Ice Ice Baby

Shave (shaved?) ice! Nothing quite like it on a hot summer day, especially if the bowl holds that magical fluffy stuff that I saw for the first time in Hawaii (forget those sizable chunks that would make a better snowball than a bowl of shave ice). Flavored syrups are fine, but what really makes it great is some vanilla ice cream right in the center. The texture of air-infused frozen particles of water paired with creamy ice cream goodness is nothing short of glorious.

My grandmother's house is one giant time capsule. It's so easy to uncover layer after layer of life (I love looking through old magazines and advertisements), as well as many things that really should just be thrown away (cake mix from the 80s?). I asked her today if she had a heating pad, and she dug out this old box from her magical linen closet. If the Gillette copyright on the bottom is any indication, it is a good 30 years old! What's even better is that after three decades, it still works well. They just don't make 'em like they used to.

On an unrelated note, I'm pretty sure that's Justin Bieber on the right. He must be a robot.

Oatmeal Disappointment

A couple months ago, oatmeal was on sale. Sure, it was those individual, pre-seasoned packets that are usually on the sweet side, but I figured I would indulge myself. I bought a box, took it home, busted one open and much to my dismay, I found it was a low-sugar version, meaning it had sugar substitute (curses!). The taste is somewhat unbearable, like eating an apple right after brushing your teeth (guess what I did around 7pm yesterday).

Since then, I've tried to mask the flavor by adding stuff like yogurt, nuts, honey, ice cream, and peanut butter. The additives were good, but I couldn't enjoy them because the taste of artificial sweetening still lurked underneath, surfacing full force in an unforgiving aftertaste. I gave up for about a month, and then tonight I decided to give it another go. This time, I tried to rinse off the oats before nuking (worked out better than I expected), but then I remembered that the only milk that I had was chocolate soy milk (worked out worse than I had hoped). It ended up a soppy, unappealing, ugly mess as seen in the picture above.

I'm well on my way to ruining oatmeal for life.

Trimming Troubles

Last week, I decided to trim my grandmother's rose bush in the front of her house.  If you'll notice, the monstrosity above is no normal bush.  Its tallest tendrils were about the height of the roof.  I trimmed it down last year to about the height of the white wall behind it, but it took on a life of its own since then (also, it doesn't help that her gardeners don't do anything to help me).  Anyway, I got there at about 10:45 a.m., and I started trimming away the longest branches first.  Those actually are the easiest to deal with since they can easily be removed.  The harder ones by far are the ones that become twisted and tangled with each other or with the wall because I have to pull hard to get them free, and anything can happen when they come loose.  In other words, thorns become a huge threat (as if they aren't already enough of a threat).

In the end, I found that I really underestimated how much work was necessary to get the bush into a manageable form.  I finished cleaning up at around 4 p.m., and I was exhausted.  It probably wouldn't have been so bad if I didn't have to trim down the branches so they'd fit in the trash can.  That probably added twice as much work for me.  Regardless, I felt like I put in a hard day's work, and that felt good.  What didn't feel good were the cuts and splinters from the thorns.

Hospital Horrors

When I was little, hospitals were a terrifying place. I'd like to blame my first early impression on the book, Madeline, where the heroine gets appendicitis and has to get it removed. Sure, Curious George Goes to the Hospital presented a scary scenario as well, but I specifically had fears of having a bum appendix whenever I had a stomach ache, and I debated whether it would really be all that bad if I let it explode just so that I wouldn't have to go to the hospital for surgery (not that I ever had appendicitis, but that was the only hospital-worthy medical problem that was even remotely looming/threatening in my young mind).

The second early impression was when I was in elementary school and I went with my mother to the hospital to pick up some stuff for her work. We passed by a dark room that had the door slightly ajar; I peered in as we walked by, and the light from the hall gave a hint of a huge apparatus that practically filled the entire space. It left such a strong impression on me that that image is still burned into my mind today. Shortly after I saw it, I had nightmares about it, and I dreaded going back to the hospital for fear of having to even look at the stuff. Who knew what kind of unspeakable, scary things medical machinery could do to you! I was sure bodies would be hooked up to their menacing, gleaning arms, and they would just suck the life force from your helpless, tortured frame until there was nothing left or until you were transformed into a horrible monster! If I had the opportunity to actually see the machines in action, to understand how they worked and why they were so big, I'm sure the fear would have been mostly dissolved (I think that first traumatizing machine doled out good ol', harmless x-rays). Unfortunately, I remained a coward for many more years, my imagination running wild with a combination of fear of the dark plus fear of the unknown.

Now, many hospital trips later, these institutions are a-okay in my book. Machines are classified in my mind as being mostly harmless. Having always been on the visiting side of things has certainly helped too- by now, being hospitalized is such a distant threat on my radar of potentially horrible situations that it is behind losing my left hand while driving with my arm out the window or waking up with a spider on my face.

Oh-bone

I don't remember ever going to obon festivals while growing up. My family wasn't too into the temple scene, and I guess I grouped it into the same mental category of generic JA community gatherings, along with Nisei Week and the Chibi-K Fun Run. The only stuff that registered in my mind about these events was that there was food booths and game booths, and it usually meant a lot of time walking around.

When I started getting exposed more to Japanese American culture in college, obon became an actual celebration, an experience I could share with friends. We would go "obon-hopping" to different festivals throughout California, eating teriyaki and udon and taiyaki, soaking up the evening sun, taking in taiko performances, and dancing into the night. My favorite time during obon was definitely during the odori: as they lit the lanterns while dusky tones settled in close to the horizon, everything just seemed so beautiful. From the bright colors on yukata and hapi coats to the families just sitting and watching from the sidelines to the summer breeze gently meandering between all the dancers, it all culminated in this moment that I wanted to freeze and keep with me.

I guess that moment stood out to me initially because of the sensory experience of it all, plus the good memories I had made, but now I think it's starting to signify something else. While obon festival traditionally honors one's ancestors (thank you Wikipedia), I see a lot of folks honoring the families and friends that are still present. The feeling of community and shared experiences at obon is unlike anything else I've seen, and it spans across generations and ethnic backgrounds. I can only wonder, then, what it's like to attend obon at a temple you've grown up with, where you actually belong to that community year round instead of just popping in during the summer months with your own group of friends. Or beyond that, what is it like to go to festivals in small towns in Japan, where all the folks are your neighbors and you know everyone's names? I want to find out.