a good range of English songs. Considering it's a 5 min walk from our house, i think we will be sounding more time there in the future. Finally got home and abed by about 2 am, which is a late night for me on a school night.

SupercallifragilisticexpiKARAOKE.

Food highlight of the day: Pizza from Saizeriya - not the worlds best pizza , but much less than the usual $40 pizza over here. More like $4 and when paired with a $2 glass of wine, it was pretty perfect.

Day 35 in Japan - ANDORYU! (First visitor)

Today we did a LOT of travelling - see the Google map below. We started at Point (A) (zoom out if you can't see) - our house in Okubo. We caught the train through Osaka, all the way over to the Nara Prefecture to meet up with our first visitor - ANDREW! Andrew is a friend from University who is a Japan expert - he lived here for a year teaching English and did a lot of Japanese at uni. He is also a total champion and karaoke master. He is having a two week-ish holiday here in Japan, and is spending the weekend with us in the Hyogo prefecture. But first, we had to meet him in Nara, where he had travelled with some of his other friends to see some of the temples and castles from the Nara prefecture.


View Larger Map

Soko, Natchan, Rei and Daisuke
with Sentokun, the mascot of the
Nara 1300th anniversary.

We did the obligatory getting slightly lost at Osaka station, but managed to find our way to the right platform eventually and kept on heading through to Horyuji (pronounced Houryuuji, but it looks horrible when you spell it like that) station. There we met Andrew, Rei (his Japanese friend who he met in high school when she came to Goulburn for a year exchange), Daisuke (Rei's husband), Natchan (Rei and Daiske's 1 year old daughter) and Soko (Rei and Andrew's friend from Tokyo). Rode in Daisuke's EL GRANDE to Horyuji buddhist temple, which is one of the oldest wooden buildings in the world. It's also a UNESCO World Heritage site. It had a very cool pagoda and was the first time we'd done the washing ceremony before entering a place. We walked around for a while, and when we had seen most of the sights, just sat around in the shade to get cool. Natchan and I played a fun game of giving each other rocks and saying (or trying to say) "Hai, douzo", which is what you say when you are giving something to someone. Awwwwww, cute.

Horyu-ji temple in all it's glory.

The mobile phone reception was spectacular.
(that's a joke - it's part of the pagoda)

Hai, douzo.

Lunch was kaki no ha sushi - the regional specialty of sushi wrapped in persimmon leaves. But you don't eat the leaves, so really it's just sushi that USED to be wrapped in persimmon leaves. A bit odd.

Thin soba noodles with dashi/soy dipping sayce (tsuyu) and kaki no ha sushi.

Heijo Palace in Nara

After lunch, we went to Heijo Palace - the seat of the Emporer when Nara was the capital 1300 years ago. Exactly 1300 years ago, so there is a year long celebratory exhibition there. Was very cool but very, very hot. We wandered around at a fairly sedate pace, and then realised we shouldn't have taken our time so much, because we all had trains to catch. We had to quickly head to Nara train station to catch the 1.5 hour train back to Kobe to get to...

VISSEL KOBE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

A VISSEL KOBE MATCH! Vissel Kobe are our local soccer team. Yeah, they suck, but Japanese soccer matches are so much fun - we chanted and clapped the WHOLE GAME. It was a nil all draw, but who cares? Soccer was the winner on the day (as well as draught beer, hot dogs on sticks and popcorn sold in nets).

We met up with a few other JETs after the match and went for a quick beer in Sannomiya (the drinking and eating part of Kobe) in what ended up being a hostess bar (thanks, Daniel). It was a pretty cool place - the dude behind the bar was a big punk fan, and ended up putting his band's CD on, while the hostess chick (who I actually think wasn't working, but none of us were game to test that theory) was playing with a huge sword called a zanbakuto. Random good times, but we still only stayed for one drink (which apparently made her cry cry).

You heard the sign - get yourself an alcoholic quick smart. 

