how to get thrown out of a japanese gym
As you can see from the photos, Iain and I decided to commemorate our time in California by getting tattoos. Or not. Thanks, Candy, for the awesome Christmas presents!
Showing posts with label dork. Show all posts
15 January 2011
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11 September 2010
bon odori video
above: those two little girls totally would have been me and Maggie back when we were kids. Oh, who I am kidding: that's still me.
* when I was interviewed at the beginning of our summer camp back in Hai Ning in July 2009. I burbled a lot about teaching children how to express themselves, unaware that I would spend the next four weeks holding up flashcards of farm animals and then allowing the kid who responded fastest to fling a beach ball at the bullseye drawn on the board. They loved that game.
** when Noa, a soon-to-be-coworker, and I were interviewed at the American Club's Big Day Out back in May 2008. This video may not have aired, thanks to the fact that neither Noa or I had any idea what Big Day Out was and were thus unable to provide any sort of meaningful insight - I'm pretty sure my interview was just me going, "You mean it's like, a thing? In Australia? Not just an excuse for expats to drink cheap beer in front of a giant kangaroo poster?" Incidentally, this was the same day I later met Iain! Fortunately for me, I managed to be a bit more articulate then.
21 June 2010
in which i finally figure out how to upload video
Above: it's Genki! *
Japanese stationary stores are much cooler than American stationary stores, and the seasonal greeting cards (for pretty much every occasion and currently blooming flower imaginable) are no exception:
Above: Happy Ninetieth Birthday, Grandma Tokuda! When I was a kid, my grandmother wrote the best letters; one of my favorites is of her describing a firefly-filled summer trip she and her family took to Japan (by boat!) when she was about eight years old.
Check out what happens when you push the button:
Above: So much cooler than an e-card. Also, also check out: uploaded video without youtube! Finally!
* The family dog when I was a kid. He was basically a bastard, but I still have a lot of fond memories of him and his bastardly ways. And yes, I know you're snickering at the name if you speak Japanese and therefore know that 'genki' (ie, 'healthy, energetic') is the standard response to "How are you?" but, Iain has a HUMAN student named Genki, so, it's not just my family!
08 June 2010
citric acid and saran wrap
above: (yes, that's an old copy from New English File Elementary mopping up the kelly green)
A couple weeks ago, I got it into my head that it would be an awesome idea to start trying to hand-paint my own yarn. I love variegated yarns, mostly because I have a very finite attention span while knitting and the changes in color keep me from getting bored; also, I love any activity that requires one to commandeer the kitchen (sorry, Iain) and make a huge mess. Anyway, it seemed like a good idea, even if the last time I dyed anything was ten years ago and I walked around with purple hands for a few days afterwards.
above: the impressively sculptural tower of saran wrap in the middle is so I can neatly wrap up the yarn afterwards.
I've been intrigued by the possibility of making your own natural dyes ever since I watched an old lady in Laos dye a skein of silk red with a handful of crushed nutshells. But it turns out, natural dying is a pretty big (and not as safe as you might think) undertaking to set up in a tiny, temporary kitchen, so, after a quick foray around the internet, I decided to go with acid dyes instead, as they seem relatively low-impact and not terrible for your health, provided you don't snort the dye powder, which is why I am wearing this incredibly fetching dust mask below:
Above: ...and now it's on the internet to be preserved forever and ever!
So last week I dyed two small skeins to get a feel for the whole process. Sexy mask aside, the painting (pictured above) is definitely fun, creative, and well worth the prep-time. I did go a little overboard on the variegation the first time around, but at least I learned what not to do next time.
Above: hooray for the 100 yen shop for selling me cheap dyeing utensils.
After painting, I steamed the yarn in the saran wrap for 30 minutes before rinsing it out. The green skein, above, was a bit too neon for my taste, so I put it back in the dye pot with some dark green dye in hopes of muting the color a bit.
Afterwards, the green washed out quite a bit - I'm not sure if it's because the green skein is silk (whereas the red was wool) or because of that last-minute decision to over-dye the whole thing darker, or what. But at least it won't stop traffic now and there's a chance someone might want to wear it.
The red skein came out much more vividly - a bit too vivid and with too many changes in color for my personal tastes. Still, it was a lot of fun - I can't wait to do it again!
