New Year's Eve

One of the best ways to see the old year out and the New Year in is to get together with good friends! We visited our friends' house to have the last dinner of the year 2006 together with some foods and wines!
Tonight's special was the NHK Year-end Grand Song Festival (Kouhaku-Utagassen) recorded through Location Free by my partner. I never expected to watch that Japanese traditional TV program for New Year's Eve here in San Diego. If we were in Japan, I guess we wouldn't watch it since it's little old-fashioned. However, with our inadequate knowledge of Japanese singers and songs, we kidded around each other asking if we know of them or not, and it turned out a pleasant event.
Setting up the Location Free and a DVD Recorder at parents' house in Japan, we are able to watch any TV program broadcasted in Japan on real time basis. What a convenient and borderless world we are in!!

We didn't forget to eat Soba (noodle) and Ozouni (Rice cake soup) as we do in Japan♪

Report from Mammoth Ski

The Mammoth is the eastern slope of the Sierra Nevada (near Yosemite Valley) and a little south of Lake Tahoe. We impetuously decided to spend our Christmas holiday for three nights to ski there.
It took about 7 hours on the way from San Diego, and 6 hours from Mammoth to return home. My impression of this ski resort, as an experienced skier more than 15 years, was splendid just like Happo-one in Nagano which I delight in, but with much better quality of snow. And it was also exquisite like Niseko Resort in Hokkaido but with more convenient/accessible lifts. As a whole, it was more than terrific.

☆The three favorite things which made me be a big fan of Mammoth
1. The bonfire located outside of the Mill Cafe
People gathering there were nice and funny! They were chatting with a glass of beer.




2. Mammoth Mocha
(= Irish coffee which consists of hot mocha, wiskey and whipped cream) from the Mill Cafe





3. Terrains, lifts and so forth
Extremely long-distance trails, well-considered accessible lifts and gondolas





★The worst three things for which I hope the improvement
1. The price of the lift ticket ($78/day)
2. & 3. umm... I can't think of more than one.....

Potluck @partner's company

It seems recently that a rice ball covered with a sheet of laver has been a favorite food of non Japanese people. I would hear about 10 years ago that the black color of laver looks gross for especially children who were unfamiliar to Japanese food, and in the U.S., Japanese kids who were going to school with rice balls in their lunch box tended to be a target for being bullied.
Nowadays the rice ball, however, seems to be envied by kids who confused a rice ball with a sushi, saying "You are lucky! Your lunch is always sushi!!" It's all thanks to healthy food fad.

By the way, I prepared some rice balls for my partner's potluck at his company. It has small amount of chopped beef mixed with spicy miso in it. Believe it or not, it was their #1 favorite and I was asked the recipe from his colleagues :)

Humble decoration

The more the Christmas decorations get showy in our community, the more I feel a compulsion to buy illuminations.
The other day, I invited my friends and their kids to dinner. A 6 year-old boy asked me as soon as he found no Christmas tree in my house, "where is your tree?". I was going to get one after Christmas, of course the drastically discounted one, but it's too embarrassing to say, so I opened windows and led him to see the humble illumination at the entrance! It seemed to have made him proud of his own illumination which was far more gorgeous than mine ;)

Potluck @ESL 2

Having any kind of talent looks really cool especially for those who have nothing on the ball like me, and he is the one I admire in our class.
It's essential to have a person who brings a lot of excitement to the party :)

Potluck @ESL 1

This was the last week of this year at ESL class and our class had a potluck party as most classes do it before each break. There were two potluck parties for me to attend for two days straight, so I prepared the same thing for both parties.
At an international potluck, I usually try to bring Japanese traditional food just to introduction sake, and this time, creamy pumpkin & beef potato croquettes and macaroons(a kind of sweets) were my choice. I totally forgot Macaroon is not a Japanese sweet but French. Below picture is some Ukrainian and Kurdistan food. A bowl of fried rice with peas and dill, a tomato salad, creamy fried mushrooms (?), potate with dills and apple cinnamon pastries. All of these were really to my appetite :) As for my food, everybody looked okay, but the souce for croquette was the most favorite thing for them. It's a Japanese traditional sauce called "sauce" made by one of the sauce companies, bulldog :( not by myself.....

