I’ll Make It Myself!: Slow-Cooker Vegetable Stock (from Vegetable Scraps)
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L.M. (CIR Ishikawa-ken, Anamizu, 2009-11) is the editor of The Ishikawa JET Kitchen: Cooking in Japan Without a Fight. Ze works in international student exchange; writes I’ll Make It Myself!, a blog about food culture in Japan and the US; curates The Rice Cooker Chronicles, a series of essays by JETs and JET alumni on the theme of cooking/eating and being alone in Japan; and admins The JET Alumni Culinary Group on LinkedIn.
Save those vegetable scraps, readers! We’re making vegan stock, and it’s as easy as saving and freezing clean vegetable peels, food scraps, and herb stems.
Slow cookers (surô kukkâ, スロークッカー) are available in Japan, and are a good investment if you like to do sauces and soups that don’t work in rice cooker. Amazon.co.jp prices seem to be around 6000 yen (lower on sale); electronic / home goods stores tend to stock them, too.
Writer Graham Shelby (Fukushima 1994-97) recently teamed up with The Butcher’s Apron Radio Show to produce this full-on audio story (music, sound EFX, the whole thing) about a distinctly JET experience.
“The Asakawa Christmas Party” tells the true story of a complicated Christmas party Graham and a few other American JETs attended at a Japanese elementary school. It was complicated because…
a.) it took place on the anniversary of the Pearl Harbor attack.
and…
b.) the teachers asked them to teach “a traditional American Christmas dance.” (FYI – there aren’t any).
How’d it turn out? Doozo.
The story was produced as part of Selfridge and Co’s Reasons to Believe series of original Christmas tales. Graham has a few more Japan stories here.
WIT Life #279: 東京家族
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WIT Life is a periodic series written by professional Writer/Interpreter/Translator Stacy Smith (Kumamoto-ken CIR, 2000-03). She starts her day by watching Fujisankei’s newscast in Japanese, and here she shares some of the interesting tidbits and trends along with her own observations.
I can’t believe I haven’t posted here in over a month, though I think I know part of the reason why. Last month TV Japan offered a free two-week viewing period of its programming for non-subscribers. During this time I got used to watching this 24-hour Japanese channel, particularly its wide array of news shows that are really useful for learning vocabulary for interpreting. The service is through NHK Cosmomedia America, and will be very familiar to those of you who followed NHK’s programming in Japan. There are multiple daily news shows, including internationally focused ones and one I really like called Today’s Close-Up (現代クロースアップ) which takes a deep dive into a particular subject. For $25 a month you can be immersed in the world of Japan, so I immediately became a subscriber when the trial period ended (TV Japan is offering a $50 rebate if you sign up before the end of the year and maintain your subscription for at least three months!). I’ve not only been studying via the news but also getting back into Read More
【RocketNews24】Why Japanese doesn’t need swear words
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Posted by Michelle Lynn Dinh (Shimane-ken, Chibu-mura, 2010–13), editor and writer for RocketNews24. The following article was written by Casey Baseel, a writer and translator for RocketNews24, a Japan-based site dedicated to bringing fun and quirky news from Asia to English speaking audiences.
The other day, my wife and I spent the day hanging out at the beautiful and awesome Hitachi Seaside Park. As we headed towards the exit at dusk, I pointed to a grove of trees with the sun setting behind them and got to bust out one of my favorite five-dollar Japanese vocabulary words: komorebi.
In retrospect, two things come to mind. First, shouldn’t a five-dollar Japanese word really be a 500-yen word? And second, why is it that the Japanese language has vocabulary as specific as komorebi, meaning “sunlight filtering though trees,” yet doesn’t have a good equivalent for *#&!, %?$!, or even &*!$?
Heads up! The following discussion of profanity contains language that might best be read when you’re not at work or school.
Read more at RocketNews24!
Getting Unstuck: How to Take Control of Your Schedule and Stop Hijacking Your Own Agenda
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Jonathan Bissell (Chiba-ken, 1995-2000) is the author of Dream in Color, Think in Black & White: How to Get Unstuck and Fulfill Your Dreams and CEO of High Performance Impact, LLC, an executive coaching firm helping proven and emerging leaders to identify and consistently leverage patterns of high performance. He blogs at www.jonathanbissell.com.
Staying in control of your schedule isn’t easy – especially when you’re stressed out, pressed for time, or dealing with multiple deadlines and the demands of others.
But let’s face it: Sometimes the saboteur is you.
If you’ve ever created a great agenda for your day but found yourself doing something completely unrelated when you actually sat down to work, then you know exactly what I mean.
