Yakedake!

Yesterday, I climbed a mountain. And not just any mountain, one of the "100 Mountains" of Japan, Mt. Yakedake. An active volcano located on the border between Gifu and Nagano prefectures. And since one of the original reasons I got into geology (my undergraduate degree) was a fascination with mountains that explode, you can imagine my glee in hiking it ^_^

So we began about 9:20 am at the parking lot


The hike is almost straight up and down. Literally, there are hardly any switchbacks once you get out of the trees...



The trees slowly begin to thin... and even though the temperature was falling it was just humid enough that I was still shedding layers, ha ha



gotta love those nice, well-maintained trails

Erin: "hmmm... now where did that trail go?"

About mid-way up there is this fantastic shrine where the tree is splitting this enormous boulder. It also doubles as a great break spot.

The snow lasted pretty much until after we passed the tree line, which was both a benefit as it made the trip faster since it flattened the trail a bit, and a curse as all 3 of us managed to plunge our feet into the snow more than once v^_^

We stopped for lunch on the ridge between mountain summits. All 3 of us agreed it bore a striking resemblance to Weathertop. Sadly, we were fresh out of 'taters and forced to rely on our trusty supply of onigiri ^_^

Nagano is that way, right?

View of Kamikochi, Nagano from the "lunch spot"

After a short break Frodo and Sam Erin and Daniel and I began the ascent of the summit, a crumbly, rocky jumble of volcanic debris. Mostly gypsum


And there were steam vents!!!

And it was steep

Like, really steep






Upon reaching the summit, we toasted the mountain with a sake kampai (cheers)

And puttered around at the top for about an hour.

As any self-respecting volcano should, Yakedake has lovely crater lake




Steeeeeeaaaam vents!!!!




And then after taking a good long look at the building clouds, we decided to descend

Did I mention there were steam vents? ^_^

The view on the way back is breathtaking


Daniel even broke into song at this point

And though the hike down was, well, down, it was surprisingly difficult. I think my legs got more worn out from the hike down than on the way up, ha ha ha

About 2.5 hours after we began our decent we reached the car. ahhhhhhhhh....

And changed pants. Most of the snow was considerably slushier on the way down than it was on the way up ^_^

And we ended our day with a stop at the local foot spa.

Total time: 7.5 hours. Hiking time: ~6
And I'm not even that sore today. Woo hoo!

Pictures

I finally decided to jump on the Picasa bandwagon. I added a slideshow to the links on the right, and once I've figured everything out I'll try to add a little more functionality to it. For now I think if you click on it it will take you to the album list. I've had an account with Picasa for a long time but I never really used it. And seeing how other people have used their slideshows to such great effect (esp Julien and Martha in Georgia!) I've decided I want one too.

Because I just have to admit to myself that I don't post about all the cool stuff that goes on here and I'm sure you'd like to at least see pictures ^_^

So far all I've managed to upload are pictures from April and May of this year. But I'm going to work on getting the older stuff up too. And then maybe, just maybe, you'll finally be able to see all those amazing pictures from Sapporo! ha ha ha ha ha

Happy weekend everybody!

PS - I'm playing in a public taiko performance this weekend. It's my first one ever and I'm really nervous about it. So wish me luck!

And so it begins

My cousin Dan married his sweetheart Ashley today ^_^ Well, technically it was yesterday.

Way to leave me the last holdout there, Dan. :P Serioulsy though, congrats guys! I wish I could have been there, I'm sure it was a blast

May the road rise up to meet you, may the wind be ever at your back. May the sun shine warm upon your face and the rain fall softly on your fields. And until we meet again, May God hold you in the hollow of his hand

And I swear, the card is in the mail ...
<_< ..
>_> ..
^_^

It's rice planting season!

I've been told that Gifu is one of the poorer prefectures in Japan; full of backwards, country farmers. But when the view on my morning run looks like this:








I really don't want to live anywhere else ^_^

Making Pie in Japan

A friend of mine had a pot luck lunch yesterday at her new apartment, and requested that I bring pie.

Some of you may be wondering, why on earth would anyone ask Jen to bring a pie?

Well, it just so happens that around here I've become well known for baked goods ^_^ Which is actually quite amazing given that there are no such things as household ovens in Japan.

You may be wondering then, how, exactly, do you make baked goods without an oven? Doesn't the term "baked" imply baking? And you would be right. So I've decided to give you a little tutorial on how I make pie in Japan. Apple pie, specifically.

At home I would have just gone to the store and bought a pie tin with a pre-made crust in it, loaded it with filling, and thrown it in the oven. Cause I'm lazy like that. But, though I'm sure it must be here somewhere, I have yet to see pre-made pie crust in Japan. Not in Takayama, and certainly not in the little store in Miya. Which means you have to make the ENTIRE pie from scratch.

