Free trip to Nagoya

At the beginning of the summer, Ayako entered a radio show contest by writing about what kind of trip she would do with some prize money if she won. Her essay was one of the six chosen, so she won a ¥10,000 ($120 CAD) gift certificate from a travel agency. With the money, we got a free hotel room in the centre of Nagoya for a night.

During the 2 days in Nagoya, we looked around at some areas we thought we might like to move to next year. In the evening, we could do a bit of shopping and also got to enjoy a Nagoya special dish of pork cutlet with miso sauce on top:

Since we were staying overnight on a weekday, the hotel (Princess Garden Hotel) bumped us up to a fancier room. The hotel was very nice, especially since the usual cost of staying there is not so high and it's in the centre of the shopping district of Nagoya (Sakae). We definitely recommend staying there if you visit Nagoya.

Christmas lunch and dinner

Ayako and I had a quiet Christmas together. Ayako was busy making a 'Japanese Christmas" lunch, which included a vegetable Christmas tree made from mashed potatoes, broccoli, and star-shaped carrots:
The Bûche de Noël Yule log for dessert was delicious:
We had a western-style Christmas dinner (although having ham instead of turkey):
Merry Christmas everyone!

Thanksgiving dinner

While Japan is celebrating Sports and Health Day on Monday, Canada was celebrating Thanksgiving, so Ayako and I invited another Canadian, Johnny, and his wife, Yoko, over for a Thanksgiving dinner:
Here we are before tucking in:
And here was this year's spread...yum yum:

Homemade Mexican dinner

On Saturday, we went over to Christine's house where she cooked us some wonderful Mexican food. More importantly for Ayako though, was how to cook authentic Mexican food. Here's Ayako learning how to make taco shells:
And here's Christine teaching Ayako how to put the tacos together:
Martin and Megumi also joined us for dinner and you can see all the delicious food that we got to enjoy:
Here's Ayako patiently waiting for me to take a photo so that she start enjoying the meal:
Since Christine will be leaving Japan and heading off to Kenya next month, it was a bit sad knowing that this will be the last time having a dinner party at her place. We wish her Godspeed and hope it's not long before we meet with her again.

Persimmons

It the time of year when persimmons are ripe on the trees. People often have one or two in their yards and enjoy eating in various ways. Here's a tree that's near our house full of ripe persimmons now:

You can see that the leaves have already fallen off, but the fruit is just getting ripe now. One type of persimmon is nice and sweet to eat fresh. Another type is quite bitter though, but after hanging it out to dry for awhile, it becomes sweet. On our drive out to the GamaRock festival today, we found some persimmons for sale by the side of the road:
Ayako was happy that we could buy 6 for ¥100 since usually you could only buy one for that price in the supermarket:
Here's me posing by a persimmon orchard:

Canadian Thanksgiving Weekend

On Saturday, we had some friends over for lunch (sushi). You can see me with Yoshiko and her granddaughter, Hiromi:
Yoshioko is the woman who straightens my back from time to time. Reiko (a secretary at Four Seasons with Ayako) also came but is camera-shy. We enjoyed lots to eat and chatted during the afternoon. We were also able to go for a short walk to watch the sun set.

On Sunday, Ayako was busy again preparing lots of food for Canada's Thanksgiving Day. We invited Christine over to have Thanksgiving dinner with us. We started eating just before four o'clock:

Ayako did careful planning for when to make all the food and how to do it all from scratch. Here's a close-up of what we ate:
Ayako also made some cute cupcakes for Christine's birthday, which was last week:
Here we are after singing 'Happy Birthday' to Christine:
We had another wonderful day relaxing and talking and going to watch a beautiful sunset. Ayako outdid herself this year by serving even more delicious food at Thanksgiving than last year.

Shabu-shabu

On Saturday, we went out with friends from Four Seasons. We had shabu-shabu, which I don't think I've had since I had in on Christmas night in Kyoto. Kathleen and Rachel will be leaving Four Seasons soon, so I might not see them for awhile. Here a photo of the group of us:
And here I am using a good shabu-shabu motion with my meat:
(Thank you to Emiko for taking these photos.)

Happy Valentine's Day

On Valentine's day, Ayako was busy in the kitchen making up yummy meals for St. Valentine's day. For lunch we had heart-shaped omurice:
Along with red velvet cake:
For dinner, we finally got to use the fondue set that Barbara and Jason gave us for a wedding gift when they came over last May. We dipped strawberries, bananas, apples, kiwis and marshmallows into the chocolate:
Hope you had a happy Valentine's day too!

Saturday drive to Kuma

Since the beginning of 2009, I've been trying to go for a 20-30 minute walk every day. I usually walk one route, but decided to try a different route last Thursday. I went towards to the elementary school near our house, and walked up behind to a small shrine there (sorry, no photos). It was nice to walk a new route and break the day-in, day-out routine. So on Saturday, I thought that going for a drive outside of the city would be a nice change of pace as well. I decided to drive up to the small village of Kuma. The last time I was there was in October 2005, which was shortly after arriving in Japan. We started off the drive and as we turned the corner near our house, we saw a couple thousand ducks (Tufted ducks & Wigeons) resting in the bay area:

We then started driving north and first stopped at a dam on Inasa Lake:

As we continued north, I took some of the very narrow roads through the forests. I love the winding roads, but I always have to be careful of oncoming cars. Luckily today, I hardly met any other cars, and never had to back up to let anybody by:
We finally got up to Kuma, where we stopped at a popular restaurant for soba noodles. Ayako had the (not-so-common) thick noodles:
I had the more common thin noodles:
Very yummy:
We looked around at the store there and saw some daikon radishes being dried outside:
We then had a nice drive back home. It was a beautiful day for a drive today, so I'm glad we took good advantage of it.

Christmas dinner

We went over to Christine & Sam's place for Christmas dinner this year. Christine and Rory were busy in the kitchen all day preparing the turkey and the rest of the meal. It was my first time to see Matt & Momo's baby girl, Ume. Here is Ayako with Momo and Ume:
And here's Matt with Ume:
The other youngster there was Rory and Julia's daughter, Indi. Here's a shot of her in the kitchen, from her level of view:
Here is a shot of the wonderful turkey before it was carved up:
And here we are after opening the Xmas crackers and putting our hats on (done before the meal, which was a first for me):
Here's a shot of almost the whole group (sorry Momo & Ume):
There was some delicious gravy for the turkey, fresh from the gravy cow:
And here is a plate full ready to be eaten:
After dinner, we were given some small musical instruments, which started up some small tunes:
And at the end of the night, we had Ayako's Christmas pudding. Here's a shot of it after being doused with brandy and lit:
Sorry, there isn't a shot of the cake afterwards. It was eaten too quickly. Ayako was happy that all the Brits there thought it tasted fabulous. I thought it was great. Maybe the richest plum pudding I've ever had. Ayako also found out that it was a bit too rich for the Japanese who were there. We had a wonderful Christmas and a delicious dinner which left us all very full...hope you had a Merry Christmas too.

Making a gingerbread house

Ayako decided to make a gingerbread house for the Christmas season this year. She did very well baking the gingerbread into the proper shapes to make the house. She was hoping that I could help put the house together, but since I have never actually made a house, I wasn't a lot of help. You can see the house coming together below:

Almost finished house:
All done:

While we were making it, we thought it be a disaster, but it turned out well in the end.