My Arguably-NSFW Breakfast

This is what I had for breakfast this morning. It had all the qualities as stuff I cook: it's ugly as hell, smells delicious, and the taste was weird at best. At times, it was good, but other parts, I hadn't cooked enough water out of the broccoli, so the egg got wet, which created a bit of a texture issue. Egg to me is a fairly dry food. Not soggy, anyway. Or at least, not a gushing kind of soggy.The ingredients are a yellow pepper I've had in my fridge for a few days, some half-frozen broccoli, about a half pound of chicken, three eggs, soy sauce, ginger sauce, and some pepper.

The title of this post is due to how scary the food looks.

Not an Okonomiyaki, but...

This morning, I was about to put some rice on before I got in the shower so I’d have something for breakfast and thought Eh… I’ve eaten rice for breakfast for the past week and a half straight. I’ve got some eggs, I’ll do something with those. and hopped in the shower.

15 minutes later, I’m standing in front of my one-burner range, checking my frying pan (フライパン “frai pan” in Japanese. Creative, aren’t they?) and getting out utensils and stuff.

‘Kay, I gots me a knife, a frying pan, and some turners. Fridge. Let’s see… eggs… Oh, cabbage! Hey, some ベニショーガ (red pickled ginger) and… cheese… eh, whatever.

Having acquired base ingredients, my eyes wander over to the four spices I have available: pepper, peppered seasoning salt, roast garlic chicken seasoning, and pepper.

For those of you that didn’t know, I’m somewhat fond of pepper.

So, mix the base ingredients after chopping them up so they’re decently sized, add about a tablespoon of fine-ground pepper, dump the whole thing into a frying pan with a little oil on that’s been sitting oh-so-patiently.

Wait. Wait some more. I have a lid for this frying pan! Put the lid on, so I feel more cook-riffic.

Wait. Wait. Flip. Wait. Flip. Flip. Hee, this is fun! Oh, right. Cooking. Wait. Wait. Flip. Hee.

I had intended to take a picture of the finished product, but I ate most of it. I took a picture of the remaining eighth, though, and you can see it looks like I deep-fried a pan full of vomit.

Yum.

A Lensatic Adventure? Guess not.

I went to the store today to buy for myself a compass. This seems kind of silly when you first hear it, but I’ve a pretty good reason.

So I woke up this morning at around six, like I usually do. So I take a shower, get dressed, and sit around, trying to find something to do. Well, I think to myself, I’ve got to go find food at some point. I could have rice again but maybe I should try someplace new. Hey, I’ve got $50 worth of guidebooks on that shelf over there… and proceeded to try and find my apartment in the books. The books don’t cover my area at all, and describe the area around it basically as “Uh, there’s not much to do here, but at least it’s linked to the other areas of Kyoto, so it’s easy to leave.” Ouch.

Unfortunately, the streets here always shoot off at odd angles to each other, so I’m constantly getting turned around. My thinking was that if I have a compass, I can at least know which general direction to go. You’d be surprised how hard that is to keep track of here. (Hint: that was my good reason)

So, what does it take to leave? It looks like it’s about five minutes by bike to the nearest train station, and a $1.50 fare should get me to Eastern Kyoto. From the station, it’s about half a kilometer to a store the かんりんりん (apartment caretaker) recommended I check out if I want to buy a decent compass instead of the one I picked up a little earlier, which even I recognize is pretty lame.

I had asked him where I could buy a decent compass as I was walking in the door, by the way.

In this same area, according to my books, is… a lot of stuff. I’m hoping to visit a shrine and find a compass today. Probably also need to eat lunch, ‘cause it’s almost 11AM and I have yet to eat breakfast.

Actually, there’s a sushi place near here…

Egg'd

I made breakfast this morning and was waiting for it to cool to an edible temperature when I noticed I had left my camera out from trying to get pictures earlier. So here’s what I eat in the morning.

I’m thinking I’ll do eggs or something to go with the rice every other day or so, and just do plain rice on the off days. Keep in mind that when I eat rice on its own, I add soy sauce and green onions, so it’s not just sad, lonely rice. The eggs pictured have a little pepper in them, but this was a very low-sodium breakfast, and the taste certainly attested to it. I figured I’d give un-soy’d and unsalted food a shot.

I have my placement test today. I don’t think I’m going to do well. Ms. Aika KUMADA warned us that some people wouldn’t be able to answer a single question, and I there’s either a one- or two-year (I don’t recall which) language prerequisite for this program.

Also, I was going to buy a bike yesterday for ￥16,800, but Bethany told me about a bike shop by the school that I had forgotten about. I didn’t know they had bikes there available for as little as ￥5,000, so I’m going to hit that place up on the way. I may still buy a bike from the place in the mall for more, but that’s $110 difference. I’m wary, though, ‘cause the last bike I bought for cheap had pieces falling off within two months. I’m sure some of remember my green bike of no pedals, a non-working rear brake, and soforth.

It will be helpful for this next section if you know that converting JPY yen to USD dollars is approximately done by covering the last two zeroes and ignoring commas. Thus ￥1,000 becomes $10. Easy.

Bikes here have more gadgets than American bikes. They also all look like they’re from the 1950’s or something. Very, very few bikes don’t have a basket, mud guards, a headlight, a platform over the rear wheel, and a built in lock under the seat that locks said wheel. The bike I was looking at has a light that’s powered by a magnet and uses an LED instead of an incandescent bulb. From what I’m told, the little cog that powers the light on most bikes rubs the tire down pretty quickly. It also uses a drum brake on the rear wheel instead of V brakes (the ones that crimp down on both sides) on both, though it still uses those on the front tire, along with a spring that prevents you from applying too much braking to the front tire. I think it’s called the “Shimano power modulator”. I haven’t seen diagrams, but I suspect it’s basically a spring in a can the size of パリパリチーズ (if you don’t know, don’t ask: it’s weird).

This brings me to my next topic: helpfulness of Japanese employees. I was talking this old man that works in the bike shop by the mall and, in addition to answering questions (my questions, by the way, are phrased in very broken Japanese, which means it gets complemented by about three people a day) for more than fifteen minutes, actually recommended that I go to the other bike shop because they have more bikes.

Bizarrely enough, they wanted my address to buy a bike. I was hoping it would go like this:

Will:このみどりの自転車をお願いします。
(I’d like this green bike.)

Clerk: はい。十六千八百円です。。。はい、二万円をいたいています。四十千円をおかりします。
(Yes, that is $160. I’m receiving $200. Your change is $40.)

Will [to the old man]: いろいろなことにどうもありがとうございました。
(Thank you very much for your help.)

Will: [exit stage, front door, with bike]

But this is Japan, so there’s paperwork to fill out. Doubtless they want to know how many people I’ve killed in the last month, whether or not I’ve been abusing drugs too frequently, whether I’ve had a measles shot in the past ten years, and what my first girlfriend’s cat’s favorite food was, along with a second set of paperwork to file if you’ve never had a girlfriend, and further paperwork if your non-girlfriend didn’t have a cat, or if he didn’t like to eat anything at all.

I hate paperwork.

Anyway, I really should be studying for the placement test. Not practicing kanji for the past four months is going to have hurt me quite a bit, I suspect.

Included is Bethany posing while making yakisoba and the girls camping the kitchen while making said yakisoba.