Cooking up a storm

And I'm not talking about the wind that's howling outside my room either. (Made work today a little troublesome.) Last night we ended work early so that we could help Yoko-san cook dinner. And by help I mean the girls wanted to learn how to do some home style Japanese cooking. They seemed kind of surprised that I was interested in learning as well. However with Aiyana, Rachael, Viola, Yoko, and Yvonne in the kitchen there really wasn't much I could actually help with, so I wound up playing photographer instead. (Now I have a comprehensive photo record which will probably more helpful to me in the long run anyway.)

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This particular nights meal was tempura. Lots and lots of tempura. I didn't even recognize some of the stuff they were using. As you can see there was a lot going on. What they are working on above was actually the side dish. I don't even know what it was called. The best way I can describe it would be to call it sea food pudding. Shrimp, Scallops, a mini spherical hard boiled egg (quail perhaps?), and something that I could not identify. All this went into a cup, and then had egg mixed with.... something poured over it. Some veggies got added to the top, then they covered them up and put them in a steamer (or maybe it was a boiler, I really don't know).

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After the seafood pudding was taken care of, the tempura ingredients were prepared (cut into appropriate shapes and sizes) and then dipped in the fryer. (Using fat free oil as Yoko-san was proud to point out) Lets see if I can remember everything we used: Sweet potato, green onion, eggplant, and some kind of tube that is apparently made out of fish. (A bizarre concept, but quite tasty.) While all this was going on I somehow managed to miss the Miso soup that was being made. There was also rice being made in the rice cooker that I failed to get a picture of.

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As you might imagine, this home cooked meal prepared by these 5 amazing women was absolutely delicious. I even ate the eggplant (which is my least favorite food in the world) without any problems or hesitation.

It was a great meal, and I'm glad that I took 272 pictures to remember it by. Yeah, that's right, 272. (I'm loving my new camera by the way) Of course there are lots of shots of the same stuff, and several of them are blurry. But its still a ton of usable pictures. Oh yeah, I did a quick count of the images I've taken so far on this trip and found out I had more then I thought. Again, there are many photos of the same thing, and lots of blurry stuff because I was walking around a lot of the time, but still, its a ton of photos (and a few of them are video). Anyway, 5,313 is the number of files taken on this trip in my image folder right now. That's a full 2k more then I originally estimated. So please bear with me, because its going to take me a long time to sift through all those and pick out ones to upload. I know I won't get to all of it while I'm still here in Japan, but I'll try to upload some of the highlights. Until next time.

~Daniel