Photo info: FUJIFILM X100T, 23mm, f/2.8, 1/60 sec, ISO1600 “On the Cup” Cedar Park, 2016
こんばんは！Hello!
Today was a slow day… we didn’t do too much, but I did have a very late night. You see, Bay went to a movie with a friend in the evening and I had to drop him off and pick him up. And it was the late show, which started at 10:30 and ended around half past midnight!
For an old guy like me, that is super-late… but at least I know I can sleep in tomorrow because of the extra hour we gain because we are switching from daylight savings to standard time. Whew!
Today’s photo is of the little figurine, Fuchico, which is designed to sit or balance on the edge of a cup or glass. They are so much fun to take photos of!
Photo info: FUJIFILM X100T, 23mm, f/3.6, 1/60 sec, ISO3200 “Furball with Feet” Cedar Park, 2016
こんばんは！How’s it going?
In my last post, I mentioned that my computer got a refresh with a fast new startup disk. Because I installed a clean system, I didn’t have any of my old games on it, so I installed a couple of my favorites. However, I stumbled upon a card-type game by Blizzard called “Hearthstone: Heroes of Warcraft” and it looked pretty fun, so I installed it and have been playing the single-player game.
Several years ago, my friend was really into the World of Warcraft card game, and a bunch of us bought different decks and played on the weekends. It was a good time! Well, Hearthstone is pretty similar but since it’s all computer-based, you don’t have to keep track of things like health or mana points. Plus I think there are more kinds of classes and cards, although I cannot be sure since I am just a beginner.
Here’s a screenshot of the deck-building screen:
And some of the gameplay:
It’s easy to learn and quite fun, so it’s a nice way to spend a half-hour or so. If you have a chance to play (it’s free), I say give it a try!
Today’s photo is of our cat, Yuzu, taking her afternoon nap on our sofa. She looks so comfy, doesn’t she?
Nice story above fron HPR about poke. I know that here in Austin a few poke shops have sprung up, and even one of the local Costco stores was carrying a couple different kinds of poke. I’m happy to see it become more available here in Texas, even if it isn’t super-authentic.
I remember as a kid when my grandparents would visit us every summer and Christmas that they would bring us a bunch of food from Maui. And one of the items was poke. Not sure if they just brought the ingredients and made it at our house or bought it already made, but I never liked it back then. But I love poke now!
It’s essential to include poke in a Hawaiian feast:
(click on the photo to view on Flickr, where you can see notes about the different kinds of dishes)
Photo info: FUJIFILM X100T, 23mm, f/3.2, 1/100 sec, ISO2000 “Oden” Cedar Park, 2016
こんばんは！How’s it going?
Today the rain arrived and the temperatures dropped a bit. As the days get cooler, three Japanese dishes come to mind: Curry, Nabe, and Oden. We had the last one this evening, and it was delicious!
Oden is hard to describe to Westerners. It’s kind of a bunch of different things that are kept warm in a yummy broth, then served in a bowl. Typical items found in oden are sausage, hard-boiled egg, tofu, daikon, konyaku, fishcake, and potato. We like to serve it with some hot mustard on the side for some heat. And of course white rice. 🍚 You just pick what you want out of the pot and enjoy!
Oden is popular in the wintertime, and you can even find it in convenience stores in Japan, sort of like how there are hot dogs and burritos in a 7-11 here in the States. I’ve only gotten oden at a Japanese convenience store once, but I remember that it was pretty good.
Of course, our home-cooked oden is the best! Another wonderful comfort food to enjoy with family. If you have the chance to try it, please do.
On a completely different note, the system drive in my desktop computer 🖥 died this past weekend, so I replaced it with an SSD unit. I must say, it’s super-fast compared to the old HDD 💽! The boot-time is down to just several seconds… it’s one of the best “upgrades” I made to this computer, which is now over four years old, but running fast once again.
I have a second, larger hard drive in this computer to store all my data on (which I keep backups of), so I didn’t lose anything important. However, one thing that I did lose was my collection of Lightroom Presets that I collected and created. There were several that I used often, but luckily I was able to recreate them using History panel, which kept a record of past changes to edited images. (I keep my Lightroom catalog on the data drive, so it was backed up) I guess I need to add the Presets folder to my backup profile. 😃
Photo info: FUJIFILM X100T, 23mm, f/3.2, 1/100 sec, ISO1250 “Mapo Tofu” Cedar Park, 2016
こんばんは！Hi, how’s it going?
Tonight’s photo is of the bowl of mapo tofu that I had for dinner. Mariko made this yummy and spicy dish from scratch, although you can buy the mapo (or mabo) sauce already prepared. It’s one of my favorite dishes.
Here in the States, many would call this type of food a “rice bowl”, meaning, a bowl filled with rice with some kind of topping. In Japan, there’s a similar type of food called “donburi” and it is just about my favorite. In particular, I love oyako-don, which is chicken and egg over rice, but I also love gyu-don (sliced beef over rice), katsu-don (pork cutlet over rice), and una-don (Unagi/eel over rice).
You could say this is a Japanese comfort food, because it is very commonly made at home. In fact, for my birthday dinner each year, I request oyakodon from Mariko, and she thinks it is a strange request because it isn’t very special. But it’s my favorite! Yummmm.
If you live in a city that has Yoshinoya, I urge you to go try one of the “beef bowls” (gyu-don). It’s so good!
I hope you ate well tonight, and we’ll see you tomorrow!
おやすみなさい！
– B
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I use a Fujifilm X-series camera for most of the photos on this site and my Instagram. Why not pick one up for yourself?
