The Bread Blog!

I have to decided to devote this blog to yet another burning question many of you have: What do I eat? The simple answer, that takes up one-third of the week is bread because I eat it with peanut butter for breakfast everyday. Yup, plain old white bread. It isn't like I have much choice... Take a look at the bread aisle at the store I like to visit most often. At the head of the aisle there are two brands of bread. Down the side are more choices of rolls and sweet things. There is something like a baguette sometimes, but it just doesn't look right to me.

Back to the two brands at the head of the aisle. The red package is more expensive than the blue; I do not know why. It only occupies the top shelf. I do not think the blue is bad so that is what I buy and eat. (The bread packages are one of the few things that do not have a description in English, but as it is obviously bread, that is not a problem!) The packages all come in the same weight, but you have your choice of five or six slices in a package at the same price. That means if you buy five slices your slices will be thicker so that your package equals the weight of the six slices. I go for the six slices because the bread is already sliced pretty thick.

Yes, you get six slices in a bag; not a loaf. And no heels. I wonder what happens to the heels of the bread here... A friend told me that they are anti-crust here. You've got me.

At home, I pop the bread in the microwave and hit the toast button that is at the bottom of the many buttons of my microwave (I have no clue what most of them do!). I wait about 6 or 7 minutes (I should have timed it for this blog) and bam, I have toast done English style--that is, toasted on one side.

My stove also has a toast function, a little area under the two burners, but I have not tried it yet. I'll get back to you on that.

Yes, I can get peanut butter here.
Unfortunately, my favorite store doesn't seem to have it. I made two mistakes and bought something (the left jar) called labelled whipped (a light, sweeter peanut butter type of thing) and something (right jar) labeled peanut cream (like an oozing peanut butter). These packages are mostly in Japanese, but I should have realized that what was in English was accurate. The peanuts on the package of cream (right jar) really helped me fall for it (and it is the worst of the two!).

I will have to run over to the other store--the true grocery store--today to get real peanut butter, because I am out. This small Peanuts jar (I don't know what to make of that branding: Peanuts brand peanut butter...) had almost two weeks worth of peanut butter. That is a regular size price tag on the jar to give you an idea of size. Pretty expensive too, at 285 Yen ($2.50 at the current 115 yen to $1US) but it was good at least. My only choice appears to be smooth. The bread was either 79 Yen ($0.70), just so you know.

There are, apparently, other ways to get peanut butter--including a Costco near Fukuoka city--that I will investigate later.

(One quick note, all the photos here were taken with my wonderful phone. I sent my camera to get fixed because I cracked the screen and I hope to have it back soon. In the meantime, please excuse the flash-less pictures!)

Quick update, Monday, August 27, 2007: I went to the store yesterday after posting the main article and found a different kind of peanut butter; it even came in creamy and crunchy! The bread at the `real grocery store' was twice as expensive, and they didn`t have my blue brand. I sure hope they aren`t putting sawdust in my brand to make it cheaper!

My Apartment

I know that everyone is just dying from curiosity: What does my apartment look like? I`ll answer that with pictures and words, but first let me tell you some important things. First, I do not live in a city. I live in a rural area that is about 20 minutes by train to the nearest big city. Looking out my window I cannot see any buildings higher than mine (three floors). There are rice paddies to the south and lots of wires. Lots and lots of hanging wires. No unobstructed views around here. (I should say to the east, across the train tracks there is a hospital that is five floors and it is a taller building than mine; I just don`t have a view of it.) Other people live in the Inaka (the countryside) too, but many people live in a city near other English speakers. I am alone except for a Kiwi (a New Zealander) who lives 10 minutes away by bike. It sounds to me like the people in the city tend to have dirtier apartments!

The first area, and one of the most important, is the entryway (genkan). Here you take your shoes off when entering. There is a appropriate way to do it: kneel, take off your shoes, turn them around so they face the door. I don`t do it at my place of course; nor do I offer slippers for my guests. But you still have to take off your shoes! One nice thing in my apartment is a small wooden cabinet in the entryway that has shelves for shoes. My big shoes don`t fit perfectly on all the shelves, but then again, I don`t use all the shelves. If you take two steps from the shoe area, you can go left to my bedroom or right to the bathroom. Keep going and you`ll go into the kitchen.

