I felt like having Subway the other morning, so I ended up randomly whipping up my own homemade sub. I used lettuce, ham, onions, bell peppers, mushrooms, tomato, egg, and a special wasabi soy sauce dressing. Did you know that that’s actually available at Subways here in Japan?! It sounds a bit extreme, but it’s actually delicious and adds a nice kick to your sub.
Wasabi Soy Dressing
Wasabi
Soy Sauce
Sesame oil
Rice Vinegar
So simple! Actually, I feel like it would make a great salad dressing as well.
I’ve been on a bit of a breakfast sandwich kick lately, so I actually ended up making another one this morning. I’ll admit that I got a bit carried away when I was slicing the bread. That’s a thick sandwich! XD
On the theme of wasabi, here is another one of my recent earring creations. A tube of wasabi and salmon sashimi. Cute right? 😀
Hi everyone! It has been quite a while. The last time I posted, I was still living back in my apartment, but since then, I have actually moved to Tokyo! I have been here for 9 and a half months now, working as a high school English teacher on the JET Programme (Japan Exchange Teaching Programme).
It was an incredibly long and challenging process settling into my new life here, and at times I was not even sure if I made the right decision coming here. But now that I have it all figured out, I am positive that my time in Tokyo will be one of the greatest experiences of my life.
It has been very hot in Tokyo lately, at an average of 32 degrees celsius! So, for lunch the perfect option was cold ramen noodles. You can buy a ready-made package in the grocery store, so all you have to do is boil the noodles, cool them with ice, prepare your toppings, and add the sauces that come with it. Very refreshing on such a sweltering day!
As with all of us, I can’t say the the whole COVID-19 ordeal hasn’t had a large impact on my life, but during times like these, I’ve learned that it is crucial to keep a positive mindset and seek out things that make you happy and active.
Even when we were recommended to keep out of crowded areas, it was still fine to go to wide open natural spaces, and despite being one of the most urban metropolitans in the world, Tokyo fortunately has a lot of beautiful nature. Last weekend, I headed to the Meiji Jingu Shrine, near Harajuku Station. It was the first time I had been surrounded by trees in a very long time, and it was incredibly refreshing. It’s amazing what a little nature can do for the soul!
People all over the world have been picking up new hobbies — baking, reading, blogging…I even have one friend who started writing a movie script just for the fun of it.
A friend and I both enjoy making things, so we recently started experimenting with different crafts. First, we started experimenting with making clay figurines, then we moved on to making resting earrings, and recently, we have settled on making earrings using shrink plastic sheets, with a varnish and resin finish.
Each set of earrings a long creative process, from beginning to start, but coming up with quirky little designs and seeing them come to fruition has been such an enjoyable experience. Get out into nature, find a new hobby…it’s a beautiful world!
On Sunday, I took the long trip out to Tokyo to attend a gagaku performance at the Japanese imperial palace! Gagaku is an ancient imperial court music and dance form that has been performed in Japan for about a thousand and five-hundred years. I was incredibly lucky and honoured to have such a rare opportunity. I worked briefly at a major Shinto shrine last New Year’s (which in itself was an unbelievable honour), but when the chief priest of the shrine got an invitation to the gagaku performance this month, he was amazing enough to gift me one of the tickets!
I haven’t been to Tokyo in many months, and it felt like such a tremendously urban and glamorous city, especially after staying in this little town for so long. The difference was even more noticeable because I was specifically in the Ginza district which is famous for being the most posh, impressive, and high-end region of Tokyo.
I got to the city pretty early in the morning so I headed over to a nearby shrine while waiting for the performance to start. After paying my respects at the shrine, I wandered through an antique market that had been set up for the day just outside the shrine. I also spent a bit of time at a museum that was displaying old documents from the fifteen and sixteen hundreds.
I got pretty hungry as I walked around, but a lot of restaurants were closed that morning. After a while, I was lucky enough to find a place where I could get a late breakfast of udon noodles. It was incredibly cheap, too, at just 150 yen which is around $1.50! I enjoyed the noodles topped with a whole bunch of shichimi (a Japanese spice mixture) while my friend had a bowl of Japanese curry and rice.
No one was allowed to take photos of the actual gagaku performance, but we could take pictures of the stage before the show started. I also took some shots of the people setting up the instruments in preparation for the musicians. The actual performance was hauntingly beautiful. There’s something about gagaku and noh that is other-worldly…it really does transport you back well over a thousand years to an entirely different time and place. I can’t even begin to describe how enchanting it was!
On one of my trips out to Tokyo, I spent the day exploring Shin-Ōkubo and Harajuku. I walked around the area outside Harajuku station, experiencing both the hectic streets lined with all kinds of novelty shops, as well as the serenity of a couple of nearby shrines. At the shrines, I was lucky enough to stumble across a few traditional style weddings.
Walking down the street just outside the Shin-Ōkubo train station, I noticed sacks of Thai and basmati rice sitting by a storefront. The whole trip, this was the first time that I had come across a shop with long grain rice. Looking around me, I realized that I had happened to wander into a small pocket of Indian, Middle Eastern, and Nepali shops and restaurants, selling pretty much everything I had been looking for. They had cardamom, fennel, chickpeas, lentils, tahini…so happy! I love Japanese food, but I was thrilled to be able to make some daal, chana, aloo ghobi, and even a bit of hummus! I also stopped for lunch at the Nepali restaurant. A little on the pricey side of what I am used to, but still, it was probably the most authentic South Asian cuisine I have had in Japan so far.
Elle's Travels and Eats 