"yuki-sukashi"

What is "yuki-sukashi" you ask?
Well, it's pronounced more like "yoo-kee skashee" and it's Japanese for shoveling snow. That's all we have been doing this last few weeks, and I'm not exaggerating!

icicles hanging off the straggly little shrub outside our front door

There has been a stupid amount of snowfall over the last few weeks. Liz wrote about the snow over New Years, but it just hasn't really lifted up since that! In fact, it's almost worse in some ways. They don't have "snow days" here. No matter how much snow there is, everyone still has to drive through it to get to work. There ARE snow plows out on the roads, but there aren't enough of them, and they don't do a fantastic job either. If you need to be at work by 8:30am, and the snow plows don't get to those roads before 9am, then you just have to drive through the snow. Yes, there are many accidents.
Poor Liz has to drive the winding narrow roads to Amino every morning. What would ordinarily take 40 minutes, sometimes takes her an hour and a half in the snow!! It's not so bad for me, because I can walk to work, but it's not an easy walk in the blizzard through knee-deep snow! haha. Of course, it's not like that every day, but much more often than we would like!

So, getting back to "yuki-sukashi" (clearing snow), that's what we have been doing almost every morning and evening. Today we had about a foot of fresh snow, so I went out and dug a path from our front door, and then I dug out the car. We have a severe snow warning in place, AGAIN, and it's set to snow all night and all day tomorrow, too!!

making progress on my path to the front door

neighbour's car which hasn't been dug out!

This is why we haven't been up to much, and we haven't been updating the blog much lately. Sorry about that. When you find yourself wondering what we're up to, just picture us with a show shovel in hand, digging out the car, and you're probably spot on!

Happy New Year!

Happy 2011, everyone!

In true Tango-style, we are about two feet deep in snow for the new year. It started snowing in the early hours on the 31st, and continued falling steadily all day and all night. Although Bryn and I would usually choose to stay home and enjoy the snow, we braved the conditions to go out to lunch with Yoko, Junko, Ippei and Yohei (sort of a wedding reunion!). The roads were treacherous, so I was glad that Ippei offered to give us a ride into Mineyama for the occasion (if there's one thing I hate, it's driving in the snow!!!).


We had lunch at Sprout, a funky little Italian/French restaurant (it specialized in pasta and pizza, but it's desserts often revolve around crepes...). The food was nice, but the company was better (especially since the others decided to order a pizza margherita and a seafood and tomato gratin for the table before remembering those dishes are anything but Bryn and Liz friendly!)



After lunch we moved onto phase two of the afternoon - bowling. Bryn and I were not terribly thrilled when the idea was announced to us, but went with it anyways. The bowling alley is definitely Japanese seeing as you rent shoes from vending machines (better know your size!).

What size am I?!

Insert money...

Shoes come flying out!

Now I am probably the world's worst bowler. However everyone there might have thought otherwise when I got a freak-strike on the very first turn! However I reclaimed my title as world's worst by throwing gutter ball after gutter ball for the duration of the day. (See why bowling isn't a very thrilling idea for me?!?) It was fun anyways!

Bowling is a VERY serious game.

Balls!

Group picture courtesy of Yohei and Facebook :)

The drive home took ages since the roads were so bad, so it was nice to get inside and warmed up. We made ourselves year-end soba for dinner, and spent the evening watching Japanese New Year's programming on TV.


We woke up in 2011 to sunny skies, but loads of snow! My poor little car was buried! After the postman had delivered our meager stack of nengajo (new year's greeting cards), we bundled up and set out for a walk to take some pictures. It was a nice walk - not too cold since the sun was really bright - and I think we got some nice pictures!

Before clearing the snow off.

It looks like a fluffy quilt!

Now that we are back and Bryn has broken the snow shovel (not his fault - who knows how old it was!) we are planning on spending the rest of the day chilling out (or warming up!) and doing nothing.

Hope everyone had a great New Year and keep reading in 2011!!

Christmas!

  

You may well have heard Liz or I complain about Christmas in Japan before (or the lack of Christmas in Japan). It's tricky trying to celebrate Christmas in a place where "Christmas" simply means blue fairy lights, Santa and his two red-nosed reindeer, sponge cake and deep fried chicken. Here in Japan, Christmas is a time for young couples to go on dates. It's more akin to our Valentine's Day (and like Valentines Day, it's just a normal day for the vast majority of people). Luckily, however, Christmas this year fell on a Saturday, so we didn't have to go to work (or take the day off). Another benefit of it being on a Saturday was that we could invite some friends over to celebrate with us. This year we invited Ippei, Yoko and Junko (who wore kimono at our wedding). Unfortunately, Junko had a wedding to attend that day, so she couldn't come. Yoko and Ippei, however, were free and keen to come and celebrate with us. This meant we needed to try our best to really show them as much of a "traditional" Christmas as we could. 

