Though we are in a foreign country, I didn't want my beloved's birthday to go unnoticed. I bought him a present that I knew would be late in getting here since I ordered it over the internet (It was Munchkin!!!); so I had to do something a little extra to make his birthday special. I decided I would bake Kris a cake and bring it to him during work. Sounds easy enough, right? Welcome to Japan as a foreigner, where even the easiest tasks are difficult. This adventure started out simply enough: I found easy cake and icing recipes online that had good reviews. Though our oven (LINK) is smaller than most US microwaves, I knew I could use the mixer and American oven in the immersion school's staff kitchen bake the cake.
I knew it would be a challenge to find the ingrediants I needed (baking powder, powdered sugar, and vanilla) since they would be in Japanese. So I did a little Google research and looked up the Kanji, Romanji, and Katakana of these items (yes, Japan has to be complicated with 4 different alphabet systems). I figured if I went prepared, I would be okay (especially since vanilla sounds like "bahneerah" and baking powder is simply "baking powderuu"). Well, the vanilla was a success. The baking powder and powdered sugar were not. What I thought was baking powder actually turned out to be baking soda (which I found out after I had made the cake). When I was mixing the icing and it wouldn't absorb the liquid, I decided to taste the "powdered sugar" -- and discoverd that it was actually CORNSTARCH! (Coornstarchee!) Since we don't have a blender or coffee grinder, I had to just go with regular sugar. The result was a rather grainy icing that looked exactly like...well, you can figure it out...(I liked it, Lauren is just a perfectionist. :-) )
Though the cake smelled very good, I was embarrassed to walk into Kris' office with this poor speciman. As my friend Bethany said, "It's kind of like a Charley Brown cake." But I did it anyway because I knew that the thought is what mattered most. And though it looked rather sorry, it didn't taste too bad (especially with 2 wrong ingrediants!). And I think Kris really enjoyed his surprise; or, at least he seemed to. (It was great! She had the whole office singing happy B-day to me.)
Eunice, the other 3rd grade teacher (until Greg gets back), suggested that we take our classes in to sing to Kris. She had a fake cake with real candles that she lit. Our kids got a big kick out of sneaking into Kris' room and singing to him. He told the students that he was 128 years old! (It's amazing how easy it is to get 2nd and 3rd graders to laugh. Even I can do it.)
For Kris' birthday dinner, we followed the new teacher birthday tradition of going out for Korean barbecue with some other teachers. Since the usual place had significant damage from the earthquake (see here), we tried out a new place down the road. We were surprised to find an all-you-can-eat platter for pretty cheap (for Japan). It was heaping with meat! It was strips of pork and what we thought was chicken. The "chicken" was really chewy and fatty -- and turned out to be pork intestine!!!! (Yum! It actually tasted good, it was just really chewy.) No wonder the platter was so inexpensive! Kris, Aaron, and Bethany didn't seem to mind it and had several helpings, but Sarah, Alycia, Caitlin, and I couldn't stomach it (but at least I tried it). And since it was Kris' birthday, they gave him a free BOTTLE of wine!
It was a birthday celebration filled with the unexpected!
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