Archive for December, 2003

Making mochi, and orchid photos

December 30th, 2003

Mochi is a sweet confectionery paste traditionally made around the new year. You start by pounding cooked special rice with a wooden hammer. After 15 minutes it becomes a sweet paste, which you roll into balls the size of your hand. The whole affair is similar to making Christmas cookies, with the whole family involved.

Afterwards, we took a walk through the grandfather’s garden to look at the orchids. He also has an impressive number of tropical plants.

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Yoshi in Kurashiki

December 28th, 2003

He and his folks have been nice enough to invite me over for a nice dinner. He was my language partner @ U of A.

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To Kurashiki via Okayama

December 28th, 2003

At the moment I’m on the Nozomi Shinkansen (bullet train) to Okayama to meet my former conversation partner. This thing is fast.

I was just on Japanese TV

December 27th, 2003

Kinda hard to explain. There was a big screen by Namba station and there was a camera somewhere taking pictures of the crowd. Our group was in the center. A lady was on a bluescreen asking questions like where we were from and we had to answer w hand signals.

Okonomiyaki

December 27th, 2003

It’s an Osaka specialty.

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Did I mention…

December 27th, 2003

The house I had dinner in last night was over 250 years old.

The food gets better and better

December 27th, 2003

Enjoyed a home cooked meal courtesy of Mitsu’s grandparents. It easily topped the onsen meal. And of course they insisted it was nothing special.

Mitsu’s grandfather breeds orchids. He has traveled all over the world looking for new species. Later we’re going to see his garden.

This work by Jeff Hiner is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported.