Hive

I was getting sick of not knowing what to do with anything in the supermarkets over here, so I’ve been trying out some Japanese recipes. First try was last week when I cooked oyako-don. It’s basically chicken & egg “soup” poured over rice, and manages to be much more delicious than that sounds. I’d had it before at restaurants at home so I thought it’d be reasonable to try — at least I’d know if I’d got it right.

If I do say so myself, it turned out well! Surprisingly quick, remarkably easy and most importantly very tasty! I will definitely make it again.

Best of all, the speed, ease and simplicity of ingredients puts it into “emergency dinner” territory. I’d heartily suggest you give it a shot.

I followed a synthesis of these two recipes and came up with something like:

Thom’s meta-Oyakodon (reader’s digest version)

Boil up roughly equal parts soy sauce, mirin, and fish stock. Simmer cubes of chicken & some sliced spring onion in this soup until it’s just about cooked. When the chicken’s ready, chuck in 4 eggs lightly beaten together, and let the mix set for a minute or three. Serve on rice!

That most accurately conveys the ease of the meal.

Click through for a proper version of the recipe (and more of my poor food photography).

Read more »

On sunday, Alice & I went to Matsushima (松島), one of the Three Famous Sights of Japan (which people mention to you every 5 minutes over here). We were taken around by Emi, Alice’s new language exchange partner. That was great because she’s a local and could tell us a lot about what was around, which always makes it more interesting.

It was really beautiful, and though the weather/lighting wasn’t that great, I took some photos.
Read more »

I ranted earlier about how difficult it is to find wi-fi around the place in Sendai. I’ve since done some more proper reconnaissance and am currently happily blogging away from a café. Two catches:

• It’s not free
• It’s not the café I’m supposed to be at.

Short version: Free wi-fi is, indeed, hard to come by. I’ve found one café that is confirmed (according to the staff) that they “normally” have free wi-fi, however as of time of writing, it’s broken. There is also a Belgian beer bar with confirmed free wi-fi, but it’s unusably slow (timeouts were common), the environment isn’t really conducive to work, and the beers are expensive anyway.

However, a few places have the for-pay Fon wi-fi service. Which means if you’re willing to spend a non-extortionate amount of cash, there are 3 or 4 cafés scattered around the city where you can access the internet.
Read more »

Merzbow is a noise artist who I’ve been interested in for a while. While I wouldn’t exactly say I like his music — it’s extraordinarily unpleasant — it’s fascinating, and sometimes in life you just need some criminally abrasive noise. Whether it’s been a bad day and you need the rest of the world to disappear for a while, or the party’s gone on too long and you want people to clear out, Merzbow will eradicate most things. It’s like the CLR Clear of music.

When I heard he was playing, I ummed and aahed about it for a while — was it really worth going overnight to Tokyo just to see this one show?

Read more »

Moving house, questing for connectivity, and assorted photos. With bonus weird seafood!

Read more »