In the spring, a young woman's fancy turns to thoughts of fruit. Unless she lives in a country where the fruit is fantastically expensive (180 yen for a single apple??), in which case her thoughts turn to thoughts of Lotte Rich Fruit Chocolate -- a bar of which costs less than that single apple.

I was especially excited to see this candy in the conbini because raspberry is a favorite flavor of mine (ah, Razzmatazz smoothie from Jamba Juice, I do miss thee), but not very popular or prevalent in Japan. I was also intrigued by the extremely mauve color of the chocolate pictured on the package. It looked like a scoop of black raspberry ice cream and I bought it without giving the other flavor of Rich Fruit chocolate on the shelf (strawberry, yawn) a second glance.

As soon as I opened the outer package, I was hit with the tangy scent of raspberries. The first bite reminded me of what I had always hoped my Red Raspberry Lipsmacker might taste like if I ate it, sweet with a tartness that was almost juicy. There was a graininess at the end that wasn't unpleasant, probably the residual bits of freeze-dried raspberry powder, and overall the chocolate has the creamy tang of a good-quality raspberry yogurt rather than the aggressive sweetness of most flavored white chocolates.

It isn't often I so sincerely look forward to trying a candy and it actually lives up to my expectations -- I feel like I've happily keeled over into a bed of raspberry satin, just like the woman in this Rich Fruit Chocolate commercial. (From that page, click on the button on the left if you have a broadband connection, the one on the right if you don't.)

Last week was Golden Week, a gloriously long (almost) week of holidays when many people in Japan travel and my town empties out. It was mostly sunny and warm and very very quiet. I used Monday to make a patchwork scarf for spring. The nights are cool enough to leave my bare neck chilly, but wool weather is long over. I've been seeing light cotton scarves everywhere and I can't decide if they are a trend this year or I've only been noticing them because I wanted one. But I've been noticing them. And I wanted one.

The main fabrics I chose were two light cottons sold on narrow rolls and often used for children's pajamas, one in a kitchen-themed print and the other printed with peas. I added some small pieces of other cottons and linens I had lying around. Before buying any more fabric, I'm trying to make a few things with what I already have -- a resolution made much more difficult by the trip I took to Otsukaya on Thursday. (But I didn't buy anything, mainly because I was starving and too cranky to bother choosing just one or two things from the piles and piles of appealing summer fabric. This has led me to the conclusion that craft-shopping, unlike grocery shopping, is best done on an empty stomach, if you are trying to keep resolutions about not splurging.)

The scarf is soft and light and provides just enough neck warmth for rainy spring days. No more enviously eyeing boys decked out in pastel cotton scarves and canvas blazers. Hooray!

I often crave churros. More specifically, I crave Disneyland's churros. I'm not proud of this, opposite as it is to the image I'd like to have of churros, which is as something lovingly handcrafted by sugar-dusted Mexican aunties, not produced in mass quantities by part-time workers in the Happiest Corporation on Earth. But there's nothing I can do about it. Churros sold in Disneyland are fresh and good, much better than the stale sticks usually sold at baseball games and fairs. So I crave.

Cinnamon is a fairly popular flavoring in Japan and donuts are ubiquitous, so churros could really take off here, if only some enterprising yakuza* would hurry up and open churros booths at a few festivals. But they haven't yet, so I was surprised to see this candy (actually more a cookie or snack) on the shelves: Churosu-ya-san, or Mr. Churros Shop. There was only one package left and it was, a bit disappointingly, maple-flavored. I bought it anyway.

Although maple snack foods and I have a spotty history, I was ready to give Mr. Churros Shop the chance is deserved. I wasn't expecting Disneyland, but I was hoping for something crispy and sweet that might slightly alleviate my churros cravings. I was heartened after opening the package; the maple scent was mild and didn't make me want to gag. They even kind of looked like churros, ridged and sparkling with sugar.

Then I ate one.

It was so so so bad. It was so bad, it is only for the benefit of the candy-eating public that I ate another, in an attempt to document its numerous faults and perhaps save a few lives from the disheartening shock I have suffered. Forthwith, I present to you Mr. Churros Shop's Crimes Against Churros (and humanity).

1. They are not crispy. They are soft and crumble heavily under the teeth, like a very stale cookie served to you by an old lady who has guests over once every five years and stocks her snack cupboard accordingly.

2. They taste old. It's not only the texture that makes me wonder if these were manufactured in 1995 and subsequently driven around in the "sweets wagon" pictured on the front of the package for twelve years, unsold, uneaten, until in desperation the bigwigs at Tohato Snack Foods Inc. decided to package and sell them as a new taste treat.** Artificial maple and old margarine seem to be the main flavors here.

