"That's what makes it the worst year in sports. What people are coming to realize is the thing we thought was such a great escape has a lot of the same issues we're trying to escape from."
日本の正月の主役である餅を記述
Rice takes prized, symbolic yearend form
Mochi is the most important dish on Japan's New Year menu — just be careful how you eat it
By MAKIKO ITOH
Special to The Japan Times
Shōgatsu (New Year's) is the most important holiday on the Japanese calendar, and the dishes associated with it are laden with symbolic meaning. While the colorful foods of osechi, packed attractively in jūbako (stacking bento boxes), are the flamboyant attention-catchers of the New Year's feast, the quiet star of the show and the food with the most historic and spiritual significance is mochi.
One classic way to eat mochi is as isobe-mochi, square cakes coated in dark soy sauce and wrapped in nori =pic
Mochi is made from mochi-mai, a type of rice known as "glutinous" or "sweet" in English. This short-grain rice is much stickier than the medium-grain uruchi-mai rice that's standard in Japanese cuisine.
Traditionally, mochi-mai was considered to be more desirable than uruchi-mai, and the pounded cake form, mochi, was a highly prized luxury food only affordable to the ruling classes. That's because mochi-mai yields are low, and quite a lot of it is needed to make mochi cakes.
In a sense, mochi is a concentrated version of the food that is revered above all others in Japan: rice.
There are written accounts from the Nara Period (710-794) of mochi as a sacred food. One tale recounts the story of a man who tried to use a mochi cake as a target for archery practice. When he hit the mochi, it magically turned into a white swan and flew away, and shortly thereafter all the rice paddies in the area dried up, causing people to starve. The message is that rice, and the products made from it, should never be wasted.
The first recorded accounts of mochi being used as part of the New Year's festivities comes from the Heian period (794-1185). To the nobles of the Imperial court, the long strands of fresh mochi were thought to symbolize long life, and the hardness of dried mochi was thought to make one's teeth tougher and more durable — good teeth being critical to one's health and well-being. There's even an account of mochi at New Year's in "The Tale of Genji," the oldest novel in the Japanese language.
The most important symbolic New Year's mochi is the kagami-mochi, a decorated stack of two rounded mochi cakes that is put on display. The name, which means "mirror mochi," comes from its shape, which is supposed to be like the round bronze mirrors used by the aristocracy for centuries. (Another theory holds that it looks like a human heart).
The kagami-mochi is usually put out for display on Dec. 28, because the number eight is considered to be an auspicious number in Japanese numerology, and never on the 29th, because the number nine can be read as ku ("suffering"). Some people choose to put out their kagami-mochi on the Taian ("big luck") day closest to the end of the year.
While the kagami-mochi is mainly a display piece, mochi is also the only source of starch allowed during the first three to seven days of the New Year's festivities. (Nowadays a lot of people break with this tradition and start eating regular rice as early as Jan. 2, which is a bit of a shame.)
Besides all the symbolic significance of eating mochi, this traditionally gave a break to the cook of the household too, since she (and it was usually a she) didn't have to prepare and cook the rice, once a significant chore.
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Dried mochi cakes are round in western and southern Japan, and square in the east and north =pic
To prepare the mochi to be consumed during the New Year period, steamed mochi-mai was pounded into mochi on the Dec. 29; the vigorous pounding action was supposed to beat ku (suffering) into submission. The pounded mochi was then spread out onto trays to dry out and cut into squares (kiri-mochi) in eastern and northern parts of Japan, or formed into small round cakes (maru-mochi) elsewhere; these dried-out cakes would last for several days.
Pounding mochi in a hollowed-out wooden log barrel with a big hammer used to be a back-breaking chore. It's still done mostly as a symbolic gesture in many parts of the country, but most people who bother to make their own mochi these days use an electric mochi-pounding machine.
Most mochi consumed at New Year's is prepared as ozōni, a soup with mochi cakes in it. Every region of the country, and possibly every family, has its own recipe for ozōni. For example, in Kyoto it is made with a white miso-soup base using round maru-mochi. In Hakata in Kyushu, pieces of buri (amberjack), taro root, shiitake mushrooms and so on are cooked in a clear soup, eaten with chestnut-wood chopsticks for good luck. And on the coastal areas of Hokkaido, ozōni is often topped with an extravagant variety of fresh local seafood, such as crabmeat and ikura (marinated salmon caviar).