Chrismukkah

Jewish people celebrate their annual festival called Hanukka while Christian people celebrate the birth of Jesus on Christmas.
I first learned the existence of Hanukka when I heard the word "Chrismukka" in The O.C. (a popular sitcom for teens). What a witty expression the "Chrismukkah" is! It's a portmanteau word combined Christmas and Hanukka used among non-religious families mixed Christian & Jewish background. Applying this word, they can celebrate both holidays at once :)

Speaking of the non-religious families, most Japanese people are non-religious. We take Buddhist or sometimes Shinto or Christian way for funeral ceremonies. Other than that, however, most of the families seldom touch a religious talk, and often kids are not aware which religion of background they have.
Nonetheless, we have a custom of celebrating Christmas in Japan. It's weird, but we just decorate a Christmas tree, and eat a big feast with a Christmas cake without thinking about Jesus for even a second. Parents prepare Christmas presents to their children, and couples in love exchange presents each other. But that's it. Unlike most American people, we don't make a Christmas shopping list to buy presents for all the relatives.

Farewell :(

I don't have a gregarious nature.
Although this may be skeptical to those who conceive I hit it off right after meeting friends, my partner especially believes so, this is not true. I'm not very bad at seemingly socializing at a party, but it's not necessarily that I am an open-book and feeling at ease. In addition, I have to admit that living in a small community where the number of Japanese can be easily counted is not an easy job. I tend to be reserved, humble person and sometimes cannot show my own self. It doesn't mean I'm trying to be someone else. Don't get me wrong...

Under this circumstances, I made some good friends here and as I wrote about her a week ago, a good Korean friend of mine has left San Diego today.

We first met at ESL school this summer and started seeing each other periodically.
The fact that we both were neither too presumptuous nor too shy (I guess) might be the reason for hitting it off. We liked to share our similar experience caused by not manipulating perfect English, and also liked to talk about advantage and disadvantage of living in the US as a foreigner, and of course liked to talk about an interesting fact or culture differences of our countries.

Last Friday, she treated me to a chinese lunch at P.F. CHANG'S and we chatted a lot as if time continue forever. It was a great time :)
Since she will be coming back to Denver in a month, we will be able to share our further experience over the internet but I truly felt lonesome.
I with her all the best :)

Assertive personality? or ...

I had a opportunity to join a drinking party of my husband's department. His boss, colleagues and some spouses (otherwise known as drivers) got together at Stone Brewing World Bistro & Gardens. We had a good time with beer & wine in laid back atmosphere :)

After dinner, the waitress came to us, cleared off the table, and asked in a casual manner as they were supposed to do so. "How was everything? Was it okay?" One of ladies from our party replied politely, "Your food was unusual for us!". Although I did not think their food was terrible, her word "unusual" obviously connoted "It's not our favorite", but I believe it's okay for customers to be candid and say straightforward to some extent.
However, believe or not, the waitress's reply was ...."Our owner doesn't expect everyone to feel that the food was 100% tasty. He embraced an innovative approach and wanted to let people know what the developed food was." She dared continue "Hamburgers and Pizzas are not only the food, and there are much more the American haven't tried and should get to know".
I couldn’t believe what just came out of her mouth. This sounded too rude for me. If it happened in Japan, the customer would have dished out the waitress and she would have been given the boot. But the lady murmured in a courteous manner.“You should put some paper to have us comment on it!” and her unresisting behavior subsided the mood as if nothing happened.

I realized afterward that they were saying, "We're not health nuts, but quality nuts!" on their card. Before upholding it, shouldn't they be decorum nuts?

Nothing more than WOW

I couldn't believe my eyes.
These are not theme parks but individual's houses.
To be more exact, the whole communities seem to be involved to create Christmas lanes!!

December Nights

December nights made a splash!!
It's a traditional festival in Balboa park and was held on Dec 1st & 2nd this year. Thousands of people got together and enjoyed themselves with various international food, dance & music performances and various other entertainment which were provided by local companies and community volunteers. All the museums opened free from 5 to 9 pm and some small concerts were performed even in a museum. The wide-spread Balboa park were packed with exhilarated couples and families, and an appealing smell of food emanated from everywhere. Although it's still hot in San Diego and many people were wearing only T-shirts or camisoles during daytime, lots of people did not forget to wear Santa's or reindeetr's hat :)
I was especially transfixed by a tap dance group who synchronized their steps perfectly!!

Spoon or Chopsticks?

One of my friends, who I often see at Starbucks and chat about various topics no less than 4 hours a day, is leaving San Diego next week. I'll miss her a lot :(
Today, I invited her to my house for lunch.
Since our topic was often given to Korean & Japanese food, I prepared Japanese traditional food or at least common dishes today.

What drew my attention during lunch was the difference of our eating decency. I didn't serve a spoon but chopsticks to eat although the meal included a bowl of miso-soup. I didn't even notice that she wanted a spoon since it's natural for us to use chopsticks for miso-soup. When eating miso-soup, we hold a small bowl in our hand and put our mouth to the bowl to drink the soup. However, this seems to be ill-mannered for people in her country, Korea. Instead of holding a bowl in their hand, they leave it on the table and use a spoon to scoop soup.
I must have looked queer to her first.