Rain, Hacho Miso, Sleep

  Okazaki, Chubu, Japan
Saturday, October 25, 2008

So Thursday was a fairly unproductive day. I'd bought an international
phone card the day before and had planned to call that morning but
here's what happened. I woke up early, took a shower, went back
upstairs and started literally seeing stars. I made my way downstairs,
made myself toast, with jam now, although they are the single serving
kinds haha so I am almost out. Ate breakfast and the dizziness still
didn't go away so I went to sleep for an hour. I woke up with new
bites? but they were in the same place as before...in any case, I'd
slept off the seeing stars dizziness and got to school early. Aoyama's
class was difficult because we've already hit the 200/201 curriculum,
which I barely struggled through last Spring. Not to mention I had a
massive headache. I had this tofu, beef donburi thing for lunch. The
dizziness I realized is probably from the lack of iron in my diet. So
after Aoyama's class was Nishio's class. We got our new history
textbooks, don't worry it's a short history of Japan so it's novel
sized, although it is about 600 pages. We went through translating the
reading of this handout so that was useful. After Nishio's class I
biked home and pretty much just crashed on my bed. My dad thinks that I
might not have mosquito bites and that I should get my blood checked
since what has been happening to my body may be some kind of allergic
reaction. Dinner was fish and salad and rice.



Friday I woke up super early to use a pay phone to call Vancity to get
my account unlocked. It took me a few tries before I realized I didn't
need the country code and luckily it didn't even cost me a $1 to make
the call. I hung around school for about three hours and then met up
with Emily, Roxy, Yamaguchi sensei and Sasaki sensei. The five of us
went to the Hacho Miso factory. It was so cool!

Hacho Miso Factory!

The sign for the factory

We got a tour of the
factory, sampled the two different kinds of miso they had and Yamaguchi
treated us to lunch. The miso they make is known as red miso, which I
like although it's very rich and I prefer regular miso at this point. They use big drums

These are the BIG drums!

to hold the soybeans in, with rocks on top to avoid air from getting in.
We were also given a package of miso paste that should make 10 bowls of
miso as a gift for visiting the factory. I probably won't use it, but
I'm sure someone will find a use for it. I also tried miso ice cream
that Emily bought, it was good but weird...because the miso taste was
too strong or something. My tongue couldn't figure it out, the
sweetness of the ice cream and the saltiness of the miso. After the
factory tour, Yamaguchi drove us to Toyota station where we went with
Sasaki to Sakae. We went to Maruzen (a big Japanese bookstore) but at
this point I still have to figure out how many books I want to take
back with me. We also found out where Jay's club is and looked into
hotels to stay in for Halloween night. Still haven't decided on that. I
came home just in time for dinner and had curry rice! Yummy!



Saturday I woke up but still had a bit of a headache, so stayed home
and slept a lot of the day. I woke up and Kozue had come to visit. She
gave me naan to have with the leftover curry rice and then I tried
taking a Japanese cold medicine. That was interesting, I had to open
this packet of powder, and swallow it before washing it down with
water. It tasted apple cinnamony, but it was difficult to swallow
because my throat was still sore. I also had snacks, more senbei and
caramel corn (looks like mini cheezies haha). Then I went to the baby
department store with Kozue and that's where I got iron supplements, so
hopefully that will help. For dinner I had tonkatsu, salad and rice.
Yummy! Now I am going to sleep and hopefully will sleep off the
sickness.