One more month

I have exactly one month left in Japan. The classes are almost over...I still have a kanji exam, an interpretation exam, a literature essay, and a presentation.

Here's my schedule for August:

02 Exams and essay deadline

04 Presentation; my last day with Morgan :'(

05-13 九州

14 Daan's birthday; might go to Nara for the 燈花会

16 京都五山の送り火

19 彦根城

20 修了式

22 天橋立

24-25 犬山城、松本城

31 flying back home via Frankfurt

Things to do before leaving:

- pack (ugh this is not going to be fun)

- send parcels in the post

- cancel phone contract, PiTaPa card, bank account

- stock up on Japanese food? well at least the matcha powder so I can bake green tea cupcakes when I go home :)

- The Museum of Fine Arts Botson exhibition in Kyoto

- Impressionism and Modern Art exhibition in Osaka

Resemblance

Having recently discovered the joys of facebook and modern technology, my Dad scanned and uploaded a photo of him and my Mum in their 20s (he was 29 and my Mum was 26). While my brother is the literally the masculine form of my mother, I've never considered myself a splitting image of her (even though there have been many people who say we look alike). I don't object to that statement, of course I look like her. But looking at my parents' old photos, I was in awe at how I bear resemblances to both my parents, I could actually see myself in their faces.

One time my Mum joked about what if my brother and I got mixed up at birth at the hospital, I laughed it off 'cause that would be impossible. Not only it's completely hypothetical, I just don't see it as possible. My brother looks exactly like my Mum (except for his ears, which stick out a little like my Dad's), and I look like both my parents, so even without a DNA test I'm 100% certain that my brother and I are the products of my parents' union.

NANA

I'm normally not a great fan of manga or anime, but this film adaptation of the manga NANA is one of my favourite Japanese films. (I love のだめカンタービレ too but only the tv series.)

The movie came out in 2005, and I remember watching it (with Chinese subtitles) with my Mum at a cinema somewhere in HK (the summer holiday after GCSEs). And then my Mum bought me the DVD, and I watched it with my roommate Sarah at school. The TV at school couldn't display the Japanese subtitles, nevertheless we watched it together, despite the fact that we had only studied Japanese for about 6 months! Sarah is a big fan of the manga, and she had been reading it for a while (in English) as it's published in a manga magazine in the States. So even though we could only understand a tiny bit of the dialogues, we knew the story quite well.

Maybe now I can watch it and understand the entire film fully for the first time?



Apart from the friendship of the two main characters (奈々 and ナナ), the other main theme is the music - songs such as "Glamorous Sky", "Journey", and "Endless Story" are quite memorable. And the performances by 中島美嘉 (who plays ナナ, vocalist of the fictional band Blackstones) and 伊藤由奈 (who plays the vocalist for another band, Trapnest) are pretty good too.

Right now "Endless Story" is my song-of-the-moment. Yes it's a ballad but I love the lyrics, simple yet precisely describes my thoughts right now...

13 new rules

Been feeling like I'm in a slump, so I made some new rules for myself:

1. Smile

2. Say "thank you"

3. Be decisive

4. Straighten up and stop slouching

5. No junk food

6. Recover from failure

7. Don't freak out about mistakes

8. Be positive

9. Quit feeling jealous

10. Make eye contact

11. Remember the good

12. Stop procrastinating

13. Don't overreach

Two chicken dishes

Today for lunch I made 野菜と鶏肉のくわ焼き, and for dinner とうがんと鶏肉の煮もの. Both are chicken dishes, and unbelievably easy to make.

野菜と鶏肉のくわ焼き is basically stir-fried chicken and vegetables (lotus root and エリンギ - king oyster mushroom). The veg is cooked first; the chicken is first marinated in soy sauce and Japanese cooking wine, and then coated in corn flour before cooking in the frying pan. And everything is stirred together with the sauce (soy sauce, mirin and Japanese cooking wine).



In contrast to the stir-fry, which has a great sweetened soy sauce (as mirin is added) flavour, とうがんと鶏肉の煮もの is even simpler in terms of flavour. There's very little added flavouring, just 1/2 tsp of salt, a big piece of ginger and some Japanese cooking wine. It reminded me greatly of the good ol' Chinese home cooking I used to get as a child.

とうがん (冬瓜 donggua), literally means "winter melon", is actually a summer fruit. Similar to watermelon, water makes up 90% of its weight, hence it's a very good hydrating fruit to counter the sizzling heat. The dish is basically boiled winter melon and chicken, a bit like a soup, but slightly different from the Chinese a corn syrup (2 tbsp cornflour with 4 tbsp water) is added at the end to thicken the soup. Because there's little flavouring, all you can taste is the original flavours of the melon and the chicken. Very natural, healthy and tasty!

