Food, glorious food! (aka why the words body fat percentage shouldn't exist)

Hello!

How’s about this weather? FINALLY we can stop making kitchen small talk about the rain. Actually I was grateful for the rain, I’m pretty bad at small talk. Standing waiting for the lift you can guarantee my inner monologue is sounding like this… “OH GOD. IT’S SOMEONE FROM WORK. I DON’T KNOW ANYTHING ABOUT THEM! WHAT SHOULD I DO? SHOULD I ASK ABOUT THEIR DAY? MAYBE I CAN JUST AVOID EYE CONTACT AND PRETEND I DIDN’T NOTICE THEM?!”. And then I invariably take the stairs.

But it’s so nice to see some sun! I walked to work twice this week which I think is pretty impressive! It’s a bit over an hour each way, but after my soul crushing fitness assessment on Monday I might make it a little more regular along with my newly regular gym visits. As someone who has lived in ignorance of their body fat percentage for 26 years, may I suggest you never find out yours? It's for the greater good, I was not good company for the proceeding hour... or day.

Which is whyyyy I’ve banished all forms of chocolate from my life until April 1^st. I was going to give it up until Easter for lent, but I’m not religious and the thought of NO chocolate hot cross buns before Easter made me weep (I blame Kelly for posting a picture of them on FB... I had almost forgotten them!). I actually woke up in a cold sweat after I’d made my pact, and have since amended it and given myself one week pre-Easter for bun-scoffing. However for the next month or so, no dice. Which means no more of the below…

My favouriteeeee slice – blondies! Blondes do have more fun, especially in chocolate form. And don’t you start me on that “white chocolate isn’t real chocolate" tirade. I don’t want a bar of it, I do want a bar of white chocolate however.

And no more of my absoluteeeee favourite sweet ever. White chocolate and raspberry bullets. These things are worse than crack, I’m not even kidding. Which is why I forced them upon my nearest and dearest at work for V-Day!. I’m so nice like that! 

PS How cute are the bags I picked up in Daiso for 115 yen? Love them! (As a side note, have any people been to both Daiso in Japan and Chatswood? If so, how does the Chatswood version stack up?)

And no more Kit Kats. Le sigh. This baby was a Hokkaido special – rockmelon! Rockmelons/cantaloupes are like gold in Tokyo. I saw one going for the equivalent of $40 AUD. Ridic, no?! I don’t even really like rockmelon and this tasted amazing. Definitely better than wasabi Kit Kats which I will avoid from now until forever.

But I can still eat other yummies. Like... these amazing housemade bagels with ricotta and homemade jam from Cafe Ella in Redfern. YUM and so freaking cheap.

Wish me luck! I have a sneaking suspscion many a bagel will be consumed to fill the gaping void that chocolate has left in my Feb-March life. And fail to help me in my mission to decrease/forget my body fat % x

Take a picture, it'll last longer

I’m a really crappy photographer, but in this modern world I can totally get away with it!

I’ll instagram anything, I kid you not. My sandwich? Sure – add Earlybird filter and voila.

Picture of a boring road. Polarize it. Ooh so arty.

See I’m a regular Annie Lebovitz. JOKING, I’M SO JOKING.
But seriously it is kind of nice that you can take the mundane and ordinary and make it seem a little special.

And if you’re like me, there is a whole lot of mundane and ordinary in your phone.

I love these cute, vintagey, hipster photos but what the heck do you do with them? Especially when you live in the “arse-end” of the world (excuse my French) and no one will ship things to you?

Google, my friend, is your friend.

I found quite a few companies offering to print your instagrams and iphone photos, but as mentioned above – a lot of them wouldn’t ship to Australia. And the rest were kind of vague with size and price, which is always comforting on the internet...

But eventually I narrowed my sights on two different products. ImageBlocks and Printsagram.

Imageblocks is based in Melbourne (hooray local!) and they turn your iphone photos into wooden blocks.

