Japanese Cuisine: Tamago Miso Tsuke/Miso-pickled Egg Yolk

Eggs are one single ingredient used all over the World (except for the glacial caps mybe!), and people have come up with infinite ways of preserving them.
Tamago Miso Tsuke/卵黄味噌漬け is a popular way in Japan to preserve egg yolk in miso.
I decided to publish this very simple recipe as it could become useful for a tasty decoration!

INGREDIENTS:

-Raw eggs: 2
-Japanese sake: half a tablespoon
-Miso: 50 g
-Sugar: half a tablespoon

RECIPE:

-Mix miso, Japanese sake and sugar well.

-Line two cups (narrow bottom and wide top) with gauze cloth (first clean it in cold clean water and press out all water). Pour half of the miso mix on each.

-Wash the egg and wipe it clean of water. Use it to fashion a “bed” inside the miso.

-Break the egg and separate yolk from white. Drop the Egg yolk (only!) inside the miso bed. Cover with cellophane paper and leave inside the refrigeartor for 2 days.

-After the first two days take the cup out and turn the egg yolk over delicately with a spoon. Leave in the fridge for three~four more days.
It should be ready by then!
It can be safely preserved inside a tightly closed tupperware inside the fridge for up to ten days!

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sake, shochu and sushi

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17 Days and Counting...

It’s less than 17 days until the wedding, and we are still scrambling to get a few things finished up.

Back at my old DJ job, my boss promised me free DJ service for my wedding.  I have since left that job, but was told a few months ago the offer still stood.  Even so, I have still been a little leery as to whether or not he’ll come through.  Then I met a guy who started at the Profile as another in-house DJ alongside me.  I explained to him my situation and he said he’d love to DJ our dance.  Great!  I told my old boss thanks, but no thanks.  We’d found our guy.  Not an hour later, I found out our new DJ already has a commitment the same day as our wedding.  So I had to plead for my old DJ back.  And as of now, I’m still not really sure what’s going on.  So, if anyone out there knows somebody who can stand behind my laptop and monitor a playlist and make a few announcements, we’ll gladly pay them for their efforts!

Tomorrow after work, Lauren and I will travel to Marshall, MN to meet with our wedding officiant, Rev. Aaron Rush.  He will be traveling east from Avon, SD and we’ll meet halfway and have dinner and discuss plans for the wedding.

As for RSVPs, I am only waiting on two people who I actually think might come.  There are about 10 who are yet to respond, but they’re mostly people from Carpenter who I would be shocked to have see in attendance.  This whole RSVP thing was actually fun for me.  I enjoyed the suspense of waiting to see whose RSVPs we’d get in the mail each day.  They’re still trickling in 11 days after the deadline!

Meanwhile, the handful of co-workers I invited are getting excited for the wedding.  Our CEO from Japan is going to be there, and he and the company president are both getting hotel rooms nearby so they can get crazy that night.  It’s not just that these co-workers are coming, but they have told me time and time again that they’ve never been so excited for a wedding ever.  That’s a lot of pressure.  Jason, you’d better deliver with a best man speech that they’ll be talking about for decades.

We also had our visit to the liquor store last night to do some pricing.  I don’t want to spoil all of our liquor surprises, but it is a full open bar the whole night with beer, wine, and liquor.  We believe there will be two kegs, probably Premium and Summit EPA, a couple of our local faves.  And some of the wedding party have created specialty drinks that will be named after themselves on a very special menu I’ll whip up.

Finally, my vacation request was approved, and I will be away from the office from October 8-18, 11 whole days.  Part of that will be the wedding, part will be the honeymoon, and then there are four more days to lounge at home.  Awesome.

Volunteers Needed! In addition to a DJ, we are still looking for a few volunteers for other things.  We need 2 or 3 people to arrive to the church early and serve as parking attendants at the church lot.  We also need someone to videotape the wedding, either with my video camera or your own equipment.  And anyone who wants to volunteer to help me set up at the reception site the morning of the wedding, I am in charge of putting up the centerpieces and a few other things.  Thanks!  Please leave a comment here or e-mail me at glanzerr@gmail.com.

Game Centers in Japan

Missing so much the Game Centers in Tokyo and Nagoya. TAITO STATION is one of the most popular Game Centers in Akihabara. Like SEGA, they have a lot of levels with many different games.

