When it comes to beans they’re three realities…
1. Beans that come in a can that you can find at the grocery store sometimes aren’t as good as hand cooked beans…
2. Hand cooked beans are special, but beans that you can buy in a can are really convenient.
3. When all there is uncooked hard beans in a bag in your country, you wish you could buy canned beans regardless of “hand-crafted chili” or not.

Some people are obsessive about their chilies. Some say that chili shouldn’t have beans in it, some say that chili should be spicy (aka nuclear) hot, some think of a chili as a bean stew. For me, chili is what you do with beans after they’re cooked and you don’t want to mash them. Perhaps there’s a little more to it then that…  but generally I don’t take chili seriously… that said, there’s not a reason why I shouldn’t try hard to make a good chili… right?

This night’s recipe is what I call “what should be in my chili that’s under 2,000 yen ($20)”

Beans technically can be purchased anywhere if you search the isles for them, but where I live the best place to get them is at an outdoor vegetable stand outside the Mutsu Chou Sato Supermarket. There you can grab beans, veggies, and other ingredients for a reasonable price.

So here’s what all I bought (note the canned tomatoes were bought at Universe).

A bag of $3 black beans
Large Onions x2
Green Peppers x3
Canned Tomatoes x2 cans
Garlic 2x cloves
Ground Beef
Olive Oil
Steak Spices (any meat spice works)
Ground Pepper
Hot Sauce (whatever you can get for me that’s Tabasco)
And Taco seasoning (not pictured)

Now before you get rolling you have to soak the beans in order for them to expand and soften a little. This process usually takes about one full day of soaking to do. One time I soaked beans for two days (because I forgot about them) and they turned out super great! But that’s probably not advised. This round, as per advice from a friend here in Mutsu, I cooked the black beans in a pot for about 10 minutes then a drained them, added new hot water to them (till all the beans were submerged) and let that sit for 24 hours.

The next day after work is when you should get busy. Before taking an afternoon nap, or hitting the john, you should put that pot of beans on the stove and get them started because beans should cook for about 1.5-2 hours. Now for me my apartment has a propane range that burns hot quickly… I used this range to get the pot boiling, but then transferred it over to a portable one burner butane stove to cook. That’s ONLY because the butane cartridges cost next to nothing compared to two hours of burning propane here.

With the pot boiling away with beans in it… You got about two hours of relax time.. Take a nap, hit the john, watch some t.v., beat that crazy level on your play station, or whatever. I decided to add a little bit of oil to my beans along with some table salt. It keeps beans from sticking and slightly salted beans taste better to me. Periodically you should be adding hot water to your beans as the water steams off the top- when you do that it‘s probably also good to stir it a little.

Once about one and half hours have pasted and you’re famished, cranky, and tired it’s time to slice & dice some of that eye-burningly good onion and those seedy peppers. One onion I sliced into small chunks and the other I sliced into rings… your choice there. The peppers I just sliced into rings.

Once that’s done, pull out that garlic, smash and slice it into bits. Add some oil, pepper, and salt to it and then mix it real good into the raw ground beef.

Start the stove and put the burger mix into a heated pan. Cook up the ground beef till it’s brown then add some of that taco mix to it. Once it’s seasoned, and browned you can go ahead and add the canned tomatoes to the pan.  This sauce you’re making is going to be the bulk of the chili taste.. Any seasoning, salt, pepper, taco mix, or hot sauce you can add to it to make it as rich and chili-like the better… Even if you over do the sauce it’s ok because once you added it to the beans and veggies it’ll bland out a little.

So while your sauce is cooking it’s time to add the veggies to the beans. We’re going to cook the onions and peppers in with the beans till everything (beans, peppers, and onions are soft). By that time, when everything is soft enough not to crunch when you eat it, pull out a strainer and strain about ½ to 2/3rds of the water out. Add the meat sauce and mix the whole thing up.

The last part is fine tuning that chili till it meats your taste standard of chili. If it’s bland… more salt & pepper… If it tastes like stew rather than chili add more taco seasoning, if it’s too weak then add more hot sauce… the main thing here actually isn’t the taste… It’s whether those damn beans are soft enough. I always keep checking to see if the beans are soft enough… if not I’ll add a little water and let it sit some more till it steams off.. Soft beans folks.. That’s why I envy those with canned beans…

And there it is.. Chili.. Let it cool down on low or off.. Put it in a bowl and add cheese and corn chips and you’re rolling…

Take that Nally Chili that takes 4-5 minutes in the Microwave to cook.

