Doctor Swag

Among the items are super soft micro cleaning cloths for eyeglasses, tons of ball point pens, a pass case, white board markets, correction tape, cable organizers and a dehydrated dish towel that plumps up to full size once you get it wet.

One of my students is married to a doctor and, on occasion, she has handed off portions of gifts that have been given to her husband. Some of the gifts she shares with me are from patients who give him case-size portions of various food items. She's given me fruit jellies, melons, and dried sweet potato. She's also give me notepads and pens before. A few weeks ago, she also gave me some facial tissues that her husband had been inundated with by companies selling allergy medication.

I mentioned to her that I could make use of the items she gave me and would be glad to take her "cast-offs". Today, she brought a small shopping bag stuffed with the assortment above. All of these items are freebies given to the doctor by various companies that want him to prescribe or recommend their products to patients. While this may look like bribery, I'm guessing it's more about brand name recognition.

One of my other students works for a pharmaceutical company and she spends a lot of her time visiting hospitals, clinics, etc. and hawking her company's wares. A lot of what she's encouraging nurses, doctors, and medical professionals to recommend are nutritional supplements. Her company spends a fair amount of their resources taking beneficial components of naturally occurring substances and extracting them to put into pills, powders or liquids so people can ingest them more efficiently on a regular basis.

After receiving this bag of doctor swag from my student, I couldn't help but wonder just how much her husband receives and how much is wasted. He's a single doctor with a single clinic and the amount of stuff he gets overflows such that he, his wife, her family, and his staff couldn't possibly use it all. My student gave some of it to me, but I'm guessing there is far more piling up in a corner somewhere. The way in which business is done in this way must contribute greatly to the wasting of resources in developed countries. How much oil is used on unwanted pens? How many trees are cut down to make gift boxes for those pens? It's a shame, really, but there's not much to be done about it. Still, I feel a little better knowing that I can either use these things or pass them along to someone else who can.

Caramel Cake

Last year, I made the CH an Elvis cake for his birthday. It was good, but a little weird, so I asked him what special cake he wanted this year. He told me he wanted a caramel cake. I believe I only made one twice in the last 6-8 years, and the original recipe came from a Penzey's spices catalog which has long since been tossed. I searched Penzey's site, but they didn't have this recipe listed so I had to try and recover the recipe (or one like it) somehow.

I have very few cookbooks these days because the whole world of cooking is open to me with a search on the web. Most of the time, that works out pretty well, but not when it comes to certain recipes. Finding a caramel cake recipe, for instance, is very hard because there are many variations and few simple recipes. Those that are simple go too far and have ingredients like "cake mix" and instructions like "make cake as instructed by mix." Also, I didn't want chocolate caramel, cinnamon caramel, apple caramel, banana caramel, or tres leches. I wanted something straightforward with two flavors - cake and caramel.

I don't make cakes from mixes, and even if I wanted to, I couldn't find a good one in Japan without sifting through import shops. Finding a good, plain yellow cake recipe for a cake from scratch is very hard. It's as if everyone figures a plain cake is best produced from a mix or homemade ones are indistinguishable from those made from Betty Crocker or Duncan Hines. I can tell you for a fact that this is not true. Fortunately, some years ago and after some trial and error-based failures with cakes that disappointed (too sweet, too sticky, too flat), I found a good plain cake recipe and had the foresight to print it out and put it in my personal recipe file so I still had the basic cake recipe on hand.

Unfortunately, the caramel part of my old caramel cake recipe was long gone, but I turned up a recipe that seemed to fit the bill. The yellow cake in this recipe is like a pound cake, though not quite so heavy. It's moist, light, and sweet and the best homemade yellow cake I've run across. The caramel is easy to make and requires no exotic ingredients. The cake looks a little funky because you have to poke holes in it to allow the caramel to creep into the cake, but it's very good. I don't even like caramel, but I enjoyed this.


Yellow cake:

• 2 C. all-purpose flour
• 1 1/3 C. sugar
• 1/2 C. shortening (I used "cake margarine/keiki magarin", but you can use Crisco)
• 1 tsp. salt
• 1 tsp. vanilla
• 1 C. milk
• 2 eggs
• 2 1/2 tsp. baking powder

Cream the sugar and shortening together. Add eggs, salt, milk and vanilla and beat until thoroughly combined. Sift in the flour and baking powder and beat until the batter is smooth. (Note: my sugar and shortening were lumpy so I took a Braun multi-quick hand mixer to it and it didn't have any bad effect on the result)

Pre-heat oven to 350 degrees F./175 degrees C. Grease and flour a 9 x 9 baking dish (I used glass) and pour in the batter. Tap the edges to even it out. Bake for about 40 minutes or until a toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean. Note that your cooking time may vary depending on the type of pan you use. Metal pans will require a shorter cooking time than glass.

