I just wanted you out there to take a look at what I had the good fortune of eating this afternoon for lunch. It being New Years Day, my mother-in-law bought my family a beautiful Osechi Ryori to welcome in 2013.
Take a look at some of the pictures I took:
This is a great New Years tradition. New Years in Japan is the biggest holiday of the year. I suppose the importance of it would be comparable to Christmas in Canada or Thanksgiving in America.
Much to the surprise of most Americans I meet or talk to, today was Thanksgiving somewhere else! That's right. Today was Thanksgiving Monday in Canada. As coincidence would have it, it is Sports Day in Japan, a national holiday, so I had a long weekend just like folks back home in Canada. Although mine was for different reasons, I'll take what i can get without complaining.
I celebrated the occasion by having a great day with my family and making a little Thanksgiving meal for my wife and I. I used chicken instead of turkey since it is so expensive here in Japan. I plan to buy a turkey for Christmas this year since we will be staying in Japan for the holiday.
Here is my Thanksgiving dinner pre-gravy. I made mashed potatoes with chicken and an assortment of stir-fried veggies.
Add some amazing 3 pepper gravy and you have a feast fit for a king.
The gravy was a Canadian delight I picked up last Christmas while visiting may family. I brought back a bag of various gravy-type mixes and have been using the sparingly throughout the year!
I made the weekend a little more special yesterday by running 30 km as part of my marathon training. it was a hard go on such a warm day. Lots of people were barbecuing along the way and at times I had trouble maintaining my focus and motivation. At the end of the run I was glad I did it of course knowing that I am one big step closer to being prepared for my full marathon in a few weeks in Osaka.
My run was all over the place, but one nice area past Nada-ku is along a storm drain/river. This was fairly close to Mikage Station. There were a lot of people having cook outs and generally loafing about on this river.
Check out this little video blog I made with my iPhone during my long run yesterday.
Here is another video I put up online last night about cool Starbucks coffee cups. This is only part of my collection.
I ran a total of 78 km last week and I will see if I can keep this weeks distance in the same range.
Random Japan news time:
Husband, grandfather, retiree – and a Japanese porn star It’s said that everyone has a secret. What was unique about Shigeo Tokuda’s fib was that everything he wasn’t telling his wife and daughter was on recorded on hundreds of videos, and that thousands of admirers knew exactly who he was and what he was trying to hide.
For a long time, Mr. Tokuda was not just the world’s oldest porn star, he was perhaps its most anonymous. His family didn’t know where the 76-year-old really went and what he did when the retired travel agent pulled on his blazer and went off to “work” in the morning.
But among his fans – and there are enough of them to justify the making of at least one new film a month – Mr. Tokuda is the superstar of the rising genre of “elder porn,” movies that feature older actors (at least the male ones) and plotlines in which the growing number of Japanese senior citizens (again, at least the males) can picture themselves. His most famous role is as a senior citizen who acts anything but his age with an assortment of nurses, as well as with his twentysomething daughter-in-law.
Elder porn is a fast-growing industry in Japan, which has a population that is both the oldest in the world as well as the world’s second-largest consumers of pornography (after the United States). By his count, Mr. Tokuda has appeared in some 350 films, with another project – Prohibited Elderly Care Vol. 45 – already in production. Read more here at the Globe and Mail
Osaka brewer's stout named world's best in British contest OSAKA - A.J.I. Beer Inc, a small brewer in Mino, Osaka Prefecture, has produced the “World’s Best Stout” for the second straight year in a British beer contest. Minoh Beer Imperial Stout, which contains 8% alcohol, is “silky textured with sweet rounded malt opening,” the organizers of the World Beer Awards said on their website.
“I have gained even more confidence,” said Masaji Oshita, president of A.J.I. Beer, adding that he will aim at winning the title again next year. Minoh Beer is produced once a year and the company will start accepting orders for the stout late this month, it said.Original at Japan Today
It is Thanksgiving and I am here in Japan. Although it is not as important a holiday as in the United States, it is still cool to have turkey and enjoy a day off. Ironically, today happens to be a national holiday here too. It is Sports Day.
Tonight I made a little Thanksgiving meal. Instead of turkey we had chicken. Some mashed potatoes and veggies as well. To top it all off, my awesome wife made a pumpkin pie for the first time. it was absolutely incredible. We bought all of the ingredients at Kaldi, a foreign food store here in Kobe.
The pumpkin pie to die for! It was and still is so amazing!
A great spread. I plan to have a big fill of turkey this December when I'm back in Canada for vacation.
Here is the plated meal. Some yummy stuff. Mashed potatoes, chicken, carrots, red bell peppers with asparagus.
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