Food in Japan

We are a bit of a foodie couple. Ok, probably quite a foodie couple haha. We enjoy cooking together, trying new restaurants, and having people over so we have an excuse to cook a bunch of food.
It is probably no surprise, then, that one of the best parts of our trip to Japan was the opportunity to get the real deal on known favorites and try lots of new food and drink items.

Vending machines was one of the culinary adventures we thoroughly enjoyed. They are everywhere, usually two or three at a time so if you cannot find what you like in one, move along to the next one (or cross the street, or walk around the corner). We found vending machines with cigarettes, beer, hot and cold tea and coffee, hot soup, soft drinks such as coke and various flavors of fanta, sports drinks including Pocari Sweat and CC Lemon, and fruit flavored waters like peach (delightful), pomegranate and guava. Sometimes vending machines are used for food orders at restaurants, we got to experience this at a tonkatsu restaurant (fried pork cutlets) on our final night in Okinawa. Luckily they had an English menu...otherwise we might have just hit some buttons and hoped for the best :D

Convenience stores were another readily available and convenient option for food and drink. We found they were far easier to find than supermarkets, and just as affordable for the amount of food we needed. You could get eggs, meat like sausages and bacon or sandwich fixings, occasionally fruits and vegetables, bento meals they could heat for you or send home cold for you to heat, and all manner of instant snacks, cup noodles and delightful treats. They also sold ready made sandwiches, hot steamed buns, rice balls stuffed with fish or seaweed or.... was not sure on some of them :) Good ones sold fried chicken or vegetable patties and other miscellaneous things that we sampled but did not always figure out what we were eating.
Drink options included hot tea and coffee, lots of cold beverages, alcohol, as well as boxes of instant or brew tea and coffee and hot chocolate. They were great if we needed a snack on the go, and provided enough options we could pick up breakfast items to save on having to find something before we set out adventuring for the day.

Approx. $2 for a cup of sake :)

All the hot drink options at a convenience
store, the cold options took up a couple of walls!

Dinner was usually the meal we would eat out, and we enjoyed a delightful range of things. Our go-to choice when we were indecisive or too tired to try deciphering menus was to find a noodle shop. But often we would pick a direction and wander until we found something that looked yummy. Japanese restaurants often have pictures in the menu, or plastic molds of the food or both, so if all else failed we could point at what looked delicious!
We only had one funny night where we felt as if our food-ordering skills got a bit subpar. We had spent all day out on an island exploring and were feeling pretty tired so we opted for a Chinese restaurant that was only a block from our apartment. This was of course the one place with minimal photos and no models, but we felt brave anyway. We thought we were ordering a set meal that came with chicken and some miso soup and a salad, so Troway wanted a bit of extra chicken. We thought the "extra" we ordered was an appetizer size of kara-age (Japanese-style fried chicken, which is divine). In reality, we ordered a meal-size one, oops. Never mind we thought, as I was sure that for myself I had order a medium size mabodofu (a Chinese spicy beef and tofu dish), which meant I could help out with the fried chicken. In reality I had order two meals for myself as well, a large order of the mabodofu and a delicious chicken fried rice. We are sure the chef must have thought we were seriously gluttonous foreigners! We gave it a good effort but we definitely could not get through it all.

Matcha (green tea) latte. Not my new favorite...

Ramen and karaage lunch in Kyoto

We were impressed to find burgers like this in Japan!

Karaage

Hiroshima okonomiyaki

Pokemon donuts!

Yakiniku restaurant, where you get to cook your own!

And of course, the must-have sushi

Tempura

Tonkatsu curry and udon, Okinawa

Japan Trip - Some Highlights

We decided before we even had a wedding date that we wanted to honeymoon in Japan. For me, it was both a long overdue return to see friends and eat the food and soak up the culture but also a chance to introduce Troway to one of my other homes. For Troway, it was an opportunity to tick off one of the biggest and first desires on his travel list, so win win :)

On 1 Jan, we flew from Washington DC (will give an update on our DC trip later) to Osaka via Toronto and Tokyo. We enjoyed a blissful 16 days exploring the cuisine, culture, shops, temples and castles throughout several cities. We only got lost a few times and with the exception of a bit of a mishap with our accommodation the very first night, had smooth sailing the whole way (if you are interested I will share the story with you, it involves miscommunication with a taxi driver, last minute change of our booking by the accommodation, a very kind diner manager and a grandferly hotel manager who managed to book us an alternate room at 2am when we were tired and I was perhaps a bit stressed). For the moment, I will share two things from our trip: purikura and the outdoor shopping malls.

