a casserole dish for dinner

Nico: When I came home, MJ was cooking our dinner.

Today's dinner was a casserole dish. It is one of our favorite dishes recently.

Cus it is easy to cook, healthy and yummy.

This time, MJ put cabbage, Japanese mushrooms (eringi and enoki), chicken meatballs with mochi and sausages. MJ really LOOOOVES eringi.

We eat them with dipping sauce.The dipping sauce is `ponzu'. It is made with soy sauce and vinegar and citrus juice. When Japanese have casserole dish, they usually use `Ponzu'. `Ponzu helps to take in iron from ingredients easily. 

Of course, `ponzu' makes dishes yummier.

I love casserole dishes in winter.

Bat Out of Hell

MJ: Just as I am beginning to cook dinner this evening (and by cook I mean boil some water for some pasta)　I see something flying around the room. Which is odd, you know. It's winter - all the windows are shut.

Taking a closer look, it appears to be a small bird, so I attempt to catch it, using the skills learned from helping to clean out my best friends bird cages as a child. And those skills don't fail me, but it isn't a small bird I'm holding, but a small bat.

Taken from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japanese_Pipistrelle

A Japanese Household Bat, is only 4.5cm long, but they give a good scratch and a fair bite.

So instead of relaxing in front of the TV on a Tuesday night with our favourite program, we get to spend it searching for an after hours clinic that will see me, and then trying to get there, waiting!!!

Frisk??

MJ: As Nico gets home from school today, she starts to apologise - she has this habit of going to convenience stores and buying new snacks and lollies. Today was no different.

'Oooops,' she says, 'I bought some Frisk today. Isn't it cute?'

Frisk are a brand of mints in Japan that come in a little box that you can slide open and one or two baby mints are ready to take. It is cute. One craze in Japan is to have an individualised box for them.

What Nico bought me home isn't quite individualised, but a mix with another fad in Japan - phone accessories!

A Frisk box, on a strap for your phone! By buying only two boxes of Frisks, you can pick a colour and your phone looks automatically cooler. And it really holds your mints for you!

Red leaves in Kyoto Japan

Me and my girlfriend `MJ' went to see red leaves in Kyoto yesterday.

It takes 1 hour and a half from our apartment, so it is easy for us to go to one of Japan's most famous places. We are lucky to live here.

Anyway, we checked the web pages about information of red leaves in Kyoto everyday. Because there are lots of temples and places where we can see them. But there are differences when leaves turn from green to red each places. Then we picked the best temples where we can see the most beautiful red leaves yesterday.

We went to `Eikando' and `Ginkakuji' temples. `Eikando' is also known as `Maple Leaves of Eikando'. The leaves of the maple trees are really amazing in autumn. Ginkakuji has huge beautiful garden. The garden is always brilliant but especially in autumn too.

Although there were so many people, it was a fantastic day! If you wanted to see them at night, there are lots of temples that light up during autumn.