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Life Study with Recycled Brown Paper

Since iHerb.com sent my order with brown paper for packaging, I decided to brush up on my drawing skills and pulled out my oil pastels. My husband edited his new book, Blubber Island, as I drew him, murmuring all the while,”No…” What do you think?

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Today’s Dinner Menu: Homemade Burritos

It’s hard coming across good (and cheap) Mexican food in Japan, even in taco-rice Okinawa. But, if you’re on the look-out like my Mexican husband and I, the ingredients are available to make homemade burritos.

Although there aren’t any corn flour tortillas floating around in San-A or Marudai, but there are flour tortillas in most cold sections of the grocery stores. Also in the regular grocery stores are: avocados, lettuce, tomatoes, onions, bell peppers, lemons, and meat.

 

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Food from this Weekend (August 4th-6th)

Here’s some of the food I made during the weekend.

Per my husband’s request, I made chicken noodle soup.

Chicken noodle soup with bell peppers and onions

We didn’t have any crackers or crunchy things (something my husband always needs during a meal), so I decided to make flour tortilla chips. Normally, tortilla chips are made out of corn tortillas and fried. Unfortunately, the stores in Okinawa mostly have flour tortillas, so I just improvised. Actually, I preferred these chips compared to buying Doritos for nachos. First, I brushed some oil on both sides of the tortillas, sprinkled some salt on them, and cut into pieces before baking them for 5 minutes. The first attempt wasn’t so much a failure but a learning lesson. One minute makes a big different in how good your chips will turn out.

My first attempt at baked flour tortilla chips

My second attempt at flour tortilla chips, and they turned out really good! I added a little bit of guacamole to go with my husband’s brunch of fried eggs and bacon.

Hubby-san’s brunch

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My First Bingata!

My first bingata!

Bingata is a traditional Okinawan dyed cloth made by using stencils and mixed dyes, and dates back to the Ryukyu Kingdom period. The dyeing process takes influence from Javanese, Indian, and Chinese dyeing.

It’s really fun to make, though it’s a bit time-consuming. When I went to do make this bingata bag, the art teacher at my school already finished putting on the stencil outline of different designs on the bags. The brown rice paste, which had hardened into a wax-like substance, held the design, so I didn’t feel weird about painting outside of the lines. I had a little bit of trouble understanding the process through a short Japanese lecture until she visually showed us.

The hardest part about coloring the bingata, especially for non-artists, is putting down the base layer. The base layer is the lightest layer, and if you put in a dark layer first, there is no way of lightening it. If you want a yellow flower with shading, you’d have to paint in the entire flower in yellow first. Once all of the colors have been painted in, the cloth is dried (we used a hair dryer). After drying the cloth, the second layer of painting is added, and it’s more time-consuming than the base layer. I used two different brushes, a regular painting brush and a flat short-bristle brush specifically for dyeing.

This second layer is fun to do, in my opinion. Using the regular brush, I put a dot of color and quickly rub the color in a circular pattern with the other brush. It’s easy to do, but if you have a lot to shade, it takes a little while. Good thing I picked such a small design! Some teachers had trouble doing this part because putting too much paint down wouldn’t shade in the design but completely cover it. Once all of the shades have been made, the design is ironed, and later, washed under cool water for 30 minutes. The rice paste comes off, revealing the actual design (normally flowers, birds, and animals).

It’s good for me to learn about processes like this because I can use these techniques in different mediums.

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Vote! Even If You’re An Expat in Japan!

Your Vote Counts

Your Vote Does Count! (image from http://www.actionnc.org/primary)

As an expat, it’s hard to keep up on events happening in my home country, the U.S. But there are some things that are too important to ignore–like the 2012 Presidential Election.

I know, I know, politics. It’s a nasty word, right? But they affect every person associated with the U.S., whether you’re an American soldier, American citizen aboard, or even the spouse of an American. Deciding who the next president of the U.S. is important. If you haven’t noticed already, the U.S. is tied pretty closely to the rest of the world. When the U.S. economy dived, so did other countries’ economies. People who couldn’t find jobs in the U.S. went to other countries (like my husband and I) to carve out a better life. It’s more important now than ever to vote.

Honestly, I don’t really care who you vote for. The important thing to do is vote. For expats living in Japan, you can check your voter status and sign up for an absentee ballot at http://www.fvap.gov/. Don’t think that a vote won’t change anything. This year, it’ll be a close race, and every vote counts.