To do this, the first thing you have to do is figure out what the kanji for flour is. This took me a looooooooooong time to do as the first time I made pie here was back last November for Thanksgiving. My Japanese isn't that great now, and back then it was even less. But I digress. The kanji for flour is 粉 (kona)

Mine is a fine powder flower good for baking (and the 粉 in the name is therefore accompanied by lots of other kanji to describe that). So once you have your flour you have to make the dough. My recipe calls for 2 cups of flour, some salt, sugar, and an ungodly amount of butter and shortening. And I didn't take any pictures of this step, sorry.

While your dough is chillin' in the fridge, the next thing to do is peel and chop the apples. Normally you use tart green apples for pie but I forgot at the store and just bought the red ones. Heh heh. Still tasted good though ^_^

For the apple coating I use brown sugar, cinnamon, nutmeg, a little salt, vanilla, and a little more lemon juice.

Mix it all together and you should have some nicely coated apples

Next you have to roll out the ball of dough that should be nice and congealed from sitting in the fridge. It takes about half of the ball for the pie bottom and half for the top.

Once you've rolled out your dough and have it in your pie pan

It's time to fill it with the tasty filling! I think I could have actually done one more apple to fill it better but the pies here have a tendency to boil over in the microwave and it's such a pain in the ass to clean up that I'm a bit hesitant to do it.

The next task is to put the top on the pie. I've done both the full and the lattice tops and I think the lattice ones work out better for cooking here. Plus, it looks more "American" to me for some reason

So up until this point, other than the difficulty in buying ingredients, making a pie here is virtually the same as making one at home. The real difference here is how you cook it. With no ovens, we have to get creative. This is my set-up

I put the pie in the microwave at 500 watts for about 30 minutes. It does a pretty decent job of cooking everything.

Now the reason that my pies have a tendency to turn out better than a lot of people's here is very simple: my toaster. It's just big enough to fit the pie plate. JUST. So after cooking in the microwave, I put the pie in the toaster on medium for another 10-15 to brown it and also to try to cook the bottom more. Pies here have a tendency to be rather soft on the bottom I think because of the way they're cooked.

Unfortunately for this pie, I made the crust a wee bit too big so it got shaved off when I put it in the toaster, ha ha

And that, my friends, is how you bake a pie at home in Japan. The real fun, of course, is in eating it

v(^_^)v

Sakura!

April is cherry blossom season in Japan, and up here in Takayama ours bloom near the end of the month. The peak was actually during last week, and with the rain we had over the weekend most of the petals are gone now. But lucky for you I had my camera out last week!

This beauty is in Kuguno, near the top of the enormous hill I have to climb twice a week to get to the junior high school

I saw this one in Furukawa, the town just north of Takayama, taken during the taiko festival I went to the weekend before last

Same tree after dark

This one is across the street from my apartment


And the rest are of Garyuzakura, the Sleeping Dragon Cherry Tree, in Miya. It's quite famous and very close to my apartment. So my usually very quiet neighborhood has been full of buses and tourists whom I love to surprise by getting off the train in Miya and walking home. Anyway, the tree is 1,100 years old, enormous, and supported by several wooden beams. Apparently it doesn't matter if you're a tree or a human; once you pass that millennial mark everybody needs a cane ^o^

I spent last Tuesday at MJH with the ichi and ni nen sei (7th and 8th grade in the US) painting pictures of the tree. Mother Nature was in a good mood and provided plenty of sunshine.... I actually came away from the experience slightly pinker than when I began ^_^




Several of the classes from Miya elementary also came on that day for hanami (flower-watching). This is the 5th grade

And a mix of JHS and elem


I got in on the flower-painting action as well

my painting half finished (and what the tree looks like in winter, ha ha)


and the finished product

Maybe not gallery-quality, but not bad for somebody who hasn't painted in like, 15 years, neh?

So that's how I spent a day of work. Out in the sunshine, painting a tree.

Yeay

Happy Birthday to ME!!

Spent my birthday at Miya elementary today. I can't imagine a better place to celebrate (or try to forget, ha ha) the day of your birth, away from home ^_^ I decided to spice up the regular stuff I had planned for English class, so we learned the birthday song (which surprisingly many of my students already knew) and Happy Birthday! And just before I left for the day, my kyoto sensei gave me omiyage as a present. Some kind of cracker with raisins (^_^)v

For the linguistically curious among you, in Japanese happy birthday is 誕生日おめぢとう！ (tanjoubi omeditou!)

And this is the present I got from the band of students I walked home with, in the rain, today



Hooray for 28