Season's Greetings to all

I have not been writing for a while, sorry for that, but I actually thought there is not much to write anyway.

So here is a short Stano News: 

I had a little concert in my boss’s restaurant; it was great I played on congas with his band too. It was cooooooool. We played some Hawaiian music and jazz standards. 

Also me and my classmates, we were invited by one of our teachers to Yokohama’s China town. We ate soooo much of Chinese cuisine there and of course had to drink a lot of beer too. But luckily for me, I was saved by a classical concert in which Mitsuyo’s younger sister performed too, so I left earlier. Lucky me. It was the same day and also in Yokohama, not far away from the China town. The performance was nice. The orchestra played composition by Mahler and Brahms. 

 

 with classmates in Chinatown

After the concert we have been invited by Mitsuyo’s parents to restaurant for dinner. And I was back in china town, having more of their famous cuisine. Later on they told me, that I am eating a shark. So I was very surprised. Cause I remembered a documentary about how they catch sharks and actually it is very sad. Human beings can be very cruel. The part of shark used for cooking is only a very small part of the animals body. And most of the time they don’t even kill the shark, just cut its fin alive and throw it back to the sea. So when eating, all the images came back and made me sad. Forgive us dear sharks, for how we treat you. Humanity is still so immature.

Last weekend we climbed a lovely hill called 大山。(big mountain). Really nice view from the top, there was a lovely temple as well. That hill is very famous for its tofu and little wooden toys for spinning. I thing that in English they are called the spinning tops. 

 on the way to 大山

 view from the top

     Well, and that is about all from the interesting things that happened since I wrote last time. Oh.. and one more. Few weeks ago we started an Intermediate level in Japanese language. So I am quite happy that the progress is so quick. But I must say, it is still hard, new grammar, billions of new vocabulary and we finally started the Japanese kanji (Chinese characters), scary stuff.

The Christmas time:

Now the Christmas season is here and finally, probably first time in my life, it was peaceful, without any stress and anybody fighting in shops or on the streets. 

Actually there is not such a thing as Christmas here. They love the flashing lights, Christmas tree and the decorations on the streets and in shops. But it is not the same as in Europe. They love the romance of it. Also very popular is a Christmas cake. That is a nice soft sponge with lot of cream and of course strawberries. Cream and strawberries… always, everywhere, all the time, every celebration – same cake…… interesting… 

The Christmas here feels actually like a Valentine’s Day. Nice, romantic evening for lovers with the flashing lights on the small Christmas tree, having dinner and cake and exchanging presents between each other, pure Valentine’s Day.

    

On the other hand, they have the New Year as the main event of the year. So far I only heard about it, but soon I will experience it, so later I will write about it. It is the time when families get together and welcome the New Year together, eating a lot and drinking a bit too. (just like the Christmas in Europe)

Anyway I will write about it later. But there is one interesting thing I heard about the New Year. Long, long time ago, the New Year’s Day, was a day when everybody celebrated birthdays in Japan. I love it. I must have been Japanese in previous lifetime, because I never remember the dates and always forget about it and that upsets people. Now I have a nice story to tell and excuse for it too…

This Christmas I tried to make nice romantic dinner for Mitsuyo. So I cooked the full Slovakian Christmas dinner. That is sour cabbage soup, fish with potato salad and also we baked with Mitsuyo some cakes too. 

 

Of course the ingredients for the European food are hard to find. And if you find here something, it is so expensive, that it actually hurts. If you can find here something from Europe, it will be countries like France, UK, Spain or Italy. But Slovakia…. They never even heard about such a country. So it is actually impossible to find anything. So the sour cabbage soup, had very different taste, but we managed to eat it, with a sour face. And the fish, they have not such a fish here, but we bought some sea fish with name I don’t remember, and it was actually nice taste, maybe even nicer than Slovakian fish. And the potato salad was delicious, almost like made by my father every year. 