Ideally we wanted to cook a roast turkey, but there were two problems with this idea: first, turkeys are more of a myth than an actual thing in Japan. Most Japanese people we know have heard of turkey, but have never seen or eaten it before. They don't even know exactly what a turkey is! So finding a turkey to buy seemed like a mission impossible; Second, turkeys tend to be rather large, but our tiny microwave oven is... well... tiny! There would be absolutely no chance of fitting a large turkey in that thing! So we settled on chicken (probably a more popular option than turkey in New Zealand anyway). Liz picked up a chicken one day on her way home from school. That same day, I happened to have some free time at work, so I got online and actually found a small turkey that said it was "ideal for Japanese microwave ovens"... and so I ordered one immediately. Liz texted me to say "I got a chicken!" and so I replied "and I got a turkey!" haha... The turkey arrived frozen on the 23rd (which incidentally is a public holiday in Japan - the Emperor's Birthday) and it was then that we saw exactly how small it was. I mean, I knew it must have been small to fit in the micro-oven (actually, that's a pretty good name for it! I think I'll keep calling it that from now on..."micro-oven"...) but still, it was even smaller than our little chicken!! ha! It was imported from Russia. Go figure! So anyway (getting back to the story at hand), we decided that for Christmas dinner we would have both roast chicken AND roast Russian micro-turkey! mmm. Liz decided that she'd make a green bean casserole and some mashed potatoes to go with it. YUM!!

Anyway, in preparation for our dinner, Liz made little Christmassy name plates to put on the table, but not before we remembered one rather major problem... we didn't have a table!! So, we asked around and luckily our friend Simon said that we could use his table if we could fit it in the car. So, round to Simon's house we went,  Allen key and screwdriver in hand, dismantled his table and took it back to our place in two trips. Problem sorted! We now had a dining table. 

Liz did a great job on the little name plates

So, on Christmas Eve we made sure we had everything sorted and ready for quick assembly the next day. We had lots of presents under our tree, and we were just settling down to a nice quiet glass of wine and a Christmas movie when the doorbell rang. It was the postman with a package from "overseas". When we opened it, it was a beautiful card nativity scene sent to us by Liz's aunt! What perfect timing, too! So we set that up and took a picture (below).

 

Christmas morning came a little earlier than hoped, but I was amping... actually, not at first. It was cold, snowy and I had to have the Russian micro-turkey in the oven by 8am! haha. Once I was up and doing it though, I suddenly felt all Christmassy and THEN I was excited for the day ahead. Not long after, Liz got up (probably woken by my clanging in the kitchen) and started preparing breakfast (and a pot of Starbucks Christmas Blend). I think I cracked open the first bottle of Champagne at about 10:30am or so, and it just kept flowing from then until the evening... not constantly of course, but you know... once a year and all... haha

Oh, and let's not forget the presents! We had fun opening our presents from each other and from friends.

Then it came time to take the Russian micro-turkey out of the oven and bung in the chicken. Holy candy canes the turkey looked good!!

Liz took this picture of me massaging the chicken before roasting it. You know, you MAY laugh, but I heard it helps separate the skin from the meat, which results in a crispier skin! Try it next time you roast a chicken... haha

 Ippei and Yoko arrived bang on time, and we sat around chatting and snacking on fruit mince pies, gingerbread men, shortbread, butterfingers, and other delicious Christmas treats. Then we started dinner off with salad, ham, smoked salmon and sushi (which Yoko brought with her because in Japan sushi is often eaten at celebrations... she also brought a big bottle of sake!... so kind!).

The main part of dinner was absolutely delicious! Both the little chicken and the Russian micro-turkey were moist and tender. Liz made gravy from the juices left in the pan, and it was REALLY good, too. The green bean casserole and potatoes were also bang on! I think we had a really good Christmas dinner by anyone's standards.
We were then all so full that we moved into the lounge and opened the stockings that Santa had left us. He must have known that Ippei and Yoko were coming over, because he had filled stockings for them too. I don't think either of them were expecting that, and they both became very excited! 

 For dessert we had pecan pie and Christmas cake. Both were very good! But none of us could eat much of either! haha. That's got to be a sign that we had a great dinner!

All in all, Liz and I had a really fun and memorable first Christmas together (well, first since getting married), and thank you to everyone who helped to make that happen.