A leisurely seafood lunch

Friday: Picked up groceries from the supermarket, taught four ethics classes, picked up Scully from wife’s work, went for a 2.5k run, cooked lentils and rice for dinner, played online board games night with friends. We played Decrypto, Evergreen, Jump Drive, Marrakech, Just One, 7 Wonders. And possibly something else I may have forgotten.

Today, Saturday, was more leisurely. I’ve started writing a new batch of Irregular Webcomic! strips, hopefully to photograph in time for new strips to go live by Monday. My wife an I took time out for lunch. Rather than go out for dinner this week in the winter cold (since we sit outdoors with Scully), we decided to have a nice lunch in the midday sun. We went to a local seafood restaurant that we like. I had the grilled salmon with agedashi eggplant on the side, which was really good. And for dessert I tried a new item on the menu, a “dark chocolate fireball”.

It came out on a red plate, a large ball of chocolate perched on a low bed of brownie-like cake. And then the waiter poured over a hot raspberry sauce, which melted the chocolate, revealing an interior with layers of raspberry sorbet and chocolate-raspberry namelaka (which I had to look up after we got home; namelaka turns out to be a type of ganache).

Dark chocolate fireball

It was delicious! And the lunch was very filling, so we’re planning to have a very light dinner tonight.

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Coldest day of the year

Sydney recorded 5.2°C overnight, making it the coldest day of the winter, and the year, so far. It warmed up a bit and the middle of the day wasn’t as cold as yesterday though.

I taught my first class on The Singularity this morning, with some of the older students, and it went well, with plenty of smart discussion by the students.

For lunch I walked Scully up to the shops near my wife’s work and had a Japanese lunch set at one of the restaurants there. They have a lunch special where you get miso soup, rice, salad, and a hot food item, like karaage chicken or pork katsu or teriyaki salmon or whatever. I’ve tried several of the options and was looking to try something new. One of the options was listed on the menu as “jumbo kaki”, and the photo showed what looked like Panko-crumbed croquettes.

I looked up “kaki” on my phone and found it meant “persimmon” in Japanese… but I didn’t think it would be persimmon croquettes. While pondering this, the waitress arrived to take my order, and I asked her what was in this dish. She looked, thought for a second, and declared the croquettes contained “beef and pork”.

Readers who know Japanese at this point: 🤔🤨

Anyway, I ordered the “kaki”. It came with a small bowl with a thick sauce. I tried one, dipping it in the sauce. Sure enough, the sauce tasted a bit like persimmon I thought, so maybe that explained the name in the menu. But the croquette filling definitely wasn’t beef or pork. It was something vaguely animal proteiny, but resembled more like a mushy mass of giblets or something than a cut of meat or a minced meat. It didn’t taste bad, so I just kind of tried to ignore whatever it might be and finished my meal.

When I went to pay, another waitress was at the pay station, and she said, “You had the oysters, right?”

Internally I was thinking, “Oh, that’s what it was!” As well as, “The other waitress really should have known better and not told me it was beef/pork.” Fortunately I don’t mind oysters, although they’re not a food of choice, and honestly if I’d known what the dish was I would have ordered something else. But I just thought now what if I’d had a seafood allergy or something? Anyway, I paid and didn’t say anything. (Also, fortunately I’m not allergic to seafood, although if I was I’d be a lot more careful confirming ingredients in restaurants than I am.)

Looking it up again now, I see that the Japanese “kaki” has several meanings. To quote Wiktionary:

柿: persimmon
垣: fence
牡蠣: oyster (edible)
夏期: summer period
花卉: flowers
火器: firearm
夏季: summer
火気: fire
下記: following
花期: flowering season
花器: vase
和気: harmonious atmosphere

Now I’m pondering a serve of harmonious atmosphere croquettes.

In sports news, the FIFA Women’s World Cup has just begun, with a surprise win by New Zealand against Norway in the opening game in Auckland, and Australia now taking on Ireland here in Sydney. I might go watch the game, and then switch over to the 4th Ashes cricket match in England.

