January 27th 2014

We received an email today from one of our children asking for us to send her baby pics for one of her university classes.  "Uh, sweetie, we didn't have a digital camera back then and all our photo albums with baby pictures are in storage in the States." I found one baby picture ... sigh.  Gary and I joked about looking for online baby pictures of babies that looked like her....lol. I told her since she has such weird parents who have all her pictures in storage she could always use this anime facsimile!
                                                                    

 Another peril of missionary life I guess...poor kid.  To top it off, it's for a psychology class so they'll probably think she led an abused childhood with no baby pictures taken of her by her awful parents.

Anyway, we had a busy week. Still negotiating the whole building thing..as they say in my land (Wisconsin)...UFDA! God is moving, none the less, with the folks we have been working with and I know we'll get a building where and when He wants us too! In the meantime keep praying please!
                                                                  

 

I was out shopping and I found some bacon that actually looked like American bacon! This is very exciting because while Japanese bacon is tasty, it is very lean and doesn't leave any fat in the pan after cooking it. This may be healthier but I use bacon grease in many cooking recipes, mainly in my southern husbands' breakfast gravy!  He has truly been suffering without his biscuits and gravy! Anyway, this bacon cooked up delicious and I was finally, for the first time, able to make some gravy! We were happy campers! Now I will have to work on making biscuits. For all my culinary prowess I've never perfected a good biscuit! Today, we just used thick slice toast pulled in pieces with gravy and scrambled eggs. 

 

This week Gary brought me home a pretty houseplant. It wasn't bloomed at all when he brought it, but overnight it blossomed into this! So pretty and cheery!

I was out and about in Tachikawa and stopped at the KFC for lunch. I had to buy one of their promotional Hello Kitty/Coronel Sanders bento boxes...it was just too cute!
                                                                  

 

                                                           (The chicken was good too!)


    Well that's it for now! Hope all of you in the COLD zones are staying warm! Hasta Luego!

January 16th 2014

Time for another update! We finally have some sunshine today after more cloudy rainy stuff! Yay! I was dreaming of the old days!

Of course this means Quick do laundry while it's sunny out!

Gary and I have had a busy several days visiting with people. First, we were introduced to Rie through a visiting brother from the Ogden church. We had a nice dinner and visit and she lives pretty close by too so that's good! 

 A few days later we were going to have Sean and Komaki over for dinner. I cleaned the house and was making a nice pot of stew and rice. Gary had gone to the train station in Kichioji to meet up with them and bring them to the house on the Mu bus. Everything was good until I was doing some final last minute seasoning and I opened the bottle of liquid smoke wrong and accidentally dumped 1/2 the bottle into the stew!!!!! 

Since dinner was no longer fit for human consumption (though Gary and I attempted it the next night), I quickly called Gary in a panic! In the end we went to Plan B; I ran to the train station, we all met up and went out to dinner! 

A couple of days later, Gary had a meet up with a very pleasant elderly atheist gentleman who wants to know more about Jesus! They had a very nice visit and are getting together again tomorrow!

On Monday, it was a national holiday called Coming of Age Day. It's a special day for all young people who turned 20 in the past year. While out and about I saw many young ladies in formal kimono wear, I didn't have my camera handy but here's a picture from the intraweb to give you an idea!

I saw several girls on my way to meet up with Yasuyo and her cute son Kenchan! We went to spend the day at Inokashira park and to visit the zoo there.

We terrorized some guinea pigs.

That's it for today, I have laundry to hang! 

January 10th 2014

                                             Hello Blog o' Sphere!
 
Hope those of you in the States didn't get frozen and those of you in the UK didn't get flooded! Crazy weather all over last week it seems! Personally, I'm just happy to have a little sunshine after a couple days of cloudy and rainy weather here! I always appreciate the sunshine and can tell it's arrived by the sound of people beating their futons and bedding outside. Humidity is a big thing here so whenever it's sunny everything is hung over balconies to air out .. such a contrast between the traditional bedding and modern living Japan! Some folks buy western style beds now... but I bet just as many people still use futons if what I see hanging on the balconies are any indication! Here's a view to the balcony above my apartment today.