At $35 a piece they would make a fantastic birthday pressie and man are they fun!

Since it’s been a year without our sweet old pup Jem, I decided to get a cute block made up of my favourite photo of her to give to my parents.

Next up is Printstagram. I’ve seen a few people in the blogging world order stickers from here, but as much as I love those adhesive-backed-beauties, I have little to no use for them. Stickers tend to end up on the bottom of my shoe or on my elbows *damn apple stickers) and aren’t treated with the love and respect they deserve.

So instead I turned all my weird and wonderful iPhone photos from Japan into a little book! And shy of a month later they have just turned up on my desk.

You get two mini books, each with 50 photos and all for $12. Nice huh! Admittedly it ends up being a little more like $24 when you factor in the shipping, but to have a cute reminder of my holiday with little to no effort on my behalf? Worth it! I was a little lazy and ordered two of the same book – one for me and one for Oh.

I love it!! It’s great that I can flick through a little book and remember all the silly bits of our holiday. Namely the thousands of Choco Cro we ate, or the many times Owen's eyes rolled in my general direction.

You can also order little prints from them too. One set of 48, again for $12. I think I’ll order these next time – they would look really cute strung up like a little garland I think!

I definitely recommend them – although keep in mind the shipping takes a while. And I naively thought they’d be coming from the US of A, when in fact they were shipped from Taiwan. No biggie, just the old adage about a assuming making a something out of something.

But in short, get printing! There are pictures of sandwiches, shoes or beloved pets pulling silly faces just sitting on your phone with their fancy filters, itching to be shared with the world!

Seems you've created your own illusion

It’s safe to say I’ve had an acute case of the post-holiday blues these last three weeks. I almost cried on three separate occassions at work in my first week back, for no other reason than the simple fact that I was no longer in Japan. So want to know how I got around this? Total denial. I’m still in Japan and don’t even try to convince me otherwise.

This has been achieved in a couple of ways…

1.     Visiting every Japanese convenience store in the CBD and never leaving empty handed. Often I just stand and stare and try to pretend I know what food groups I'm looking at. Also it has resulted in so.much.calpis.drinking.

2.     Listening to songs on repeat that remind me of my holiday. This song was playing in every single corner of Shibuya all day every day and I’m not even remotely prone to exaggeration on this one. Also I don’t care that I can’t understand the lyrics or the Vietnamese subtitles in this particular video. I love it all the same, or perhaps more because of it.

3.     Eating onigiri for lunch and mochi for dessert even though I didn’t eat either of those foods while actually in Japan.

4.     Getting the lovely man-friend to make me okonomiyaki and me then adding unhealthy amounts of mayo

5.     Eating bowlfuls of frozen edamame. Actually I didn't read the instructions where it tells you to let them thaw for an hour... so I microwaved them and lived to tell the tale. Delicious and only $2.85 which sure beats the $6 you pay for a bowl half the size in most restaurants. But I think their claim to "slightly salted" actually means "no salt has touched these beans so you should add a shaker-full" cos that's what I did.

6.     Buying all the things I should have bought on holidays, but didn’t, on eBay after the fact. The fact that this cover actually hinders some functions of my iPhone is of little significance to me because this thing is freaking CUTE. Plus you can even download an app with her face on it. YUP.

7.     Kit Kats. I don't even eat them... more often than not I just pull them out and stare at them lovingly.

8.     Listening to the happy sounds and alerts of the JR Yamanote train line found here courtesy of one of my new favourite blogs melon soda. Only Japan could make you miss catching public transport. I can't tell you how weirdly soothing this is.

So based on the evidence of the above eight steps, I am still in Tokyo and its unseasonably warm for winter! And suddenly all my friends have also relocated here too, which was a pleasant surprise. What is it they say... fake it til you make it? Oh man am I faking it.


