The Zappos ad is quite specifically targeted – usually showing me various colors of Onitsuka Tiger’s Ultimate 81 shoes. I went once to their site to see if they had in stock the same color as the pair I have now (which is great but wearing out). They didn’t so I moved on without buying anything. With Little Miss Matched, I don’t get a targeted ad but I do get the same ad on pretty much every website I visit. After awhile, it is not only boring and monotonous but unnerving and creepy.

So I wrote them a letter today:

Dear Little Miss Matched,

Sincerely,
Christiana

Fortunately, the New York Times ran this lovely article full of cucumber recipes, including one for Cooked Curried Cucumbers (which has a much lovelier photo of the finished product, I might add. As a photographer I should be ashamed but hey, it’s my kitchen and I was ready to eat.)

I only made slight modifications to the recipe – I didn’t bother to scoop out the seeds, I used rice wine for the cup of dry white wine and I also probably added 1/3 more curry powder.

Postprandial Notes: A nice, lightly spiced, refreshing side dish or condiment as part of a larger spread. They went really well with burgers. I think they could have used a touch more heat or maybe sharpness, which the original white wine would definitely have provided. That said, they are definitely a new summer staple.

There have to be about a billion (almost typed a dillion – ha!) pickle recipes. I am pretty openminded about my pickles – I like most except really sweet bread and butter types. The pickling cucumbers were pretty big and looked like they’d already been off the vine for a few days so I decided to go with something simple with ingredients I already had on hand.

To be honest, the real challenge was finding a big enough container – I had just enough large enough pickles that they didn’t neatly fit into any of the jars I had on hand. After a 30 minute crash course study of cucumber volumes in various glass containers, I decided to use my ceramic nabe.

Ingredients

• 3 pounds-ish pickling Cucumbers
• 8 sprigs of fresh dill, chopped
• 5 fat cloves of garlic, sliced fine & slightly crushed
• 2 cups of vinegar
• 2 cups of water
• 2 tbsps of non-iodized salt

Preparation

1. Put pickles in a suitable storage container, ideally not metal or plastic. Chop the dill and slice the garlic and throw in container.
2. Mix water, vinegar, and salt in a bowl and whisk until salt is completely dissolved. Pour over cucumbers.
3. Close container and park in the back of the fridge for at least 2 weeks before eating.

The pickles about 15 days in. Sampling data was taken at this point and results compiled below.

Postprandial Notes: I used a mixture of apple cider and white wine vinegar for my first batch. They were received pretty well but they’re a bit on the sweet side for my taste. I think I’ll go with a different vinegar next time. I may throw some raw onions and mustard corns in as well. For a different opinion, let’s have a look at Wayne below.

In the famous words of some random kid, “He likes it! Hey Mikey!”

“Well, I’m working on this project called 100 Casualties. I go out early Sunday mornings and take pictures of all the trash that people have left behind from Saturday Night. The idea is that people are represented by the trash they leave behind.”

There was a man sitting next to her at the bus stop. He was wearing perfectly round pale tortoiseshell glasses and a three-piece light brown tweed suit. He nodded in understanding.

“Like this medication on the ground,” I said, leaning over with the camera.

“First time I’ve seen that,” he said, looking off into the distance.

I stood up and she looked right at me with purpose, “Are you gonna clean it up?”

You know that sound a record needle makes when you take it off the record? My brain just did that. And then my artist’s ego spun off into the distance like an untied balloon and sputtered out on the ground, completely deflated.

“Well, to be honest, I have to work fast. Because the guys who do clean it up will be here in about 30 minutes.” I said, lamely.

“Hmpff.” she said, not entirely satisfied, “Well, there’s some more medicine here. It’s all around the bus stop.”

I took a couple more pictures and crossed the street, wading through point-counterpoint conflicting waves of guilt and reason on the way.