And the cakes, we gave them to many people as a present, and we had only a good response. We liked them too, and actually they were so delicious that we had to bake the same type of cakes 3 times in a week. I am thinking about opening a shop soon… 

Well and tomorrow we are going to Mitsuyo’s parents’ house for the お正月 (New Year’s day celebration). We will be there for few days. So I am sure I will have a lot to write after I came back. 

Wish you all Happy New Year 2012. 

May only happiness overflows your minds.

First concert and other first time things...

First concert

This weekend we had a concert with Yoshie and Junko in a school where Yoshie is teaching. So here are few photos from our performance.

I was told that Japanese kids are very shy, and it is hard to make them speak or do something. But actually when we asked them to join us to sing and dance few famous Japanese children’s songs, they just jumped with happiness and sang so beautifully. It was really nice to hear about 600 children’s voices. Just like angels.

We also performed a Canon by Pachelbel with 2 girls from the school. One of them is really talented violinist. Her father is a guardian of local temple, so their family lives there. Very nice place to grow up. 

We also had a little party in the evening and before that I was introduced to a local farmer, who is growing vegetables in organic way. He invited us to his house and his wife prepared for us lovely carrot juice and some magic potions made from vegetables and rice and plums and lettuces. It was like in a winery, just instead of a wine, we tasted vegetable juices and rice extract. It was very nice. It reminded me of Uma san and his Allanton morning super power juice.

We also visited Fuji sanctuary the next day, and joined their celebration of the founder’s birthday. It was interesting to see lots of tents with local produced vegetables and foods. More like a Sunday market in Slovakia. I met there also with Haggit, a friend from Izrael. She was very surprised to see me in Japan. We had a nice chat.

First shrine

After the celebration we went to a near shrine. It was actually a shrine I visited on my first visit to Japan in 2006. It was nice to see it again, this time in its autumn colors.

It is really beautiful now here. All the maple trees have amazing colors.

Even Mitsuyo bought a small maple tree for our balcony, so we can enjoy the autumn colors. It is very nice.

Well and the best at the end.

First time (and hopefully the only) ...

On 7^th of April next year, Mitsuyo and me; we will get married.

Life is amazing.

The autumn has come

  The temperatures dropped to about 16 to 20 degrees, colors of leaves are slowly changing … The autumn has come.

       New semester started again. And I must say it is very joyful time for me to be in school.  As much as I didn’t like the school when I was teenager, I love it now. Such a great life it is. 

       We have one more student in our class; it is a girl from China, Chin san. That means, the Chinese boys hormones are on the lookout. It is quite funny to see that, and it always reminds me of the time in school in Slovakia.

       Today we had lunch together and then went to Karaoke. It was good fun. Few photos:

(Sorry for the darkness, I am using first time my new camera, actually my first camera ever, a present from Mitsuyo)

Mohsen san, from Iran

 Chinese boys

        Very soon we will have a concert with my friend Yoshie. She is a teacher and they have some special day at the school. So we will perform few pieces of music for the kids and their parents, all together about 800 people, the biggest audience I ever had. We will perform also with her sister Junko, she plays flute and also Maho, Junko’s daughter and other young and very talented violinist. 

       For this opportunity, as well as for the future playing, we bought a new toy, called cajon, a Spanish drum, mostly used for flamenco. 

        You should see Yoshie buying it in Tokyo. First question was: “Can you give us discount?” They just put it on sale that day in the morning. But of course, she managed to take the price down and get a proper nice case for it too; for free of course. From now on I do shopping only with Yoshie….. Amazing…

    We will play some nice jazz and tango to entertain the parents and also some Japanese kid’s song, for the younger ones. It is really nice to play Take Five (by Dave Brubeck) and Libertango (by Astor Piazolla) in the formation of Cajon, Flute and Piano. And to my surprise the children songs are quite amazing compositions with lot of rhythm changes. I like them. Looking forward to it…

    Here are some pictures from our practice.

 Maho trying the cajon

 Our practice in Yoshies house, Honjo

 Maho, young violinist and Yoshies cute cat

         I was also invited to house of my boss; from the Golf place. They have a lovely place, by a river and nice woodland area. Next to their house, they have a small coffee house, called "River Side", (Please remember the name. It is vital information for one of the photos). 

