Pumped Up Kicks

Well, I may not be making some pumped up kicks, but I am making some pumped up mini-tote bags, har har har... I'm sorry.

Moving on, while there hasn't been as much embroidering going on there is still some sort of sewing happening up in here.  Here is the bag that I made, and it was super easy.  It's just big enough to carry the things Beans' needs for walks or visiting a neighbor without being too big, too heavy, or too awkward to carry while trying to corral a hyperactive crocodile in puppy clothing.  I'm considering making a shallower more purse-like bag next, because the only problem this one has is it's deep enough that digging for keys happens more often than I'd like.

I used fabric I'd bought in Japan before coming home, a subtle dark navy fabric with some detailing on it, and a very busy and very Japanese print to offset the blandness of the navy.  I was honestly tempted to make the entire bag out of the print, but what you can't tell from the photo is that the colors are pretty dramatic.  It's like the Las Vegas strip in chrysanthemum format, and I love it.  Balance was probably a better way to go, though.

I set myself three challenges with this project:

1. Get that triangle section in without screwing up the measurements and making a frankenbag
2. Insert a lining like a grown adult person instead of my former slapdash method
3. Sew straight seams

I know, I'm so ambitious, aren't I?

It went pretty smoothly.  Measuring out the triangle part was simply done by finding the halfway point on the top, dividing the bottom into thirds, and connecting.  Then it was just a matter of remembering the seam allowances, and ironing everything so that the seams matched up perfectly.  I've got to say, ironing on a standing ironing board that's four feet long is so much easier than on my little old Japanese one that went on the floor and was only a foot and a half long.  No back problems here!

The top of the triangle ended up a little jacked up, but the border hid that pretty nicely, as you can see.  If I hadn't said anything I bet you wouldn't have known, right?  That border also helps protect the lining from fraying and coming loose.  I tried to take a picture of the lining to illustrate that, but the lining is black so it was just the black cave of darkness up in there.  What do you guys think of the border?  I like the effect and I love the the practicality, but I'm a little worried it's kind of happy hobby hands or something.  I am ambivalent.

The last thing I did was make the bottom square to add some depth and structure to the bag.  I wish I'd thought to put some fusible interfacing in there to give it even more structure, but it works well enough without it. 

So there's some proof that my crafty side hasn't been completely erased by hydroponic gardens, excel spreadsheets, lifehacker, and studying Japanese.

But wait!

The next entry will be all about Japanese study!  The first part will be an in-depth review of the book that I mentioned in a previous entry, Business Japanese, but the second part will talk more about language study in general. 

Go Beans!

So Beans won a theme week over at the amazingly cute tumblr http://dachshunds.tumblr.com/, eeveryone go check it out!

Beans' reaction is more to the point.

Does winning come with treeeeeeats?

Next blog entry involves my latest project, the bag you can kind of see in the background!

Bring 'em Home

Today's song title is Bring 'Em Home (Edward Sharpe Vs. T.I. Vs. Lady Gaga Vs. Beyonce) by D.veloped. I am a big fan of these mash-ups, if you couldn't tell.  I strongly recommend this one.  Also, I'm going to put random puppy photos in this entry to break the text up, and to showcase that Beans has finally figured out that there's an "outside of the car." 

What is this tomfoolery.

 She isn't very amused by it, though.

Zzz

You know, the internet is really a wonderful thing.  You can learn almost anything if you google and search around.  Yes, the downside is that retentive memory skills don't do as well when you can look something up on your smartphone, but I think that the sheer potential of learning counterbalances that.  Or, more succinctly, the world before google.

The reason this is on my mind is because I've been spending the last few weeks researching.  Researching my new company, researching furnishing an apartment and buying a car, researching organizational tools, and researching light gardens.  And My Little Pony, but we won't be talking about that.  Anyway, it boggles my mind that with just a couple of books and the internet I now know so much more than I did before, and I'd like to pass that on to the lovely people stopping by my blog.

Tell me more!

First of all, here is the Aerogarden.

It's a hydroponic garden, so no dirt beyond those little plug things in the seed planter.  It runs on water, oxygen, and light, is completely automated, and you can grow anything in it.  Aerogarden has pre-made seed kits, but you can also make your own.  I'm enjoying it a lot, and it's super easy.  Right now I'm growing various types of lettuce and cherry tomatoes.  If you like gardening but you don't have the time or space to do anything more ambitious then the Aerogarden may be a good alternative.  It's a chunk of money to plunk down at first, but keep an eye out for the sales that run on the website fairly regularly.  Also, the lettuce at least can supposedly be harvested for 4-6 months, so think of the money you'll save on not buying supermarket salads anymore!

In the other corner we've got Mindbloom, a handy little site I found on LifeHacker.  Basically you've got your tree, and each leaf represents a part of your daily life, i.e. finance, creativity, health, relationships, etc.  Your tree needs water and light to grow, and you have to charge your sun and raincloud before you can tend to your tree.  You charge the sun by finding inspiration (either uploading your own or accessing Mindbloom's database) through pictures, quotes, and music.  You charge your raincloud, and this is the cool part, by setting up activities and completing them.  Mindbloom has a set of possible activities, such as "add a contact on LinkedIn" for the career section or "read for pleasure" in the creativity section, but the really useful part is you can add in your own activities!  Plus, you can schedule them ahead of time and have the reminder repeat daily, weekly, or whatever you like.  So, for example, I could have under my career heading "finish one chapter of Excel 2010 Step by Step" and have it repeat every day.  Then I get a handy little reminder every day, a reward when I complete it, and a visual log of all that work I'm doing for my career.

I think that visual aspect is the best part of Mindbloom.  You can look at how you're dividing your time through what you're accomplishing and adjust accordingly.  Maybe your health leaf is looking a little puny but your creative leaf is humongous.  Maybe you'll put of that reading for pleasure or listening to music activity and take a walk instead.  Maybe your career leaf is thriving nicely, but your spirituality leaf is looking a little sad.  You can take some time to meditate and alleviate stress before it kicks you in the behind.

If you join Mindbloom let me know, because you can help inspire and support your friends as well, and we all need a little helping hand sometimes to get us out of our four hour Project Runway marathon of anti-productivity.

How are ya?

This blog title is from a mashup by DJ Jewboy from his newest album Chrome Kippur.  I heartily recommend the whole album as well as his previous release Let My People Flow.

To answer DJ Jewboy's question, I am doing quite well, actually!  I got the job, and I am over the moon about it.  It's exactly the kind of company I've always wanted to work for; forward-thinking, intensive, and focused more on results than on procedure necessarily.  I cannot wait to get started!

However, I'm happy for another reason, too.  You see, My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic's second season has just started, and this show makes my feminist heart happy in so many ways.  I wish this show had been on when I was growing up, but I probably wouldn't have appreciated it anyway.

I first heard about MLP:FiM in feminist discussion circles online.  It kept being brought up as the ideal positive cartoon for girls, and eventually I got curious enough to watch it myself.  I steeled myself for disappointment beforehand.  So many TV shows or movies are trotted out as perfect examples of a female-friendly medium and then turn out to be full of badly-written tokens, one-dimensional characters who serve mainly as a medium to direct attention back to the male characters, or at best a single well-written character in a sea of male characters.  It still doesn't give a girl many options toenjoy watching, look up to, or see herself in.  Take the Big Bang Theory, for example.   I love The Big Bang Theory; I think it's funny and well-written most of the time (its handling of Howard as Nice Guy(tm) who sexually harasses for fun and profit notwithstanding), but it fails the Bechdel Test horribly.

For those who don't know, the Bechdel Test is a test popularized by Alison Bechdel, and it consists of three questions.  Now, the Bechdel Test is supposed to be used on films, but I think it works on TV as well.
1. Are there at least two women characters in the film?
2. Who talk to each other?
3. About something other than a man?

For the Big Bang Theory it passes some of the time.  There are four female reoccurring characters currently, so it passes number one.  They all talk to each other, except for Priya.  The problem lies in that they almost always end up talking about the guys, which isn't surprising as they're all past or current love interests of the four main guy characters.  And you know what?  I'm getting pretty sick of the TV and movie people continuing to push this thing where women are so boring that the only way to keep the audience's attention is to have the women talk about something more interesting (i.e. the men).  Don't even get me started on that horrible Whitney commercial that encourages women to punish the men in their lives by *gasp* talking to them.  Isn't she edgy.  Ha ha ha, women should be seen and not heard, hey 1950s America, when did you get here?

In any case, that's what I was expecting with MLP:FiM.  Boy was I pleasantly surprised!
A balanced, predominantly female cast that doesn't fall into stereotypes! Fluttershy, the shy quiet one, is not always shy and quiet, and she isn't portrayed as weak either!  Rarity is the fashionista, but instead of being a shallow valley girl she's a business women who owns her own boutique.  She's also pretty funny.  The show avoids the subtle absolutes that plague so many of the one-dimensional female characters around.  Interest in fashion does not equal shallow, shy and quiet does not equal weak, bouncy and fun does not equal stupid, and bookish and smart does not equal awkward social outcast.  Basically, instead of creating a bunch of templates and saying "we think this is who you are" it creates the same flexibility that male characters get and says "here are some characters that may or may not be you but are enjoyable to watch anyway."  Which is all I ever want, really.

Next episode: Robin Hobb and Aerogardens.  No, these things are not related.  Or are they?

This city

Hello all, it's been awhile, yes?

Things have changed quite a bit since May.  I'm back in the USA.  I have a puppy.  I am waiting to hear back from my dream job.  I would be sewing but the sewing machine I've ordered has mysteriously disappeared and Beans tries to eat my embroidery.  I'm starting up indoor gardening.  What, you want more detail?

It was very difficult to leave my island, and to leave Japan.  I miss my students, my coworkers, and my friends all the time.  Sometimes I dream that I'm at Matsue Station walking to SATY Department Store, or that I have a class and I can see every kid's face clearly.  It's usually very difficult to wake up and realize that that part of my life is over.  Because, you see, it is over.  As much as I miss my life in Japan I am so happy to be back here.  I'm able to move on with my life in a way I wasn't in Japan.

In Japan every major decision was something to put off, if you get my drift.  JET isn't a career, and for me teaching English in Japan isn't a career either.  I knew I was going to go back to the US and make a life there, and that put everything else into a kind of stasis.  Now that I'm back home (because the US is home for me) I can move forward again and take charge of my life without worrying about how to transfer it back home.  Case in point:

This is my little puppy, Beans.

It's so rewarding having her.  She's as sharp as a tack and an absolute joy to train.  I've managed to teach her sit, shake, and down, and she's doing pretty well at leash training and house training.  She's adorable and steals the hearts of everyone she meets.  Dachshunds, especially miniature dachshunds like Beans, have pretty nasty reputations for being barking, biting, obnoxious, and overprotective, but she's an absolute sweetheart who cuddles, begs for tummy rubs, and plays well with others.  Well, she barks sometimes, usually when she wants to play with my cat.  Cat's stone deaf though, so she doesn't mind.  In any case, Beans is one of the main reasons I'm happy to be home.

I won't say much about my dream job because I don't have it yet, but suffice it to say that it is wonderful.  One of those perfect companies that has all the right stuff personally and professionally.  I interviewed on location with them, and it was unbelievable how comfortable they made me feel.  The job itself is challenging in the way that inspires you to try harder.  In preparation I've been studying up on Microsoft Excel and business Japanese (let me just recommend this book for business kanji and vocab, and this one for vocab and some of the best set up phrase explanation I've ever seen in a textbook) and it's so rewarding.  I'm really enjoying using Excel now.  I had no idea how versatile and useful it was before this!

Finally, I'm delving deeper and deeper into feminist and social issues, which is making my blood pressure shoot up more than usual.  I'm still keeping an eye on Japan and Japanese news, of course, but feminist issues are hitting closer to home lately.  I'm planning on blogging about that in the near future, but I wanted to bring everyone up to speed after the brief hiatus.

(PS the kotatsu made it home in one piece with all its accoutrements and looks lovely.)

Okonomi-likey

Meet Yoshida-san, the lovely woman who takes us in, teaches us, feeds us, helps us, and basically makes this island home.  She is a wonderful lady, and one of the only reasons I regret not re-contracting is that I won't be able to see her every weekend.  She is honestly a joy to be around.  This past weekend we made okonomiyaki together!

Okonomiyaki is Japanese pancake pizza, and the name means "as you like it."  You can add anything you like to it, and it tastes delicious!  Now, I had never made okonomiyaki before, so I was looking forward to cooking it with Yoshida-san and my fellow ALT!  I wasn't really anticipating any surprises; after three years here I thought nothing could phase me.  The hubris, the chutzpah, the cheek!  I have met my match.

Butchering squid?  No problem.
Disemboweling a fish?  Not even a shiver.
But nagaimo.... and it's tororo.... it looks like snot!  Exact consistency and color of snot!  You know, I used to think of this when I thought of tororo, but now it's just hanamizu.  It's not right.

 

 Well, anyway, the snot grated nagaimo was added to a mixture of flour, shredded cabbage, shrimp, and squid and stirred together.  First bacon was fried.

 Oops, forgot to add the salt and pepper.

 Fried eggs!  The next step was a bit difficult.  First, put on the special okonomiyaki sauce.   Then add the mayo, ideally in stylized waves, cross-hatches, or a tic-tac-to motif.  Sprinkle on some dried seaweed, garnish with dried bonito flakes, and voila!  To serve, flip the egg on top and plate.

 One of these was plated correctly, and one had a bit of an accident on the way to the plate and ended up in my lap, in my coworker's lap, on the table, and under the grill, outside, back in the US.. it was epic.  See if you can guess which one had to be surgically pieced back together.

ow, that one bowl of okonomiyaki stuff ended up eight pancake pizzas total, and by the end we were getting a bit bored with the decoration bit.

Finally, here is a video of the near finished product once the bonito flakes have been added.  As Yoshida-san tells us, since they move and dance due to the heat of the grill, children and foreigners tend to think that they're still alive.  Ghost fish on my pancake pizza!

Good Eleven

Eleven things I'm looking forward to when I get back to the US of A.  In no particular order!

1. A puppy! (and my cats)
2. Furniture that isn't all on the floor (I miss curling up on a sofa while reading a good book)
3. A gym with plenty of equipment that's open for long hours
4. Being able to decorate my own space more permanently since I won't be moving internationally
5. A job where I'm actually given responsibility and growth is possible
6. Being able to bake in an actual oven again
7. Mundane things like paying bills will be easy again
8. Libraries!
9. Friends
10. Family
11. And last but not least.... a working vacuum cleaner!

 

 It's going to be very difficult leaving my island, my home for three years, my job, my friends, and especially the kids.  I choke up when I think about it seriously.  However, I don't want to spend the next 83 days being a sad sack of sad so I thought up this list.  Unfortunately, the vacuum cleaner is so important to me it's a little sad in a different way.

I never knew how long I was going to stay here since you re-contract every year on JET, so I did my best to stay away from bigger purchases.  What's the point of getting a better oven, vacuum cleaner, sofa, etc. if I was just going to be leaving the country?  Why deal with the hassle of trying to get money out of my successor?  It would end up being either a waste of money or a headache in the long run.  This vacuum is a total joke, though.  I am looking forward to being able to actually clean effectively nearly as much as I'm looking forward to getting a better job.  My priorities are odd.

Updated Pineapple Pillow Pictures:

 

To finish, a short video of Shiohama, one of our beaches, on a windy day.  The first half of the video sounds like you're stuck in a wind tunnel, but near the end you can hear the sound of the waves.

Life on Mars?

First of all, I'm sure everyone on the planet already knows about these books, but if anyone's been living under a rock like me please check out Kim Stanley Robinson's Red Mars.  What an amazing look at humans living on Mars.  I love the in-depth discussions on terraforming, how to bring more heat to a cold planet, adding oxygen to the atmosphere, growing things in soil that doesn't have enough nitrogen, the politics, it's all great!  It does get a bit wordy, but that just makes it even more worthwhile, in my opinion.  Every section is from the point of view of a different protagonist, much like George R.R. Martin's books, and for the Mars trilogy it works quite well!  Also, as a trilogy it doesn't run into the problem of most longer series where the quality goes down and you only end up sticking it out due to loyalty/trainwreck syndrome.  Case in point?  Jean M. Auel's Earth's Children series.

Now, I'm not passing judgment yet.  I'm taking my time going through the final book, The Land of Painted Caves, but so far I'm not impressed. 150 pages in and it hasn't really covered any new ground.  Lots of review with little pay-off.  Yes, Marona is jealous of Ayla.  We've gotten three different conversations about that, but Marona has yet to do anything.  Yes, Brukeval has issues, he loves Ayla and hates her, part Neanderthal, angst,  yadda yadda yadda.  Lots of talking, but very little action as of yet.  Previous books had exciting, dramatic discoveries such as the spear thrower or using flint to start fires.  So far Ayla and Jondelar built a seat so that the overweight Zelandoni could ride in relative comfort behind the tamed horses?  Well, that's a bit of anticlimactic.

On the other hand, there are still hundreds of pages to go so hopefully this picks up.  I still enjoy the long, detailed descriptions of the caves, clothing, tools, and so on.  It's fairly well-written, and the dialogue is believable.  All in all, a bit of repetitiveness is to be expected in a long-running series, so I'm keeping my mind open.  Hopefully things will begin to pick up.

The other news of the day is my latest sewing project!  It's a present for my favorite JTE.  She took the last year off to have a baby, but she's back at school and I am thrilled.  She is one of the most effective teachers I have had the pleasure of working with.  Her lessons are beautifully balanced.  Her lesson plans focus on learning as opposed to regurgitation, so they have multiple activities which focus on learning, then writing, listening, speaking, and reading as opposed to writing the five target sentences ten times each (I'm looking at you, Westside).  She constantly engages the class, and doesn't hesitate to review things.  She teaches by constantly referring back to the foundation of English, reinforcing pronouns, third person, past tense, and all of the other little fiddly bits that make English so difficult to learn.  I love her to death, and I always leave classes with her having learned something.  Right now there are only two teachers on the island who do this (this being teaching instead of just reciting drills and taking notes), so I value them very much.  The obvious thing to do, especially since she took me to her house to meet her baby, is make a present!  So here is the in-progress Pineapple Baby pillow.

The red R is for my teacher's name, the smaller yellow R is for her son, and the blue T is her husband's name.  Her favorite colors are red, and green, so I've got the holly in the corner.  Her son's letter is yellow with soon to be green accents because when he was a newborn everyone called him the Pineapple Baby because he had a mohawk.  The monograms are all satin stitched, and you can see the progression on the T where it has been outlined and the padding is in progress before the final satin stitch cover.  The holly stems are Portuguese Knotted Stem Stitch, and the leaves are normal stem stitch.  The berries will also be satin stitched.  I'll keep you guys updated!

And I don't want to Miso a thing

Two weeks ago I made miso with a local family.  I've made miso with them once a year since I came to Japan, and compared to the first time it was so much more fun!  Thanks to another American ALT having left a less than postive impression the first year was a little difficult.

 The second year was a little better, but still a little tough.  The kids had loosened up a bit, which helped a lot.

 This year it felt like we were family.  I didn't want to leave!

 To make miso you first need to mix up all the ingredients and feed them bit by bit into a mincer.  Then, one it's all been minced, smush it up into balls and mince it again.  Then you pack it into balls and throw it into a pot as hard as you can to get all of the air bubbles out.  Inevitably this part leads to...

The air bubble-less miso is then lightly covered with shochu to prevent rot and covered with plastic wrap.  The entire 3-5kg pot is then wrapped in garbage bags, tied into a cardboard box, and put into storage until October when it will be ready to eat.  It's time consuming, but totally worth it.

3DS Review

As mentioned in previous entries, nothing in a foreign country is as easy as in your native country.  After doing my research I had decided to buy a Nintendo 3DS.  I knew that they were going to be sold on the island.  I knew what day they would come out.  I didn’t know if I was actually going to be able to buy one without serious inconvenience or embarrassment.

I woke up Saturday morning ready to head out and promptly dragged my coworker along for moral support.  As we walked to the store all I could think of was everything that could go wrong.  The store would be sold out.  Every student would be in there and my shameful gaming habit would be revealed thus dooming my last six months in Japan to be a constant litany of “you have video games in America too??”  The sign had said “3DS arriving on February 26^th,” but maybe I had misread what actually said that three DS consoles were coming.

Long story short, they had the consoles.  I bought one, my wallet cried.  They had three games available, the variations of Nintendogs+cats, a magician game, and an historical fighting game called Sengoku Musou Chronicle.  I didn’t buy the magician game, but Nintendogs and Chronicle are well worth it.  Nintendogs is adorable, and the graphics are head and shoulders above the original Nintendogs incarnation.  It’s much more realistic, and the mini-games have been re-mastered to be more interactive and less repetitive.  It also appears that the earlier “point system” where you unlock new breeds and items through winning contests and going on walks has been abolished.  Instead, carrying your 3DS around in sleep mode seems to be the way to get special items, and all the breeds appear to be available.  I recommend it.

Word of warning to those playing Chronicle in Japanese; the Japanese is old-school Japanese as it’s set in the 1500s.  Don’t lose heart, you can still manage the game if you don’t have a lot of Japanese because they helpfully have pictographic maps and they put “Target” over the head of whatever guy you have to kill.  The graphics are breathtaking and the music is beautiful.  The 3D is pretty useful, but I’ve found that I have trouble in fight scenes as I inadvertently change visual angles as I button mash.  That warps the 3D and I end up trying to slice my own guys half of the time.

For Chronicle, the joystick is more of a plus than the 3.  For one thing, there’s no more mashing the D-pad until your thumb cramps.  I also find it easier to fight because a joystick is much more intuitive to move than the D-pad which means pretty much all my attention can focus on button mashing fight combos.  It really gives the illusion of the game being an extension of your body, which is a new sensation for me.  When I play Chronicle I feel the same kind of immersion as when I saw Tron: Legacy thanks to Daft Punk’s soundtrack and the trippy worldscape.

Still, the most mind-bending part of the 3DS is the AR or Augmented Reality card system.  Using the twin cameras on the front of the machine 3D images are projected into the real world using the real world.  You can play an archery game that warps and deforms your kotatsu table to make the targets.  Watch as the table ripples like real water as you go fishing.  Play 3D pool as the table deforms and melts to make the shot more difficult.  I was shocked when I entered the obedience contest in Nintendogs and found my dachshund projected into thin air right on top of my laptop case, panting and scratching a flea!  It really is a huge step forward towards virtual reality.

All in all, I’m glad the 3DS has come out when I’m already an adult.  I can see why there are concerns about lines being blurred between reality and video games are revving up again as a system that actually interacts with reality hits the stage.  I’m glad that the sleep-mode points system exists because it encourages kids to close the system and go for a walk, or close the system and shake it up and down to simulate walking, I guess.  I’m definitely going to be keeping an eye on it, because I can see it going both ways.  I can see this bringing video games further away from the stereotype of someone living in a basement and avoiding human contact or the sun.  Unfortunately, I can also see it as a continuing trend in electronic entertainment over using one’s own imagination.  Thoughts?