I just added a bunch of new photos to Flickr. See them here.

And happy New Year!

One: Learn enough Japanese cooking vocabulary and kanji to be able to use all the amazing cookbooks and cooking magazines (a.k.a. food porn) that surround me. In pursuit of this, I bought a cookbook of 15-minute meals to get started and, as a future goal, a more complicated book of recipes from a bakery called "Ouchie Cafe." I bought it specifically for the goma (black sesame) cookies and the kabocha (pumpkin)-filled cakes. Yum!

Two: Start making quilted things. I noticed when I got to Japan that quilted bags, tablecloths, curtains, etc. are popular in the world of zakka (the Japanese name for household goods and accessories -- I love zakka!). I thought it was a modern development, but when I visited the Hida Folk Art Museum on New Year's Day, I saw tons of quilted bags and hats from at least a hundred years ago. Quilted drawstring bags have been a kimono accompaniment for ages, apparently. This explains the proliferation of incredibly cute quilting fabric at craft stores, as well as all the remains of kimono fabric sold cheaply here. The only problem I face is the lack of a table of normal height, which will make it difficult to use the foot pedal of my sewing machine. What did the Japanese women of olden days use -- their knees?

Three: Take more pictures of the things I eat. (This was inspired by this book: Everything I Ate: A Year in the Life of My Mouth.) I'm kicking myself now for not taking a picture of the amazing breakfast I ate at the minshuku (B & B) in Takayama, where I spent New Year's Eve and Day. It included many elements of osechi ryori, the food traditionally eaten on New Year's: gomame (small dried sardines in a sweet sauce of sugar, mirin, soy sauce and sake); kamaboko (pink and white fish cake -- red and white are traditional New Year's colors); namasu (daikon radish and carrot pickled in vinegar, also considered a red and white food); a small piece of omelette; and a thin chicken and vegetable soup with a giant piece of sticky mochi at the bottom, one of the most delicious soups I have ever tasted.

And after writing all that, I'm kicking myself even harder.

I've been thinking about food a lot. I've also been eating a lot. This first came to my attention during Capt. T's visit, when I would polish off my bowl of udon and slurp down the soup while he was still swallowing his initial mouthful. Oops. But actually, it didn't embarrass me; I felt proud. I once was someone who always sat down at the table thinking, I will never finish this, and I was always right. Now I sit down knowing I can eat everything on my plate with ease, can look in the eyes of the chef at the end of the meal and say, "Gochisoo sama deshita!" ("It was a feast") and know they'll see I mean it. This feels like a triumph somehow.

So yeah, I think about food all the time here. Some of that is because there is so much good food everywhere. On the streets, sightseeing, I have eaten so many yummy things: a hot grilled yam wrapped in paper, chestnut soft serve topped with pumpkin puree, piles and piles of warm sembei (big grilled rice crackers), fish-shaped pancakes stuffed with sweet bean jam...and on and on and deliciously on. I find myself thinking about these things -- and other memorable meals -- while I'm riding my bike to the train station or sitting at my desk between classes or drifting off the sleep at night.

The other reason why I think about food all the time is because Japanese people, for the most part, love food. They don't love it with a guilty pleasure or a hedonistic glee, but with something pure and joyful, a love for food just because food is awesome. Case in point: a few weeks ago, one of the teachers in my staff room brought in a dozen freshly-hard-boiled eggs and a shaker of salt. She left them on a table by the coffee maker and as the teachers trickled into the room during the lunch hour, she told them all to take an egg. They took their eggs and almost all exclaimed, "Oh, eggs! Delicious! Thank you!" and, after eating their eggs, again talked about how good they were.

Meanwhile, I was thinking, This is so crazy and great, because first, can you imagine bringing in a dozen hard-boiled eggs to work in the U.S. and getting even TWO people to eat them, let alone talk about how delicious eggs are and how much they love eating them? Second, can you imagine bringing ANY food into work to share and not hearing a single person profess how "bad" they are for eating said cake/bread/cookies/nuts/etc.?

I adore hard-boiled eggs, so I happily peeled mine that day and ate it while listening to my co-workers exhort the oishii-ness of eggs, feeling so very happy I live here. (Then I felt guilty about not finishing my rice, but what can you do? Hard-boiled eggs really fill you up.)

