Day 18 in Japan – Goya fail!

Today everyone in the area here was gearing for a typhoon – I didn’t know the weather was as extreme as that, but it certainly felt like a big storm was brewing. There were patches of rain to alleviate the humidity, and there was some wind in the afternoon into this evening. I hurried home after school because the light was weird, and everything felt a little like ghost town – clearly everyone else got the same creepy vibe as me.

Otherwise today was a normal day at work. I worked on my English wall and sang show tunes really loud while doing so. I realised two things afterwards: 1 – I had all the windows to the quad open, and 2 – I have become my mother. I was sticking up a bunch of printed pictures from home, and it was surprisingly nice to see everyone’s faces – I didn’t realise how much I was missing family until I could see them all stuck onto colourful cardboard.

When I got home, I set out on a culinary adventure – cooking goya. Goya is also known as bitter melon, and I have been lucky enough to get some goya, piman (capsicum), myoga (wild ginger flowers) and cucumber from a nice farmer man that I pass on the way to work every day (whose name I learned today is Sumino-san). I talked to Numata-sensei, the supercute home ec teacher that I sit next to at Akashikita, and she told me how to prepare goya to get rid of the bitterness. Following her advice, I set out to make bitter melon palatable. The epic story (with photos) is told below.

Step 1. Look at weird bumpy goya-ness. Smell weird goya-ness.

Step 2. Cut goya in half lengthwise.

Step 3. Scoop out seeds and fleshy innards.

Step 4. Chop goya finely and get a bowl of salt water ready.

Step 5. Chuck finely sliced goya into salt water.

Step 6. Leave goya for at least an hour and a half. Take a photo while you are waiting.

Step 7. Dry goya and rinse a few times in fresh water. Put into a hot frying pan with some finely sliced bacon and fry away. Onion too, if you want it, but we didn't have any.

Step 8. Add some egg and mix it all up - go for somewhere between scrambled eggs and an omlette. I added a bit of salt and pepper at this stage.

Step 9. (not pictured) Throw the whole thing in the bin because goya is disgustingly bitter, and no amount of salting or soaking makes it edible. It just wastes your nice bacon and eggs. End up eating peanut butter on toast for dinner.

To make up for the horrible, horrible dinner, we discovered that the internet has been connected at our place! A nice Skype chat to Fletch made me feel a bit better about the epic culinary fail, and at least Sam picked all of the bacon out to eat. And found out that Mum, Fletch and Anna have all booked tickets to come and visit - bring on November! I smell a Kyoto trip in the works!

Food highlight of the day: DEFINITELY NOT GOYA. I picked up some odd bits from the bakery today and was thrilled to have my first karepan (Curry-pan = curry bread) - curry-ish sauce stuff inside white bread. Delicious!. Also had a delicious custard filled berry bread thing that was almost cheesecake-y in the filling.