Gather around dear chyldren, for today I wish to tell you of something that has become very close to my heart (a little bit south of actually): sweet bean paste. I was a bit taken aback at first by how ubiquitous this tasty filling actually was. When I bought a pack of mochi, I was expecting it then, since sweet bean paste in a rice ball is what that item is all about. But those jelly rolls I picked up at the super market? Not jelly. That bread that I thought had tasty grape jam already inserted? Not jam. It took a bit of getting used to, but I've actually found that I've developed quite a taste for the stuff, and when it popped up in my donut, I shrugged and happily resumed devouring (if nothing else, I'm suppose it's technically healthier than jam, jelly, whatever the stuff is they put in donuts stateside these days).

However, I finished the last of my sweet bean encapsulating foodstuffs a couple of days ago, and I think I've figured out the dirty little secret of why this stuff seems so popular. It's full of crack. I know this because I appear to be smack in the middle of withdrawal right now. I've already ransacked my cupboards three times, hoping that I might have somehow missed something, and have found my thoughts continually drifting away from my studies to dreams of delicious baked goods sporting in fountains of bean paste, like so many crispy, flaky, dolphins fresh from the bakery. And once again my analogies degenerate into food inspired gibberish…
*sigh* These things happen. Oh well, I can always start gnawing on my arms again, just to check to see if someone has magically replaced my blood with sweet bean paste since the last time I checked.

In other food news, I was cruelly mislead. There were no cooking lessons today. Those will be Friday. So I showed up for class this morning in my poofy hat and apron all for nothing (in hindsight, forgetting my pants also probably didn't help much). Well, I suppose the stares I got were worth something… maybe no more than a great big heaping helping of humiliation, but at least that's something. More or less. Probably less. I have to wonder what kind of image people are getting of me, because as well as this incident, there's the fact that I've spent the past two afternoons hanging around the lobby reading a copy of "Plagues and Peoples" that I picked up from the JCMU library the other day. Aside from the cheery title, it has this nice little woodcutting of plague corpses dancing in their graves on the cover. Now to really mess people up by appearing in the lobby tomorrow with my copy of 'Japanese High Schools." Mere eclecticism can't explain me. Hell, the cubists can't explain me. I'm not sure what people in the white windowless vans are trying to do in concern to myself (something ominous no doubt), but whatever it is, they apparently aren't having much luck with it either.