[here’s my postdated entry for Saturday]

The Mukaihara matsuri (festival) was postponed from Saturday to Sunday because of the incoming typhoon. Originally I figured I’d head into Hiroshima on Sunday, but guess I’ll have to wait until next weekend. Didn’t want to try today with the storm coming (the trains sometimes shutdown during typhoons).

So I spent the first part of the day finishing straightening up and otherwise settling into the house. Its amazing just how many nooks and crannies this place has. Just about every interior wall has a closet or cabinet in it someplace. And in those there are all kinds of interesting things that my predecessor, James, left for me (such as a snowboard that’s seen better days). Should mention that James was quite good to me, even though he wasn’t able to be around to meet me. In addition to a very helpful handbook explaining how stuff around the house works, he left more than a few packages of foodstuffs, some of which I’m still trying to figure out how to prepare. Hey, he even left me a few cans of beer and bottles of sake. What more can ya ask for?

After that, I did a bit more food shopping at another of the several small grocery stores in town (so far I’ve done most of my shopping at the largest, A-Coop). Even picked up some of the locally produced miso soup paste. Popped back home (just around the corner) to put the food away, then went looking for a flashlight, one thing the house didn’t have and might be useful considering the threatening weather. Ended up finding one at the electronics store, DeoDeo. They’re going to be loving to see me there, considering I’ve got on my to-buy-from-them list a cell phone, internet service, printer/scanner and satellite TV. On this trip, in addition to the flashlight and some DVD-Rs, I placed the order for the printer/scanner and picked up info on the satellite (gotta get more than the 8 rather uninteresting channels I’ve got at the moment). They even let me check my email. The lady there has been quite helpful and between her fractured English and my very fractured Japanese, we’ve been able to figure out what I am looking for so far.

Once I returned home, the rain finally picked up beyond just a light sprinkle and with a little more wind too. Watched a couple episodes from the first season of Babylon 5 and then contemplated dinner. For the most part so far I’ve been eating either prepared meals from the grocery or frozen dinners (guess not all that different than in Tucson). This evening I decided I should experiment just a little and decided to fix rice and miso soup (well, I did say “just a little”, Iron Chef this isn’t yet). The kitchen has a rice cooker, and while the James’s guide has what the buttons do, it doesn’t include amounts to put in. I think its one of those fuzzy-logic ones, so I figured if I put in roughly equal amounts of rice and water it’d figure things out on its own. Didn’t come out too bad, perhaps just a little overcooked. On the miso, I remembered to get some konbu (dried kelp) to make the broth, but forgot to get some bonito (fish flakes), so not quite right. Also forgot to add the paste bit-by-bit, so it was a bit clumpy. Oh, well, with practice I guess. Still tasted pretty good, a bit different than most one gets in Tucson.

As I was doing this, the storm picked up quite a bit. Since it was dark, it was kinda hard to tell just how strong it was. It definitely was making the flags and banners whip up pretty good and the TV weather seemed to mention Hiroshima prefecture quite a bit, so I guess it came through here fairly directly. House has seemed to fair well, just a small leak down the wall by the kitchen window. It was probably a bit harder than a strong monsoon rain in Tucson and lasted something like 3-4 hours. Didn’t seem as severe as the tropical storm I weathered in Seabrook (but then, that was right on the coast and I’m quite a ways inland now). I think I may have noticed the eye pass over around 8:50p, it’d been fairly noisy, then rather quiet in comparison, then picked up again. Also didn’t notice any trains for a couple hours during the storm, there are usually one or two an hour that pass by the house. Probably got delayed by the weather.

Its quieted down again now around 10p and I’ve had a couple bowls of rice and miso. Have to see how the festival tomorrow afternoon goes.

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