The drop in temperature during this month turned my apartment room into an icebox. My electricity bill had tripled due to me needing to leave my heater on all night long lest I freeze to death. The rain had also started to come back adding a sense of gloom to the atmosphere as we all knew that some of us would be parting ways soon. The iChat Lounge held one last even for the international students, a Nabe Pot Cookoff. Nabe, or nabemono, is a traditional Japanese winter dish that combines a variety of ingredients into a single hot pot, sort of like a large bowl of soup. Students were separated into groups of 5 or more and were given a limited amount of money to buy ingredients for a nabe recipe of their choice. Some groups made nabe curry, seafood, or noodle dishes. I had the idea of making a spicy broth nabe that would contain meatballs mixed with kimchi, naming our group "Mama Mia Spicy Meatball". The idea seemed great until it was put to the test. The meat would not retain its ball shape and would come apart in the broth but luckily we had some money left over from our grocery trip and we decided to put the meat into gyoza skins turning out meatballs into potstickers of a sort. Once our time was up, each group's dish was judged. In the end our group was designated the winners by the International Center and iChat Lounge coordinators! Cookoff participants were later invited to an actual nabe dinner put on by some of the school's higher ups. During this month I was also invited by Eva to visit Kobe, her place of residence during her time studying at Osaka Gakuin. The train ride took such a long time, it's a wonder how she is able to wake up early enough to make it to her morning language class! I arrived in the late afternoon so it was a bit early for restaurants to be open for dinner, but I insisted that we stop at a steak restaurant first as I was dying to try some Kobe beef. Luckily there a place near the train station about to open so we hopped in line with everyone else waiting to get their hands on some steak. Appropriately the name of the restaurant was "Steak Land" lol. The set up was very similar to Benihana where the chefs cook your meal in front of you. I ordered one of the most expensive steaks on the menu, around $80 for the meal, but it was my only chance to try some grade-A Kobe beef so I just went for it. AND BOY WAS IT WORTH IT. Without a doubt that was the best steak I've ever had, I hope to try more in the future! After our early dinner we wandered around some shopping districts where we found an owl cafe where we each had a drink got to pet some of the owls lined up on a perch against the wall (pictured below!). Our next destination was the Umie Mosaic, also know as Harborland, a large shopping mall Final Sushiro and Karaoke
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
Authorまいど!おおきに! Archives
December 2014
|