Okonamiyaki is one of my favorite japanese foods. In fact it is one of our families favorite foods. I ate it my entire mission, Melissa and I ate it on one of our first dates at a Japanese restaurant in Beaverton, and now we eat it on a regular basis here in marugame. It is famous in Japan, and comes in two styles, Osaka style which combines all the ingredients together in one patty, and Hiroshima style which uses noodles, more egg, and layers ingredients rather than mixing them. The following is a detailed description of how I make Okonamiyaki. It is a blending of the two styles, half layered, half mixed together. In reality though my version is more osaka style than Hiroshima style (which I know is a disgrace to my missionary roots) but it is easier to make than Hiroshima style, which takes more grill space, and more skill in my opinion. They taste very similar though, and I would recommend you give it a shot of there is an asian market in your area with the necessary ingredients.

The first step to making good Okonamiyaki is chopping lots of cabbage. I use about a quarter head per person served. Steam it in a pan until well limp, then drain in a strainer and set aside.

I thawed our chicken strips in a bowl of warm water so they would be easier to cut.

After the cabbage has begun steaming, boil your buckwheat noodles. Don't add salt (they are plenty salty already).

The batter consists of one egg per person served, plus a about a third cup of milk and a third cup of flour per person served, in addition to some soy sauce, ginger, garlic and occasionally tiny dried shrimp.

add these mini dried shrimp to the batter for added flavor (come on, don't be affraid, it's just little shrimp)

Most restaurants use soba noodles made only of wheat flour, rather than buckwheat flour and wheat flour, like the ones pictured here (ironically soba means buckwheat, although most soba noodles contain no buckwheat).

Add just a touch of Shoyu to the batter (less than a 1/4 cup) and mix into batter. The batter should be a consistency somewhere between crepe and pancake batter.

Cut the chicken into thin strips (bacon or thin sliced beef is easier to use, and more traditional, but less healthy)

place two table spoons of olive oil in a medium high pan, and set the thin slices of chicken in the pan. Top with a quarter cup of soy sauce and then sprinkle with turbinado sugar or some other minimally refined sugar (this helps retain the thicker molasses taste in the teriyaki flavoring) Cook the chicken on both sides until almost done. (Alternately add a little water to the pan and cook on one side covered).

Here is the prepared batter, the steamed cabbage, the cooked teriyaki chicken, and the prepared noodles. The two bottles of sauce are for topping the finished product.

Place a large scoop of batter somewhere inbetween the size of a crepe and a pancake in a medium high pan and spread it to about 6 inches accross.

After the noodles comes your toppings. In this case, pre seered teriyaki chicken strips, torn into small pieces. Other common ingredients include bacon, shrimp, veggies, and mushrooms.

As soon as you put the batter down, place the steamed cabbage and cooked noodles on top of the crepe, while the batter is still wet enough to 'grab hold.'

As the underside of the cake finishes cooking (the edges will get dry like crepe or a pancake does, poor another 1/4 cup of batter evenly over the top of the noodles.

After sprinkling the pile with a bit more sauce, the entire cake is flipped over and cooked for another few minutes (it helps to cover the pan with a lid to ensure the inside of the patty gets cooked completely, otherwise you end up with the japanese equiv. to magic middle pancakes).

Clockwise from bottom are the essential toppings for Okonamiyaki (fish flakes, Okonami sauce, seawead flakes, and japanese mayonase). The okonami sauce is made of plums, apples, worcestershire sauce, sugar, vinegar and a number of other wonderfully asian tasting ingredients. It is similar to yakisoba sauce and tonkatsu sauce (bulldog sauce in America). The mayonase is different than american mayonase-It is smoother and thicker, and sweeter. The fish flakes are just what they sound like, dried flaked fish that japanese people consume by the megaton. The nori flakes are a little salty and absolutely essential.

Here is the final product! This is about what it looks like when you order it at a restaurant (minus the polka-dot plate and the dollar fork).

