タグ: Niigata

Cooking from Scratch

I cook for me and my old mother every day. What I always try in my cooking is to avoid a processed food and to cook from the scratch. I go to a supermarket frequently and always buy food that is natural ingredients. I need to buy vegetables, fruits, fishes, egg, meat, and so on. luckily enough, I don’t need to buy green vegetables recently, because I can get them from my garden.

Daikon Leaves that I got from my Garden

Daikon leaves eventually become too hard to chew. So, it is important to use young leaves by thinning in early stage of their growing

I cook, because my mother can no longer cook, though it is still okay for her to boil water with a kettle, and to wash the dishes. Old people gradually lose their functions in daily life. It is more obvious in the case of dementia. The important thing is to let them do what they can do by using their remaining functions. My mother still has one important function, that is shopping. She can go to a supermarket and a convenience store nearby (, though she uses cash).

Salad that my mother bought today from a convenience store.

Going shopping by herself is basically good, however, here’s another problem. She buys what she wants to eat like oily food and/or processed food which her son is trying to avoid. When she comes back home, she shows me what she bought. And I always see those unhealthy foods. I wonder what is inside salad which says its expiry is the morning of the day after tomorrow. I feel the taste of chemical preservatives whenever eating a such salad.

A lot of chemicals are being used in the processed food

It seems that most people like the taste of processed food of convenience stores. But I don’t like them. For me, taste of those foods is just of chemical seasonings. Therefore, I cook by myself from the scratch with natural ingredients.

Summer-only Menu “Chilled Noodle – Hiyashi Chuuka” is still available in October

I went to a town next to my village today. I had to go to the branch office of the city hall to get the national ID card of mine. The card is called “Mai Nambaa Caado (my number card)”, which is often shortened as “Maina Caado”. This “Maina” sounds like “Minor”, but nothing has to do with minority kind of things.

Railway

I got on a local train to go the next town.

Water Drinking Place

On the way, I found a facility to serve drinking water. But is there anyone who drinks water here?

Shrine that I visited on the way back

After I got the card, I walked to back to the JR station. I know there is a shrine near the railway, but today was the first time for me to visit this shrine.

Glass Wind Chimes

Today was a windy day. These wind chimes were making sounds with wind blow. I didn’t know why there were so many wind chimes in this shrine.

Chilled Noodle “Hiyashi Chuuka (冷やし中華)”

I wanted to eat a hot Rahmen for my lunch. But I found that the chilled noodle was still available. The Hiyashi Chuuka is summer-only menu, but now it’s month of October.  I guessed they were still serving it because the summer of this year has been too hot and lasted long.

A single fruit of Persimmon, if it falls into the Earth

I found that a persimmon fell onto the ground in my garden this morning. Since its color was not orange but pale yellow, the fruit had not ripened enough yet. Although I was going to throw it at first, but changed my mind and decided to remove bitterness. I am expecting that I will be able to get some 20-30 fruits of persimmon within a month. Even though it’s just one persimmon, I thought it could be a practice of removing bitterness from persimmons.

Persimmon and strong alcohol (must be more than 40%)

Soak the stem part in alcohol.

Put into plastic bags and tightly seal them (I used three bags)

Let me wait for ten days. I will post about if it has become sweet or not.

A Neighbor gave me Seedlings of Strawberry

I was cultivating a place to plant onions’ seedlings in this morning. Then a neighbor came to my field. He wanted to see how I was doing with my vegetables and fruits trees. At the end of the talk, he gave me seedlings of strawberry as the photo below. Actually, I had also grown strawberry in my field several years ago. But it was a little difficult for me to grow strawberry well. And then I had given up because I was too busy because I was working as a Japanese teacher on line at that time.

Although I thought that working for vegetables in this season would be over when I have planted garlic and onions, now I have got another plant that is strawberry in eight pots. Although they are not many, I need to make a place to plant them and take a care of them. If it’s going well, I will be able to get some strawberry in May.

Boards I saw in my community

Today has not been a productive day. I worked in my field three hours in the morning. What I was doing was to make a place to plant onions’ seedlings. It was not a hard work, but I got tired much. The only thing I did in the afternoon was shopping in a supermarket. I took some photos on the way.

Bicycles Parking Lot

Monthly Parking Lot

Don’t hit the Wall by a Ball

Rules in this Park

I want to plant bulbs of garlic soon and seedlings of onion in this month. After I plant these two kinds, there will be not much work for vegetables until the spring 2026 come. But I have to work a lot for fruit trees. Although my garden is by no means an orchard, I have planted a lot of fruit trees in my garden; they are apples, grapes, citrus, figs, plums, pawpaw, persimmon, kiwi, and so on. Actually, I cannot get many fruits from those trees, because I couldn’t take a good care of them in the past six years. Now it’s the beginning of October. I think I will not have many good days to work from now because the weather is going to be worse towards winter. Time is always limited.

