Setsubun is coming...

It really isn't even that big a holiday, but maybe it is, because when I went to my favorite park this statue of an ONI had been erected and many signs advertising the bean throwing festival to banish the evil spirits.

Seems like just yesterday I was posting a photo of the Setsubun sweet.

Who is that big guy standing there.

My Winter Holiday

Winter Holiday 2013-2014

First Max and I went to Korea. This was Christmas dinner. We had a big seafood lunch where they boiled everything alive (including octopus, mussels, sea snails, scallops, and more) in front of us. Then went to Max's grandma's house. Then we went to his aunts house and had a big steak dinner, the next day we finally went back to his parents house and had a fried and grilled chicken dinner date with gelato dessert. Little did I know I had some sort of brewing gut virus which left me spewing the next day. I don't think it was anything I ate but maybe it could have been. It was short lived, only a few hours, but I spent the last 3 days of the trip in bed. It started at the shopping center which was the biggest most crowded most incovenient place it could have started at. I made the most nobel effort to keep a street food lunch of spicy rice cakes and a corndog and sundae down, but when I could hold it no longer we got of one bus stop early and I exploded into a bag I found in a restroom, which we then stuffed into a trash can. 

Here's a picture (of the seafood stew)

 You cannot appreciate the sheer size of this from the photo. Let's just say this could serve 4-5 people or more. Probably more. There were three pots of it at the party. That's a whole chicken in the pot. But I assume very healthy.

And my chicken dinner: 

We stopped by the sea and ate some dried and slightly fermented fish

It tastes like butter.

We had a fancy tea time. That's a cute little tea bag! 

We went back to Japan, feeling sick I had to wake up at 5:00 to get to the airport, but we got back and my friend Lindsay came to visit! It was great! I struggled to go to the shrine food fair where I got a chocolate covered banana like every year in Japan. And saw so many people of my city. Surprisingly I didn't see any students, but I did see one out shopping with his dad for snacks on New Years Eve. 

Choco Banana Action

(and Choco Pineapple) 

And then, the obligatory character Castella! 

Thanks for coming Lindsay.

My camera battery was dead so I was only able to get the highlights :D

From Heike Monogatari

(From Heike Monogatari)

When did my heart learn such ways,

of late I think so longingly of

palace companions I once knew

The past, too, has vanished like a dream

My days by this brushwood door 

cannot be long in number

Kureimon-in was bathed in tears, 

overwhelmed by memories of the past and thoughts of the future

Pretty much sums up how I've been feeling these days... 

Why

These are poems I wrote in my journal that I read when I was in college.

But I didn't forget them.

Why should my heart

remain stained

by blossoms,

when I thought 

I had tossed all that away? 

Trailing in the Wind

Fuji's Smoke

fades into the sky

destination unknown

just like my own thoughts

They are Japanese poems. I don't have the translations and I didn't even write the author's name down, so for asian studies scholars out there, let me know if you know who it was.

Feeling very much like this today... things abandoned, things I must abandon, things which can't be changed. Which just makes me think of AAA Wisdom poem. Even though I'm not addicted to anything. Except maybe tonkatsu, chocolate, and darjeeling tea. And kimchi.

That is all.