Beyond the brief try at kicking a big bag near the end of my first session there has actually not been a whole lot of kick in my boxing.

We are still meeting at the Kabukicho kickboxing gym, though the last two times we met up for ‘class’ on Thursdays instead of Wednesday as we did the first time. It has been as much less crowded.

I’ve stayed for about an hour both times, but not a whole lot of that is actual active time. I still feel awkward and unsure of what I am doing, so I spend a lot of time standing around watching and waiting for instructions rather than taking initiative on my own.

Best images I could manage to capture at the gym: Jees with the bag, Kenta & Daisuke practicing

The basic structure seems to be: arrive at the gym and wait outside until all four of us show up so we can enter together. Once inside, change in the tiny particle board changing box next to the door. (Kenta and Daisuke strip off their pants and change into shorts on the gym floor, but I don’t think I want to be following their lead on that).

Once changed, we stretch and warm up in the corner, and then I commence the waiting around, broken up by bouts of pair practice with either Kenta or Daisuke in between their own practicing.

Practice is regulated by a digital clock high up on the wall. It counts down continuously, alternating between a 3 minute period and a 30 second period, with a loud beep marking the end of each. You’re supposed to train for each 3 minute period and then rest for 30 seconds.

Generally when we do pair work I go for about 2 or 3 rounds, depending on how I feel, then rest and watch Kenta and Daisuke take turns coaching each other until they get tired and ask if I want to go again. The last two classes I think I got in a total of 2 or 3 such practice bouts while there.

Here’s a video I took covertly of Kenta and Daisuke practicing during my second class. They both commented when they saw it that their kicks look weak. In person there is a lot more power going into them. It’s fairly intimidating.

During my second class I started with more shadow boxing on my own in the corner while the boys warmed up with the punching bags.

I was having a problem adjusting to the movement for the right punch, which requires turning from the hip with each thrust. To get the most power behind the punch, you’re supposed turn your right leg inward, pivoting on the ball of your foot, while reaching far forward with your right arm and pulling your left shoulder backwards. I had issues coordinating all those movements at the same time while keeping my right foot from lifting off the ground and maintaining balance.

Kenta picked up on all of this when he pulled me out to practice, of course. The first few rounds were the normal left jab right punch combo, but by the end of the evening he was going for entire 3 minute rounds having me do nothing but right punches over and over, all while goading me by saying things like “Motto tsuyoku.. tsuyoku.. chigau, motto” (come on stronger.. stronger.. no, MORE) and “don’t lift your foot.. keep your shoulder back.. put your hips into it.. longer movement” etc.

I did okay, and saw some improvement by the end, but it was spotty and hard to control.

I stopped when my wrist started feeling sore, and Jees (who was tired and mildly hung over) and I left early.

On the way home I noticed a nice patch of broken capillaries on my right knuckle. It made me feel kind of badass and hardcore, and I showed off my battle wounds to Eric proudly when I got home.

The next day the joints on my right hand were killing me, and it was pretty hard to make a fist and hold on to anything that required closing my hand.

Whoops.

I was concerned about gripping the bar in Group Power with my gimpy hand, but realized that the bar diameter was just large enough to not cause much pain, so I went to class as planned and just went slightly easy on the weights to make sure I didn’t drop my barbell and hurt myself any further.

It took a full week for the last of the soreness to go away… at which point I went back to kickboxing and managed to do the exact same thing again.

Whoops.

This time I did only 2 bouts of 3 rounds each. I was tired and couldn’t seem to put any real energy behind my punches for the first go around. Kenta actually said I’d done really well the week before and tried to use that to get me to put more into it, but no matter how much I tried, I couldn’t seem to land any decent hits.

After those first few rounds I took a long break of about 20-30 minutes. I almost went home at 8:30, but Kenta asked if I wanted to go again right before I actually made up my mind, and I figured I might as well give it one more shot.

We used the newer of their two sets of pads this time, and I’m not sure if it was that or the rest, but I finally managed to get in some good, strong punches. Encouraged, I went for 3 rounds. This time he mixed it up some and did combos like left-right-right left-right-right, or left-right-right-right left-right to test my reactions.

Kenta asked if my hand was okay several times, but it didn’t feel bad at the time, so I kept going. Just like the week before I only noticed the bruising after I finished and took of my gloves.

But unlike the week before, this time I was prepared and iced my injury as soon as I got home.

The bruise once again faded within about a day or so, while my hand continued to be sore for most of the rest of the week. The damage seemed to be concentrated on a spot at the base of my right ring finger, but it was more of a dull ache connected to movement than an acute or constant pain.

I had to skip kickboxing this week since I seem to have come down with some kind of nasty upper respiratory illness, and next week is out, too, as we are booked with concerts over the Golden Week holiday. But I do think I will need to adjust and compensate for this if I’m going to continue kickboxing.

My first year here I was surprised at exactly how pervasive the sakura obsession was. I was not really surprised at my instructors and Japanese friends bringing it up in conversation, nor groups of middle-aged women on the street; but seeing small children, suit-clad business men toting briefcases, and even gangs of high school boys bursting with anticipation at the coming of the pink blossoms was not what I would have expected.

And it’s not just certain portions of the population of Japan that makes a big deal out of it; it’s truly a cultural institution. I’d say it comes close to the 2-3 weeks surrounding Christmas in the west, but rather than culminating in a major holiday with family and gift exchanges, it culminates with massive picnics and drinking parties and a week or so of everyone finding every excuse they can to be outside near a park.