Another way of enjoying dried mochi cakes is to cook them on a special wire grill called a mochi-ami until puffy and lightly browned, then to dunk them in a sauce or coating of your choice. My favorite is the classic isobe-mochi, square kiri-mochi coated in soy sauce and wrapped with a piece of nori seaweed. This kind of mochi can be enjoyed at any time of the year these days, with the easy availability of ready-made dried mochi cakes. And even though the sight of a mochi cake puffing up on a mochi-ami is very atmospheric, cooking the mochi in a toaster oven works just as well.
A word of warning before you dive into your mochi. Every year, several people — most of whom are elderly — are rushed to the emergency room after choking on mochi. Mochi is actually the leading edible cause of death by choking, far more than foods that have been banned as choking hazards in some countries, such as konyaku jellies. Make sure to bite off small bits from the sticky mass and to chew well before swallowing. Keep in mind that the pounded mochi favored in Japan is a lot stickier than mochi made from rice powder, which is the norm in other Asian countries such as China.
There's one final mochi ritual to finish out the New Year: the day of kagami-biraki, or "opening of the mirror," which usually occurs on Jan. 11. The dried out kagami-mochi cakes are broken up with a hammer, never cut with a knife — cutting a sacred offering is considered to bring very bad fortune. The pieces are often cooked in sweet azuki bean-paste soup as shiruko, but when I was growing up my mother would always break up the pieces further, leave them out to dry out completely and then deep-fry them to turn them into kaki-mochi, or crispy rice crackers. A perfect start to a brand new year.
Makiko Itoh is the author of "The Just Bento Cookbook" (Kodansha USA). She writes about bentō lunches at www.justbento.com and about Japanese cooking and more at www.justhungry.com.
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TexaRican254
The Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim, Orange County, California, United States of America, North America, Western Hemisphere, Planet Earth, Universe should contend for the Wild Card this season.
Blainer27
So should the Texas rangers of the Dallas Fort-Worth Metroplex, based in Arlington, Texas, United States of America, North America, Western Hemisphere, Planet Earth, Universe.
Thomas Beatie, a former Hawaiian beauty queen, was born female but underwent sex change surgery in order to wed his partner Nancy legally. As part of the reassignment procedure, the former Tracy LaGondino took male hormones, inducing a beard and an outwardly masculine appearance. He kept his womb and ovaries intact in the hopes of one day having a child. Wife Nancy is infertile.
So when Beatie announced he was expecting the child, of an anonymous sperm donor, a backlash ensued. Critics claimed that as a natural-born woman Beatie was not in fact a man but was merely masquerading as one. But the state of Oregon legally recognizes him as one, and his marriage to Nancy is official and the couple enjoys all the rights and privileges of typical married pairs. He gave birth to his first kid naturally following a 40-hour labor. And now he's pregnant again; his second baby is due June 12, 2009.
■The Twin Brothers who don't know which one is the father, as they were having sex with the same woman
Twin brothers, Raymon and Richard Miller, are the father and uncle to a 3-year-old little girl. The problem is, they don't know which is which. Or who is who. Ramon and Richard have been fighting in court for four years over the paternity of a child; the identical Missouri twins say they were unknowingly having sex with the same woman.
According to the woman's testimony, she had sex with each man on the same day, within hours of each other. When the woman in question, Holly Marie Adams, got pregnant, she named Raymon the father, but he contested and demanded a paternity test, bringing his own brother Richard to court. But the paternity test in this case could not help, as it showed that both brothers have over a 99.9 percent probability of being the daddy— and neither one wants to pay the child support.