Allow the cake to rest in the pan for 15 minutes. Gently loosen the edges and turn it out on a rack for cooling. Allow it to cool for at least 30 minutes before the next stage.



Caramel sauce:

• 1 1/2 C. brown sugar
• 4 tbsp. all-purpose flour
• 1 C. boiling water
• dash salt
• 2 tbsp. butter
• 2 tbsp. cream
• 1/2 tsp. vanilla

Add the sugar, salt and flour to a heavy bottomed saucepan and mix together well. Add the boiling water and heat over medium heat until it starts to bubble. Turn the heat down a bit and cook for about 5 minutes until thickened. Stir it very often and monitor the heat carefully to make sure it doesn't burn. You want the final result to be slightly thicker than you'd like for the cake because it'll be thinned out a little by the butter, cream and vanilla.

Remove the cooked sauce from the heat and stir in the butter. Once the butter has been completely melted into the sauce, stir in the vanilla and finally the cream. You want the sauce to have cooled a little before adding in the cream, but it shouldn't be cold.



Assembly:


Take the cooled cake and poke holes into it with a straw or chopsticks. I usually poke the holes closer together at the edges, but you can choose any pattern or number of holes you like.

Carefully pour the sauce over the cake filling in the holes as you go. You'll notice dimples forming as the sauce penetrates the cake. Once you have covered the whole cake once, go back over it and pour more sauce into the dimpled areas. There is plenty of sauce so you shouldn't have any problems totally filling in the holes even if you make quite a few (which I did). Any remaining sauce can be poured onto the center. If you run low on sauce, you can always spoon up the spillover and fill in any dimples.

This cake keeps very well for 2-3 days because it's moist and the sauce keeps it moister than usual. In fact, it is actually better the second day as more of the sauce penetrates into the cake as time goes by.

I think we were fortunate this time around to have both U.S. butter and New Zealand dark brown sugar to use for this. I've made it before with Japanese ingredients and it's good, but Japanese brown sugar isn't as deeply flavored. Also, and I hadn't noticed this until very recently as I haven't had American butter in about 2 decades, American butter is sweeter than Japanese butter. It's not that sugar is added, but rather that they use a different type of cream in U.S. butter. The U.S. butter, incidentally, was imported and sold for a hugely inflated price (about $17 for 2 cups) because of the butter shortage in Japan.

My husband and I didn't buy it. He was given it by a student who picked it up for 100 yen (about a dollar) because it was set to expire too soon. The butter we were given was equivalent to 2 cups of butter and doesn't expire until the end of this month. I'll be sad to finish it off. It's so good.

The Most Important Day

I've tried to approach this post from various angles and have written and deleted several paragraphs, but the truth is that some things are nearly impossible to explain in a way that others can relate to. Forty-six years ago today, the person who has transformed my life in more positive ways than I could have conceived of was born. This day is more precious to me than any other because he is more precious to me than anything.

Lots of people say that unconditional love does not exist, but I know it does because I've experienced it and it's nothing short of a miracle. Living with that miracle everyday through my husband is the greatest gift life can give a person. I can't begin to celebrate this day in a way which suits its importance to my life, but I'm going to try.

Mortified

In an earlier post, I mentioned that we nearly made it through the summer without any cockroaches penetrating our inner sanctum. That was on October 19th. I figured that the roach had sneaked in on my clothing which had hung on the line, but I did find it odd that it was crawling high across our white living room wall rather than lurking in the shadows or wedging itself behind furniture. Roaches like to be wedged between two narrow areas so they are touching something on both their tops and bottoms. They don't like being high and in the open.

At the time, I recall thinking that I was glad that it didn't show up in a similar place during one of my lessons as it would be horrible for me to be teaching a student and to have a roach crawl by where a student could see it. I know that people who live in Tokyo are aware of the inevitability of roaches, but I can't help thinking that they'd believe I was a really dirty person or that they couldn't feel comfortable in my apartment if a roach might amble through.

I saw what I hoped was our first and last cockroach of 2008 on October 19. Now that it's November, I figured the likelihood of one showing up was pretty low, until two days ago when one of my worst scenarios played out. Several nights ago as I was teaching a student around 7:20 pm, something dark and high up on my whitish walls caught my eye. A roach was slowly crawling across the wall on the left. When I saw it, it was behind my student, but I believe it made it's way over the wall and out of my field of view.

I don't know if the student saw it once it passed my peripheral field of vision, but I did notice her eyes dart to the left several times (though her head didn't move). Of course, a lot of people look to one side or another while thinking as we naturally look to the side of our brain that we're utilizing while concentrating, and I didn't know if she saw it or if she was just thinking. By the time the lesson ended, it was nowhere to be seen and I figured it had crawled behind the bookshelf that is at the end of that same wall.

