paspas in english

Sometimes I wonder how far I can push myself to the edge.
Where are my limits? In this case, meaning the "lower" side,
that is. How far low can I hit and still come back with a smile?
The fact that I'm starting to wonder about this means I'm probably
hovering around my limits just now.

However this dullness is probably due to my lack of sleep these days.
I'm probably averaging about 3-4 hours sleep per day, with not
much of an excuse as of what I'm doing while I'm awake so long.
Nothing special, just dwelling along and simply gazing at nowhere
and thinking of nothing productive.

So what has triggered this meaningless life cycle of mine?
Who knows. Life is full of traps and deceptions, right?
Well, probably I do know the obvious reason, but I'll keep that
to myself for the meantime. No use spilling out one's guts when
it's just an insecure insight.

Okay, so it's been a while since my last update,
whatever that was about.

Since I'm starting to miss my sleep again, let me try to put myself
to sleep by using all my brain cells writing my blog in English.

So what do I write about? Maybe I'll introduce something
I'm into right now. Fantasy football, is what I'm checking out a lot
these days. I boost up my PC, check the news, and the next thing
up is my page for fantasy football.

Just as in many things (especially involving the internet)
American sites are way ahead of Japanese services, despite
the infrastructure (more than 2/3 of Japanese internet users
are said to be connected by ADSL or above speed).
Fantasy sports is one of those, and at least I do not recall
seeing any advertisements or sports magazines choosing this
specific topic to discuss about.

Well, besides all the background crap.
Currently 7 weeks have gone by, and I own 2 teams,
both doing fairly well. One team is going 6-1, while the other
is recording 5-2. Not bad for a guy who doesn't know
most of the rosters on his team, right?
Or maybe it is better for me not to know any of them,
since I can view them as simple pawns in my chess game
instead of dragging any personal feelings.

Fortunately I'm playing in a free league so there's no harsh
feelings (hopefully) involved among the players, except for
maybe a quiet battle with my brother who invited me to this
whole thing in the first place but is running 3-4, but that's not
a big deal. At least I'm winning and I'll feel fine as long as it
stays that way. Simple, right?

Anyway, hopefully soon this great pastime will spread across
Japan as well, probably starting with baseball, and I can find
more fun in the world of internet than just zapping through
the usual blog sites and SNS sites. Also before that, hopefully
I can start to catch up with my sleep again so I can face
another weekday in my dreadful life of work.

"Katsu-don", meaning a rice bowl with pork cutlet on top covered
with egg, is a popular cuisine in Japan. Of course it is one of
my favorite dishes too.

However...




This is a photo showing a Katsu-don I ate today.
Though it is difficult to recognize, the volume of pork and rice
served in this bowl is roughly double that of a typical Katsu-don
you will eat.

This dish is served at a diner called "Kokkyo-Shokudou",
meaning "Border Diner". The diner is located close to the Border
of Kyoto and Nara, thus the name. It is famous for serving such
absurd dishes, especially those using pork cutlet for some reason,
while the price is fairly reasonable. This one only cost 980yen,
which could be cheaper than what you will receive at many
other places with half of this volume.

Since this is a good opportunity, let me introduce another huge dish.




This is an Okonomiyaki, named as "Ohsama-yaki", or "King's plate",
which is served at "Ohsama-no-Kote" or "King's Turner", located in
Nara city.

Okonomiyaki, a pankake-like meal, basically uses flour and cabbage
as its base ingredients, adding whatever others "you like", or
"the store likes", such as pork, beef, shrimp, squid, even cheese.

This "King's plate" includes 10 different ingredients, and actually
tastes good despite its massive posture that makes you expect
less than you should. This generally serves for three people,
but if you're hungry enough you may be able to cover it all by yourself.
However it costs about 3,000yen, so you better consider your
budget against your appetite before making any attempts.

Recently it seems such over-sized dishes are increasingly seen,
but this may well be due to the pressure on the diners' side
to create something new and one-of-a-kind. Otherwise it will be
difficult to attract the general. Of course the best is to have them
serve extraordinarily good-tasting meals, but wouldn't it be
easier to make attrative huge plates to create a buzz?

Meanwhile, with all respect to the above two places, they tasted good.

Okay, so yesterday's healthy cooking didn't turn out so good.
Then what can I do good? With leftovers from yesterday,
I decided to fix up a dish using spaghetti, my lifetime favorite dish.




