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。
今日は雨が降っていました。私は来週の授業のパワーポントを一日中作っていました。雨だから、畑の作業はできませんでした。
写真はジャガイモです。しかし、食べるジャガイモではなくて、植えるジャガイモです。１kg買いました。植える場所は、もう耕して（たがやして）あります。
日本では男爵イモ（だんしゃくいも）というジャガイモが一番食べられています。しかし私が種芋（たねいも）に買ったのは、メークインというジャガイモです。男爵イモは煮るとやわらかくなるので、イモサラダやマッシュド・ポテトに適しています。メークインは煮ても煮崩れしにくいので、煮物に適しています。ジャガイモを煮た時、ドロドロになるのが嫌いなので、メークインを畑に植えることにしました。１kg植えたら、３kgぐらい収穫できるでしょうか？世の中、そんなに甘くないかもしれません。
みなさんに注意ですが、ジャガイモから出て来た芽（め）や、日光に当たって緑色になった部分は、食べないでください。毒があります。
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。
私は今日一日中、作文の添削をしていました。そして夕方、３回目のコロナワクチンの接種会場へ老母を連れて行ってあげました。会場では私のように、５０代の息子が８０代の母親を連れて行っている光景が多く見られました。みなさん、日本は高齢化社会ですよ!
母を接種会場に連れて行ったあと、私は近くのホームセンターに行って、今シーズンの野菜の種を買ってきました。マクワ瓜とゴボウは、私の栽培技術では無理だと思います。でも、挑戦してみたくて買いました。青菜と二十日大根は、なんとかなります。大事なのはニンジンです。４月に入ったら種まきができるように、今から土を耕して、準備を始めています。
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。
今日は2041組の授業のあと、それぞれの学生にフィードバックを返して、そして、午後 散歩に行きました。
私のいるところでは平地の雪はなくなりました。
白い山は1600から2100メートルくらいの標高です。山の向こう側は福島県です。 だんだん春らしくなってきました。気分がいいですね。
Now snow on the ground is gone. I can get green vegetables from my garden.
I put those green leaves into miso soup.
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 used 30 minutes to make this post. I should not waste my time because I have to work hard for the coming semester.
That’s it for today’s post. Thanks for taking a look.
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”.
Agony or Fun?! Second Language Learning 