■The Man who hired his neighbor to get his wife pregnant, but he was sterile too
In Stuttgart, Germany, a man hired his neighbor to get his wife pregnant. It seems that Demetrius Soupolos, 29, and his former beauty queen wife, Traute, wanted a child badly, but Demetrius was told by a doctor that he was sterile. So, Soupolos hired his neighbor, Frank Maus, 34, to impregnate her. Since Maus was already married and the father of two children, plus looked very much like Soupolos to boot, the plan seemed good. Soupolos paid Maus $2,500 for the job and for three evenings a week for the next six months, Maus tried desperately, a total of 72 different times, to impregnate Traute.
However, when Traute failed to get pregnant after six months, Soupolos was not understanding and insisted that Maus have a medical examination, which he did. The doctor's announcement that Maus was also sterile shocked everyone except his wife, who was forced to confess that Maus was not the real father of their two children. Now Soupolos is suing Maus for breach of contract in an effort to get his money back, but Maus refuses to give it up because he said he did not guarantee conception, but only that he would give an honest effort.
■The Man who fathered a child from a 22-year-old sperm sample
In June 2008, Chris Biblis, a former leukaemia patient who had his sperm frozen as a teenager, fathered a baby after doctors successfully thawed his sample a record 22 years later.
Chris was 16 when doctors told him that he needed radiotherapy that would leave him sterile and recommended before going ahead with the life-saving treatment that they put a sample of his sperm into cryogenic storage for future use. Now aged 38, he is celebrating the birth of a healthy baby daughter, Stella, who was conceived after scientists injected a defrosted sperm into an egg from his wife, Melodie, and implanted it in her uterus.
The 22-year lapse between storage in April 1986 and conception in June 2008 is a world record, according to specialists at the US fertility clinic who carried out the procedure.
■The President who admitted to be the father of a child conceived while he was still a Catholic bishop
In April 2009, Paraguay's president and former bishop, Fernando Lugo, admitted he is the father of a child conceived while he was still a Roman Catholic bishop. Lugo, 57, renounced his status as bishop in 2006 to run for president but it was not until July 2008 that Pope Benedict XVI gave him unprecedented permission to resign, relieving him of his chastity vows.
The president admitted he had a relationship with Viviana Carrilllo, 26, which began when she was 16 and the paternity of her son Guillermo Armindo, 2, born when he was still the bishop. He finally came out five days after lawyers for Carrillo announced they were filing a paternity suit against him.
■The Man who paid $20k on child support over a daughter he never had
In New Mexico, Steve Barreras was forced to pay a total of $20,000 for a daughter that never existed. After getting divorced to Viola Trevino, Viola claimed to be pregnant with Steve's child. This was in spite of the fact that Barreras had a vasectomy in 1998 and claimed that Trevino had tubal ligation in 1978.
Trevino fabricated a daughter named "Stephanie Renee", who she claimed was born in 1999, and obtained a baptismal certificate, birth certificate, Medicare card and Social Security card for the fictitious girl. Mr. Barreras' adult daughter, Eve Barreras, assisted her mother in the scam by filing a fraudulent birth certificate for the phantom daughter with Vital Statistics while she worked at St. Joseph's Northeast Hospital.
In 2002, Trevino was able to persuade a court to order Steve to pay child support for the fabricated daughter, by falsifying DNA evidence. When the judge demanded to see Trevino's daughter in December 2004, she went to a local mall where she persuaded a grandmother and her 2 year old granddaughter that they were "going to go see Santa Claus", but instead went to the courthouse with the 2 year old girl and attempted to pass her off before the judge as her own.
Mr. Barreras, the paternity fraud victim, successfully sued blood laboratory Mobile Blood Services for their role in the DNA hoax. The DNA came from adult daughter Eve Barreras with help of lab employee Pamela Flores. Viola Trevino was sentenced to 16 months in a federal prison in Arizona for claiming the "girl" on tax returns. Trevino owes the IRS over $2200 for the fraud and Barreras $26,000 in child support and lawyer's fees.
Meet Alfie Patten, the British schoolboy who became famous for being "Britain's youngest dad" at the age of 12, then found out he's not the baby's father.
“I take responsibility and will look after baby Maisie like a grown up father. I am the only one who slept with Maisie's mother Chantelle," Alfie told the media whilst holding what he then thought was his baby daughter. But a British tabloid reported the results of a DNA test that showed that he was in fact not the father of Chantelle Stedman's baby girl.