Guilt: “She’s right. I should come back and clean up some of this stuff up next week.”
Reason: “There’s a whole team of guys that do that – it’s not your responsibility.”
Guilt: “Yeah, but isn’t it hypocritical to photograph the junk other people leave in your neighborhood and not throw it away?”
Reason: “It’s not like I’m the one throwing a bunch of litter around – why should I have to clean up after other people? Besides, I’m always picking up stuff in front of my hou-”
Art: “Wow! a dime! I gotta get a picture of that…”

The Long Story: From July 2004 to July 2007, I worked as an Assistant English Teacher (ALT) at two elementary schools and a junior high in rural Okayama, Japan. One of the questions I was most frequently asked by adults was “Why did you choose to come to Okayama?” It’s important to note that even Okayama folks knew they lived in a place that everyone else considered a cultural backwater and were amused that anyone would choose to live there (especially coming, as I did, from not only the United States but Los Angeles, home of movie stars and Disneyland).

To be honest, I didn’t really choose Okayama. The JET Programme application allows for applicants to “request” three areas they’d like to go if a teaching position exists but there’s no guarantee of placement. I’d done quite a bit of research about JET and knew that my chances of teaching in inaka (“the boonies”> were high. As an artist, I thought it might be interested to learn a Japanese art so I chose three places that were famous for pottery. Okayama ended up first on my list because, not only is it famous for Bizen-yaki, it has great weather. In fact, the weather in Okayama is nearly identical to the weather of my hometown, Washington, DC.

Of course, when I first arrived in Japan, I didn’t have the language skills to really all that so a typical conversation went like this:

日本人：なぜ岡山県に来たか？
Japanese person: Why did you come to Okayama?
私：天気がいい。
Me: The weather’s good.

This would always elicit peals of laughter and, if my companions were male and fairly liquored up, they might suggest that there are other things in Okayama that are good, if I caught their drift.

Heh. But I digress.

I did a lot to improve the quality of English teaching at my schools. At junior high, I put together a weekly curriculum to complement the reading and writing-heavy curriculum with speaking and listening roleplaying exercises. I ran after-school Eiken preparation classes and I taught elective classes in which students performed plays and put together an English DVD about themselves and their dreams for the future. At elementary school, I used the same roleplaying approach to teaching and added props. I also played a modified “English” version of UNO with the students in between classes. If I had sixth period free, I spent it with the 1st and 2nd grade students who were waiting for their older brothers and sisters to finish classes so they could go home together. We did our homework together (I was studying kanji, preparing for Kanji Kentei) and then we played UNO.

When one of my students’ father’s invited me to make shaved ice in his family’s booth at the big summer Flea Market, I joined in with enthusiasm. I also joined his team in the local softball league. Most of the teams came from automotive factories based around town but mine was made up of older local guys. Our first baseman had to be nearly 80 and our pitcher/manager was the grandfather of some of my junior high students. We never won a single game but that wasn’t the point – softball was just an excuse to get together and drink afterwards. And teach the foreign English teacher bad puns, Japanese riddles, and slang so local folks just up the road wouldn’t understand it.

Despite the amount of time I spent with the adults and children in my community, there were definitely times when I despaired about making any difference in the perception of Americans in Japanese eyes. One year, I had a really nasty cold that kept me home from school for several days. When I returned to school, one of my students rather innocently wondered aloud, “Americans can get colds?” That same year, my supervisor told me that my English handwriting was atrocious and I made my zeroes backwards. He also chastised me for eating too many mikans because the palms of my hands were “too yellow.”

But I did see small changes. When I first arrived, I was often asked “How do Americans celebrate Christmastime?” and I always countered this with “Well, you know, in America we have a lot of different kinds of people and some of them celebrate like this.. and some celebrate like…” After three years, people stopped asking me what Americans do and started asking me what I, or my family, did.

And sometimes I saw big changes. After one of my former junior high students tried to run away from home twice in high school, I was asked to talk to him. Because of all the teachers at junior high, I’d encouraged his writing and his drawing the most. We traded books and movies back and forth and talked about games and comic book character development and movies. When I came to his house, it was the first time a foreigner had been there but nothing between us was different – we talked about games and comic book character development and movies. And in the end, with support of many teachers and his own family, he was fine – he graduated high school with his classmates and went on to study animation in Tokyo.

