Buggirl's Increasingly Strange Tokyo Tales...

Don’t ask me how I made pancakes this Monday morning. I woke up and realized that I hadn’t prepped for an easy breakfast…something in my head said “Oh, yeah, you planned to make polenta/swiss-chard/eggs for breakfast….because in the evenings you have illusions of morning competence. Idiot.”

Why I thought this was a good plan for a workday morning I do not know. That sort of cooking is for weekends, after you sleep in, when it can take however much time as it takes.

Pre-coffee I managed to slog through the ratio of one part eggs, two parts liquid, two parts flour, some butter/baking powder/ vanilla extract and make myself pancakes.

I will be more realistic tomorrow.

After 48 hours of no presspot with which to make my morning coffee I am back on track.

I'm not the huge coffee drinker that I used to be. On most days I simply have my mug of morning coffee. Weekends are usually two cup days. (morning and on the way into Tokyo.)

But I do love my new presspot. Big enough for two people worth of coffee when need be, but small enough for just me daily use.

The last train I can take to arrive at city hall on time is at 8:02. Tully's opens at 8. So nowadays the morning brewing and thermosing of my coffee is a must. The loss of lattes isn't great. When I started cutting back on fruit juices and yogurts with sugars to decrease ups and downs in my daily sugar cycle I also looked into other things that might not be great for me...and when I was preparing to lose monthly income due to a transition to a lower paying job as an ALT at a nearby city I started brewing more in the morning and skipping the Tully's expense.

I'm not a sweet coffee drinker, but I've been a daily latte drinker for years...but only skim lattes because full-milk tastes nasty to me. I tried to transition to full-fat milk, figuring that it is less processed and generally better for me than low-fat (which goes against all that American low-fat propaganda, I know!)  but I couldn't hack the taste.

My latte habit probably started when I was drinking too much coffee, milk was a way of offsetting gut-rot.

I don't like milk. As a child I refused to drink it and my mother let me, figuring that my body might just not be milk compatible and that I sure as hell ate enough cheese and ice cream to be getting my calcium. I used to despise yogurt, but have come to be an unsweetened yogurt fiend.

I now realize that the wisest way to prevent gut-rot is to not be drinking so much goddamned coffee. I'm down to a large morning coffee a day, with the occasional second cup on weekends.

After a few weeks of my budget-saving home-time brewing I ordered a latte and couldn't finish it. My body hasn't changed. I can't drink milk. It bloats and gasses me and makes me feel vile. I'd just grown used to it, thinking that perhaps I was just a gas-bag naturally and that milk with coffee would be a good thing to do. Nope.

And don't even suggest soy lattes. Soy latte is an abomination, and I am not so sure that soy in the highly processed forms available for soy lattes is good for anyone.

Special exceptions will be made for pumpkin spice lattes when visiting America.

At approximately 4:50 AM on Friday the 17th I sat in a messy room trying to remove a sliver of glass which had been imbedded in my heel for a few days. This delicate surgery was performed with an oversized safety pin. I am happy to say that this was not the high point of my day, but neither was it the nadir.

 

( Part One )

More to come….

 

Tomorrow, at work, I will put on my new, cheap, apron and mix together equal amounts of water and laundry starch to make paste. Then I will tear colored tissue into shapes, dip them into the paste, and twist, wad, fold or do whatever to the until they are ready to be stuck to a piece of illustration board…when I have something that truly exhibits the feeling of spring and summer flowers I will let it dry and then attach (with two pieces of adhesive tape) a string to the board in order to hang it.

This is in preparation for Thursday and my first non-English class. I’m not teaching 5th and 6th grade art anymore, they changed the schedule…two hours a week of first graders, baby. Anything they can read, I can read toooooo (Well, I can read Kanji, but they have a larger, if not basic, vocabulary.)

I also have a small pile of vocabulary cards for myself…so that I can explain everything in Japanese if need be. Illustration board, twist, paste, laundry starch, tear, soak (in water) dilute (with water) some of the vocabulary cards have sample sentences for class like, Tear: Tear the tissue paper into the shapes you want. And some cards have sample sentences for my daily life like, Dilute; He drinks his Whisky straight.

I’ll be a stunning conversationalist in a few months, "I do not like your face, I want to rip it into small peices, maybe red ones." "Not only is there meat in the sauce, but it tastes like laundry paste!" "Bastard diluted my coffee!"

I'm headed up to Takasaki. It's up-north, a few hours by regular train. I'll be traveling with Jimmy "Black-cat" Lee (humor him) who is the lil-brother-former-co-worker who got me this gig. I'll be going with him to an English Language Study three-day summer camp for elementary school kids up north. It pays. The cash will hold me until paycheck day! Yay! And that's really why I'm doing it. The experience of working with the lil' ones, that's nice and all..

It will be my first time actually working with elementary school kids, and seeing that that is my new job, I could probably use the practice. Most of it will be group stuff. Games, hiking, and...stuff? Not sure at all. But on the second day I'll be alone, with 6-7 kids, for 2 hours...(shiver)

I raided my new school for supplies and I got packed up. I've got some big flash cards of colors and fruits and some monkeys with magnets on the back of them. No clue really. I think I'll be making up simple songs about liking fruits and colors...then games about fruits and colors...and then perhaps two team competitions about fruits and colors in which scoring is kept by the monkeys climbing banana trees...all very intellectual stuff I assure you. Post-modern, really. A great use of my degree in fine arts.

But it pays. I'm pretty sure there will be no vegetarian food, nor any food source nearby. I'm got a sneaky feeling I'll be on a caffiene low as well...but it pays! I've packed my allergy meds, because I've never worked at a summer camp or internationalization seminar that didn't involve sad moldy bunk-beds and a special demonstration devoted to "how to fold the linens."

Wish me luck and edible cafeteria foods!