Chantelle had insisted that she was in love with the babyfaced schoolboy and that he had taken her virginity. However, half a dozen boys from Eastbourne in England claimed to have slept with the 15-year-old, who fell pregnant at the age of 14, and prompted Alfie to take a paternity test, with humiliating results.
■Anna Nicole's million dollar baby, and the four men who claimed paternity
At least four men filed petitions claiming to be the real father of the Anna Nicole Smith's baby, who stands to inherit many millions of dollars.
These are as follows: Howard K. Stern (Anna's long time lawyer, friend and lately lover), Larry Birkhead (a celebrity photographer who was linked to the glamour girl for almost two years), Zsa Zsa Gabor's former husband (who, out of the blue, decided to come clean about his 'amorous' relationship to Anna) and one of her bodyguards. And another man with whom Anna was linked in the past and who stands equal chances of having fathered Danni: a man who is now spending the last months of his sentence in prison - Mark 'Hollywood' Hatten. Mark stated that he could be the father of Anna's child, since she once asked him to make a 'sperm donation' to the 'Anna Nicole Smith sperm bank', a thing to which he immediately complied since there wasn't anything he wouldn't have done for her. As a consequence of this battle, even Anna Nicole's burial had to be put on hold.
Finally, after all the noise and DNA tests, ex-boyfriend Larry Birkhead was proven the father of the baby girl, although his rival, Howard K. Stern, had been caring for 7-month-old Dannielynn since the former Playboy Playmate's sudden death, and his name is on her birth certificate.
■The Twins kids who came up from different parents after test tube mix-up
Wilma and Willem Stuart are a Dutch couple who had been, unsuccessfully, trying to conceive for years, before they decided to try IVF. They soon learned they would be parents of twins.
But when the two boys were born, Koen had blue eyes, dark hair and pink skin, Tuen had dark eyes dark hair and brown skin. A DNA test revealed that Koen was the Stuarts child but Tuen was not Willem's. The report of the investigation has not been made public, but speculation is that a piece of lab equipment called a pipette, like a large eyedropper, had been used twice, causing another man's sperm to be mixed with Willem's.
The hospital called it a “deeply regrettable mistake”. The Stuarts remembered there was a black couple in the waiting room the same day during the IVF process. The hospital located the man and confirmed he was Tuen's biological father. Although he was under no obligation to meet his son he never knew he had, he did when Koen was 18 months old. The biological father only looked at him from a distance and didn't try to claim him and was comfortable that the Stuarts loved the child, and let them continue raising him.
■The Man who has to pay child support, but he's not the father
Sixteen months after his divorce, Richard Parker, a Florida resident, discovered the child he was paying support for was not his via DNA testing. Florida justices ruled 7-0 against him, stating that Parker must continue to pay $1,200 a month in child support because he had missed the one-year post divorce deadline for filing his lawsuit. His court-ordered payments would total more than $200,000 over 15 years to support a child she had with another man.
ぜんぜん面白くない冗句
****
It's Murphy's Law if you don't get the joke in Japanese
Monday, Jan. 23, 2012
By MARK SCHREIBER
Special to The Japan Times
If you miss the punch line to a Japanese joke, don't feel bad. It's simply unrealistic to use something as elusive as humor to measure your ability to understand a foreign language.
On the other hand, knowing what makes people laugh is a great incentive for language study.
Years ago, I found the lessons in my university's Japanese textbook rather dull, and set out to supplement them with more amusing materials.
I was reminded of those efforts last August, when I read the お悔やみ (okuyami, obituary) of veteran TV entertainer Takehiko Maeda (前田武彦), who had passed away at the age of 82.
I'd enjoyed a book by Maeda — long out of print, alas — titled 「毒舌教室」 ("Dokuzetsu Kyoshitsu," "Lessons in Poison-tongue [malicious language]"), published by Kobunsha in 1969.
Maeda's "lessons" were basically sarcastic jibes or insults aimed at people in different occupations. One I recall, directed at a yakitori (grilled chicken) shop operator, involved a customer complaining about the grisly texture of the skewered meat by inquiring, この鳥、餓死したのか (kono tori, gashi shita no ka? Did this chicken die from starvation?). To which the proprietor laconically retorted, いや、 コレラで... (iya, korera de..., no, [it died] of cholera ...).