But in other less delusional news - hey, emmaline! is back open for business in 2012. So if you have an engagement party of a wedding coming up, or just know someone who really likes their tea then check it out here! The shop is looking a little bare at the moment because I've had quite a few orders, but it'll be updated all the time. And check out the new postcards I designed and ordered last week. I love 'em... even if I did get the link to my shop wrong on them. HA... I only wish I was kidding.

PS I will post more holiday goodness once I’ve come crashing down to earth and finally accept I’m no longer in Japan… so that could be days or it could be weeks. Only time will tell!

I think I'm turning Japanese - Part 1

Hello hello!!
I'm writing from my teeny tiny hotel room in Shibuya, Tokyo and boy it is COLD. But being the (overly) prepared person that I am I've got it covered with fleece-lined leggings. Might I suggest you get yourself a pair of these bad boys the second winter hits? These things work miracles - pretty sure I could walk on water in them (and still be warm I bet!).

And to make the whole experience a little more authentic, we've just had an earthquake. Obviously nothing to severe if I'm still sitting at a desk blogging... but still bizarre none the less. It took me a good minute to 1) realise we didn't have a vibrating bed and 2) wake Owen up to ask if this was in fact an earthquake he was sleeping through.

Earthquake aside we are having so much fun! I'll admit I had a minor freakout when we first landed because I forgot how damn hard it can be to communicate here. We speak zero Japanese bar the very simple thank yous and yes and there really aren't a lot of English signs (not that there should be, we are in Japan after all)... so safe to say we've looked pretty stupid on a number of occasions including being told to move by Shinto priests because we were in the way of their religion procession. But that is half the fun of travelling right? Or so I'm going to keep telling myself.

We've walked all over the place and have eaten more crepes and even more okonomiyaki than I'm willing to admit. My current theory is they cancel each other out. Please don't correct me, I simply don't want to know.

 The three steps to okonomiyaki:

Step 1 - stare longingly at hot plate

Step 2: push food around with chopsticks in an attempt to look useful

Step 3: eat said food before it is finished to annoy your dining companion. Enjoy!

Kidding! He actually cooked mine for me so I shouldn't be such an ungrateful git. He's proving to be my near-perfect travelling companion... dealing with my extreme nervousness and he's tagging along for some shopping and even encouraging me to buy things. Winner!

We've hit up lots of different suburbs and while a lot of stuff is closed over this time of year, we haven't really been bothered by it. There is always something to see and do - it is Tokyo after all. And I'm not willing to disclose just how much yen we've spent on videos games except to say... it's a lot.

 Exhibit A: Emma's idea of fun...driving along Rainbow Road. Exhibit B: Owen's idea of fun... punching a panda.

Last night being NYE we had a nice dinner (drinking Japanese cocktails... and Spanish wine... ticks for authenticity!) and loitered around the Shibuya crossing with just a few (thousand) other drunks. When the clock struck 12 everyone waited patiently (if patient means loud and involves throwing glow sticks) for the lights to change so everyone could surge onto the crossing and wish each other a happy new year. It was kind of similar to being in a sweaty moshpit at BDO but with less nakedness due to the single digit temperature (not to say there was none..) and a lot more good will. And today the city is pretty quiet so we did a little bit of shopping and someone else is busy sleeping.

You can bet I'm busy tracking down every Kit Kat flavour and trying every novelty food/drink I can get my hands on. But that my friends is a post for another day!

Anywayyyy enough yabbering on. I'm going to get me some deliciously cheap noodles for lunch (heart vending machine noodle houses, so much less fuss). And here is my unashamed photo dump of Shibuya/Yoyogi Park/Harajuku - half iPhone, half new camera (thanks mama and papa - birthday present! 26 years young!). Happy New Year! And sayonara!

Ohayo!

In one week I'll be in Shibuya! I can't even begin tell you how excited I am... oh wait, yes I can. I'M REALLY EXCITED!!

I've been a busy bee, between getting a new (read: BETTER) job and finally leaving the nest that is my family home of 26 years, blogging has taken a back seat. Maybe even the back seat on a bus I'm not even on? Oh how philosophical of me. But seriously folks, this has been a full on six months and I think I need a nap.