My bedroom is nice, it has a bed, a wardrobe and a traditional closet (sliding doors of regular height--about my height, not quite 6`--hide a huge area with one shelf halfway up and another smaller set of doors are above the main doors with another shelf area). The bedroom is 6 tatami in size. Tatami are traditional mats. When I tell others my bedroom (and my living room) is 6 tatami, they automatically know the size. The picture at Wikipedia is exactly the layout of my 6 (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tatami)--wish I had those beautiful doors in my room! The door frames in my place are just barely over my head. If you are taller than me, you will be doing a lot of ducking in my place.

The bathroom is nice. Like the bedroom it has a solid sliding door fusuma (the bedroom has two actually).

(Forgive the dim picture of the bathroom sink.) To the left of the sink is the toilet. It has one of those wonderful efficient tanks that with which you can regulate how much water goes in and you can wash your hands on top, too. (Toilets are going to have to have their own blog, don`t worry.) To the right of the sink is the shower/bathtub. The shower area is nice enough, I don`t have to crouch much to get m head under the nozzle. The hot water heater is on the porch near the washer, so it can take a while to get the hot water to the bathroom. It is a stand-in-shower area and you have to cross through it to get to the bathtub. I am not so sure what I think about the bathtub. For anyone to use it, they would have to sit with their knees bent to their chin. That is fine with me though as I actually never used the bathtub in my last apartment in New York City where I lived for three years.


If you ignore the bathroom and the bedroom, you`ll go into the kitchen/dining area. It is the biggest room in the house. All the amenities you could ever need--except a real oven. I have a two burner stove, a microwave, a rice cooker, a 3/4 size fridge and a sink. What? No toaster? Don`t worry, the microwave does that just fine. The kitchen, like the living room, has a sliding glass door that goes to the balcony. Right outside the kitchen is my washing machine. In the picture you can see one of the plants that the community center gave me. Very nice people there! They also gave me an electric kettle that looks nothing like a kettle and which I never use--I just boil water on the stove.

Also in the kitchen pictures you can see my futon--that long white padded looking thing. That is the traditional Japanese bed. Mine doesn`t fold up, so I usually throw it to one side in the kitchen. Why the kitchen, you ask? Because I am to lazy to take it to the bedroom. Now, I am sure you are really confused. Why don`t I take it to the bedroom? After all, all isn`t that where I sleep? And don`t I have a normal bed too? Yes, I have a normal bed, but right now it is to HOT to sleep anywhere but the living room where the A/C unit is. I drag the futon into the living room, slide the shoji (the sliding-glass doors with the small frames) shut and kick the A/C to 26C and sleep there.

My apartment is plenty large for me. Next door to me is a family of four. I am sure the little ones share a room. What is the living room for me is probably a bedroom for them.

Welcoming Inkai

And this was just the start. There were seven cold dishes on my plate: 1) sashimi in cabbage salad, 2) crab claws, 3) a whole fish, cut in half,with fish cakes 4) octupus, 5) sweet beans, 6) a whole shrimp with vegetables, 7) salted herring (I think!). In the front middle you can see a beer glass and a saki glass (the little blue one turned upside down): whichever one you chose, they would keep filling for you. If you wanted tea, they could do that too. Right behind the glasses is a glass bowl; this has the sweet beans in it--not baked beans mind you, something completely different.

Later they brought everybody a steak (I think, I didn`t try it) and I got a salad with tomato wedges and eggs. After that they brought us a small bowl of soup with sprouts and chicken. Then they brought us two slices of melon (they call it pumpkin but it was green--I think pumpkin is a catch all phrase for melons). Finally they brought us some sweet rice cakes.

They were really upset that I could barely eat half! I kept trying to tell them I was full but they didn`t believe me!




This was the welcoming Inkai for me and the farewell for my predecessor, Eric (August 9, 2007). Our immediate supervisors came, as did the community center manager and the principal and assistant principal from the jr. high school. Also there were a bunch of people who I didn`t know. They were, apparently, principals from the local elementary schools. Guess they were there as functionaries.





Two days later was the real party.

The community center had an Inkai too, this was not only for Eric and I, but also another girl who was leaving. Almost everybody from the community center and its library showed up--about 18 of us. The food was delivered in increments. Beer was ordered by pressing one of the buzzers around the wall (you can see one way in the back of this picture with its accompanying sign). We spent the night eating, drinking and butchering each others` langauge. Great fun. This is Tahara and I. Kampai!!!