Japanese, to their credit, do not like to be left out of a good gag. One of the most successful examples of marketing American humor here was the translation of Arthur Bloch's book, "Murphy's Law and Other Reasons Why Things Go Wrong."
Murphy's Law postulates "If anything can go wrong, it will." It's said to have originated from an American engineer named Edward Murphy, who was working on deceleration research for the U.S. Air Force back in the early 1950s.
In Japanese, Murphy's Law is rendered as 失敗する可能性のあるものは、失敗する (Shippai suru kanōsei no aru mono wa, shippai suru, a thing with the possibility of failure will fail). While not a literal word-for-word rendering, this does a good job of conveying the meaning while retaining the brevity and irony of the original. By contrast, a well-known commentary to the law, マーフィーは楽天家だった (Māfī wa rakutenka datta, Murphy was an optimist), could be translated directly.
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Translated and published by ASCII in 1993, Bloch's book was a resounding success, with more than 2 million copies sold. I suppose that had something to do with the timing of the book's release: It appeared just after the collapse of Japan's バブル経済 (baburu keizai, economic bubble). And what better way to describe a catastrophic economic crash than to invoke Murphy's Law?
Curious to know how ASCII pulled it off, I visited the office in Shibuya Ward, Tokyo, and met editor Satoshi Endo, who told me that the translation of Bloch's book had gone through several stages of painstaking 試行錯誤 (shikō sakugo, trial and error) to make sure the meaning and the humor would shine through.
As one example, let's take one of the 選択的重力の法則 (sentakuteki jūryoku no hōsoku, laws of selective gravity), which states in Japanese, バターを塗った面を下にして食パンが着地する確率は、カーペットの値段に比例する (batā wo nutta men wo shita ni shite shoku-pan ga chakuchi suru kakuritsu wa, kāpetto no nedan ni hirei suru, the probability of the bread falling with the buttered side down is directly proportional to the cost of the carpet).
Just as in the English, the Japanese phrasing, while economical, sounds slightly もったいぶった (motaibutta, pompous) and ばかげた (bakageta, absurd) by turns, taking an otherwise trivial situation and expressing it as a universal truth.
Actually, Japanese have their own native sayings that view the human condition with irony and wit, such as 転べばべったり糞の上 (korobeba bettari kuso no ue, if you fall down, it'll be smack dab on top of excrement). Another expression about how things can go from bad to worse (similar to the English "when it rains, it pours") would be 泣きっ面に蜂 (nakkittsura ni hachi, bees [stinging] a crying face).
Following up on the success of the first book, ASCII invited readers to formulate and submit their original observations, which in 1994 it published in「続・マーフィーの法則：現代日本の知性」("Zoku Māfī no Hosoku: Gendai Nihon no Chisei," "Murphy's Law Continued: The Sophistication of Contemporary Japan"), featuring several hundred contributions.
One that I liked was "Nishida's law of natural shop decrease," which postulates: 二日酔いの前日に行った店の数は、思い出せる数より一つ多い (futsuka yoi no zenjitsu ni itta mise no kazu wa, omoidaseru kazu yori hitotsu ooi, when hung over, the number of shops where you went [to drink] the previous night will be one more than the number you can recollect).
Truly, the disciples of the 日本マーフィー普及会 (Nihon Māfī Fukyu-kai, Japan Association for Dissemination of Murphy) have proved themselves to be apt pupils.
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Why buy a cow when you can get milk for free? and Why buy a cow when milk is so cheap?
Prov. Why pay for something that you can get for free otherwise. (Sometimes used to describe someone who will not marry because sex without any commitment is so easy to obtain. Jocular and crude.) I don't have a car because someone always gives me a ride to work. Why buy a cow when you can get milk for free? Mary told her daughter, "You may think that boy will marry you because you're willing to sleep with him, but why should he buy a cow if he can get milk for free?"