        My boss plays ukulele and once a month he organizes a live concert with his friends. They play mostly Hawaiian music and bit of jazz standards. So we had a little coffee there with Mitsuyo and chat with him and his wife. They are very nice people. We also played together a little bit. He liked my performance, so he invited me to play at the next of their live concerts. Looking forward for that too. 

        It reminds me of the time in Dumfries when I worked at Rift Valley Jazz Coffee, and played there with the boss, David Kelly. It looks like, wherever I go, a coffee house is waiting for me, with a boss who loves music. Recently I realized, that music opens so many doors. Even if we don’t know the language, the music will manage to break all barriers and create friendly atmosphere. Such a wonderful tool. 

         Few photos:

 Check the sign on the wall .... always makes me laugh...

Me and my boss

         PS:  Jessica, I think of you and Margaret every day. Please say hallo to her from me. Times like these shake our consciousness, and show us the right values in this precious life. Your gratitude is the best prayer you can give to her. Gratitude is actually the only true prayer I know.  May your missions be accomplished. You are amazing.

Photo slide show

Here is a link for my photo slide show.

Please, click the "Various Photos Slideshow" part.

It takes about 5 minutes.
Enjoy.



Link is here*

Various Photos Slideshow: Stano’s trip to 日本 was created by TripAdvisor. See another 日本 slideshow. Create your own stunning free slideshow from your travel photos.

Dinning and food in Japan

Well, to be honest, there is so much to write about this part of Japanese culture. But I will write only few of my experiences, so no worries, it won’t take too much of your precious time.

Japanese people really love to eat and love to try different cuisine. You can see here many French sweets shops and bakeries, Italian and Chinese and other Asian restaurants. On the other hand, compared to UK, I have seen very few Indian foods.

The presentation of food is always very nice and colorful, as you can imagine. It is very important part of dining. And of course the taste, they really know what goes well together, especially with fish. I must say, they also love to experiment with tastes and textures of food. Many times I could say only: “hmmm… interesting…..”.

One of the surprises for me was that they like fat parts of meat and fish and they pay a lot of money for it. It is first time for me to see fat parts of tuna or beef in shops. And the prices… wow…

Another interesting discovery for me is that Japanese people like sweet taste. All of bread and baked products have sweet flavor and are very soft. So it took me time to get used to it. Even now I still shake my head sometimes when I eat it. Of course we could buy imported bread, for example from Germany, which I like, but for 3 slices I would have to pay about 4 British pounds. So … no thank you.

I tried to bake as well, but I couldn’t figure out how to bake with this flour and east they have here. I still have to experiment more. But who will eat the outcomes of my experiments…….. J I wonder…. Poor Mitsuyo… she is so kind to me….

So far I have tried few interesting places for dining. One of the most popular places to go to eat is Izakaya, there are hundreds of them. It is actually place more for drinking than eating, but the food there is so good and varies from place to place. It has a very different feeling from UK pubs, or Slovakian “krcma”. I must say I love it…..

Uma san, now I understand. J

Here is few pictures from one of them… in Atsugi, my favorite so far… わん (wan).

                                                            from outside                                     menu

                                                               from inside

                                                                sashimi (raw fish)                   meat dishes

                                                         Japanese sweets                              sake time

 

Of course, a must go in Japan, a sushi bar. Yummy yummy…… 

Few photos from sushi bar in Shinjuku, Tokyo.

                                                    massive portion of wasabi                    crab miso soup

And another big one in Japan is Ramen shop or Udon or Soba shop. These are different types of noodles. Very nice too. Cold hiyashichouka in summer – pure heaven.

Sometimes you can see such a small tiny little ramen shop in a corner of a street, where only three people can fit. Amazing. They love it here. Also if somebody becomes famous with their ramen taste, you can see people waiting even for 2 hours to get in, in long queues.

                                                              Ramen in small ramen shop in Asakusa, Tokyo

As I said, there is so much more to write about this, I could continue for a long time. Maybe some other time.