This is a little nod to those of you who have seen Miyazaki's "Grave of the Fireflies". I didn't realize that they still made hard candies in this kind of container, but apparently they do. For those of you who haven't seen it, you really should - it is bar none the saddest movie I have ever seen, but it is simply superb. It also deserves credit as the world's only serious yet unpretentious animated movie.
Didn't do too much again today - I just went to church, wandered around the shopping district looking for a CD shop and went out to eat. I finally found the shop by sheer chance, and I'm glad I did; I got a great Ladysmith Black Mambazo CD and a Jayhawks CD for a total of about 13 bucks. Speaking of CDs, for those of you who haven't bought the Cardigans' "Lone Gone Before Daylight" yet and have the money to do so, shame on you. It just keeps getting better, no matter how much I listen to it.
At dinner I was talking with some Japanese girls about idioms and onomatopoeia, and realized that the reason that Japanese has almost no idioms is that they use onomatopoeia to express the same sentiments, and English doesn't use onomatopoeia for the inverse reason. That's not very profound, but it is interesting to note that idioms and onomatopoeia are mutually exclusive in a language. I wonder if this holds true in all languages. The Japanese have some idioms, of course, just as we have some onomatopoiea. Interestingly, they have an idiom/proverb that is the exact translation of the Biblical idiom/proverb: pearls before swine. I was really surprised that two radically different cultures could develop a word-for-word-identical proverb.
Since I didn't really do anything noteworthy today, I'll give you the skinny on my eating habits here. They are very exciting.
BREAKFAST: Pretty much nothing. If I have leftovers, I eat them. Once I made umeboshi rice balls, but that was a little much on my morning stomach.
LUNCH: Eaten at school, I stick with what I'm sure I can have and go with either curry or yakisoba. The curry isn't particularly good, but it's cheap.
DINNER: Yakisoba, udon noodles, or spaghetti. Mostly yakisoba. Yakisoba is the greatest meal ever.
That's pretty much what I've lived on for the past 2 weeks, since learning how to cook. The first week I ate ramen and rice. Since I love it so much, here's an introduction to yakisoba.
NEEDED: soba noobles (thin yellow noodles. Can be purchased in two big packs at Costco for something like $3), vegetables, meat (Evan, you can use Tofurkey or something - actually, tofu works just fine, I think), and sauce. You can use whatever kind of sauce you want, but I'm in love with yakiniku sauce, which you can either buy or make. It's easy to buy here, so that's all I do. Oh, and I add pots and pots of hot sauce.
The genius of the meal lies in the fact that it takes about 5 minutes to make, and depending on the vegetables and meat you use it tastes different every time. All you do is cook the meat, throw the noodles on top (they're pre-cooked), throw the vegetables in, toss on the sauce to taste, then cook until you think it's done, which is usually about 1-4 minutes, depending on my mood. Enter magic. This is the best college student food ever. Here, packs of soba noodles big enough for one meal cost about a quarter, so it's ridiculously cheap AND delicious. Eating food this good for so cheap makes me feel like I'm scamming The Man, which is good because I'm just the sort of rebellious, angsty, activist person who can't wait to throw off the foot The Man has on my neck before he starts pushing too hard.
Peace Out, Forever Jah!