Blossoms still hanging on as the first green leaves appear towards the end of the blossoming process.

If you have never been in Japan during spring you might not realize it, but a very large number of the trees planted around towns, rivers, parks, etc. are some kind of sakura, which causes the entire country to explode in pink blossoms around the same time every year.

A couple of weeks before the event itself, when the buds first start appearing on these trees, the entire country goes on high Sakura alert. The weather reporters begin predicting the dates for the progression of the ‘cherry blossom front’, and come out with detailed maps showing the degree to which blossoms in various areas and parks have opened based on a multi-part scale; social and work related groups will begin pinpointing the best dates for hanami; and the stores explode with limited edition sakura-flavored or themed products.

Children will gather up and throw petals at each other and their parents much like snow in the winter.

Somehow, despite this having been my 6th consecutive Spring season in Japan, the blossoming of the cherry trees always catches me by surprise. I’m not sure if I have some kind of recurring amnesia, or if I just I fall victim to desensitization because of the hype leading up to the trees blossoming, but I’m fairly certain that the blossoms have exceed my expectations every single year. Before they open I find myself filled with an expectation for them to be beautiful, but also mild sense of “been there, done that, have the pictures” that tempers my level of excitement.

Fallen petals being carried away in streams on the river.

The first few buds open slowly over a several day period, with slightly more pink visible each day. It’s pretty easy to look at the trees during this time and think “oh looks like they’ve blossomed.. nice!” and move on, but this is really just a pre-show. The real peak always comes practically overnight, and when it happens it is impossible not to realize that it has happened. There there is always that one “Wow” moment when you step outside for the first time and are stopped in your tracks in wonder at the sight of it all.

For me that usually seems to happen when I head out for a run along the nearly river, which has sakura trees planted up and down its entire length.

My running path along the river as it appear about one week after the sakura peak.

The blossoms only last about one week at best after they reach their peak before they fall, almost like snow, and cover absolutely every surface in pink. This is possibly my favorite part of the entire thing. I remember vividly the first time I got caught in a sudden gust of wind on my way to class five years ago and found myself in the middle of a whirlwind of flying pink petals. It honestly felt like a scene straight out of a movie that couldn’t possibly be real, and yet every year it happens again.

I don’t think anyone ever really gets it until they’ve been in Japan to see it happen.

Despite essentially doing hanami three or four times in one week (Saturday, Sunday, Monday, and Thursday), over the weekend I went back to Shinjuku Gyoen with Eric in tow for one last glimpse of the flowers. I wasn’t expecting there to be much left at that point, but apparently they keep a larger variety of trees than I realized and many of them were still blossoming, so it was still very, very pretty.

We got a little bit rained on while there, but it was worth it for the views. I didn’t bring my camera, but Eric  brought his and got some great shots. I think I’ve probably already reached my quota on sakura pictures for this year, though, so I’ll refrain from sharing any.

On Sunday we headed back out to Chiba for another Luna Sea session. As is our custom, I made pancakes for breakfast that morning. I go through a lot of pancake experimentation and recipe tweaking, but for quite a while I’ve been using a spelt flour, flax, & cottage cheese based combination that yields a fantastic tasting, higher protein but still fluffy pancake.

Sadly, I had been out of spelt flour for a while, and my favorite cottage cheese seems to have fallen victim to the quake supply problems and disappeared from the shelves. So instead I opted to use up the last of the pumpkin I opened the week before and make whole wheat pumpkin spice pancakes.

They may be out of season and from totally opposite time of year, but they still came out very, very well.

Whole Wheat Pumpkin Spice Pancakes

120 g whole wheat pastry flour
25 g flaxseed, ground
1 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp salt
1 tsp ground cinnamon
1/2 tsp ground ginger
1/4 tsp nutmeg
1/4 tsp allspice
2 eggs
125 g pumpkin puree
125 g whole milk
20 g blackstrap molasses
1/2 tsp vanilla extract
1/2 tsp maple extract

Measure all of the dry ingredients into a medium bowl and use a whisk to combine well.

Add the wet ingredients the jar of a blender, and pulse until the mixture is thoroughly combined and homogenous.

Pour the wet mixture onto the dry ingredients, and whisk until just combined. Use as few strokes as possible and don’t worry about small streaks of flour. Let the pancake batter rest for about 10-15 minutes before cooking to ensure the fluffiest possible pancakes.

While the batter sits, warm up a griddle or non-stick pan over medium low heat. When hot, brush the surface lightly with butter or coconut oil. Use a 1/4 cup measure or a ladle to pour the batter onto the griddle. Let cook until bubbles just begin to break the surface, then gently flip the pancakes and cook for about 1m more before removing to a plate. Keep the cooked pancakes staked and covered with a kitchen towel to keep them warm while you finish cooking the rest.

This recipe yields 8 pancakes. I like to eat two pancakes each fresh from the griddle and reheat the leftovers for breakfast the next morning.

The most obvious example of this is an ongoing fight between a particular pair of my interests: fitness vs. knitting. I’m not sure why, but I have never managed to carry on both of these activities with any real dedication concurrently. The times I’ve been most productive and interested with knitting projects, I can’t seem to get myself to the gym– and the times when I am deep in my fitness routine, I don’t seem to be able to keep up with knitting.