If you live in Okinawa, Japan, there are voting assistant days every Friday, from 8:30am-11:30am and 1:00pm-3:00pm at the U.S. Consulate General Naha, Japan Consular Section Waiting Room in Urasoe (2-1-1 Toyama, Urasoe City, Okinawa, 901-2104) (For Google map). Please email NahaVet@state.gov to set up an appointment (no walk-ins).

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Making the Escape 2 Years Later

Now that I’ve completed exactly 2 years in Japan as an English teacher, I feel more accomplished–and less “escaped” from the life in the U.S. I have a great job, a great husband, and an ever-growing confidence in my not-so-new surroundings here in Okinawa.

Looking back on the past year, things have really changed. I earned my Teaching English as a Foreign Language (TEFL) certification, which has made me look at teaching completely differently than when I arrived in Japan 2 years ago. My Japanese has gotten better, and I can hold a conversation using easy language. I’ve even gone from my Japanese study books to reading Japanese comics in their native language (not an easy feat, if you ask me). And finally, I still spend every day playing with my husband (that’s something that hasn’t changed and I still enjoy).

Since this year, I’ve been looking at my future more seriously, more squarely. I’m thinking about things that I’ve always wanted to do, things that I wish I could’ve done, and all that good jazz. But you know, I’ve learned that thinking about things isn’t going to take me anywhere except nowhere. So, just like how I got my butt into shape and made my dream of coming to Japan a reality, I have to get other things in order.

I want to:

*buy a house

*publish a short story book

*lose weight

*help out more with school life

*learn how to play the piano and/or guitar

*improve my Japanese

*learn Spanish

I know I can achieve most, if not all, of these things in a year’s time.

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Food Blog: Teriyaki Stir Fry

Since I wanted to use up some of the bell peppers slowly warping into leathery skin, I cut a couple with some onions and a slab of boneless chicken fillet before tossing them together in a saucepan of teriyaki sauce. The magic came in with the seasonings, though. I added basil, parsley, garlic, salt, habanero pepper, chili pepper, and grounded pepper until it had a little bit of a kick. Just a tablespoon of soy sauce pulled out some of the teriyaki flavor.

The rice wasn’t regular Japanese white rice, but during the boiling process (surprisingly, I don’t have a rice cooker), I added a chicken bouillon cube. My husband doesn’t like plain white rice anyways.

 

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CLAMP: The Known-Unknown Manga-ka

“Who?”

“You know, CLAMP,” I said excitedly before repeating the name with Japanese pronunciation: “Ku-la-n-pu”. My Japanese co-worker scrunched up his face in the same way my students looked at me whenever I spoke English.

“Who?”

Oh, how I wanted to die. Apparently, he was another Japanese person–who liked manga–who didn’t know the four-member manga group, CLAMP. How could CLAMP, the CLAMP who created Chobits and a dozen other manga titles, the CLAMP who have been awesome guests at Anime Expo, the CLAMP who influenced great artists around the world like Kriss Sison (SevenSeas’ Last Hope), be so unknown among my Japanese co-workers?

I thought that when I came to Japan, CLAMP’s name would be well-known, but sadly, even some of the most ardent manga readers weren’t in the know. The only way I can get recognizing eyebrows to go up is by saying, “They made Card Captor Sakura.” I look on that series with affection; the first volume of CCS was the first manga volume I ever owned, so the CLAMP who got me interested in possessing volumes, and thus, an expensive (outside of Japan) hobby was born.

Come to think of it, CLAMP was the first for a lot of things for me. CLAMP’s Chobits was the first manga series I completely collected and the Magic Knight Rayearth series was the first manga I followed religiously when it was in the throw-back issues of Tokyopop Magazine (before its papery demise). Many of my early drawings were based from studying CLAMP’s work.

What I love about CLAMP is the art style between the three artists, Tsubaki Nekoi, Satsuki Igarashi, and Mokona, and the refreshing writing from the leader, Nanase Ohkawa. The characters are drawn very beautifully and their expressions are spot-on in regards to the writing. Most of the stories have romance in it, but there are more parts of their stories than love (unless you’re reading The One I Love). The consistent elements inside of CLAMP’s stories are magic, endearing characters, relationships, and the child-like adventurous quality from the 1980’s.

From all of their manga I’ve read so far, I think that Clover and Legal Drug (Drug and Drop) are experiments for the artists. In Clover, the expansive negative space in the panels and the minimal dialogue gave a usual story–magical kids are taken into the military to be used as weapons–a completely eerie, sad feeling, one that has resonated in my mind like a heart break. Legal Drug, though typical in story and art style, has only male leads in the entire manga and seems to lead readers towards a close BL style like The Descendants of Darkness and Brother x Brother.

