![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Holding out for a Hiroshimayaki
How one actually makes Hiroshima-yaki:
1) Pour batter on grill, spread to crepe-thinness, cook crepe
2) Put cabbage on crepe and cook it along with other veggies
3) Cook meat separately on grill, cook soba separately on grill
4) Combine meat and soba with veggies on top of crepe
5) Fry an egg, then use the egg to top the rest of the thing
6) Smash together into big pancake, top as you would normal okonomiyaki
How Deanna made Hiroshima-yaki:
1) Pour batter on grill, make pancake thingy
2) Put cabbage and sprouts on pancake and cook
3) Mix egg with other veggies and negi and all. Dump on cabbage/pancake. Flip soggy eggy cabbagey mess in desperate attempt to contain it.
4) Cook meat and soba separately on grill.
5) Combine powers to form Voltronomiyaki.
6) Realize that base pancake is too thick and completely uncuttable. Eat like okonomiyaki combined with yakisoba and feel like a big idiot.
Yeah, so after work today I dragged my friend Carlos out to make okonomiyaki at Dotonbori. We met up in the arcade next to Kawaguchi station, since his GEOS school is near there. I said we were going to Nishi-Kawaguchi and he was like "Uhh... uhh... my students tell me that it's a REALLY bad place," but of course we just went east from the station and it was no problem. He attempted to make normal okonomiyaki and mostly failed too, but hey, that's the whole fun of it, and I was glad to have someone else around to feel incompetent with. I whined at him for an hour about classes and it was therapeutic, but he probably thinks I'm insane now. Oh well. He was at least delighted by all of the Tanuki statues all over the damn place, and even had to snap a few pictures.
Another funny thing is that Carlos has lost like 40 pounds since coming to Japan two months ago... here I thought it was crazy enough that I've dropped around 10. I hadn't seen him in over a month, so it was a pretty drastic change.
After I got home I rode my bike for 45 minutes, way the hell into Hatogaya, almost halfway to Soka-shi. Didn't really see anything interesting aside from a supermarket that described itself as a "Grossary" store.
As for the rest of the day, there's not much to say. I got two new students today. One's another banker-forced-to-learn-English-for-work, which we have a neverending supply of. The other's a 16-year-old high school student, who is really freaking good at English, to the point that it's almost scary. New students are great, but it makes me feel like I need to adjust the classes yet again to fit the students, which is sort of tough.
Plus, next week is Intensive Week, which I'll explain a bit more of sometime later, but which essentially means that some students might take 6-7 classes in one week as opposed to their normal 1-2 -- and with all three of us teachers, rather than the normal one. One of my students signed up for six of Duane's classes and none of mine, and many of my students signed up for Eri's classes, but one of Eri's students signed up for two of my classes and tagged me on the way out all happy like "I will see you in class next week, Deanna-sensei! Yay!"
Oh, and the manager of the Ginza school called our school just to tell me about one of my new students, who had signed up in Ginza but was going to take classes in Akabane. I answered the phone with my now-standard imitation uguisujyou -- aka "high-pitched Japanese female voice", saying "Thank you for calling, this is GEOS Akabane, can I help you?" in Japanese, and the manager replied in Japanese, "Is Deanna-sensei there? I need to talk to her about her new student," and I replied in Japanese, "This is Deanna, do you mean the Mill A one?" The manager replied in English, "Oh, you are Deanna? Good to talk to you. Yes, I need to tell you that..." and so we talked in English while she explained stuff. Before saying goodbye, she said "By the way, why are you so good at Japanese? I thought you were actually a Japanese person when I first talked to you!" I explained, "I'm really not that great, I have lousy vocabulary and grammar, I just have great pronunciation. Your English is much better than my Japanese."
It made me realize that I actually often get fooled by pronunciation as well. I have a few students who have GREAT pronunciation but terrible language skills... and then I have some students who are fantastic English speakers but have some major pronunciation issues. I'm betting that to a random person on the street, the people with better pronunciation would probably seem like better speakers at first, until they came out with strange sentence structures like "I am inconvenienced when I can try expressing myself."
Oh well, time to sleep. Then tomorrow, time to face the 8-year-olds again. Wheeeeee.
