February 4th 2013 Happy Spring!!!!

       
                                             Spring!!!!!

Spring is upon us! February 4th is the official first day of Spring in Japan! Yay!!! I'm all for early Springtime! It's actually rainy and quite foggy outside today, kind of gloomy looking for the first day of Spring, but yesterday it was sunny and warm. (Edited to add this: Later it turned to snow! Our first snow of the year actually. It didn't accumulate but it was pretty to look at!)
                                        

 

I had a toothache last week and am half way through a problematic root canal, but that should hopefully be resolved in the next few dental visits and then I should be good to go again! I'm not a fan of Obama's Un-affordable health care act, but Japan's national insurance is wonderful and affordable! 

Gary and I were having dinner at an Italian restaurant here the other night. It's funny because we really enjoy their appetizers more than anything else, so we just order a bunch of those. It's really funny because the waiters start bringing all these plates to our table and it looks like we're gorging ourselves, but its only a bunch of appetizers!      

(edited to add: this is NOT a picture of our table, this is a picture of a medieval feast) lol

 

Anyway, we were enjoying our meal when Gary received a phone call from our Realtor saying there may be progress on the building we want to rent for the church! Everything had pretty much ground to a halt in negotiations but then there was this ray of HOPE!!!! I high-fived Gary right there in the restaurant, whatever, we were already the crazy foreigners with all those plates on the table!

On to food!!!

I ran across this Cheeto flavor the other day.

Chicken Stew flavor! 

It took a few days for me to get up the nerve to try them and when I did it was about as I expected. Awful!!! I could taste the carrots and broccoli which is definitely not a flavor I want in my Cheetos.

Gary didn't mind them as much, he described them as "Meh" and not nearly as bad as the Pepsi flavor Cheetos.

I was walking home the other day and stopped in a convenience store and picked up a pizza flavor Nikuman. It was delicious... but then I love just about all things pizza! 

Traditionally, the Nikuman have pork in the steamed bun, but apparently, the pizza ones are popular as well in the convenience stores.

I tried out a new recipe the other day, pork hasami yaki. It was quite tasty and a recipe I'll make again!

I find a lot of good recipes on Cook Pad online. They just translated the recipes into English last year. Most of the recipes are fast and easy!

Well that's it for now!  Have a great day!!!!