                                        
 In other news, we're still jumping through hoops trying to get into a church building, we still haven't been told "No" yet on the latest in Mitaka so that's good! Despite not having a building, God is bringing people our way to minister to, so we are building relationships and keeping busy. Everything here is about introductions. In business, you can't get a lawyer without an introduction and socially, you can't make new friends without an introduction. People are friendly etc. but to hang out you really need to have that introduction first. Fortunately, in our Fellowship we're all about introducing people and we've had people from our churches world wide providing introductions via email or personally, with people here in Japan!  People in our churches all over the world have been praying for a church in Japan for years! I imagine once we have a building, we can build out from there with folks from church providing the introductions but for now we are making progress with a little help from our brethren! We have people who are writing to us, asking us to tell them about Jesus! Japan is so full of hurting people and they are looking for an answer.  When we first arrived, we were told by many long term missionaries not to expect a single convert for at least 5 years! We definitely didn't accept that word but it encourages me to know, that even without a building, God is bringing people to us to work with!
The other day I was moving some things in Gary's office and discovered we had created a Robot without even meaning too! Isn't he cute?!
                                                                  

 

                                                 

   

On to Food!
I've been experimenting some with a few new recipes lately. I started out with Shiso Beef Soboro on tomato. it doesn't look like much but I found it to be very refreshing, tasty and surprisingly filling!   The wasabi dressing really made it good!    
                                                                                                                          

 

                               It's from this you tube video.

Then I thought I should try something German for a change... outside of Bratwurst and potato salad I don't have a whole lot of German recipes in my repertoire so I thought I should work on that.  I decided on rouladen which is thinly sliced beef with mustard,onion,bacon,and pickles or sauerkrat which is rolled up and cooked into a gravy type broth. I made both of us one of each so we could compare. Both were tasty, but we preferred the sauerkrat one. I'd like to try the sauerkrat one with a horseradish base instead of the mustard sometime too. I don't have a recipe handy for this one because I just googled several and put this together.         

                                 
Finally, last night I decided to try slowcooking some steel cut oats with apples and cinnamon. I used this recipe, which made WAY to much for just Gary and I but was quite tasty! I'll line muffin tins with plastic wrap and freeze the left overs for individual microwavable servings later.
                                         

 This link includes the recipe and a video.
http://crockingirls.com/recipes/apple-cinnamon-steel-cut-oatmeal/

Well that's it for here! Leave a comment, let me know you're out there!  Try something new and have a great day!

January 4th 2013 First post of the New Year!!!

                    Happy New Year!!! 
Gary and I had a nice New Years Day. The New Year celebration is a really big deal in Japan with all sorts of traditions and food. A lot of places close shop for 3 days so I had to do a bigger grocery run than usual. I'm pretty much a daily shopper, that's an old throw back to my days in Mexico and getting everything fresh from the market I guess. It's alright though since I can only buy what fits in my bike baskets and my kitchen is small so daily shopping is more convenient. Fortunately, the grocery store is only a couple of short blocks from the apartment so it's no bother.
Traditionally, you're supposed to try to start the New Year the way you want it to continue, so folks clean house, bathe and eat nice foods. I did two out of the three. Gary asked me if I was going to clean house but I told him that since he was the only Japanese in the house he should do it and that I'd do the German tradition instead, unfortunately, as far as I can tell that just entails getting drunk so I didn't do that!  Neither of us cleaned the house, but it wasn't really messy anyway so that's alright.
Mostly, the other couple of days were spent quietly. We have been waiting to hear from our agent regarding the building we want to rent for the church but with the businesses closed there wasn't any movement on that. Gary wrote him right away this morning though to check on the status so hopefully we'll hear something soon!
I've never been one to make New Year's resolutions but I've determined to study Japanese harder and to keep trying new recipes. That second one is something I always like to do though so I guess that doesn't count as a resolution. Oh well.

On to Food!!!!
Gary and I had fun cooking mochi (a Japanese rice cake) in different ways. First, we tried grilling it, but my stove has a safety feature and kept turning itself off...I guess it didn't like the cheap little mochi grill I had bought! Then, we tried the toaster oven, but it didn't get soft enough on the outside. Finally, we boiled some and they came out soft and chewy and perfect! We ate them in Japanese soup that Gary made and also alone, dipped in ponzu sauce with daikon radish or dipped in soy sauce with sesame. Supposedly, people die every year eating mochi because it's super chewy and easy to choke on, but I like life on the WILD side and went for it!   
Gary's soup was one his mother always makes with a shitake mushroom base..very tasty!   I had splurged on the best kamaboko, (that's the pink and white fish cake in the picture), it really was delicious! 

I was also going to make Sukiyaki  but it was late and we were full so I saved that for the next day. I found some beautiful beef and made the sukiyaki from scratch. You can buy pre-made broth for it but I wanted to try my hand at the broth and it was pretty easy. The next day I cooked up some udon noodles in the left over broth and we ate it for lunch.

That's it for now! I hope you all had an enjoyable New Year as well!