Sweets Paradise in Umeda!

unrelated, but I've had this song in my head all day: 

Anyways, I'm pretty sure the music (and this video especially!!) by Kyary Pamyu Pamyu reflects the feel of this restaurant. Sweets Paradise is a restaurant that offers tabehodai ( 食べ補題） aka all-you-can eat. They also only serve pasta, and dessert.

Um. Anyone who knows me, knows that this is pretty much my dream come true. At home I'm always known for having an extreme sweet tooth- some of my friends even call me a "baby dinosaur."

Well. Here's some photos to give you an idea of Sweets Paradise.

just seeing this wall made me excited as we walked in

I felt like I had walked into a Dr. Seuss book. 

this is all just dessert. 

yes, this actually happened

this is a coffee machine. you press a button and a latte comes out.
I don't understand but it actually tasted okay. 

this was written on the soda machine. some good ol' engrish!

... I ate two plates of this amount of cake. and I had two cappuccinos. I was extremely happy. 

So yeah. That is Sweets Paradise. I'm pretty sure this is a chain restaurant thing, and definitely doesn't exist only in Umeda. So if you get the chance to go to Sweets Paradise, I highly recommend it- especially if you like cake, and fruit flavored things. Just don't eat anything before you go. You will be very sad if you see cake you want to eat but can't because you're already full.

I was determined to eat as much cake as possible... It probably wasn't a good idea, but I was very satisfied. 

Mister Donut the Dunkin Donuts of Japan?

Alright guys. It's like 11:44 pm here, and I should be studying, but this topic has been on my mind and I just have to blog about this. And who actually wants to write kanji over and over till they all look like inkblot tests...

About a week ago, I went to Takarazuka with some of my friends from the CET Program to buy tickets to see a show in the all female acting troupe "Takarazuka." It's about an hour by train from where we are in Osaka, and by the end of the trip we decided to stop by the Mister Donuts at the train station.

Mister Donuts is a pretty big coffee/donut franchise in Japan. They're pretty much everywhere, and they specialize in... donuts and coffee.

photo courtesy of clubsnap.com

Anyways, I had already eaten, so I didn't get anything. My friends went ahead and got some donuts! As we were riding on the train back, I noticed there was writing on the Mister Donuts bag my friend was carrying. It was in English, so I read it. 

photo courtesy of Elizabeth Denny

I don't know if you can read it very easily, but the bag is basically saying this:

Mister Donuts started in Boston, MA in 1956

Mister Donuts began in Japan in Osaka in 1971.

Mister Donuts is a big deal in Japan.

but. but. Mister Donuts started in the United States? What? Mister Donuts is HUGE in Japan but I've never heard of it in the America. And I'm from the Boston area! I was really surprised to hear this because I've really never seen one in my area back at home.

This was really nagging me for a while so I went to the source where you can look sound information on pretty much anything.

Wikipedia!

Mister Donut's Wiki Page

Apparently, Mister Donut and Dunkin Donuts were competitors for a while in America, but then Mister Donuts became a really big thing in Japan. In the 1990s, Dunkin Donuts bought out pretty much all the Mister Donuts in America and agreed to let Japan manage/own the Mister Donuts in Japan. 

... so are Dunkin Donuts and Mister Donut the same? The same niche of coffee shop-ness? When I read this my mind was pretty much blown. But looking back, when I walked into the Mister Donuts shop in Takarazuka, Osaka Japan, the store smelled just like home. It smelled exactly like Dunkin Donuts.

Now I really have to go back and try the coffee and the donuts and see how similar they are!!!! When I do this, I will be sure to blog about and let my dear readers know. 

But maybe, this all just means one thing. That the world truly runs on Dunkin.... 

Here's a blog about curry rice making.

Making curry rice isn't actually all that difficult, or exciting, but it definitely is a Japanese university student staple meal. Many a nights have I looked in my fridge and thought "I need a vortex to get rid of all these potatoes...

...curry rice."

Curry is a great way to just throw in a ton of vegetables and call it a meal. The ingredients I used were onions, potatoes, and carrots. 

