Took a shot at making homemade kaisendon 海鮮丼 (various sashimi on rice) today, think it turned out fair legit. I’ma show you a just how easy it is make your own too!
Now this recipe is actually different from the super pretty one I made above but its all the same. Most supermarkets here will stock kaisendon sashimi kits, they basically just include サーモン (salmon), まぐろ (tuna) and 鯛 (sea bream) that have been cut up into bite sized chunks. Unlike the super fancy kaisendon above this one only set me back about 400円 for the fish. I picked up a packet of Kaisendon no tare 海鮮丼のたれ (soy based seasoning for the kaisendon) while I was grabbing the fish, it can either be used to marinate the sashimi before it is placed upon the rice or pored over the top once it is assembled. Here is one of the little packets of the sauce. Tare たれ is used in a huge array of Japanese dishes from nabe to sashimi to yakiniku, and is essentially flavored or thickened soy sauce with added dashi, vinegar, etc. That said each variation is a little different depending on the dish it is to be used with. I really like sushi rice so I decided to make some to go underneath the fish. Its super easy to do, this is the 米酢 (rice vinegar) that I like to use, you simply add it to the freshly steamed rice with a little sugar and salt straight out of the rice cooker. http://www.wikihow.com/Make-Sushi-Rice But i don’t need to get into that. And here is the finished product, garnish with some shredded nori 海苔 (dried seaweed) and a little wasabi, Enjoy!
It’s that time of year where our old JET’s are leaving our community to make way for the new arrivals coming in August.
Annually we hold a large event to farewell our friends prior to their departure and this year I was on the leavers party organizing committee. We decided upon a venue in Harborland called Cafe Fish, a wedding reception that could hold the 100 or so guests of the evening.
The party is always an emotional event, this year in particular it is with a heavy heart we are saying our farewells to many of the great pillars of our community. Although we encountered a few hiccups along the way, more or less I would consider the event a great success.
A tradition alongside the party is the screening of a farewell video during the midway point of the event, I took it upon myself to make the video this year. It was a labour of love taking months of effort accumulating over 1000 photos and editing them together. I am very proud of the results, and it was with great relief to see it well received on the evening.
Without further a due, please enjoy the 2014 Kobe JET Leavers Video.
If you’re interested the leavers videos from 2012 can be found HERE and and 2013 HERE 🙂
Where have I been you ask, did I drop off the face of the earth? Yes and no….. Over the Christmas and New Years period I returned home to the down under to spend the holidays with my family in Melbourne.
Now I did the same trip last year and expect I will do much the same this coming Christmas. However the relationship developed with a country left behind in lieu of another is a bittersweet one, the return to said country equally so.
Upon leaving Australia after my last trip I retained a residual distaste for the country, questioning whether I would ever want to return to live there in the future. Despite having spent a fantastic few weeks with my friends and family, I found myself longing to return to Japan. This year however I have returned to Kobe in quite the opposite headspace.
For so long firm in my mind was the firm belief that I was a black sheep, not only amongst my family and peers but also within my country of origin, that I was somehow different from everyone else’s.
If there is anything that can shatter long held beliefs and redefine a person it’s two things, time and distance. As the saying goes ‘you ain’t know what you got till it’s gone’.
I guess the major turning point for me was finding myself begin to contemplate my future, not in Japan but post-JET. I guess seeing my long term friends my age back home getting on with their lives caused me to reflect upon my own situation. What am I doing in Japan? What kind of career do I want in the future? Shall I return to university for further study? What will my life have shaped up to be by my later 20s?
Over the past few weeks I have sincerely had some of the greatest times of my life, simply enjoying the company of the family and friends I left behind half a world away. From this experience I experienced a major shift in my mindset of what exactly Japan and the JET program mean to me.
Having had aspired to reaching my alleged ‘ultimate goal’ of living in Japan for almost a decade. I can now see with definite clarity that I had put the country on a pedestal, the way one might put a pretty girl.
Now I’m not saying I thought the country was all Sushi, anime and geisha as many do who have never been fortunate enough to visit Japan. Nor would I want to downplay the profound respect I have developed for its people and culture. But instead I would like to put forth that yeah, if you get an awesome placement like Kobe on the JET program (or even if you don’t), Japan can be everything that you ever dreamed of and more. But at the end of the day the experience like anything in life is going to be what you make of it.
I know I have said this in past posts but you can grow up and discover where you want to go in life quite rapidly here, today is the 588th day of my journey here so I would hope to have made some progress. Whether that is the product of conquering the hardships of living alone in a foreign country for the first time or unique to JET I couldn’t say. However I am a firm believer that this experience has helped set me on the right track to becoming the man I always needed to become.
