Poseidon’s Projects

at keeping this updated. Oh man… like 2 months? That is terrible. Whatever.

I’ve been busying with work and therefore have had real troubles keeping this updated. Also 2 weeks ago my computer was giving me troubles. I bought a new computer recently and I guess one thing I should try and resolve to do is keep all my current photos uploaded to the site and also update more recently. Why is this you ask? Well let me tell you. When my computer broke I didn’t make a backup. I think I lost all my photos that I took since maybe February? That is a lot of photos. And not just photos of food either. Photos of friends and stuff like that. So from now on I’ll try and resolve to keep the site updated more. I know I’ve said this in the past. BUT right now it is summer vacation so really I have no excuse to not update at least everyonce in a while.

What have I been up to? Well not much really. Being broke and stuff. Recently I’ve been out taking pictures of the sky. Those have turned out pretty good. I’ll probably be uploading them in a little bit.

See you in a while.

I put up some pictures of me climbing. Check em out. Unfortunately no actual good pictures of me. Just shots of my back going up some rock.

I’m updating regularly! Wow.

Well. I have something very troubling to tell everyone. I wrote a while back that I was trying to cook with wine and that I didn’t like to drink that much. I had an epiphany the other night though. My epiphany is related to food. I basically decided that I like Mediterranean and Middle Eastern food. So I’m going to try and concentrate on learning how to make various foods from those regions. My vegetarian cookbook is nice in that a lot of the recipes are from around the world and they use ingredients from around the world. So there are some North African dishes I want to try and make, and Greek dishes, and Israeli dishes, and all types of good stuff.

But what I realized as I was making some improvisational spaghetti sauce was that I should really learn how to cook with wine and also DRINK wine. My good friend James has on more than one occasion said to me “If you like food then you need to learn to like wine.” Currently he is managing a restaurant in San Francisco I believe. His father is a wine broker. He is currently doing lots of stuff with wine. So I thought to myself, hell why not. So this weekend I went out and I bought a whole bunch of wine.

I got a bottle of American Chardonnay, bottle of French Cabernet Sauvignon, bottle of French Sauvignon Blanc, bottle of Italian xxxxxxx, and a box of Australian Shiraz (which is the wine that I bought last time). So far I have only tried the Chardonnay. And I enjoyed it very much. It is the second wine I’ve had in my life that is drinkable. It kind of tastes like sparkling white grape juice. I’ve had a German Christmas wine before at the Reed’s house that I also enjoyed. So now I’m going to keep trying wines and experiment with cooking with them. I’m sure some of them I will hate and some of them I will probably like. So let the great wine experiment begin. I will certainly be posting my results.

On the subject of wine, I’m interested in attending some wine tasting stuff in Tokyo. I’ve already done a whiskey tasting festival so there MUST be a wine tasting one. Also Costco has a pretty good variety of wines that I will be checking out. Also the currently liquor store I went to also has an extensive wine selection. But I’m looking for cheap wine… not expensive $300 bottles of the stuff. In fact, it is cheaper to buy wine here in Japan than it is to buy beer. So we shall see what the future holds.

Long time no hear. I’m sure everyone has been wondering what I’ve been up to for the past couple months. In March, my good friend Brendon came to visit me before he moves back to America. We had a good time. I’ll have some pictures up of what we did. We went rock scrambling (we did a little climbing but most we just scrambled around some cliff areas). Then we met up with Kozue the next day and went back with the intention of climbing the mountain and maybe doing some rock climbing. Unfortunately, Kozue tagged along which was the downfall of our plan to conquer the mountain. You see, Kozue had been up the previous night till 5 in the morning. She got maybe 4 hours of sleep? She was not in the best mood and we had to retire from our planned mountain adventures early.

A couple weeks passed after this and Kozue and I broke up. So there goes another relationship. Oh well. It was fun and we broke up on good terms so I’m not complaining.