I got my first haircut in Japan this weekend. I was afraid of my first haircut in Japan, I have to tell you. I was afraid of ending up with a girl-mullet, which seems to be a popular haircut here. I wouldn't look good with a girl-mullet. I would, I think, look like Janet from Three's Company if I had a girl-mullet. But luckily, I had no reason to be afraid. For only slightly more than I used to pay for my impersonally-hip turn in a vintage barber's chair at Rudy's, I got the BEST shampoo I've ever had (it was like 15 minutes long! with lots of head massaging!), a non-mullet haircut, a blow-drying and straightening, and a lovely conversation with the stylist, a woman who spent a year cutting hair in Los Angeles. She almost convinced me to get a straight perm, which is nearly as popular as the girl-mullet here, but now that my hair is back to its non-straightened, wavy-crazy self, I'm happy I kept it that way. (Here's a picture of it in its temporary stick-straight state.)

In pursuit of my resolutions, I've been cooking and crafting more. I used the holiday on Monday (Coming of Age Day, kind of a big birthday for everyone who did or will turn twenty in this school year) to finally tackle something major with my sewing machine: my own version of the hip (as in the body part) bag, which is Japan's cute answer to the fanny pack. I've seen them everywhere here and have wanted to buy one, but they seemed ridiculously expensive. This one is made of turquoise velveteen, lined with cotton and decorated with a wood button from the 100-yen store. It took nearly all day to make and the straightness of the seams -- much like the straightness of my hair -- leaves something to be desired, but as with my wonky hair, I love it anyway.

I love eating candy. I also love looking at candy: the smooth chocolate shells, shiny fruit colors, perfect swirls of caramel. And I love candy packaging, especially here in Japan where there is always some new and beguiling candy box prominently displayed on the shelves of my local supermarket. A few months ago, I made a pact with myself to buy a new kind of candy every time I went grocery shopping; this pact was tossed a few weeks later after the unfortunate purchase of the previously-mentioned, truly repulsive Meltykiss.

But on my kitchen shelf there still teeters precariously a large pile of half-eaten boxes of beautiful-looking, awful-tasting candy which I can't throw away because this box looks so pretty and this one is so funny and this one is amazingly strange. By initiating an official Candy Friday, a day each week when I can document one of these finds, I hope I can finally bring myself to throw them away. Or at least take them into work and make other people eat them.

(I'll also review some candies I like; there are a few.)

The first contender: FEEL SAFARI
Self-proclaimed flavor: "Bittersweet chocolate infused with a special blend of Cinnamon and spices."
Brand: Fujiya, released as part of their "Chocolat New York" series. They also released a similarly packaged candy called FEEL ENVY. This series apparently encompasses the glamorous life of New York City. In candy form.

Obviously, I bought this for the package. How can you resist candy that looks like a giant box of exotic condoms? Indeed, the packaging is the only reason to buy Feel Safari, as the chocolate itself is chalky (as is much of the chocolate in Japan, I've found) with a mild spiced flavor, like Mexican hot chocolate without any of the creamy yumminess. The wafers, shaped life the wooden paddles that came with ice cream cups in elementary school, just kind of sit unmeltingly on your tongue until you chew them up, and then they crumble.

But the package! It's like a big wallet made of snakeskin and leopard fur and it closes with a cool tucking action. And on the inside flap there's a crazy neon-orange picture of a leopard on a turquoise background. Every time I look at it I have the urge to carry it around in my back pocket, so I can pull it out whenever I run into someone and say, "Do YOU feel Safari?"while offering them a candy.

At the very least, it would be a way of getting rid of the contents. Then I could keep the wallet and feel safari every day.

I see book covers all over the place here, which I find very cool and somehow satisfying. Reading from a book with a brown paper cover reminds me of elementary school. For this reason, and also because foreign books are ridiculously expensive ($25 for a paperback!), I decided to cover the book I bought yesterday.

And what book is it? Best American Nonrequired Reading 2005, which feels like such a treat. I've been reading so much classic literature lately because that's the easiest to find at the library here that reading something outside the canon is something special. So special it deserves its own book cover decorated with origami paper from Kyoto.

What, you didn't know it was a holiday? Here, excerpted from my NaNoWriMo novel, is the story of the first January 17th.

Matt was making Rosie a mix CD. He assured her the cover art was guaranteed to rock her, but he was concerned the music wouldn’t be obscure enough to impress her. She told him it was fine, she wasn’t a music snob. She didn’t tell him she would be inclined to sleep with it under her pillow no matter what.

He finally presented it to her one night at work before they left together for a co-worker’s going-away party at a nearby restaurant. The cover was a picture of Rosie sitting in front of her computer at work, a thought bubble rising from her head that said, We do not belong here.

