Cook Fest 2008!

Getting excited for a family gathering sponsored by me. Although I can attribute it to viewing some of the Blogs I read that show foods.

My mother plans on coming over and preparing some Japanese dishes - I requested 'Gyoza', cooked her way. The recipe she whips up is something she learned when in Japan and she slightly modified it by adding a little more (quality) meat.

There are several different ways to make these and recently I've learned they serve them in some US establishments and call them Pot-Stickers.

The recipe seen is pretty much typical, though mom's is better.

We are going to take this opportunity to have Aya cook some food items she brought with her and some that her mom sends in some of the packages she sends about one every two months.

It's funny, as these packages are sort of what her mom must think as emergency relief packages. They contain teenage magazines, books, comfort foods and snacks to remind her of home and to lessen what kind of homesickness she may have.

I am sure there will be more samplings and have invited my sister who rarely has the time to visit us and the girls.

One of our neighbors recently allowed me to utilize his snow blower since basically to be cheap I shoveled through most of the storms we've had. So in turn I invited him and his wife over on the scheduled Saturday.

My favorite soup is Miso Soup:

Happy Birthday Aya!

Yes, officially Aya has now turned 18 years old yesterday.

She's come home to tell us she has had cake in school where they threw her a surprise birthday party and again at her friends house where her friend from Thailand was celebrating her own birthday (ironically).

Aya last night revealed the fact that she was utterly sick of eating cake as she has had cake the past 3 days for one occasion or another.

As she made that statement my wife brought up a cake with 18 lit candles to the table after dinner, she looked at me with the "OMG" look.

Her mom had sent her a package from Japan with all kinds of snacks and goodies, plus a gift. I told Aya that she could only open up the present from her mom on her actual birthday, sticking with our American tradition. (She was tempted though)

She opened up her gift from her mom, "Jewelery" to include earrings. I believe I mentioned in an earlier post that Aya requested to get her ears pierced but in the state of Massachussetts, no place we went to would allow it without her real parent(s) present. The only way she get her's done is if she was 18 years of age, but this was last Summer when she tried hard to get it done before the start of school.

Well the waiting game was over and we will be taking her to one of the many malls to get hers done properly - she's excited about the excursion.

Her mom did send her a doing-it-yourself home-kit, though I know she tried on her own - but not sure it came out well enough as I didn't see her wearing any after the first month of trying it. My guess is that it wasn't centered and looked akward.

Amongst her gifts we focused on getting her car key chains, car bling stuff because her mom told her when she returns home - she's got a car waiting for her to drive. We of course could not top this gift (mom's always seem to have the trump card).

She told us that she had tried to blow out all the candles when given the cake at school and she failed there, so I told her her wishes she makes before blowing out the candles won't come true if you don't do it in one breath.

She huffed - and - puffed and they were out.

Photo Recap

Apparently I am a little behind in the photo posting department but here are a few.

Images of Halloween, Homecoming, Thanksgiving and Christmas.

The exchange

(To see more click the picture above)

ESL more like English as a common language

At school Aya has been doing mediocre, she is passing her class - though I feel sometimes the teachers are going easy on her as not to fail her completely.

There are two other ex-change students at the school, both of whom seem to be adapting very well. The one girl from Thailand "Gahm", wants to be a doctor one day has gotten all A's on everything she does. Her spoken English is very well.

Aya told me she asked Gahm (which is her nickname, as her real name is very difficult to pronounce) how she does it. Gahm stated that she is taught Thai-English at an early age there (reads/writes), plus she has stayed abroad in the U.K.

In general I beleive the Japanese are behind in their English and the world has passed them - making it even harder to effectively communicate. Though Aya's willingness to learn English waning.

I think the country is beginning to feel the pinch and wants to increase their education - but I think too little, too late. Here is blog link with new on that: Japan's push for more education

Sub Artic ((Burrrrr))

Northeast
Snow, sleet and freezing rain will assault the northeastern
U.S. tomorrow. Accumulating snow, locally heavy, will coat Pennsylvania and New
York state, then push into western New England late in the day. Snow may begin
falling in NYC late in the afternoon or early evening. Snow and sleet should
arrive in Philadelphia during the afternoon, then change to rain during the
evening. Farther south, freezing rain and sleet seem likely to threaten
northeast West Virginia, northwest Virginia and western Maryland. Rain showers
can be expected over the remainder of Virginia and the Delmarva Peninsula. High
temperatures are predicted to range from the teens in northern New York and far
northern New England to the 50s in eastern Virginia.

You know it's going to be a rough week when:

1) Your car doors are stuck shut and they are unlocked.

2) 45 mph gusts nearly topple you on your walk into work.