Andrew and Sam and I headed back to Akashi for a quick izakaya tutorial from Andrew (we are much better now, potential visitors - we even know how to identify most gizzards), and then KARAOKE!

Obligatory karaoke shot - Andrew is probably
mid-Grease Megamix?

We left karaoke at about 3 am and found out how much a taxi from Akashi to our place is (about 3000 yen - doable when we need it) and got a cool ex-french chef taxi driver - he chatted to us in English, French and Japanese, and I think it will be worth catching a taxi just to talk to him again, if I ever see his smiling face behind a wheel. We chatted for a while longer and Andy gave us the stuff he had kindly brought for us from Australia (Vegemite and shot glasses! Thankyou!), before we finally got some much needed sleep. Epic and totally fantastic day with great company!

Food Highlight of the Day: Mochi wrapped in bacon and fried from the izakaya rocked my world.

Day 34 in Japan - Fruity-kebana and Real Cheese

Ready for summer kadou

Today I have a very productive day! I got a lot of my work done and figured out the crazy Japanese photocopiers (more like newspaper printers than the printers I am used to) before 10:30, and then I was free to go along to the Flower Arranging club with some of the students, and one of the lovelier teachers. A little old Japanese lady comes along twice a week to teach tea ceremony (sadou) and flower arranging (kadou or ikebana), some of the traditional Japanese arts. She spoke no English, but was really enthusiastic and chatty, and was very complimentary about the arrangement that I ended up making. Today, rather than doing flower arrangement, they did a "summer fruit arranging" activity - arranging fresh fruit and summer vegetables with vines to create beautiful lines and a feel of summer. My final product is shown here, but the biggest challenge of the whole thing was trying not to put the grapes or cherry tomatoes too close to the eggplant or bananas. I just kept making penises without realising. I'm sure that means something.

BEHOLD MY GLORIOUS FRUIT!
Note the lack of phalli.

The awesome older lady who comes to teach
traditional Japanese arts at school.

See, I blend right in here!

I went to lunch with another lovely teacher at a cute little place called Loire - it was such a chick place! Lovely and calm, and they served nice little foods and salads and cakes. I will have to bring Mum there - I think it's exactly the kind of place she and Lovey would enjoy. In the afternoon, I finished of a listening test, finalised another lesson plan and finished off the Wall o' English.

Live crabs that they sell at the CO-OP.
Friday afternoon discount - only 100 yen!
But how do live crabs go off? ...oh.

Another thing that has been happening a lot at school is Brass Ban practise. Over lunch, my teacher told me that our school has got into the state championships for brass band, and basically that they kick ass and are probably going to make it to nationals. They have been practising their marching and flag twirling all week, and today I finally managed to get a bit of video of a small group (probably only 1/8th of the band) practising their marching. They do it first without their instruments, and I love listening to them all singing their parts - it's quite a cool effect. So the video below is about 20 seconds of them practising a turn in marching. They did this for 4 full hours, in the scorching sun. I am truly amazed at their dedication.

I also had a quick chat to Adam (Wok) online before I left work, and he inspired me to find myself some Friday afternoon nibblies. I scoured the supermarket to find some real cheese, and even found some salami! I was so proud of myself on my triumphant return home bearing real cheddar, camambert and crackers and a 6-pack of the best beer I have found here so far - Suntory Malt. Also had some odd little cheese balls with pepper and salami or garlic and chicken flavouring. They were supposed to be beer snacks, and did go perfectly well with our beers. Spent most of the evening Skyping home (and feeling sick from eating too many snacks, to be honest), and getting ready for our first visitor tomorrow! Andrew called and we are going to meet him bright and early for a surprise excursion tomorrow, so we're off for an earlyish night.

FRIDAY! IT'S FRIDAY!

Food Highlight of the Day: Has to be the odd little cheeseballs made for eating with beers. They were a bit unusual, but definitely tasty.

