So, I apologize for not quite wrapping up my travels properly. Jamie's now put all the photos from the last leg of our trip onto his laptop, and I didn't get a chance to get at them before he took them off his camera. I'll try to upload them to my Flickr account eventually, but no promises as to when that will happen. In summary, I met up with some friends of mine (Josh and Dan) on the Monday for some city fun. We went to the Ghibli Museum first. For those of you who are fans of movies like Princess Mononoke and Spirited away, you'll recognize the name of the studio. For those of you who aren't, it's considered the Japanese version of Disney. The museum is about 40 minutes away from Tokyo, and well worth the trip if you're a fan of animation. We got there a little early, so took a walk around and stumbled upon a local school festival, which was quite an amusing slice of Japanese life. After the museum, we had lunch before heading to a yarn store that I was looking for in particular (yes, I specifially went shopping for yarn in Japan). After that, we hit a karaoke place, because you can't go to Japan and not karaoke. Last stop was all-you-can-eat yakiniku (Korean BBQ). Yum! The next day, we went to the town where Josh lives and works, Tochigi. It's about an hour and half away from Tokyo by train. Josh picked us up there in his new car (a Vitz, which is what they call the Yaris in Japan), and we were off to Nikko. First stop, a fabulous nature walk. After that, we visited a whole series of fantastic waterfalls before being treated to a yuba croquette. Yuba is tofu skin and really yummy. We tried to go to the Toshogu Shrine, but because it was the day after a national holiday, we discovered that it was closed when we got there. Oh well! Yummy dinner at a traditional Japanese restaurant, and then on the train to head back to Tokyo. The next day we were on our way to Izunokuni for some soaking in hot springs, and enjoying some quiet time outside the bustling city. Nice views of Mt Fuji, relaxing baths, and great food. After that, it was home to Toronto!
Today, I tried cooking with beets for the first time.
As you an tell, it's not exactly a success. The beets dyed the sausage red (it looks more red in real life than the photo shows). It doesn't taste that bad, but it's just not the best combination I've ever thought of. Oh well. Jamie opted to have instant noodles though. Haha!
About Me
Happy Snow Day everyone! Here's a look at the view from my place earlier today.
Just as well that we were home-bound today. It gave me a chance to recover from our annual 0T1 Christmas bash. Jamie and I hosted this year, and it was lots of fun. It'd been a while since we hosted a large dinner event. This year, I took over turkey duty from Barry which made me quite nervous; after all, he'd done such a great job for 3 years running that living up to that kind of standard is tough. Nevertheless, we pushed ahead and got ourselves a 15lb free-range bird from Cumbrae's at Church and Wellesley (who was recommended to me by the nice people at The Healthy Butcher).
I got a turkey and stuffing recipe from a post-doc in our lab. It came out of the Canadian Living Christmas Book, so it was a time tested set of instructions that in the end were pretty easy to follow. I made the stuffing the night before, and the bird the day off. I think the biggest challenge was just dealing with the size of everything and finding fridge space. In the end, the turkey was deemed a success, and I feel like I've earned yet another cooking skill. In his ever-present geekiness, Jamie commented that having tackled the turkey allowed me to level up my proficiency in cooking (it's an AD&D or RPG reference so don't feel bad if you don't understand). There was so much turkey left over! I think Jamie and I will be quite sick of turkey before the month is over. I've already made turkey stir-fry!
The gift swapping was chaotic as usual. For those of you who read this blog who don't know how we do it, we draw numbers and then select gifts from a big pile in numerical order. The gift is opened, and the person after has the option to pick from the pile, or steal from one of the people before them. A gift can only be stolen once per round to prevent a gift from just going back and forth. So, you can see how getting a later number can be advantageous, and how everything can change in the last round. This year was no exception! A few hot items that got stolen more than a few times: Cranium, Krazy Karpet + 2 sled discs, and 365 Days of Duct Tape Calendar. Barry gave what I would consider the most altruistic gift: 3 books donated to children's hospitals across Canada. That item wound up getting stolen from Jia by Naana.
Lots of food, and lots of fun! I'm already looking forward to next year :D