Bats and frogs and fish, oh my

We went for a short walk last night - himself persuaded me to go out just as it was getting dark. I didn't need much persuading as I'd been indoors all day working. I was a little worried when I saw a flash of lightning while waiting for the train, but I'll get back to that...

It was spitting rain when we got to the station two up from ours that links to the lovely woodland/riverside trail. We crossed under the platform (where some police were talking to what looked like a group of travellers, but it didn't seem confrontational) and across the stream to walk under the trees - which were full of bats! They were wheeling and swinging between the trees and the water, and I'm sure they were having a feast as the air was full of midges. They looked quite small and there seemed to be quite a few (well, there could have been two of them following us too). We carried on as the rain wasn't so bad, and just as we were having second thoughts we found one of the created ponds fenced off at the side of the path. There had been frog spawn there before so we decided to look and see if there were any frogs now. Himself shone his bike light in... there must have been about 20 frogs. We don't know if the light set them off or what happened, but they started croaking in a huge range of tones and pitches and frequencies and we just stood there and laughed in the wind and rain.

We eventually decided to cut back across to the station one up from ours and get the train the rest of the way back. But it was well worth getting wet for.

In other news, I braved the fish counter today. Although I still have problems understanding Swiss German, it does seem to be true that if you speak standard/High/German German you will be understood. Not that it's that difficult to ask for 200g of wild salmon. When you can point for half of it. It was on sale and looks amazing. I'm going to have it for dinner tonight with some organic courgettes and (normal) mushrooms. Strawberries are in too! I got 500g of them for 1.90 CHF (down from 2.50) which was nice. Especially as I paid almost that much for a single red pepper last week.

Banditry

Once again I have made out like it's my birthday and Christmas combined at the Swiss Japanese Friendship Society. We went to their bowling event today - himself came third overall, I came last. Yes, my bowling really is that bad.

He got a medal, a bag, a poster, a can of "neri-an" (red bean paste), three food bowl covers and a box of toothpicks. I got a scarf and pendant, three small cases (all flourescent orange) and a box with seven white bowls! Mr. Yamaguchi bought my drink while I wasn't looking and the Society picked up half the tab when we went for pizza afterwards, and Mr. Yamaguchi drove us all home. He's doing an origami course nearby in October. I am so signed up for it...

But of course

A live hockey match in a mini-stadium. Inside Zurich Hauptbahnhof.

Edit: Apparently they also do beach volleyball in the station. With sand.

Just wow.

I was extremely touched to find that a letter from a client in Japan, which I assumed had a signed contract in it, actually contained a gift of an A4 plastic folder with white rabbits and a sheet of stickers illustrating the town of Kawagoe. I'd hoped to meet him while I was in Japan but wasn't able to, and he'd bought these for me as omiyage.

How sweet. I almost don't know what to say.

Just in case

For those of you who absolutely have to see an effigy of a farmer snowman being blown to nothing, the photos are up!

No groundhogs, please, we're Swiss.

Zurich has its own traditional method of weather forecasting, the Sechseläuten (Sächsilüüte?) (pronounced a bit like "sex-er-loiter"), which involves putting an effigy of a snowman packed with explosives on top of a bonfire. The faster the head blows off, the better summer will be. This is a holiday in Zurich (not anywhere else) with shops closed and himself on a half day.

In the event that that the effigy does not go off, it will be assisted - witness the description of the 2008 burning on the link above, where the fire brigade used their considerable knowledge and a supply of kerosene to help it along. It also involves fleets of guild members in period dress on horseback distributing flowers around the city.

I may just put "busy" in my calendar and go see what photos I can get.

Ikea does manga?

Well, it's close. Saw these in the wonderful Ikea fabric section today. Anyone for Godzilla prints and origami moose?

Just looking at these again - is that the Little Mermaid in the bottom left of the print? Is Godzilla destroying Copenhagen?

Sushi!

I promised a friend a photo of the chirimen (crepe) sushi I got at the Chirimen Museum in Kyoto - here they are! One tamago-nigiri (a slice of Japanese omelette on rice with a band of seaweed) and one inari-zushi (a cured tofu pocket stuffed with rice, dusted with black sesame seeds).