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Bonus cheese

There was some pumpkin and lentil soup left over form last night’s dinner. Not enough for dinner tonight, I thought, so I pondered ways to recycle it into another dinner for two. A bit of searching turned up an idea to turn leftover pumpkin soup into a pasta sauce, by adding bacon.

That sounded good, but I couldn’t use bacon because of my wife not eating meat. So, I thought, what vegetarian substitute could I add? Haloumi cheese, fried crispy! It’s crisp and salty like bacon, and I could cut it into small pieces. Only we had no haloumi in the house.

Okay, I can take Scully for a walk before dinner and get some haloumi from the nearest supermarket. It’s a small local one, more like a corner store than a major supermarket, so I check their web site and yes, they stock haloumi, and it says it’s available for delivery, so presumably it’s in stock.

I walk over with Scully, tie her up outside, and go in to grab some haloumi. No haloumi. The section in the fridge where it should be, where the price label is, is full of feta instead. I dig through it all to see if there’s any haloumi hiding behind all the feta, but no. I ask a staff member who is stacking ice cream into the freezer if they have any haloumi, and he says no, it’s out of stock.

Hmmm. Well. Feta? Yeah, maybe the hard, crumbly type of feta will work okay. I won’t need to fry it either. Okay, so I grab a pack of feta and go pay for it. I untie Scully and we start walking home.

A minute later, as we’re walking, I remember we have feta in the fridge at home.

Oh well. I guess we can always use more feta. Anyway, I get home, do some things, my wife gets home from work, I start making dinner. I get out the leftover soup… and discover there’s a lot more left than I thought. Plenty for two people to have soup again for dinner, with a side dish, and way more than would be needed for a pasta sauce.

So, we have the soup heated up. And don’t use any of the feta at all.

Tomorrow: Search for recipes that use feta.

In other news, I scheduled a new iteration of my 6-week course in Creative Thinking & Problem Solving, with an example exercise in board game design, for kids on Outschool. This one is on Mondays, at a suitable time zone for Australia/Asia (early evening), and Europe (late morning). The Outschool class listing is here.

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First run in a while

This morning I went to pick up the groceries from the supermarket. I order online most things, but choose my own fruit and vegetables before I collect the online order. Today I needed to get onions, but … there were no onions. The place where the onions normally are was full of bags of potatoes. At first I thought they must have reshuffled the vegetable section like they seem to like to do every so often, but scanning the rest of it I couldn’t find any onions at all. A staff member noticed me searching in vain and asked if I needed some help. I asked if there were any onions. He led me over to the organic produce section, where there were a few dozen tiny onions for two or three times the cost of regular onions. I sort of looked askance at this, and without any further prompting the staff member picked up a couple of the onions and said, “I’ll just peel the stickers off for you.” So he peeled the “organic” price stickers off them and handed them to me. Okay. Not one to look a gift onion in the mouth, I took them.

I had four ethics classes today, so there wasn’t a lot of time to do much else. But after the first I managed to fit in my first 2.5k run since returning from Japan. It was a little too cold to be comfortable, and I took it easy since I was out of practice, and clocked just a couple of seconds under 13 minutes.

After that I had a shower and also cleaned the bathroom and shower. Then had lunch and then went out to pick up Scully from my wife’s work. I drove back via a bakery where they had a new product: a mini sticky date pudding. I like those so I tried it. It didn’t have butterscotch sauce which is the usual topping, but did come with a blob of icing on top. And the woman there asked if I’d like it heated up, which I accepted given it’s winter and a warm pudding would really hit the spot. The icing melted and made a kind of sauce, though a more sugary one. It wasn’t quite the same as a sticky date pudding you might get after a restaurant dinner, but pretty nice anyway.

Then it was into three ethics classes in a row – phew! I had another older group among them on the Privacy topic. There was an interesting contrast with yesterday’s class. I ask the question: At what age should children be given privacy by their parents, with respect to things like using email or messaging apps to talk with friends, or with what websites they visit? Yesterday, both students said about age 14. Today there were three students, and the first two said 18, while the second nominated 16.

