Yay for blackouts

On Thursday night I was about to start cooking dinner -- well, actually I had already started by chopping the onions and capsicum and putting them on the stove, but the pan hadn't even warmed up yet -- when the power went out. Our whole apartment block was in darkness. Interesting the sort of things that bring a community together. We stood out on the balcony and could see and hear people running up and down the corridors and stairs, jabbering at each other and shining torches, or just standing around doing nothing. Having no idea how long this situation would last I said to Craig "D'oh! I guess this means we're going to have to go out for dinner."

Craig agreed that this was a burden we'd have to bravely shoulder, and said "So, what would you like?"
"Something not Japanese," I replied.
"Indian?"
"Yep."

So we wandered down to this nifty little Indian restuarant called Aladdin we had found on our first night in Numazu. As well as having typically delicious Indian flavours (and when they say something is hot it actually is! That's something else I've really missed here in Japan; they simply Don't Do Spicy), this restuarant serves the most enormous pieces of naan bread you ever did see. So for a decent price, apart from their imported Indian beers which I really didn't care about anyway, you get a great meal which you didn't have to cook yourself. Love it.

And on our return home, the power was back on.

***** ***** *****
ETA: I guess I should explain the location of this restuarant for anyone who happens to find themselves in Numazu one day and wondering what to eat. Um, I haven't learned the names of the streets around here. But you walk up that main street north and slightly west of Numazu Station (the one that leads to Ishibashi Plaza), and take the second street on the left. It's about four shopfronts along on the north side of the street. (Just look for the sign saying "Aladdin".) Less than five minutes walk from the station.

Taiko drums

I have mentioned before that there is a park across the street from us. Last weekend it was the site of some sort of cultural festival. Not sure exactly what, but on Saturday night we could hear lots of music and voices over the loudspeaker, so we decided to wander down there and check it out. They had set up a temporary stage, and when we arrived there were four old women dressed in traditional kimono with fans, performing a dance (didn't think to get a photo, unfortunately).

When their number was over, a large group of teenagers dressed in what looked to us like black karate outfits started preparing for their act. This involved putting drums of varying sizes in specific locations on the stage. When they rolled out "the big one" (it took two kids to carry it, and was set up on a stand of its own), we figured this was definitely going to be interesting enough to stick around for.

The performance was an extremely impressive display of high-precision, choreographed drumming. Craig struck up a conversation in English with a man standing next to him who turned out to be the students' teacher; they were performing on traditional taiko drums.

I haven't done a lot of research into taiko, but it appears that they have existed for centuries and are associated with Japanese martial arts. Perhaps that would explain why the students were dressed the way they were; they even had rather warlike white belts tied around their heads. Later on all the boys took their shirts off which kind of added to the "look" -- although maybe that was just to cool down because the drumming was pretty vigorous (too bad for the girls!). In more recent decades, taiko performances of the sort we witnessed have become very popular. And no wonder! They are really, really cool.

Kore wa nan des ka? (What is this?)

In the interests of being culturally enlightened, I bought this vegetable at the supermarket.

This is what it looked like inside. The outer green section was watery and
crunchy, a bit like the white flesh of a watermelon just before you get to the pink bit. The inner white section was slightly spongy, like raw zucchini. The seeds reminded me a lot of pumpkin seeds. I had no idea if you were meant to eat it raw or cooked, but I figured I'd try raw first and if that was horrible, cook it to see if it improved. The verdict? Scroll down.

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Pah! Amazing Cassia sucked on it as long as she did (long enough to get this photo and that was it). About the bitterest thing I've ever tasted.

The inevitable conclusion. And no, cooking didn't improve it.

Curiously enough, we found it at the smorgasbord restaurant we went to last week, cleverly disguised as a tempura (deep fried in light batter) vegetable. It was still revolting.

And it's called a goya, by the way. Apparently it's an acquired taste.

Food, glorious food

The food is really different here. I could write a book about it. But I'll try to keep this post to the essence of it.

First up, they don't do items in bulk. With perhaps the exception of rice which you can buy in 10kg bags (still nothing to get excited about; you can find 20kg bags in Asian groceries in Australia), and sake which you can buy in 3L bottles. But honestly, who wants three litres of sake?

To demonstrate what I mean, bread comes in packs of 3, 5, 6 or 8 slices. That's white bread, by the way. The only wholemeal bread I have found so far comes in packs of 3 slices. For $1.15 a pack.

Secondly, they don't do cheesem, rolled oats or beans in a can. OK, they do cheese. The individually wrapped slices of plastic stuff (6-8 slices per pack), or tiny blocks of plastic stuff for almost $20 a kilo. And beans are virtually unheard of. I really, really, really miss my beans. And my oats.

Fruit is insanely expensive (about $1 per item) but veggies seem to be pretty cheap. I must say it is nice to get a packet of bean sprouts for 49 cents.

Fish, pork and seafood (i.e. shellfish and all those revolting slimy things that make me want to vomit on sight like octopus) are their staple meats. We don't do pork or seafood. Incidentally, many, many seemingly unrelated products such as noodles have seafood flavour bases too. Bleurgh. We're not big fish eaters either, although that's probably going to change over time.

They love their chicken, so there's some respite for us.

They do beef, but it's expensive and fatty. Inedibly so. They don't do lamb.

Curiously, their love of fatty meat works to our advantage. The cheapest cuts of meat are the leanest. I had the amusing experience yesterday of finding one tray of diced beef that was $10 a kilo cheaper than all the others around it. It actually consisted of pieces of meat. And breast is the cheapest cut of chicken. Can't complain.

The other night, being the third of the month, we went to a restuarant for dinner. It was a smorgasbord place, with Western food. Ohhhhhhh! I loaded my plate with pasta, bean salad, thick cut potato chips and tomato sauce, more pasta, Mexican-style chilli, etc etc. It was sooooo good. Not a grain of rice to be had. (I actually don't mind rice. But not for every meal.) We also hoed into the steak, until Craig saw the chef rubbing the hotplate with pork fat. D'oh.

Anyway, we're slowly making adjustments. I have cooked fish three times since we've been here. That's three more times than I'd ever cooked it before. We eat with chopsticks a lot of the time. Um. OK, that's the extent of our changes. The rest of the time we're sticking as closely to our old diet as we can (minus a few much-loved items) so we're a bit slow on the uptake with this one. We might get there eventually, like maybe by around the time we come home again.

Fuji-san from our north balcony

This was the first time we got to see it. We'd only been here a few days. There had been a bit of a storm, and then the clouds cleared. Pretty cool, hey?

Unfortunately there is another large hill directly between us and Mt Fuji (which you can see quite clearly in this pic), so we can only really see the top of it. Craig gets an awesome view of it from his building at work, though, apparently.