“When did you take—oh, I remember…” A couple weeks ago she had caught Matt snapping a picture of her through the cubicle glass, thought it was weird and promptly forgot about it.

“You saw me? Fuck!”

“It’s okay, I had no idea…” Her voice trailed off as she inspected the playlist (printed on a piece of their office letterhead, white-out artfully used for effect) and the back cover (a picture of the view out the front doors of the office). “This is amazing.”

“Yeah?” He was smiling hugely.

“Yeah.”

“What did Matt give you!” Molly yelled from the back of the office. “I want to see!”

Rosie walked back to show Molly and Shelby, who were sitting and chatting at Shelby’s desk. They inspected it closely. “Oh my god, he’s so in love with you,” Shelby pronounced.

“What? No…” said Rosie. She didn’t know what to do about the smile on her face.

“Yeah,” Shelby said.

“Yeah,” said Molly.

The going away party was at a restaurant on the beach, filled with well-coiffed adults in tasteful black clothes, including, oddly, the actor who played Kramer on Seinfeld. Rosie and Matt both ordered the steak frites and shared an appetizer. When the steak arrived, Matt made fun of the way she sprinkled salt on her steak—first she sprinkled the salt into the palm of her hand and then she meted it out with her fingers.

“I can’t see the salt,” she said. “This way I know how much I’m putting on.”

“It still looks ridiculous,” he said.

“I don’t care. I bet my food tastes better.”

After dessert and drinks, they decided to walk on the beach with Greg and Toni, two co-workers who were also ready to leave the party. “Woo woo!” someone yelled as they prepared to walk out together. “A romantic walk on the beach!” Matt, Rosie and Greg rolled their eyes, but Toni, who was in her 30s, single, and prone to turning everything into a sexual innuendo, said, “You know it, baby,” in her gravelly classic-rock-DJ voice. The other three were immediately sorry she was going along.

Out on the beach she was quiet though, and they all kicked off their shoes and socks to walk in the cold sand under the dark sky. Rosie stepped into the frothy water; it was freezing. Everyone had wandered off on their own, contemplating the dark, insistent waves, the sparkling lights of Santa Monica, the occasional lucky stars peeking through the pollution. She looked at Matt’s silhouette and wished for the 398,227th time that he was hers.

The next night, Josh, Matt, Jackson and Rosie decided to go out dancing with the girls who lived in the apartment below Matt and Jackson. Rosie bought a new top for the occasion, a low-cut, striped affair. She had a vague feeling that something was going to happen—there was a familiar bubbling, a volcano waiting to blow. She thought, It’s been over a month.

She went upstairs to help Matt and Jackson with their eyeliner before piling into Josh’s car together, along with two of the girls who lived downstairs. At the club, they all made a beeline for the bar, where Rosie was accosted by the creepy, camera-wielding, fake-gay guy who maintained the club’s website. He posed her against the bar to take a picture. “Lean over…just a little more…wait, just a little—good,” he said as he snapped the picture. “That’ll be a good one.”

Rosie rejoined the group, making a face behind the creepy guy’s back. “How’s your boyfriend?” asked Jackson.

“Shut up,” said Rosie.

It was the club’s three-year anniversary, so the dance floor was more packed than usual and the music was mostly their favorites. After an hour of dancing, they escaped to the patio and squeezed into an empty corner. Matt stood next to Rosie.

“So you like the CD?” he said.

“I love it!” she said.

“Do you really think it’s the best mix you’ve every gotten?” He was leaning toward her, smiling and looking quivery.

“Yes!” she said.

“Yes!” he said, and raised a fist in triumph. “That’s amazing.”

And when they went back inside to dance, as they were wending through the packed crowd, she reached out and took his hand, like she needed it to keep from being separated from the group, like it was a harmless gesture between friends, like it didn’t mean anything.

And his hand was perfect.

And then they danced some more, and she pointed out to him that the projections running on all four walls of the room read HAPPY ANNIVARSAY and they laughed together, hunched over on the dance floor, until their sides ached. “Happy Annivarsay!” one of them would wail, and they would collapse into giggles. She was hysterical, close to the edge, terrified, elated.

And Josh was out on the patio or drinking by the bar or dancing in the other room; she didn’t care.

And after they went outside and shared a cigarette, they walked back in together, Rosie leading the way this time, and Matt put his warm palm on her shoulder, on the exposed area close to her neck, like he needed it to keep from being separated from her, like it was a harmless gesture between friends, like it didn’t mean anything.