Which actually reminds me of another interesting thing, from the younger classes. We’re talking about heroes and villains, and i bring up the story of Robin Hood – steals from the rich to give to the poor. I ask the kids is Robin Hood a villain for robbing people, or a hero for giving money to the poor? So far, almost all the kids have said he’s a villain. Stealing apparently feels so bad that it’s enough to make someone a villain. Then we have a bit of a discussion which brings up the point that in this story “the law” is actually being made by the corrupt Sheriff of Nottingham.

After my classes, I went out for dinner with my wife, to our usual pizza place. It’s comfy and homey, and a good place to relax, and was really nice after our recent trip away.

Tonight is online board games with my friends. I’m in the middle of losing another game of 7 Wonders….

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And right into the working week

I had another good, solid sleep and feel pretty much over any travel weariness now. My wife even got up super early to go to the gym before work! I got up just after 07:00 and took Scully out, then had breakfast and prepped fro a morning of ethics class, beginning at 08:00. This is the end of the “Natural resources” topic.

Which means a new topic tomorrow, for which I began writing the lesson plan this afternoon (but will need to finish tomorrow). The new topic is “Heroes and Villains”. I also just now got a message saying that some parent has enrolled a 7-year-old in my class designed for 10-12 year olds! I’ve had a few 9s and an 8 before, but this is the first time someone has tried to enrol a kid that young. I’ve sent the parent a message saying the class is too advanced for most 7-year-olds. Let’s see what response I get.

The other thing I had to do today was compete tomorrow’s Darths & Droids strip and send it off to our guest commentator so they can get their comments in before publication time. I’m going to be a bit hard pressed to keep up with comic production this week, as I barely managed to buffer enough strips to cover my trip, and now the buffers are empty. We’ll see how I manage…

In food news, recall that when I dropped off my sourdough starter with my friend to mind while I was away, he gave me a bottle of home-made Carolina Reaper chilli sauce. I tried it today, putting a couple of drops on my lunch wrap, which also had cheese, some zucchini fritter things from the supermarket, sliced tomato, and a lot of sour cream, just in case. Well… turns out the sauce wasn’t nearly as hot as I’d feared. It was actually perfectly fine at that concentration. So I might be a little more bold with it next time.

I’m still getting used to the cold weather again after being in hot Japan for two weeks. Today wasn’t too bad, with a top of 18.0°C, but tomorrow will be challenging, with a forecast maximum of only 15°C – which is about as cold as a winter day gets here in Sydney. And it’ll be rainy too.

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Shopping and great food in Kyoto

We slept in a bit this morning, not getting up until close to 08:00. We decided to start the day by exploring the nearby Shosei-en Garden, which is only a couple of short blocks from our hotel. But first my wife wanted some coffee, so I searched and found a cafe called murmur coffee not far away where she got a take-away. She said it was drip style coffee rather than what she was used to, but it was still good.

The garden cost ¥500 each to enter, and the woman at the counter gave me a very nicely designed glossy brochure with map, which she very deliberately said I could keep, and was not allowed to give it back. We followed the suggested walking route around the garden, exploring the various corners with tea houses, pavilions, and wooden and stone bridges over the pond and streams. We saw sparrows, mallards, crows, and some grey herons, which are impressively large birds.

Shosei-en Garden, Kyoto

It didn’t take too long to walk around the garden, so we headed back to the hotel since it was nearby for a few minutes to put on some sunscreen and use the bathroom before heading out again.

We walked north, choosing random small streets to avoid the larger roads. Our goal was Nishiki Market, which is famous as the evolution of a traditional market street. It runs for several blocks and has a roof covering the street, which is pedestrians only and was a bit crowded with people – mostly tourists.

Nishiki Market, Kyoto

It was a good mix of shops selling wares, ones selling fresh seafood, meat, or vegetables for home preparation, stalls selling food ready to eat, and restaurants. We browsed along everything and stopped in several places for bites to eat. The first stop was a place selling very large rice crackers and also skiers of what looked like meat but apparently was made of rice, topped with various things. We got a couple fo the rice crackers, a “five pieces” one and a sea lettuce one. They came hot, and we ate them sitting in the shop. There were frequent reminders over a PA system that eating while walking was prohibited, and all food must be eaten in or next to the shop you buy it from. Next I stopped at a place to get some takoyaki. They wouldn’t let my wife sit with me inside while I ate unless she also bought some food, so she explored outside a bit instead.

