Monthly Archives: March 2011

white day

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March 14, Japan’s supposed White Day**, found me and Hubbie apprehensive. He has to go to the office and considering the tremors over the weekend and the ensuing  radiation scare, we were both apprehensive to be apart from each other. Still though, he has to go, especially that there really is no visible major effect the quake had in Yokohama except for the fact that there were shelves in the groceries with missing supplies (probably because of panic buying by people and most probably by gaijins, sorry to say this) and of course our nerves in jangles what with one tremor after another and what with keeping ourselves posted, with bated breath, on the latest updates on the nuclear plants.

I keep myself posted mostly by reading updates on Kyodo News Network. It’s so Japanese, balanced, reporting what needs to be reported, without too much flair. CNN is just too filled with drama for me. Not-so Japanese. I do try to venture other news networks every now and then but mostly, i’m for Kyodo News. As Hubbie pointed out, media has the tendency to over-commercialize what is happening, because indeed, they earn out of the news they share. I do hope media will do their own share as well in keeping people at bay and to not cause more people to panic.

So okay, I digress. Jagged nerves in place, receiving a package first thing in the morning with a cheerful “yubin desu!!” (you have a package!) in the intercom was certainly heartwarming. I had to pool in some of my EQ to wait for Hubbie before opening our package.

Dhonna addressed it to both me and Hubbie hence it was just but right to wait for Atsushi. And am glad I did. It felt good opening our package together.

It contained our cord and it’s container and a hardbound book about marriage and a heartwarming card. Certainly a good thing to receive at a time when we are most fearful.

We just love the cord. Workmanship is really good!! And the materials used was certainly of good quality.

We just love the container. It’s so cute! See the size of the container in comparison to Hubbie’s thumb?

We just love the detail that Ghepoi and Dhonna put into packaging our cord. They put a cute-designed crepe paper to lay the cord on on the container. They also put a sticker of our logo on the inside of the container cover – I think they got it from the save-the-date envelope that I gave them before.

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Thank you Dhonna and Ghepoi!! 🙂

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**White Day is the equivalent of Valentines Day that’s designated for women. See, on the Japanese Valentines Day, the women give their husbands/lovers/boyfriends/crushes/officemates chocolates,cakes, etc etc. White Day is in turn the day when the men reciprocate the women’s initiative. For this year’s White Day though, there were no extravagant and elegant displays of gifts as there were in the previous years.

energy!

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I am most happy with our kitchen. Right now, I have nothing to ask for that’s kitchen-related (well, except for new pots and pans 😀 ). It’s a happy place for me. Especially since we also eat in the kitchen haha. Dining table will only be delivered this weekend hence, we’ve been eating in the kitchen. It’s fine though. We already have lots of kitchen memories. 😀

As for the dishes I cook, well, mostly, they’re experiments. I think i’m on Marj Special # 9 or so already. Maybe I should start taking notes about them. At one point last week, when Hubbie peeped in the boiling pot, he asked me if our dish for the night was Chinese. I laughed and said I actually don’t know what nationality it is. Nor any of the dishes i’ve cooked. They certainly aren’t Filipino since I’ve been using some ingredients that aren’t Filipino. Thankfully though, Hubbie likes ’em all and eats ’em all, even when I estimated we’d have plenty of leftovers.

Will share some pictures next time. For now though, here’s some healthy goodness to share. A medium-sized carrot and a big apple when pulped can produce about 300ml drink. Add in 5ml honey (yes, see the path the honey made? took this before we did some stirring) and you’d have a healthy and delicious drink to cap your meal. Laughed when Hubbie exclaimed “energy!” after drinking his share (it’s a pun for the FM radio station in the Philippines).