~J out

If you’re unfamiliar with the festival it’s simply the biggest winter festival happening every year in Japan.  So famous that if you just said “yuki matsui” (snow festival) to anyone in Japan chances are good that they would know exactly what you were talking about.

What makes it so famous then?  It’s that this particular festival is huge! it takes up the entire city with snow and ice sculptures. Some in Odori Park (Sapporo’s central park area) get as big as a two or three story buildings. Additionally there is also ice sculptures in Susukino (Sapporo’s drinking district) that  are as elegant as marble statures one might find in London, or Paris.

Suffice to say that if you’ve never been to Sapporo’s Yuki Matsuri its just a fantastic event. Unfortunately it happened this year in a bad time and probably will happen again next year at a bad time as well. February has sort of been the month with little to no breaks. There was one holiday (a Thursday) a while ago we had off, but no holidays during the festival that could warrant me more then a weekend. Luckily I could get to Sapporo in a day, but even so I had more or less than 20-24 hours to see everything before having to go home which sucked.

During my stay I was very lucky to reconnect with my host mom from back when I last stayed with her and my host family in Hokkaido as an overseas student at Hokusei Gakkuen University. It was good to just reconnect and catch up on all that had happened in the last four years (which was a lot )

Overall I was surprised at how much everything had changed since I last lived there. There’s some landmarks I still remember… mainly Odori Park, the TV tower, and the giant 100th anniversary monument out in the distance. However, Sapporo seems to be trying to spruce up its image and make itself more of a high class city. Somehow they’ve got an approval to put in a bullet train from Hachinohe (the current end of the bullet train line) through Aomori city which is remarkable. I saw in Sapporo they were even building a big Bullet Train Station. I think it’s good the city is trying to get more connected with the rest of Japan. It’s good for the economy of Hokkaido and will probably bring a new source of business to the area…

I still like Sapporo, but lately I don’t feel like I’d want to move there for good. Lately I’ve been thinking somewhere more south would be a better transition from… cold old Mutsu. Somewhere like perhaps Osaka or Kobe? Or Fukuoka… ahh now there’s somewhere warm…

Good Trip… Good Trip… Very nice weekend get away… well worth every yen spent.

~J out

When I used to live in the Northwest we used to joke at all the terms the weather man used for rain intensity. I believe there was the “Oregon Mist”, “Slight Showers”, “Drizzle”, “Down-pour”, “Heavy Showers”, and “Partly Cloudy with a chance of sprinkles.”

Here on the Shimokita Peninsula, I suppose from what I’ve seen, there would be “Partly flakey”, “a slight flurry”, “a Light Dusting”, “The Artic Blast”, “Free-jeez-ezing Frost”, “The B51+1 Bombarding Blizzard”, “Zah To-ta-RU (the total) BOnZaI White Out” amongst others.

If it’s not apparent, it is really cold here. The weather today is was considered balmy and it reached around a modest 8°C (46°F). The rest of this week is supposed to get better with highs in the 10’s maybe. Yet, it’s hard to truly believe…
That said, there are a handful of good things about the weather I do like. The snow and Ice here, for all the problems it causes, does make things very pretty. I’m always amazed on my drives to other schools just how pretty it is to look around and see snow cling to branches of pine trees and ice work it’s way down from roof tops to form massive columns to the ground below. Here, everything has that “snowy Christmasy” charm… so, if Christmas is your favorite time of the year and you really really want to enjoy a 5-6 month stretch of “white Christmas” drop in and I will be happy to show you it… not really…

~J out

I’m pretty excited to say that I purchased a new couch yesterday. Since back when I first arrived in Mutsu I’ve gotten these “stories” about the couch in my apartment. It’s an old beige sofa that probably didn’t look bad when it was new, but it’s long since been worn out.

I started looking around for a couch locally, but the used couches I found either were over priced or not what I wanted. Asking around people told me of a place called “Nitori.” Nitori is sort of like a Japanese IKEA, but without the hype or the size. The store actually pitches itself as a “Home Fashion” store rather then the store chain “Sunday” which is a home improvement store.

