Japanese Thanksgiving

I decided to make a bunch of random things for Thanksgiving since we are limited oven-wise (we basically have a convection oven, so it's not even big enough for a frozen pizza!) But I digress... here is a Mexican flavored Veggie Tart that I made as an appetizer. Turned out I chopped up some wacko hot white chili to add some heat to the vinigrette and paid for it dearly. More on that to come...

Second course consisted of twice cooked Japanese baking potatoes (SO good!!!) combined with bacon, onions, and dill. Yummy!

All the sudden, all of my fingertips start burning like they're on fire and they are unrelenting!! Joel and I were clueless as to a cause until we remembered that darn chili I chopped up and used my fingers to de-seed. OMG! I then started trying to soak them in anything that provided temporary relief. I think the toxicity really affected me because my fingers are really dry anyway, so I lived in pain (literally, I thought my fingers were flaming with fire it burned so bad) for about 2 hours. I tried soaking them in milk (in the picture), oil, cold water, rum (REALLY reaching on that one, but you never know...), and lotion. NOTHING WORKED. So I suffered like a champ and Joel did most of the food handling for the rest of the day.

This picture does not do the redness of my fingertips justice. They looked horrible!! I mean, they were even burning under my fingernails! Under my fingernails people!!!

This stuff was my favorite - probably because it had beer and cheese in it and was therefore bad for me. You got it folks, Beer and Cheese Soup. SO de-lish, there aren't enough words. This recipe is a keeper. Thank you "Food and Wine Magazine"!

I made homemade mashed potatoes (with sour cream and butter, so good). Then Joel rolled fresh cooked shrimp in the taters then covered them with panko crumbs. Joel fried them and we dipped them in sesame dressing.

Last but not least (actually not last, but I forgot to take a picture of the Pear Pie I made!), we had more mashed potatoes, Asian cooked fresh cabbage and scallions, along with a couple of Cornish Hens. Yup, you heard right. Cornish hens. They're totally awesome and fit in our tiny oven. Turkey is just not going to be an option for the next few years. But we had a marvelous Thanksgiving and are SO happy because our household goods arrived 2 days before!! So were able to eat all this wonderful food on our own dishes and sit on our own furniture and wear clothes we haven't seen in months! You can bet your sweet bippy we were SO grateful for SO many things this year. God has been very good to us here. :)

Yamaguchi Brewery Trip

We stopped at this rest stop about an hour into the trip.

Our tour bus! Thankfully the bus was comfy-it was about a 2 hour trip from Iwakuni out to the brewery.

This is the view of the Yamaguchi Brewery and restaurant from the parking lot. It is settled up on the side of a mountain and has an amazing view!

Our first course was ready at our tables when we arrived! It consisted of a fried crab leg, cream cheese stuffed cherry tomato, grilled scallops, grilled squid, and prime rib.

Ummm...Kirk?

First round of brews: Weisen and a Pale Ale.

Sausages with a whole-grain mustard.

Pasta with grilled eggplant and cheese.

Eating pasta with chopsticks is a difficult task!

Round two: Stout and Pilsner

Margarita pizza! We took most of this home with us - there was so much food.

Main course #1: Roasted Chicken

Main course #2: Grilled steak - this was so good I started to eat it before taken the picture

Bottled beer from the brewery for sale in their gift shop. One bottled was 570 yen which is about $7.25 - no thank you!

The brewery kettle.

After dinner we took a walk up to the waterfall behind the restaurant.

Captain Kirk looking off into the wild yonder

So sad to leave! We'll be doing this trip again next year for sure!

Mikan Picking with JAS

Well, we went on our first JAS (Japanese American Society) trip! They gather annually to caravan up the side of a mountain (literally!) to pick Mikans at a local farm (very similar to Clementines back in the States), eat good food, and play BINGO until everyone wins. It was SO much fun! Plus, we were able to eat oysters to our hearts' content. Wow, they are yummy! JAS outings are really cool - the intention is for us Americans to practice speaking Japanese and immerse ourselves more in their culture and for the Japanese to practice speaking English and teach us about life in Japan. Everyone was super friendly and really funny. There were a lot of families there (Japanese babies are ADORABLE!) and tons of smiles. It really was neat.