Delicious pepper and salami flavoured
cheese balls. 

Day 33 in Japan - Sankyu, Softbank!

Today was mostly work and chores - I met the other ALT at my second school today. Her name is Deyi, and she is a total champion. I think we are going to get along really well - she likes travelling a lot, managed to convince a teacher to drive us to a ramen place for lunch, and scored us an early mark. She's my new hero!

Yesterday, I learned that the word for traffic light is shingo.
These shingo are outside our house. Blue summer sky!

Was quite keen to head home early today as well, because our new status as aliens (picked up our gaijin cards yesterday) meant that we could FINALLY sign up for mobile phones! In Japan (actually stuff "in Japan", it's totally the same in Australia, but anyway...) your mobile phone is your lifeline to a social life, a translation tool, a dictionary and a vital device for negotiating public transport. And most importantly, we can figure out which pub everyone is at now.

So we headed up to SoftBank (ex-vodafone) to meet up with our new friend Mai, who helped us set everything up. Actually, we headed up to the shops, realised we had forgotten passports and other vital documents so we couldn't do the phone thing, headed home, and then headed back again. The bus driver looked very confused.

This is the rugby team at Akashi Shimizu training.
ON DIRT. They are covered in scabs and scars,
but chicks dig scars. HARDCORE!

I still don't have a phone, because I signed up for an iPhone 4, but Sam got the green monster left to us by my predecessor and a pre-paid card good for two months for about $30. He's pretty happy with that, but no data means that we are still a bit in the dark for figuring out trains on the go. Had another MOS Burger dinner (double MOS Burger this time, Cros!) and then thought we'd better walk home to remove our burger guilt. Stopped in the graveyard on the way home to enjoy the view of the lights over Akashi, and the bridge being lit up.

Food Highlight of the Day: Taco Naan from MOS Burger - mexican-style meat with lettuce, tomato, (cream) cheese and crushed up corn chips on a bit of naan bread. Weird and totally right.

Day 32 in Japan - I am Alien!

The 6:30 from Kobe/Akashi
letting out at Okubo station -
this is AFTER peak hour!

What a day! Picked up our Alien Registration Cards with the help of the lovely Yukari-sensei, and even saw a photography exhibition of some of our students while we were at City Hall. My Wall o' English is almost done (thanks for the huge Australian flag, Mum!), and I'm feeling a little closer to ready for classes to start. Or maybe I'm just sick of waiting around in limbo - who knows?

After school I updated my bank book at the ATM. It's like being back in the 80's in Australia, when I remember having a bank book with my $50 savings reported and going into the teller to get it updated every few weeks. Actually, with the $50 balance, it's almost exactly like being back in primary school - have been spending money on fantastic fun times a little too much, I think.

Nah, who'd pick these two as related? Lew is talking to Sam's mum here.

Speaking of fantastic fun times, we had a truly excellent night tonight. In what feels like the biggest coincidence in the world, Sam's uncle Lew (who is from Australia originally, but has been living in the US for quite a few years now) happens to be in Kobe this week for an immunology conference (for my science homies, he's a flow cytometer sales and development guy). We were so excited to be able to see him - it's been about 5 years since either of us got to see him, and the fact that we could see ANYONE we knew was pretty fantastic. Since we still have no phones, it was a little bit difficult to actually meet. We arranged to meet at Sannomiya station, which is a very big place, and finding Lew was a bit hard. It would normally be fairly easy to play spot-the-gaijin, but with the immunology conference on, there were tons of nerdy looking people spewing out of the gates we were waiting for him at.

YAKINIKU!

When we caught him, we wandered the streets for a little while looking for food and beer, and eventually found both in the form of a yakiniku place (pretty much exactly the same as Korean BBQ - yaki = fried and niku = meat). Several huge beers, and a few odd cuts of meat (beef tongue, anybody?) later, we figured it was time to head to another place, so found our way to another izakaya (Japanese pub) before Sam and I had to leave at 12:30 to make sure we could get on the last train home. It was such a great night, and makes me excited to have more people to visit and take around the Sannomiya area. HINT HINT HINT HINT everyone!