Purikura is a delightfully intense experience that I think everyone should embrace while in Japan. Found in arcades, shopping malls and bowling alleys, photo booths offer various themes and styles of photos for you and your friends/partner/anyone you can drag in with you. The horrid elevator music they play at deafening levels is slightly more intimidating than it was last time I was there, but I suppose it adds to the fun in some fashion. The best purikura sites provide mirrors and space where you can fix your hair and make up before the photo shoot begins; some we saw on this trip even had hair straighteners and curlers! Once you're in the booth (which have hooks for your bags and coats and umbrellas, I love Japan's ability to be prepared for everything) you pick a theme and the countdown is on. Most booths take up to about 12 photos so that's a lot of poses to come up with in about 2 minutes total!
Once the photos have been taken, you rush around to the other side of the booth to pick your favorites, then you get to decorate! You can set backgrounds, add text, give everyone hats or funny hairstyles, sky's the limit really. Hit save and the machine spits them out :) Kudos to Troway for agreeing to give it a go, given most of the other patrons in the arcade we found were about 17 haha. Of course the bonus to this is a group of high school girls took us under their wing to show us how to play some of the games, so even though we did not win anything we had a blast and had our own personal cheer squad who seemed pleased they would have bragging rights for helping the foreigners.

Neither of us are huge shoppers, but we enjoyed exploring the outdoor shopping malls that seem to be in just about every city in Japan. They are a seemingly endless maze of shops and food and people watching. One morning in Hiroshima we walked for two hours and I am sure we only saw half of the streets that were part of the mall. Shops range from tourist traps full of knick knacks to clothing stores, tea shops, swords chopsticks, kimono stores, sock shops (where they sell NOTHING but socks) and $2 shops full of everything imaginable. There is usually a couple of museums and arcades, and maybe a movie theater, and at least a couple temples in case you need a quick prayer break. We actually stumbled on a beautiful Buddhist temple just as they were beginning afternoon prayer. It was an incredible experience, listening to the chants and drumming, totally away from the hustle and bustle of the shopping street that was just outside the door. Food can range from McDonald's and Mos Burger to squid on a stick and seaweed salad. We sampled quite a few tasty treats during our explorations, and found that playing "Spot the Foreigner" was an excellent game to play because they stick out like a sore thumb, even the other Asian tourists.

The Buddhist Temple we found, Kyoto

An ad for a Karaoke parlor...

If all else fails....go to the hedgehog cafe!

Life Update

Good morning,

You've probably decided I gave up on posting. I suppose I did have to give up regular posting, more because of a lack of capacity for additional writing that was not focused on Masters study, but I have had getting update out on my to-do list for awhile.
It feels a bit silly to just say I have been busy, because it seems a single constant in everybody's life is they are "busy." I suppose I may as well tell you what I have been busy with though!

School is ticking along, but continues to take up quite a lot of time, which is really my biggest excuse for neglecting other things. However, the end is finally in sight with things, I have completed all of the required research and over the last few weeks have been writing and revising and formatting and otherwise trying to polish up the long essay. A current challenge is how to structure everything and say what I want to say without exceeding my word-count limit. At the moment I am in danger of that, but there is still work to be done that will hopefully allow me to cut out bits and pieces here and there so I am sure it will all come together. Anyway, two months from now I will submit things for review, so not far to go :)

Amidst all this, there has not been space for too much excitement but a couple of things are worth sharing.
Dad came to visit in September, so we enjoyed getting to show him around Taranaki. Since we decided to stay local I got to be a tourist in Taranaki, which I had not done for about 5 years! It means I got to tick a few things off the Taranaki sight-seeing list that I had not done yet.
Highlights were the Tawhiti Museum in Hawera, which I highly recommend. No photos allowed so I cannot post any, but I can say it is an impressive artistic display of local and Maori history.
We also did a tour around the sugar loaf islands on Chaddy's Charters, where we got to see a baby shark! They reckon the young fella was about 21 years old and just oh so cuddly.
We also explored the Blacksmith Museum in Pio Pio (which is technically not Taranaki but it is a good day trip so close enough, ha!). We had to get a key from the local convenience and let ourselves in with an honesty box donation and had the luxury of being the only visitors that day, so we were able to take our time exploring the old tools and houses, etc.