3. They contain no cinnamon. Churros are not supposed to taste like Aunt Jemima. That is all.

4. The aftermath is even worse. I have just eaten three "churros" in succession and feel disturbingly full. Each one is no bigger than my index finger, yet they are dense as energy bars. My mouth tastes sour. I have had to pop a plum candy to rid myself of Mr. Churros Shop breath.

The worst part about all this is that if the yakuza ever taste these, there's no way they'll ever open up a churros stand, and my ultimate dream of walking through a festival with a fresh taiyaki in one hand and a fresh churro in the other will never come true. Curse you and your sweets wagon, Mr. Churro Shop!

*The Japanese mafia is said to control the festival snack booth world. No, seriously.

**I even checked the expiration date -- July 2007.

Every year my town holds a festival with a vaguely Earth-Day-ish theme, with plants and homegrown vegetables for sale, reusable canvas bags kids can decorate, and an old-Japanese-lady version of a church rummage sale. I call it The Ogaki Hippie Festival. Last year's festival was packed with college-age kids in tie-dyed clothes, swaying to the tunes of the Phish-type band playing in the middle of the park, an unexpected sight in the midst of my rather staid, decidedly unhip(pie) town. I returned this year with my friend Liz in search of more cheap potted plants, yummy Indian food and dorodango.

Dorodango are perfectly smooth and shiny balls of mud, surprisingly beautiful objects originally made by Japanese children on the playground which have gained popularity recently both in Japan and the United States. The retired Japanese man I tutor remembers making them when he was small, and tells me he and his friends used to throw them when they were done, smashing to bits what must have taken hours to make. I'm sure there is a haiku about the fleeting nature of life to be found in there somewhere. Liz and I just wanted some super-shiny mud balls of our own.

Under an open tent, a glowering old man and a cheerful old lady presided over several tubs of dirt and a bucket of thick mud, each one surrounded by groups of small children rubbing, dusting and patting the growing balls of dirt in their hands. After snapping a few pictures, we asked the cheerful woman if we could try and she cheerfully urged two clumps of mud into our hands, demonstrating how to squeeeeeze the water out of the clump while shaping it into something roughly spherical. We squeezed and squeezed. "Dō desu ka?" we asked. "Chotto..." she said, and proceeded to squeeze for us. This exchange roughly translates to: "How's this?" "Um, yeah, no."

Step one: cut a hole in the box squeeze the mud.

After a proper squeezing by strong granny hands, our mud balls were dense and ready for the dirt. She led us over to a tub and we squatted next to a cool dad sporting a track jacket and hip glasses. He and the old woman attempted to pool their collective knowledge of English and instruct us on the next steps. From what we gathered, we were to sprinkle dirt on the balls and transfer them from hand to hand gently. Gently. We sprinkled. We transfered. The balls cracked. Suddenly, the glowering old man came barreling out of nowhere, yelling at us in Japanese and shaking his mane of gray hair vigorously. The cool dad translated for us: "Squeeze, no!"

But what to do about the cracks already present? Wasn't squeezing the only answer? Judging from the disapproving lines creasing the face of Dorodango-sensei, apparently not. Liz's ball was rescued by a friendly young Japanese mom, while I continued to gently sprinkle and transfer, sprinkle and transfer. The cracks began to slowly fade. Liz resumed shaping her now-crack-free ball and, after a period of contemplative sprinkling, yelped. Her fingernail had gouged a tiny divot in the ball. "It looks like it has a bellybutton," she said sadly. My own dorodango was still slightly ridged where the cracks had been. We forged ahead regardless.

Kids and cool dads.

Finally, the cheerful woman decided we were ready for the next step: sifting dirt through a screen, then dipping the palms of our hands into the resulting soft dust and rubbing it into the ball. It was at this point we realized we had unknowingly pledged the rest of our afternoon to the making of dorodango. We had already been at it for an hour and we noticed the people who had been at the stage we were currently at when we arrived were still there, dipping and rubbing, showing no sign of finishing. I overheard Dorodango-sensei telling someone the finished balls on display had taken three hours each to make. I reported this to Liz. We looked at each other, shrugged, and continued to rub.

Having reached this stage without being yelled at again, we were able to relax and observe what was going on around us. Liz was fascinated by a middle-aged man wearing headphones and assiduously working away at his dorodango with nary a smile or sparkle of joy in his eyes. Every time he had to take a break, he would hand the ball to his wife, who stood, patient and still, until he finished eating his snack and handed her the discarded wrapper. She put it in her purse.