By the side of the (energy) drink is an asparagus-tuna omelette. Yum! 🙂

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had another earthquake just now…. 🙁

idea

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Had some idea in mind. I know I’d be pushing too much what with my hands being too full with home organizing and our wedding in a month’s time. But I want to do this. I hope though the idea would come to fruition.

earthquake stricken

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Atsushi and I were woken up by an earthquake early this morning around 5am. Hubbie’s phone said this had a magnitude of around 4 with epicenter at Tokyo Bay – closer to home. This is the first time that we’re having an earthquake from another epicenter after having had experienced a hundred or so aftershocks from Friday’s 9.0 magnitude earthquake  with the epicenter in Tohoku region.

It made me and Hubbie cling to each other more, the both of us getting fearful each time we had to get separated because he has to go to the office. Except for when he has to go to the office, we go everywhere together now; even when we just have to buy some items in the konbini or buy our dinner supplies.

Was alone in our apartment when the quake hit last Friday. Thankfully, our building is quite new (hence more “earthquake-proofed”) and our unit is on the 2nd floor hence I felt the shaking more from the ground and that it was not amplified because of height. Not unlike Hubbie and the rest of our officemates who are in our 36-floor office building (Hubbie’s department is located on the 27th so they definitely had their fill of the amplified swaying). Still though, the first major earthquake was vertical and took almost 4 minutes so whether you are on the ground or elevated, the vertical movement can be fully felt. I was in front of my laptop then when the shaking started and after a minute passed and the ground was still shaking quite vigorously, I was already thinking if I was able to fully make my loved ones feel how much i loved them.

After the 4 minute-big one, there were a series of strong aftershocks, making me doubt the stability of the buildings already. Hubbie told me to go to the nearby park which is considered as the safe place to be during earthquakes, it being an open area. But mobile phone is not working anymore and I would rather stay connected with Hubbie so I decided to stay rooted in front of my laptop to keep connected with him. I really don’t have to worry about any furniture in our house falling on me as we don’t have any furnitures yet. We are still in the process of cleaning/organizing our house that’s why everything is actually still on the floor. So I just have to brace myself for the shaking and, well, the roof caving in on me.

Yes, we had the greatest scare of our lives last Friday and over the weekend as hundreds of aftershock tremors still continued well into Sunday. And again, we had another scare early this morning. But we’re still thankful that what we experienced was only the tip of the iceberg. We only had a “scare”. Whereas the others in Tohoku region had to live the nightmare, had to experience the full blunt of the earthquake, the Giant Tsunami, and now the Fukushima Nuclear Power plant problems.

We think of the people getting washed back to the shore now, after days of floating in the open sea. The tides are bringing them back in, like driftwoods and plastics. Only, they had lives they led before, they loved and were loved, they had dreams, they had joys. And even for those who survived, yes we are thankful, but they have to be provided with the basic amenities ASAP, especially now that it’s still freezing temperature up there in the northeast area.

We’re still in the process of organizing our home hence we still don’t have a TV. We updated ourselves using the radio (oh what era we live in! hehe) and the internet. But the images we see are more than enough to break our hearts. And nowadays, I keep myself updated on the news for the Fukushima Nuclear Plants albeit a Chernobyl-like case is near impossible, thankfully and hopefully. At the time of writing, units 1 and 3 of the Dai-ichi plant were almost stable after depressuring steam. Operators are now in full attention on Unit 2 though, which seems to be in a worse state than the other 2 units aforementioned. Please, let them be able to keep the reactors cool. Spray it with seawater directly, albeit it may have repercussions later on power supply as the reactors would then be unrecoverable after being sprayed with seawater. I have good faith in the Japanese being good engineers. The precautions they had on using a container housing for the reactors and not using graphite helped a lot for this case not to become like the Chernobyl disaster. Still though, it’s a race against time. And unless it will be cooled down and stabilized, we worry.

That reminds me though of the absolute idiocy of the Malacanang order(??) to check the supplies coming from Japan for any radioactive material. Seriously?? Any scientist/engineer would really laugh at this purely nonsense order.

