What a Month!

Well, let's see...

Daughter had surgery on tonsils- She's fine now. 

Typhoon Guchol dumped 25cm of rain in three hours. 

Same typhoon caused an utterly massive landslide that destroyed my neighbor's house, just 30 meters away from my front door. He was trapped in the rubble for six hours. Pinned on his side with a six inch breathing space in front of his nose. Luckily the mud didn't penetrate that part of the house, and he didn't suffer any broken bones. Just a dislocated shoulder, numerous lacerations, and severe bruises. More than 50 rescue workers swarmed over the house to cut him out. Thank God he wasn't injured any worse. 

 
Garlic was harvested, 50+ drying in the shade under the cob oven's roof. Anna was right, planting the big cloves led to bigger garlic all around. If this keeps up, soon they will be as big as my head (which is pretty enormous already). 

Sunflower stalks are now 2 inches across the base, 2.5m tall, and still no sign of flowers. I am thinking of measuring the diameter at breast height, like trees they are so big! 

First three cherry tomatoes were eaten by crows. 

Dog had Sarcoptes Scabei canis (Scabies) mites. Then a cough, and now a sore paw. The poor little guy. Lucky our vet is quite affordable. 

Goats escaped twice and ate the middles out of the cabbage plants that weren't infested with loopers. 

Goumi fruits are ripe, and will be tested for radiation in a few days. 

Picked four enormous dandelion roots to dry, roast, and make dandelion coffee (which will be tested for radiation as well).

That is about it for now.

Neighbor's house after the mudslide

Standing on the wreckage looking up the slide.
That mud is at least six feet deep.
It carried 30-40  fifty year old cedar trees that it smashed into kindling.
Nature scares me sometimes. 

Road to Recovery

Tonsillectomy scab third day

Our oldest had a tonsillectomy on Wednesday morning. I took the day off work to be with her, we kept the middle one out of school and we all nervously hung around the surgical waiting room for her. She came out crying, said it was like someone had cut them out with a scissors. But by evening she was feeling a lot better.
Here in Japan, they keep the patients in the hospital for a ridiculously long time. They said they will discharge her on Tuesday!

New Year's Eve

On Dec. 16, I wrote about my buckwheat harvest and how I planned to make "Toshi Koshi Soba" for New Years Eve.
So we did it! We made "Go-Wari Soba." Which means that it is half buckwheat and half wheat flour (the gluten holds it together).
If you want to try it, you need:

Ingredients
150g Buckwheat flour
150g Wheat flour
129g water between 20-25 degrees C.

Start with 150g each buckwheat flour and wheat flour.
Measure the water into two cups- 90g in one, 39 in the other. 

Sift the flours together

Now you have 300g of flour ready to go

My helpers drizzle 90g of water while stirring with chopsticks.
Then mix it with your fingers to make it grainy.
Add the 39g of water a little at a time as you continue to mix it.
When the grains get bigger, stop adding water and make a ball.

Kneading the dough 100 times

Cover the dough and let it rest while you flour your rolling surface and get out the rolling pin.
In Japan, most serious foodies have a soba kit, with a big rolling pin and board.
I am not a foodie, I'm an eater. I use my table and a regular sized pin.

Press the dough flat with your palms.

Begin rolling the dough out. You are aiming for a rectangle.
After two or three times, roll the dough onto the rolling pin, and rotate it 90 degrees.
Then unroll it again, and continue. This should give you a relatively square piece.

When it is about 1mm thick, flour 1/2 of the sheet, and fold it in half.
It helps if you roll the sheet onto the rolling pin one last time before you fold it,
otherwise it will stretch and stick to your table surface.

Fold it in half again, (now it is four layers thick) and put it on a cutting board.
Use another cutting board as a ruler and cut the noodles about 1mm thick.
If you cut, and bump the ruler with the side of your knife, you can get a good rhythm going.

The noodles, cut and ready to boil.

Put a BIG kettle on the stove and get it boiling. 

Now you need to make the soup. I didn't take pictures of it, but it is so easy.

Ingredients:

6 cups of dashi-broth (made from dried bonito flakes, or "Katsuobushi". Look in an Asian Grocery. Most people use prepared granular bullion)

1/2 cup soy sauce

2 Tbsp of mirin

1 tsp of sugar

1 skinless chicken breast cut in bite sized pieces.

Dump it all in a pot and boil it until the chicken is done.

By  now the big kettle should be boiling. 

You will need a large bowl, with a smaller colander inside it, and a steady stream of cold water into the bowl.

Divide the noodles in four (I like to put them into the four bowls that we will use to eat with), and get ready, because this part moves fast.

1. Drop 1/4 the noodles into the boiling water, and stir it a few times to make sure the noodles don't stick to each other.

2. When the noodles float to the top and the boiling resumes, count to 15, scoop the noodles out, and put them into the colander. Rinse them lightly, drain, and transfer them to the bowl you will eat out of. (try one noodle to see if it is done to your preference, you can then adjust the time)

3. Repeat steps one and two for the other 3 bowls.

4. Ladle some of the soup into the bowls over the noodles, maybe sprinkle some green onions and tenkasu on top, and dig in. After finishing the noodles, put a ladle of the water used to boil the noodles into your bowl and drink it dry. 

A bit thick and thin, but delicious!
(We didn't have any green onion)

Rice Planting Time

Saturday was the big day. The neighbor had planted his rice the day before, and gave us some of the leftover flats of seedlings he had left. So we started the big day.

Step One: used the brush cutter to slash down all the weeds growing around the paddy. Mostly just for aesthetics, but also to make sure there were no snakes hiding out on the banks.

Step Two: Used my kuwa (a Japanese hoe) to stir up the bottom and loosen the paddy. Also it was to chop up some of the field horsetail that thrives where I built the paddy. After chopping and loosening, I was able to use the rake and take out a lot of the root systems. At least I hope so...

Step Three: We all took our shoes off and got into the paddy. Inside, I stretched a nylon string attached to two stakes across the paddy. This was our planting line. I broke off pieces of the rice seedlings and handed them to the kids, and we started to plant. Every 15cm we planted three or four blade bunches. The paddy soil was mostly sand, so it was hard to push the seedlings in, but we managed.

Bunches of 3-4 rice seedlings at 15cm spacing.

The middle child loves planting

At about the halfway point, the youngest got too bored to continue, so we decided to leave off there for the time being. Later, when I went out to take the goats up to the house, I finished the job.

Finished! You can see the flat of seedlings in the corner on the paddy bank.

Sports Day!

Our Daughter's school held it's annual "Sports Day" on Sept. 5th.
What a great day! It was a bit hot, a bit bright, but so much fun!
Relays, tug-o-wars, and just a lot of crazy fun stuff as well that the kids designed. Like the parent's "Love Love Partners" race, where we got to switch husbands and wives, hold their hand, and run around with a balloon between our cheeks. I guess I should have shaved a bit closer, that was a mighty loud pop when the balloon hit my cheek.

Go Team White Hat!

The traditional unicycle show. Every year they do a bunch of stunts. All the students in the school are shown in that picture by the way....

Holy cow, look at that boy run! What form! Too bad the "race" was only 10 meters! It was the "Cute Guests" fun run for the new students for the next few years. Of course, he is going to be the only student entering the first grade next year, where he will study in the same classroom as "The Second Grader." (Note the definitive article- she was the only first grader this year!)

He came back complaining- It was so short, I didn't even feel like I ran!"