Moving Day

 Today is the day of my first move.  It is also the first day that the clouds cleared off.  There was some lightning and thunder last night, but I didn't hear any rain.  Given I can't hear the jets taking off (when they do), the lack of rain noise was probably a good sign.  In any case, when I looked out my window this morning, this is what I saw.

On the flight in I was hoping to see Mt. Fuji, but I could not.  Instead, I get to see it from my hotel window.  Until tomorrow, that is.  Today is moving day.

I think I mentioned the hotel wants people in quarantine to switch rooms every 3 days.  They say it's for cleaning (which is probably true), but I think it also has to do with me keeping my stuff all together.  Since I know I have to move everything after three nights of sleep, I keep everything packed.  If I feel like I want to get something that might be buried I stop myself and ask "Do I *really* need this?"  Most of the time the answer is "no," so I leave it be.

The other change today is I had the Japanese breakfast.

Clockwise from the top left is rice, coffee, grilled smoked salmon with egg (yellow squares) and some dried fruit, pickled greens, pickled white (I have no idea what it was), and custard-y something with wasabi (on the blue-green leaf plate), salad, green tea, miso soup (in the dark bowl on the lower left with the bowl's lid right next to it).  The lid is resting on a small plate with soy sauce and nori.  Between the coffee and tea is a square bowl with pickled radish and turnips, then a round bowl of natto.

To start, it seems the difference between a Japanese salad and a Western salad is onions and beans.  That was the only difference there.  I'm rather enjoying having a salad like this at breakfast.  The only things I didn't finish were the nori (I inadvertently left it to the end, and dried seaweed is very salty) and the as yet unidentified pickled white stuff.

The custard was pretty good, but I couldn't begin to guess what it actually is.  The natto I read about after I opened the container.  The opening was a process in and of itself.  First there is a layer of plastic film.  Under that are two small plastic sauce packets - one with mustard and one with "special sauce."  Then there's another layer of plastic right up against a mound of small beans.  Lifting that second film was a challenge because the beans are really sticky with some coating.  This is when I turned to Google Translate, found it was natto, and searched for it online.

Natto is fermented soybeans.  It's slimy and sticky and has a very strong odor owing to the bacteria responsible for the fermenting process.  70% of Japanese citizens enjoy the taste.  Meaning 30% don't.  I discovered that normal practice is to mix the natto with chopsticks until it is gooey.  The beans don't breakdown at all, but the bacterial coating changes texture quite a bit.  Then add the sauce and mustard and mix again.  Finally, dump it on rice.  At home many will add a raw egg on top or perhaps some type of onion.  I wouldn't say I enjoyed the flavor, but I will definitely eat it again.  It's a food that has been part of this culture for almost 1,000 years.  Of course I'm going to eat it many times while I'm here.  It's also an excellent source of vitamin K, which helps with blood coagulation.

Tomorrow I will have my first Zoom class meeting with the students from Shikoku.  I'll spend a reasonable part of today preparing for that.  

Onward, ever onward like the Fighting Sycamore I am.