Good days and Sunshine
What a week!
We learned to make udon noodles, from scratch, from official udon masters.
First you have to mash a bag of the flour, yeast and sake until it’s as soft as you ear lobe. Once the mixture ferments for a couple days your ready to get your udon on. We made sure to prepare our noodles before class. Creating the noodles requires as much concentration as it does man/woman-power. Rolling the dough flat to the sensei’s satisfaction can take over half an hour, and is quite vigorous. Once it’s flat you get to do another cool rolling technique, where you wrap the dough around the roller and make it really thin.
Alas we got to play with the cool Japanese udon knives. Slicing the blob of dough you begin to realize how yummy it’s going to be. It sounds simple but as with all Japanese processes there is a million “crucial” steps, and specific ways one must attack the task at hand. Putting so much thought into it really adds a bit of yourself to the noodles, and makes them that much more nourishing!
The other day there was a beautiful ring around the Sun. Similar to a rainbow but not quite so colorful. It was amazing! James, a fellow wwoofer from Canada, said they are common with the seasonal change, but several of us had never seen this natural phenomenon before.
It’s official. We’re going to Thailand! We leave from Tokyo/Narita on July 26th and return on August 9th. I don’t think two weeks will be enough, but considering we know absolutely no Thai (language), and don’t know a soul in the country I think it will be just right. Enough to get our feet wet at least.
For those of you geographically challenged Thailand is a country in mainland Asia. It has a very long peninsula; it’s next to Cambodia, and rather close to Laos and Vietnam. Not to be confused with Taiwan, a small (yet very awesome) island off the coast of China. Thailand has a lot of cultural influence from India as well as China, and was a really happening place (it still is) in ancient, ancient, ancient times.
We’re really excited to say the least. We love Thai food, don’t know much about Thai culture, and it’s dirt-cheap. I mean dirty, dirty cheap. I’ve read one can buy a custom fit Versace suit for about $10 US. We will be spending our one-year wedding anniversary there so we will be able to live it up in a fancy hotel in Bangkok for a few days.
The monk has returned to Nikko Park Lodge. Our mornings now consist of yoga and Zen meditation lessons from Zenryu. He has been a monk/yoga teacher/VEGAN for over 20 years! He enjoys mountain climbing, and I think we won him over with our story about Mt. Nyohou.
Oh…and I now have dreadlocks (at least the framework) thanks to Melissa’s everlasting patience and natural dreading talent. Thanks sweetheart, XOXOX!!! Best wife ever!
Tags: Japan, Travel
Zach
Zach-
I’m in Cairo at the moment, after having spent a month in Ghana, and I was talking to Jessica about how I wanted to do WWOOFing with a friend next summer and she directed me here. Which is 1) a great read and 2) strengthens my desire to go around the would farming.
I totally wore that white bandanna! Woo!
Congrats on the dreads, both of you!
and right now I’m totally wearing your (Adam) green bandanna
That’s hot, bandana swap. Are your dreads not ready to be published yet? 🙂
not quite yet…we still have a little ways to go. Over 20 hours so far and maybe 10 hours to go!!!