Having your agenda hijacked by someone else is bad enough, but when you’re the main culprit, the loss of control is even more demoralizing. But rather than play the blame game (haven’t you had enough of that?), let’s focus on solutions to the problem.
Here are 3 quick tips you can immediately put into practice to regain control of your schedule and stop hijacking your own agenda.
- Schedule Your Shadow Priorities. Shadow priorities are the things that you actually do even when you plan to do something else. These priorities are not listed on your agenda, but they exert a powerful influence on how you spend your time. So give them the attention they seek by including them on your agenda, but set clear boundaries around how much time you allot to them. For example, if your plan is to rethink your strategic objectives but you find yourself checking email instead, then incorporate email as a priority on your agenda and schedule specific time blocks to attend to it. You’ll find that scheduling your shadow priorities gives them the attention they crave – and the boundaries they lack.
【RocketNews24】Learn Japanese from YouTube: Amp up your listening skills with this four-step guide
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Posted by Michelle Lynn Dinh (Shimane-ken, Chibu-mura, 2010–13), editor and writer for RocketNews24. The following article was written by Fran Wrigley, writer and translator for RocketNews24, a Japan-based site dedicated to bringing fun and quirky news from Asia to English speaking audiences.
It used to be that if you were studying a foreign language in your own country, the only listening practice that was easily available to you was hearing your teacher or classmates speak, or listening to the CD that came with your textbook. The first Japanese textbook I ever bought actually came with a cassette tape, which was particularly irritating as it was 2006 and I didn’t even own a Walkman any more.
Then someone invented a website that allowed users to upload short videos for all the world to see. Fast-forward nine years and YouTube is one of the biggest sites on the planet, making it a veritable treasure trove of free online spoken content.
So whether you’re after language lessons, YouTubers who vlog in Japanese, or just want to try watching your cat videos in a foreign language, online videos could be your new secret weapon. The trick is just knowing where to look.
Continue to our four-step guide here!
JET alum’s column on Ebola in USAToday
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JET alum Emily Metzgar (Shimane-ken, 1995-93), a professor of journalism at Indiana University, has a column in USAToday this week titled, “Is U.S. ‘stuck on stupid’ on Ebola outbreak?”
If Emily’s name sounds familiar, it’s because she’s also the author of Promoting Japan: One JET at a time, a paper based on surveys of and research on the JET alumni community that attempts to measure return on JET-vestment.
I’ll Make It Myself!: Marketing Halloween in Japan: Pocky
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L.M. (CIR Ishikawa-ken, Anamizu, 2009-11) is the editor of The Ishikawa JET Kitchen: Cooking in Japan Without a Fight. Ze works in international student exchange; writes I’ll Make It Myself!, a blog about food culture in Japan and the US; curates The Rice Cooker Chronicles, a series of essays by JETs and JET alumni on the theme of cooking/eating and being alone in Japan; and admins The JET Alumni Culinary Group on LinkedIn.
Pocky’s been doing Halloween-themed packaging for a few years but I hadn’t written about it because the product was the same. This year, Pocky has Halloween packaging for the normal chocolate and strawberry flavors but also a Kumamon (the mascot of Kumamoto prefecture)-themed “sweet pumpkin” flavor!
Via Glico
【RocketNews24】Clever font sneaks pronunciation guide for English speakers into Japanese katakana characters
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Written Japanese uses three kinds of script. At the top of the difficulty curve, you’ve got kanji, the complex characters originally imported from China that can require over a dozen brush strokes to write, with each kanji representing a word or concept.
A little less challenging are hiragana, a set of 50 curving phonetic characters, but if English is your native language, odds are you’ll have the least trouble with angular katakana. Like hiragana, katakana is a phonetic system, so each character corresponds to a syllable. Even better, while often one kanji can have three or four possible readings, each katakana has just one possible pronunciation.
Of course, you still have to memorize how to pronounce all 50 katakana (85 if you’re being really technical) in the first place. One group of graphic designers are aiming to make that task a little easier, though, with a font that combines katakana with phonetics written in English.
WIT Life #278: High Speed Rail Plan (via the Onion)
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WIT Life is a periodic series written by professional Writer/Interpreter/Translator Stacy Smith (Kumamoto-ken CIR, 2000-03). She starts her day by watching Fujisankei’s newscast in Japanese, and here she shares some of the interesting tidbits and trends along with her own observations.