The view from the restaurant.
Yes, it was that blurry. Don't look at
the sizes of the beers in the shot
above.

Food Highlight of the Day: Actually, it would have to be the beef tongue that we had at the yakiniku place, which you grilled and then dipped into this delicious lightly lemony sauce. The first bits were pretty tough, but then Lew cracked the code, and told us to pull them off the grill a lot earlier - Worked brilliantly. So there's a tip for you - don't overcook your tongue!

Day 31 in Japan - ESS Summer Seminar Extravaganza!

Today I learned that if you put extravaganza on the end of anything, it makes it exciting and fun. Dod it work for you in the title?

Today was the first real "teaching" experience I have had so far. And totally unsurprisingly, I stuffed it up a little, but still had a really great time. I was pretty unprepared for getting up and going first to get all the students talking, and trying to run activities that someone else wrote made it all a bit awkward. Ah well, next time will be a bit better. After I was done with my bit, I could get to the business of enjoying the rest of the day, and I have to admit that it was lame but totally fun to play all the little games and do the activities that the other had prepared. We did Pub Quizzes, made commercials for random props, played Jeopardy and even had an auction in English (which was very convincingly MC'd by a Canadian). My English teacher supervisor bought me what she very sweetly thought was a Western-style lunch - sandwiches and a hotdog. Pretty funny stuff, when everyone else there had their beautiful bento boxes. Unfortunately I forgot my camera for the whole thing, so I have no permanent records of Rob dressing up as a lady (once wasn't enough, so he came back for a second crack).

I took some photos to show off our local supermarket. Max Valu (pronounced Mackusu Baroo) is just around the corner from us - a 1 minute walk, I think. We are really lucky to be so close to a reasonably cheap place to buy food, because with no mode of transport other than bicycles and feet, shopping could get pretty difficult if we had to trundle a long way. 

But thankfully, you can see the giant pink signs above almost from our house. They have a bakery right inside the front door (the first time I walked in was the exact moment I'd be fine for a year in Japan), heaps of OK-priced meats, pre-prepared fried foods (karaage, tempura stuff), sushi and salads, veggies that are decently-priced and expensive fruit. And alcohol like you wouldn't believe! There are three aisles of the supermarket devoted entirely to beers, wines, pre-mixed drinks, shochu (whole aisle alone), sakes, and whiskeys. 

The prices are from about 120 yen (AUD$1.50) for a 375 mL can of beer, up to about 4000 yen (AUD$55) for a large bottle of whiskey. And by large, I do mean large. 4 L large, as pictured! You can get the same size of shochu for a bit less (it has lower % alcohol), and a new liver is about 500,000 yen. There are plenty of interesting Japanese snacks that you can eat with your alcohol as well. Sam and I haven't tried them yet, but "Nuts and Fish" sounds so delicious that I don't know how much longer I'll be able to resist.

When you are done loading up your funny cart trolley, you take everything to the checkout, where the attendant person scans everything and talks constantly to you while you look bewildered until they eventually give you the final price. I think they say the name of everything they scan as they are scanning it, and maybe the price or any specials or something, but for all I know they may be saying horrible things about my Mum or reciting Japanese poetry. I actually really enjoy it now, but I was a bit scared that I had some role in the process at first. Now I know that I can just sit back and enjoy the ride, I like the running commentary and even catch a few words here and there (which are rarely insulting to you, Mum). When you give them the money, they stick it in a machine that does all the change automatically for you, which they then count out in a really careful, practised way for you, then give you your own plastic bags and you move to the side to bag up your groceries.

