I had been making decent progress with written Japanese lately, but then I realised I'd been neglecting the actual language. I went back over some of the stuff I learned some time ago, but I've still got a long, long way to go. It's an odd feeling, as I realise with pride that I can read something written in hiragana, katakana, or some (very few) kanji - only to find I don't understand the words I can read. It's quite hard to strike a balance. Does anyone have any tips - vocab vs writing?




We've just had a busy Bank Holiday in the kitchen, baking bread and cooking mochi. Or rather, trying to cook mochi. I think we've got the wrong type of rice flour, as it turned out quite doughy and not at all springy, like actual mochi. However it's still quite nice, just closer to a kind of pastry sweet from India I had once than it is to mochi. The bread, however, was fantastic - I can't take any credit for that though; it was all Louise's handiwork!

It's been a while since I've posted any recipes, so I thought I'd include one. Not mochi - I think I have a lot of work to do before I can claim that one's finished! - but something suitably Japanese. I've developed a kind of simulacrum of ramen which I'm quite pleased with. It's not quite the real deal, as we have no access to bonito or kelp with which to make dashi, and I don't have much of a proper recipe to go from anyway. But I had some amazing ramen in Tokyo, and ever since I've been using what I do know about cooking to try to make something similar tasting. So here goes (I apologise in advance if I'm way wide of the mark and it's an affront to the good name "ramen"):

Ingredients

Soup:
Fresh ginger
Garlic
Onion
Pork stock
Vegetable stock
Noodles (par-boiled)
Cayenne pepper
Shichimi togarashi
Black sesame oil

Toppings:
Egg
Spring onions
Pork (I have a recipe for choshu pork, however it takes so long and makes such a lot, I tend to just marinade a few slices of ham in soy sauce and ginger and fry for a few seconds each side - cheat!)
Nori (one inch squares)

Method:
Fry the ginger, onion and garlic (all very, very finely chopped) for a few moments in a hot wok. I use vegetable oil, but anything with a high smokepoint is good. Once it starts to caramelise slightly, add the spices, the sesame oil, and then the stock, one after the other. Let this simmer a while - the longer the better, although since there's no meat in here it doesn't matter if you only give it a few minutes. Keep tasting as you go, and once you've got something you're happy with, and you're close to serving out, add the noodles and, depending on the type, cook for another minute or two.

The toppings can be arranged in each bowl after serving. The egg looks best hard-boiled, sliced, and placed on top - but I think it tastes best if you drop it raw into the wok along with the noodles and poach it in the soup for a minute.

This is where a proper recipe blogger would have a picture. But I've never photographed my own ramen, so until I make it next, here's one I stole off Google as a placeholder:

This year is flying by...

I think I've been too relaxed about things lately, and it seems like life is beginning to pass me by. I don't particularly want these next seven weeks or so to pass me by, because at the end of them my life will be changing quite a lot for quite a while, so I intend to make a bit more of an effort to enjoy, and make the most of, my remaining time with Louise.

We have resolved to redouble our efforts to learn Japanese - that's the main thing. We'd been learning in different ways, and at different speeds, independently but now we've promised each other to help each other out with our studies. I'm coming on quite well with written Japanese (or at least well by my standards!), while Louise has been more focused on the spoken. We're aiming for at least three hour-long joint lessons a week, where we'll share with each other what we've been learning.

I'm also going to make more of an effort to keep my blog up to date - and, remembering why I set it up in the first place, I'll be sharing what I'm learning here, too.

One topic I've always struggled to remember has been days of the week - for some reason, even though there's only seven of them, they just won't stick. Louise dug this out of the internet, which really helps a lot. I'm aiming to have them - kanji and all - remembered by the end of the week, and to have taught Louise colours in the same time frame. By the time Louise goes away at the end of May, I'm hoping to have helped her master hiragana (which I've pretty much completed now), and to have learned sentence structures/verb conjugations myself. I reckon that's a healthy target to have set.

We've also set up a Tumblr site focusing on Japanese style & culture, which you can find lurking behind this link. It's a photo blog, with a new theme every week; the current one is bento. It's nice being able to share the myriad quirky pics we happen across here & there...
Finally, at the risk of sounding like a bloody advert, I have to once again extoll the virtues of smartphones, in particular Android phones, as a fantastic resource when learning a second language. An app by iStudy Campus called Survive! Japanese has done absolute wonders for my progress. And they're not even paying me to say that!

So it's back to the books and the blogs for me. Wish me luck - Watashi wa ganbarimasu!

Howdy!

So Louise, my better half, is doing something incredible this Summer, and I feel I must spread the word. She's leaving her job and going half way around the world, to Phuket, Thailand, to volunteer at The Soi Dog Foundation, who look after sick, mistreated and abused cats & dogs. Unfortunately, in Thailand, strays have a rough time - they are often poisoned, beaten and otherwise persecuted by business owners and residents. I won't go into too much detail because it's actually very upsetting, but those who would like to learn more can do so here.


Louise is self-funding her trip, but because of mounting costs (she found out today, after booking her flights, that her budget accommodation has just fallen through) and an already very basic budget, she needs help. She's set up a website, www.phuketfundraising.com, on which kindly folk have been donating. There's also a link to her shop on there, where you can buy Louise's handmade amigurumi animals, with all proceeds going to her cause. The local papers have been great, too - the East Riding Mail and Beverley Guardian have both promised to run articles. In fact, the former sent a photographer round yesterday and will be conducting an interview shortly.