With chopsticks or a fork, Okonamiyaki is one of my favorite japanese meals. The fish flakes actually dance a little when they are sprinkled on top ( I think it's the heat that does it).

Jammin on the harmonica. Go Santa!!!

Joey's glad his gut doesn't usually hang out so much when he helps Melissa with her music!

Joey and Shunta watching the Magic show during the party.

The Christmas origami was a hit with all the kids

Daddy is Santa Claus????

The cast of the Nativity ala Japan. They did a great job. Oto was Joseph, Mizuki was Mary, Callan was the shepherd, Haruka was the angel and Ayaka was the wiseman (I guess it should have been wisewoman in this case). Fumiyo and I were the directors!

The Shepherd (we only had one) and the Angel standing on the "stage" (a coffe table) for the nativity play

The Christmas Party!

We just arrived home from our Christmas Party at MIA (work). There were about 50 or so people there, a good number for a party and much more manageable than the Halloween party with about 100! Joey played Santa Claus most of the time, the kids even had their picture taken sitting on his lap.
There were a few games, a room for making Christmas origami and a short Christmas video for everyone. (Charlie Brown's Christmas, dubbed into Japanese). The highlight of the party though was an actual nativity play, put on by the kids in the Afterschool class on Tuesdays and Fridays. Their towel costumes were adorable and since many of them had never even heard the story before we just had them walk up to the stage while Fumiyo (our boss) read the story from the Bible (in Japanese). They were adorable! especially our little shepherd. I think this was his first play! Go Callan! Fumiyo even explained a little more about Christmas and who Jesus Christ is.
Joey the Santa Claus handed out presents at the end (handfuls of candy) and everyone went home happy ( I think!!).

Adventures in Laundry 3

Yes, it's winter. And we are still trying to figure out the best method for drying clothes. Since the heater in our living room is on all day long now, I have been hanging the clothes on hangers on the curtain rods and anywhere else a hanger hook will fit around the room. It's a little funny to have laundry all over the place but it was not drying at all outside or in the "sunroom" (which should really be called the freezer now!) ooh! How I miss my dryer!!

Story Time

We have in our children’s book collection dozens of toddler books for Callan to choose his story from every night.  There are at least four Sesame Street books, a half dozen Thomas the Tank Engine books, and a handful of Caillou paperbacks.  There are flip books, and pop up books, award winning picture books, and even a Winnie the Pooh Puppet book.  However, despite this wide selection, the book that Callan always wants to go to bed with is a dog-eared coloring book full of simple drawings of slightly mis-proportioned little boys playing baseball, soccer, hockey, football, and basketball. The book, which is missing its cover since Callan tore it to pieces last night, is printed on thin newsprint and was purchased at the dollar store in America.  Still, it has a lot of pages and the story details the basic rules and actions of all the major professional sports in America.  So of course Callan, who was born with a baseball in his hand, can’t get enough of it.  As we speak he is laying in bed with mom reading about how a little boy named Chris learned to catch, throw, and hit all in one day.  Not only does he read it at night, but he colors on it during the day.  Sometimes, even when he doesn’t read it at night, he puts it in bed with him.  Go figure!

District Conference

 Today we spent all day in Takamatsu at District Conference.  Because people have to come from as far as two hours away for the meetings, the church holds two general meetings on Sunday rather than an adult session on Saturday and a general session on Sunday like was done in our Utah stake. 
 
I translated the first session, which I enjoy for the most part, because it means I pay extra attention to not only what the person is saying, but what they are trying to say and what they are trying to teach.  Because I can't translate as well as I would like to I often do a lot of summarizing and abridging.   When I have to translate like this it makes me want to improve my language abilities more so that I can do justice to those who are speaking.
 
