Tuesday's walk

***I've been writing this for days, it's been impossible to get a good chunk of time to sit down and do this, so just bear with me and change all the today's to yesterday's and the yesterday's to Tuesdays. :)***

Oh what weather! 

Yesterday afternoon wasn't the best (much needed sprinkle of rain), but Monday, Tuesday morning, and today have all been fantastic! (name the Doctor! *winkwink*)

Lots of outside time to be enjoyed! 

Monday morning, Elisabeth and I headed out to see if our nearby "river park" had melted enough to venture through with our stroller. Sure enough it had! 

It was an amazing gorgeous walk and I took lots of pictures with my phone planning to share them.

Kevin came home from school early, so we went to our grocery store, got some sushi and had a little sushi lunch picnic. Perfect!

Tuesday morning, we decided to go back to the park for Elisabeth's morning nlooked like this Mandarin Duck.. could have been one actually!ap walk and this time, I brought the camera! Yay!

On Monday, there was a duck couple at this little pond, but the male wasn't a standard mallard and looked like a Mandarin duck!

Then Tuesday, expecting to get a picture of him, I see they had given up the spot to these two. 

By the way, if you're interested, the bird in the post before last was a brown-eared bulbul.I don't know why I didn't just google it before, but here's a great picture list of some birds here. I have actually seen quite a few of them!

These low tables you can use as a bench or a table... In other parks, I've seen more typical picnic tables so this was interesting to me. 

 The trees everywhere are close to exploding with leaves and blooms! Yay!

This large expanse is where we had our lunch and sat down to enjoy our morning treat. :)

I didn't get a good picture of it since a bunch of preschoolers came to play here in the grass, but there is a wisteria (I think) tunnel behind those bushes. Really interested to see what it's like when it blooms, I hope we will be here!

Kevin said the matcha latte was the most delicious thing ever. It was pretty darn good! Sweet, but good!

The ice cream was delicious. We shared it like a good married couple but we each could have totally enjoyed our own! :)

After running away from the preschool group who we feared would wake our sleeping muffin, we continued down the path admiring the little river and it's calming water noises.

Then we made it to our little waterfall spot. :)

How does anyone take signs here seriously?

Heading down river along the opposite side we came, we are parallel to the residential area and from each street we can see Mt Moiwa. 

I love the amount of effort they put towards helping spring along. The pile on the right was much bigger on Monday than it was here. (today is was gone!)

The old man to the left of Kevin seemed to have just been one of the residents here and he like many others we've seen all over the city, get out there with their shovels and just break the piles down, getting them to melt quickly in the sun. 

I told Kevin that I will very much be one of those people if we ever have a yard/farm someday! 

I consider my knowledge of plants and flowers pretty vast but I have no idea what these will be and I'm dying to know. I see them all over in yards here!

More Moiwa...

I'm always on the lookout for a beautiful flower!

Kevin and I can't get enough of these trees in people's yards!

 These are the first daffodils I've seen in bloom! Love it! 

They were so bright and in such a sunny spot, I couldn't even get a good picture of them! 

This park is our new favorite by far!

**I've been there every day this week and I imagine we will be there tomorrow too! Hope you are having an awesome week!!**

Sunday

Yesterday, we went grocery shopping at Seiyu (a bit of a walk from our house, but they're a bit cheaper with a great selection). We did a little meal planning and picked up stuff for a few meals: pork curry donburi (rice bowl), yakisoba, and tofu meatballs. 

The pork curry was delicious. The Japanese love their curry! We hope to get some more authentic Japanese curry at a restaurant sometime, hopefully soon! It's really different from Indian or Thai curry (we super duper love Thai curries!), it's a darker thicker sauce with (what I think) was a strong white pepper flavor. Here's a short wikipedia article on Japanese curry. 

And the link to the recipe we followed is here: http://justonecookbook.com/recipes/pork-curry-donburi/

That website is a great source of not only recipes, but info about Japanese cooking. Check out the extensive explanations in the pantry section! It's been a lifesaver and helped us a lot to buy the right stuff! 

We picked up some strawberries. They were pretty expensive but just so juicy looking that we decided to treat ourselves. Treat yo' self!

(for those that missed it, it's a Parks and Recreation thing! ;)) 

Thanks to our ice cream challenge, we were able to pick up this box:

I've been studying some hiragana in my free time, so I can with 99% certainty say that it says adzuki on the box. Meaning the red bean that they use in sweets here (like the daifuku!).
The ice cream was really more of a popsicle. It was good but I didn't think it was great. I was hoping it'd be more red bean ice cream type of dessert. Kevin liked it a lot though.

We rounded out the day on skype, walking to what I thought was a grocery store that we haven't been to (it was a drug store), and finally by eating leftovers for dinner. 

The common room was busy last night, we talked a lot with some folks and had a great time! 

Elisabeth is such a popular little muffin here, everyone wanted her to come to them or smile or something! But with a face like this, I can't blame them. I'd be doing the same thing!

A great end to a great weekend! :)

Sunnuntaina kävimme ruokakaupassa. Laitettiin japanilaista curry-possua, oli hyvää!
Ostettiin kalliita, mutta hyviä mansikoita. 
Myös adzuki-papu jäätelötikut mahtuivat kärryyn. 
Skypetettiin, käytiin iltakävelyllä apteekkiin (luulin, että se oli uusi ruokakauppa), syötiin loput curry-possusta ja hengailtiin naapureiden kanssa alakerrassa. Kaikki halusi Elisabethin huomion, mutta ymmärrän et noi kasvot on aika vastustamattoman suloisia! :)

Rainy day

The wind was kicking and it was pretty cloudy and rainy this morning. Thankfully, the clouds parted enough for us to get to the store and pick up milk (and ice cream!) without getting a drop on us. Yay! It was like a double whammy, Elisabeth fell asleep in the stroller and is continuing her nap as I type.

