Homemade mochi

My host grandparents are pretty awesome. They live on the other side of town. They have a really big garden -or a really small farm, whichever you want to call it- where they grow vegetables. Because of that, my family gets to eat fresh watermelon, cucumbers, figs and melons every day. I believe they also sell some of the produce at a roadside stand. This evening we went to the grandparents' house for dinner. The grandmother was cooking up some fresh mochi in a mochi-making machine.
If you don't know what mochi is, or think it's a kind of ice cream, let me explain. Mochi is the gooey outer coating you find on mochi ice cream. It's basically white rice cooked until it's soft, then ground up and steamed into an elastic white dough. I've had it before from Japanese grocery stores, but it was soooo much better fresh. We ate it with azuki beans, soy sauce,peanut powder stuff, or ground daikon radish on top. As the grandmother was making mochi, I saw her chopping up a very, very, purple root.
Me: Wow, that is definitely purple.
Grandma: This is a sweet potato.
Me: Really?
Grandma: Yes! Do you have sweet potatoes in America?
Me: Yes, but not that color.
Grandma: Sou desu neeee. (can't be translated)
She kept asking me a lot of funny questions like that, whenever different topics came up. "Do you have cucumbers in America?" "Do you have convenience stores in America?" "Do you have Saran Wrap in America?" Anyway, she took the purple potato and mixed it into the next batch of mochi, so the mochi turned a beautiful shade of purple. And you know how much I love purple.
After dinner the grandma took me on a walk around the neighborhood and showed me the local buildings. The grandfather also taught me how to play some board games. And they kept trying to get me to eat more food, which is exactly what my American grandparents do. "Eat, eat, there's plenty of food! Are you sure you're full? There's more food you know." Maybe someday when I'm a grandparent I'll understand this.
Before I left the grandmother gave me some little hashi oke, chopstick rests, made of Italian glass. I would like to give them a present as well, but none of the souvenirs I brought from America are nice enough. I think I'll draw them a picture.
Today, as usual, was extremely hot. Our house has no air conditioning, so I'm getting used to feeling sweaty all the time. So I was sitting there, feeling sweaty and fanning myself with a paper fan when all of a sudden it started to rain outside. Within about a minute, BOOM, it was furiously pouring outside, with thunder to boot. It was crazy raining. Looking out my window I saw a few pitiful souls who had been caught walking or biking. About five minutes later all the rain went away, and left the evening cool and dry. So I am in a very good mood this evening.

Thanks everyone for reading my "bloggings of Japan" and leaving nice comments.

Engrish fest!

Here's dinner, which my host mom made. We have egg tofu, miso soup, and an omlette over fried rice. The ketchup spells out "Ke," which are of course the first two letters of my name! How cute is my host mom??

Last night was sooo hot. In America I was used to the cool sea breeze coming in the evening. But here we're not so lucky. The days are hot, and the nights remain hot. Last night was particularly bad so it was difficult to sleep. Eventually I went into the bathroom, wiped cold water all over my body and went to bed without drying myself off. It helped. Right now it's raining, so if I need to cool off I guess I can just step outside for a bit. Thank goodness my host mom is letting me borrow the electric fan for my room tonight. I heard that we're going to have a typhoon tomorrow! As extreme as that sounds, nobody seems very concerned about it. How awesome to be able to say that I've been through a typhoon.

Boy do I have some great Engrish for you guys today. Really outstanding.

Inuyama Castle

Yesterday my host mom was kind enough to take me to Inuyama castle. It was pretty small, but still beautiful. Of course we had to take off our shoes before we went inside. What surprised me were the very, very steep stair cases which were a little scary to walk up and down. My little host brother actually refused to walk up them. It would seem to me that having such steep stairs would make getting around the castle in a kimono or samurai suit very difficult. From the top level there was a great panoramic view.

While looking at the view, I saw this little chapel. You can see it in the picture below, to my right side. "Oh look!" I said to my host mom. "A Christian church!" "Huh? Where?" She said. Then she laughed, "Oh no, that's not a church. That's a wedding chapel. Most Japanese aren't Christians but they like the western church weddings. See, it's right next to that hotel. The ceremony is in the chapel and the reception in the hotel."

The castle was built on a very steep hill with the river at it's back- a very strategic position, no? But I still saw a very big flaw: the castle, like all old Japanese buildings, was made of wood and paper.
Wood.
And paper.
To me it seems like all you would need to defeat the mighty castle would be a ninja with a lighter. It's amazing it's survived as long as it has.
Later that day my host mom asked me to wait in the car while they picked up something at their grandparents' house really quick. I ended up waiting in the car for a good while. When they finally came back, my host mom said, "Sorry to keep you waiting, Kelley! There were a lot of mosquitoes!"
I sat there wondering how mosquitoes could have possibly hindered their return to the car. Maybe huge godzilla-size mosquitoes, or sudden swarms of mosquitoes sucked the blood out of their legs so they were unable to walk for several minutes. Most likely it was the innate Japanese impulse to drop everything in order to hunt down and kill every mosquito in sight. After looking at the puffy little mosquito bites on my legs, I guess it's not such a bad thing. Apparently it's pretty time-consuming, though.