I was most interested in watching Dorodango-sensei, the grumpy old man who obviously loved making these mud balls and seemed simultaneously pleased and pained by the kids' attempts at making their own. I saw him patiently help a toddler compress the initial clump of mud and start shaping her own tiny dorodango. I also saw him squeeze his eyes shut when one little girl dropped her ball and it smashed on the grass, like he could physically feel the mud shattering into a thousand irretrievable chunks at her feet. Most of the kids addressed him as "Sensei" and spoke in polite Japanese, except for one short-haired girl who looked to be about eight, who called him "Ojiisan" (Mr. Old Man) and spoke in blunt, casual Japanese. I admired her bravery. The man was intimidating.

Congratulations, little girl. You have made it onto my Kids I Want to Steal list.

After about an hour of polishing, we risked showing our dorodango to him. "Is this okay?" I asked in Japanese. "Mō ganbare," he said. Don't give up yet. But the festival was ending, the other booths packing up and getting ready to go. I noticed some people were putting dirt and the unfinished balls in plastic bags to be finished at home. I also noticed the booth was strictly BYOBag -- "We don't have bags!" Dorodango-sensei barked at a terrified child who dared ask for one. Luckily, we were in the Land of No Public Trash Bins, Not Even At Hippie Festivals, so both Liz and I had plastic bags floating around in our purses, which we dug out gingerly with dirt-encrusted hands.

Clutching our plastic bags of dirt and mud balls, we made for a nearby water fountain and attempted to rinse off and brush away the dust covering our hands, clothes, hair and shoes. Did I mention it's really windy in my town? And that some kids thought it funny to toss the dirt into the air? And that my once-black shoes had become a dull gray? Then we went back to my place to finish our dorodango in style, not crouched in the dirt and dust, but sitting on chairs on my balcony, sipping cold beers, polishing until the sun went down. Liz's ended up beautifully shiny, nearly as nice as the display dorodango we saw, but mine somehow ended up dull and slightly pitted from its journey in the plastic bag, which had been slightly wet. I was glad Dorodango-sensei wasn't there to see my pitiful first attempt.

This is not my beautiful dorodango.

We then contemplated throwing the balls over the edge of my balcony. Life is fleeting and so are dorodango -- but not when you spend three hours of your life making one. Maybe after I make the next one, I'll throw the first one against a wall somewhere.

(Updated to add: If you are interested in making your own dorodango but don't have a Dorodango-sensei nearby, My Little Mochi looked up some resources and CRAFT:03 has a how-to article. Perhaps you can convince a friend or relative to don a gray wig and yell at you sporadically for the full Japanese dorodango experience.)

Summer is approaching and I'm itching for more skirts. For me, the perfect summer skirt is cotton, A-line, in a cute print that matches various tops, not too tight at the waist and definitely not frumpy. Most of the time, I find my Perfect Summer Skirts at thrift stores, but with the dearth of affordable second-hand clothes in Japan alongside the proliferation of cute fabrics, I decided it was time to try my hand at sewing my own skirts.

Despite its cheesy name (and does anyone else feel like that should be a question mark instead of an exclamation point?), Sew What! Skirts is exactly the kind of how-to book I needed. It takes you step-by-step through the process of drafting a pattern for and constructing a skirt, in a tone that is casual without being cloying and detailed but not overwhelming. While I could have just bought a couple simple skirt patterns and made a lot of versions of the same two or three skirts, it wouldn't have been nearly as flexible or creative as having the basic formulas for many different skirt elements which I can put together any way I like. Elastic waist, drawstring, wrap or zippered? One ruffle or five? There are guidelines for making nearly any skirt style you can imagine and recommendations for tailoring patterns to your personal preferences.

Not that I'm at the ruffles and zippers stage yet. My sewing experience up to this point had been limited to totebags, pillows, and an apron for my gentleman. For my first skirt, I wanted a basic elastic-waist, A-line skirt made of a light cotton, the kind of thing that would be comfortable to wear around the house on sticky summer nights, but attractive enough to wear out of the house as well. The seersucker fabric printed with flowers and leaves I bought while on a fabric-buying binge last weekend seemed perfect. With all the steps carefully laid out for me, I had no problem putting everything together and only made a mistake in the hemline curve of my pattern, which I was able to fix without incident.