I arrived in Kobe coming up 2 years ago a person I can look back upon with distaste, self-righteous, unempathetic and stubborn as hell. I like to think I’ve made a little progress since then, yet I realize the road ahead is long but if I have gained any insight it’s this:
“Real knowledge is to know the extent of ones ignorance”
-Confucius
I don’t want to say that I have come to some great epiphany either, rather that I am just walking my own path one step at a time learning with each one.
What I have learnt is to truly appreciate and treasure those you who love you, whether they live next door or a world away. Rather than worrying about winning the affection of others and what they think of you, simply be the best you you can be. Show a sense of empathy, respect for others opinions and a sincere interest in what those around you say and you will never want for company.
I have met so many amazing people in Japan from all corners of the earth in the short part of my life that I have been here, but I will be sure never to forget those friends and family I had in Melbourne neither.
To all that I saw and spent time with during my visit home I thank you for making my trip amazing. Particularity the efforts of my parents who took every step imaginable to do anything and everything to make my visit home a memorable one.
Kobe Luminarie 神戸ルミナリエ has been a grand event held in Sannomiya the central district of Kobe, for around 2 weeks every December since 1995.
The lights were donated by the Italian government to commemorate the Great Hanshin Earthquake which had devastated much of Kobe that year, resulting in the deaths of around 4600 residents.
The display includes around 200,000 hand painted lights which have been lit every year as a tourist attraction to draw people back to Kobe after the disaster. In addition the event acts as a fundraiser to help cover the 100 billion dollars of damages that were caused by the Earthquake.
Unfortunately I missed out of seeing the lights last year,as the event conflicted with my return to Australia over the Christmas break. This year however I was lucky enough to check it out with my good mate Pete!
Around this time of the year, glancing at my Facebook feed, it seems like pretty much every JET in Kobe seems to head over at some point, take the exact same photos and upload an album of them :p
Protip: If you are attending this event, don’t be a stooge and line up with the masses!
Especially on the weekends people will wait for hours and hours just to walk down the shopping street!
The thing about Japan is the average person here doesn’t really break the rules, so there is little to no security at things like this. If you simply just walk along parallel to the enormous lines of people, there is really nothing stoping the clever of us from just slipping into the river of people at the entrance of the event.
So I was quite ecstatic when the coach of the track and field club (who I have been training with everyday) finally asked me to go swimming with the students this morning. The school pool has sat tantalizingly cool and refreshing across from my desk but realistically a world away up until now!
Anyhow I just finished up spending the last 90minutes swimming with my kids, playing games and whatnot. Now with what feels like retinal chemical burns, it’s painfully clear why the boys laughed at me when I said I didn’t need goggles…… Shouganai live and learn ^^;
The basics of the the game are as follows.
Prior to the event ALTs can put together teams of up to 8 people with a theme of some description, as points are awarded for ‘best’ dressed’ crazy costumes are a must.
Teams assemble at ‘tits park’ at 7PM of the night of the event and are given a list of clues to solve ‘the mystery’ by interviewing ALTs playing on the ‘home team’. As one successfully interviews ‘suspects’ they receive more and more clues, meanwhile additional points can be scored for taking specific ‘crazy photos’.
Anyhow this years events theme was ‘Digital Kobe’. The following letter was the letter we received prior to its commencement.
Greetings,
First, on behalf of Aztechnology, I would like to thank you for volunteering for this peculiar mission. As you may or may not know, we function as the technological intelligence and advancement sector under the US Air Force. We create anything and everything from programs to Nano technology.
Recently, we’ve had a disturbance in our Master Server; –programs have started to malfunction or disappear. Then about 2 days ago a virus appeared in the system. It started rapidly corrupting files. We aren’t sure who’s behind it but whoever it is hides their tracks very well.Our biggest concern is our multi-billion dollar AI program N.A.V.I (Neural Artificial Visual Interface). For some strange reason she’s appearing and disappearing from the system as if she’s hiding. When we can access her she functions fine. So we are sending you and your teams into the server. Projecting human forms into the digital world is still a little new to us. However, we’re sure you’ll be fine.
You have 3 missions:
1.) Find out who’s behind this. Programs ALWAYS leave a bit of their coding somewhere; search for them. Also some of our programs are still functional but not accessible from here. Find those programs and get whatever information you could get from them before they are corrupted or officially off-line.
2.) Find NAVI, each group that finds her and take a “Screen Cap” saves part of her data.
3.) Find the virus dubbed “the Black Plague. We don’t expect you to terminate him but by taking a screen cap you will isolate him in an area for about 10 minutes.
I’ve created a anti-virus who will be your point of contact in the digital world. Her name is H.A.V.O.K (Hatter’s Anti-Viral Optimal Killer – Yes! We like acronyms !) Sadly, she was created in a rush and full of bugs. A patch was created for her so she won’t mistake you for viruses.
I’ve already created a direct link to your team captains. I’ll try to keep you informed about what’s happening out here.
