Udon Is My Best Noodle

I’ve had a day off in 26th, so I made Japanese noodle called Udon. Hey, its not just like getting dried spaghetti in the market and throwing them into the boiling water. I made up Udon from ingredients!

Maybe famous Japanese noodle is Ramen, because it is popular through out the world. You can find instant type Ramen in super markets near you. Udon is not that famous, however very popular in Japan. Udon is very old style noodle, so young people might not select this for their meal so often, but I very much like this.

Last year, I went to Kagawa prefecture for sight seeing, which is located in middle-west part of Japan. Kagawa is very famous place for Udon, that numbers of Udon shop is more than numbers of traffic lights. I don’t know this is real or not, but Kagawa is definitely the place you need to visit for eating Udon. When I visited Kagawa last year, I also went to one-day Udon school and learned how to make best Udon. Since then, I like to make my own Udon

Udon I made this time is Kitsune Udon. Kitsune Udon is the Udon with sweet flavored deep fried thin tofu. This type of Udon is often eaten by people in Osaka. Osaka is the place where I born and spent most of my young days. So I love Kitsune Udon.

I made this Kitsune Udon. It was marvelous

If you have a chance, please try Udon. When you visit Japan, you can easily find the place to eat.

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Swine Flu and Masks

Foreign people who visited Japan mostly surprises that a lot of Japanese people wear masks. Especially in spring (from February to April), Japanese people suffering from pollen allergy wear masks, but recently pandemic swine flu made Japanese rush to the drug store. It is common to the experts of virus disease, that wearing masks will not drastically prevent infection. However, Japanese do like wearing masks. One reason is that mass media like television and newspapers incite people to wear masks, and another reason is that old age people have strong belief in masks. Wearing mask was one of the preventive way introduced in early 20th century when Spanish flu prevalent globally. Although, wearing masks is slightly better than not wearing masks. But what we really need is to have better understanding to swine flu. Washing hand and gargle carefully will also make change.

In my point of view, it is little sad that I can’t see beautiful women smiling wearing masks. lol

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Relax with Japanese Tea

Japanese green tea is effective also for the relieving of stress in daily life.

It is because a lot of vitamins C are contained in Japanese green tea. When the mind and body is stressed, internal organs called adrenal gland in the inside of the body makes a large amount of adrenal cortex hormone(steroid), increase blood glucose levels, and helps resistance for mind and body to develop. Vitamin C is necessary for synthesizing this adrenal cortex hormone. Therefore, the consumption of vitamin C rises in a stress situation. Vitamin C is readily available for adrenal gland in a stress situation by taking vitamin C usually a lot, so the body becomes strong to stress. 

Moreover, there is an effect of untangling nerves and relaxing also in vitamin E.  So Japanese tea ceremony is very effective in the relaxation, because vitamin E can be taken by drinking Matcha.

» Read more about this topic.

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Ice Extracting Gyokuro Tea

For tea lovers, I believe that it is common knowledge that too hot water will extact astringency from tea leaf when preparing tea.

High-quality Japanese tea like Gyokuro, these tea leaves are grown under the screen to prevent exposing to sunbeam. This is because sunbeam will make tannin, which is the source of astringency. So gyokuro itself has less tannin, less astringency. Although, if you use boiling water to prepare Gyokuro, tannin will be extacted from the leaf. This is the reason that you should NOT use too hot water for Gyokuro. Proper temperature of the hot water for Gyokuro will be around 60 degrees Celcius, however more lower temperature will be better if you don’t want to extract tannin at all.

Then what is the lowest temperature water for Gyokuro? This question is same as asking “What is the lowest temperature of water?”. Yes, its zero degrees Celcius

So, I tried ice extraction. It’s so simple.

Put 4 grams of Gyokuro on a saucer (believe or not, tea pot is better! lol), and put couple of ices on the leaf. That’s it!

Wait patiently until the ices melt down. Move extracted tea to a cup and have a sip. You must be surprized by the difference from the taste of extracting Gyokuro with hot water.

Very very sweet like candy and completely no astringency. I recommend that you try this with Gyokuro. It’s so cool!

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OMG! Akiba Mart Is Broken

I tried to update Magento from 1.2.1 to 1.3.1 via Magento Connect, but installation process ended up with error! Damn! I’ve searched the internet and tried to find out some solution to resurrect Akiba Mart, but no good answer was there.

OK, then let’s try clean installing and see how it goes.

But clean installation did not work. Magento requires “Safe Mode Off” in PHP5 to run, but my contracting hosting service does not support that. Do I need to reinstall 1.2.1 again? I made some research in the service of the hosting service and found that they had newly started to support “Safe Mode Off”!

I configured PHP5 and tried to access to backend. It worked! But for the frontend, the top page shows white screen while other pages placed deeper are fine. It took a lot of time to figure out that the reason was that the upgrade of magento overwrited /app/code/core/Mage/Cms/etc/config.xml file that is used for installed skin.

To conclude, I will reiterate the reasons of the problems:

• PHP5 Safe Mode
• Overwritten config.xml

Now our site is back online

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Rainbow in Tokyo

Yesterday, weather in Tokyo was bad. Rainy and cloudy, rainy and cloudy… But when I looked up in the sky in 6PM, beautiful rainbow was shining

Rainbow in Tokyo

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Another side of Obama City

Now,Obama city in Japan is famous for “US president Obama manju”. But actually, real special product of Obama city is Wakasa-nuri lacquered chopstick.  80% or more of the lacquered chopsticks of Japan seems to be made Obama city.
Of course,the lacquered chopsticks with  Obama’s face mark are also selling in Obama city.

In Obama city which is also famous for chopsticks, on April 7th, the big chopsticks were made for a half year , entering the Guinness Book of Records as the longest chopsticks in the world .
 
This big chopsticks are 8.4 meters long!
If you go Obama city, you can see this big chopsticks. 

The longest chopsticks in the world

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I Love Obama?

Yesterday I met with my friend in Osaka. He went to Obama city in Fukui prefecture. Obama city is famous in its ridiculous act made during America’s president election. Obama city made a big campaign during this election supporting Obama just because the name is same. They also made up a lots of souvenirs with illustrated president Obama’s face in it, I don’t know whether the president accepted or not.

My friend gave me this Obama manju yesterday. Isn’t it funny?

Obama Manju

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Motorcycle Life in Tokyo

Last month, I bought a motorcycle. 8 years ago, I owned a motorcycle but I sold it to my friend, so it will be a long time after that.

A very memorable event happened 7 years ago was that when Susumu visited Tokyo for recruitment, me and Susumu tandem seated on my motorcycle and went to Odaiba in the night. Riding on the highway speeding, and beautiful illumination of the Rainbow Bridge is good memory of my young days. I wished that I want to do this with girl friend

In Tokyo, there are many cars but less parking. When going out for driving, it will make you sick finding the parking lot. So motorcycles will be a good way to go out in Tokyo. Only problem is that motorcycles do not like rainy day, ha ha ha.

Kawasaki 250TR

Other posts you might be interested

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• Udon Is My Best Noodle
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