On Saturday, Cassidy and I had stayed at JCMU to recuperate from our 3-day trip during the previous weekend, and we decided to make tenpura together. We had gone to the store on Thursday to buy shrimp and Japanese pumpkin, and on Monday my conversation partner brought me an entire bag filled with brand-new, roots and dirt still on them, Japanese sweet potatoes (called satsumaimo), which have become one of my favorite Japanese foods of late. On Saturday we also went back to Caines, primarily to go to this awesome little cake shop called Fujiya, which I had visited in Fukuoka and bought a lovely little piece of cake, which they had carefully packaged in a little box, including a mini ice-pack (!). I’m not sure if I liked the cake or the packaging more, so I had to go back, this time with the excuse that “cake and ice cream will make me feel better that I’m stuck in Japan over Thanksgiving”. So we did, and I got this cute little thing called a crepe something or other. We also checked out the puzzle section of Caines. Japan takes puzzles very seriously. Every puzzle comes with glue, because when you are done with it, you are expected to glue it together and hang it in a frame, which can be bought not based on size, but based on the number of pieces of puzzle is. Needless to say, Japanese puzzles are also quite beautiful. I’m currently working on a puzzle of Daigoji Temple in Kyoto, a puzzle I kind of kidnapped from the TV room here as it had been sitting on a table half finished for about 3 weeks (don’t worry though, when I’m done with it I’ll be returning it..).

So back to the tenpura. My roommate was gone for the weekend, for Cassidy came over to my room and we started getting set up to make tenpura. Then we realized we wanted to have rice as well, so we threw some into the rice cooker and sat and played a few card games while we waited for it to cook. 30 minutes later, we got the tenpura ready. Tenpura is amazingly simple to make, and about 10 minutes later we had made enough satsumaimo, shrimp, and pumpkin for the two of us, so we sat down to eat it. Cassidy ran to grab us some green tea from the vending machine so that we could complete our Japanese meal. After eating the tenpura, we both got our our cute little boxed cakes (Cassidy had cheesecake) and ate those as well. Ah, life was good….