And his hand was perfect.

And when the night was over and the club was about to raise the lights, they stood together at a table, sweaty, waiting for the rest of the group, and she knew she had to tell him. Well, this is it, she thought, and touched his arm.

Yes. This candy is called "Collon." Collon are pieces of crisp tube-shaped cookie filled with chocolate and bits of toasted almond. The colon, you may know, is part of the lower intestine. And a crisp tube-shaped cookie filled with chocolate and bits of toasted almond, you may know, looks just like slices of intestine filled with -- well, let's just say they look like very full intestines.

These aren't bad, kind of like any number of crispy creme-filled cookies from Europe you can buy at Trader Joe's. The almonds add a light nutty flavor that is nice.

But really. "Collon"?! Whoever came up with the name must know. The cookie part is even ridged in that uneven way I recognize from attending the Bodyworlds exhibit at the California Science Center and staring at a plastinated digestive system. I imagine it was a sniggering American, jaded after years of teaching English in Japan, who first suggested the name.

Jaded English Teacher: Whoa, this stuff really looks like -- hey... you should call this candy "Colon."

Japanese Candy Developer 1: Really? What does that mean?

Jaded English Teacher: It means... "chocolate" in... German.

Japanese Candy Developer 2: German? I studied German in college. I thought "chocolate" was "Schokolade."

Jaded English Teacher: Listen. Who are you gonna believe -- Kobayashi-san here, or the guy who spent three weeks in Austria after graduation?

Japanese Candy Developer 1: How do you spell "colon"?

Jaded English Teacher: C... O... L... uh... L... O... N.

The extra L was so no one in Japan would Google "colon" and find out the truth, I'm convinced.

One of my clearest memories of big holiday meals with the extended family is The Unveiling of the Som Tam, a slow cracking open of a Tupperware container or styrofoam take-out box which inevitably filled the kitchen with the creeping stink of its contents, overpowering even the roasting turkey. My uncles would giggle like kids and shovel the stuff into their mouths, their eyes watering at the excess of chilies, smiling and gobbling until the container was empty. I don't remember anyone else ever asking to share the Holiday Som Tam; I just remember my mother and her sisters rolling their eyes at these annual antics, exasperated but understanding. They knew what it was to miss a food so bad you dreamed of it at night, conjured the ghost of its scent while walking through the grocery store, tinkered with recipes so heavy with substitutions they buckled under the weight, never producing anything more than a weak mockery of what you loved.

For you see, my mother's family all grew up overseas -- in Thailand and India -- because my grandfather was a missionary. They returned to the U.S. once every four years to load up on underwear and other necessities only the First World could provide, and in the years between supplemented their Thai food diet with hideous shelf-stable things like powdered dairy and sweetened condensed milk. Dessert in Thailand is usually fruit or perhaps a cube of coconut-flavored gelatin, so it makes sense that my mother and her siblings, living in a world without Fudgsicles and apple pie a la mode, would develop a crippling addiction to sweetened condensed milk, the only creamy and super-sweet substance available in a can. (For some, the addiction still lingers. Poured on pancakes? Eaten straight from the can on a spoon? These are not unheard-of indulgences in my family.)

But food obsessions, like jet lag, are an inescapable part of moving from one end of the world to the other, and they strike on both sides of the ocean. Hence my uncles' extreme glee every time they got to dig into a pile of shredded green papaya speckled with chilies and dried shrimp, doused in fish sauce and lime juice. (In the early years, before the existence of Thai Town and fusion cuisine, they used to eat a version made of shredded carrots. I'm sure it was never quite right.) I never really understood this. After visiting Thailand, I returned with memories of skewered beef, noodle soups bought on the street, the best mangoes and sticky rice ever, but I was never tortured by the absence of the real thing.

Two and a half years ago, my mom, stepdad and younger sister moved to India and were soon joined my other sister. When I visited them last summer, I had to admit I grew a bit tired of eating at sub-par Western restaurants, watching my family moan in ecstasy over watery pesto, when we could have eaten good Indian food for a fraction of the cost. I found my youngest sister's obsession with Trader Joe's beef jerky funny and her habit, upon returning to the States, of eating two bags a day incredible. It just seemed so sad to me that my family sat around dreaming of a real turkey dinner on Thanksgiving.