Safe journey and good luck
Signed
J. Hatter
Chief Technician
So basically this years ‘interviewees’ were actually all computer programs. Each had a unique interface and teams had to use the proper technical commands to effectively extract information regarding ‘The Black Plague’.
The ever amazing organizer JoJo
Alas with the following information at hand we set upon our task, meanwhile Chief Technician J. Hatter frequently sent updates via a Captains thread regarding the status of the viruses infection and whereabout!
Now on to my team!!!
This year I wanted to put my own crew together and so I set about rounding up the creative types from Gakuentoshi uniting us under the banner of the greatest cartoon ever made!
What time is it? Adventure Time!!
(Really Richie and I just wanted to be Finn and Jake as we find their characters very ‘relatable’)
Meet the crew!
Finn and Fiona
BMO and Lumpy Space Princess
Princess Bubblegum and The Ice King
Jake the Dog
And last but not least Marshal Lee
For those of you who don’t know what Adventure Time is…… for shame!
It is an amazing cartoon that resinates with demographic decades above its target market, allowing 20/30 somethings a nostalgic adventure into their childhood imaginations and so has gained has a colossal fan base (myself included)!
Here is the video of this years event with the results. Our team came in 3rd place however we would have got the most points for photo objectives ^^
We also won best video for our hilarious Harlem Shake!!! (Feat. Drunk Salary men)
And now onto the photos!!
Being naughty on the train on the way there.
Hugging a stranger.
Kumi-taiso #1
Kumi-taiso #2
Kumi-taiso #3
Vitruvian Man
Under an umbrella
Eating an onigiri
Totem pole
In a guillotine
Man on a scaffold
Torii barricade
Invisible bike
In water
Fighting
Chugging a can if drink in front of a combini
Power Ranger posing
Biggest phallus
Hengao-ing
Face covered in paper
On a pachinko machine
On one team mate
In the air
2 girls one pockey
In a locker
Does this make me any less of a man
It’s a new fashionable hat
Between to pillars
Twin elephants
This is why we can’t have nice things
Call me maybe
In an elevator
Pig chef
The iron throne
You call that dancing, this is dancing
A boy peeing
This is going to hurt
Heaviest breasts
I am superman
Kissing a rival team
Haduken
Nanpa-IMF an ojiichan
Happi coats
Inappropriate use of nameko
Dancing with a stranger
Kibasen with strangers
Of course there were another 8 teams we were racing against, check out some of their awesome costumes.
ALT: Arkham League of Terror
Hula hula nuku nuku apua’a
Kitchen Invaders
And of course a special mention to the ‘the Black Plague’ Jarryd!!
Today my Tuesday shougakkou 小学校(elementary school)made up a special kyuushoku 給食 (school lunch) for the teachers on account of me, as the kids one had shellfish in it which I am allergic to.
Having had a near death experience eating school lunches in the past it’s nice to see they look out for me.
So far 3 of the teachers have thanked me for having allergies since today’s lunch is abnormally delicious (^^;;
Today at my Tuesday shougakkou we had a 避難訓練 (disaster drill), after a speah from the visiting fire fighters. The ‘Kobe City Fire Band’ put on a brass band concert for the students, mid way through the set the conductor asked the kids if they like Kyary Pamyu Pamyu before suddenly started busting out Ninjari Bang Bang めっちゃびっくりした！
Came across this on one of my students worksheets when correcting last fridays lesson on comparatives vs superlatives, I swear this kid is a daft punk fan and trolling me!!
Took a shot at making homemade kaisendon 海鮮丼 (various sashimi on rice) today, think it turned out fair legit. I’ma show you a just how easy it is make your own too!
Now this recipe is actually different from the super pretty one I made above but its all the same. Most supermarkets here will stock kaisendon sashimi kits, they basically just include サーモン (salmon), まぐろ (tuna) and 鯛 (sea bream) that have been cut up into bite sized chunks. Unlike the super fancy kaisendon above this one only set me back about 400円 for the fish. 
I picked up a packet of Kaisendon no tare 海鮮丼のたれ (soy based seasoning for the kaisendon) while I was grabbing the fish, it can either be used to marinate the sashimi before it is placed upon the rice or pored over the top once it is assembled. 
Here is one of the little packets of the sauce. Tare たれ is used in a huge array of Japanese dishes from nabe to sashimi to yakiniku, and is essentially flavored or thickened soy sauce with added dashi, vinegar, etc. That said each variation is a little different depending on the dish it is to be used with. 
I really like sushi rice so I decided to make some to go underneath the fish. Its super easy to do, this is the 米酢 (rice vinegar) that I like to use, you simply add it to the freshly steamed rice with a little sugar and salt straight out of the rice cooker. http://www.wikihow.com/Make-Sushi-Rice But i don’t need to get into that. 
And here is the finished product, garnish with some shredded nori 海苔 (dried seaweed) and a little wasabi, Enjoy!
nihonomnom 