Labour Day here is end of October, the first holiday since early June when the Queen's birthday is celebrated. Since I hit the big 3-0 the week before Labour Day (we had a pie potluck to celebrate which I highly recommend as an at-home social event!), we decided to enjoy a weekend away for the holiday weekend. We headed over to the sunny Hawke's Bay town of Napier. They have beautiful palm trees, we went to a wine tasting at New Zealand's oldest winery, enjoyed exploring the art deco downtown and had lots of sunshine and relaxation. If only it could have lasted a bit longer, ha!

Hope all is well in your world. We are looking forward to our Christmas trip home (Troway's first winter Christmas!) and then exploring Japan for two weeks so I will keep track of good things to share :)

Happy Thanksgiving a bit early!

Seal Colony around here

Baby...Shark..do do, do do do do :)

Blacksmith Museum

Pie potluck!

East Coast at Napier downtown

Napier rose garden

Mission Estate Winery

Historic Pianos

One of the perks of going back to school is you get access to university resources. When I was deciding whether to choose Auckland, one big point in their favor was a significant collection of historic keyboard instruments. I was recently granted access to spend some time playing keyboards that are relevant to the period I am studying.

An important component of my research is a phenomenological approach, which is essentially a fancy word for an immersion experience. By playing and studying specific four-hand piano scores, I am attempting to understand what it was like to be an amateur pianist in the first half of the nineteenth century. The ability to play the music on the pianos that these players would have owned was necessary for understanding aspects such as space, sound, and feel. Of course, in addition to the  academic benefits for my research, it was a thrilling experience from the perspective of being a pianist.

The piano that was most relevant for my area of study was a replication of an 1826 Congrad Graf grand from Vienna. Viennese pianos were known for their lightweight action. I have a 1914 Broadwood upright from London at home (came over to NZ on a boat!) and the difference was immediately noticeable. The keyboard on the Graf replica I played had 6 and a half octaves, making it about 18 keys shorter than a modern keyboard. This means there was enough space for two people to play duets (my area of research), although I reckon hoop skirts might have made it a tighter squeeze!

The keyboard on this might have been shorter than modern ones but this was balanced by the fact that the piano had six pedals. Modern options have either two or three pedals, depending on whether they are American or European model based.
Working left to right, the pedals are:

1.  a soft pedal (which reduces the number of strings struck by the hammers, standard on modern pianos)
2.  second from the left is unknown but appeared to be another option for reducing overall volume
3.  a bassoon pedal (which produces a buzzing sound to emulate the double reed instrument on the lower half of the keyboard)
4. a lute pedal (which makes the sound rather thin and wispy sounding)
5. a damper pedal (keeps the dampers off the string so the sound continues until the key is released or the strings stop vibrating, also standard on modern pianos)
6.  and my favorite......what is called a Janissary pedal, for producing percussive sounds! This became popular when a particular trend in 19th Century pop music was to play military and Turkish music, which obviously requires something more exciting than mere piano sounds :)

I had quite a fun time experimenting with the different sounds you could produce. I discovered that early 20th Century novelty piano music sounds great with the Janissary pedal, haha!

I also got to play a Clavichord for the first time in my keyboarding life. The Clavichord was a small, quiet pre-cursor to the piano. It became a popular alternative to the harpsichord because it allowed the player to produce a [small] range of dynamic contrast. They were small enough to be portable, with some models built to be contained within a carry case.

Pictures below are all photos of keyboards in the University of Auckland historic keyboard collection. I know details of some of the keyboards but not all. 

