Kelly Azuma

Today I woke up early and decided to go into the city. Yasu dropped me off at the station and I caught the train in, it takes about 45 minutes.

Firstly I went to the Nick Cave Exhibition at the WA Museum. I had been wanting to go, and as I was footloose and fancy free, I decided to.
It was a great look at one of my favourite musicians, and there were quite alot of personal trinkets of his, and even a bespoke suit made for him in London. Lots of his notes, artwork, and even his office! Also lots of videos of interviews, video’s, and framed photographs. I spent a good hour in there wandering around and reading, the exhibition itself was quite big.

Afterwards I went to some of the Japanese supa’s and picked up some groceries including some Hamburg Sauce for the hamburgers I made for dinner.

I also dropped by a store called Utopia, which makes Japanese pan and cakes. This store is very much the same as a Japanese panya, and there was all kinds of pan, currypan, sausagepan, to matchapan, melonpan, anpan, cheesepan etc. I bought Yasu a cream cheese pan for $2, and a bag of 6 matcha anpan for $3. The prices in Utopia are pretty much on par with the prices I spent on pan at Obihiro station. All this time it’s been there and I didn’t know. I have a feeling I will be a regular customer.

After mincing around the city for a while, I had had enough so I got on the train and came home. I caught a bus to our house, and when I got home, Yasu was in bed. He’s just gotten over his flu so I don’t blame him. The weather wasn’t all that good either, mostly overcast, so a great day for snuggling.

I made us a cup of tea and we had the pan for afternoon tea. Yasu devoured his cream cheese pan stating it was the best he had ever had. It was actually quite large for the price, about 15cm diameter. Yasu also had two matcha anpans, and I had one, so there are three left for tomorrow.

We were watching Softbank Hawks take on Chunichi Dragons, and surprisingly Softbank won by 4. So that was good. I’m pretty used to seeing CD beat the pants off every other team. After baseball was over, I made dinner, and the Teriyaki hamburg sauce was loved by both of us. Very nice. Made by a brand called Ebara.

So that was my saturday pretty much. A very nice day. :)

I have a supplier that I regularly buy Japanese candy and sweets from for my blog Sweet Pursuit.

Yesterday he let me in on a little secret.

He bumped into the Pepsi rep in Japan and she told him what this years Pepsi flavour will be.

Are you ready??

SHISO!!

Yes, Shiso Pepsi. You heard it right.

We thought Yoghurt, Cucumber, and Hawaiian were weird, now you just wait for this one. I bet it’s gonna taste twice as weird.

It will be released on June 23rd and according to the rep it is “very authentic and strong”.

Tonight turned out to be pretty good. Yasu came home at 6pm and I made bulgogi for dinner, which I had tweaked around with, the sauce now tastes exactly like the original Korean style bulgogi.

Then for dessert I made a carrot cake loaf with cream cheese and lemon icing. It was totally divine. My little mouse couldn’t stop nibbling it, and now there is only half left. He has some in his bento tomorrow though so that should keep him happy.

We watched サラリーマンNEO tonight that Yasu had recorded last night. It was good but Sexy Bucho wasn’t in it tonight. Having looked up the website he’ll be on the next episode so I’m happy about that. I can get my fix.

One more day for Yasu to work then 3 whole days together. Our car is in the mechanic at the moment though and won’t be ready til next Tuesday so we probably won’t be going anywhere over the long weekend as we only have the company car, unless we pay for the petrol. We’ll probably end up going for a picnic in the hills not far from our place though. It looks like the weather will be nice.

I got a surprise in the post today. I won a double movie pass to “night at the museum 2″. I’m not really a fan, I saw the first one and it wasn’t my cup of tea. Though a friend did tell me it has a few laughs, so maybe I’ll rope in a friend of mine to go with me.

Yesterday I was still abit foggy-headed so I just ordered pizza from Domino’s for dinner. I got a good deal of 3 pizza’s for $20. Aussie bob (Egg,bacon, cheese, and bbq sauce), Supreme (all minus capsicum but extra anchovies), and Double Bacon Cheeseburger (beef, bacon, cheese, mayo, bbq sauce). They were all really yum I have to say, but sadly something has happened to the size of Domino’s pizza, in that they have made a Large smaller. Oh well, lucky we ordered 3. Yasu took the rest to work for lunch.

After watching the Japanese news, Yasu switched over so we could watch Thank God You’re Here, but サラリーマンNEO was on at the same time, so he recorded it for us to watch later. Then Yasu ran a bath and I watched Criminal Minds, which was a really good episode about a killer with OCD.

After that I jumped in the bath and had a very relaxing soak with バスクリン(天然カモミール）.

I stayed up a while and tried to finish the book I’m reading, Four Fires by Bryce Courtenay, but it’s quite a big book (770 pages) and it was 3am before I finally turned in, and I still haven’t finished it.

It’s a really good book. A part of it talks about a character who is this boys dad, and he talks about his time in a concentration camp in Borneo under the Japanese. I was reading that at 3am and just started crying because it sounded so much like my own grandfather’s experience. I have real compassion for those men and women who went through so much during the war and could never escape their experience or the nightmares they had about it every night after.

This coming weekend is a long weekend for Foundation Day, so Yasu will have the whole 3 days off and I’m looking forward to spending time with him again.

This is for Nagaijin who asked for a copy of the Azuki An recipe that I attempted to make yesterday.

I have scanned the pages from the book, I hope it comes out ok for you to see. If not, please let me know and I will re-do them. Sorry for the crookedness of the pages, the book did not quite fit in my scanner so I had to tilt it slightly to get it to scan the whole thing.

If you click on the image you will be able to see the full size.