We asked these kiddos if we could take their picture because they were cute. The one in the middle reminds me of me because he's being goofy. :-p

The Mikans were literally falling off the trees, ready to be picked.

We had little pruning shears to snap the Mikans off the tree at the stem. The ones that receive more sun time are sweeter.

This picture does not do the windy road justice. We took a lot of hairpin turns on a really narrow road getting up the mountain! There were mirrors along the way so you could check to see if anyone was coming around the bend right at you!

Our bags were checked when we done picking and if there was any space left over, we were told to go back and fill it to the brim! My co-worker Jeff and his friend Haroko joined us and we made other new friends too!

Everyone gathered round an outdoor hibachi grill to eat hotdogs, yaki soba (a rice/noodle concoction that's AWESOME), and some other type of egg noodle pasta salad with apples and raisins. There were also pot stickers and grilled oysters. YUM-MY!

This is our new friend, Toshi-san. He chose Cheetos as his prize in BINGO and Joel chose a bag of dried squid. They both stretched beyond their cultural boundaries with their prize choices. I am so proud. :-p

The view was STUNNING. When the sun broke through the clouds, it looked like a painting in the distance and not real life. Oh and did I mention it was 70 degrees outside and gorgeous?!?

Jeff and Hiroko. SO cute!

Random Thoughts and Observations

Sorry folks for not writing more often. Joel and I have been fairly boring lately and haven't done a whole lot. I mean, we've still been eating lots of new food and learning more of the language. (We are taking a Japanese class every Tuesday night and now have a really good audio program we're working with as well. It's slow going though, I'm not going to lie.) But sadly, Joel and I have noticed we've begun to take the scenery for granted. There's mountains surrouding us that are stunning and we drive right along the sea every morning and evening, yet we've already begun to stop noticing. We're attempting to be more intentional so we don't take anything here for granted.

It's also very ironic - the weather is GORGEOUS during the week, mid-70's, sunny, breezy... and then without fail, every Saturday morning we wake up and it's POURING RAIN until Sunday evening, then back to beauty on Monday morning. **SIGH** We have a three day weekend this weekend though for Veteran's Day, so take that weather! You shan't thwart our plans this weekend!! :-p

Speaking of plans this weekend, we actually have some. We will be going to a JAS (Japanese American Society) BBQ and fruit picking. Folks from Base and locals from town car pool to a local farm for a picnic lunch, bingo (they play 'til EVERYONE wins, LOL), and Mikan, also known as "Satsuma", picking. They are a lot like clementines and are busting out of the trees right now. They are extremely tasty so I'm excited to pick a bunch to take home. Maybe we'll get to practice some Japanese with the locals as well... although we are limited to: "Do you speak English?", "I am an American", "Yes", "No", "Thank You", and "Excuse Me". Hmmmm... maybe we can just help them practice their English until we learn a bit more, LOL.

Here's some random observations for y'all:
(1) A couple times a day, our neighbor walks his cat.... Yup, his cat. It's a big white cat on a leash just chilling and walking slow so our neighbor can get some exercise (he has a limp). They're really cute.

(2) There's also this guy that walks backwards every morning. We see him many mornings on our way to Base. We're thinking he's trying to exercise all of his muscles equally... that or he's just plain weird.

(3) The thrift stores out in town are called "Recycle Shops" and I can tell you now, this is where we will be getting most of our furniture to supplement what is coming in our household goods shipment in a few weeks. They're really cool and have so many random things! The furniture here all looks like child furniture (we laughed out loud the first time we walked into a store), but is quite comfy.

(4) Our new church has this cultish obsession with this game called "Settlers". Joel describes it as a cross between "Risk" and "Monopoly" if you can imagine that. They did teach us how to play and I won of course. :) I have to be honest and admit it was because of beginner's luck, though. The game does take a lot of strategy and is one I'm sure we will become quite competitive at, since that is the Diller way.

Anyhoo, we have a hike and a brewery tour coming up this month too, so we will be writing a lot more soon. Thanks everyone for checking in with us and keeping up with our lives! Love and miss you!