Generally, the aftermath tends to be Sam and I getting home and going "Wait, we bought WHAT now?", but that's all part of the beauty of the supermarket. We probably shop here at least once every 2-3 days, because we have no real food storage area in our house, and because it's still new and exciting for us to see face masks and miso paste, and to marvel over how much a perfect peach costs. 

Food Highlight of the Day: Cold soba noodles - I really like soba and I love eating things cold, so the cold summer that you can eat in summer here is great for me. "Soba" are thin buckwheat noodles, which you can buy pre-prepared with a dipping sauce (no idea whats in it - soy-based stuff that you put wasabi and spring onions in) to make everything more delicious.

Day 30 in Japan - Mecha-niku

(The title up there means robot meat and I thought it was funny)

I had my first interactions with my ESS (English Speaking Society) club today at Akashi Kita. Almost every student in Japanese schools will be involved in some club or another after school, and most schools have an ESS club. Mine will meet twice a week, and we will work on speeches, essays (woo!), and do some fun things like cooking foods from overseas, watching movies and listening to music. Today I met about 8 students from my main high school (Akashi Kita = Akashi North), and it was a bit nerve wracking. They were very lovely, and I am lucky to have some good English speakers in the crew, but I am still a bit nervous doing my self-introduction in these semi-formal situations. It's too casual to do the full "Hajimemashite, watashi wa Tomuson Burianna desu. Douzo yoroshiku onegaishimasu", but it's too informal to just say "Hi, I'm Bri", so I normally end up improvising something in the middle and coming across as confused and nervous. Which, actually, is pretty accurate so maybe it's all for the best.

Anyway, we prepared at school today for the ESS Summer Seminar at Akashi High School - more about that tomorrow I guess. But met the kids, and had my first time running through some excercises with them. SCARY. It will get easier as the year goes on, and I settle into my new role I guess.

After work, I did some much-needed repairs on my beautiful bike. I replaced my front brakes, sorted out the screaming back brakes and lubed that sucker up! It's like a new bike now - no more squealing or unfunctional brakes, tyres all pumped up, and the chain has had a hint of oil on it for the first time in years. I still need to buy some more chain oil, and maybe replace my basket, but the bike is already a billion times better. Sam and I test rode it around our carparks, and I totally did a trick. Sam just missed it with the camera, I swear.

My old, worn-down brake pads.

Just before my totally sweet trick.

Our apartment is the one with the broken-down van
(i.e. second bedroom) right outside the window.

Food Highlight of the Day: Tonight we had a Japanese equivalent of an instant dinner - curry rice. The "curry" is a sweet and totally non-curry flavoured dish with a few bits of unidentified meat, some potatoe, onion and a lot of brown coloured sauce. Mix with rice and voila, a very cheap and tasty meal. Just don't ask too many questions about it, and it's fantastic.

Day 29 in Japan - Kaitenzushi (a.k.a sushi train)

Big sleep-in after a late night, and then a lot of cleaning and doing chores. We caught a bus up to a shopping area north of our house (with a big Qanat shopping centre) to buy a wireless router and some other bits and pieces. We ended up lugging a few bins and a futon padding thing back on the bus after a big afternoon at the kaitenzushi (sushi train). This sushi train is KICK ASS and we are going to take pretty much everyone who visits us there. You order stuff on a screen and can pick up any plate that goes past for 100 yen, and sit there for ages just eating and eating. Ended up pretty cheap for a lot of food and entertainment. AND THEY HAVE A WELCOMING ROBOT. THE FUTURE IS NOW.

Sam has a particular way of preparing his sushi before he eats it, as shown below.

1. Wasabi on rice

2. Replace topping

3. Add ginger

4. Add soy

5. EAT!

Now, Doctor Who and preparation for the week ahead, before I get an early night to catch up on some much-needed sleep.

Food Highlight of the Day: Definitely sushi, but which kind? I think it would have to be the oddest sushi I have ever eaten – hamburg sushi. Like a sushi roll but with a tiny little hamburger patty. 

Hamburg sushi.