But now I am here. While it's true that as far as Asian countries go, Japan has got it pretty much covered in the Western food department -- I can buy things at my local grocery store that my poor family in the Himalayas can only draw nostalgic pictures of -- still. No cilantro. No chocolate chip cookie dough ice cream. No readily-available, non-processed cheese. No fish tacos. No cornbread. No pho. I spent the beginning of winter tentatively fantasizing about McCann's Irish steel-cut oatmeal, knowing there was little hope of finding it, since every time I had asked my students who spent a year abroad, "What was the grossest food you ate in the U.S./Canada?" they always said, "Oatmeal!" which was not encouraging.

But amazingly I found a big metal can of it in a foreign foods store in Nagoya. I believe I grabbed it off the shelf and cradled it like a newborn baby as soon as I saw it, then immediately bought it, as if it might somehow be snatched from my grasp. Mornings when I make it -- topped with dried cranberries, brown sugar and warm milk, it is the perfect winter Sunday breakfast -- I sit staring at it for awhile, marveling in the miracle of its presence. Then I wonder what I'll be craving two years from now, what foods will haunt my dreams. I shiver to think of a world without black sesame ice cream, without enoki and maitake mushrooms, without beautifully-marbled tuna sashimi.

Will I end up like my uncles, cracking open secret Tupperware containers and gobbling their contents while cackling like a madwoman? Will I groan ecstatically at the counters of particularly good sushi bars? Will I eat azuki bean paste by the spoonful?

It's all very possible. At least I know my family will understand.

A tiny box of traditional Japanese candy (wagashi) was given to me by another teacher. Pretty, isn't it? I'm not going to say much about it, except that I wish I hadn't bitten into it because it was much nicer to look at than to eat....

My tooth hurts. And I think, when I look closely, I can see a cavity. This terrifies me. Maybe it's because I've seen one too many Japanese street-fashion magazines, with their pages of crooked and blackened smiles, but I don't want to go to the dentist in Japan.

I've been paranoid about dental problems since I got here. About a month after arriving, I had a nightmare that my teeth were starting to fall out and there was nothing I could do to stop it. I know this is a common nightmare, one that symbolizes a loss of control, so it makes complete sense it would pop up after I moved to a new country with a language I could barely speak. Still, it's not as easy to dismiss this nightmare as it is my frequent zombie dreams because this one follows me into the morning, staring at me in the mirror as I inspect my possibly-cavity-ridden tooth. Just going to the dentist relinquishes a sense of control -- there you are, helpless, mouth wide open -- but to go to a dentist who doesn't speak your language, to have to have all information translated through your supervisor, a cringing and mostly-ineffectual man, is to feel completely vulnerable.

Not that I haven't had time to get used to this feeling. During my first months here, I had to bring all my mail to work so my supervisor could tell me what it meant and whether or not it was important. As someone who likes to assiduously read and file all documents which may be used in the future, this was a painful ordeal. In the U.S. I always had a carefully-ordered filing cabinet; now I just stuff all papers that may one day be necessary in a drawer. Once, when there was a problem with my internet service, I just dug out all the papers with the logo of the ISP and handed them to my Japanese-speaking friend to decide whether or not they were relevant. The excellent secretary in me cringed.

I've learned how to manage my day-to-day life through my Japanese lessons and the memorization of certain interactions (for example, when I buy sushi at the supermarket and the cashier asks me a rapid-fire question, even if I don't hear the words, I know she's asking if I want chopsticks because the first time this happened, I didn't know what on earth she was saying, so I apologized for not speaking Japanese and she said, "Chop sticku" in halting English and the whole vaguely-embarrassing interaction was indelibly burned in my brain). But when it starts to feel like there's a wobbling somewhere in the structure -- a throb in my tooth, a stopped-up drain -- I am suddenly afraid it's all going to fall apart. Like there's no safety net. Like terrible things could happen I'd have no control over their outcome. Like all my teeth could fall out or my apartment could flood or I could somehow accidentally commit a heinous crime and the only thing standing between me and certain doom would be my cringing supervisor and his highly questionable skills at negotiation.

I think I'm going to look up "toothache" in my Japanese dictionary. And then brush my teeth again.

There's a new page in town: the Bookshelf, which documents my usually-voracious reading habit. I've been reading a lot more classic literature lately because the "New Books" shelf in the foreign section of the Gifu Prefectural Library is usually a depressing collection of tell-all celebrity (or "celebrity") autobiographies and self-help books.

Also, just so you know, if I don't like a book I don't finish reading it, so if a book shows up on the page it means I liked it.