The shrine near our apartment in Fuchu, whose name I don't know yet. It gets dark early and the weekends go by too fast here; while Iain was off playing guitar with some of the other teachers on Sunday, I went for a walk around the shrine, past festival-style booths selling okonomiyaki, garish chocolate-and-sprinkle covered bananas, and a strange savory pancake that, when opened, turned out to be filled with an unidentifiable mince of vegetables and meat.
In other news, today I figured out how to make instant almond gelatin! My mom used to make it when I was a teenager, and it's the quite possibly the best dessert in the world - who doesn't like the synthetic taste of fake almond? (Most people, apparently, Iain included, which means more for me!) Also, a perk of learning the Kanji for my name - 美加 - is that, thanks to the meaning of the second syllable (addition), I can now make some headway in figuring out cooking instructions! You could probably argue that the adding part of the recipe was obvious thanks to the drawing of a maniacally cheerful anthropomorphized jug of milk pouring itself into the boiling hot pan, but that would be far less cool.