The Graf replica 

Brief excerpt of Dizzy Fingers by Zez Confrey with

Janissary pedal

Replica of a late 18th Century piano
Knee levers under the keyboard rather than pedals

Original grand from late 19th Century (Brahms era)

The clavichord I played

Beautifully decorated harpsichords: 

Quick Update

Hi Readers,

I promise I have not been intentionally ignoring you. There just has not been a lot of excitement that I felt was worth sharing. My daily routine is pretty standard right now, with up early on weekdays for work, study in the afternoon/evening. Weekends are mostly study time as well, although I've allowed myself the occasional respite for other things, partly for some much needed mental time-out!

The good news is my study is going well. I am almost a full 6 months in to the program, so a lot of work is behind me, but of course there is a lot more to come. I am unsure how many books/articles/essays I have read to date, but at last count I only have about 30 left to read, which feels pretty exciting! This of course means the long hours of writing, revising said writing, formatting etc are yet to come, but I have already drafted a lot, so getting the reading done will mean I have more consistent work to fine-tune the writing parts.

My recent claim to fame and bit of excitement was participation in the 20 July concert with the Taranaki Symphony Orchestra. They put together a wonderful evening to commemorate the 50th anniversary of the moon landing. As part of this, I was asked to solo, playing Debussy's Clair de Lune. I was honored to be a part of the concert and thoroughly enjoyed the opportunity to perform, something that has taken a backseat while I'm studying. Of course knowing I would get to play the big concert Steinway was just a bonus! The concert went off without a hitch though, to a nearly full theater and the review in the paper was brilliant.

Now that the concert is past, my excitement is the occasional trip to Auckland to refresh my library stash and the weekend time I have allowed for work on a baby quilt for a friend that is expecting. I'll share a picture when it's done, it is a new pattern.

The mountain has its winter hat on :)

Final rehearsal before the concert

Old printing press I stumbled on in my last visit
to Auckland University library

Cool trees in Albert Park, Auckland

Old meets new

Obligatory visit to a donut shop while in
Auckland (because New Plymouth does not have any)

Winter has come

Winter in my part of New Zealand is pretty mild, at least compared to winters I remember from growing up in Missouri. It snows but only on the mountain. There is lots of wind and lots of rain and an annoyingly on-going feeling of dampness. My biggest complaint tends to be that jeans and towels take a long time to dry since having a dryer at home is not generally affordable here. I suppose a second complaint is having to get out of bed on cold mornings since central heating is also not a thing here, but it does mean I move quickly and therefore get out of the house on time, ha!

Thanks to winter weather, I got to have a new experience while driving down to a little township called Rahotu for one of Troway's rugby games (they won, first time beating this team in several years woot woot!). When I left town it was sunny, but started raining not far outside of town. Since some form of rain (which could precipitation, rain, drizzle, general wetness, showers, any other synonym the weather people can think of) was predicted for the day this was not terribly surprising. After I got past the next town the rain stopped and the sun came back out. But don't get too excited, because all of a sudden it got terribly windy, started absolutely pouring rain (but sideways rain due to the wind) all while the sun was still shining brightly. SO - I have officially driven through a rainstorm with the need for sunglasses. Thank you Taranaki. Troway reckons it was actually only raining at the mountain but it was so windy it blew the rain to the highway :)

In other news, school is going well. I have officially finished phase 1, which was analyzing a rather long and mentally painful list of scores for a comparison of how the music was arranged for piano. My poor neighbors have had to suffer through me playing the scores. One commented the other day that he has been able to hear me playing a lot lately and fortunately he thought this was a good thing!
Being a pianist has come with its share of interesting neighbor interactions. When I lived in Vienna, there was a city policy that outrageous activities such as practicing the piano were not allow between the hours of 10pm and 7am, so I was pretty safe there. When I was living in Kansas City there was a fella who lived in the apartment below mine who would bang on the ceiling if he had reached his capacity for classical music (even though I have always tried to be respectful of what hours I play as I understand not everyone has my taste in music). But the winner of non-musical neighbors is the lady who once knocked on my door to let me know that there was some noise coming from my apartment. I was practicing something by Beethoven at this point. I was unsure how to respond to her designation of his music as "noise."

I hope you have a good week. I will seek out adventure so I can write again soon :)
Some highlights from recent daily life below.

Autumn in the park

A nice benefit to rainy days

Winter sunset (not to brag, but this view is walking distance
from home) :)