These candies are weird omiyage (edible souvenirs) given to a friend of mine who generously (and possibly gratefully) donated them to my strange-candy-eating effort.

On the right: dried scallop candy. Yeah. Out of its wrapping, it really looked like a little mummified piece of an unidentified internal organ which had no place calling itself "candy." Or even "food." But once I got over its alien-spleen appearance and actually put it in my mouth, it wasn't so bad. Chewy and teriyaki-flavored and honestly not that different from teriyaki-flavored beef jerky, except for the slightly fishy undertone. Was it terrible? No. Do I think scallops have any business being candy? Most definitely not.

In the middle: Hida beef taffy. Hida, an area in Gifu Prefecture, is famous for its tender and flavorful beef. As you may know, there's not a lot of grazing room in Japan, so beef is much more expensive than in the U.S. Taffy, on the other hand, is a mixture of sugar and butter and is therefore relatively cheap. It doesn't take a genius to figure out this money-making equation: sell the delicious flavor of beef in taffy form! Wrap it like a Now & Later and call it candy! It will have the unsettling taste of garlic and soy sauce! But don't worry, it strangely won't be as gross as the dried scallop candy! You might even consider eating it again!

On the left: wine hard candy. Though at first glance, this candy was the most appealing, possibly because it was the only one not involving the flavor of surf and/or turf, it was ultimately the most disappointing. I think my hopes were too high. The texture was that of the sugar-free candies I used to get from my dentist when I was a kid and the flavor was... rotten grape. I'm not saying it doesn't make sense that a wine candy would taste like what wine is, I'm just saying I'd rather have some wine. Ironically, I hate most of the wine I can get in Japan because it's way too sweet. So the wine candy tastes too much like wine and the wine tastes too much like wine candy. I can't wait to be back in California....*

In retrospect, this was kind of like eating a meal at Black Angus in candy form: an appetizer of scallops, a juicy steak and a glass of red wine. Wasn't Willy Wonka trying to invent this exact thing? Good thing I didn't eat the last omiyage in the bunch -- it was chocolate covered blueberries.**

*I will be back, and soon: March 11 - 22, to be exact. Mark your calendars, my friends!

**This really was the other kind of candy given to me, which I decided not to include because it seemed like it might actually be good, not because I was afraid I would balloon into a giant blueberry like Violet Beauregarde.

On this, the seventh day of the third month of my first real winter, I can honestly and wholeheartedly tell you I am fucking sick of winter.

Perhaps it is the e-ticket to Los Angeles resting peacefully in my inbox, the knowledge that somewhere in the world someone has stepped out into a sunny day and is right now smelling the fresh-cut grass, and that in a month I will be there standing in the sunlight next to him, or maybe it is the five solid inches of sweater I have to put on every day before my frigid bike ride to school, or it could be the mold blooming on my entryway floor, or the condensation dripping from my windowsills, or the endless procession of days so dismal I have to turn on the lights in the morning.

But at least I am no longer one of those annoying Southern California residents who, when someone starts talking about the misery of winter, just stares blankly, or maybe mentions something about how cold it was that one week in Mammoth Lakes. Now I finally understand the pure genius of wool garments, and the necessity of clinging to every small comfort you can when everything seems gray and oppressive.

Here, then, is a list of things without which I would be a miserable little giantjeanspopsicle:

1. hot baths in a Japanese-style bathtub, which immerses you completely (assuming you are close to Japanese-sized), preferably sprinkled with Japanese-cypress-scented salts

2. lapsang souchong tea, which tastes of smoke and is the closest thing I can get to a roaring fire

3. nabe, a soup cooked in a clay pot on a portable gas range in the living room. The broth is heated and then you add fish, shrimp, tofu and vegetables and after it simmers for a few minutes, everyone helps themselves. Not only does the soup warm you up, but the bubbling broth also helps heat the room. (In an uninsulated, unheated apartment, you take what you can get.)

4. baked apples, so yummy and easy and comforting. This is how I make them:

Baked Apples for Winter Survival
2 servings

2 apples
1 Tbsp butter
1/2-inch piece of ginger, peeled and sliced
juice of half a lemon
2 Tbsp brown sugar
1/4 tsp nutmeg
2 Tbsp water

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees. Peel the apples with a vegetable peeler and scoop out the cores with a melon baller, leaving the bottom intact. Place in a foil-lined ovenproof dish. Divide the butter and the sliced ginger and put into the apple hollows. Mix the remaining ingredients and drizzle over the apples, pouring some into the hollows. Bake for 45 minutes. Remove the ginger and serve in small bowls.