Nishiki Market, Kyoto

We grabbed a few other miscellaneous snacks to eat, filling up on bites that came together to make quite a respectable lunch. We also stopped to browse in several of the shops, including the Aritsugu knife shop, founded in 1560, and now operated by the 18th generation descendant of the original founder. There were also shops selling nice looking pottery

We reached the end of the Nishiki Market and continued on east towards our next destination. The next stop was Hanamikoji Street, which is a preserved historical street and district with old style houses, many of them converted to shops or restaurants, although many are also still used as private residences. Some of the buildings look old and well preserved, while others have clearly been recently renovated as the wood looked very new, but in the same old style in keeping with the historic nature of the area. One interesting thing was there were large signs placed frequently, warning people that Hanamikoji was a private street and that photography is forbidden. The signs say that surveillance cameras are in use, and there is a ¥10,000 fine for taking photographs without a permit. It was a bit of a shame, as it was very photogenic, but I didn’t want to risk having security guards come racing out and trying to issue a fine, so I withheld from taking any photos, although I saw a handful of the other tourists sneaking photos here and there.

Along this street we stopped in a shop where we had to remove shoes to enter. They had some amazing pottery pieces in there – amazing and expensive. Some tiny tea cups were around ¥5000 ($50), and there were bowls for around ¥20,000 ($200) or more, as well as some more decorative pieces that went up to ¥200,000 ($2000). The iron glaze on some of them was amazing, giving them a sparkling metallic glitter appearance, in various attractive colours. We also stopped in a shop that sold tenugui printed with a very large range of art designs in more or less traditional styles. Some of these were very attractive and would make excellent wall hangings or framed pictures, but we didn’t get any. We did get some cotton handkerchiefs form another shop, printed in more attractive designs with gold highlights. My wife chose three of these for a special price for the three.

At the south end of Hanamikoji Street entered the Kennin-ji Zen Buddhist temple. This is a sizeable temple and a significant one in Zen Buddhism. There were some parts of the complex that were fenced off with low fences and other people were walking around inside, but we figured they must have paid to get in there via one of the buildings which we hadn’t bothered to go in because of the entry fee. But we could still see everything from the outside area. We walked out an exit to the south to continue back to our hotel.

The day had been mostly overcast and very humid, but not rainy. It was warm though, and we used the opportunity to cool off and rest on our hotel room before seeking dinner. I looked for some okonomiyaki restaurants with vegetarian options, and found four within walking distance. Reading their reviews made me want to try Yamamoto Mambo first. When we arrived there, it looked good, but was very busy and a man behind the cooking counter said they were booked out and it would be a “long long” wait for a table.

So we headed to the next place, an intriguing possibility with a very high Google review rating, but based on only 15 reviews, compared to the 500+ for all of the other options I’d found. It was called Aikochan, and one reviewer said it seemed to be operated by an old couple out of the lower floor of their old house, but was well worth the visit. As we walked over towards it, the shops petered out, and the pedestrian traffic as well, until we were walking through an almost derelict old residential neighbourhood. Here we found the old two-storey house with a red lantern out the front. A middle-aged woman was on her phone outside, but came over to usher us in as we walked towards the door. I asked “okonomiyaki desu ka?” and she confirmed it was the right place.

Aikochan okonomiyaki restaurant, Kyoto

Entering, we found a tiny room with a counter with two large hotplates facing four barstools. There were two small tables, one with four seats and the other with two, four a total seating capacity of ten people, although the room would be very cramped with ten in it. As we entered, we were the only customers, though. Behind the hotplates was an older woman (perhaps the other one’s mother?). Neither spoke more than a few words of English, so my wife got out her vegetarian card written in Japanese to show them. They understood, and asked a few questions to confirm that she could not eat squid either, and we also managed to convey that I was fine with anything on the menu. They went through a list of various meat options and I chose pork. I ordered an Asahi beer from the fridge and my wife didn’t want anything so they gave her some iced tea.

