Thursday

I think I am catching a cold and have been tired lately, but I woke up this morning in a really good mood. I think it’s the fact that this is the sunniest day we have had since last fall...it feels like spring J I am just trying to lay low this week and avoid letting this bug get to me (the marathon is a week away, so any illness is potentially dangerous to the running plan).
Scandinavian Cooking Class this Weekend
Saturday is also my Norwegian Baking Class with the Harimacho International Friendship Association. You have to RSVP for the cooking events, and I guess mine is closed, which is both good and bad. I know three of my foreign girlfriends are coming (I am going to admit I need to reinforcements… I like cooking, but it’s not my specialty), so is Yuki (the young Japanese girl that I want to tutor me… she’s really cool), as well as quite a few of the Japanese women I know from town. I did a practice lesson with my English club yesterday, but we only made the Kransekake (tiered, Norwegian wedding cake).
I’ve made the lefse at Norwegian camp many times (um, and over an open fire), so I am less nervous about that one and just wanted to practice getting the rings of the Kransekake down. I would say it went pretty well yesterday, but not awesome. It turns out we actually didn’t need the baking rings (almost ordered them off e-bay), but we should have made the rings a little thicker, as evidenced by the flat appearance of the rings on the cake and the bunches of extra dough we were left with. Timing went well, though, and my kids understood what to do. I think I’ll be fine with the IFA… fingers crossed! In addition to kransekake and lefse, I also decided to make “fancy” smorbrod (literally “butter bread”, but essentially an open-faced sandwich) which is practically a staple in the Norwegian diet and good to serve for around lunch-time.
Dolphins
On a random note, I don’t know if you have been reading the international news lately, but Japan has been in the headlines a lot for its involvement in international whaling and especially for the practice of slaughtering and eating dolphins. The standard Japanese response (well, the people BBC or CNN interviews) to dolphin slaughter is that catching and killing them for food is comparable to people eating cows in America. Interesting stance; people in India may agree with that? I guess you could look at eating dog in parts of Asia (actually illegal in Shanghai...), too, but a common argument again the dolphin slaughter is that they are like humans in a lot of ways. The reason I bring this up is that the textbook lesson one of my second-year classes was working on today was all about dolphins. It was actually referring to them as intelligent creatures that we are lucky to share this earth with (or something halfway cheesy, along those lines). These are government-approved textbooks, which does make me wonder what the consensus on dolphin slaughter (and whaling?) really is in this country. What does the average Joe (ok, or Daisuke) think about it? I would venture to guess that most of my students have not read the stories about Japan’s controversial role in both markets or the criticism of their country for being the largest dolphin-slaughterers in the world...Just some food for thought (no pun intended).