Find three different Game Centers by myself while I was in Nagoya, on my last trip to Japan, and wasn’t that big as SEGA Akihabara is.

TAITO STATION had a gorgeous girl on the first floor, with a very long hair. She was really cute. And was my favorite floor, UFO Catchers!!!!

On this blog I showed some prizes that I got on UFO or I’ll show later:
- 9 Otsuka AI Bunnies;
- 1 To LOVE-RU Mug;
- 1 Shana Mug;
- 1 Sumeragi Noriega Figure;
- 1 Haruhi Figure;
- 6 Nendoroid Petits;
- 2 BLOODY MELT Figure;
- 1 Thousand Sunny Boat;
- 2 Walt Disney Bunnies;
- 1 Tiger of Pooh (forgot the name);

And A LOT OF Cellphone straps… that I don’t have idea where are they.

Phew, so it was easy for me to get a lot, wish you guys luck to get a lot too.

Si yo tuviera una escoba... - If I had a broom...

Os garantizo que la forma de trabajar que tienen los japoneses es a veces  un espectáculo. Siempre que paso junto a una obra me gusta pararme a curiosear como hacen los abueletes.

I can tell that the way that japanese work is sometimes a show. Everytime that I find a work site I like to stop and take a look just like grandpas do.

En materia de seguridad y limpieza en el trabajo a los japoneses no hay quien les gane. Siempre van perfectamente equipados y parece que siguen a rajatabla las reglas. Fuera de cámara había otros tres o cuatro operarios, dos de ellos dedicados exclusivamente a regular el tráfico de los peatones a pesar de que la acera era muy ancha.

When it comes to safety and cleanliness at work japanese are the winners. They are always perfectly full equipped and it looks like the follow the rules to the letter. Out of the shot there were three or four more workers, two of them in charge of regulating pedestrians’ traffic even though the sidewalk was really wide.

Este hombre de la foto se dedicaba a recoger el polvo que salía de la radial del otro. Se quedaron extrañados cuando les pregunté si les podía sacar una foto. ¿Una foto a qué?. Otra cosa interesante en las obras son las lámparas que usan por la noche. Siempre trabajan de noche en zonas no residenciales. Nuestro amigo Ale tiene unas fotos interesantes respecto al tema. También en la web de Héctor he encontrado algunos posts sobre el tema: Usando el casco y construyendo una casa en un día.

This man in the picture was collecting the dust coming from the radial saw. They were surprised when I asked if I could take a picture. A picture of what? Another interesting thing around work sites is the lamps they use at night. They always work at night time in non residential areas. Our friend Ale has some interesting pictures regarding this subject. I have also found some post about this matter in Héctor’s web: Wearing the helmet. You can also check this interesting post about speed construction in Osaka.

Tennis, Toyo Sleepover

I was too tired from last night to blog, since I just got back from a 24 hour sleepover with the students. O_O So starting from Tuesday:

Tuesday morning, I woke up early so I can catch a bus to ICU to play tennis with Mika and the Ono’s father. Jessica was my guide there, and since we arrived early, we got a tour of the campus. It’s a beautiful and huge campus, comparable to UC Davis’s size, but has 10% the student population of Davis (Davis has 20,000+, ICU has ~2000). When Mika and the others arrived, we played 3 sets of tennis =D

Me, Kanji, Mika, and Yukina's father

After a shower, I went shopping and back home to get ready to meet the students. We met them on the way to the SI student center, and then when we arrived, we played games as we waited for dinner. After dinner, we had a 2 hour sharing time from 7-9:30pm where we talked about our hobbies, favorite food, and summer activities. Afterwards, we had free time to talk, shower, play games, or play n64/NES. I stayed up playing so many games with the students until 3am. O_O We played Signs, Pabo Game, Big Booty, Wani Wani, and more. After going to sleep at 3am, I thought they would go home the next day, but when I woke up at 11am, they stayed with us until 5pm! So the sleepover was 24 long instead of just the night. O_O But it was a good time to bond with the students through games and talking. =) Later that night, we went to a ramen shop at 10pm at a mom & pop place, and came home. The girls came over to help clean Mike’s room out, so since we stayed up late cleaning, I wasn’t able to blog on Wednesday. =)

The students are happy to be able to spend the time with us on their summer vacation =)

Misaki is in the middle as we're playing the game "signs"

We played picture Shiritori =)

This video is of the students playing the Kani Kani game, then me panning around so you can see the SI student center =)

