Influenza and ichigo

Some of you might have noticed that I haven't been updating as often this month. Thanks to the influenza epidemic running rampant in my school, I was forced to go to the local doctor (whom I don't trust all that much, frankly) after feeling completely crappy for more than 24 hours. Ultimately I was laid up in bed for a week with chills, fever and cough, stocked to the gills with antipyretics and a full course of Roche Pharmaceuticals' wonder drug Tamiflu. I found it ironic that I was ordered by the doctor to stay home for a week to avoid infecting the kids at school; the same kids who'd given me the flu in the first place! Bloody kids.

Staying at home for a week isn't fun when you're all groggy and feverish, but it gave me a chance to really enjoy the best of the local strawberry season. Up until now, I'd never eaten a fresh strawberry that was even remotely sweet, so I was really surprised and very glad when I took a chance on a punnet I saw in the bargain bin of the supermarket. Must be the fertile soil and favourable weather conditions here, because the berries were the sweetest and most fragrant I'd ever had. Makes me drool just thinking about it ^^

I once saw on TV that the fruit are hand picked when ripe, sorted to within an inch of their life by colour, size and shape, then precision packed for display on supermarket shelves. Might explain why they're not the cheapest fruit around, even though they're grown locally by the tonne. The cheapest, smallest berries ring in at ¥400 for about 20 a punnet, while the really super premium stuff can cost upwards of ¥1000 for a dozen perfectly heart shaped, ping-pong ball sized fruit, packed in a nest of shredded tissue paper in a miniature wooden carton. The biggest I've seen though were featured in an agricultural catalogue for plants that could bear strawberries more than 7cm in length. Heck, I wouldn't mind trying one of those ^^

The strawberries I find in the shops come from various prefectures, including my own, and it's a lot of delicious fun trying to find the best produce. So far, the ones from Tochigi next door seem to be winning out in terms of flavour, though the ones from here are way bigger and juicier. Strangely enough, the "Tochi-otome" cultivar that's used in a lot of limited edition confectionery isn't as always good as the ones without the premium branding.

Of course the glut of strawberries means that associated spinoff products hit the market in a big way too. Everything from prepared sponge cake sandwiches and fresh whipping cream to strawberry flavoured Kit Kat and sweetened condensed milk to dip the berries in. They don't have to bother with the last one though, the strawberries really are good on their own.

One of the products I picked up was a strawberry sprinkle, packed in convenient stick sachets. It seems to be a powdered form of sweetened condensed milk, fortified with calcium and oligosaccharides, reputed to be good for health around these parts. Japan seems to have taken the Splenda revolution quite seriously, because a lot of convenience foods, including this one, use sucralose instead of regular sugar. This stuff isn't too bad since it gives a pleasant, sweet, milky flavour to those strawberries that happen to be a little sour. Can't beat real whipped cream though.

It's not just the supermarkets that get in on the action; family restaurants and other food outlets are turning out limited edition strawberry themed desserts. The Baskin Robbins in the local shopping mall offers crepes filled with strawberries, ice-cream, cake and whipped cream, while Denny's (gee, all very American) will do you a parfait that looks like this:

Rich, delicious and absolutely terrible for the waistline! Methinks I won't be able to go back to eating Aussie strawberries after this. So before the season ends in a few weeks, I'll be prowling the fruit section of the supermarkets for a while yet, and making these:

And a vanity shot, of course:

Though you can't see it, there's a bit of soft chocolate filling under that whipped cream. Indulgence! ^^

Black cats, breaking mirrors and walking under ladders

Living in a seriously temperate country can have its pitfalls. Sure, all that snow is pretty and makes for a lot of wintertime fun, but it can also get really cold, to the point where you can't feel your extremities after a quick trip outside to put out the garbage. Having to scrape a night's worth of frost off your windscreen in the mornings also cuts into precious sleep time, especially when you realize that you actually needed the extra 15 minutes you spent in bed to get your car ready to go to work. Bah.

Another thing about the weather is that it puts a tremendous amount of strain on your car battery. So much so that when someone forgot to close the door properly on their way out of my car *glares at the next door neighbour*, the cabin lamp that was left on completely drained the battery in a matter of hours. The end result was that my car didn't work the next morning when I really needed it and that I had to catch a taxi instead. In Japan, the meter jumps slowly, but in ¥80 increments, so a 15 minute journey will set you back anything up to ¥3500. Not happy Jan.

In my mad rush to contact my supervisor and school to tell them I was going to be late, I dropped my keys somewhere in the carpark and couldn't find them in the snow. In times like this, you can only laugh (albeit a little bitterly) and get on with the day. It really puts your existence into perspective when you realize you're stuck out in the snow with no transport and no way to get back into your apartment.

It was a good thing then that my sempai found my keys that evening and hung on to them for me after a harrowing day at school with a half dead phone and no battery charger. At least I wasn't going to freeze to death outside and I could warm up in the shower. At this point, I knew Murphy had it in for me that day when I turned on the hot water tap and nothing came out. Zip. No water flowing on the hot side, but a healthy gush from the bleeding cold tap. It wasn't until later that someone suggested that my water pipes might have frozen from the unusually cold weather that day. Just my luck that I was the only one in the entire apartment block to be affected, eh? :/

Being the persistent bastard I am, I decided to boil a kettle of water to wash with. It would have been better than going without and being generally stinky for the rest of the night. I swear, If I ever meet this Murphy guy, I'm going to kill him. Even though I had a minimum of lights and electrical appliances on at the time, the induction stove tripped the electricity in the apartment and left me in a cold dark apartment, wondering what kind of cosmic karma I'd incurred to have such a seriously lousy day. At least the kettle was warm enough for a quick splash without giving me third degree burns, and I was able to go to bed that night halfway clean and hoping fervently that the next day might be a little better.

A famous fictional character once said, "Must be a Thursday. Could never get the hang of Thursdays." Too roight. It's better than getting your home planet blown up to make way for a hyperspatial bypass, I suppose.

Snowman!

February is said to be the coldest month round these parts, with the greatest amount of snowfall. Little wonder then that at times I woke up to see this out of my balcony, where it had been clear the night before:

Sharp eyed folks might pick out what looks like a bit of shovel on the right side of the pic on the steps of the apartments next door. That's the landlord's dad, who busts his ass to remove the snow from the carpark and surroundings as soon as it falls so we can drive and walk in safety. What a guy.

Of course you know I'm not going to pass up a chance to do the stereotypical winter thing and build a snowman, so a bunch of us snuck out in the middle of the night and put him together using all the snow that was shoveled together in the middle of the carpark. Here he is, at various stages of completion:



I supplied the carrot nose while my neighbour provided the cap, scarf and slippers. We scrounged up the eyes and buttons from a pile of stones next to the apartment block next door. Not a bad job, if I do say so myself. We called him Heath, in honour of the guy playing our favourite homicidal clown, since he did cark it the day before. Our ten-gallon hats off to you, pardner.

It looks so easy in movies and on TV, but putting the guy together took way more snow than I thought, mainly because it call compacts down when you try and shape it properly. Once the stuff is packed in, it also becomes really difficult to fine tune the shape, since you're now dealing with practically solid ice.

Anyhow, Heath was all ready to greet the kiddies the next morning as they were walking past our place to school. We thought it might have been nice to have him holding a sign which read, "Ohayou gozaimasu", but we couldn't find the materials. Oh well. It would have been funny.