But lately the struggle has been between blogging and actually living my life and enjoying my day-to-day activities.

I’m sure it’s pretty obvious from my last two posts here that this time of year is absolutely gorgeous in Japan. Because of the sudden upturn in the weather, and the fact that the real height of spring and the cherry blossoms only last for about two weeks tops, I have been doing my best to make the most of the daylight hours.

In addition to doing hanami at Shinjuku Gyoen and along the river near our neighborhood, I’ve also been heading out to the park near here most afternoons with a bottle of tea, some fruit, and a book to read. It’s been nice to jut sit out on the grass in the sunshine and watch the kids play and birds fly around over head for a few hours at a time.

But, being me, somehow this seems to have interfered with my ability to sit down later in the day and actually write, and as a result I’ve fallen pretty far off my preferred blog schedule of posting three times per week. This is never good for me, because having a backlog of things I want to blog about and pictures I really want to share tends to stress me out and make it even harder to get back on track.

So! Let’s play some catch up, and I’ll come back to topics I want to discuss in more detail later on.

Quake stuff:

The aftershocks continue. We’ve had several moderate to large jolts in the two weeks since I posted about the 7.1 aftershock, which was the largest since the day of the 9.0 itself. The biggest of those was a 7.0 the following Monday at about 5:17 pm.

Somehow I found myself watching videos of the earthquake taken from Tokyo that afternoon. I think with everything going on in Tohoku my memory of what the actual quake felt like here had gone hazy, and for some reason I wanted to remind myself of what it was actually like for us.

Since we escaped to the park just 15 seconds in, and rode out most of the shaking on solid ground rather than under our desks, my experience is different from what many of these videos portrayed. I watched several videos from places like Disneyland, Shibuya, etc., but the one that stuck out to me the most, was this video taken from a security camera in Edo-ku, Tokyo. Please take a minute to watch it, and remember that Tokyo was actually very, very lucky and didn’t suffer much real physical damage despite the power of the quake.

Then remember that we were about 300 km away from the actual epicenter, which significantly weakened it for us.

I was watching these videos and musing on how hard it was to recall the actual sensation of the world shaking like that when the Yurekuru alert went off on my iPhone. The shaking hit about 10 seconds later. I was still rattled from the previous aftershock a few days before and jumped up to get myself into a door frame without bothering to pause the video I was watching.

..so I rode out the quake by myself with the startled screams and rumbling of the original quake playing in the background. To say it was disconcerting is an understatement if ever there was one.

It did not help that this quake mimicked the 9.0 in the sense that we were besieged by aftershocks once every 5-20 minutes for the rest of the evening afterwards. After several weeks of relative calm it felt like those first few days all over again. To make matters worse, the next morning at 8 am another strongish quake (6.3 or so) hit Chiba while I was having breakfast. It was one of the closest large quakes we’ve had. Not fun.

All this sudden activity after the recent quiet was mentally draining and took a toll on me. I was out of sorts for most of Tuesday and even tweeted at one point:

Follow @mayanoko@mayanoko
maya

Anyone else feeling a little PTSD-y today.. or is it just me? #Tokyo #jpquake

April 12, 2011 11:00 am via Twitter for iPhoneReplyRetweetFavorite

I bounced back fairly quickly after some time in the park and more hanami, but the largish aftershocks have continued every few days since then. No more 7.0s, but a few have been closer, such as the ones in Ibaraki the other evening, and Kanagawa at 2:30 am before that. Kanagawa was relatively weak, at I think only about 4.5, but it wa also the closest one we’ve had.

Kesennuma:

My student’s trip to Kesennuma was delayed by one day because of damage to the roads from the 7.1 aftershock on the evening of the 7th, but he still made it up there for several days of work that weekend. He came back with pictures to show me, and interesting tales of his work.

It seems that he did a lot of house calls to check on patients who were unable to receive medical care due to hospital closures, and also spent some time in evacuation shelters assessing some of the evacuees. He spoke of families so happy to receive medication from him that they tried to give him gifts in thanks, and said that the work was very rewarding.

Two things surprised him during his trip. The first is how Kesennuma is clearly divided into the coastal area, which was completely destroyed, and the inland area, which is still functioning relatively normally. He said the difference was really strange, especially since we don’t see much about the inland parts of the city on TV. He mentioned even being able to eat yakiniku one day at a restaurant there that had reopened already.

The second was that he did not diagnose many cases of PTSD. He said that a lot of the evacuees had low-level symptoms, but that very few had enough for a real diagnosis. In spite of the tough situation he said he would like to go again to help more people if given the chance by his hospital.

This is getting longer than I meant. I’ll finish catching up in another post. Here is a recipe in the meantime:

Last Monday, after I’d calmed down a bit from the latest aftershock, I made a mexican casserole I had been planning to put together for quite some time. I used to make black bean casserole fairly often and had actually had been thinking of making one again since before the quake. Just a few day before it hit, I’d made a batch and a half of corn tortillas while doing my taco prep to ensure I’d have enough tortillas leftover after for just such a purpose. Of course, in all the excitement of post-quake life that stack of leftover tortillas had been pushed to the back of the freezer and somewhat forgotten.

