Behavior Modification

Now this title I know no one will get :b

Crazy week! Midterms are coming up, so everything's really busy. I've been interviewing people for my upcoming Japanese midterm presentation (I have to talk for 3 minutes in Japanese about information I collect from interviewing 7 Japanese people), and I actually made good friends with Taisho-san tonight, who's the bartender at Ontakesan bar. He's a really cool guy, and people are much more laid back at the bar and less stressful about my attempts at Japanese, so it was a good time, and I got a couple of interviews for my project. Two birds, one stone!

We also went to okonomiyaki last night, which is a sort of food. It's...really hard to explain. It's sort of like the Japanese equivalent of pizza, as I've heard it described. It's vegetables, meat, and such in a pancake-ish batter fried up into a savory-flavored pancake-type thing. Also, in most, if not all, places, you have to make it yourself! Basically, you sit on the floor around a table that has an electric griddle built into the middle, and you're given a plate and a little spatula, and two big spatulas for using on the griddle. You order, and you're brought a bowl with all the ingredients in it, including the batter. (At this point we had to ask the okonomiyaki-ya lady how to do it xD). You then oil the pan and spread it with the spatulas, and put the veggies and such on the griddle and leave the batter in the bowl. You fry up the veggies a bit, and then make them into a circle and dump the batter in the middle. Let it cook, flip it, finish the other side, divide it up and put your favorite sauce on and enjoy! There's actually a special sauce just for okonomiyaki, and it's often used on takoyaki as well. It was really tasty, though a bit difficult to make for beginners. Also, they had ramune (a special type of soda in a special type of bottle. Hard to explain, but you can find them in the US), so this is the first time I actually saw that here in Japan. Also, Coke in glass bottles, ftw! =)

Also, Japan has some great sweets. Tried Hai-Chuu (High Chew?) for the first time, and it's really fabulous. Like the Japanese version of Starburst, I guess. Also, Assault Rifle Chocolate for Valentine's Day. Not even kidding. Of course, since the new Eva movie just came out here (or is coming out? I can't remember. I'm not on top of my Eva news :b), so they're doing all kinds of promotional stuff, including assault rifle-shaped chocolate. Weeeird. But hey, anywhere you can walk into any old convenience store and get chocolate-covered almonds is a great place in my opinion. Speaking of food, I went out on a limb last night and bought some fish. Didn't know what it was, but I know I wanted to try fish. I'm so tired of getting bento here that have a piece of salmon or something in it, and it still has the bones in it, so I wanted to do something on my own. Well, I got this filet, I think it's tuna, and I used half of it tonight to make tuna teriyaki from scratch. Not that it's that difficult :b. Biggest problem is that teriyaki is about 75% alcohol-based (2 tbsp soy sauce, 4 tbsp sake, 2 tbsp sweet sake, 1/2 tbsp sugar), and we're not allowed cooking alcohol. So I had to substitute water and it turned out a little salty, but it wasn't bad. I need to tweak it a little, but it was still tasty. My taste-tester Abby said it was fabulous, so I guess that's a good thing =). Next experiment: orange chicken. Got some orange marmalade to try it with, though Abby says we might do garlic-cheese salmon tomorrow. For those of you that don't know, cheese is rare and expensive here, so garlic-cheese is especially a treat, particularly this delicious stuff Abby makes =).

It's really surprising how much you don't realize you'll miss butter and things like it until you don't have it! I will say this though: the Japanese do bread right. The packs we get are all uniform, full inch or inch and a half thick slices of bread that toast perfectly every time and are really delicious. True, each pack is only 6 slices, but with how much rice we eat, the bread doesn't really go that quickly. Except on Valentine's Day when I was feeling homesick and got raisin bread and made some really fantastic french toast with it :D. Sometimes, home cooking does the trick. Like tuna-mayonnaise sushi! Surprisingly, it tastes just like a tuna salad sandwich, if you put just a little lettuce in it. Really good stuff, but don't confuse it with ebi-mayonnaise unless you want shrimp salad =).

Not much else this week, due to general busy-ness. Have postcards, will send. I unfortunately bought them just before midterms, which was probably dumb of me. I'll get them out soon though! See you all again soon~