Lazing on a Sunday afternoon

Well, kind of. It's also our day to use the washing room, and I'm having a general tidy up since I can't find space to put my mug down on my desk any more. But other than that, it's sunny outside and the birds are loving the food we put out, so there's much fun to be had sitting inside in a sunbeam watching them flutter about. Himself is in charge of identifying species. So far, we've had blackbirds, starlings, blue tits and finches. There are also bumblebees flying around as well as midges and a resurgence of spiders. I'm sure the woodland cockroaches will follow in due course. These are related to the despised and exterminated cockroaches, but apparently cannot live indoors and only come into houses because they're attracted by light. The fly screens I bought in Frankfurt last year are still up, so hopefully they will keep them out this year.

In other news - not much. I cleared Endless Ocean 2 and am now doing side quests. I need to do more tidying up and shredding. I haven't got any further on registering, other than the Migrationsamt saying I don't need to give the community office any documentation about work. I hope the community office doesn't have a different take on it. Himself is out testing his new road bike by seeing if he can go around the lake.

Time to empty the dryer and put the next load on.

Cats. Ants. Birds. など。Etw.

We have been feeding the birds recently, and himself is complaining that they wake him up in the morning. You can't have it both ways. It's a lot of fun watching them scamper around the garden and selectively pull sunflower seeds out of the feed and hammer them open on the tree.

On the other hand, we've also noticed ants in the flat. Time to start being ruthless about clearing up in the kitchen.

And seen in Migros today - catnip!

Success!

Behold the chocolate matcha muffins! The recipe is fairly fiddly and only makes 6, but they were delicious and very fluffy. Stuck to the silicone cups though.

Our first fondue on Sunday went very well. I had terrible memories of fondue from school ski trips, but enjoyed this one very much. We had the matcha cake I picked up in Narita duty free for desert - highly recommend it if you're passing through there!

So today it's back to being ready for work if it should arrive and also trying - again - to register here. I've spent the morning reading around what I'm supposed to do and have just confused myself again. I may go back to the town hall just to see if I speak to someone else and they tell me something different. I've had a few leads to try from different people, but still no clear path. All I can do is keep on trying, I suppose.

And I need more matcha powder. And a haircut. And to write loads of thank you emails.

Matcha! II

Back from our trip in to Zurich, and himself has everything he needs to do a fondue tomorrow. We just need to make the place look less like a bomb hit. ^_^;

In the interests of spreading around all that matcha goodness, here are the recipes I've found:
Matcha chocolate swirl cake/cupcakes
Matcha latte
Matcha cheesecake and fresh chocolate

Matcha!

After tasting so many tasty matcha (powdered green tea used in the tea ceremony) things in Japan - especially the matcha chocolate in Uji - I went and found some recipes online for matcha chocolate cake and ended up finding one for the highly desirable matcha latte as well!

Next step was to find some matcha powder and for that we headed into Zurich to check the wonderland that is the basement food shop in Globus. They had some matcha milk chocolate, which I snapped up. They had matcha powder too - from Uji! - for the exorbitant sum of 37 CHF.

I went to the Nishi Japanese food shop - they were closed, but I could see on their site that they have matcha powder for 13 CHF. I can either go there on Tuesday and get it, or else use the "green tea" mix I was given by Nozaki-sensei which appears to be matcha with added sugar. I can work with that...

[Note: my "green tea" mix appears to be tea with ground brown rice. Not sure how they'll do, but they make a very nice tea!]

Easter means pandas!

At himself's office anyway. I got back safely, stayed up for a bit then slept like the dead. Having a real bed helps lot!

On Thursday I amazingly woke up at 8am, got up and cleared the 200-odd emails that had arrived over the holidays and started listening to my new Asian Kung-Fu Generation CDs. I even went and tagged and filed the several hundred unsorted ones left over from when I moved my stored emails over.

Then it was a quick shower and in to himself's office for lunch and possibly my German lesson. It wasn't clear if it was happening because I was the only person scheduled to be there and the office was having a half day. The Berlitz office were utterly clueless. The lady at reception told me that our teacher had left but we had a new one in a different room. Maybe. Her info from Berlitz was out of date as well.

It turned out to be correct and there were three of us there, one guy from my class had got his holiday dates wrong and a guy from another class joined ours - which the new teacher hadn't heard about. I survived it remarkably well and hung around while himself finished up some things, then home to scan through photos and finally watch Ponyo before crashing.

Up early again today and trying a post from my phone here as it also has a camera. Not used to the keyboard yet though!