A Loaf Story

Lately, I have been reading a lot of food blogs and tons of them mention a recipe for No Knead Bread. Well, I got a craving for homemade bread. I actually love kneading dough and don't have the patience for a 20 hour rising time, so I made a plan old white loaf tonight. The most PERFECT loaf ever--it rose beautifully, and the texture was perfect. I popped the loaf pan into our combination microwave/oven with eager anticipation. Surely, if it looked so beautiful going in, it would be amazing coming out, right? Wrong. The bread had risen to perfection, but alas, our oven is the size of a microwave (actually, it IS a microwave). My perfect loaf ended up completely burnt on the outside, as it was almost touching the roof of the oven, and completely gooey on the inside after fifteen minutes in the oven. So, I am missing a regular size oven tonight. There goes my hopes of an angel food cake for breakfast...I mean, birthdays.

Here is our sad little oven. On the upside, it's a great microwave. If you press the orange button, your food will be nuked until it's hot and ready, thanks to a nifty little heat sensor.

Cash=Handful

I will stop myself from making a "handful of Cash" joke! Here are a few recent pics of Cash. He has just recently mastered standing up and is so proud of himself! He is such a happy, pleasant baby and gets to be more and more fun every day. His favorite things now are: eating off of mommy's plate, attempting to wave, biting things that shouldn't be bitten, pulling up on things that shouldn't be pulled up on, and unplugging the drain stopper in the bathtub as soon as he gets in the tub. We are loving it!


Look at me!

Our Temple Trip

On Saturday, we were able to make a trip to the Fukuoka temple with our branch. Our branch goes to the temple six times a year. It was Culture Day, so we had the day off. We left at midnight and got to Fukuoka around 7 a.m. We went with our boss to cut costs, as it costs around $100 to cross the bridge off of Shikoku island (one way!), and there are numerous toll highways along the way. It was a fun trip. Fox and I took turns watching Cash and going to a session. It was so nice to be off of Shikoku island and to see some different sights. We even got to go to Costco, where we found oatmeal, beans, tortilla chips, and macaroni and cheese. Hooray!

Here is a picture of the Fukuoka temple. It's a mini-temple in downtown Fukuoka.


This is Steve, another teacher at our school, and his wife, Sachiko. They got married in the Fukuoka temple about a month ago.


Sunset at the junction of the islands:



The Kanmon bridge, which connects Kyushu and Honshu. Nearby, there is also a highway tunnel that goes under the sea!


Along the way, we stopped at several rest areas, which we were very impressed with. Each rest area had huge, nice bathrooms, several restaurants, and even cribs for babies! In the parking lot, families and truck drivers were sound asleep in their cars. The ladies' bathrooms had individual vanity stations, fresh flowers, and toilets that had "flushing sound" volume control buttons, for those people who like a quiet flushing sound. I love Japan!

Harry Potter Controversy

Alright, I know that this has nothing to do with us being in Japan, but I wanted to weigh in on the latest Harry Potter news. Some of you may not know this, but I actually am a really big fan of the HP series, both books and movies. Another thing that some of you may not know is that JK Rowling outed Hogwart's headmaster and all-around great wizard Albus Dumbledore as a homosexual at a Q&A session she had at Carnagie Hall last week. This has been really big news on literary websites.

Before I go any further, I just want to say that I have nothing against the homosexual community. I feel that there are wonderful people who are homosexuals, and I do not feel like their private lives have to affect their friendships with me in any way. That said, I have to express a great deal of disappointment in Rowling.



She has defended her statement by saying that Dumbledore is her character, that he is what he is, and that she can write whatever she wants about him. I agree. But I feel that her method was irresponsible and unkind. If she truly wanted to have a homosexual character in her series then why did she hide that fact until months after the final book hit print? She claims that she only mentioned it because she was asked a direct question about Albus' love life at Carnagie Hall. I feel that by then, the position is too moot to discuss. By waiting to reveal this character's sexual orientation, Rowling was protecting her sales. The fact that Dumbledore is gay does not hurt the story of Harry's maturation in any way. But the same fact has a huge potential for crippling the sale of her very last book. By waiting until after she has raked in her millions for the final chapter to drop such a bomb, it's almost as if Rowling was trying to tell the gay community "I'm fine with you, but not fine enough to make it obvious or supportive in any way."