One speaker that sticks out in my mind was a young Chinese man about missionary age who spoke in amazing Japanese about his conversion and his subsequent activity in the church.  Six months ago he met the missionaries in Tokushima and heard the gospel.  Because he grew up in China he never had the opportunity for religion, and he said that when he met the missionaries he ate it up.  He was baptized, soon received the Aaronic Priesthood and got to work helping the branch.  This conference he was sustained as one of the newest members of the Melchizedek priesthood in the district and bore a strong personal testimony of how the Savior and the testimony of him contained in the Book of Mormon was changing his life.  Who knows but he will be a leader in the Church as it heads into china.
 
During the second session of conference I got someone else to translate so I could be on Callan duty and let Melissa focus more on the speakers.  We lasted the first half-hour of the second session before we decided I should take Callan out in the cultural hall where several other parents of young children had retreated to let their kids get the wiggles out.  There were two other children about Callan's age there and the three of them became instant friends.  The took turns walking up and down the stage stairs, drawing on the  whiteboard, and running in large circles around the carpeted cultural hall.
 
One of the children was a three year old girl not much bigger than Callan named Julie Tandberg.  She is the Daughter of Jeff and Ayumi (I think that's her name) Tandberg who just moved back to Tokushima from Colorado where they had been living for the past five years.  I knew Ayumi when I was a missionary and was surprised to see her and her family at district conference.  Ayumi was still single when I was in Tokushima, but left to America to get married.  I remember seeing a picture of her and her fiancé once at Church and thinking little of them.  How bizarre it was today then to be sitting on the edge of the stage watching my son play with this couples three year old daughter.   I have always remembered their engagement picture, and I recognized them immediately when I saw them come into the chapel, but I never would have guessed that our paths would ever cross again. 
 
Tonight we watched Mr. Krueger’s Christmas for family home evening.  The movie seems so dated, but the message is still great, and it was nice to see a bit of Christmas in America.  Watching James Stewart pray in a dream to baby Jesus made me think about my own prayers, about my own humility before that Baby who grew up to be the Savior of the World, and I was grateful for the reminder to be more prayerful and more thankful.
 
I think that is why the movie works, not because it is a touchy feely sentimental story about an old man who finds a little bit of Christmas joy, but because it is a touchy feely sentimental story about an old man who offers a humble pray to his Savior.  I don't take quiet moments to kneel down and thank God for His Son enough. 
 
After the movie Callan and I took a bath together and then read some stories and he was off to bed.  Or at least I thought he was off to bed.  About five minutes after I left his room we heard his bedroom door open followed by the sound of his little footsteps in the hall.  He burst open the kitchen door and said, "Eat! Eat potatoes! Eat!" 
 
On the Kitchen table was the baked potato that Callan had hardly touched and as usual, now that it was time to go to bed, he decided he wanted it.  So I put him in his chair, put a bib on him, and cut his potato into smaller pieces.  In addition to most of the potato, he ate some sliced tomato, some broccoli and a few apple slices.  He then demanded that we read scriptures with him before he went to bed, which I did, and then with a short story about Thomas the Tank Engine he was finally sound asleep.
 
Now I am off to bed, but before I do I will go into Callan's room and turn on the electric halogen heater we have for his room that does a good job of keeping him comfortable, but produces so much light that it appears that Callan is having nightly bedside visions from heavenly messengers.  So far though, he sleeps well, and seems to be staying warm enough. 

Pressure to Succeed

Tonight during a class with two middle school age girls one of them broke down into tears.  We were doing a listening activity where I said some simple sentences in English (like my name is Tom, I am 20 years old, I like hiking, and I live in Tokyo) and the girls were to write down what I said.  I thought the sentences I had planned were simple enough and I repeated myself several times, very slowly, but apparently it was too much for this poor girl.  I don’t know if it was just not being able to spell the words in English, or feeling dumb for not understanding, or perhaps an unrelated problem at home, or maybe just being 13, but she couldn’t handle the pressure and she spent the rest of the lesson holding back some heavy tears.  