By the time I got around to actually following through on this recipe I didn’t actually have any black beans on hand. So rather than make my standard old recipe, I changed things up a bit to work with what I had available and needed to eat. It came out quite well, and we ended up getting a full eight servings out of this one recipe, which kept Eric and I fed for most of the week, with some other meals worked in between for variety.

Chicken & White Bean Mexican Casserole

6-8 corn tortillas, cut in half
480 g chicken breast, cooked
1/2 tbsp coconut oil
150 g onion, diced
3 cloves garlic, minced
200 g red pepper, diced
240 g diced tomatoes (1 can)
240 g sweet corn (1 can)
240 g white beans (1 can)
3 jalapenos, minced
1 tbsp lemon juice
1 tbsp chili powder
1 tsp chili flakes
1 tsp smoked paprika
1/2 tsp cumin
150 g shredded mozzarella cheese
salt & pepper

Shred the chicken using your hands or two forks and set aside. I like to use poached organic chicken breasts for recipes like this. To poach the chicken, I place the breasts into a skillet with a splash of soy sauce and a few pepper corns and add just enough water to cover them, then bring the water to a full boil over high heat. Once the water is at a boil, I cover the skillet, turn off the heat, and let the chicken sit for 30 minutes to finish cooking, then drain and rinse the breasts with cool water before shredding.

In a medium skillet, heat the coconut oil add the diced onions. Cook the onions until they turn translucent, then add the garlic and red peppers. When the red peppers begin to soften, add the shredded chicken, diced tomatoes, spices, lemon juice,and about 1/2-1 can’s worth of water as needed.

Let cook for about 5-10 minutes, then add the corn and white beans. Heat the mixture through, adjust the seasonings as needed, and remove from the heat.

To make the casserole, layer the tortilla halves, chicken & white bean mixture, and cheese into two layers in a deep casserole dish.

Bake at 180°C (350°F) F for 25-30 minutes or until the casserole is heated through and the cheese is golden brown and melted. Let cool in the pan for 5-10 minutes before slicing and serving.

Makes 6-8 servings.

I like to go with smaller servings and beef up the meal with homemade drained yogurt and corn chip or a salad on the side to stretch it as far as possible.

I’ll be back with a real update when I can stand being inside again…

Every year, without fail, there’s a moment I walk outside and remember.

Eons ago, on the day before the earthquake hit, Eric’s friend Jees came to our apartment for an IT refresher course with Eric in preparation for an interview he had the next day (I’m going to assume it did not happen as planned). While he was here he mentioned that he’d just come from a kickboxing class at the Shinjuku Sports Center in Takadanobaba, just 10-15 minutes from our apartment on foot.

Of course, I was immediately intrigued. I’ve had a lot of fun in my Group Kick class this past year or so, and I had briefly toyed with the idea of looking for some kind of martial arts or defense class outside of my gym on occasion. I was also looking for a new Thursday activity, so it seemed to fit perfectly into my plans.

Jees explained that the class was taught by his friend Kenta, who Eric and he have gone out drinking with after work many times, and only cost ¥400, the fee for entering the Sports Center. I was all over the idea, and made plans to tag along the following week, possibly even with Eric in tow, since it was his friends doing the class.

Obviously once the quake hit our grand plans were totally derailed and somewhat forgotten as gym closures and power shortages affected all aspects of life for the first few weeks.

My favorite pre-strength training breakfast: greek yogurt w/ berries, nuts, & chia seeds + coffee w/ milk.

This week, Jees contacted Eric to let him know that kickboxing had resumed as of last week, but that it was temporarily relocated to a different venue in Kabukicho, and asked if we wanted to come. I waffled a bit, since I’d done a Rachel Cosgrove strength workout that morning and hadn’t really planned on going out again, but ultimately curiosity got the best of me and I headed out to meet Jees at 7 pm as suggested. Eric abandoned us and instead hit up BurgerxBurger for dinner in my absence.

Kickboxing turned out to be much more hardcore than I’d been expecting. I’m not quite sure what I’d envisioned, but the way Jees described it as a class definitely seems to have shaped my expectations somewhat, and a class it definitely was not. In reality, I found myself standing in a small, hardcore kickboxing gym in the middle of Kabukicho with three large men, and with pairs of other guys sparring around us.

And by sparring I mean going at each other with real power behind their attacks. They were using pads to lead punches and kicks rather than actually fighting, but it was intense. There was some blood at one point. Well, two points, but it was the same guy and his same nose doing the bleeding, so it really only counts as one, I suppose.

Lunch du jour: the last of the three-bean chicken chili on a fried egg w/ another huge salad on the side.

Kenta and the other guy who showed up, Daisuke (another one of Eric and Jees’ drinking buddies) had both been kickboxing since high school, and apparently were quite competitive in the past. They had Jees explain the basics to me while they did some training off to the side, then handed me a pair of gloves and took turns getting me to punch their pads in three-minute spurts.

Punching for real? It’s kind of hard. I’ve done jabs and hooks and uppercuts and all that in Group Kick, but those are all nebulous movements with no actual target. This was first time I’ve actually thrown punches that connected with something, and been goaded into putting more actual power behind them.

It was fun. Hard to adjust to the rhythm the first time around, but fun. I was surprised at how very focused I managed to get during spurts of following the pads and punching. I almost had some sort of tunnel vision and lost awareness of everything around me but the pads I was aiming for. It made me feel pretty hardcore myself!