Aikochan okonomiyaki restaurant, Kyoto

The old woman began cooking the okonomiyaki for us, by laying down a thin layer of batter. After letting this cook briefly she topped it with chopped raw cabbage, spring onions, some pickled ginger, and something that looked like rice bubbles. Mine then received a layer of thinly sliced pork strips. This cooked for a while, then the woman poured some more batter on top, and flipped them with two spatulas. After cooking the other side for a few minutes, she took out two eggs, checking that my wife was okay with egg (so I’m not sure what was in the original batter). She cracked an egg onto the hotplate and then picked up my okonomiyaki and dropped it on top of the egg, then repeated the process with the other one. At this point she asked us if we wanted spicy or mild. I said spicy, and my wife said a little bit spicy. After a minute or so she flipped them over again and spread two different sauces on with large brushes. I think the first was the spicy one. Then she topped with powdered kelp, and powdered bonito for me, and then mayonnaise. She cut the okonomiyaki into eight wedges and served up the first onto a small plate for us to eat with chopsticks, leaving a small spatula for us to help ourselves to the remaining pieces from the hotplate, which kept them warm.

Aikochan okonomiyaki restaurant, Kyoto

It was delicious, really good. After eating a few pieces each, four young men came in and took the table of four, squashing behind us. They seemed to speak Japanese, but still apparently had some difficulty figuring out the menu options. The lady pushed our remaining pieces to the edge of the hotplate and prepared the middle to begin cooking their okonomiyaki, which also had noodles on them. When we finished eating and got up to pay, the old woman also gave us a packet of 7-Eleven pancakes with maple syrup flavour, presumably as some sort of dessert. This seemed very generous, especially when the price for the entire meal, including a beer, came to just ¥1550 (about A$16)! What an absolutely amazing experience.

We walked back the short few blocks home to the hotel, stopping at a 7-Eleven on the way to buy some rice balls for me for tomorrow’s breakfast. I also grabbed a chocolate ice cream for dessert. My wife wanted to save the pancakes for is to share at breakfast too.

Back at the hotel, it was early enough for us to do some laundry, using the hotel’s coin-operated machines. We washed our things, which should give us enough clean clothes to last the rest of our trip.

Pre-Japan trip day

It’s our last full day at home before we fly out to Japan tomorrow evening. I was busy with four ethics classes, starting at 9am, followed by three in a row from 2pm.

After the first one I worked a bit on completing Darths & Droids and Irregular Webcomic! strips for the buffer so that they can continue updating while I’m overseas. I managed to get all this done, so both comics will be uninterrupted by my trip. (Hopefully… if nothing goes wrong with the auto-updating scripts.)

Between the classes, I had an errand to run, heading out in the car first to pick up Scully from my wife’s work, and then taking her on a drive across town to a friend’s place. He was the one who gave me my sourdough starter a couple of years back. He said recently that he thinks his starter had died and he wanted to get a bit of mine back to start again. The timing was fortunate and I asked if I could just drop off the whole starter and he could feed it while I’m overseas, taking some for himself, and then I could pick it up when I get home. So I was going over to drop it off.

We made it a contactless exchange, since his wife had COVID in the past few days, and he didn’t want to expose me to it. He’s been busying himself making fermented chilli sauces recently, and left a bottle of a sauce he made from Carolina Reaper chillis for me. I’m actually a bit afraid to try it. I do like a hot sauce, but middling heat is more my style. I won’t try it before I leave for Japan tomorrow, but when I get back I’m going to start by adding just a single drop to a whole meal and stirring it through, to gauge how hot it is.

In travel prep, I recharged the batteries for my DSLR camera. And I looked into overseas roaming for my phone. I’ve never used this before, because it was expensive and I was okay just connecting to WiFi when necessary. But prices have dropped and I think I might just take the plunge this trip, and see how it works It’ll be handy having net access and things like Google Maps just working everywhere. There are a few other housekeeping and packing things to be done tomorrow, but our flight is in the evening, so we have time after we drop Scully off at a friend’s place for dogsitting while we’re away.