I'm taking this ice cream challenge seriously and Kevin is jumping on board with it too. Duh, who wouldn't?! 

So amongst our Japanese leek and spinach, Hokkaido milk, and dashi stock sachets, was this little box of heaven. I say that, because it was one of the best green tea ice creams I've ever had. Mind you, I like green tea ice cream! (We've been eating our share of ice cream before it's made its way to the blog...!) 

They're called Parm and made by Morinaga company. (it's a milk company apparently, they make everything from ice cream to formula!) They are also the makers of Pino, which are featured in the link I posted yesterday.

They're also pretty small. Definitely good for portion control. It means I can have one every few hours and not feel bad. ;) Huehuehue.

We also picked up chocolate melon bread. It's a sweet bun with cookie dough on top. You can read a better description here. It didn't taste like melon at all (the name comes from the way it looks), but apparently some do! Kevin's been on a search for melon bread, he had some high hopes for it. We've tried something similar, but with a whipped cream and custard filling. YUM! 

The grocery store by our house, co-op. Not the most flattering angle, but like I told Kevin, it's a phone camera, I'm not trying to win awards with these pictures today.

The view from their parking lot. I love the mountains!

And we've been noticing the attention to detail here. Most of the man holes and little covers on the street and sidewalk have designs on them. I particularly liked this one. :)

The soccer field has pretty much no snow on it. And in general, the streets are more and more bare. I looooove that we're really getting into spring now! The weather next week is supposed to be up to +15C (59F) during the day and sunny!

Speaking of sun, it keeps poking its head out through the clouds. Maybe we'll go for a proper walk when Elisabeth wakes up or if it's still sunny around sunset. :) 

Oh yeah, the translation.

Taisin eilen unohtaa suomentamisen! Hupsista!

Eilen siis aiheena oli rutiinehin asettuminen, kävelystämme kuvia ja jäätelöhaasteesta. 

Tänään siis kokeiltu uusi jäätelö: valkosuklaakuorutteinen vihreä tee-vanilja! 

Melonileipä. Joka ei siis meloneilta maistu, eikä sen välttämättä kuuluisikaan.

Co-op, meidän lähiruokakauppa ja maisema parkkipaikoilta. En kyllästy ikinä näihin vuorimaisemiin.

Täällä on koristeellisia yksityiskohtia joka puolella, jos niitä vain etsii. 

Jalkapallokenttä on sitten virallisesti jo sula. Muutenkin viime viikon lumi, +5-10 C lukemat päivällä ja tämän päiväisen sateet ovat saaneet paljon lunta pois katujen varrelta ym. Ihana kun kevät tulee! 

P.S. forecan mukaan, Tampereen ja Sapporon ilmat on aika samanlaiset tällä viikolla! 

Routines

Another day, another walk, another nap.

I think we're starting to create a kind of routine, which while I've never been one for schedules, routines bring a nice kind of comfort.

We wake up after 8, eat something, drink coffee, put away futons, get dressed, talk on skype, do whatever stuffs... then walk and nap... then I get to sweep and clean without distraction (the great thing about a tiny apartment is how fast you can sweep it!), and then I get to sit down and drink coffee. 

When she wakes up, it's lunch time and we'll probably go downstairs and heat some leftovers up or make a little lunch. 

Then Kevin gets home, we got to the store sometimes, then make dinner, then relax and skype or watch some movies or shows on the laptop. Then set up the futons and go to sleep. 

It's a simple life. I like it. Even though we don't have a dishwasher, washing machine, or even a kitchen. I miss those comforts of home and our apartment there, but life here is much more simple. It's definitely like an extended vacation for me in some ways. Or well, extended maternity leave anyway. Which is amazing and I'm so grateful I can spend this time with her as time is something you can never get back.

But oh, I've strayed from my topic. And the pictures.

We took a short walk, just enough to get her to sleep and then we walked back. 

We made it to the river, over the bridge, and south down the other side. 

We passed joggers, walkers, bikers, and a small group of preschoolers. 

Even the snow at these riverside parks has melted so much in a week. It's not sunny outside, but it's warmer than the past few days and not as windy.

The willow (I think) are in bloom in the photo above. 

I was a little...perplexed? by what the guy was doing in this picture below.

He was in this massive area of snow just driving around bulldozing it. He wasn't spreading it to another area, he wasn't moving it. Just driving back and forth pushing it around. Is that supposed to melt it faster?

Everywhere I go, people are trying to get rid of the snow. People in their yards with shovels making piles. People chiseling away the icy snow on their curbs. 

I'm really interested to see if the people here change with the season like they do in Finland. Summer brings out the happy side of Finns! :)

For those interested in gardening: remember how I mentioned they wrap their bushes in straw for the winter? Here's a photo of a bush still wrapped. I think it's actually bamboo and not straw.

And these were in someone's garden. I had to make up for the poor quality phone photo yesterday. Ick. 

 

I've accepted the "challenge" from a friend to try different Japanese ice creams. Here's the link of what inspired it. 10 awesome ice creams available from convenience stores in japan

At the grocery store yesterday, we found this one:

It was delicious after dinner last night. I could have eaten the whole box. ;) 

It's vanilla ice cream inside mochi (the same stuff in daifuku and other Japanese sweets).

If you're interested in reading about this vanilla ice cream daifuku, there's a short wikipedia article about it here: yukimi daifuku.

I guess it's time to start prepping tonight's dinner while the muffin's asleep. :) 

Ah, routines. ♥