The gym was pretty crowded, so much of our time there after the first 1/2 hour or so was spent standing around watching the more experienced fighters and waiting for space to squeeze in. This was great for me, since it gave me time to rest and observe proper form, but I think my two experienced Japanese companions were disappointed at not getting enough time to practice.

Early dinner of leftover mashed potatoes & pesto chicken meatballs w/ sautéed spinach & mushrooms.

Eventually they decided to take advantage of the situation to teach me some actual kicking, which I practiced on a giant weighted bag hanging from the ceiling to one side of the gym. That was fairly humbling. It is pretty impossible to look anything but ridiculously uncoordinated the first time you lift your leg to kick one of those bags.

Overall, I enjoyed my first experience with kickboxing. The actual venue was a bit hardcore for my liking, but it was an interesting contrast to the more cardio oriented combat classes I’ve taken before. I think that once they return to the usual Sports Center it might be less intimidating. I’ve heard there is another girl who participates in their group, which might make me feel less self-conscious being there. I do think it would be worth going back to try another couple of times to see how I like it once I become more accustomed to it.

Maple banana softserve w/ whey protein + coconut, cacao nibs & OSG inspired cookie dough balls.

While there, Jees mentioned that in addition to kickboxing he also goes bouldering (or indoor climbing? I’m not sure which) once a week or so. I’ve been interested in trying that out for quite a while now, so it’s very possible I may try to tag along for that in the near future as well. Maybe I can even get Eric to come along this time.

Anyone else out there ever try kickboxing or a similar combat sport? What did you think?

I’d planned on starting this post by pointing out that after four solid weeks the aftershocks had noticeably calmed down in frequency and intensity, and go on to say that the feeling of constant movement was just a memory now. Of course last night at about 11:30 pm, just as Eric and I had finished up the last episode of a Farscape 3-parter we had another one. At magnitude 7.4 off the coast of Sendai it was the worst since the big one, actually.

When the clock hit 2:46 this week, I was finishing up lunch while catching up on the latest quake news.

About 10 seconds before the shock hit us, our iPhones went off as the yurekuru call app (that translates roughly into ‘tremor coming’) registered the quake and sent out an alert. The app has been hit or miss thus far, with some alerts coming a few minutes after a smaller quakes, but this time it was spot on. It let us know right before the tremor reached Tokyo that a shindo 6-weak had struck somewhere in Miyagi-ken, and we were totally alert when it hit.

It was a long one, and our apartment shook, trembled, and then gently rocked for at least a 1-2 minutes. Thankfully, it wasn’t so bad by the time it got to us (I believe it rated just about shindo 3 in our area), but it did knock my newly acquired coffee from the top of the fridge to the floor. Along with the big quake and the Shizuoka aftershock that first Wednesday, this was the only time we have had anything fall in our apartment.

Of course, this derailed our plans to go straight to bed after finishing up Farscape. Eric managed to head to bed after about 20 minutes of NHK and twitter watching, but I stayed up a fair bit longer watching footage of the shaking and waiting to see if the predicted 1-2 m tsunami would actually hit. The warning was eventually lifted about 90 minutes post-quake, but it seems that this one took out the power to three entire prefectures in Tohoku, as well as part of another. As if they weren’t going through enough up there.

As of the current time I think some power has been restored, but there are still large areas that remain in total black out. I ended up getting roughly 2-3 hours of sleep after all that.

Lunch was avocado, egg & chicken salad on an english muffin & a cucumber, tomato, radish & spinach salad.

In tangentially related news, earlier on Thursday evening I met with one of my private students for a lesson. This particular student is a psychiatrist here in Tokyo, and the hospital he works for has been regularly sending rotating teams of doctors and medical staff up to the affected areas to help support local medical staff. He told me the previous week that if all went according to plan he would be headed to Kesennuma the following Friday (today) as part of a small volunteer psych team to help out at a local hospital for three or four days.

Early in the day, as we emailed to finalize our meeting time, he confirmed that things were still on track and his team was making preparations to head out the following afternoon. I was filled with warm and fuzzy feelings of pride at knowing someone who was personally involved with the relief effort, but I have to admit that part of me also felt the weight of helplessness a little more strongly than usual as well. So I decided to try contributing in my own way: by baking.

My decision to follow through with the baking idea came a bit late, and I only had about three hours in which to get home and get everything done. But despite the time constraints I still managed to crank out three different recipes, package them, and make it out the door in time for to meet my student for his private lesson. I stuck to battle tested recipes that I know turn out well, and chose to make banana bread, pumpkin cherry loaf, and chocolate chip cookies.

Each of the quick-bread recipes yielded two medium-sized loaves, and I ended up with about 40 smallish cookies. With my tiny Japanese oven limiting the number of items that could be baked at once, I had to work in about five rounds to get it all done, and did not pull the final loaf out until just 10 minutes before I had to run out the door.

Since I was concerned about space in their car (they’ll be bringing medications and such along with them, as well as whatever they need to get through the weekend) I only sent half what each recipe yielded, and kept the remainder to bring to weekend hanami here in Tokyo. I have to admit that in retrospect I sort of wish I’d sent more.