02 May 2010
secret composting, my lovely leaf-stealing mom, and other garden-y things
I spent at least an hour today uprooting weeds, moving rocks and digging massive holes in the garden, which was tough work (Iain cut his finger with our "Yay it's FINALLY PAYDAY" new kitchen knife and so wasn't able to help); it was intensely satisfying even if I got pinioned beneath the heavier-than-it-looks rotting wooden platform after a particularly strong wind blew it on top of me. I'd been very excited about today for almost a month now, because today was compost burying day, and if you don't share my giddiness about this, then possibly you didn't grow up in a household that siphoned bathwater two stories down into the garden during droughts or where the term non-indigenous invasive plant has become a dirty word. That last sentence was quite long and possibly nonsensical, but that's how excited I was today.
The minute I realized we had a garden, I suddenly couldn't think about anything else except starting a compost pile. I blame this squarely on my warm, funny, wonderful mother, who has set the bar high when it comes to stealing people's trash in the name of making the world a nicer place*. Though I spent most of my childhood cringing every time she picked through the trash and chided us for throwing away tea bags, or pulling the car over so she could ask neighbors for their grass clippings, clearly she made more of an influence on me than I'd ever imagined, because the thought of gardening without some sort of compost system just seems ...wrong, somehow. This may be because, thanks in part to her compost, my mom has the most beautiful garden in the world (not that I'm biased), which routinely turns out a wealth of delicious vegetables and herbs. Or it may be because, the more environmentally conscious the rest of the world gets, the more I realize my mom has been ahead of her time for years. Either way, I immediately started exploring my options given our smallish kitchen and smaller yard.
Though I toyed with the idea of ordering worms on eBay (is that weird? I think it might be a bit weird) and starting a worm bin, I quickly stumbled on a Japanese form of anaerobic composting called bokashi. There are many, many comprehensive explanations of exactly how it works elsewhere on the internet, but basically: kitchen scraps go in the bucket, you sprinkle a handful of bokashi bran on top, seal the bucket, repeat till full, periodically draining the liquid runoff, and then eventually bury the contents, which have been fermenting away without smelling wildly unpleasant, in the garden, where, according to the internet, they will break down considerably more quickly and without attracting pests. I am really, really praying that this last part is true.
above: the inside of a brand new, sparkly clean, bokashi bin.
As for finding the bokashi bin itself, I can only profusely thank Yuka, the nicest person in Numazu. Our first week at work, she told us to ask her for help if there was anything we needed. I don't think she imagined that the first request would be for a highly specialized compost bin (she hadn't heard of bokashi) but within 24 hours she had found one.
At any rate, after a few weeks, the bin was finally full and ready to bury, which is why I spent the morning digging three massive trenches in the garden. You can't see them in the photo above (which is the garden after I was finished) because I am slightly paranoid about weirding out our neighbors and so - with Iain standing guard - buried everything as furtively as possible, in furtive shifts, with many furtive glances to make sure no one was watching. We haven't had much contact with our neighbors at all, though sometimes the old woman who hangs her laundry on the other side of that white fence points to our flowers and chatters about them too quickly to be understood. As nice as she seems, I'm a bit worried how the sight of a bunch of kitchen waste being freely buried might look in trash-disposal-obsessed Japan, and my Japanese is not up to the task of no, don't worry, thanks to an innovative fermentation process, this kitchen waste has been restructured on a molecular level and so is no longer appealing to pests, so please don't call our landlord.
Above: in case you were wondering how I'm frittering away the money from my first paycheck while Iain is out buying knives (and decent frying pans): multi-colored nasturtiums!
Anyway, three trenches and a lot of very pickle-y smelling vegetable scraps later, the first batch of compost has been clandestinely buried. So now, we start over and wait, and I'll try to keep any further compost related developments to much shorter, less-digression prone entries, as I'm pretty sure the only person reading this at this point is my mom (Hi Mom!) In the meantime, tomorrow we get our Golden Week on and head down to Shimoda, where there are (we've heard) both white-sand beaches and the Black Ships that brought the first Westerners to the island.
* because when you're a kid and your mom has the only compost bucket in the neighborhood, that's sure what it seems like. The fetid smell of grass clippings will always remind me of being nine years old and so totally convinced I have the weirdest mom on the planet.
22 January 2010
with apologies to my grandparents in advance for this photo
Above: WHAT did you just call me?
In the Newark airport, waiting for my flight to the UK; this day began way too early thanks to the overzealous airport shuttle schedulers (4:30 am pickup time?!) and the even more overzealous driver, who showed up half an hour early and then took me on a pointless detour through the Tenderloin so he could run some errands and try, without any luck, to pawn me off on another shuttle bus. Weirder still, though, was the extremely inappropriate sign above (again, sorry, grandparents), which nobody but me seemed to notice.