New home is fun! It's tiny, but it's cute and most importantly its ours. We're getting on like a house on fire... sometimes the kind of fire that makes you want to leap from the window with your prized family heirlooms... but more often than not it's a happy, loving fire that makes me want to beam in a really smug way that probably makes other people want to punch me. I absolutely love having his company almost all of the time. I'd like to say all the time but that's a lie because living together now suddenly involves a lot of UFC watching.

That said, I still have pangs of missing home and I always miss my mum and dad. I don't think the cord is cut just yet.... maybe I just attached an extension cord to said umbilical cord. Yes I'm going to be 26 in a week, what's it to you?

I won the Christmas tree war. I campaigned for 12 solid months that I would have a Christmas tree in our tiny flat and tears were shed (I wish I was joking), I was ultimately victorious! So what did I do? Buy the tackiest Christmas tree I could find of course, thank you Target. It's red! I love her in all her gaudy glory. She stands 1.2 metres tall.. and I bought 24 metres of lights to string around her. I like to think she's wrapped up in love... and 24 metres of LEDs.

I caught up with one of my oldest and dearest friends who I hadn't seen for an age. We (well at least I) had so much fun - we spent a good 20 minutes debating the name of the quirky science teacher with the really long fingernails (Mr Williams FYI... might save you 20 minutes one day), gossiped in a (mostly) harmless way about who was doing what and/or who. And we somehow got onto the subject of nuclear physics, which was explained with help from a humble salt shaker.

Safe to say that conversation had my undivided attention.

We had LION CUBS come into work. Sorry but I think that the words LION CUBS deserve some serious capitalisation. They were beyond cute and I'm pretty sure everyone in the office made at least one attempt to steal them that day. The other month we had zombies in the office (not quite worth of capitalisation but close). Safe to say, things are always interesting at the new job.

And this last weekend we had a cardboard party. Seriously, this theme is amazing. It costs NOTHING except your time and maybe the muscle between your thumb and forefinger from cutting a lot of thick cardboard... um ouch. Nothing like last minute inspiration (aka google search) to get you moving. We repurposed our old TV box into everyone's favourite arcade game characters. I'm not one to gloat (okay maybe I am... but that's just because I know I'm good. SERIOUSLY KIDDING, I'm not, I suck.) but these costumes looked pretty good considering we started making them 20 minutes after the party was due to actually start. Hooray procrastination! I was the ghost because I have the nervous eye thing down pat and Owen likes to eat a lot ie. the perfect Pacman.

I kind of want to keep them on our walls in all their spilt wine and nacho-cheese-cornchip-smeared glory. A testament to a fun night out with great friends and silly costumes. We ended up with about 3 friendly police cars driving past and giggling at our costumes.

Anyway. That is a long, rambling and possibly annoying account of a few things I've been doing in the last couple of months :) Love love!

insert blog title here

Sometimes I wonder what the people at Myer must think of me when they look at my buying history.What is one woman doing with all those teapots?! I’m pretty sure I’m known “that crazy teapot girl”. To be honest, if you’re buying two of the same white teapot, it might not raise an eyebrow. But when you’re buying 22? It usually looks a little something like this…

I’m a-okay with it! If you’re going to be notoriously crazy about something, why not teapots? I like teapots better than cats and you can bet hurling teapots at people isn’t going to get you in trouble with PETA… unless you hurl a teapot at a cat and then you’re just sick. Anyway no one is hurling anything at anyone so why don’t you all just put your teapots down and take a deep breath.

Phew, that was close.

Anyway I prefer the term quirky to crazy. Quirky is the most polite way you can tell someone they’re a little left of centre (or right, let’s not get political) and you can bet I’ve been told that once or twice in my life time. I’ve also been called feral by a uni lecturer… as in “Emma I didn’t recognise you, you normally look more feral than that” end quote…and it was apparently meant as a compliment. To me as a feral or as a slightly more polished feral, I’m still not sure but it was about six years ago and you can bet I haven’t forgotten (or forgiven. I kid! Always forgive…).