So on people’s recommendation I drove down to Aomori city which is about two hours away and found this Store tucked in with some other big box stores. The store itself is very nice with three floors of furniture ranging from kitchen wares, to sofa’s and dining sets, to bedroom and office furniture.

The sofa’s were on the second floor and there were a lot to choose from. There were your basic fabric models, leather models, reclining models, high back models, folding bed models, and floor level futons. After sitting in basically every one I more or less had to choose between two leather sofas. One was a model just discounted (perhaps last years model) and one was a cushy newer model for $100 more. Both had similar feels though the discounted one was a bit stiffer. I ended up buying it anyway because I’m hoping that with use it’ll soften up.

To buy a sofa at Nitori was shockingly easy. It’s good (I suppose) if you’re buying something big to get the stores membership card before you buy something expensive. Luckily they ask you if you want to be a member. Anyway, so each furniture item has a ticket. You take the ticket to a clerk who will then print you out a receipt that you take to the register. This is time too to ask about shipping options. With me being so far away from Aomori, I’d thought this would kill me but it only ended up being $30.

Once you’re done and have your receipt you can either continue to shop (I happened to go to the first level and buy a lamp, and a coat rack..) or go to the register to pay.

Using a Japanese Credit Card

Now, if you’re using a credit card from Japan it’s important to know what you have. I happen to have a credit card from JAL, but it’s an “IC” card just like a lot of cards from other places (Tsutaya, Lawsons, 711, etc.). The “VISA” stamp just means it can be used anywhere world wide. If you already have one, you know that to get it you had to link it to your bank account. This is because when you get “the bill” it’ll just be a statement of the money that they’ll automatically withdraw each month equal to the amount you charged the month before.

Thus when using the card, unlike a US Credit Card, you need to tell the store you’re using the card with how much you want to pay each month. This is very different then charging on the card then paying it off in minimal payments on your own. Also this system puts the burden of payment on the store so technically if you had no money then the store would take a loss, not the bank. So it’s a simple mistake to think that you’ll just pay gradually on your own or that when the bill that arrives it’ll ask  you how much you want to pay each month. In fact, the way my card is setup if I charge 30,000 yen (~$300) on it then the next month the Credit Card company will take 30,000 yen out of my bank account. Therefore, credit cards here are more like “delayed debit cards” rather then actual “credit” cards.

A useful phase then is to say to the store clerk/or look for on a website…:

～回払いお願いします。

~kai barai onigaishimasu

“I want to pay this debt in ~ number of times please”

Where “~” is the amount of times. This tells the store that you don’t want to pay everything in a lump sum the next month, but rather you want the store to charge you a set number of times each month. This is vaguely like a scheduled layaway plan, but you get to take the stuff home.

Be careful then that you know this before going out and charging 200,000 yen (roughly $2,000) because you might not have any money the next month for rent.

~J out

Take my skiing weekend story:

A few weekends back I took out a pair of cross-country skis that were given to me by a friend. It had been awhile since I had skied and I was a bit anxious and nervous how I would do. I had decided for cross-country skiing I’d start off small and simple like Mutsu’s very own sport’s park. Here the facilities are often used all throughout the other three seasons, but in the winter it’s a quiet, silent, and peaceful place to ski around. Here in the winter, they never plow the snow in the park so it’s real thick powdery stuff.

Just strapping on and taking off from the baseball diamond was a beautiful wintery landscape. The track field was barely visible and nearly one and a half feet of snow sat perched upon the score board. Snow had piled so high that trees that towered around the park were reachable by hand as I slipped passed underneath them.

Faintly around the park seemed to be the sign of another pair of skiers that had gone earlier, but their tracks had been covered by a light dusting. If only I had gone later I wouldn’t have known if they were tracks or small dimples covering some mystery deep underneath them. This route I skied in took me all around the park. Tall slender trees stood silently in the distant as their branches deeply bowed as if burdened with old man winter’s heavy snow.

Deciduous trees, whose shade covers families and kids alike from summer’s harsh rays, stuck out of the white mass with their leafless branches reaching high into the air. Everything there looked quiet, still, and freshly chilled by winter’s cold breath. It was as if everything had been tucked into the vast blanket of snow and gone into a deep hibernation.  There was no cheering or roars from the stands, no cracking sounds of bats or starter guns, nothing  but the silence winter brings here to Shimokita Peninsula.