If you can, please donate or buy a knitted animal. And if you can't (there is a recession on after all) but you do support the cause, then please tweet or Facebook about Louise (she's @Catface85 on Twitter) and www.phuketfundraising.com, or even just leave her a message of support. She's doing such a wonderful thing, and I am so proud of her, but there are so many obstacles at the moment that any help - moral, fiscal or otherwise - would be very gratefully received.

I hope you can help.

Thanks for reading!

Okay, I've been discovering the joys of quizzes today. In a quiet patch at work I set my team a grammar quiz, with the grand prize of a bag of skittles going to the winner(!), and then I got home and found one for myself: http://www.realkana.com/ This is a great, and oddly addictive given its simplicity, little game that's helping my kana nicely. I particularly like the different fonts... Enjoy!

January ... Meh.

So Santa's been 'n' gone, the snow's been replaced by rain (actually, that's kind of a good thing - more on why later!) and work is back to normality.

I shouldn't moan - I've had a really great Christmas, and was off from the 23rd Dec-4th Jan, which is pretty good. I got some fantastic gifts, many of them Japan-related (and many of those were Japanese sweets - brilliant!). The candies included some DIY sushi-style sweets, with little sachets and moulds that you used with water to make jellies that look like rice, ikura, tuna and other fish, as well as black icing to roll out (with the mini-rolling pin included) as nori. Not only was it delicious, but it was very fun, and clever, too - I was particularly impressed by the ikura, which was made by mixing up a sweet, red liquid, then dropping it with a pipette (also included!) into a sweet solidifying solution. This satisfied the amature physicist in me as well as the candy-loving child in me!

I won't list every one of my gifts here (as much as I may want to!) but I would like to thank everyone for picking such great gifts and making it a wonderful Christmas. I hope i was able to play a part in doing the same for them.

I began the New Year with a renewed determination to learn katakana, and to my surprise I've done really well! Thanks to the 'Survive! Japanese' phone app on the Android Marketplace. In just two days I've pretty much got it. Compared to the two months it took me to learn hiragana... I really am very impressed with this game - cliched though it may be, it actully does make learning fun. This means I'm able to move on to kanji, which is more of a challenge to me, as my handwriting is terrible. Louise got me a kanji practice book though so I'm having fun trying (no matter how childish my scrawl may be).

Mini Blog-In-A-Blog: Snow.

Normally, I love the snow. My last post was testament to this (wow, that was a long time ago now i think about it). But last week the UK's Big Freeze really upped the ante. We'd already had our share of disruption, before six inches fell in under an hour, which is rather a lot for here. the Councils just aren't geared up for it, and started running out of grit. The roads ground to a halt. We left work three hours early at 4.30pm but still didn't get home until gone half-past 10. And I'm sure there's people out there who had it even worse, too. So as beautiful as snow may be, the fact this particular bout has turned to steady torrential rain is not necessarily a bad thing.

On the plus side, I did see this incredible satellite photo on the BBC last week. No PhotoShop or colour-correction here - this is genuine!

I hope you all kept warm and safe wherever you are - Rob

So the BBC website told us that we'd have no snow this weekend after all, despite previously announcing we'd get a shedload. We wound up getting quite a bit on Friday, which was great except we didn't get back from work while about 9pm. Then last night we got the motherload - flakes like dinnerplates covered everything! from then on Louise & I have spent pretty much every waking moment playing in the snow like kids.

We did take time out to go to our local Chinese supermarket to pick up some Chinese, Japanese and Korean sweets 'n' treats for Christmas, and to start a series of Japanese language tests. We'll be quizzing each other as we learn from now on to make sure we don't skip over bits in our studies - for instance I found out I need to go back over the days of the week as I'd forgotten almost all of them...

Anyway, here's the fruits of last night's labour - a rather magnificent(?)-looking snowman!:

(hope this comes out - I'm blogging off my mobile and don't fully understand the app yet)

Happy winter everyone!

I'm getting really excited about Christmas now. Work's been so hectic but there's only four more days left before we break up, then I'm off until the 4th Jan, unless I choose to take some extra Football Live shifts. Sadly Louise is back at work on the 30th Dec for two days, but we still get a good amount of time off together.

Christmas brings out the kids in both Louise & I, and now we have a house to ourselves we're probably a bit badly behaved - no grown-ups to keep us in check. Christmas Eve is now, by tradition, spent moving bedding downstairs so we can sleep by the tree and presents and watch Christmas films all night.

This year will probably feature The Polar Express, The Muppet's Christmas Carol, and A Christmas Story. The latter is one I barely remember from my childhood, but I do recall quite liking it and I managed to pick it up at a bargain price from Tesco recently. Louise has been almost entirely put off by how creepy the kid, played by Peter Billingsley, looks on the cover:


Random Blog-End Note: We've been lucky enough to sample some delicious far-Eastern treats recently in mochi and bubble tea. Mochi, a traditional Japanese sweet made from sweetened rice paste and filled (in this instance) with red azuki-bean paste, is thoroughly delicious. I hear it's a traditional New Year thing in Japan, so I think we'll try making some in a few weeks. Bubble tea is sweetened flavoured tea with large tapioca pearls in, which is very unusual but equally delicious. I heartily recommend both!