I tried to reassure her that there was no pressure and that she had done fine, but she was inconsolable.  I almost ended the lesson so she could leave and be alone (I have been in that situation where you are so upset that you can’t stop crying and it probably would have felt better for her if she could have left, but it was freezing cold outside and her parents wouldn’t be by to pick her up for another twenty minutes, so I just decided to play a game with the two of them.

The pressure to succeed in this country is very tangible if, not overwhelming.  From such a young age, children are trained not only to think they need to be the best, but at the very least be just like everyone else.  These dual pressures to both fit in and excel  appear to cause an internal struggle in Japanese children that makes them feel both an incredible urge to have the right answer, and an incontrollable fear of having the wrong answer, or at least a different answer than there classmates.  Some children exhibit this conflict in greater measure than others, but all of my students show signs of the conflict in some way or another.  Even my most gifted students seem hampered in someway by the fear of going against the grain, making a mistake, or being seen as different.  

More on this later

Here are some things I’ve been thinking about in relationship to this:

The conflict seems to be greater in girls than in boys, but certainly is not limited to girls.

Japanese girls are taught from a young age that quiet observance and obedience are valued traits in a respectable female.  WHAT?  A nine year old girl actually said to me, “I’m a girl, so I should be quiet and listen?”  Is this 2005 or 1905?

Adults seem to have the same problem, in lesser degrees. Some of my adult students baulk at the slightest hint of error, and appear to be more concerned about making a mistake than learning.  

I wonder if Japans cultural need for uniformity and unity are crippling its creativity and independence.

I’d like to explore more the negative aspects of American independence, self expression, individualism, and bravado that seem to contrast so much the Japanese cultural sensibilities.

Lots and lots and lots to think about.

$333.39 American

So we sent 333 dollars American to my parents in Las Vegas via a registered mail, international postal money order just under a month ago.  The Money order arrived at the American post office safely and the mail man even tried to deliver it once to my parents’ home but they were out.  The mailman left a note for them and apparently took the letter back to the post office.  However, when my mom called the post office to see about picking up the letter, no one at the post office seemed to know where the letter was.  The carrier had logged it as delivered, but my parents hadn’t signed for it, so it shouldn’t have been delivered, and their mailbox is locked, so it wasn’t taken out of the mailbox.  The carrier doesn’t seem to recall what happened to the letter, only saying that ‘it was busy that day and he doesn’t remember.’  However, according to the post office people themselves, losing registered mail DOESN’T happen.  The safeguards for keeping registered mail on track are supposed to be fool proof.  Which is why I feel like a fool now, because our money is gone, and the process of getting it back, assuming no one finds and manages to cash the money order, will take several months.  Worse than that though is that now I don’t feel like I can trust the post office with handling our money orders and that was the cheapest way to send money to the states that is currently available to us. Ugh.  

I talked with my mom about it today and for the first time felt a bit frustrated about the whole situation.  Not only because it means being overdrawn in our bank account, and possibly losing three hundred dollars, but because it means mom is stuck hassling the post office in my place because I am here in Japan, and because I can’t help but feel like the postman is not telling the whole story.  If registered mail is really guarded and protected like the post office says it is, (they have a literal ‘cage’ for it apparently),  then loosing it ought to be a big deal and this guys head should role, or something.  I would at least feel better if his supervisor questioned him a bit more thoroughly.  I want to be a trusting person, and I also want justice.  And who better to have going to bat for me than Mom Franklin.    

An update on our teacher situation…

As of yesterday there is officially a new couple coming to work at our school and they will arrive here in Japan on the 2nd of January.  Their names are Deron and Lori Watanabe and they have a two month old little girl.  Deron will work full time and Lori will work a few hours a week like Melissa does.  

In addition, for the time being though Melissa and I will have to continue to cover classes until we get here, I got our boss to change the schedule enough so that Callan doesn’t need to be watched on Thursday’s and Saturday’s which we are very glad for because having him watched that much was a major cause of most of our stress about the entire situation.