Since I didn't want that thing running around after my husband got home as they creep him out rather fiercely (and I'm not too great a fan of them either), I tried to hunt it down. I rocked the bookshelf in the hopes of scaring it out, but it didn't show. I took apart the bookshelf which was chock-a-block with heavy books and pulled it away from the wall, but it wasn't there. I got a flashlight and searched a lot of darkened nooks and crannies including under the bed, behind the sofa, behind the T.V., etc. and I couldn't find it. I was already tired and all of this searching was the last thing I needed. Finally, I gave up, turned off the kitchen light and at that moment it scurried from a dark corner and I nailed it with roach killer.

Though I was mortified to see a roach on my wall during a lesson, its presence as well as that of the other one was educational. It's no coincidence that both of them showed up late in the summer after the air conditioner in the living room was no longer used. Though I've plugged every hole that I know of in the apartment, there is one I can't plug and that's the one's related to the air conditioner itself. My guess is that they are coming through a hole that was made during the unit's installation which is a less attractive route when the AC is used. The reason they are high up on my walls is that that is where the entry point is. I don't know if they can crawl through the tubing which water drips through or if it's some other hole, but clearly I'm going to have to try and lock off this point of entry when the air conditioner is not in use if I want to avoid them with more certainty.

As for my student, I'm hoping she wasn't freaked if she saw it. She's a pretty level-headed person, and a nurse, so she's seen some pretty gross stuff. If she shows up next week, I'll be in the clear. If not, well, I'll know what happened.

Stuff and Happiness

I'm not the type of person who finds much happiness in "stuff". I don't shop for amusement. I don't collect anything (at least not anymore) and I don't expect (but do appreciate) gifts. That doesn't mean I'm utterly immune to the charms of material possessions in life. While, the thing that makes me happiest is attention from my sweet little hairy hubby, there are objects that give me pleasure. I think that's part of the nature of corporeal existence and that we can embrace the pleasure we get from things as long as our lives are not defined or totally fulfilled by them.

Lately, I've been feeling pretty down for a variety of reasons. One is that I seem to be slowly succumbing to a cold. Another is that some of the discussions and circumstances surrounding the recent election were a bit depressing. For instance, when I learned that 69% of black California voters voted to support the ban on gay marriage, I was greatly disheartened to see a formerly oppressed minority act so strongly to oppress another minority, particularly in light of Obama's victory. I also was not happy that a student I hoped never to see again was heading back into my life, albeit for a temporary stint.

Bad times can often be lightened unexpectedly though. The student I didn't want to see canceled her lesson today as did another student so I get to rest a lot today when I feel under the weather. I also got two big surprises yesterday in unassuming packages which really brightened my day.


The CH went to Costco 3 days ago and he picked me up a few surprises. Ferrero Rocher is one of my favorite candies and he procured a large box of them for me in addition to some gorgeously yummy almond roca. I haven't broken into them yet and, in fact, will be hiding them in the closet for awhile so that I'm not overly tempted to indulge. Ideally, I'd like to save them such that I have an appreciable amount left around Christmas. However, the thought he put into buying things he knows I like is warming weather I get a sugar high off of them immediately or not. Also, frankly, with a looming cold, good sweets are wasted since my sense of taste may be diminished.

The second gift came from my sister and that was Adobe Creative Suite 4 Design Premium collection for Macintosh. I'm extremely happy to get this update. I'm looking forward to learning how the new stuff works and installed it on my aging Mini yesterday. There's a CD with the discs with two hours of tutoring. I'm very, very grateful to her and one of her associates who are responsible for graciously giving me this.

So, even though I don't focus excessively on material items or tend to use them to make me happy, they do sometimes shine a little light into my darker days, and yesterday was a very good day in that regard.

Yes, I'm Happy

I know that people are sick to death of the American election so I won't go on about it. I'm happy with the results, but cautious about my expectations. What happens from now depends on how the American people respond to future proposed changes. Since the end of World War II, Americans have been reluctant to buckle down and do without and I have to imagine that there's going to have to be a lot of that in the future if things are to get better. The pendulum is swinging back to the left after lingering for what felt like an eternity on the right.

The thing that resonates most with me today is that:

• 146 years ago, slavery ended
• 44 years ago, Jim Crow laws which mandated "separate but equal" ended
• 41 years ago, anti-miscegenation laws ended
• Today, a man who was born of a union between an African man and a Caucasian woman was elected president of the United States by a sizable margin.

The next time someone responds to the topic of Japanese racism with claims of how the U.S. has problems, too, I'm going to send them a psychic punch in the teeth. Yeah, there are still problems in America, but clearly they can't be that bad.