The finished skirt isn't perfect, but it's just what I was looking for, and I know what I need to do to make the next one even better. I'm actually kind of looking forward to conquering my first zipper. My only complaint about the book is the artfully out-of-focus pictures used for a lot of the finished skirts, which made me feel like there might be something weird about the way they actually fit. There are clear (but much smaller) pictures of the skirts on a dummy, but I would have liked to see the skirts out and about and not uselessly blurry. Also, a few of the skirt styles are definitely not for me -- I'm not a organdy-over-brocade kind of girl -- but all the patterns are so flexible, it seems simple to change them into something that doesn't remind me of eighth grade dances. Additionally, if you're a super-experienced seamstress, this book is probably too basic for you, but it is perfect for a beginning or intermediate sewer addicted to skirts like me.

(If you do buy the book, be sure to join in on the Sew What! Skirts sewalong on Flickr.)

A Chocolat Poche is a shokora posshu is a chocolate pouch. I don't know about you, but for me the name "chocolate pouch" conjures up images of a small potbelly that is the result of too much chocolate, like a beer belly for candy cravers. Or maybe like a fanny pack ("bum bag" for my UK and Australian friends*) filled with emergency chocolate rations which can be conveniently consumed at any hour of the day.

Chocolat Poche wouldn't be the first thing in my chocolate pouch, but it could have a respectable corner in there somewhere. I like tea-flavored sweets (Earl Grey cake? Yes, please!) and the herbal, citrusy tea flavor goes well with the airy cookie outside and white chocolate inside. Unlike the last Ceylon tea treat I tried, Chocolat Poche doesn't make me feel like I'm eating a tree. The lemony tang of the tea and white chocolate gives the whole thing an almost cheesecake taste. The texture of the cookie is somewhat like the edge of a cream puff, crisp and flaky, different from any other Japanese cookie-chocolate combo I've tried.

But the white chocolate is a little too sweet for me and I prefer the crunch of Takenoko no Sato, which is why this wouldn't be at the top of my pouch pile, but if you're looking for a candy with an interesting flavor that won't turn to choco-mush once the summer heat descends, Chocolat Poche Ceylon Tea it is.

*Working for the JET Programme has vastly increased my knowledge of slang from other English-speaking parts of the world. Who knew they call coolers "eskies" in Australia? And "chilly bins" in New Zealand?

I'm lucky enough to live in a town with a fairly large Brazilian population, which means a Brazilian grocery store stocked with a variety of affordable dried beans. Beans! I must admit that back in the days when canned cooked beans were easily purchased at my local market, I didn't think they were worthy of an exclamation point. But after months of beanlessness (except for sweet azuki and the occasional soybean side), I began to realize a life without beans is no life for me.

A couple weeks ago I bought a bag of dried chickpeas which, once in my kitchen, began to speak to me. "Hey!" they peeped. (What, you didn't know chickpeas peep?) "You should have a potluck party with us as the guest of honor. You can make falafel and that hummus recipe you saw in Saveur last spring."

Who am I to deny a bag of talking chickpeas?

The hardest part about making hummus is taking all the skins off the beans, but if you watch a couple episodes of an action-packed TV series (very old Alias, in my case), the time will fly. This also means that starting with dried beans is only negligibly more difficult than buying them canned since you have to do this step either way, and results in a much better flavor. Dried beans!

Falafel was also a must, and I felt like a hardcore Middle Eastern granny grinding a giant bowl of cooked chickpeas by hand in my suribachi (Japanese mortar and pestle). For this task, I recommend having a friend in the kitchen to talk to and make up impromptu dances with; the time will also fly. I used this recipe, but substituted dried parsley as there was no fresh stuff to be found in my whole town. The aforementioned friend, Liz, made a roasted cumin yogurt sauce to accompany the falafel. Yum!

By early evening, the chickpeas were ready for their debut alongside enchiladas, pasta salad, shepherd's pie, lemon risotto, fresh spring rolls and Chinese-style pork belly, all the things we foreigners dream of on nights when sushi just isn't cutting it. There was also lots and lots of sangria. Plus a dessert of tapioca in coconut milk, which led to this:

Instructions for a tapioca ball race

1. Drink 3-4 glasses of alcohol in preparation for the race.

2. Place a single tapioca ball on your cheek.

3. Tilt your head and shake vigorously. The first one to maneuver their tapioca ball into their mouth wins. Extreme frowning as a means of moving the ball is permitted.

...Um, yeah. No one ever said Gifu's nightlife rivals Tokyo's, but I had a great time. And I think the chickpeas were pleased.