Can Protein Supplements cure my Pain in Elbow?

I am going to write about one of three major nutrition. It’ not about carbohydrates and fats, but Protein. When I worked as a Japanese teacher in a university, I had lived in a residence in the campus, and cooked almost of all of my meals by myself. A lot of foods were available for me to cook. I could buy many kinds of vegetables and sometimes buy pork and chicken. However, I felt that I needed to take more protein if I cooked and ate foods that were available to me there.

My solution was to bring 3 kilograms of protein supplement when I came back from Japan at the end of summer and winter breaks. It seemed to me that 3kg was enough for one semester. As I expected, 3 kg lasted in spring and fall semesters in 2024 until the end. However, I consumed all the 3 kg one month earlier in the last semester. It was still mid-June. Since I planned to leave there in middle of July, at that time, I didn’t think it’s a major issue. I just tried eating chicken breast more than usual.

But I got a problem. I think it was the end of June or the beginning of July that I got my elbow aching. It’s on right hand. The pain has continued since then. Even though I came back Japan, it didn’t seem to get any better. And then one day in August, I got an idea that perhaps my pain in elbow might have come from lack of protein. Once I noted it, I went to a supermarket, bought chicken breast a lot, and ate them. To my surprise, I felt that pain was eased a little by eating chicken breast which I thought protein rich food. But it was not effective enough and soon I realized that buying a lot of chicken breast every time I go to supermarket was cumbersome because it’s too heavy to carry to my home.

Then again, I bought 1 kg of protein supplement from Amazon. I shake three spoonfuls of white powder and milk, and drink it in every lunch. Still, my right hand’s elbow continues to ache. I wish the pain in my elbow get better soon. My biggest problem is that I cannot play my electric bass. I had not played it since July. I love playing music. It is part of my life. So instead of playing bass, I play piano a little these days. Of course, it’s just a little so that my pain would not get worse.

My one of three basses; The strings are intentionally loosened because I don’t play it for so long.

I went shopping in Sunday Afternoon

Small Park where Kids Hardly Play

Though era of division, everyone can agree that “Traffic Safety is Important”

Straws are piled up by a Rice Field

We have to care about Nature; Farm Grounds and Water are Important

The Board is there; It simply means some People Throw Trashes.

A Farmer is Harvesting Rice using Machine

Droppings must be removed by a pet’s owner.

And this is what I bought in this afternoon.

Oh, by the way, I have just before answered for the national census 2025 through the internet. I could complete it within five minutes. One of the questions was whether or not I am working. Not willingly, but I had to confess that I hadn’t worked at all during the week of September 24 to 30, 2025. Reason? I chose the answer “Children, the elderly, etc.”

Photos Two Years Ago

I don’t have enough energy to write a post tonight. These days I work in my garden in morning hours; cultivating soil, eliminating weed’s roots, giving fertilizer, taking care of fruits trees, and so on. By 11 a.m. (not noon), I get completely exhausted. I have to take a nap in the afternoon. At 4p.m., I practice a piano, from 5p.m. start cooking supper. I usually write a post from 7p.m. in my room. But I cannot compose my thinking for a blog post today.

The following photos do not have to do with my current life in Japan. I took them in October 2019.

That’s all for today.

I took my mother to a local clinic to make a reservation for her health check.

Everyone in Japanese have to pay for health insurance. Thanks to the universal health insurance system, people like me can get medical services by paying 30% of total cost, and old people like my mother only pay 10%. If a healthy person hasn’t seen a doctor for long, he/she would lose most of money for other unhealthy people. But the idea of the universal health insurance is helping each other. And everyone has a right to get a health check once a year.

I have already got this year’s health check in August right after I came back in Japan. At that time, it was too hot. The highest temperatures were like 35 Celsius every day. I thought I would take my mother to health insurance once it gets cooler in autumn.

Now it’s near to the end of September, and it has got cooler a little, wind blow is comfortable. Today I took my mother to a local clinic to make a reservation for her health check. Although I know that my mother would soon forget the date of the check, I didn’t attend in the examination room. I let her go into there alone, because it was better for her to activate her remaining ability to make an appointment with doctor. Probably she would forget the date, but I knew that a nurse would give  me a memo for the date and time afterwards.

She could get several checks, but she refused tests of stomach and breast cancers. Actually, no one has died of any cancers in my mother’s relatives. Her families are very excellent people as for health. So, she is okay, but I am not. Because most of the people on my father’s side have died of cancers. I know that my brain comes from my mother and my body comes from my father. I think, some day in the future, I will be diagnosed that cancer tumor growing inside of me. Once it happens, my life will change forever. I have to spend my precious days until the day like that coming.

Anyway, I have to take her again to the clinic in the coming week. Checks are only for weight, height, blood pressure, urine and blood. It will not take much time.