Whenever someone asks me, “What’s your favorite manga?” I always think of a title by CLAMP first. But now that I’ve met another person who’s not familiar with their work, I think I’ll just carry around a picture of Sakura from Card Captor Sakura.

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Food Blog?

I have decided to start blogging about what I eat so that I can keep track of my diet and how I make things. Lately, I’ve been cooking more at home to help lessen my tummy fat, fatten my wallet, and condition my cooking skills. One of the suggestions I’ve read in losing weight without categorizing calories (something I was guilty of) was by keeping a food blog. It forces me to see what I’m eating and also garners support (or criticism) from people reading about the food I post. In a way, it’s a way to kick my ass into shape. Along with the food blog, I’ve been upping my cardio workouts, switching between dancing, kickboxing, and ballet to keep things interesting. However, I’m looking forward to food blogging. I like cooking for my husband, especially when I can make the meal look and taste good, which is harder than it looks.

Today, I felt like eating a creme pasta with baked chicken, though not the best choice in the healthiest of meals (whip creme is made out of percentage of fat and pasta has carbs). But baking chicken curbs the extra fat from pan-frying and the fresh ingredients give the food a more wholesome taste. Tomorrow, I hope the meal is more healthy. Wish me luck!

Lightly-seasoned baked chicken, creme sauce pasta with fresh basil, and freshly-cut tomatoes and onions

Creme Ingredients:
-1 small carton of whipped creme, liquid
-2 tablespoons of fresh sliced basil
-1 tablespoon of onions
-spaghetti pasta
-2 tablespoons of margarine
These are cheap and local items at any Japanese grocery store or produce place.

First, cook the onions and any other vegetables. Put the cooked veggies to the side. Under low to medium heat, melt the margarine in the pan until the water has evaporated and before the margarine can brown. Pour the whipped creme into the pan and slowly stir the melted margarine with the creme. Let the combination simmer a little before turning down the heat. Stir it for 5 minutes. Add all of the ingredients into the pan and enjoy!

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Becoming Illiterate: The Real Adventure in Japan

It’s funny to hear anime and manga fans say earnestly, “I want to go to Japan!” Images of giant mecha and tiny Japanese maids follows along with rows and rows of kawaii and strangely adorable fashion. But honestly, that’s tourist stuff.

When anyone who hasn’t learned Japanese enters Japan to live for a long time, the reality sets in: “I’m illiterate!” It’s not like going to Mexico and seeing things remarkably close to English–Ingles is English–but more like dropping into a realm of complicated characters and incoherent yet noble English phrases.

The language barrier is a big obstacle for expats in Japan, especially the ones who have never studied Japanese. Besides romaji, the Romanized Japanese alphabet, non-Japanese-speakers won’t be able to read anything. Foreigners become virtually illiterate. The newspapers, the restaurant menus, even the manga become sources of frustration. “I can’t read!!”

For book worms like myself, it’s been challenging trying to overcome my Japanese illiteracy. In some ways, I’ve had to sacrifice my English literacy to close the gap. Instead of reading books in English, I’ve opted to study Japanese. It took me a month to memorize all of the characters in hiragana followed by another month of remembering all of the characters in katakana. But that’s only the tip of the iceberg. The fourth writing system in Japan is kanji, characters originating from China, and it’s the writing system that adorns stores, food packages, billboards, and signs. No one, even tourists, can’t escape kanji in Japan. It’s everywhere.

And kanji is where the illiteracy begins to take an ugly turn. Kanji has two readings, on-reading and kun-reading. On-reading, or on-yomi, is the Chinese way of reading kanji. Kun-reading, or kun-yomi, uses the pronunciation of the existing native Japanese word. As one of my co-workers explained to me, the way that most people know which reading is which, is by seeing the sequence of the characters. Most of the time, two kanji together gives the words the on-reading, but by themselves, they’re pronounced using the kun-reading. An example is using the kanji for “mother”,  母, pronounced haha in kun-reading. However, if “mother” is coupled with another kanji, 国, or “country”, the pronunciation changes to the on-reading, bokoku (母国), or “mother country”. To be frank, learning kanji is really difficult. Even some Japanese people tell me, “Even some Japanese people don’t know kanji.”

