Friday, July 20, 2012

MC Yu and the Takoyaki Party.

It's finally Friday! Just one more week of school left. Thank the heavens. I am running out of steam. It's taking a lot out of me to get through each day now...
In addition to hours of homework and studying everyday, this week included some fun with a visit to an elementary school to play with some awesome (and amazingly well-behaved) sixth graders.

Here are my assigned students! We did a variety activities, including yoyo, badminton, and origami.


Aidan, Wolens-san, and I also had dinner with Kouhei Nishikawa, a Kanazawa University student that we met towards the beginning of the program during our visit to the university. 

We went to a casual yoshoku restaurant and talked about everything from lightning bolts to American history, all the while going back and forth between English and Japanese! He's such a friendly guy, so we had a great time!
 I ordered the meat sauce doria, which is a Japanese take on gratin. The dish has rice pilaf on the bottom, topped with bechamel sauce and meat sauce, then baked. Kouhei ordered the same thing, so I knew I was ordering the right thing! 

After working so hard this week, I couldn't wait to get class over with today. 
As usual, a little slap in the face in the morning, along with a great breakfast to entice me out of pressing snooze get's me to school on time! 

A runny egg on top of ham, my mom's bread, salad, sesame marinated bean sprouts, coffee, and yogurt with pineapples, bananas, and blueberries! 

I got through class!!! I was worried there for a second...

Right when I get out of class, I usually just hit the homework straight away. It usually takes at least a couple hours, so I like to keep the brain stamina going while I have it. However, today was the Speech Contest Presentation, and I was chosen to be an MC!
 I guess the teachers liked my over the top hand motions and enthusiasm. 

So...Lucas Broido (another awesome Princeton student/ MC) and I practiced our script during lunch. 

Here is my bento. It's so pretty!

I also had a little neba neba salad with mozuku and wakame seaweed, okra, and nameko mushrooms on top of sliced daikon. 

Broido and I kept did our thang during the presentation. We didn't butcher the looonnnng, complicated names and titles of all the judges, while managing to add our own flair, so I thought we were pretty successful. 
Kept our cool. No shin pais. 


After doing more homework for the next few hours (there was sooooo much), I finally couldn't handle Rifare any longer. Being in the hot building from 8:45 am to 5:30 pm, doing work pretty much straight through, drives me up the wall. 

Time for some relaxing and fun! Let the weekend begin!

 Emmy and Marina came over to my house for a takoyaki dinner party. Takoyaki are super delicious round balls of batter, grilled in a special takoyaki pan. 

We filled it with octopus (tako, hence the takoyaki), tempura pieces, pickled ginger, green onions, kimchi, and cheese...

...turned the little balls in the pan with little wooden skewers...

...and topped the freshly cooked delights with takoyaki sauce (Japanese worcestershire like sauce), Kewpie mayonnaise, katsuobushi, aonori, and little more green onions and ginger. Yum yum yum. 


 Although I eat takoyaki in LA at izakaya restaurants, I don't get to have them this fresh and make them right in front of me because I don't own the special pan! Therefore, this was a super fun and rare occasion! 

My mom also made fresh blueberry cheesecake! She is such the host. She stayed up late the night before making this! While I was up late studying in my room, she was baking up a storm in the kitchen!


After our great dinner party, Marina and I had a sleepover! 
Emmy, Marina, and I were going to leave early in the morning for the Kurobe Alpine Route the next morning, so Marina slept over because she lives a bit aways. 

Cheers to my last full weekend in Kanazawa! 

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