Kobe's delights-Costco and the delightfull Illuminarie

so.... today we went christmas shopping for our own gifts. i know that goes against what christmas gift giving is all about. But i figure that those rules are merely just guidelines. Also, i thinks that those rules dont apply once you venture outside of north american airspace.

So 1st we went to the body shop. the body shop is important to me 1) because it sells shower gel. Shower gel is hard to find here. i've looked in 2 huge drug stores twice and walked out with Spa moist milk bath. it looks like shower gel, smells like shower gel, but alas it is a gel that turns into a milk like substance when it hits water. it does nothing to clean you, you feel like youve been lightly coated in a thin layer of rose scented vaseline.

yesterday me and shiv headed out on our kobe day trip adventure. we took the train from our place to amagasaki station. Amagasaki is a city just between Kobe and Osaka. but what really brought us to amagasaki is COSTCO!! it was the real deal folks. case loads of mac and cheese, discount meats, tacos,spices, mulivitamins, BBQ sauces etc... it was great. And to top it all off they deliver!. it cost about 1500 yen for our 3 boxes to be delivered to our house, and boy oh boy, i cant wait for my costco sized bottle of tabasco sauce and my tubs of prego.

we really have 2 people to thank for their guidance on the costco situation. timesha and charles. they are a cool duo from ATL!! we dropped by their place 2 nights ago to visit and it was so nice to kick back and watch tv in english. wow what a treat. we dont get our cable till thursday, so it would be 2 months and a few days to be exact since we have watched english cable television. shiv and i felt like mush, we could have sat there in thier apt for hours watching "the hills", the diary of pharrel and a steven segall. And to top off the evening charles fed us oreos and pepsi. wow! gotta love those americans!

Getting back to our Kobe adventure, we hopped back on ther train to Kobe ( by hopped we mean walked around, stared at kanji signs, asked for help, made hand gestures, ran after a bus and ran to another train platform) and headed to the Illuminaries. Illuminars is a lights display that goes down in kobe every year to honor the people who died during the Kobe earth quake in 1995. Over 6000 people died in that earthquake and it leveled most of the city to rubble. Most of the areas we saw were pretty new, new buildings, new roads, new stores. It is very odd to see a completly new city, devoid of any old decrepid areas. I think Kobe City is the perfect description of a phoenix-city. A city charred and destroyed and somehow reborn out of the fire and destruction. It still has a long ways to go, there is alot of construction still going on. The sight of the land being plowed, parted and moved reminded me of home. Of the developments just south of the city and the land that is constantly being torn up, ripped apart and planted with new homes and strip malls.

We were not quite sure how we would find the illuminaries from Motomachi station in Kobe. But one thing you have to remeber is japan is: Japan is a country rife with people. No festival is a small festival because evena small festival will pull crowd of thousands of people. So, when we got out of the station, we were suprised to see all the down town roads shut down, police with light sabers and guides with loud speakers directing thousands of people. So we joined into the madness and that winded through the super-clean streets of downtown Kobe.

The ligh display was gorgeous. it felt like we were in a christmas open air catherdral. they had loud speakers (that were hidden) that were playing classical christmas music and every where you looked was bathed in the softest-warmest peach glow. the display was my defitinion of beauty. Actually i have seen two beautiful man made sights this year. 1) The glass flower ceiling in the Bellagio Atrium 2) the Illuminarie street displays in Kobe.

Shiv is the one that got the good shots of this wonderment www.pbase.com/shivdesilva

by far the day was well spent, took the train back home and slept off the day
ps! dishi and matt i used my backpack all day and we carried quite a bit of weight in it from costco. And its Amazing!! the weight is so evenly distributed you hardly feel any thing. Props to those masters at MEC!