But there’s something endearing about kanji. Maybe it’s because of the difficulty that I’ve grown to accept it not as a hulking obstacle in my life in Japan, but as a part of the culture. I decided to try and learn as much kanji as I possibly can before I return to the United States. Some ways I’ve been slowly acquiring the meanings and readings of kanji is simply by asking my co-workers. “What does this mean? How do you say this?” (And this is where I get the same statement–“Even some Japanese people don’t know kanji.”)

So far, the best way I’ve been learning kanji besides by shameless questions is by reading manga. Some manga use furigana. It’s a small set of kana (hiragana and katakana) that shows the reading of kanji. Furigana is useful for elementary students and Japanese learners. The difference between learning kanji from a kanji practice book and a manga is pretty big. With kanji practice books, there’s little fun in them. Just memorize the stroke order, or how it’s written, and write it over and over again until it becomes second nature. However, manga has a more gratifying result. A story unfolds within each learned kanji, and the practical way that characters are used can easily become imprinted in one’s head. I’m learning Japanese idioms and new words with every manga I read in its original, untranslated form–something that would take years to learn in a Japanese class.

But I’m still a long way from being literate in Japanese, and so is every other foreigner who’s never studied Japanese in Japan. The rows and rows of kawaii can easily turn into rows of kowaii, so tourists and anime fans, beware. Study Japanese before you come to Japan.

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Japanese Writers

When I first became interested in Japan, I was only interested in Japanese animation and manga. It wasn’t until college that I decided to read Japanese authors to get a better perspective of Japan. Although I think that anime and manga are great ways to learn more about a culture, books have a unique way of presenting cultural information in a gentle manner; the reader gets to walk in the footsteps of a Japanese person, not just look at drawings of Japanese people. The thoughts and mannerisms of a Japanese are ingrained in the writing–if readers can read between the lines.

Haruki Murakami

Murakami is one of my favorite writers in general, let alone, Japanese writers. His works are very famous around the world, and almost every book I’ve read by him has amazed me. His most popular books include 1Q84, Norwegian Wood, and Kafka on the Shore. Each of his stories deal with the surreal, whether they encounter dreams, ghosts, or the character’s own tormented psyche.

Banana Yoshimoto

Though I would say that Yoshimoto is a female version of Murakami, her works stand well on their own. She also writes surrealistic stories, such as n.p., Goodbye, Tsugumi, and Kitchen, but she focuses on a situation that leads the main character towards different relationships with people. What I like about Yoshimoto is that her work is really honest and straightforward, something that’s difficult to find in writers nowadays. Her work is easy to digest, but don’t be fooled. There’s always a deeper concept playing beneath the surface of her words.

Kenzaburo Oe

Nobel Prize winner, Kenzaburo Oe, is a well-known Japanese writer with many of his works translated around the world. A prolific writer with heavy themes, Oe captures the depth of human psychology while infusing existentialism into his stories. His works include A Quiet Life, The Changeling, and A Personal Matter. Although his works are more difficult to read–his audience seems to be for people above a tenth-grade reading level–Oe’s works are worth reading, especially for readers looking to find the gritty side of the human soul.

 

Yukio Mishima

Though this writer, actor, poet, and film director was born in the early years of the 20th century, Mishima’s works still breathe of lives that face the same issues of loss, death, and reality. Similar to Oe’s dark-themed works, Mishima faces his readers with brutal honesty that isn’t easy to absorb sometimes. Still, his books like Death in Midsummer and The Sea of Fertility tetralogy are worthwhile reads.

Amy Yamada

Although Amy Yamada isn’t so popular like Murakami or Yoshimoto, Yamada’s books are engaging and interesting. Her books, like  Trash and Bedtime Eyes, appeal to older women–many of her titles embraces life as a Japanese woman in the U.S. and the relationships she engages in. What I like about Yamada is her confidence in writing about gritty subjects, like sexuality, racism, alcoholism, and interracial coupling. She’s not shy about the reality of relationships, good or bad.

Yasutaka Tsutsui

Author of popular stories that spawned multiple anime and movie titles, Tsutsui’s books are more suited for the complicated teenage mind. It’s not the plot lines that I would suggest books like The Girl Who Leapt Through Time for the teen-book section. Simply, the English versions I’ve read are written at a fifth or sixth grade reading level with the same level substance. Like Murakami and Yoshimoto, many of Tsutsui’s books have a surreal quality, but more fantasy or science fiction is weaved into the stories. Unlike Murakami and Yoshimoto, who use simplistic vocabulary, Tsutsui hasn’t mastered how to create depth in the stories. As I mentioned before, I would only suggest Tsutsui’s books for complicated teenagers.

