Heading to Omihachiman!

Tomorrow, after work of course, we will be heading north to Omihachiman, the city within which reside two acquaintances of Emma's and mine who are know throughout Japan, ney, the world as THE Joseph and Tiffany Eckberg...

Yes, I speak of the same Joseph and Tiffany of www.jtjapan.com...

Emma and I are headed there at about 9:30pm Akashi time... Emma will be on the train back from work, and I will meet her at the Akashi station with our luggage, and we will continue on to Joe and Tiff's... I believe the train ride is just under 2 hours... I might nod off a bit...

We plan to beach the beach, tikka the tikka, and beer the beer... Good time will abound!

Vote on the Poll!

Vote on the poll to the right... ------>>>

It's a silly one, but it's an experiment to see how much interest there is in polls...

If there is a lot, I might start making more interesting ones...

Ones where you vote what you want me to do or say in Japan...

Vote!

Someone is a Movie Star!

And that someone is Emma!

Check her out on the NOVA website! She is kicking the ass of the idea that buying groceries in Japan is difficult!

Check out the movie!

Whoo!

The Cinnamon Roll Experiment Pt. 2

I know you are all hanging by a thread... waiting... anxiously waiting.... the results of our Cinnamon Roll Hypothesis... Well... here's the results...

Yum!

After a night of yeasty feasting, our dough was ready to rolled out and rolled up...

The most challenging part was the actual baking, as we do not have an oven... Just a toaster oven, and a toaster oven/microwave... We tried one pan in each... I'd say the one we did in the conventional toaster oven worked better, as the microwave/oven only cooked from the top... We had to flip the rolls!

Other than that, some other observations:

Brown sugar in Japan in basically white sugar that is slightly brown in color...

Frosting tastes good...

I think it was a success... We each had four for breakfast! They were good...

Here's a gallery of more pics...

Enjoy!

The Cinnamon Roll Experiment Pt. 1

No, it's not the name of my new experimental progressive rock band...

The other day Emma and I were watching an episode of Good Eats (with Alton Brown) in which Alton was making cinnamon rolls...

That made us extremely hungry for cinnamon rolls...

So today we went to the local "SATY" (big dept. store with a grocery store in it) in Okubo (local town two stops to the west) and bought the ingredients to make Cinnamon Rolls.... Got a recipe off of allrecipes.com, and we've made the dough... Right now we're letting it rise, and will make the rolls in the morning...

I will have pictures and results tomorrow... Stay tuned!

Two Packages in One Day!

Craziness!

We were awoken today at 9:30 am by the doorbell... Usually no one ever comes over, so it's a bit jarring...

But today it was a mail-man with TWO, count 'em, TWO packages!

Click here and here to check 'em out!

Bang!

My New Favorite Room...

Recently I have found my new favorite room in the apartment...

No... Not the kitchen...

No... Not the toilet room...

No... Not even the 105 degree second bedroom that we seal off and never go into...

My new favorite room? The Shower...

When I get home from work, where's the first place I go? That's right, the shower...

Only cold water turned on + me + 10 minutes of spraying the back of my neck = A very good feeling...

I shower at least twice a day, usually more... Every shower is only the cold water turned on...

I suggest you all take moment and consider the humble "Shower"... You'll be glad you did...

Mount Rokko!

Who's Rokko?

Rokko is a mountain near Kobe...

Last night Emma and I were taken to the summit lookout by our Japanese friend Toshi...

We met Toshi last week, he knows a lot of the NOVA people we work with. He invited us to cruise to Mt. Rokko with him...

So not only was it our first trip to Mt. Rokko, it was our first trip anywhere in a car in Japan...

Toshi has two cars, but last night drove in his van-like car... The car looks so small from the outside, but when you get in there's a ridiculous amount of room! Like crazy stretch-out-your-legs-in-the-front-and-back-seat room...

After a crazily wind-y (not a lot of wind, whynding... is it spelled the same? Weird...) route up the mountain (with an increasingly car-sick Emma) we got to the lookout...

It was extremely interesting to look from a great altitude upon the city of Kobe...

I took some night snapshots... They are located here. Enjoy!