My second gripe is that the revelation really has nothing to do with the main storyline at all. This is information that does not affect Harry's quest for belonging in the early novels nor his quest for revenge in the later ones. So why tell it? Why ruin the fun of sitting with your friends and reminiscing about favorite chapters? Why make it so that the next time you read the books, you can't help but have an annoying aspect that the author threw out so cavalierly changing your entire perspective? Rowling has made it so that fans cannot have their own opinions about Dumbledore. She has ignored the fact that this particular issue is still a hot button for many people. AND she has neglected to consider that this revelation about Dumbledore's character throws a somewhat inappropriate and unnerving spin on the dynamics between his and Harry's relationship.

I love the books and plan to keep them forever and read them to my children, but I am incredibly disappointed that the author would try to force such irrelevant interpretation on the readers after the fact rather than allowing us to see, discover, and adjust to this aspect of the novels as we read along.

I am including the web addresses of some articles that I found interesting:

http://media.www.dailynorthwestern.com/media/storage/
paper853/news/2007/10/25/Play/Gay-Dumbledore.Just.
Doesnt.Make.Sense-3055880.shtml

http://www.efluxmedia.com/news_JK_Rowling_Stunned
_By_Fans_Reaction_To_Gay_Dumbledore_09970.html

Halloween in Japan!!

It is that time of year where we all pay homage to the gods of Nestle and Hershey by trying to induce sugar comas on the kids that bother us in our neighborhoods the other 364 days of the year. Here in Japan, familiar candies are hard to come by. WE can find full candy bars like Snickers and Kit Kats, but they each cost about a dollar and ten cents (for a normal-sized bar... there is no concept of King Size here). We love the fact that there are around thirteen flavors of Kit Kats here. Here are two that I like (Amy could go either way with these):



Yes, That is a Caramel Kit Kat. Me likey.



Now before you grimmace and shriek at the god-slaying concept of combining life-giving chocolate with one of THE MOST bitter fruits on the planet, take a moment to remember that I do not finish things that I put in my mouth if they make me want to gag. I ate this whole bar as if it were going to run away if I loosened my grip on it.

And what would Halloween be if there was not a gaggle of kids dressed up in all sorts of costumes. Now Halloween has not really caught on here in Japan the way it has in America. The people here would certainly NEVER allow their kids to knock on their neighbor's door and ask for food, regardless of the junkfoodiness-to-holidayiness ratio involved in the act. But, they love (read: "show up in hordes that act without restraint or compassion for the poor schmoe trying to MC the thing") parties. I was impressed with how many people showed up to the Halloween party that we had at our church last night. Most of the people that came were students at our school, so it turned out to be part Branch party and part MIA party. The kids loved dressing up and really went all out for it. Observe:


Kako (left) came dressed as a character from an anime that I didn't recognize. Wika (center) was a princess. Note the expression of sheer joy on Kako's face that is a result of having more sugar than blood in your blood.


Chinatsu put a lot of effort into her witch costume, so much in fact that she did not want to be touched out of fear that someone might disrupt the perfection of her costume.

And what blog about Halloween would be complete without a gaggle of shots of the most important man in Japan... CASH?!?!?!?


Cash was a Dinosaur for Halloween


A darn-cute Dinosaur!

We'll try to get some more pictures of him up soon. He is worth seeing at this stage of his development from pupa to larvae.
~Fox

Autumn Fest

About a week ago, we went to a Chosa (Harvest) Festival in the town of Toyohama. Around this time, each town or neighborhood has their own harvest festival to pay tribute to their neighborhood shrine and honor the gods of harvest. In this festival, there were about twenty different 2-ton real-gold-tassled floats that community members parade around the neighborhood before heading up to the local shrine, and then they swing it around the town square to pay tribute to three main gods. The floats are huge, heavy, and wheeled by a group of about fifty or more people (mostly men) each. Occasionally, the men would hoist the float off the wheels and move the giant float with their own strength. To dull the pain of moving a 2-ton float, most of the men got drunk. So, it was pretty funny.
Here is one of the floats:

You stare at me, I stare at you:

Cash loves Nauto. Nauto loves girls. Girls love Nauto holding an American baby!

The floats light up at night--when the real fun begins!

Fox tries to pull a float without the help of alcohol:

Family Pics

Here are a few recent family pics. Just thought I'd share:
Cash and Mommy have matching jammies!


Cash hanging with Dad at the Autumn Festival:


All three of us--for once!


At the beach in Toyohama: