Food in a Typhoon

Pardon the terrible image. I kind of forgot I didn’t have any photographs and had to do one at the last minute.

So, yesterday a typhoon hit near Tokyo. We noticed, funnily enough, because the weather that had been incredibly warm and humid suddenly took a turn for the British and became cool and full of rain. I actually vastly preferred this weather, but then, I am British.

We met up with Chihoko to apply for our alien cards and health insurance. There was a lot of English at first, which was relieving, but when we got upstairs to the Health Insurance part, everyone talked in extremely fast, polite Japanese and it was all I could do to nod and smile and sign things.
Then Chihoko gave me a copy of an ARASHI CD :’D She’s such a lovely girl! I listened to it today. I actually have a guilty pleasure for ARASHI, even though I’m mainly into indies bands.

So we battled on; this time to the yuubinkyoku or post office, to register our mailboxes (to make things easier when accepting important mail). The form was so difficult to read, I felt like such an idiot… But we got it figured out eventually.

Then we had lunch in this really awesome place atop the mall. Miles and I had tenpura; I’ve only had it once before, ages and ages ago, so it was a nice surprise.
Tenpura is food done in batter, but the food isn’t always conventional; in this platter there was a battered flower, two thin, spindly mushrooms, spinach…And of course, the garden-variety fish and so on.

After that we started the traumatic attempt to find Rob a phone. Rob’s 20, so he’s legally allowed to own a phone, but it still looked like a seriously traumatic state of affairs. I guess I’ll have to wait a while to get mine, though I am gonna have a go at convincing them that I should be allowed one (I’m an adult in the UK, damn it!)

Oh, also – at some point, Rob’s umbrella broke. The typhoon was THAT HORRENDOUS. You may understand why we lurked around the mall for a while and actually had a SECOND lunch in McDonalds.
I managed to order a Teriyaki burger without mayonnaise (success!) and it was really good! It’s a shame they don’t have it in the UK. The fries, however, are IDENTICAL.

So yeeeeah… we went and bought some food for dinner and then came back to the guesthouse and studied a little and talked to Wynne about the test. Apparently it’s multiple choice which RELIEVES ME TO NO END, so I can just focus on studying readings and grammar. Excellent.

Eventually Kaz and Chihoko had to go home (Poor Chihoko looked like she was falling asleep) so after a little more study we decided to go and cook dinner.
Dinner was in two stages – first there was miso soup with harusame, clear, thin noodles recommended by Rob. It was delicious.

However.

The main meal was rice, with cooked prawns and boiled vegetablesplus cut up boiled eggs. The latter ingredients were all incredibly easy to prepare and cook
The problem was the RICE!
We tried a rice cooker, realised it wasn’t cooking (and then promptly switched itself off), then followed a friend’s recommendation to put it in the microwave; but we didn’t have a covered dish to put it in with.
Eventually we resorted to type and used the pan again. Sadly it takes forever to clean the pan after cooking rice in it.

Oh, also, most of the day was accompanied by people saying innocent things and then Miles laughing at them and turning them into Bad Things™.

Today we’re meeting Georgie and I’m gonna get a new camera!
WHOOOO

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