The butter melts and makes this yummy, gingery pool around the apple when you cut into it. It's very delicious and satisfying. And your kitchen will smell like warm apple pie for the rest of the night. It almost makes you sad winter is coming to an end... but then you shiver violently and snap out of it.

Note: Immediately after writing this entry, I was caught in a freak rainstorm which lasted exactly the length of my bike ride home, the first drops spattering down as I passed out of the school gates and the final drizzle ending as I stood dripping on my kitchen floor. In between was such a riot of wind and rain that I was left to choose between using my umbrella as a sort of battering ram against the wind as I wove unsteadily from side to side on my bicycle, or not using the umbrella and being soaked, but able to ride quickly. I made the intelligent choice of switching between the two, which left me both soaked and sore-armed, and subject the gawks of passing people sitting snugly in their cars wondering either, "Is that girl going to fall off her bicycle?" or "Why is that girl putting her umbrella away?" Either way, I'm sure I looked grumpy.

Although Valentine's Day is celebrated in Japan, it is not a day of giving candy willy-nilly, nor is it a day for the exchange of chocolates between couples only. Instead, Valentine's Day is about the exchange of giri-choco, "obligation chocolate," which sounds like a dream come true ("Hand over that truffle or face estrangement from society!") until you find out women are supposed to give chocolate to the men they work with, but not the other way around. For the sake of fairness, another holiday was invented called White Day, exactly one month later, when men give chocolates to women, but I don't think it's actually fair, because first, white chocolate is the tradition on White Day and a piece of white chocolate is simply not suitable recompense for a nice milk or dark giri-choco in my opinion, and second, I will be in Los Angeles on March 14th and therefore will not receive my socially-obligated chocolate.

This seemed reason enough to buy three kinds of chocolate for myself.

Dark ("bitaa") chocolate is popular in Japan right now, and I think it has something to do with this new Japanese diet fad involving the consumption of 50 grams of dark chocolate every day as a way to lost weight. The main benefit I see to this diet is the sudden prominence of dark chocolates from all over the world which I, a non-dieter, can purchase and eat in over-50-gram servings. With so many choices now available, I feel it is necessary to research by buying several different kinds of dark chocolate at once, then deciding which I like best, then eating all of them, even the ones I didn't like best. Atkins schmatkins, the dark chocolate diet rocks.

My intensive research has led to the following conclusions:

1. My choco-enjoyment level peaks at around 75% cacao.

2. Japanese chocolate is chalky and terrible, even when the package says, "This chocolate is particular about especially materials. Exquisite combination is characteristic of it."

3. Russian chocolate is appealingly packaged, but only so-so tasting.

4. Sometimes, after eating dried scallops and beef taffy, you just want to eat candy you actually like, so even though you have a candy with a funny name sitting on your shelf, you don't review it because you know it will be gross. Instead you pretend that something is a review when actually it was just an excuse to buy and eat a lot of chocolate.

On Saturday I went to a nearby town of 8,000 residents for their annual sagicho festival. It's a day for eating, drinking and burning giant pillars of bamboo decorated with Japanese flags, New Year's ornaments, poems, songs and (according to the website) "shrimp ornaments." It was a great day.

(First, I apologize for the lack of Japanese Candy Friday last week. My internet was down for a couple days, but I promise a new and exciting candy update this week.)

When I first heard my school had a naginata club, I knew I wanted to join. Naginata is a Japanese martial art in which armor-clad girls spar with each other using long bamboo poles. Is there anything cooler than that? In traditional times, naginata was taught to women so they could defend their homes -- back then, the pole was topped with a sharp knife, and the preferred fatal blow was a slice to the jugular -- and today the art is a mix of choreographed moves and fast-moving sparring matches. It is actually practiced by both sexes, but at my school the club is all girls, which makes the whole thing feel more like I joined a secret academy of crime-fighters.

Saturday was my first practice. It started off with training, which included jumping in a big jump-rope, jogging around the perimeter of the school and doing two-person stretches. "Onegaishimasu," said one of my little first-year students, bowing, which is what you say when you want to be someone's partner. Moments later, she was using the weight of her body to press me even deeper into my stretch. (I've seen the baseball team at my school doing two-person stretches, and have pondered how unlikely it would be to see two American high school boys extending each other's calves.) After stretching I learned "quiet walking," a special shushing way to move from one side of the gym to the other. I was good at quiet walking. Maybe I should be a ninja.

