Mixer

As it turns out, we had tongue again today at a birthday (or so I thought) party today. It was good, and it is on my list of things I like now. Several of you commented about seeing an entire tongue putting you off the idea, and I agree. When I was a counselor at EFY, a session director gave me an 8-pound cow tongue as a trophy...I think he used it for some object lesson and at the end of the week he gave it to me because I am really good at talking, or because bear a strong resemblance to a cow. Who remembers?

 We had a welcome back party at a new restaurant. It was alright. Here you can see the big plate full of sashimi. Starting from top left we have shrimp, mystery fish, mystery fish, mystery fish and wasabi. 

 We also had deep fried mystery. In that bowl is chopped onions, some kind of sauce and eggs. Not my favorite. As much as I love fish baby-genocide, I don't. 

 More sushi! It was a pretty good party overall. Much like the others. Drank a whole bunch of coke and raw fish. 

 At the English Society meeting we talked a lot about tofu. Turns out one of the guys who comes to the meetings is a tofu expert...guy. He read about 10 pages of information about tofu origins, style, types, regional tastes and chemistry behind it. It was interesting, but not really interesting. Afterward he made tofu for us fresh. 

 Making tofu is hard work. It requires constant supervision and recombining of the different parts for up to 15 hours. When he ran his tofu shop, he would work from 5am to 7 or 8pm every day just making tofu. He had made a special brew the night before and was ready to heat it up for us there in the room. You have to get a boiler to heat it by steam or you will scald tofu. He had a special pot that he took with him to Italy last month to show them how to make good tofu. 

 Stirring the tofu mixture. He gave a lot of insight about why he chose to be a tofu master. He just decided to leave his pharmaceutical job and make a tofu shop with no experience. He talked about how much he enjoyed taking risks in his life to do what he wanted. When he was younger, he liked fireworks. He walked into a fireworks factory and started working there and eventually became manager for many shows before he left again for the higher paying job. I thought that was more interesting than tofu personally.

 It was really interesting? I realize that I have 3 pictures of a man stirring a pot of bean curd. 

 If you can tell, it is done and we took a chunk out of it. He explained the benefits of using fresh water and higher quality local beans and the merits that they have and how they change the taste of the tofu. He gave a sample to everyone and they all tried it and immediately started freaking out about how good it was. People were commenting that it was so sweet and tender. People were saying "Wow, this is so amazing." Christina, who was a vegetarian prior to coming to Japan, thought it was extra-sweet and delicious.

I did not think so. Call me a heathen. Call me unrefined. It's tofu. The taste variance is pretty minuscule in my experience. Was it good? Yes. Was it good enough/different enough to comment on? No. 

 I caught this little bugger scuttling across the hall on the way to class. I asked the teacher that was walking with me if we should step on it. He said no, that we should leave him alone. He said that "it has a life." Evidently he thinks spiders have souls and deserve to live. Too bad he is wrong. I didn't squish it, but I did see that it was curled up dead a few feet past where I saw it. Boom. Justice.

Lastly is this terrifying picture I found in a textbook. Advertising Halloween in America, they chose a picture of a white woman dressed as a witch...and in black face? I think? The longer you stare, the less sense it makes. 

Internet go! I got a class full of Asian students saying Annyong on my command. The kids had to learn how to say hello in 8 languages. They know English so well, they thought they would throw in Swahili, Russian, Finnish, Korean, Chinese and Portugese.