But enough of my petty (yet impressive) grudge holding abilities. One thing I’ve always liked about Japan is that they’re also a little quirky! I’ve been getting pretty (read: very) excited for our trip to Japan in December so I’ve been blog stalking like crazy and trying to pick up some good tips (let me know if you have any - I’ll love you forever!). Along the way I discovered Mameshiba. Words fail me on this one so you’ll have to  read the below and watch. Hope you love it as much as I do!

A day in the life of an extra ordinary person

On Friday night I walked in to Priceline with the intention of buying some velcro hair rollers and some dry shampoo (Seriously, get on this people. Life changing, no exaggeration.) and leaving quickly thereafter. For the record you do not "pay less at Priceline" if you buy more than you intended (they lie through song, jerks) and I somehow walked out significantly poorer. But on the plus side I now have a lot of stuff... because I really needed more of that. I also got some nail polish in jade green and a nail art pen, and armed with both these things a night’s worth of frustration. Win win!

Owen and I went to see Griff the Invisible and grabbed some lunch at Mappen before we went in. I almost chickened out because I’m one of those people who doesn’t like to look like they’re lost or like they don’t know what they’re doing. But stress not my neurotic soulmate, Mappen have a sign with clear steps telling you how to order so you won’t lose any cred, or look plain stupid.

They also have this apple drink – WITH REAL FRUIT JUICE! - all 1% of it. The food was decent and cheap and it’s a matter of opinion as to whether I got a little “over-excited” at the tempura self serve. Either way I walked out of there covered in a thin layer of broth – Emma, udon and chopsticks do not a match make. And why yes my boyfriend does have pretty hands, thanks for noticing!

While we're on the minutae of my life - I recently discovered that my Japanese Kit Kat collection was kind of old... as in, they were kind of out of date (don't ask me if I still ate them, I won't answer truthfully). I’m not normally the kind of person to ration sweets of any kind, give me a tub of ice-cream and I will soon return said tub back to you empty, accompanied only by the milky smile on my face. But because they’re so damn expensive and relatively tricky to find, I went against my better judgement (better judgement which would have required me eating them all in one hour). So I headed to IGA in Market City to replenish my stocks.

Lemonade and Coca Cola! I’m a bit (read: incredibly) indecisive so this threw me for a minute... until I realised I could just eat both. Problem solved! I like solving problems.

I left my heart in Shibuya

2011 has been a crazy year for this old Earth. Already we've seen it alight, flooded and broken and it's only March. In January I stretched my money as far as I could and emptied all I had left into the Queensland flood appeal. Christchurch soon followed and now Japan - each one worse than what came before and I don't have all that much left to give. This makes me feel like a royal jerk, especially when I think about how much Japan has influenced and sweetened my life. But I'm still determined to find a way to help where I can. And thanks to a handful of incredible people who are equal parts creative and generous, it's actually not too hard to help in your own small way.

Start off by buying the Hello Sandwich Gift Wrapping Zine for $5USD, with all the proceeds going to Japan. The best bit is you're actually doing yourself a huge favour in owning this - the things that Ebony can do with a pair of scissors and a plastic bag will probably change your life, no hyperbole here. (Also it might say it's sold out by if you follow the link on the page it'll still work!)

Secondly swing by Catkin and Teasel and snap up a set of Eloise's Save Japan postcards, with 100% of proceeds going to the Red Cross. They're gorgeously designed and I reckon you'll never want to give them away, but instead keep them all for yourself.

 

And maybe if you're a little more flush with dosh, you could afford this cute print by Paul Vickers, which sums up Japan perfectly for me.

And so I think it's only fair I do my bit too! Buy a teapot from Hey Emmaline in March and I'll donate $10 from each order to the Red Cross specifically for the Japan Earthquake relief.