Anyways, please do visit this blog for photos and videos of the debacle and on how you can make your donations:

http://supporttohoku.blogspot.com/

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PRV (pressure relief valve) didn’t work that’s why unit 2 reactor was in worse case than the other two reactors (wherein they were able to reduce the pressure by venting steam to the atmosphere. The blasts previously reported on units 1 and 3 were inevitable result of this venting out of steam by the way, since the hydrogen from the steam reacted with the oxygen in the atmosphere). This news about the 2nd reactor is really quite alarming…

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/15/world/asia/15nuclear.html?pagewanted=1&_r=2&hp

cooking Vitamin E-enriched rice

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In my previous 4-year intermittent stint here in Japan, I really did make sure to maximize my stay here as much as possible; opting to explore new places and trying out new stuff rather than save and hibernate in my apartment. However, being an illiterate with the Japanese language still made me unable to truly live the Japanese way of life.

Until now. Lived with Atsushi for almost six days only and he taught me quite a lot about normal Japanese way of life already. Including making your rice Vitamin E enriched. Being a bride-to-be, Vitamin C and E are like magic words hence Hubbie certainly had my attention when he was explaining this certain packet to me.

Apparently, you can have your rice Vitamin E-enriched by dropping a globule or two of Vitamin E into your uncooked rice just before shutting close your rice cooker.

Vitamin E globules!

A close up.

I can only hope that having a globule or two everyday can have some visible effects in a month’s time, enough to help prep us up for our wedding. 😛

getting started

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As what Hubbie posted previously, we’re now together, and we’re so thankful for it. Now I just have to secure my reentry visa and hope there’ll be no hitches so I’ll be able to return to Manila to do the last minute preps for our wedding. Both Japan Embassy in Manila and Japan Foreign Affairs here already assured us there’ll be no hitches but still, I want to be on the safe side… 😀 

Will try to post next time all the documentations involved with my migration and hope it’ll be of help to those who are also processing their papers. And I have to make time as well in making a feedback (and I have to find that feedback paper as well for their contact details!) to CFO’s PRISM. The way they handled and have handled Japanese spouses deserve setting aside some time to give my feedback. Please do expect a 2 page letter or so from me. When..uhm…until I have everything settled here.

Now, on to happy things. Hubbie welcomed me with one of my favorite things. Now, already 5 days after, they’re still as beautiful and fresh-looking as on the first day. Atsushi really did treat me like a pricess on my birthday. 🙂

i'm already 5 days old!

We’re trying to get our home organized and styled and it sure can be quite overwhelming!! But I am having a good time so I sure am not complaining. My most notable changes so far are the kitchen area along with the counter area and the bathroom sink (two places in the house that I am most particular with along with the toilet of course – they should be clean always, as much as possible!). Tidy frog can help me do the job.

Yesterday, I went to Maita Ward Office for my alien card registration. Walked from Gumyoji to Maita to try explore the place. Came along a furniture shop and finally found the dining table that I’ve been looking for. Eureka moment, yes! It’s wooden and it has chairs that has a slim, elongated back, which would help us exude the effect of having a bigger place than it really is. The wood color is quite dark but the chair upholstery is white so it’s just perfect. We can also have a light-colored table runner to, again, help us in bringing the effect of a bigger place. It’s quite interesting that the store people used a malong (traditional in Mindanao) as a table runner. It’s a sign?? hehe. It’s quite expensive though! And so of course, I asked for a discount – me in my broken Japanese (or more like one Japanese word at a time) and the store clerk in pure Japanese. We somehow understood each other though. He said that if I buy the one on display (it is in very good condition actually) and not have a new one made, we can have 30k yen discount (we can already buy two cabinets with that discount!). They’re open on saturdays so I can bring Hubbie along this weekend and hope he’ll like it as well so we can have a dining table already.

It’s just funny though, my audacity to do some haggling even when I only know a smattering of Japanese words. haha. Well, bringing along a calculator, or using your cellphone’s calculator is the only secret actually. All store owners, in any language probably, knows the english word “discount” 😀

The washing machine-dryer takes 6 hours to finish though, using the automatic mode. Totally not electricity efficient and not environment-friendly. Have to experiment using the washer only and try hanging the clothes outside. I worry about environment yo…