Apropos of nothing, can’t resist sharing this gem from the Onion. I love how they use the actual train names/types. 良い３連休を！
WIT Life #277: Garden of Unearthly Delights
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WIT Life is a periodic series written by professional Writer/Interpreter/Translator Stacy Smith (Kumamoto-ken CIR, 2000-03). She starts her day by watching Fujisankei’s newscast in Japanese, and here she shares some of the interesting tidbits and trends along with her own observations.
As a member of Japan Society, last night I had the chance to preview the new gallery exhibition Garden of Unearthly Delights. It featured works from two artists and the collaboration teamLab that were largely fantastical with a strong dose of social commentary. As a result, it felt like a very dense exhibit that seemed to occupy more space than the gallery’s actual square footage. 
Garden begins with works from Manabu Ikeda, an artist originally from Saga Prefecture who now resides in Madison, Wisconsin after previously living in Vancouver. The focus of his paintings in this show are on disaster art and 311, an event he witnessed from outside the country. You can see many manga and anime-like aspects in them as well. I particularly liked his work Foretoken, which is often compared to Hokusai’s The Great Wave off Kanagawa, displayed nearby in the gallery. Upon close inspection you can see the intricate detail of his infinite brushstrokes, but when you look at it from a distance you get a whole other perspective. Underneath the huge wave that is cresting you can find things like Read More
【Exploring Unfamilar Japan】We have dessert and meet a cow named Julia at an organic island café
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Michelle Lynn Dinh (Shimane-ken, Chibu-mura, 2010–13) is an editor and writer for RocketNews24, a Japan-based site dedicated to bringing fun and quirky news from Asia to English speaking audiences.
La Cigale is a family-run cafe located in the heart of the largest of the Oki Islands, but it’s much more than a place to get a thoughtful cup of coffee. La Cigale is a hub for the community that supports local events and hosts field trips to teach children about sustainable farming. It’s also a place where neighbor kids gather to help pick vegetables or collect shiitake mushrooms in the nearby mountains. So while we thoroughly enjoyed the coffee parfait we indulged in at La Cigale, we were completely taken with the cafe’s farm-to-table philosophy and the intriguing history of its proprietors.
Read more at RocketNews24
I’ll Make It Myself!: Fig-Almond Muffins (Dairy-Free)
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L.M. Zoller (CIR Ishikawa-ken, Anamizu, 2009-11) is the editor of The Ishikawa JET Kitchen: Cooking in Japan Without a Fight. Ze works in international student exchange; writes I’ll Make It Myself!, a blog about food culture in Japan and the US; curates The Rice Cooker Chronicles, a series of essays by JETs and JET alumni on the theme of cooking/eating and being alone in Japan; and admins The JET Alumni Culinary Group on LinkedIn.
More muffins! These fig-almond muffins are perfect for autumn and easy to make in Japan. If you’re looking for a break from all the cinnamon and pumpkin products, try one of these!
I’ll Make It Myself!: Marketing Halloween in Japan 2014: KFC Halloween Bucket
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L.M. Zoller (CIR Ishikawa-ken, Anamizu, 2009-11) is the editor of The Ishikawa JET Kitchen: Cooking in Japan Without a Fight. Ze works in international student exchange; writes I’ll Make It Myself!, a blog about food culture in Japan and the US; curates The Rice Cooker Chronicles, a series of essays by JETs and JET alumni on the theme of cooking/eating and being alone in Japan; and admins The JET Alumni Culinary Group on LinkedIn.
Source: KFC Japan
As I’ve written before, Halloween has exploded into the Japanese food scene. Ten years ago, there were–as to be expected–barely any Halloween specials or goods. An increasingly large cultural shift toward Halloween as popular (children’s) holiday began sometime around 2010. While some of the shift was motivated by consumer demand, the ramped up marketing has increased awareness and consumer demand, leading other businesses to make their own Halloween specials to keep up with the popularity of the holiday.
This time, we cover KFC’s Halloween campaign.
【RocketNews24】New tax exemption system for foreign visitors to Japan starts today!
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Posted by Michelle Lynn Dinh (Shimane-ken, Chibu-mura, 2010–13), editor and writer for RocketNews24. The following article was written by Jessica, a writer and translator for RocketNews24, a Japan-based site dedicated to bringing fun and quirky news from Asia to English speaking audiences.
If you are a regular RocketNews24 reader, you may already know that there have been a lot of changes to Japan’s consumption tax system this year. For those of us who live here, it’s meant an annoying price hike for nearly everything, but for visitors, there is some good news.
Starting today, October 1, new rules regarding consumption tax exemptions for foreign visitors go into effect, and for once, these are actually changes that work in your favor. More details after the jump.