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As an English teacher in Japan…

As an English teacher in Japan, you realize:

1. How horrible your penmanship is.

2.  How difficult it is to explain English grammar

3. That English can be fun in class

4. How hard English is to learn as a second language

5. How hard English is to teach as a second language

6. That the Japanese teachers write on the blackboards way straighter and better than you

7. That English is a strange language

8. That you’re no speech therapist, but you sure as hell have to try to teach kids how to say “R” and “L” words

9. That your whining about your classes or students will probably go unheard

10. That stickers and candy can get the laziest student to do the activities

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Anime and Manga is Funnier When You Get It

Since I was twelve years old, I enjoyed watching anime and reading manga. Fourteen years later, I still watch  anime and read manga, but now, I enjoy them in Japan–and they’ve taken a whole new dimension in my eyes. Anime and manga are actually funnier than I realized!

One series that has Japanese culture bombarding every page in big and small ways is Great Teacher Onizuka, or G.T.O. for short. Blow-up dolls, booty grabbers, and bad boys of Japan spring up in a rather simple premise. Among them are the comical antics of the main character, teacher-in-training Eikichi Onizuka. Somehow, the stupid yet charming things he manages to pull off in a rigid society like Japan makes me laugh.

What a bad Japanese application looks like.

What a bad Japanese application looks like.

In one part of the second volume, Onizuka submits his application for a teaching position at an academy. One look at it, and you’d think, “OK, here’s an honest applicant with zero experience.” It’s truthful, but what makes it funny is how some poor applicant in Japan will take this at face value and submit an application identical to this one. As tempting as it is to copy the anime or manga lifestyle, the sad reality is it’s not reality.

If you’re like me, and you’re inside the Japanese educational system, you’d probably change that line to, “This guy is a dumb-ass.” Everything is wrong with the application! You don’t write what you honestly think. Just write what the interview panel wants to read. You don’t put “my physical body” as a personal attribute. What does that have to do with teaching? And you definitely, under no circumstances, use a cute perikura picture for the required picture–it’s obviously not to size.

Aside from G.T.O., many series have cultural points laid out for foreign readers like the hierarchical system in addressing people (i.e. Tanaka-san, Tanaka-kun, Tanaka-chan) and references to Japanese history or pop culture. Some cultural points can’t be explained, but rather, seen firsthand. For example, seeing characters fall over suddenly when someone says something stupid or ridiculous seems to belong in anime and manga. The keel-over reaction is something I’ve seen at work in Japan again and again. Another piece of Japanese culture that most fans readily identify with is the panty vending machines. I’ve only seen one in a ladies’ changing room at a hot springs resort, but other than that, they don’t exist on every corner of Japan. Cigarette and soft drink vending machines can be seen every kilometer you go in Japan.

I started reading a manga called ARISA about a junior high school student by the same name with an outgoing personality. In the first read, I grasped the story and the characters, but in the second read, I noticed some mundane parts of the manga that are hilarious—that is, if you know the cultural significance of it. Arisa clobbers some boys for throwing a carton onto the ground, something that is illegal in many parts of Japan. I found myself encouraging the boys’ clobbering. “Get ‘em, Arisa! They didn’t recycle!” But only if you’ve lived in Japan could you find that funny while claiming a moral responsibility towards the situation.

Although there are some things that are pretty dead-on between Japanese animation and Japanese culture, the funniest part about it all relies on the cultural points—and how much you get them. Once I was able to understand the real situations from living in Japan, anime and manga took on a different significance.

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American Burgers Suck. Go Japanese!

Japan isn’t known for its meat, aside for Kobe beef, but one thing that I’ve come to love–and ironically despise from the States–is the hamburger. Japanese places around Okinawa and mainland Japan can make really good burgers.
The meat that they use is similar to the run-of-the-mill ground beef, but the way it is cooked makes a big difference. The Japanese people take great care in keeping food less satuarated in oils while maintaining flavor. Not only that, but the lettuce, tomatoes, onions, and buns that add up to an overall burger are fresh. No deflated, dry buns. No soggy lettuce and tomatoes. Basically, you get a burger that looks like the picture.
Although A&W is a nice burger joint, I would suggest trying the smaller mom-and-pop shops around Japan. Recently, my husband and I found a great though tiny burger place called B.B. Burger. They have great-tasting burgers with curly fries, bacon, or ham added between the buns, and they always look like the pictures. What I appreciate about this place besides the burgers is their reasonable price. But you have to be careful–you won’t see burgers the same when you go back to the States.