A lesson of love

Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It is not rude, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres.

(1 Corinthians 13: 4-7)

Here's one of my favourite scenes from Grey's Anatomy (Season 2, episode 24 "Damages") - I always cry when the father of the victim puts his hand onto the guy (played by the brilliant John Cho) who crashed into their car and subsequently killed his pregnant daughter

(BGM: "Nowhere Warm" - Kate Havnevik)

I go nowhere high, go nowhere warm

Until you’re by my side

Your hand in mine

And I’ve always known

You’re like a feather

You go where wind and fire melt together

And I’m sure you’re on your way

Yes I’m sure you’re on the road

And I’m sure you’re faster than before

Yes I know you’re somewhere on the road

I reckon there is nothing more to say

あじの梅じそ揚げ

So for a while my Japanese cooking thing went into a halt, probably because I had been lazy, and trying to save some money by eating some instant food (e.g. なっとう、くらげ) with rice. As much as I love natto et al., I can't eat that for a week straight. For sometime I ate at the cafeteria as often as possible, but then I got bored of the crappy food there (the unagi rice a couple of weeks ago was pretty good though).

Anyway, today I got back to cooking, and I made あじの梅じそ揚げ. Aji is Japanese for horse mackerel. The dish is basically pieces of aji and bits of ume-boshi (pickled plum) wrapped inside an しそ（大葉; shiso）leaf, and then coated with flour, egg and breadcrumbs and fried.

It looked tasty in the recipe book, and I happen to like fish, umeboshi and shiso so I thought I'd give it a go. It tasted okay, perhaps a little bit more umeboshi would have made it better? But the process was a pain in the ass.

At the supermarket I couldn't find ready-to-cook horse mackerel fillets. So I bought two fish - actual fish, that needs filleting. That took me almost an hour! and I had to wash my hands a dozen times 'cause they stank of fishiness...and the chopping board was covered in the fish's internal organs and blood and roe etc. Ugh.

As much as I liked the dish, not going to make it again. Never again.

Ramblings

Wow, I don't think I've ever felt like this.

So alone...everything is all grey (despite the beautiful weather and the dreamy marshmallow clouds) - all because of just one person.

What's happening with me?

Looking at the graduation photos of my fellow St. Helen's old girls, everyone looks so elegant, grown-up and beautiful. Then I look at myself.

I might look grown-up, but sometimes I feel like I'm still twelve. So immature and irresponsible.

By the way, today was scorching hot! and it's only going to get hotter...

Deadlines

I'm currently swamped with work. As we approach the last three weeks of classes, exams, presentations and essay deadlines are looming...(so are the ever-tempting summer festivals), hence the lack of blog posts - sorry!

13/7 2,000-characters report on interpretation seminars

15/7 draft of the final report

17/7 Gion festival

20/7 Grammar exam (on JLPT Level 1 stuff); meeting with advisor about the final report & representation

21/7 Politics presentation

24/7 Gion festival

25/7 Tenjin-matsuri

29/7 Classical Japanese assignment (translate into modern Japanese); Speech on stereotypes for conversation class

30/7 Essay for Early Modern History class

02/8 Essay for Literary Criticism class; Kanji exam; Interpretation exam; final report due

04/8 final presentation

Last Saturday was the university's summer festival - quite nice that it's on Minoh campus so no need to travel to other campuses (like the Machikane festival in Toyonaka last November). The weather was pleasantly timely - it's been rain rain rain. But on Saturday it was sunny and clear and very, very steamy hot. Nevertheless I put on the yukata for the first time in two years! I was a very happy bunny ('cause many people complimented on the outfit) until I saw another girl who wore the same yukata :(

I have tremendous weaknesses in these things:

black lace

cashmere

freshly baked, chewy chocolate chip cookies

cheese

Cosmopolitan (the cocktail)

Hollandaise sauce

cameras, film and digital

sea urchin (ウニ), salmon roe (イクラ), and crab (カニ)

deep-fried stinky tofu (臭豆腐 chou dou fu)

鼎泰丰小笼包 (xiao long bao from Din Tai Feng)

Christian Louboutin's red sole

cinnamon

Rachmaninoff

Tchaikovsky

foie gras

warm, moist chocolate brownies

handsome heterosexual male pianist/violinist/singer