Honestly, I got teary thinking of the progress in thought processes that have been made to obtain the result of today's election. Most Americans may still see color, but clearly, it doesn't matter that much to them in estimating a person's value, intellect, or ability.

What's Shaking?

Back when I was living in Pennsylvania, we lived near a coal mine and a railroad track. Large trucks full of coal would go rumbling down the dirt road next to us and large mining machinery would excavate from not too far away. The railroad was extremely close and my childhood was spent at times exploring the rails for discarded ties. If you don't know what a tie is, it looks like a nail with a serious thyroid problem. It's huge and heavy and for some reason, I though picking these big, dirty, rusty, heavy nails up and carrying them home was really cool.

On a few rare occasions the trucks would go around the turns of the road too quickly and turn over. This resulted in quite the racket as this massively heavy truck and all of its sooty cargo thumped to the ground. It wasn't unusual for the trucks or equipment to send shock waves through the ground as they did their thing. This would result in some small shaking in our house from time to time. Also, no small amount of dust was kicked up on the road, particularly in the summer. The dust would come in through our open windows and leave a film all over our furniture on a regular basis.

An office affiliated with the mining operation was about a mile or so behind our property and the people who worked there would sometimes fly in helicopters over our house. Because the approach was relatively near, the helicopters often came in or went out low and we could hear them loudly overhead. Despite growing up in a rural area and in relative isolation from other people, we heard our fair share of noise from the loud train whistles and engines to the rumbling trucks to the sound of distant explosions on occasion from mining operations. And even though we lived in an area where there were no earthquakes, it wasn't uncommon for our house to shake.

Now, I live in a place about as far removed from my rural upbringing as possible. I've gone from living in a house where visiting the nearest neighbor required a 15 minute walk or a hop in the car to a place where my neighbors are so close that their conversations in front of their homes sound like they're taking place in my living room. I don't even need a car for life in a metropolis. While I used to live with a huge lawn both in front and behind my house and woods nearby, I now see nothing but concrete punctuated by the odd gingko or osmanthus tree.

Despite all of these differences, some things apparently remain the same. I don't know why, but low-flying helicopters seem to pass over my apartment. Sometimes, they are low enough that they cause my building to vibrate and the glass doors in the living room to rattle. Also, Tokyo smog and my proximity to a major road seem to leave my apartment coated with dust on a near hourly basis just like the dust from dirt roads did back when I was a kid. Lately, there has also been construction going on not too far from my apartment. I can hear the banging of heavy machinery in the distance and my kitchen scale, which rattles a little when shaken, seems to be rattling on a regular basis these days. If I lived a little closer to JR and could hear the train, it'd be just like growing up all over again.

We Don't Need to Be Paragons

Some time earlier this year, I decided it was in my best interest to stay away from the news-based or impersonal English language sites that cater to people living in Japan. The reason I made this decision was that most of those sites seem to be ran by and commented on by people who are so deeply steeped in being a foreigner in a foreign land that they have a worldview entirely shaped by it. Many of them have extremely rigid views of what a foreign person should do while living in Japan and have disdain for anyone who doesn't fit their definition.

A recent discussion with a student about the Yamanote line Halloween party compelled me to revisit one of those sites (it ends with "Probe" and starts with the name of the country it's about). For those who don't know, the Yamanote line is a train line which travels around central Tokyo in a huge loop. It's often packed with commuters, shoppers, etc. and trains arrive at stations at very frequent intervals (about 3 minutes apart). She told me that she'd seen on the news that police were gathered to deal with the party this year, but she was unclear as to why that was the case. In the interest of clarifying the situation for her, I ventured into hostile territory.

I'm not going to debate whether or not the party is a good or bad idea, because I've never attended one of them and only have second hand information about how disruptive or festive it is. And frankly, I don't care. Just because I'm a foreigner, it doesn't mean that the actions of other foreigners have to be of paramount interest to me.

When these sorts of controversial situations come up, there are always people who assert that the people who behave in ways they view as inappropriate for Japanese culture are making us all look bad. Their viewpoint is that we should all be paragons so the natives won't generalize the bad behavior of one person or party to all of us. They say this knowing that this standard doesn't apply to Japanese people, who are far from all acting perfectly in public (very, very far).

The notion that we must behave well so as not to make others look bad by association is based on a very real mindset among some Japanese. That is, they see one foreign person causing trouble and nod their heads and say that's what you have to expect from foreigners. Many of them already believe we're all ill-mannered and bad behavior from one person confirms their prejudice. The crux of my point is that people who already hold a prejudice and are just looking for confirmation are never going to view foreigners differently, no matter how perfectly mannered they are.

Being the most obedient foreigner you can be isn't going to change any one's mind about how foreigner's in general behave. They'll see you as an exception to the rule, not as an example of the rule.