What good luck - or perhaps good karma...

I've been lamenting the increase in littering lately.  Behind the old pachinko parlor where I often park in a grey zone of legality it has been getting very very dirty.   So working on the assumption that I can't complain about the grottiness if I don't make active efforts to improve it, I took a pair of  gunte  - litterally army gloves but there actually coarse woven cotton gloves that are cheap enough to be disposable if need be -  to the station with a garbage bag this morning to clean up the area.  And if I do say so myself, it looked much better.

Fast forward to this evening.

Hiro & I caught the same train home.  Often he calls as he finishes work, if I am still in the uni library I can make the same train as he does quite easily.  Carriage 4.   When we arrived I showed him the improvement in the appearance of the area.  By chance the local govt. had been out tagging bikes for removal, which was actually quite reasonable since it seems like some have been dumped there, and bike infringement notices had been carelessly dropped, like  losing betting slips on race day.  I picked them up & left them in the garbage bag from the morning....

Fast forward 20 mins...

Wandering around the supermarket to find something to go with the morning's soba noodles....the checkout....AAAAARGHGHGHHHHH my wallet.  I had it as I came out of the subway.  Gone...  Only yesterday I had had a clear sensation that this would be the first time ever I would wear a wallet out before losing it....  Aaaarghhhhh.... back to the station... look... look... back to the rubbish bag.... back to the bike parking area - quite dark.... arrrghh.... Hiro not very impressed.... understandable since I lose things so often it might be considered a hobby rather than a habit..... to the subway ... nothing.... back to the bikes.... the rubbish bags....arrghh... the police box....aaarghhhh

Hiro calmly fills out the form.... $250 dollars (thank goodness I paid the phone bill yesterday... what a pity I didn't extend my commuter pass today as I'd planned)  1 credit card (hoping my Australian one isn't there...), 1 ATM card, (hoping my Australian one isn't there....) 1 train pass (phew I registered it) I foreigners card (thank goodness they are still being processed at the local office), 1 student card, (can't get into the library without it....) 1 staff card (is that a sackable offence?)   the plethora of supermarket and electronic store loyalty cards aren't important enough to go on the policeman's list (lucky experience has guided me to always use the points rather than save them....).  The policeman tells Hiro to write on the form he is filling in that it's proxy because I can't "do" Japanese...I ask Hiro to fill out because I can't write kanji neatly... I didn't check  to see what he wrote... 

Home via the places we've been.  Nothing at the bike stand area.  Toss the leaves with my shoe.. karma... please ....St Anthony..... arrghhhh.....  Payback for  being sanctimonious about littering?  arghhh.... Hiro marvels at the irony of dropping a wallet while being indignant about littering....

Walked the length and back. Asked a girl talking on a mobile phone if she'd seen it.  No....she'd just arrived...

arghhh...

One last kick of the leaves.....YATTTAAAAAAAA..... found it... still there,, in the shadowed part of the shadows, behind a witches hat (triange shaped road marker thing).... oh my goodness... what a relief.... 

Home two hours later than anticipated but I'll sleep well tonight, once the adrenalin stops...

Pictorial records of tsunami clean up progress from Kyodo

http://blogs.sacbee.com/photos/2011/09/japan-marks-6-months-since-ear.html

This is a link to a website with amazing pictorial records of the tsunami from Kyodo.

There are three photos of each site. The first the immediate damage of the tsunami, the second taken in June and the third in September.  Rikuzen Takata, where I spent a week, is among the photos.  It's a great testament to the effort that has been made by locals, the self defence force, the US military, three levels of government, and tens if not hundreds of thousands of volunteers. 

Reconstruction has barely begun - plenty of places still don't have electricity -  but the progress has been phenomenal.  

Akebi - a cooking challenge

Inside the box of goodies was akebi - I have no idea what it is in English. It's a Tohoku food apparently, Yamagata people are thought particularly savage, even from their fellow Tohoku-ites because they eat the bitter skin.  According to kyoto foodie it's considered a fruit - the fleshy inside part is like a rambutan or lychee in taste but has fleshy seeds like a pomegranate (only much softer and fleshier).   Also according to kyoto foodie the wild ones split open naturally whereas the cultivated ones need a bit of help from a knife.  I guess these were wild ones.

Hiro's suggestion was cooking like miso eggplant, which I did.  Very tasty. I cooked two  - peeled one and left the other as is.  I liked the skin on.  Definitely not the food of a savage!

Akebi

Cooked Akebi

A feast from Akita

Akita's signature dish - Kiritanpo.

On Sunday out of the blue Hiro's mother sent a food parcel (since we can't buy food in Tokyo).  Some vegies and chestnuts from the vegie patch, some local apples, oldest uncle's new season rice and.... kiritampo.  Kiritampo is the signature dish of Akita prefecture & Hiro's mother cooks it to perfection.  It's a chicken hot pot with mushrooms - mostly maitake and shiitake but some shimeji as well - gobo, naganegi (leek?), and seri (a relative of cress I guess).    It came in five parts.  The stock, in a 2 litre pet bottle, the cooked mushrooms, gobo and chicken together in a plastic bag, the kiritampo rice sticks in their supermarket packet, and the negi and seri in different bags.   She would have simmered the chicken for hours... very tasty.  It took all of 5 minutes to compile and 5 minutes to heat up.   Delicious, and very hard to find in Tokyo.

Next time I will take the camera off macro and wipe the table properly....