1) Pour batter on grill, spread to crepe-thinness, cook crepe
2) Put cabbage on crepe and cook it along with other veggies
3) Cook meat separately on grill, cook soba separately on grill
4) Combine meat and soba with veggies on top of crepe
5) Fry an egg, then use the egg to top the rest of the thing
6) Smash together into big pancake, top as you would normal okonomiyaki
How Deanna made Hiroshima-yaki:
1) Pour batter on grill, make pancake thingy
2) Put cabbage and sprouts on pancake and cook
3) Mix egg with other veggies and negi and all. Dump on cabbage/pancake. Flip soggy eggy cabbagey mess in desperate attempt to contain it.
4) Cook meat and soba separately on grill.
5) Combine powers to form Voltronomiyaki.
6) Realize that base pancake is too thick and completely uncuttable. Eat like okonomiyaki combined with yakisoba and feel like a big idiot.
Yeah, so after work today I dragged my friend Carlos out to make okonomiyaki at Dotonbori. We met up in the arcade next to Kawaguchi station, since his GEOS school is near there. I said we were going to Nishi-Kawaguchi and he was like "Uhh... uhh... my students tell me that it's a REALLY bad place," but of course we just went east from the station and it was no problem. He attempted to make normal okonomiyaki and mostly failed too, but hey, that's the whole fun of it, and I was glad to have someone else around to feel incompetent with. I whined at him for an hour about classes and it was therapeutic, but he probably thinks I'm insane now. Oh well. He was at least delighted by all of the Tanuki statues all over the damn place, and even had to snap a few pictures.
Another funny thing is that Carlos has lost like 40 pounds since coming to Japan two months ago... here I thought it was crazy enough that I've dropped around 10. I hadn't seen him in over a month, so it was a pretty drastic change.
After I got home I rode my bike for 45 minutes, way the hell into Hatogaya, almost halfway to Soka-shi. Didn't really see anything interesting aside from a supermarket that described itself as a "Grossary" store.
As for the rest of the day, there's not much to say. I got two new students today. One's another banker-forced-to-learn-English-for-work, which we have a neverending supply of. The other's a 16-year-old high school student, who is really freaking good at English, to the point that it's almost scary. New students are great, but it makes me feel like I need to adjust the classes yet again to fit the students, which is sort of tough.
Plus, next week is Intensive Week, which I'll explain a bit more of sometime later, but which essentially means that some students might take 6-7 classes in one week as opposed to their normal 1-2 -- and with all three of us teachers, rather than the normal one. One of my students signed up for six of Duane's classes and none of mine, and many of my students signed up for Eri's classes, but one of Eri's students signed up for two of my classes and tagged me on the way out all happy like "I will see you in class next week, Deanna-sensei! Yay!"
Oh, and the manager of the Ginza school called our school just to tell me about one of my new students, who had signed up in Ginza but was going to take classes in Akabane. I answered the phone with my now-standard imitation uguisujyou -- aka "high-pitched Japanese female voice", saying "Thank you for calling, this is GEOS Akabane, can I help you?" in Japanese, and the manager replied in Japanese, "Is Deanna-sensei there? I need to talk to her about her new student," and I replied in Japanese, "This is Deanna, do you mean the Mill A one?" The manager replied in English, "Oh, you are Deanna? Good to talk to you. Yes, I need to tell you that..." and so we talked in English while she explained stuff. Before saying goodbye, she said "By the way, why are you so good at Japanese? I thought you were actually a Japanese person when I first talked to you!" I explained, "I'm really not that great, I have lousy vocabulary and grammar, I just have great pronunciation. Your English is much better than my Japanese."
It made me realize that I actually often get fooled by pronunciation as well. I have a few students who have GREAT pronunciation but terrible language skills... and then I have some students who are fantastic English speakers but have some major pronunciation issues. I'm betting that to a random person on the street, the people with better pronunciation would probably seem like better speakers at first, until they came out with strange sentence structures like "I am inconvenienced when I can try expressing myself."
Oh well, time to sleep. Then tomorrow, time to face the 8-year-olds again. Wheeeeee.