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Thursday, June 17, 2004
asia me
there is nothing more amusing than watching japanese people eat spicy foods.
last night, Mami, Nishino and Fukuda went out for Laura`s Goodbye Party. so sweet eh? and Laura had mentioned last week that she liked shaved ice (kokigouri??), and Nakagawa sensei promised to bring her some. I wasn`t sure it would happen, cuz what was the woman going to do, haul in an ice machine and chip away at a big block with an ice pick? highly unlikely. Instead, Japanese ingenuity/desire for convenient sweets surprised me once again. We each got a little plastic cup that had sweetened ice in it (consistency of a slushy), poured some green tea powder over it, and added a generous spoonful of anko and voila! a spectacular maccha anko ice dessert! it was AWESOME. i`m so making some at home. anyways, Nishino suggested Thai food and all parties agreed enthusiastically. When we were ordering, Fukuda made all of us adhere to one rule: order dishes with Red Stars ONLY. and who am i to disagree with a fantastically cuteandlittle, chain-smoking japanese woman? everything looked amazing, and...harmless. but u would never know it the way the three of them were sweating and yelping. mami started tearing as soon as she had some of the PAPAYA SALAD, and fukuda kept blowing out streams of invisible chili flames every five minutes. Both of them would alternate between proclaiming ecstatically that everything was so delicious and then immediately start sobbing because everything was so spicy. it was hilarous. nishino was not that bad, but there were definitely some small pools of sweat forming at the base of his nose.
Laura and I hardly blinked.
During dinner, Laura and I gave them all "American" names: Sabrina (F), Emma (M) and Micah (N). Laura managed to score a Japanese name for herself as well: Mitsuki (beautiful moon). She also made quite an impression by showing them a picture of her "sky-high!!" boyfriend and promised to hook Sabrina up with Sky-high`s friend. hahahaha.. that was the best.
They`ve only met Laura twice, yet wanted to give her this dinner...stuff like this makes me love Ikuno even more, and makes it harder to leave Japan...
I`ve started to extend my departure date.
I`m still leaving though. I swear.
________________________________________
so i think Koreans are some of the coolest people. They have awesome food, have lots of labour demonstrations, can rap better than any other Asians, make interesting films, and their language sounds super cool. So for next week`s activity at Nanko, we`re combining english and hangul, since they`re learning about Korea. I got to phonetically spell out "Chocolate kimchi is not delicious" in hangul heeheeeeeee... so fun. and on tuesday, Konishi sensei gave me a recipe for chijimi. And i keep on having this recurring delusion that when i get back to Japan, i will somehow convince Linda and Wayne to go to Korea for a weekend during the first week in September.
i swear i`m leaving.
there is nothing more amusing than watching japanese people eat spicy foods.
last night, Mami, Nishino and Fukuda went out for Laura`s Goodbye Party. so sweet eh? and Laura had mentioned last week that she liked shaved ice (kokigouri??), and Nakagawa sensei promised to bring her some. I wasn`t sure it would happen, cuz what was the woman going to do, haul in an ice machine and chip away at a big block with an ice pick? highly unlikely. Instead, Japanese ingenuity/desire for convenient sweets surprised me once again. We each got a little plastic cup that had sweetened ice in it (consistency of a slushy), poured some green tea powder over it, and added a generous spoonful of anko and voila! a spectacular maccha anko ice dessert! it was AWESOME. i`m so making some at home. anyways, Nishino suggested Thai food and all parties agreed enthusiastically. When we were ordering, Fukuda made all of us adhere to one rule: order dishes with Red Stars ONLY. and who am i to disagree with a fantastically cuteandlittle, chain-smoking japanese woman? everything looked amazing, and...harmless. but u would never know it the way the three of them were sweating and yelping. mami started tearing as soon as she had some of the PAPAYA SALAD, and fukuda kept blowing out streams of invisible chili flames every five minutes. Both of them would alternate between proclaiming ecstatically that everything was so delicious and then immediately start sobbing because everything was so spicy. it was hilarous. nishino was not that bad, but there were definitely some small pools of sweat forming at the base of his nose.
Laura and I hardly blinked.
During dinner, Laura and I gave them all "American" names: Sabrina (F), Emma (M) and Micah (N). Laura managed to score a Japanese name for herself as well: Mitsuki (beautiful moon). She also made quite an impression by showing them a picture of her "sky-high!!" boyfriend and promised to hook Sabrina up with Sky-high`s friend. hahahaha.. that was the best.
They`ve only met Laura twice, yet wanted to give her this dinner...stuff like this makes me love Ikuno even more, and makes it harder to leave Japan...
I`ve started to extend my departure date.
I`m still leaving though. I swear.
________________________________________
so i think Koreans are some of the coolest people. They have awesome food, have lots of labour demonstrations, can rap better than any other Asians, make interesting films, and their language sounds super cool. So for next week`s activity at Nanko, we`re combining english and hangul, since they`re learning about Korea. I got to phonetically spell out "Chocolate kimchi is not delicious" in hangul heeheeeeeee... so fun. and on tuesday, Konishi sensei gave me a recipe for chijimi. And i keep on having this recurring delusion that when i get back to Japan, i will somehow convince Linda and Wayne to go to Korea for a weekend during the first week in September.
i swear i`m leaving.
// posted by naomi @ 1:42 a.m. 