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Lunch at Two Chaps

Remember two days ago I talked about transferring our physical Japanese Suica transit cards onto our phones, in preparation for travelling to Japan? Once the transfers were done, the phone said that the physical cards would no longer work and we could discard them.

Lucky I didn’t! One of them is a standard issue Suica card, but the other one, which we got for my wife when we travelled to Japan together last time, turned out to be a limited issue commemorative card. To be precise, one of these ones, which is currently selling on eBay for about A$130. These limited edition cards are quite the collectors’ item apparently. I did find some others for sale online for prices ranging from about A$20 and upwards, mostly on Asian sites. I might just hold onto it for a bit and see if it’s worth anything decent in several years.

Today my wife suggested we go over to Marrickville for lunch. She was keen to explore the suburb since it has a reputation as a place with a good variety of cafes and restaurants, and we’ve only ever been there a handful of times many years ago. One of my friends lives nearby and recommended a cafe called Two Chaps to us.

We drove over – about 30 minutes – and took Scully with us and managed to grab a table right on the transition from street to indoors, where staff told us we could sit with a dog. The menu is 100% vegetarian. I couldn’t go past the “Corned Beet” Reuben sandwich, which the menu suggested would be good with a side of crispy potato skins. So I had that.

"Corned beet" Reuben

Wow. This was amazingly good. Really delicious, and generously filling. There were other very tempting goodies as well, including mushroom pies and potato and cheddar pies, and a range of amazing looking sweets and pastries. But I was so full after the Reuben that we just had to leave and go for a long walk to walk it off. We walked a loop around several blocks, passing many other interesting cafes and bakeries and things.

Back home this evening I had three more ethics classes on Natural Resources. And worked on another Darths & Droids strip, which now safely brings me to the other side of my trip to Japan. So I have enough buffer to last through the trip, phew!

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Getting creative with pizza

In good news, my cough seems to have almost resolved, meaning for the first time in about a month or more I feel almost back to full health.

I had 4 ethics classes today, and in between went to my wife’s work to pick up Scully, who spent the morning in the office with her. I thought I’d take Scully for a bt of a drive over to the Italian bakery and get some delicious goodies, but I realised I didn’t have all that much time before my afternoon classes began, so decided to just go home.

This evening I made pizza, with broccolini and a pseudo-satay sauce on top, essentially just peanut butter and chilli flakes. I’ve done this once before, and it worked fairly well.

And tonight is online board games night with my friends. We’re currently playing The Castles of Burgundy. I’ve played it before, but a while ago, and I can’t remember much about it.

Not much else to report – it was a pretty busy day, with nothing out of the ordinary.

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Crossing the harbour for lunch

A dream I had last night: Someone gave me as a gift a guided climb to the top of Mt Everest. So I went, and eventually found myself at the summit with a bunch of mountain climbers and Sherpas. They’re all sitting there at the top enjoying the view, while I’m saying, “Whoa, no, this is way too high… I can feel the mountain swaying… I want to get down…”

Today my wife and I dropped Scully off at the dog groomer, and then we indulged ourselves by heading down to the ferry wharf:

Little pied cormorant at Greenwich Point

A little pied cormorant was sitting there, but this was as close as I could get before it flew off. We caught a ferry:

Ferry to Balmain

Across the harbour to Balmain, just two stops away:

Balmain wharf

We walked up the hill to the shopping strip and The Cottage restaurant:

The Cottage

Where we sat inside and had a lovely lunch. I had chicken schnitzel, with mash, fennel, and radicchio:

Cottage Schnitzel

And a sticky date pudding with pistachios and rose water for afters:

Sticky Date

After lunch we walked down streets full of historic houses:

Birchgrove houses

To Birchgrove Wharf, where we caught a ferry back home:

Birchgrove Wharf

Just in time to pick up Scully from the groomer!

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