Also, over the holidays we have been so lucky to meet 2 of shivs host brother from Lions club that he met 10 years ago in japan: Akio and Ben! they have been so kind to us, taken us out for anazing meals, introduced us to their families and their super ccute daughters and showed us some really amazing sights round Osaka. Photos of the girls are included here.

love jan and shiv (3 sleeps till christmas)

the gifts are here and x mas can start off right!!!

hows it going. just thought id drop ya'll a line to say that the rough part of the move to our new apt is done. it has hard today carrying chairs and a table from the "konan home depot" in the blowing freezing wind. but at least we have something to sit on now. standing and eating dinner just wasn't cutting it.
we just recived your x mas parcles ammi and thathi, dilshi and matt. thanks sooo much!. mom we saw that yours it at the post office, we have to pick it up.

i dont know what it is. but chocolate in the mail is soo much better when you are far away. we are not going to watch the dvds till x mas. we set up our tree yesterday, bling'ed it out with decorations and lights even!. we decided to call it henry the x mas tree. and i made a wreath for the door. it is very "winners chic!" and its home made!. if any one steals it, i will be so mad. i will break into their aptartment and personally put coal on their futon!!
work is going well. i had a group of students today that hardly talked, and i think for a few split secoonds i fell asleep on camera. but i also had a wicked group of students that loved to talk about food, needless to say we all became fast friends.

so much has happened in the past 2 weeks since i wrote. but to recap we have been ghetto, no let me say that again G-H-E-T-T-O!!! just last friday we got paid, but before that we were honestly living on...no money. its been a great experience for me and shiv. we thought we were down and out in halifax, but this beat it badly. we some how survived for the last 5 weeks on about $200. so to break that down, thats alof of 100 yen store food and noodle packets. we learned how to find the super sale food, entertain on a budget and see the city without spending any money.

the day we got paid was the sweetest day, we went for indian buffet, bought a tree, moved into our new place and got train passes (finally). so life is a tad bit more comfortable. but some how eating pasta, tuna and dollar store orange juice, using our stolen internet will remain a fond memory for years to come.
Another event im so happy about is our new YakiNiku BBQ. shiv is genius and found and bought this indoor table sized BBQ grill. We have been making some of the best BBQ i have ever eaten. So tender and tasty. You know what it tastes like....The satay sticks that you get at the phillipines tent ot the Thai or polynesian tents at heritage days. Its soo good. Ive included a picture!

dad, we would like to have you know that it was only up untill 2 weeks ago that we used that safety hundred. we saved it all through our halifax poverty and only cracked it out just recently. it was a life saver.

on a goodnote we have booked our x mas trip to shirahama. its a onsen (hotspring) resort beachy town. we are so excited to get out of osaka's unrelenting grey and see trees and the ocean. also over the holidays we have zeev and his girl friend coming to stay with us from the 25th-3rd. and we have doug coming on the 2nd-5th from south korea coming to stay with us while he gets his back tattooed at chopstick tattoo.

the new apt is much newer and hence a lot less grungy. we like it tons more. have a good pre x mas week every one.

love jan

Oyishii, You lie!!!!!

So after dinner me and shiv sat down to watch some tv. Like most nights in osaka, tv consists of a crazy food themed show. And by crazy food themed show i'm talking extreme close ups on gravy, screaming and jumping when the food hits the tounge, floresent letters roughly translated to mean "Super Good Yum!" "Good Food Taste" "Oh MY I love the Chef". The grammar of japanese pop culture will be another indeph posting soon to come.

But right now i must stick to my task at hand. Describing these crazy shows. Each night we see at least one partially live animal scooped from the sea, sprinked with some salt or soy based product and eaten while still moving!. All the while the hosts are jumping up and down screaming "OYISHII!!" wich can mean " SOOO GOOD!" All i have to say is "you Lie!". TV hosts "YOU LIE!!"

Scooping your hand into a trawler full of live baby fish and plopping them into your mouth does not equal dinner. It equals madness, with out proper cooking time. The japanese are feinds for freshness and that is why on many shows you will see the animal alive, then on a plate in less than 2 minutes.

shiv and I witnessed a strange cusine dish of squid. 1st the squid is not killed, its skin is just peeled back, then it is chopped into small moving bite sized peices, then its ink is hand mixed with dollops of rice, and lastly the twitchy squid is placed atop the dollop of ink rice and downed my a hyperactive japanese tv host.

I dont get it. Just once i would like to see some one puke after eating a live fish baby, or atleat not scream in excitment while the squid is attaching its tenticles to their esophagus. But i highly doubt that i will ever see the day of japanese refusal of strange food. they are too damn polite and love crazy food

jan

ps the pictures from this post are some random shots of food, Nara japan, deer, todaji trmple, a big buddha, and the jan and shiv! enjoy