We certainly want to do what we can to help our boss while she is in a bind, but not at the expense of our family’s well being, and though Callan enjoyed going over to the Morimura’s to be babysat, we could tell that all the running around and trying to stick to a schedule was wearing him out (not to mention it’s effect on us).  Hopefully over the next few weeks we will be able to make permanent adjustments to both schedules so that life is easier for us and for the new teachers coming.  The schedule certainly has not up to this point been designed with teacher’s life in mind, and we are trying to change that.

This is the back of the fridge. It smells much worse than it looks. However, the inside is fairly decent considering the age of the fridge. For complete story about this cockroach Hilton, see the blog entry below entitled "Roach Motel."

The fridge has been quarantined on the front porch if/until we deem it safe for food.

Callan, on a cold morning before we all left for the kindergarten

Callan loves his new book about Scoop the Digger

Roach Motel

With little time off in the past few weeks we have had absolutely no time to do anything with the disgusting fridge that was given to us by our boss.  For two weeks it has sat on our front porch in the same pitiful state, dirty, moldy, and literally crawling with cockroaches.  Last Saturday we finally had a spare forty five minutes and we attacked.  We went through an entire bottle of bleach, several buckets of near boiling water, two old toothbrushes, and three different rags before the fridge even began to look usable.

The worst part of the whole fridge was the back near the bottom where a combination of high humidity, darkness, and regular warmth produced by the condenser created a breeding ground for cockroaches.  The day that we got the fridge I noticed that, in addition to the horrid smell of mold and rotten something it produced, the fridge was home to a whole civilization of cockroaches.  At least three cockroaches about the size of honey bees crawled out from underneath it when I moved it the first time.  I found two more on the porch later that day, and during the week Melissa and I both killed at least two each that had made their way inside our house.

However, the real surprise came last Saturday during cleaning.  From the underside of the fridge, I personally flushed out no less than fifteen small cockroaches that had made homes in the warm, dark, nooks and crevasses around the condenser.  Not only did we find entire families of cockroaches, but what looked like a Utah county maternity ward worth of cockroach babies.  By the time we were finished, the cockroach carnage was almost unbearable. Dead roaches, and roach parts were strewn about our front porch, and the smell of bleach stung in our noses.

Though I washed off the porch where the massacre took place, roach remains are still evident if you look closely.  However, since the siege, we have not seen a single living cockroach, and with a freshly purchased supply of bleach, we will hit the fridge one more time this Saturday before we again consider bringing it into our house.  

Watch Your Head

With church starting at 10 o'clock everywhere in this country, you would think that anyone could get themselves and their two year old out the door and off to church on time. Well, that is exactly what we had been doing since we arrived here in Japan, at least until about a month ago. I can't pin point the problem, but some combination of not getting things ready on Saturday, laying in bed too long on Sunday morning, and spending too much time cooking breakfast has produced a fairly chaotic scene at our house on Sunday mornings.

It was on one of the chaotic mornings a few weeks ago that I found myself running into our bedroom in frantic search for car keys. If you remember, I explained once that doorways in Japan are built at a standard 178 centimeters (or about 5 ft. 11 in.). Barefoot I am just under six feet. This height problem has in the past resulted in various bumps and bruises on my head, but none have ever been very lasting. Because the doorways are only barely shorter than I, rarely notice the difference. However, on this busiest of Sunday mornings, things would be different.

You must also understand that when the human body is in a running motion it's actually like a long series of repetitive jumping. This means that though when standing I rise above the door way just a centimeter or so, when running that difference increases another centimeter or two. Also, running in place that I usually walk disrupts my normal pattern of movement. Thus when running full tilt into the bedroom after a lost set of keys, I experienced a momentary laps in my habitual cautionary ducking as I went into the room and ducked too early. My head smacked squarely into the underside of the lentil and I fell flat on my back, thankful onto our bed, instead of the hardwood floor. Both Callan and Melissa came running into the room and Cal tried to comfort me with a hug. The bruise is mostly gone now, but I am definitely more cautious about running through the kitchen.