Cooking Konnyaku: A Video

It reminds me of Tofu in how you are supposed to use it because it acts like a sponge and soaks up whatever flavor it is in.  It has a weird but interesting texture and reminds me of squishy fishing lures.  Like exactly like them.   I may try to cut a piece of Konnyaku into the shape of a fishing lure.   We’ll see.   Also apparently it is so low in nutritional value for anything that supposedly a guy tried to lose weight by eating nothing but Konnyaku and died of malnutrition.  Crazy.  Here’s the video:

Konnyaku: Weirdest Health Food in Japan

For my school lunches, I don’t know what I’m eating about thirty percent of the time.  That is not an exaggeration;  most of it is good even though I don’t know what it is, some of it is pretty terrible.  It took me a long time to realize a particular garnish was in fact tiny baby fish.  For about a month I had been eating a grayish chewy food and I finally had to ask what it was.  Konnyaku.

from justhungry.com:

Continue reading

First Day in Japan

Most of my posts will be few and far between until I get set up with internet of my own, which will hopefully happen this upcoming week.  For now I’m using the internet at my host families house for brief periods here and there.  Also, I cant find the apostrophe on this keyboard, so colon it is. update: Found the apostrophe.

My first day started off without too much of a sense of nervousness, I was used to being around people speaking different languages.  Even being one of about four white people on the plane didn’t phase me. It wasn’t until interaction with Japanese that I really realized how different, and tough this is going to be.

On the plane I put on the included headphones and turned on the movies on the screen on the chair in front of me.  About a minute later the stewardess, Eba, said sorry, a bunch of words I didn’t understand and then nearly forced the remote from my hands as I took the headphones off.  Noooo idea why as I looked and nearly everyone else on the plane had theirs on.  A half hour later I tried again and was in the clear.

Upon landing, Karen and I got our bags and headed for the exit in hopes that there would be people waiting for us.  Two gentlemen holding *kofu board of education* signs were waiting and helped us with our bags. (I can:t find the quotation marks at the moment).   Matsuda and Tamura were very nice but spoke little english.  On the bus ride we had lots of forms to fill out.
Continue reading