Just to make it clear, it’s highly unlikely that any of items these will actually make it to any of the survivors of the quake. I would like nothing more than to know that something I baked maybe brought a smile to the face of one of the locals, but I am not under the assumption that this will happen. My student’s team is not going up there to volunteer with the evacuees. They are going there to work in a hospital and provide support to local staff, and they will not have the time or resources to do anything else. I’m fairly certain that my baked goods will most likely end up feeding my student’s team as they do their work. Perhaps they might share with some local med staff, but this is not guaranteed.

Of course it would make me feel pretty awesome if I was able to help the survivors directly, but the work that my student is doing is important and admirable, and I’m glad I have a chance to support that in some small way. Supplies are scarce up there, and dealing with the damage in person is likely to be hard on them, so I know anything I do to help them out will be appreciated.

My much-loved banana bread/muffin recipe was posted previously and can be found here.

I’ll be interested to hear what he has to say next week after he returns. In the meantime here is one of the recipes I made to send to Kesennuma.

This was originally a muffin recipe, but I opted divide the recipe into two medium-small sized loaf pans this time for portability and convenience once they reach the disaster area. I also made sure to pre-cut the loaves before wrapping them in foil so the volunteers won’t have to worry about finding something to cut with. The first time I made this I used cranberries, but the dried cherries worked equally well. You could also probably go with nuts or chocolate chips, and it works perfectly plain as well.

Pumpkin Cherry Muffins (or loaf)

180 g whole wheat pastry flour
1 tsp baking powder
240 g canned pumpkin
200 g raw sugar
75 g rice bran or other neutral oil
2 large eggs
1/2 teaspoon cinnamon
1/4 teaspoon ginger
1/8 teaspoon ground cloves
1/8 teaspoon ground nutmeg
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon salt
160 g dried cherries (optional)

Preheat oven to 180°C (350°F) and butter and flour a muffin or loaf pan (for loaf pans use one large or two medium-sized pans).

Sift the flour and baking powder together into a bowl and set aside.

Add the pumpkin, sugar, oil, eggs, spices, salt, and baking soda to a medium bowl and whisk until fully combined and smooth. Add the flour mixture in two batches and mix until just incorporated. Stir in the dried cherries, and pour into the prepared muffin or loaf pan(s).

Bake for 25 minutes for muffins or 45 minutes for loaf, or until a toothpick inserted into the center comes out clean. Be careful not to over-bake or it will end up on the dry side. Cool in the pan for 5 minutes, and then remove to a wire rack to finish cooling.

Makes 12 muffins, one large loaf, or two medium-small loaves.

I’d been hearing for several days that the sakura (cherry blossoms) are in full bloom in specific parts of the city. Ours have been a little behind around here, but they are finally starting to open up. I predict that by the weekend they should be right around their peak. Just in time for hanami.

After my confession the other day about falling behind with the cleaning and cooking, I’ve been doing my best to get back on track. I went through the disaster zone that was my apartment yesterday and organized/tidied up as best I could, more thorough cleaning will follow. Cooking is still mostly centering around large batch comfort foods, but I have started to come up with a few ideas of foods I would like to make soon, so it seems like lack of creativity there might  also be starting to pass.

In my efforts to get back on track, I decided early in the week that it would be a good time to do a bit of a modified fast or a detox to help regain some mental and physical clarity.

I haven’t talked about it at much here, but my nutrition took a slight hit from this whole earthquake and not working thing. Nothing major, but those of you who have been reading for a while or who know me in person are probably aware that I’m very organized with my food, especially during the week. I usually plan out and pack up all my meals for the day in advance (with the exception of dinner, which is planned half of the time and decided on the fly half of the time). Since I am currently in the midst of training to gain some muscle mass, I also pay quite a bit of attention to my macronutrient ratios to ensure I am getting enough protein and that I am eating at the right times.

For the first few days to a week after the quake, the planning thing, as well as the ratios, went right out the window. It just wasn’t on my priority list. Things improved after that, and I’ve still been eating quite healthy by normal standards, but in the last few weeks I feel that I have been eating just a bit too much for my current activity level and letting a little too much sugar creep in. Because of this I’ve been feeling slightly sluggish, lethargic, and have not been seeing the results of my training as much as I probably should be.

I used to do one-day fasts fairly regularly (every few months or so) up until a few years ago. I’ve always felt that they help me regain some mental clarity, get more in touch with my body, and help to reset my internal functions going forward. I also think that brief periods of strict adherence to very deliberate rules, be it though fasting or structured detoxing (like a no-sugar, no-grain detox), helps to reinforce my sense of self-control, and gives me boost of accomplishment; much in the same way that pushing through the last 10-15 minutes of a difficult run does.

Since I haven’t actually fasted in a while and had a group kick class on that day, I decided to go with a modified not-really-fasting type of fast. I decided to limit myself to liquids during the day, followed by a normal dinner after Eric got home. I ended up having two fruit and kefir smoothies for my main meals, and drinking a coconut water beverage that I’d found at Yamaya the day we stocked up on canned foods after the quake as a between meals snack. The coconut beverage sadly wasn’t pure coconut water, which I didn’t realize when I bought it. It had a bit of sugar and water added, but they were lower on the list ingredients, and it tasted alright overall.

For dinner I had pesto mashed potatoes, a few of the remaining pesto chicken mini-meatballs, and some roasted puchi-vale, which is a kale-brussels sprouts hybrid I’ve had a few times before here in Tokyo and LOVE. I hadn’t planned dessert, but in the end threw in some banana soft-serve to round out the meal.