Then: the naginata. Emi, the teacher, showed me how the curved top of the naginata is supposed to be like the knife of olden times. This is the part that should connect with the shins, head, wrists or throat of your opponent. Then I learned the first of five sets of choreographed movements and practiced them again and again, first with the teacher, then with one of the students, then -- while everyone else put on their battle gear -- with a pole dressed in armor. I learned the right way to bow, to stand, to sit, to step, to hold the naginata. There seemed a million factors to constantly monitor. I had never before felt so flaccid and imprecise.

When the sparring drills were over -- I was eventually recruited as the timekeeper and whistle-blower -- we did two-person calisthenics. After each round, my partner (who counted off hesitatingly in English) said, "Nice fight!" which somehow did make me feel better about my groans during the last five sit-ups. During the light weight training, we listened to J-pop and yelled out the names of fruits after each set. "Yuzu! Mikan! Ichigo!" We did a final stretch and then the practice was over, almost four hours of home defense preparation completed. Forget the fact I have barely been able to walk for the last two days: I love naginata.

Instead of giving chocolate for Valentine's Day, I made black sesame (goma) shortbread cookies. They were easy and really yummy, especially if you are as obsessed with black sesame desserts as I am. I used this recipe for the shortbread base and added two tablespoons of pure black sesame paste (the blackest, sesame-est thing you can imagine) and three tablespoons of roasted, crushed black sesame seeds. (I roasted the seeds in a pan on the stove for about one minute and then crushed them in my suribachi, a Japanese mortar.)

If you are not obsessed with black sesame desserts, you may not like these. But it's worth a shot.

I'm planning on experimenting more with desserts. Elements include, but are not limited to, kabocha, gingerbread, azuki beans, cream cheese frosting, green tea, ice cream, jellies, cheesecake and cupcakes. I'll keep you posted.

Dear Rummy,

I know you know I only picked you for your looks, Rummy. It certainly wasn't because you are 3.7% alcohol and your package warns against eating you and driving; I didn't discover this until I got home and stared at you for awhile, expecting only the worst. You sat on my shelf for over a week. I apologize -- I had Valentine's Day candy to contend with.

But it was unavoidable: the first crumbly bite of one of your two neatly-wrapped bars. Your center was a lighter brown, studded with raisins. "Ack!" I exclaimed to my empty apartment. Usually I am not one to exclaim to my empty apartment, but you tasted so strongly and throat-burningly of rum, there was nothing else I could say. As the alcohol dissolved, you turned into a creamy mouthful of chocolate and raisins, which reminded me how much I love chocolate-covered raisins. Then, Rummy, you were yummy. But cresting that first wave of eye-watering taste wasn't worth it. I had a second bite, gave an "Ugh!" and wrapped you up. Rummy, I don't know what to say. It's not you, it's me. I know this because I gave you to someone else who was happy to have you, polished off one of your bars on the spot. But I just can't stand the raw taste of rum.

Maybe it's because my first drinking experience involved dark rum and Cokes, the alcohol quietly pilfered by my half-Jamaican friend from the shelves of her parents' liquor cabinet, downed by the two of us and another friend in the living room of my unsupervised house one New Year's Eve in high school. After two drinks apiece, we called my ex-boyfriend, the one who had mangled my 15-year-old heart when he broke up with me with no explanation (I suspected it was because I was not like the coiffed, carefully-ditzy girls his friends dated), and held the phone up to the TV, which was tuned to the scrambled porn station. We turned the volume up. The groans were deafening. It was two in the morning. His voice sounded groggy when he picked up the phone, but as soon as he heard the moaning and flesh-slapping, there was something alert in his silence. One of us held the phone up to the TV while the other two ran to listen in on the phone in my mom's bedroom. We made faces at each other as we cradled the earpiece between us. How long would he stay on the phone? Couldn't he tell this was a crank call? I felt my sadness over our breakup evaporating with every passing moment. I could never be heartbroken over someone who chose the sad sounds of scrambled porn over the dignity of hanging up. After awhile, it stopped being funny. We raised our eyebrows at each other. Ready? We knew what to do. "Pervert!" we yelled in unison, and hung up.

Then we giggled like crazy, rolling around on the suburban carpet, the groans still going until one of us yelled, "Turn it off!" and the squiggly porn people were silenced finally. But there was something raw at the back of my throat, something that made me feel sick, despite the laughter. I coughed and coughed, I drank a glass of water, I sat on the bathroom floor facing the cold toilet bowl, but still it didn't go away.

Disappointment. That's what you taste like, Rummy. Don't take it personally.

Your friend,
Anjali

Takoyaki (pieces of octopus, battered and fried, also apparently known as "pizza ball"), weather warm enough to walk around tights-less, a huge aquarium, a new selection of Japanese candy and good shopping -- what more could you ask for on a weekend excursion?