need to sleep

I didn't do enough studying today. But I did do some. I might be in okay shape for the coming week. Maybe.

Instead of studying, I did laundry, picked up my dry cleaning, went grocery shopping, and learned how to make a new dish: nikujaga.

I did not successfully finish making stuff for my bento box lunch for tomorrow's picnic. Have to get up early tomorrow. Great.

Saturday's Meals:

Breakfast:
plain yogurt
granolaish cereal

Lunch:
scrambled eggs with mushrooms, green onions
last of the curry
white rice
little bit of kimchee

Dinner:
a small amt. of yakisoba
two small bowls of nikujaga
half a container of peaches in yogurt

Cats and Dogs

We had a death in our dorm family last night; a one-eyed cat who loved us gaijin despite our differences. She was always friendly, although sometimes too playful (bitingly). She liked our front terrace, even though it had no shelter from rain or any comfy places to curl up. Yesterday, she saw me and rolled upside down. I didn't pet her because this action usually meant she'd be up for biting (playfully). Now I wish I had. She was run over last night. I'm not sure if her remains have been taken care of, I don't know how to request that sort of thing, and I am trying not to think about it.

So, now that I've ruined your mood, let me tell you about the good things about yesterday.

1. I didn't fall asleep (at least not all the way) in my classes on Friday. Three hours of conversation in the morning, three hours of moderately easy grammar in the afternoon. It's hard to take that on inadequate sleep.
2. I registered for (most of) my classes, finally.
   
3. I dressed up for the Welcome Party. My suits were stilll at the cleaners, so I had to make due with brown pants and a bluish-black sportscoat. It went together better than it sounds like it did. (For those interested, I wore my white with-invisible-green bespoke shirt with my yellow dogstooth Tyrwhitt tie with Italian glass cufflinks. Let's not talk about my shoes.)
4. The party was okay. I ate too much of the free and quite good food, as you may note below if you ever get that far.*
   
5. After the offical welcome party, I went to the steps of the auditorium for kumanomi, where a lot of other students were drinking. (Drinking outdoors is legal.)
   
6. We got chased away by a policeman around 10pm. (Being loud is not legal.)
7. We went to the park, which is often the drinking place of choice.
   
8. A German girl almost beat me in arm wrestling.
   
9. I went home and had hot water with lemon with some good people.
   

Friday's Meals:

Breakfast:
natto with tomatoes and shirasu
on top of white/brown rice

Lunch:
the rest of the mabo-dofu
brown/white rice
the last bit of spinach/mushroom stuff

Dinner:
slice of grapefruit
three french fries
three cocktail wieners
two shumai
four eggrolls (small)
two tuna roll pieces
a cucumber roll piece
one big maki roll piece (egg, crab, cuke, ???)
a small triangular egg salad sandwich
a scoop of yakisoba
three fried chicken nuggets
two broiled chunks of chicken
a slice of ham
a small cup of apple juice
a small cup of sweetened iced tea
half a cream puff filled with ice cream (vanilla)

Late Night:
hot water with lemon
a handful of sweet crackers

*why I ate so much: it had been too long since lunch, it was free, it was MEAT (which is expensive here), and I had to fight with Chinese people for a clear shot to the food, which made me go into competition mode.

Winded

Today we ended up having no classes on account of a typhoon. The typhoon's main effect on the campus's area was to make it sunny, warm, and breezy: a perfect indian summer day.

(Why close school? So the teachers and students who live in neighboring prefectures wouldn't have to ride the trains. The trains can easily get disrupted in typhoons.)

I went with a group of other students to go get my Alien Registration Card. I know, I know, "alien?" But that's what they call us, officially, at least on that card.

After we got our cards, we went to a nearby ice cream shop, where I had some amazing Italian ice cream. Grom, in Shinjuku. Very nice.

Well, that was around 5pm, and a big meal was to come later, so, as you will soon see, I strayed from the ideal nutrition path today very much in the afternoon and evening.