I had in fact gone out and discovered something indeed that day. I had discovered while skiing that every place does in fact have secret pockets of beauty in it. More over, because that beauty exists, it also makes living here in sub-freezing weather and bombarded with snow, all that more tolerable.

~J out

You see, in most schools only 1 fresh pot of coffee is made a day. If your’re not in by that round then you might be stuck with “tea-bag” coffee or worse… “instant.”

Depending on the school, your morning meeting might start at 8am sharp or maybe as late as 8:20. I consider this brief time as my ‘warm-up’ phase, a time to put on your game face and prepare to play-the-game of Elementary School ALT.

A good ALT knows how to unpack their bag and properly clutter their desk. For the first hour you need your schedule, some teaching books, the class text book, a maybe a dictionary. The goal is to look busy till the morning meeting begins then afterwards look busy “preparing” till all the teachers scurry off to class.

The morning meeting only lasts about 10-15 minutes, but it’s the epicenter of the morning (if not the day). It’s a time when you see the Japanese people at the peak of orderly perfection. At first you rise like in  a courtroom; bow either toward the front desks or to right infront of you. A sharp uniform “Ohayoo Gozaimasu” is said then everyone sits down for the show. The meeting is just typically announcements, but the rules and proceedures are what make it interesting. To announce something you raise your hand, bow to the front, then quickly say your announcement followed by “iijo desu” (“over”) like two soldiers over a radio.

After the morning meeting, the teachers who have you in their classes consipire to tell you what their agenda is about 3 minutes before they have to go to class. Sometimes you’ll be given a paper with the agenda (often copied from some book or template) or sometimes it’ll just be told to you hastily in forced Japanese.

Once these small informal agenda meetings are done with, and teachers vacate the teacher’s room,  you can relax– chill out and drink your coffee– check your phone mail or read the news– pretty much it’s all up to you till your first class… just try to stay mostly awake.

~J out.

The thing is, no matter how much snow falls a year in Oregon or Washington, if it snows at all everyone gets excited. Schools might close at the very mention of snow forecasted the night before. Roads might close at the accumulation of an inch and almost always (even if it’s 5 or so centimeters) buses go on “snow routes.”

Now moving to Shimokita, I was told it snows here. I would ask people periodically just ‘how much’ it did snow and the answer was nearly always “ahh not too much.” To someone like me, “not much” means like well… “not much.” The nuance here is that if I were to ask the same people about Washington and Oregon’s snow fall… the answer might be more like “snow?! Where? What snow… it doesn’t snow at all here.” Since what we get each year is some absurd joke compared to here. Simply put… Aomorians are strong people to put up with, what I’ve seen as, a snow-monstrosity.

 To give the merest example I present to you a small story about this morning at my place…:

This morning as I attempted to escape my humble abode I left the door with my satchel, a pair of dress pants, some dress shoes, my Scottish scarf, and a medium to heavy leather coat. As I opened the door I was greeted by two fearsome abominable snowmen. In fact, it was merely the snow pack that had crowded on either side of my front entrance. I took one giant leap into this frosty dreamland and watched as my foot slipped across the steps of an ice rink. “This is unfamiliar” I thought to myself. The actual trek to my car was closer then the trek from my door to my bathroom. However all I could see to my right as I cautiously slipped down each stair was a mound of snow in the shape of what might be my Suzuki Jimny.

Behind me I was startled as the giant roar of this beastly blue machine started up my path. In the driver seat of this bulldozer, that had sat quietly all season in the parking lot, was my landlord. A thin small man that always has the aura of a small business tycoon, he pulled up beside me and grunted with a half smoked cigarette hanging loosely between his chapped lips, “Ohayoo.” I watched as plowed tones of snow to the side which seemed to form the huge side walls of a snow palace. Perhaps this was his newest apartment venture.

Not walking, but stomping towards my car, I tried opening any orifice I could to get in. All doors were sealed by winter’s cold icy lips. The only door that opened eventually was my rear hatch… It cracked and screeched as it opened revealing a dark covered cave that was my “new car interior.” I laughed remembering the guy who sold it to me how nice it was that he was giving me the “tinted windows option” for free. My only option was to start it up and punch it till I could get out of the lot. It seemed barbaric, risky, but shoot somewhere in the sea of kanji on my insurance policy was probably this scenario… right?

