Agony or Fun?! Second Language Learning
I am a native Japanese speaker who used to teach Japanese in a university somewhere on this planet. Currently I don't work but stayed in my house in Northern part of JAPAN. I hope that you could enjoy reading my posts and know what life in Japan is like.
みなさん、こんばんは。
今日の晩ご飯に、餃子を食べました。料理の手間を省き（はぶき）たかったので、焼くだけの既製品を買ってきました。日本では餃子を焼いて食べます。最初は油で焼くのですが、途中で水を少し入れて、蓋（ふた）をします。蒸し焼きみたいな調理方法です。最初はなかなかうまくできませんでしたが、何回かやっているうちに、焼けるようになってきました。もうちょっとパリッとなるように焼きたいのですが、ブヨブヨです。
そちらで食べる水餃子とは違いますから、日本に来たら、食べてみてください。ちょっと油が多いので、水餃子のようにたくさん食べられないです。
写真の緑の野菜は、私が畑で育てたリーフレタスです。
この写真と文章は、私の学生たちとのコミュニケーションの一環として、Dingtalk上に掲示したものです。
みなさん、こんばんは。
今日も私の畑の作物（さくもつ）です。大根のように見えますが、大根は秋に育てるのが普通です。それに写真の大根みたいなものは、長さが１０センチくらいしかありません。これは二十日大根（ハツカダイコン）です。実際は２０日以上かかりますが、短い期間で成長して、小さいまま収穫する大根の一種です。これくらいの大きさが味噌汁の具にするのにちょうどいいです。もちろん葉の方も食べます。今は毎日春菊と一緒に食べています。
この写真と文章は、私の学生たちとのコミュニケーションの一環として、Dingtalk上に掲示したものです。
みなさん、こんばんは。
少し前に春菊の写真を見せましたが、とうとう大きくなって、今では食べ放題です。スーパーで緑の菜っ葉を買わなくてもいいです。
・・・・・・・・・・・
今日は日曜日だというのに、みなさんもお疲れさまでした。私もそろそろ仕事を終えて休みます。
この写真と文章は、私の学生たちとのコミュニケーションの一環として、Dingtalk上に掲示したものです。
みなさん、こんばんは。
写真はブルーベリーの花です。このブルーベリーの木は、去年 別の所から移植したものです。以前は毎年５kgくらい収量があって、ジャムをたくさん作ることができました。事情があって、私の庭に移植しました。去年は収穫がゼロでしたが、今年は ほんのすこし、ブルーベリーの実が採れそうです。以前のようにジャムが作れるようになるには、もう２年くらいかかりそうです。
仕事が終わらないのですが、寝ないと明日が辛いので、今日はこれで仕事を終わりにします。
この写真と文章は、私の学生たちとのコミュニケーションの一環として、Dingtalk上に掲示したものです。
みなさん、こんばんは。
写真は「おだまき」の花です。授業中にもちょっと見せましたが、私の庭でたくさん咲いています。これは日本の「深山（みやま）おだまき」と言います。西洋オダマキはカラフルで面白い形ですが、私は日本のオダマキの花もきれいだと思います。
今日は腰痛がひどくて困りました。ウンウンうなりながら、みなさんへフィードバックをしました。今晩はこれで仕事を終えて、休みます。
この写真と文章は、私の学生たちとのコミュニケーションの一環として、Dingtalk上に掲示したものです。
The photo above is yesterday’s. I boiled sweet potato in the pan. Those were the potato that I planted in my garden last year.
This is a photo of today. I wanted to take a picture of train running, but those local trains do not come so frequently.
Today I bought the fish Mackerel. That was not “Horse Mackerel”, but simply “Mackerel”. This is Japan, but we usually see on the supermarket shelves, “Mackerel from Norway”. The mackerel in the photo was not from Norway, but from an Island of Sado which is the major island of Niigata Prefecture.
I boiled them with Miso which is salty soy bean paste for seasoning. Not only Miso, I used also a little bit of sugar, ginger slices, pieces of red pepper, and Japanese Sake for seasoning.
The white slices accompanying with Mackerel is white part of green onion.
Now it’s already the last third (we call it “Gejun”) of Februray. But this winter is cold and still going on. Since the spring semester will start from the coming week, I have been just making PPT slides all day for my classes.
I found them in the supermarket where I always go buy food. Many packages of small horse mackerels were left unsold on the shelve. They were 30 percent discounted from the original price. But the original price was already reasonable because it was less than Two USD. I think that the problem was that they were too small to cook and eat. It was obvious that soon a lot of small horse mackerels were going to be thrown to be waste. Feeling sorry for that, I decided buying them.
When you cook horse mackerels, you need to cut the hard scales off from the body side from the tale.
I wouldn’t show you the most cruel part of the cooking process.
Put a lot of Potato Starch around the fishes. I didn’t use fresh egg between the fishes and the starch. I just put the starch directly to the fishes.
Frying uses a lot of Oil. I usually use a good oil (a little expensive one), but for frying, I bought a cheap cooking oil.
The municipal government where I live has been collecting those cooking oils for recycling. I saw many bottles of dirty brown cooking oil were gathered at the entrance of the community center. Since there is a library in that building, I saw it every time I go to borrow books. But recently the city decided to stop collecting the oil. I don’t know why, because the city government doesn’t say anything about the reason explicitly to us. Recycling is good, so I think there must be a reason for stopping the recycling of used cooking oil.
Oil is not good for our health. I put fried fishes onto cooking paper in order to remove excess oil.
Actually this is not the completion of the frying horse mackerels with potato starch. But I didn’t have time to do the end process of the cooking because I wanted to serve this for the dinner soon.
We Japanese usually put the fried horse mackerels into a sour sauce and keep it at least one night. The sauce is made of soy sauce, vinegar, and sugar. Ginger and red pepper are used for seasoning. Plus, slices of Carrots, onions, and peppers are accompanied. Those sauce and slices are poured onto fried mackerels and they are kept in the refrigerator. A good things of that are not only good taste, but also the vinegar makes the fish bones softer. When you come to Japan, please try to eat this menu that is “Aji no Namban Dzuke”.
They were the last figs in this fall.
Only sugar was used; No chemical, no preservative, no artificial flavor/color.
They were boiled for tight sealing.
Actually I made five bottles of fig jam. I sent these four bottles to my sister.
So only one bottle was left. Fig jam on the toast in the photo above was the last portion from that bottle. But I still have many fig compote in my freezer.
Agony or Fun?! Second Language Learning 