Arts, Crafts, and Soba

 I received my class rosters today.  I asked for them so I can try to figure out how to identify student names if they are in Japanese.  Several sessions of concentrated study spread over the next few days should get me there.  Any students reading this please recognize how I am studying.  An hour here and there on a single topic is better than multiple hours cramming one thing into your head.  You give you brain time to process, and just as you are starting to forget you give it a reminder.  It really does work much better this way.

In any case.  When we first got married, Jen taught art classes to children at a recreation center in Lexington, MA.  One of the things she considered (maybe she taught it - I don't recall) was origami.  She checked out a book or two from the Waltham Public Library, which was literally right around the corner from our apartment, and we sat down to learn.  Turns out I am pretty capable with it.  I made a dragon back then.  Based on that, I decided to look up some origami boxes thinking I might be able to use them for giving gifts while here.  Here is the tutorial I found.  I only have quad-ruled notebook paper with me now, but practice has to start sometime.  This is my second attempt with a 3d printed flexible octopus inside.  (My first attempt went bad very early.)

And here it is empty.

I've made another one, and I'll probably do more after I grade the final exams. 

Despite Tami's disappointment in me, I had Nissin's soba with tempura last night.  Nissin is the company that originated cup noodles.

 The key to recognizing this as soba with tempura is in and around the green box of text on the left.  The red box is hiragana for "soba," with each character representing one syllable.  The green box is a kanji character followed by two hiragana for "tempura."  Finally, the red text just to the side reads "irodori shichimi-tsuki" according to Google Translate.  It means "with colored shichimi."  I did not know what that is, so I looked it up.  Shichimi is a spice mix.

Open it up and this is what's inside.

The red packet is the shichimi, and the purple is the sauce/soup flavor.  It says to warm this on the lid.  That's coming up.  The last packet is the tempura.  I'm not sure what all is on it.  Inside the bowl are the noodles and green onions.  There's a little line scored on the inside of the bowl.  I assumed that is the "fill to here" line, so I added boiling water to that level and folded the lid back down.  The first night I made noodles, I removed the entire lid.  That was bad.  If you look at the first picture of the bowl you should notice a hard break between the picture of the noodles and some text above.  That's where you peel back the lid to.  Then, once you've added the water, you fold it back down and a little tab sort of clamps it shut.  Then you wait about 5 minutes.

I put the sauce and tempura on top.  I'm not sure if the tempura is proper, but it did warm up everything.  I gave it the time needed, opened everything up, and added the packets to the noodles.  Mix well.

Itadakimasu.  For the most part, pronunciation of Japanese words is very straight-forward.  Nearly every syllable ends with a vowel sound.  Some have -n or -m attached (like the end of "ramen" or the first part of "tempura").  And, words ending in -su typically don't pronounce the "u."  The vowel "i" is given a long "e" sound from English.   So "itadakimasu" is said "i-ta-da-ki-mas."  It is said before eating and loosely means "Thank you for this meal I am about to eat."  I shouldn't be holding chopsticks while I say it, though.

The tempura stayed pretty crunchy, and the sauce gave everything that distinct umami Japanese flavor.  I can't describe it better than that because I don't typically think about the words used for flavors.  I mostly eat and enjoy myself.  Sorry.  It wasn't spicy at all, even with the shichimi.  One bowl is filling - about 500 calories.  The steam coming from it really clears the sinuses. 

When you are finished eating, it is customary to say one of my favorite things to say in Japanese so far.  Gochisoosamadeshita.  "Thank you for the meal I just ate."  Pronouncing the last bit "-deshita" is more like "desh-ta" with the "i" slurred away.

So, there you have it.  Origami and a bowl of noodles.  Now, I have to grade.  At least I have more noodles to look forward to tonight.