Bucket Lists

Though i'm not very good at it, i like writing.  Hence the blog. 

But even more than writing, i love reading.  As a kid i read books aaaaaall the time.  After high school that kind of died with all the academic readings and endless homework and everything else that came with college.  There just wasn't enough time for any leisurely reading.  I'm trying to change that now, but while i don't have a whole lot of access to books in English (although i should stop being lazy and tackle some books in Japanese too), i enjoy reading other blogs.

Most of the blogs i read are other foreigners in Japan, but i also like to keep at least one inspirational blog on my blog-roll.  For a while it was 1000 Awesome Things, which i followed for about 3 of its 4-year run.  Sadly it ended a little over a week ago.

Today i just found a new blog to take its place.  Avery's Bucket List.  I recommend taking a look.  If this doesn't make you appreciate life i don't know what will.

Tokyo Disneyland

Since mine and the Roomie's birthdays are so close together we decided to celebrate together by going to Tokyo Disneyland yesterday!  Twelve hours at the Happiest Place on Earth running on four hours of sleep.  It was a crazy marvelous day, accompanied by good friends.  There will probably be a more detailed, picture-full post soon, but for now i think this sums up the day pretty nicely:

A Very Japanese Easter

Trying to keep some traditions alive.  Easter almost came and went without notice, but Roomie brought a calendar from the US with US holidays on it, so it was remembered!  

I was shocked to hear that Roomie had never dyed Easter eggs before.  I knew i had to remedy that for sure.

Found food coloring at Loft.  I thought it was the little bottles of liquid like i'm used to but it was actually powder!  They worked just as well, if not better, than the liquid stuff.  Only 5 "scoops" (each bottle came with an itty-bitty scoop) in place of the liquid dye in the standard egg-dye recipe.  I was afraid that using rice vinegar instead of white would make a difference but it worked just the same too.

All set up and ready to go!

Cleaning up our messes made for some really cool paper towels

Our finished eggs all together!

The ones i did:

Cherry blossoms!

Um.. weird 80's egg!

Another cherry blossom one.

And Doraemon egg!

I just realized i don't have a picture of my star egg, how sad..

Egg-dying took place Saturday, and on actual Easter Sunday, we had been invited to do hanami (flower-viewing) by our Lady Boss (M-sensei).  We met her at the station shortly after noon, got some more nibblings to take with us, and then flocked to the park with the other thousands of flockers flocking and met her friends there who had thankfully saved us a spot.

I'm going to try and forget that the only beverage available was alcohol (yes, alcohol outdoors, because Japan is cool like that), and so for the entire six hours that's all i had to drink, and i WAS fine up until the last hour when i started to get loopy and i still insisted that i really wanted to see Titanic at 8pm but can hardly remember anything after we left the park at 7pm.. except that when we finally got to the next station over where the movie theatre is, as soon as i stepped off the train i sat down on the platform in defeat and had to be hauled home by Roomie, bless her heart.

But that's what hanami is all about.  One of M-sensei's friends that i was talking to at the picnic even said something along the lines of, "Why do they even call it hanami?  No one looks at the flowers!"  That's half-way true.  They all look at the flowers in drunken stupors.

I at least did enjoy them not under the influence.

Tree blooming at my station

Flocking

Herds

Food Part 1.  They loved our eggs  :)  Especially Doraemon

Food Part 2

This is me, still normal

I was just excited that i had been chosen!

Rice Omelet

First things first- i now have a room-mate!  She is also my coworker now too.  We met at UW and she just graduated in March, and my boss was looking for another English speaker for the daycare so it all worked out.

Anyway, my new roomie had asked me if i knew how to cook omu-raisu, a rice omelet, since she was craving it.  It got me craving it too, and while i can cook it and it is pretty easy to do so (just cook some veggies and meat if you desire with rice and ketchup, then roll up inside an omelet with cheese if you like as well) i didn't really feel like cooking after work last night so i suggested we go to this nice little omu-rice restaurant a friend of mine had brought me to before, called Rakeru.  Apparently it's pretty famous.  I do recall seeing it elsewhere before too.

It's a really cute place.  I wish i had thought to take a picture of the door, because it's adorable. (A-door-able!  Aah, knee-slapper right there.  I honestly didn't plan that, i just realized it as i read it in my head while typing).

Cute little table settings

Delicious foooood!

I got the mushroom dry curry with demi-glace and cheese omelet.  It's a mouthfull to say in English, and even more so in Japanese.  But a very delicious mouthful.  And oh my goodness their rolls.  It's a little funny-looking with the four little points on top (i thought it rather resembled a cow's udder..), but they taste aMAZing.  (Uh-MAZ-ING ROOOOOOOOOLL).  Soft and warm and slathered with butter and a bit of cheese.  I kind of want to go their and just order a plate of the rolls.

But yes, the omelet was very delicious as well!