3) You get put on the schedule to work overtime during anticipated snow
storms.

4) Your first week day drive home from work results in a 1 hour traffic delay due to a Semi-Truck fire in the middle of a 3 lane highway, blocking all
exits.

5) And your wife calls tell you, you need to stop by Wal-Mart and pick up thermometer covers to check a daughters temp because she's coming down with a
fever - only to find Wal-Mart has none in stock.

6) Car heater stops throwing heat while stuck in traffic

7) Come home to colder home, because you felt it wasn't necessary this year to spend a little time winterizing it because Summer was so nice and you were lazy. (Heat bill through the roof).

- Raising the white flag here.

Today's activity: Volcanic

My youngest has a project due at the end of this week and its content reminds me of an old Brady Bunch episode when they built a demo-Volcano.

She of course will need to enlist my help in building her a working volcano. (Baking soda comes to mind)



Oddly enough by in 1988, when visiting Japan my Uncle took me around Kyushu we stopped and climbed part of the base of Mount Sakurajima (pictured left) near Kagoshima and another time we traveled quite far near Nagasaki to Mount Uzen and climbed it, at the top we couldn't really see the surrounding cities or town because of a errie fog that was either the weather or the steam emitted from the mountaint top.

There was this small pond at the top of the mountain that was bubbling and smelt of sulfer gas. My sister and I built some type of circular rock formation that we'd seen left near the top. We weren't sure what it was all about, but thought it was ritualistic to whoever comes up here makes one out of the small volcanic rocks.

Later we learned in 1991, there were fourty-odd people who died in an erruption from this mountain including volcanologists Katia and Maurice Krafft (pictured below) and Harry Glicken.(go figure), they died from a pyrocastic cloud consuming them I presume.


Gives you a creepy feeling to say you were there and to know people died up there and it could have very well been you.


Going to do a little web research as in how to make a safe volcanic that she can demonstrate for her science class students.


I think I will try using this link and a few others:
http://www.ehow.com/how_7938_make-volcano.html

Demolition New York

The family was bored this Saturday, so I decided to take the children to the movies.

The flick that we were aiming to see had only 2 showings a 12:30 and 18:55, which meant I would have to pick up my youngest from Basketball practice and shoot straight there. To add to this Murphy's Law showed no mercy, for it was snowing quite heavily enough to cover the roads.
Needless to say we showed up all but 5 minutes behind, which usually means we only missed the 15 minutes of previews. My youngest daughter is in love with the movie "National Treasure", not sure why but may she has a crush on Nicolas Cage.

Of course my goal was to surprise her and take her to "National Treasure: Book of Secrets", Aya didn't care either way she just wanted to get out and do something since she's always bored. Apparently for a movie that has been out for a few weeks now and movied from the largets screen to the smaller ones - it was Sold Out! (Panic set in)

The line behind us for a snowy Saturday night had grown long; we has to make a quick decision - wait for the 20:30 showing of "Untraceable" or catch the other movie that stuck in my head as want-to-check-it-out movie was "Cloverfield" and we coughed up the 38 bucks to see it plus the over-priced snack foods.

[Choice #1: See a movie about a killer on the internet]

[Choice #2: See a movie about a killer in NYC]

Simply put, with a 10 year old in tote, I chose one with the least likelyhood to occur.

My personal take on this - was the movie was filmed entirely on a hand-held digital recorder and it was WAY to shakey for my taste.

SPECIAL EFFECTS: 7 / 10
ACTING: 8/10
PLOT: 5/10
VISUAL ENJOYMENT: 2.5/10 (Due to the extreme herky-jerkiness)

We entered the theater and had to take nearly the front row seats, becaue it was nearly full to my surprise, this exagerated the big screen shaking.

Kids reviews:

- Youngest thought it was pretty good, but shakey.

- Aya: Gave her a headache, hard to watch

- Oldest daughter: She had to keep her eyes closed most of the movie to prevent severe nausea from due to the wild camera movements.

- Me: As I play video games, I was able to watch it from start to finish - it still made me dizzy.

Super Blunder Sunday

As Aya’s American High School Football team has a unbeaten record, she has heard a lot about sports after the Sox Victory in October and now her attention was turned toward the New England Patriots.

To be honest, I am a 49’ers fan – but my alternate group is the N.E. Patriots. Aya told me a lot of boys where Patriot’s shirts and hats this time of year.

So we hunkered down with all the goodies my wife prepares: Cheese dips, chicken fingers, chips, some kind of pesto cheese thingy that was also good and watched the game.

As the game seemed to stagnate after the score was 7 and 3, then all hell broke loose when it seems the Patriot’s offense couldn’t do what they have been doing all year and the Giants Defense were doing what they do best.