This past weekend was a long weekend. I went to a bunch of places. On Friday night I went to my local bar. There I met my two friends Kazuo and Raita (who we have nicknamed Liar because he is constantly lying and telling stories which aren’t true). Raita turns to me and says “Would you like to go to an onsen?”
I ask him “Uhhh sure. When?”
“How about right now?”
It was 9 at night. He wanted to drive 2 and a half hours away in the rain to enter a hot spring. I said sure. So Kazuo, Raita, and myself drove 2 hours away in the middle of the night to some remote mountain town to sit in a hot spring for 2 hours. It was very interesting and a nice experience. I’m sure I’ll probably be doing it again. We got back around 3 in the morning and I finally got into bed around 4. It was an interesting night.

On Saturday the weather was nice in the evening so I rode my bike around and took some pictures of the sky and such. Hopefully they came out okay, as I haven’t put them on my computer yet.

The next day I went to a mountain climbing area. I’ve known about the area for a while now but I hadn’t yet to make a visit. So I thought to myself “What the hell why not go check it out.” So I did. When I got there though I was surprised to see some of my rock climbing buddies there. They asked my if I brought my gear and if I wouldn’t go climbing. Unfortunately I only brought my camera. So they invited me back the next day to do some climbing with them.

So on Monday I went climbing. It was raining in the morning a little but had dried up by the time we got there. So I did some climbing in the area and it was pretty fun. Apparently depending on the weather they go climbing there pretty much every week. So it looks like I’ll be climbing outside every weekend or so… as long as the weather is good. I don’t have an pictures of me climbing but I have some pictures of the area from the previous day.

On Tuesday I drove about 2 hours away to Costco. It was nice but I don’t think I’ll go to that Costco again. They didn’t have some stuff I was looking for. But it was a nice drive out there and it was fun and relaxing. I’ll probably be going to another Costco nearby to pick up some more stuff. Maybe this weekend. Depends on the weather. Might be doing some more climbing =)

So this weekend I finished 3 projects. Wow. I was able to clean up my house a little bit. I was able to bake the Greek casserole and try the banana bread recipe. The casserole wasn’t so great. In fact I would go so far as to say it was terrible. I probably won’t be trying that recipe every again… these cheese sauce on top was just too hard to make. I had no idea what I was doing and I think I definitely messed it up. The banana bread came out pretty good though. I made 12 loaves of banana bread this weekend. In my opinion that is crazy. Fortunately for me, Japanese groceries have a section of “clearance” produce. This is produce that they have determined to be unsell-able. Why? Because the bananas were ripe. They had black spots on them. So clearly they are in edible. So the first time I went to the supermarket. I picked up 8 fairly large bananas for $1. Then yesterday evening when I was making 10 loaves for my school, I bought something like 16 overripe bananas for $1.60. It was a pretty good deal in my opinion. If I ever go to the supermarket and see bananas with brown spots all over them, I’ll probably end up making a loaf of banana bread. It is a fairly easy recipe and after making 6 batches of it I’m fairly confident in my ability to make banana bread.

The tomato sauce that I made for the casserole did turn out okay. I probably won’t be making that style again but I’m going to try and play with the base sauce and make it maybe a little saltier. The sauce I made came out very very sweet. And then after it went into the oven it became even sweeter. Its actually pretty good if it hasn’t been baked. So I may start using it for spaghetti. Going to have to add way more salt though. I like a salty tomato sauce. The recipe though does make a lot of sauce.

What else was interesting this weekend? Ah yes. So in Japan they have Valentine’s Day right? This is the day that girls are supposed to give boys chocolates. In America everyone is spreading the love around. Not so here. In Japan on March 14th, they have “White Day.” This is a holiday where men who received chocolate are supposed to repay the person they received chocolates from. So if Kozue gave me chocolate (she actually gave me a cheesecake) on Valentines Day, on White Day I’m supposed to give her flowers or jewelry or something. She unfortunately had to eat my casserole and my banana bread. Check out the pictures for the recipe and just some funny interesting pictures.

It is getting very warm here. I no longer have to worry about freezing to death at night. Soon it will be so warm I’ll start to wear shorts outside. My favorite season is Fall and Winter in America. Here in Japan I think my favorite seasons are Summer and Fall. The homes here are just not insulated properly for the cold. Oh well. The newer houses being built right now are getting properly insulated. So maybe if I decide to live here forever I’ll have to buy a proper house.