In the end I ate just under 1200 calories on my ‘fast’, which is not drastically low, but, just like with a full fast it left me feeling very clean and refreshed. I’m not sure if it’s related, but that night, as well as the next, I fell asleep quicker than usual and slept like a baby.

One of the annoying side-effects of this whole disaster thing has been the disruption to my normal habits and routines. Beyond the fact that it has left me without work for the time being (a very major disruption!) and has affected our power consumption habits, it has also had an effect on my motivation to do some of the things I usually enjoy, such as cooking and baking, as well as less enjoyable things, like cleaning.

To get straight to the point: despite copious free time, our apartment has been a mini-disaster area, and we have not been eating terribly interesting things since the earthquake.

Honestly, although I tend to prefer organization and I am much happier when things are in their proper place and the house is clean, I’ve never been the best at keeping it that way. It is very easy to fall into the habit of letting items, such as papers, empty bags, unfolded laundry, etc. pile up on tables and in corners for a few weeks until one or both of us reaches our limit and declares it to be a Massive Cleaning Day.

I’d like to think we’ve improved with this over time. I am relatively good at maintaining order once it has been established, and we haven’t let things get as bad in recent years as we had been known to in the past; but in reality I know that it’s a tenuous situation at best.

The earthquake definitely derailed our fragile hold on keeping things clean and in their place. It took us several days to do something as simple as pick up the items that had fallen from our shelf during the initial tremors, and since then the tables and counters have been piling up again, and seem to revert back to that state soon after being straightened up when we actually do something about it. I’m sure this won’t last indefinitely, but at present cleaning and organization have taken a backseat around here.

Typical post-quake dinner of potato & garbanzo bean hash with eggs, brussels sprouts, cottage cheese and avocado.

On the cooking front, my creativity in the kitchen has been very much absent in recent weeks. Rather than using my free time to come up with interesting meals each night and try out new and exciting baking experiments, I have instead been gravitating towards relatively quick, simple, and familiar meals with high leftover-potential and have not done any baking at all in several weeks. Dinner has consisted mostly of simple potato and garbanzo bean hashes, fried eggs with sautéed vegetables and cottage cheese, and quick vegetable pastas that aren’t all that exciting fodder for blogging.

Early last week I broke into our newly abundant store of canned beans to make one of our old favorite fallbacks in the world of bulk foods and save myself from having to come up with idea of what to eat for the rest of the week.

Chili is one of a few recipes that Eric and I have been making together since way back in our college days in San Francisco. Before moving to Tokyo we actually owned a huge 16-quart stockpot purchased specifically with the intention of making massive quantities of chili to fuel us through the week so we wouldn’t have worry about making dinners or lunches on school nights. These days our batches tend to be much smaller, since we don’t have enough space for either a 16 quart stock pot or the resulting massive quantities of chili, but they yield enough to get us through a few days at least.

The recipe I use is mostly unchanged from the basic one we’ve always thrown together, though I have adjusted it slightly over time (such as the addition of a small amount of cocoa power to add some depth). Back home we generally used ground turkey for this recipe, but turkey is not widely available in Japan so instead I tend to add in ground chicken, or leave it out entirely depending on how I feel about animal protein on the day I make it.

Half a serving of leftover chili atop a fried egg with avocado and greek yogurt for lunch.

Most of the time I stick to two cans of red kidney beans, as they are the easiest to get here, but using several varieties can make for a much more interesting and complex chili. For this particular batch I used a mix of three different varieties of beans, since I had so many to choose from thanks to our recent earthquake-inspired restocking of the pantry. I used one each of red kidney and white beans, plus what was left from a can of black beans already open in my fridge.

I like to top my chili with cheddar cheese, greek yogurt, and crushed up crackers, which is something I absorbed from proximity to Eric. The leftovers are good served as is, or can be used to top baked potatoes, as a burrito or taco filling, or for some beefed up nachos. I’m guessing leftover chili would also make for an interesting version of the Okinawan favorite taco rice, though I’ve never tried doing that myself.

Three-Bean Chicken Chili

1 tbsp avocado oil
250 g onion, chopped
3 cloves garlic, minced
300 g ground chicken
300 g bell peppers, chopped
240 g red kidney beans (one can, drained)
240 g white beans (one can, drained)
160 g black beans (two-thirds of a can, drained)
400 g diced tomatoes (one can)
2 tbsp tomato paste
1-2 tbsp chili powder
1 tbsp unsweetened cocoa powder
1 tsp smoked paprika
1 tsp chili flakes
1 tsp cumin
1/2 tsp cayenne pepper
salt & black pepper to taste

Heat the avocado oil over medium heat in a large, heavy bottomed pot. Brown the onions and garlic, then add the ground chicken. Use a large spoon or spatula to break up any chunks, and cook until the chicken is opaque and no pink remains.

Add the chopped bell peppers and continue to cook for a few minutes until they soften sightly and brown a little around the edges, then add the beans, tomatoes, tomato paste, and about 2 cans worth of water.

Allow the water to come to a light boil, then reduce the heat to low and start adding the spices. It’s best to be slightly conservative at first and adjust them to taste as the chili cooks.