Today's meals:

Breakfast:

plain yogurt
granolaesque cereal
apple

Lunch:

leftover mabo-dofu (homemade)
brown/white rice combo
sauteed spinach, mushrooms, green onions, garlic

Snack:

Grom ice cream cone.
Blueberry-raspberry on top.
The Italiana's recommended "Grom di creme" on the bottom.
Delicious.
(only 490 for the small cone.)
(yeah, not very frugal.)
(but worth it.)


























Dinner:

Goulash with dumplings (amazing)
too much cheetara (cheese strips in strips of cod), kaki no tane (crackers), and senbei (more crackers)

Eiyou (栄養) Means "Nutrition"

The past two weeks: registration. First, a level test. Then pick, within whatever level they give you, from among very similar classes which ones to register for. The descriptions of said classes are all in Japanese. Then, attend each class you registered for as well as the class you actually want. Then you may or may not be able to register for the class you actually want.

Gotta love the Japanese bureaucracy.

I was lucky enough to ascend a level in my core class. Most of my classmates are more fluent than me, but I feel that they're within reach. The core class I chose is a textbookless class. We're going to talk about our own topic, write essays on our topic, read each other's essays, discuss them, interview people, write more essays, and finally produce a final report to be bound in a book. Yes, all in Japanese.

The important thing is to pick a topic that is important enough to you to hold your own interest for four months. So what to pick. I at first thought about linguistics. Too abstract, and, without a specific focus, people might not know how to discuss it with me. Then, over the weekend, it came to me: nutrition!

As some of you may know, when I was [redacted] this summer, I was in the middle of a summer-term nutrition class. I wasn't able to finish the class due to being [redacted], so I worked out a deal with the teacher. If I can get a proctor over here to give me the exams, I can get the credit.

Taking 13 Japanese classes (1.5 hours each) doesn't leave many hours for studying an unrelated subject on my own. But, if it's tied to one of my courses, I might make the time. So I picked nutrition as my topic for the core class.

Specifically, I'm interested in the idea of nutrition in Japan as compared to the idea of nutrition in America, and how the statistics work out. It's common knowledge that the Japanese are very long-lived, and many have tried to claim that the Japanese diet is responsible. Yet the Japanese eat little meat, lots of rice, and very little insoluble fiber. What's the recommended dietary intake here? What's the average intake of those nutrients? How do those figures compare to America's? What's considered a "balanced diet" here? What do people think makes a healthy meal?

Another reason nutrition is on my mind may be because of the health check I went through last Friday. I, like almost all the other foreigners, was told that I should lose weight. I reacted a little strongly to that. I was told to lose about 20 pounds (9 kilos). I happen to know that, for my height, by American standards I would be in acceptable range with a loss of 5 pounds.

While weight has little to do with nutrition per se, this encounter has made me keep more of an eye on my serving sizes. (At the health check, I told the doctor how much rice I ate with my nattou, how much curry-rice I have for lunch, etc. She asked if I drink, and I said never. She asked if I drank water. I said "A lot." She asked, "No-Calorie water?" I said of course. She had nothing to say after that, except that, once my [redacted] gets better, I might exercise a bit more. She did not know who she was dealing with, obviously.)

All of this is to explain that, from now on, I would like to start documenting my meals once again. Long-time readers may recall February of this year I reported my food intake daily. That was partly to lose wintergut, partly to irritate G., and partly to get over a blogging slump. I risk alienating my readership here if I indulge in such self-metrics, but, well, I don't really think anyone reads this anyway. Also, it fits in with the original theme of this blog: how to eat on the cheap in Tokyo. (Mainly: eat rice.)

Perhaps for my final project I will get some Japanese people to record their meals for a week or two and then we can compare. Do you think any Japanese people would be into that?

Today's Meals:

Breakfast:
45g of natto with chopped green onion, cherry tomatoes, and whole shirasu (little white fishies)
white rice
instant miso soup (wakame seaweed and fried tofu)

Lunch:
small bowl of Japanese curry on white rice
small portion of sauteed spinach (olive oil, garlic, salt, pepper, hot pepper)
one hardboiled egg
iced green tea

Dinner:
apple
five big gyoza (at a brand-new restaurant, only 290 yen)

Second Dinner:
two grabs of spinach mixed with a bit of kimchee
a small amount of curry with a small amount of rice