It's March!

Hi Everyone!

In updating the settings on this blog, I realized that some of my very favorite people in this world had been leaving me messages that I had accidentally blocked! This whole time I thought no one was reading this thing so I sort of started slacking on my entries. Sorry! 'Specially to Jim Sensei, Tom Newhall, and my Mumsy, who have all left me wonderful messages recently.

Not much new to report here. It's cold and rainy right now. The Japanese teachers have been harassing me for not learning how to make Japanese food while I've been here, so I'm about to undertake teaching myself how to cook Japanese food. I just attempted to make my first ever Japanese style bento (lunch box) for tomorrow at school. I think it's pretty.

Ingredients:
-Nanohana (Rapeseed Blossoms) in Mustard-Miso Sauce
-Japanese simmered pumpkin and carrots in a mixture of mirin and soy sauce
-Baby Tomatoes
-1 hard boiled egg

-Rice with Black Sesame Seeds

The Nanohana dish is pretty good- but I think I made the sauce a bit too strong. The simmered veggies are good also, but I think the flavoring is a little to weak. I'm no Iron Chef, but I'm learning!

I really need to learn to make Tamagoyaki- the rolled sweet egg omelet- to make this an official bento. I bought the special rectangular pan that one needs to properly roll the eggs after school today, so hopefully I can start experimenting soon. There are all sorts of variations I want to learn, like dashimaki- made with nori and katsuo dashi (dashi- traditional broth is usually made from a combination of seaweed-nori- and dried bonito flakes-katsuo), and norimaki eggs- made with nori rolled inside. Shouldn't be too hard once I get the hang of it.

Moving on from food.

Sooooo, Sunday was my Birthday! I didn't really do anything for it. My dojo had testing for belt ranks so I was at the dojo all day. I was asked to take ukemi for the kids class in the morning, then I went to the adults class in the afternoon, and the really long eating/drinking party afterwards. The really cute boy in the dojo led everyone in a round of Happy Birthday (in English)- and this made me pretty happy. I'm having a big dinner party at the local pan-Asian restaurant tomorrow night then we're going out for drinks.

Birthday Flowers from Naoki!

Well, off to Karate! I really love my dojo. My Sensei is so awesome and nice. Although they regularly hit and kick me really hard, they're really nice about it. I haven't seen Mafia-Sensei in a while. He's the teacher that usually stands around kicking students until they limp away. He only caught me once! and well... my leg hurt for the next week... Yay for karate! Off to the dojo!

Ciao!