Angelswillwinthewest:
why are you all hating on Albert he's a good person , and he plays the game the right way ...... no inhancements...more
hornsnrangers:
enhancements?
Angelswillwinthewest:
whatever you know what I mean ...more
texasluva:
Well he certainly needs an enhancement, attachment, or something otherwise the Angels will remain in the Basement for the moment or "The Machine" will need a replacement so the fans will get some appeasement for some sort of achievement. He needs some improvement for an endorsement and investment by the Angels. Called Overpayment!
It said the personal files showed that, during one of the most significant manhunts in history, bin Laden was out of touch with the day-to-day operations of various terrorist groups inspired by al-Qaeda. He was "not in sync on the operational level with its so-called affiliates," researchers wrote. "Bin Laden enjoyed little control over either groups affiliated with al Qaeda in name or so-called fellow travelers."
AFI's 100 Years...100 Movie Quotes From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Part of the AFI 100 Years... series, AFI's 100 Years... 100 Movie Quotes is a list of the top 100 movie quotations in American cinema. The American Film Institute revealed the list on June 21, 2005, in a three-hour television program on CBS. The program was hosted by actor Pierce Brosnan and had commentary from many Hollywood actors and filmmakers.
A jury consisting of 1,500 film artists, critics, and historians selected "Frankly, my dear, I don't give a damn," spoken by Clark Gable in the Civil War epic Gone with the Wind as the most memorable American movie quotation of all time.
is a tool used to crush, grind, and mix solid substances (trituration). The pestle is a heavy club-shaped object, the end of which is used for crushing and grinding. The mortar is a bowl, typically made of hard wood, ceramic or stone. The substance to be ground is placed in the mortar and ground, crushed or mixed with the pestle. Sometimes referred to as an "Apothecary Grinder" by individuals unfamiliar with its use, the proper historical name is "mortar and pestle".
From some dialogue of the movie 'Easy Rider'(1969)
"This used to be a hell of a good country. I can't understand what's gone wrong with it." He observes that Americans talk a lot about the value of freedom, but are actually afraid of anyone who truly exhibits it.
Pulling an all nighter is commonly believed to be when you sat up until the sun rises doing homework then sleep in the morning. it is not. pulling an all nighter is when you stay awake for any reason whatsoever all night (give or take one hour) and continue into the next day.
Once I pulled an all nighter that lasted over 48 hours. I pulled one last night because I had a friend over. She passed out at 7 am.
REASONS TO PULL AN ALL NIGHTER:
• studying
• your schedule is so busy you get home from classes at 9 (my case at age 12) and have to do hw
• you're an insomniac
• partyyyy!!
• other
Chinese despair at endless food-safety scares
China is investigating claims vegetable sellers are spraying cabbage with harmful formaldehyde to keep it fresh, an official said on May 8, in yet another food-safety scare to hit the country.
comments
Christopher Glenn · Top Commenter · Badger, California
The water to farmers in California has been cut off by the EPA to preserve a worthless minnow. Senators Boxer and Feinstein support the eco-terrorists who want to turn California back into a desert instead of the food basket of the world that it is. Then we can buy all our food from China and Mexico, where we sell all the pesticides that we outlaw for use in the US. Smart plan.
mcrawspace4 (signed in using yahoo)
I understand your point of view but I don't think that was the case when all of the orange groves disappeared from Orange County. They were replaced by housing developments and strip malls in the name of profit and tax revenue. There just isn't enough profit in a food basket, that is also why California farmland is shrinking. Just like everything else, it's cheaper to buy from China and boosting profits is all corporations and governments care about.
The French Riviera surrounds the principality of Monaco with a total population of over two million. It also contains the seaside resorts of Cap-d'Ail, Beaulieu-sur-Mer, Saint-Jean-Cap-Ferrat, Villefranche-sur-Mer, Antibes, Juan-les-Pins, Cannes, Saint-Raphaël, Fréjus, Sainte Maxime and Saint-Tropez, It is also home to a high-tech/science park or technopole at Sophia-Antipolis (north of Antibes) and a research and technology center at the University of Nice Sophia-Antipolis. The region has 35,000 students, of whom 25% are working towards a doctorate.