Of course there were some questionable calls in the Giants favor, but overall the Giants played well.

We were hyping up Aya’s stating that see you are lucky to be in a state where the baseball team and the football team have been elites. (I obviously inserted my foot in mouth on the later).

Thoughts about our current status with our student.

Time seems to going by rather quickly after the Holiday rush has passed and we look to be getting back into the same ol' grind. Me back to work and the kids and my wife back to school.

Recently Aya had to hand in a research paper for History class. One which she feels is over burdened with work, especially for someone who is new to the country and is still grasping our language.

I have to admit she isn't putting as much effort into learning English as I had hoped. Viewing her desk area, I still see the worksheets I gave her to practice her cursive (penmanship) which she had not touched.

We both are getting the impression she didn't come to America to exchange culture, but merely was an escape to see America and do as many fun things she can at other peoples expense.

I try not to put a negative spin, but sometimes things get rough with exchange students. I think mostly some of these kids come from well-to-do families and though they've studied hard to at least get this far, they simply expect to live like a guest still in our homes.

At this point, I no longer view her as a guest but as person who lives her and has responsibilities just like I would expect from our own children. The host family isn't supposed to be a shuttle service or just a place to crash; at least in my eyes.

I have heard some stories of children from other countries who are really wild and crazy and put a bad taste in the families who host as I am sure students who stay can tell some wild stories of how bad the host families were to them.

You have to take the good with the bad. I am trying to find the silver lining and keep the family in a happy co-existence.

Negative Key Points I've noticed so far:

• The expectation that every day should be an entertaining day for her: e.g. Go to the mall and hang out, shopping, go to a party, go hang out with friends (some of whom have boyfriends of 21) all to prevent boredom, which she says often.
• Homework isn't going always going to be easy and if you have questions ask the teacher for help. The teacher's have expressed to me if she has any questions what-so-ever please have her e-mail them as the teachers regularly check their mail at night. This is almost never done.
• Time management and poor planning is constant.

a) School work isn't started until just after dinner and the children get home by 2:30 pm, thus she stays up until mid-night to complete the assignments.

b) She lately has been wanting to go over friends houses, which isn't a bad thing but she never knows how she is going to get there, the time frame of stay and who is going to pick her up. - it seems to be spontaneous.

• Fails to make a whole-hearted attempt to get to know my oldest friends, even when they come over and/or invite her to the mall or movies. She seems to relate more to my youngest daughter than our oldest who is a High School Freshman rather than a 5th grader.
• Keeps to herself though we've invited her to play board games and watch a movie with us, instead she'd rather text page her friends from school or watch a DVD movie on the portable player.
• My oldest daughter was expecting someone she could hang out with and enjoy things together, to share their life experiences and culture exchange - but none of that is occurring which is sad.
• Spends more time on Japanese web sites and Myspace than she ought to - though she does ask for permission to use the PC when my oldest is on her own (shared PC).
• Forgot her mothers birthday - no phone call or card and failed to send a New Year's Card which is celebrated more over in Japan.

Positive Key Points:

• She enjoys Boston, and looks forward to every trip there. Especially because she knows there are a few Japanese shops there and mini-mall with back alley eateries like one would find in the outskirts of Osaka or Tokyo, or at least if you use your imagination you can see yourself there.
• She plays with our youngest often, whether its tickle fights, scare fights, Nintendo and general sibling taunting and teasing up to the point when they annoy each other because they don't know went to stop.
• Does most of her chores regularly except feeding the fish - I suppose if you come from a country that spends a lot of time eating them, rather than thinking of them as pets. (I am expecting dead fish before the Summer)
• Is quiet most of the time and asks permission to enter our PC/Office room every time we are in there and stands patiently at the door until we acknowledge her for her to ask.
• Never talks during car rides: Long or short (this is in a positive section because its nice to not hear fighting from that side of the car).

One of the Japanese religions and the Jewish Faith point of origin the same?

After poking through some of the Blogs I gander at when things are slow at work, I came across one about the Jewish Faith and the Shinto Religion.

At first the title of it looked like something you'd see at the Super Market tabloid section.

It would quite odd to learn that some of the Japanese people in Japan are actually one of 12 Tribes from Israel who had to roam the desert.

See and read for yourself, thanks to Japan Probe and other sources.



Zionfestival
Uploaded by oniazuma

Part 2

Here are some Links read through regarding this comparison:

http://oniazuma.wordpress.com/2007/11/14/are-japanese-jewish-looking-at-the-mysterious-connections-between-japan-and-judaism/

http://www5.ocn.ne.jp/~magi9/isracame.htm


I plan on discussing some of these findings with Aya, though I know she is from a different religion and may not be know about Judaism, Christianity and Shinto.