You start by just frying some onions and then throw in the rest of the vegetables with meat if you want. I put in some chicken, yum. It had been in the freezer for a couple days so it took a while to thaw out while running under some cold water but eventually it was good to go! 
You don't need fry it too much, its really just for the vegetables to soak up the meat flavor. 


Then you pour in some boiling water. This cooks a LOT faster if you just boil some water to start and then pour it in. Otherwise, you'll end up waiting forever for those potatoes to cook. As it all boils, bubbly layers of foam will come up. You wanna scoop that stuff out and throw it out- it doesn't taste that great. 

When the potatoes are finally cooked (they take the longest) it's time to add the curry flavor! Japan has a TON of variety in the curry flavor you can buy, but it's pretty much all the same as far as how to use it. They come in blocks in boxes, and you just break up the blocks of curry powder/flavor and mix them in when the water is boiling and everything else in the pot is fully cooked. 

This is the kind of curry I used. I don't think it was that expensive, maybe 300 or 400 yen max? I'm totally guessing- I don't remember how much it cost. It was definitely cheap though for how many servings of curry you can get out of it.

And tada- curry rice! Pour lots of that curry/vegetable mixer over some white rice and eat it! I know it kind of looks lumpy and weird and stewy- but I promise curry rice is super good and it's basically my go to for Japanese comfort food.

... and of course there's some coffee with dinner for me. How else do I finish up that late night studying? :P 

I think there may be people who truly make homemade Japanese style curry rice, but I have no idea how they would do it. It seems to be the norm here to buy the curry blocks and just use those. I've even seen the same curry blocks at international grocery stores back at home like Cam Man, Tensuke Market, Saraga International Foods, etc. Definitely check it out! And refer to my last blog post for the link to a more informative tutorial on how to make curry rice! 

thanks for reading everyone! 

Cooking in Japan! With no idea what I'm doing...

Alright guys. Blogging spree. This time with some food! 

To be totally honest, I've made two real meals in this apartment. I've made curry rice （カレーライス）and omurice (オムライス）

Both of these cooking adventures included rice (duh). That's fine! I use a rice cooker at home! I got this! 

sorry this picture isn't super clear...

Yeah. That's... not English. I was so excited to finally cook- I'd really pumped myself up. But if I couldn't figure out the mystery of the rice cooker, what the heck do I do??? 

I... did some more button mashing. The circle button on the left that's white... That has a soft yellow light that lights up when you plug it in. I think if you press it, you activate the warming system, to keep your rice warm and happy. Then on the right, there's a reddish circle button. To make rice with this thing, you press the left white circle button, and then press the red circle button. The red circle button has a red light when it activates- and then you finally know that your rice is cooking, not just sitting making warm soup-rice stuff.

I honestly have no idea what the other buttons mean. I was happy that I rice, and I didn't question the mystery of the rice cooker. 

So anyways, the first day I made curry rice. I should have taken more pictures of me cooking, but it didn't occur to blog these happy cooking adventures until it was pretty much done. But here was the finished product of happy CURRY RICE!

It actually came out okay - I was pretty pleased. But believe me, I'm not that gifted at cooking.

Japanese Curry in 5 Easy Steps

This is the website I used for advice on how to cook curry rice. It was actually pretty easy to understand and it tasted pretty good! Hurray. Victory for Camille....

And then this morning- I woke up *super* hungry and I really needed to make some food. What would I make? There are still so many vegetables... So many eggs.. so much rice. 

And I love Rooftop Prince.

Youtube Omurice Scene from Rooftop Princeyup, anyone who has scene Rooftop Prince remembers this scene of the boys eating omurice for the first time...

So I thought- I too will make omurice! and I will experience the same blissful feeling of eating omurice as they did in this kdrama!





I gathered all my ingredients.

 Stirred it all around in a pan! Add some rice too! 

Look at all those vegetables.

Trying to be healthy here... trying. 

Then I added some ketchup, pepper, and soy sauce! I know the ketchup part sounds weird, but that's what you're supposed to do.. Stirred it around a little bit. Pretended I was on Iron Chef.

ya know. 

Then I had to make the omelet part! I put the rice mixture in a separate bowl...

So- two eggs and some milk. Some of that delicious, fatty, Japanese milk. (skim is pretty hard to find here in Japan...)

