Hello hello! It’s the last day of January, so let’s hear one final round of applause for everyone who was born in this lovely frigid month.
On Wednesday the 26th (my mother’s birthday), I went to Coco’s (a casual dining restaurant that I haven’t been to in several months) and got a chocolate strawberry parfait. Here it is for your viewing pleasure:
It doesn’t look as good now as it did when I got it at 10pm, exhausted from a long day of work. It’s almost our busiest sign-up season, since the Japanese school year finishes in March and starts in April, so I have been sorting and stapling and stuffing direct mail in envelopes and such recently.
Also, it’s still cold, and our office heater is super weak, so I’ve been trying to do it all with half-frozen fingers. I’m not a summer person, since I can’t stand to be sweaty, but I’m definitely excited for spring.
In other news, I made that sushi I was talking about in the blog post last week. I also got some smoked salmon and made lox-style Ritz crackers.
One of the sushi rolls is shrimp tempura with cucumber and mayonnaise. The other is imitation crab with cucumber and cream cheese. Both attempts have a bit too much rice. It’s hard to get the layer thin enough but still have full coverage over the seaweed.
I would’ve used avocado, too, but they didn’t have any when I went to the supermarket. Very sad. Also, I would’ve plated them nicely, but I was eating them as I went along. After these two rounds, I didn’t even cut the sushi. I started eating the logs like burritos.
I made three or four more variations, but I can’t remember exactly what I did. One used sriracha mayo and tuna; another used yellowtail; another used natto.
It was fun if you want to turn lunch into a day-long activity, but I probably won’t be doing it again anytime soon.
In other news, I’m still trying to make sure I use the gym enough to justify 7,000 yen a month, which means that I go a few times a week but don’t follow a particularly strict schedule.
I also booked 5 online Japanese lessons over the next three weeks, after taking almost the entire month of January off (a reward for having finally taken that test last year).
Coming up next, I’m about to go to karaoke, then get some takeout and watch Jujutsu Kaisen on Netflix.
Then after work tomorrow, I’ll have to do a quick gym visit so I can get back and go to sleep early enough to wake up feeling rested for my 9am book club meeting on Wednesday.
Speaking of book club, I don’t think I kept anyone updated on what we’ve read after Americanah. December’s pick was Great Circle by Maggie Shipstead, a recommendation from my Aunt Beth, and January’s was Rebecca by Daphne du Maurier. From tomorrow, we’ll be starting on The Dispossessed by Ursula Le Guin.
Outside of book club, I read Pillars of the Earth by Ken Follett this month. It was, ah, uncomfortably explicit at times, but overall an enjoyable piece of historical fiction. I haven’t been reading very much over the past few years because of the concentration it takes to sit down and focus on a book, but the discovery of audiobooks let’s me “read” while I’m walking to work and jogging and such, so it’s really convenient. Highly recommend!
One final update is that COVID-19 cases are going up, so the government is once again imploring us to be careful. I know the USA is kind of over it, but we are still in the prevention stage rather than the “live with it” stage. My manager is asking us to make sure our students know how to use Zoom because we might be going remote again soon. We shall see.
That’s all for this week. Thanks for reading!
Alisa
Alisa & a Visa 