At this time, I knew that I was going to be the last JET teacher in my town as the Board of Education has decided to get ALTs from a company called Interac rather than through the JET Programme. My town wasn’t the only town – other towns and cities in Okayama had done the same. I knew my successor had big shoes to fill so I spent a month preparing for her – I took pictures of every one of my students and had all of them make a magnetized English nametag they could stick to their desk so she could learn their names easily. I documented all of my roleplays and games and left her notes about each class year’s particular strengths and quirks. I left her my props, my many decks of UNO, my big box of American crayons, my Totoro stamps, and my hope.

And she stayed for six months.

I don’t know how many English teachers have come and gone since that first one but I wonder if any of them still remember the students’ names or interests. Did they write letters to their students while they were there? Trade postcards at New Year’s? Run in the relay at Field Day? Haggle with a vendor at the Flea Market for a remote-controlled truck? Give confidence to a student just realizing how different he is from his peers? Inspire a student to study English conversation outside of school?

As of July this year, the Japanese government has been considering cutting the JET Programme from its budget. Their budget concerns are real and deserve attention. But so does the JET Programme. To show my support for JET, I’ve created an online exhibit called 100 English Dreams combining photographs of my students with their actual thoughts about English. Please give it a look and pass it on.

Le Bumblebee: Quelle est? Ah, le belle femme fleur fatale. How is it that she can sleep when I am so near? We must stoke the furnace of love, must we not?
Le Fleur: Le mew. Le purrrr.
Le Bumblebee: This little love bundle. Now she is seeking for us a trysting place. Touching, is it not? Come, my little peanut of brittle. I will help you.

Le Bumblebee (caressing Le Fleur tenderly): You are ze corned beef to me, and I am ze cabbage to you!

Le Bumblebee (intoxicated with the scent of Le Fleur, buries his head in her pistils): I pierce you with the ack-ack of love, flowerpot. Ah, there ees very little difference between men and women. But.. VIVE LE DIFFERENCE!!

Radicchio has definitely been the most successful of my greens grown in containers. It never wilts, has no pests and grows back quite rapidly after harvest. It was happy with a minimum of watering and equally as happy during a week of thunderstorms. If you’re a fan of truly bitter greens (as I am), trying being a little stingy with the water – a little dryness contributes to the bitterness factor.

If I had to pick something to hold against it, perhaps I’d mention that it doesn’t really fare well during hot DC summers.

Eh, something to look forward to in fall, right?

I noticed a week ago that the radicchio I planted last fall had finally begun to send up twin antenna towers. I figured it was about due to bolt but I didn’t expect such delicate purple flowers from such a bitter, hardy green. If you look closely, you can see their tiny purple eyelashes.

Heh. Not this year, no sir! 2010 ain’t no punk@ss moderate year, content with soft breezes and gentle temperature fluctuations.

Nope, 2010 is the year that announced, “I’m gonna be different! I’m gonna dump more snow on the city than it’s seen in over 100 years. I’m gonna be really freakin’ cold and then I’m gonna be really freakin’ hot. Not hot like “Hey Koolaid!”-hot. Hot like fry-an-egg-on-the-nice-flat-hood-of-an-old-Jeep-Cherokee-Classic-hot. Now that’s HOT.”

In concrete terms, it means we’ve had one rainstorm in the most recent three week period. And we’d already hit 39° C/100° F-plus temperatures by late June. LATE JUNE. It ain’t even August yet.

Fortunately, my current addiction to triathlon has revealed a solution to being hot and sticky: getting more hot and sticky. After all, if I’m hot just sitting around the apartment, imagine how much cooler I will feel after baking for an hour or two in the hot sun on a bike/run training brick?

Now, if I were a tomato plant who sat in full sun all day, I might feel differently. I might feel like I was being just a tad whiny about the temperature indoors in the shade. I would probably counsel myself to be a little more grateful – at least, I had shade. Shade which I wouldn’t have if I were a tomato plant. Which, of course, I’m not. No, quite fortunately, I’m not a tomato plant who sits in full sun all day; rather I’m merely the morning and evening waterbearer.

Which brings me back to beans. On last night’s watering foray, I noticed little green bean sprouts poking up through the dirt. Hence this morning’s pictures. It’s the same Dragon’s Tongue bean I planted earlier in the year – if you look closely at the picture below, you can see tiny purple flecks in the veins of the baby leaves.