When the omelet is starting to look half-cooked about, I added the omurice mixture I made earlier.

Nice and neatly on one side! Then it was time to flip this monster into a real omelet.

..... This is where I realized my kitchen didn't have a spatula yet. 

Yeah... I used some chopsticks and a spoon to flip it, but it pretty much started to fall apart. The presentation on the plate wasn't what I had hoped for either.

But hey, I squirted some ketchup on it and it sort of looked like something out of a drama? I'll have to buy a spatula and try again. Some people make some crazy art with omurice. They make like teddy bears of rice and use the eggie part as a blanket or something. It's pretty great. If I ever achieve that level of omurice-making, I will be sure to blog it here! 
Thanks for reading :) 

I think we'll need to break this into a couple posts...

Hey guys! Happy Saturday to me! I've done two weeks in this CET program and man, I'm learning that blogging during the weekdays is.. kind of not possible. Hahah I'm too busy doing homework or eating food. Ya know.

Lots of things happened lately- all interesting things, and I could make it into one giant blog post. but then I don't know if people would actually end up reading all of it because it'd be this one giant stream of consciousness... So let's split it up. 

We'll start this blog post with more fun things about my apartment and my roommate! 

My roommate is a pretty cool person. She has lots of cool clothes and definitely is one of those Japanese girls that takes care of her appearance. She wears the circle lenses and fake eyelashes every day. Other than that though, she really only wears eye makeup. I haven't seen many girls here doing a lot of eye shadows or strong lip colors- the emphasis seems to be on just eyeliner, mascara, circle lenses, and fake eyelashes.

Fake eyelashes are pretty popular here, it seems! I see a lot of girls on the train wearing them to work or to school. Back at home I only wore fake eyelashes for Halloween...

My roommate's clothes are pretty simple but chic- and she wears a lot of white, black, and pale pink. She has lots of dresses. Something I would wear to a day party is something she would just wear to school. I'm also taller than her but she has these ginormous heels and sometimes towers over me. At first, I was like "gosh, my roommate wears these giant heels. That can't be normal."

... but girls wear them everywhere here. I heard that girls wear heels in Japan- but I never realized it was like this! Literally i see girls in these heels at least 5 inches tall. To class. To the grocery store. 

I only brought some flats.. hmmm. Time to go shoe shopping I think. Though I think if I bought 5 inch heels here I would just look like a giant. I'm only about 5 foot 4, but that definitely is tall in Japan. Most girls here *look* like they're around my height, but then look down and you realize they have some elevator heels going on. 

Anyways - back to the roommate again. She doesn't seem to have much class or homework- I think her major is Hospitality. Her friends also are doing majors such as Hospitality or Administration. I haven't asked her yet what she wants to do with it. I know one of her male friends really wants to be a wedding planner. I asked him if he'd ever seen Bridezilla or Say Yes to the Dress.  Of course he hadn't, but I wonder if bridezillas exist in Japan... Hmm. But since my roommate isn't a freshman and is doing Hospitality, she has a lot of free time. In that free time, she does a lot of part time work at a pachinko parlor.

This at first surprised me, but she seems to really like it, even though it's tiring. Her work is about an hour away by train, but it's really near her home. When she goes to work, she usually stays at home for a while too. I actually haven't seen her in about a week... So I wonder how strict classes are at Japanese university? I have no idea.  

When she comes home from work, her family always gives her big boxes of food. It's pretty great, it's like groceries are falling from the sky. Our fridge is full of vegetables, meat, eggs, and our pantry has a million kinds of seasonings sitting on the microwave. It's really more than our apartment kitchen can fit, but I sure do feel healthy just looking at it.

... but. My roommate drops off these beautiful groceries and then disappears for another few days. It's getting to the point where there's all this food... and I'm the only one here. Finally the other night I cracked. 

WHAT DO I DO WITH SO MUCH FOOD. ARGH.

I would feel SO bad if she came home and all the food went bad because I didn't eat any of it! But... but all this stuff needs to be cooked. There's no snack food here. And I'm not about to just sit and eat a cabbage raw. I wish I'd paid more attention to when we were cooking together for *exactly* how to make things. For the most part the seasonings/sauces things are a complete mystery to me because all the labels are written in kanji. 