Eggplant on spaghetti may not seem much of a good idea
if you're used to American food, but today's dish was pretty good.
Japanese cuisine is famous for intaking many international foods,
and this kind of a combination is not so rare.
Good for me to make a comeback from yesterday's disaster!
Happy meal for once in a while.

My current lifestyle is structured by semi-fasting.
Although obesity has been a problem I've been facing
for the majority of my life, the reason of my current diet is
not necessarily to resolve this. Rather more, it is part of a
plan I am secretly conducting for myself, even close to a
punishment which reason even I have almost lost track of by now.

Well, that is a lie, I know to my heart why I'm going through this
nonsense, but just that I'm not up to revealing the reason
right now. Let's just say there are times in our lives when
you just want to see how far you can push yourself to your limits.
Maybe someday my mental status will calm down so I can look back
to these days and smile and talk about it.

For now, I'm not eating so healthy for quite some time,
but some people do not let me get away. My colleague gave me
a recipe book to cook healthy food and eat for a change.
Well, since she is younger than me and the policy of my life is
not to argue with ladies, I have decided to follow her advice and
make some dishes from the book.

My first dishes are eggplant and minced pork, and 'konjac'.
Both are low in calories and popular foods in Japan.







They may look pretty good (or maybe not?), but actually
I did a pretty bad job on the cooking part, and my first attempt
ended up in a pretty bitter result. Well, the taste itself was far
from bitter, because there was almost no taste at all.

Better luck next time.

Seems my good friend Tommy who came up with this
splendid idea to start a blog in English has finally decided
to step forward and start rolling. Time is limited for him
due to hard work and a new born child (congrats!), but
hopefully he will keep his word and keep up to achieve his
goal to "Send out a 'point of view' from Kobe".

So I guess MY blog will be to send out a point of view from Kyoto.
Probably not, but I'll just be talking about an everyday life
of a strange guy living in a nowhere land in Japan.
Fortunately I've got the chance to reconnect with good old
friends from US, and maybe I can use this as an update of my
current life to them as well as to practice writing in English.
Sometimes it's really depressing to face the deterioration of
my English ability, but then again no one can promise your
English was so good from the start, right?

Anyway, Let me reboot this one-month old site
and try to get things working!

The dark photo you see here shows the Nara Station.
However this building, or monument, or whatever it is,
is currently not in use.

The Nara Station area is currently undergoing a major
reconstruction, starting from whenever it was from way back when,
and ending whenever they say which is not really clear or
necessary for me to know about.

By the way, this useless piece of whatever cost 200,000,000yen
to build. And once again, may I say? It is not in use.
How tolerable these citizens are! They should do something
about the commerce in this area first, if you ask me.
There used to be a Starbucks right in front of the station before,
but now it's a sushi bar. Don't ask me which is better,
but at least the sushi bar doesn't look so tempting to enter.
Whoever has the guts, please go see what it's like and let me
know again.

Today I wandered around Kyoto city. Even though I live in the
same prefecture, I hardly go up to the city to see the tourist spots.
Why force yourself into a pack of unpleasant crowds to see
nothing but a beautiful city of tradition being wrecked down
by bad manners and western civilization?

Anyway, there's one spot I'd recommend to all Japanese to visit,
not to foreigners, because they already know this place.

Kyoto Gyoen.

Just wander around inside there and you can forget about all your
miseries in life. Only for that moment, of course.

At least I got to forget mine for a while.

But not any more.

Unexpectedly to myself, yes, even to myself, I spent this Saturday
without any intake other than fluids.

Despite the sudden fasting I jogged in the morning and night,
and also dropped by the sauna to sweat out whatever is
stuck inside me.

Of course my body weight drastically dropped, but it certainly
doesn't feel healthy at all. Pretty obvious, isn't it?

Maybe tomorrow will be a better day.

Today was my drinking night in Osaka.

Not something I'm enjoying during this current stage of
fasting and forcing myself to live my life on the fast lane,
but then again, eating and drinking always turns out to be
a pleasant occasion, as long as you don't mistake your company.




The food at this place is good and each table is separated
into cells, so it's nice to enjoy a relaxing time, but the biggest
problem with this place is that the food and drinks come
extremely slow. Probably one of the most irritating things
that could happen at these places is to be kicked out after
your given two hours while the guys don't bring your food and
drinks on a timely manner. Half of the time we were pissed,
but of course that will not change anything except your mood.

But there aren't many good places to eat at Tennoji anyway.