This video shows the students teaching Lyndsey a super popular game in Japan. I’m so going to learn this and teach people in America. =D

This video shows them adding a new rule to the already quite hard game. O_O

It was so good to finally be meeting students. The students were so friendly and I got to talk with a few of them over the day. Personally, my conversations were just friendly, but I saw Maria was able to get into some deep conversations with some of the girls, so I just prayed silently during the whole day for the Lord to bring these students to Himself. =)

Prayer Requests

1. May Matt and Robin finish their support by Thursday =)

2. May those Toyo students see the love that the Lord has for them

I added my teammate Lyndsey’s blog link on the right so you can check her blog to see our year through a different set of eyes. =)

Memory from Japan #6

My eyes hovered an inch or two above the clear spring water. I was looking straight down with a towel wrapped around my head. My legs folded below the water and my wrists rested comfortably on my knees. I tried hard to focus on the smooth rocks below but a small waterfall ensured my efforts were in vain. I could make out all the little details of the rocks, all the little imperfections and cracks,  but no matter how hard I tried I couldn’t focus. The ebb and flow of the water shaped and twisted the light of the immovable object I sat on.

I stopped my vain focusing and thought of three questions: Who was I? Who am I? Who will I be? Who I was can’t change, only how I see my past self. Who I am can change but it’s difficult and uncertain. But who I will be is something I can change with great ease. I thought of my future self and saw myself becoming that man. I drew a line in my mind from my future self to my present self and saw the path I had to take.

My focus came back to the water hovering in front of my eyes. As I focused on the water I could see the rocks clearly. With that I lifted my naked body out of the spring and breathed my first breathe.

shirahama: part two

Day two in Shirahama dawned bright and early with a phone call from Ben, and the realisation that I’m increasingly keen to get home – I’m still having fun, but I’m also looking forward to sleeping in my own bed, seeing my family and friends, being able to read and understand when people talk, eating something other than Japanese cuisine (I love it, but I could murder a good vegetable lasagne or fajita right now).

Still, I was determined to realise the vision that had brought me to Shirahama in the first place, namely of spending a day alternating between soaking in an open air onsen (hot spring bath), swimming in the sea and lying in the sun on a beach of pure white sand. Well the sun wasn’t showing its face and it was markedly cooler than when I’d been schlepping around Kyoto and Tokyo sightseeing (sod’s law). Not seeing an onsen immediately apparent on the beach, I figured there was more beach around the coast a bit, where my onsen would be waiting for me.

I followed the tourist map out of town and tried my best to stick to the shoreline, but it was increasingly dominated by private property. I found myself outside an onsen, but it wasn’t on the beach like the one I was looking for. After 40 minutes of walking along a road that was not friendly to pedestrians, I found myself at Senjo-jiki, or Thousand Tatami Mats, an outcrop of stratified rocks that are said to resemble a pile of tatami mats. I realised that there was no more beach to be had in this direction, and reached the conclusion that my walk had been in vain, that my onsen was waiting back at the beach I had just left and hiding somehow. Leaving the car park i saw a Nissan Figaro, which cheered me up as it always does.

Back on the beach I scanned every shack and shelter to see if I’d missed the onsen bath somehow, but nothing jumped out at me, so instead I turned my attentions to the last remaining shred of my vision: mother of us all, the sea. It looked pretty inviting, and there were people in the water so I wasn’t going to look like one of those nuts who jump in the sea in January. Still, there was a distinct lack of women in bikinis on the beach, and I felt very self-conscious in mine (I know, you’d think I’d be ready for a nudist beach by now, but no). I took the plunge, and it was bracing without being freezing, so I had a bit of a swim before realising that swimming in the sea if pretty boring on your own.

Disheartened, I headed back to my minshuku and promptly fell asleep. On waking two hours later, I flipped through my guide book and realised two important things: the minshuku had its own little onsen, and one of the guide’s recommended restaurants was on my tourist map. After a hot shower and a short soak in the very small hot tub, I headed out into the evening to find my restaurant.

I knew I was onto a winner when I arrived and there was a queue of about 10 Japanese people outside. Yes it meant waiting half an hour, but it was a balmy evening and I was quite content. Once inside I explained what I wanted with great difficulty to the waitress, and received a big bowl of excellent noodles, topped with prawn and vegetable tempura. I returned to the minshuku and readied myself for Hiroshima.