But... girl's gotta eat. I started cooking in my Japanese apartment. Look forward to other blog posts with my cooking adventures!!!

gross food trash and used cds

So today my roommate came back from her part time work. She works about an hour away, so sometimes I have the apartment completely to myself. These times are pretty nice because I can do typical foreigner things without looking like a total idiot...

For example; laundry. 
I didn't really need to do laundry until my roommate left for the weekend, and the I finally realized there was no way I could spend another night sleeping in the same pajama tshirt and shorts that I had slept/sweat in for almost a week... 

Okay, laundry! Can't be too bad. We have a washing machine, so it's pretty much the same as home, except I have to hang my clothes to dry, right?

Um... Well the washing machine (sentakki) was all in Japanese. And there was plenty of katakana (engrish) but I absolutely couldn't find an "on" button. I found "off" though... Gosh. Luckily my roommate wasn't home to watch my button mash the poor sentakki. Finally, I hit the combination of buttons that made the machine start to go, and I was so relieved! Looks like the same strategy I use in Super Smash Bros. also works in situations like this. 

Other than that, I can *mostly* handle not burning the apartment down when my roommate is not here. I'm a little nervous about cooking still, because honestly we only have Japanese ingredients and I have no idea what the packaging says for the most part. I mostly make eggs, toast, and coffee. 

But the thing is, in Japan, if you have any "food trash," that also has to be specially taken care of. In the sink, there's this interesting bin with netting where you dump all your food trash. At first, this was hard to comprehend because in America I would never through food in the sink because it makes such a mess. It's actually kind of nice to have the bin.

BUT. Usually at some mysterious point in time, my roommate gets rid of the food trash from the sink and somehow gets rid of it... And I honestly had no idea where to put it. I actually forgot about the food trash until one night as I walked around the apartment there was this awful smell.

I walked around the apartment, thinking, maybe it's the bathroom!
Maybe its wet clothes drying outside?
Maybe it's my bed? Should I do more laundry?

No... it was the food trash. Gosh I really had no idea what to do with it. I realized there was a mesh bagging in the bin in the sink that was disposable but, where the heck do I put it?? Looking at the food trash, all I could think about was that I wish I had eaten all of it so I wouldn't have to deal with it. Even the egg shells...

I finally looked through everywhere in the apartment, and finally found the mesh bagging in the compartment in my kitchen that kind of looks like a mini refrigerator. I wrapped up the old food trash... 

but then where the heck do I put it? It's not burnable paper-trash! It's not cans/bottles kind of plastic. It's not plastic wrappers! 
Trash in Japanese is really complicated and specialized and with four or five different bags of trash hanging on the wall, I had no idea. I ended up wrapping the food trash in a plastic bag, and tucking it on the floor next to the other trash bags and hoping my roommate wouldn't think I'm a total idiot when she returned from work. 

So far laundry and food trash have been the most confusing things to deal with by myself in the apartment. I'm waiting for a moment where I do something completely wrong and my roommate just laughs at me. 

Aside from apartment business, I've been trying to get to karaoke as often as possible. It's fun because I really like music, and it's a really great way to study. I always pause in the middle of songs and point at the lyrics and shout "I learned that kanji today! I still can't read it yet, but I'm supposed to! :D"

Well, whether I can read all the words on the screen or just make up my own words, karaoke is really fun. Especially because in the apartment, the walls are pretty thin and even playing music on my computer feels like I'm making a disturbance in my apartment. So far my favorite place for karaoke is a little joint on the fourth floor of some sort-of-sketchy building near campus. There's these big colorful signs and you enter an elevator to access the karaoke place. It's a little creeper but this karaoke place has a ton of English and Japanese songs, so it's perfect for foreigners like me who are still learning their Japanese!

There's alos a lounge area, and there you can read manga, drink milk tea, or even play some video games. There's also some used cds....

I flipped through them today, because I thought "what the heck, why not."

....
.......

One of Superfly's cds!!!

hfosaifaosfafsf
I really love Superfly, and I was really excited to be able to sing Superfly songs in Japan. But! But! To find a cd in a little karaoke lounge of all places was totally unexpected! This album has a lot of her covers I think. It's one of her older ones, and it only cost me 100 yen.