Let the chili simmer, uncovered or partially covered, for 30 to 90 minutes. The longer you let it cook the better it will taste, but it will be ready to eat after just 30 minutes if you are pressed for time and need to get dinner on the table sooner rather than later. Make sure to check the water level and give it a good stir every 10-15 minutes as it cooks to prevent possible sticking.

Makes 6-8 servings, depending on how you serve it and your appetite. As with all chili, the recipe and amounts are highly adaptable to suit your preferences.

As of this afternoon it has been three weeks since the earthquake. Here in Tokyo things have been very much returning to normal.. or, well.. more like we have been adjusting to our new definition of normal. Radiation levels being part of the weather reports, power saving activities and dimmer lighting, and shortages on specific items at random don’t really seem to faze us much any more. One of the most amazing things about human beings is our ability to adapt to our circumstances and environments, and these are now just part of the new daily routine.

Unlike the week before, I had no waffle problems before we headed out to Eric’s first session since the quake.

I definitely think that those of us still here have been finally settling back into life again recently. Things around us have been normalizing more and more with each passing day, but through it all thoughts of the earthquake, radiation, and the heartbreaking situation in Tohoku are still very much a part of my daily life and always close to the front of my mind. This has been causing some problems with perception for me.

Tokyo is so relatively unchanged that as more time passes I have begun to feel downright dramatic and guilty for focusing so much on disaster related issues on this blog and in communication with others. But I also know that the feelings and experiences that we have from this, even here, are very real and not imagined or trivial.

Gingerbread waffles with homemade greek yogurt, nuts, coconut, maple syrup, and mango slices.. yum!

I have been describing my feelings to others as “non-survivor’s survivor’s guilt,” as that is the best way I can explain it. I feel some guilt for being affected so much by what has happened, but at the same time I don’t believe I deserve to feel anything like survivor’s guilt when I’m not an actual survivor– I don’t have any right to considering how far away and unaffected I am. However, I know I am still very close to things here, and not being directly in the path of the tsunami does not render my experiences illegitimate. We are still living as close to the disaster area as you can get without being directly affected, and Japan is such a cohesive and connected country that any destruction of such a massive scale to part of it is felt very strongly throughout the entire nation.

Finding a balance between these extremes is proving to be quite difficult. But I do know that being here during this time has redefined my entire understanding of shared pain and collective determination to bond together to recover.

Leftover waffles for Monday morning breakfast, this time with strawberries.

For the first two weeks after the quake I had a very hard time with what I’ve heard referred to as jishin yoi, or ‘quake-sickness’ (literally earthquake drunkenness or intoxication, which is kind of awesome). This is similar to motion sickness, and in my case involved feeling like the earth was moving much more often than it actually was. It was most noticeable for me when I was walking in straight lines on the street, in the underground, or standing on train platforms. I often felt as though the ground was rocking gently back and forth, almost like a hammock, under my feet, and I’m fairly certain that I ended up doing the drunk-walk and weaving side to side as a result. This has not been an issue for the past week, though, thankfully.

The aftershocks (which as of writing this number around 865) have been steadily decreasing and weakening in strength, and there have been whole days during which I’ve not really noticed any tremors at all. I’m sure this is partially because of the actual decrease, but I suspect that it’s also because I’ve adjusted to the smaller ones. There have been several instances in which I have been sitting quietly at my laptop and received warnings on my phone and via twitter of quakes felt here in Tokyo that I did not notice at all.

If you have not seen it yet, this interactive quake map gives a very good idea of what I mean when I mention the aftershocks. I highly recommend checking it out. It is a bit slow-moving by default, so if you do check it then it’s probably a good idea to speed it up a bit using the buttons on the right side.

Lunch for most of the week involved an uber-salad with a half portion of three-bean chili on the side.

News from Fukushima continues to be bleak and not moving in the direction we’d like it to move, but I still don’t feel directly threatened by it. As I’ve remarked on many occasions, I think that I’d cause myself more permanent and long-lasting damage drinking a can of diet soda each day than I would exposing myself to the current levels of radiation we’ve got going on here at present. But, as always we continue to keep an eye on said levels.

Savory cottage cheese oats topped with black beans, cheddar, avocado, and a fried egg for dinner on Monday.

The supplies and panic buying haven’t changed much recently. There are still shortages on certain items at certain times, but nothing that really impacts our lives too much. The hard to get item for us this week is my favorite brand of cottage cheese from Hokkaido, which has been totally sold out for a few days now. Whole grain english muffins are also missing from the shelves, though we did find regular white ones at Seiyu.

The train schedules took a further step towards normalcy today on several lines. I’ve heard that the Fukutoshin line, which connects Shibuya with Saitama, is finally running trains along the whole line again, and I was surprised to see Express trains on Seibu Shinjuku this morning as well. In addition to that, certain stores that had been closing early have gone back to regular hours; such as the Starbucks in Seibu Shinjuku Pepe, which had been closing at 6 pm for two solid weeks.

Oatmeal makes me happy: Scottish molasses oats with yogurt, strawberries, nuts, and coconut.

Eric finally returned to his office after nearly two whole weeks of working from home, but my week was not terribly eventful. I went to the gym, ate lunches and most dinners at home, and taught a few private lessons in the evenings. Nothing too out of the normal other than one bout of extreme retail therapy.

This weekend we have a few fun events planned, including a concert featuring our friend Sabrina. For now I’ll leave it at that and hope that blogging starts coming to me easier going forward than it has this past week.