So on my car went and in 4wd I put it… I revved a little, shifted in first, and said softly “to hell with it…”

WHAMO!

The Jimny lurked forward and out of the rut it went. I proceeded as if it was routine getting out and scrapping the ice and snow off of only the important windows.

So as the car warmed up and I looked ahead at the obstacle coarse that was Mutsu’s roadways I thought silently to myself… “another day of living the dream life on JET…”

 ~J out

For him, going somewhere means leaving something behind. He pauses and smiles at all that he’s done, as well as all he is about to do.

As for me, I do sit and ponder the life of this 25 year old. There’s so much to say and little time to say it… but most of what should be said really doesn’t need to be said at all… As people, we feel it… live it… know through instinct what all needs to be said and done.

So think of it all as though he isn’t leaving leaving home, but that he’s arriving at home somewhere else…

somewhere exotic. ;P

~J out

Other books I read without listing in ‘09: Tons of Japanese Grammar Literature, and a beautiful well written book titled “Yakuza Moon” Yakuza Moon: Memoirs of a Gangster’s Daughter by Shoko Tendo

I liked this book because it was a non-fictional biography written by somebody who isn’t exactly a varnished writer. Tendo is very blunt in her book and when you read it… it comes out like a conversation you might have with her at a bar or something.. Very human and very good read..

The last book I dug into was

Underground: The Tokyo Gas Attack and the Japanese Psyche by Haruki Murakami. Murakami is very well known author respectfully, but in this book he lets the victims of the Tokyo Subway Sarin Gas Attack give their accounts with Murakami periodically commenting here and there. It’s a good book to read just to read other Japanese people’s varrying perspectives on the same event.

Ok… now on to a few books I’d like to read for ‘10

Dog Man: An Uncommon Life on a Faraway Mountain by Martha Sherrill

(Author) – A story about WWII Japan and dogs. I figure this year I should read more good dog literature.

Discourse By Three Drunkards On Government by Nakae Chomin- Apparently a very loose informative discource on European, Japanese, and western political differences as well as speculation on the future…

Japanamerica: How Japanese Pop Culture Has Invaded the U.S. by Roland Kelts- A book on the exact same topic I wrote and presented in my high school senior thesis back at Fort Vancouver HS. (Go Trappers!)

The Setting Sun by Osamu Dazai- A unique Japanese author who writes somewhat sorrowful sad books… I actually picked up one of Dazai’s other books No Longer Human at a book store in Aomori Station’s and read through it a little. No Longer Human didn’t turn me on, but I still would like to read something of his sometime. Dazai, I think, writes in a very “Japanese-istic sort of personality.

From Mahan to Pearl Harbor: The Imperial Japanese Navy and the United States Sadao Asada- Gotta keep up with my pops whose also reading up on WWII from the US angle.

Japanese Imperialism 1894-1945 – Yep, more history books I need to read.

Then of course whatever else I pick up and read…

Let’s hope I actually do order these and read ‘em..

~J out

Generally, in regards to this blog, I feel that I didn’t write as much as I should have in 2009. So much was happening during that year that I could have spent a little time writing about it all and didn’t. This means that for 2010, a major goal of mine will be to pick up the writing spirit I once had years ago and to take it to the next level.

My problem last year wasn’t that I couldn’t write, but that my will to write just wasn’t there. There’s no excuse that would adequate other then I was just too lazy and tired to do it. In other words, I neglected my duty. Shame on me.

However… the beginnings of a new year is time for reflection and self-correction. This blog is completely powered and managed solely by me so it’s my job to push on ahead with it.

So onward to 2010. This year will be truly unique because the better portion of it will be spent abroad in Japan. I was blessed that I could open the year at home, but 2010 will definitely be a challenging year of acclimating to living in a new surrounding. I feel that the culture shock is mostly faded, but the reality of day to day living there still will be an interesting challenge

To a year of hard work ahead… I am ready take it on.. and I hope to bring as much of 2010 to my readers as possible.

Cheers.. and to the best of luck to everyone on a new year of unfinished projects…

~J out