Okay, so it's kind of beat up, missing some of the pages inside, and sort of cracked on the back. It's totally jank. BUT. It's the first physical Superfly item I've ever had I'm really really excited about it! And the cd plays fine so... what more do you need? :D 

That ended my day on a pretty great note. The store clerk may have looked at me a little strange when I was so excited to hand over 100 yen for this, but whatever! :D 

Happy times in Osaka....

there's finally time for a blog post.... 

Alright, I made this blog like a week ago and this is my first post in it. My family has been asking and asking for the link to this blog, and my answer always is "well here is the link, but nothing is really there yet...."

Most likely, only a few people will read this blog but I will do my best to tell a good story of my time in Japan!

But let's start of with some Jikoshoukai, ne? (Self Introduction)

I'm currently in Osaka, Japan, from June 3rd to the the end of July. I'm a Japanese/Economics major coming from The Ohio State University, and I'm currently studying Japanese through the CET Academic Programs. I'm a temporary student as Osaka Gakuin Daigaku, and I'm in class about 4 hours a day 5 times a week studying Japanese.

And I can only speak in Japanese. 

Yeah... that's the tough part. The truth is, even this blog is probably pushing it, but I think writing is going to be okay. The real tough part of this program is that we all take a language pledge to only speak Japanese while we are here. It's really tough, sometimes frustrating, but we're all definitely getting better at our Japanese! Though sometimes I feel pretty mute. But, I put my hand on a dictionary and pledged that I would do it, so... がんばります！（I'll do my best!).

The program works like this: When we arrive in Osaka, we are settled into apartments with Japanese students who usually don't know much English at all. We take a placement test the second day of the program and then we pretty much get punched in the face with Japanese. 

Ahhh, that placement test. 

It was a written test and then also an oral exam. To give you an idea of my background, at Ohio State, we pretty much use Japanese: The Spoken Language and JWL: The Written Language.

If anyone is familiar with these books, I'm sure you can sense the upcoming problem.

These books are pretty good. JSL (Japanese the Written Language) is extremely strong in teaching students how to *speak* fluently and we study quite a bit of keigo.

However, with the emphasis on keigo, there are many simpler grammar points that many students learn way before JSL students would. Also, through the JSL program, we aren't really hit with much kanji. In fact, you could complete the entire JWL (writing) book and only learn about 400 kanji.

CET expects me to learn 800 kanji in two months. That's 100 kanji a week...Hah. Excuse me while I cry in the corner. 

That paper is my homework for the week. And the inside of the textbook CET uses (Tobira).

Look at these books... I think I'm still going to reference JSL for grammar points because they have so many "Drill" exercises...

Well the writing/reading part of that placement test. Haha. Well I am truly amazed I got into the 3rd year level with that. I think it must have been because of the Oral Test, which went very well.

Hopefully I'll be able to catch up soon!

In the mean time, outside of class, there's this whole living in a Japanese apartment thing.

Well. 

Here's some pictures.

This is our little toilet room.. .
With a Rilakkuma rug! 

This is our super itty bitty kitchen.
No stove or washing machine.
But, we can make food and coffee in here,
so it's alright!

This is my bed! My roommate has
matching sheets and things.
 The screen on the right separates the two beds...
That's kind of it for space.

This is our bathroom with a tub /shower and sink.
There's a switch to change the water
from the sink to the showerhead.

And our cute little fridge! It's filled with food. My roommate can actually cook so we've been eating pretty well!
Look at all those vegetables. 

I don't know if it's truly clear from these pictures, but my apartment is very small. I've been in the other students apartments, and I'm pretty sure my apartment is the absolute smallest. Well... I'm in Japan so I guess everything is smaller! 

Sorry this blog post is kind of scatterbrained. So much has happened in this week that I had so much to talk about! I look forward to making more blog posts that will hopefully be interesting!

I'm thinking about posting things like
* living with a Japanese university student
* trying to cook Japanese food in a kitchen the size of a closet
* Osaka Gakuin Daigaku campus and social life!
* CET classes
* adventures in Osaka!!!