Shopping Day at IKEA

D, I and Hiro headed to Hillary  yesterday to pick-up a bottle warmer which we bought on eBay.  We were just thinking to buy one as we warm up BM (expressed breast milk) very often everyday, then we found this at very cheap price.

On the way back we dropped by at IKEA. They are doing a campaign that they take the cost of your food and drinks off your store purchase when you dine at IKEA restaurant – so, the food and drinks are basically free if you have something to buy.  (This offer is until 27 May (today!))

When we arrived we headed to IKEA restaurant straight away – needed some sweets!  After the tea time, we went though the store.

We bought two clock, some kitchen stuff and a canopy to put on Hiro’s cot.

After the shopping, we decided to take more advantage of this campaign and headed to the restaurant again….

And had early dinner…

Total we spent at IKEA today was less than $10.00!

We were so tired afterwards (spent for 2 hours there) …  Hero slept very good at night 🙂

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Friends and Kids

Hmmm..  my friends, who are not married or don’t have kids, stopped contacting me since I gave birth to Hiro!  I know they think I might be busy taking care of baby and won’t have time to go out or even answer the phone, but I actually do.  I do go out because I get bored if I stay home all day.  I do have my own time as D works at home and loves taking care of Hiro.  We sometimes even fight who feeds him with expressed milk.

I emailed/sms/called them saying “let’s meet up”, but then I realised I’m the person who always asks for a meet up – even before I had Hiro.   Doesn’t anyone want to see me?  … ok, I know it sounds bit crazy – clearly I was having a negative thought.  I even emailed mum asking “do you still remember me?”.   :p

Just to take the stress off, I visited my friend who recently moved into a new house.  She has two girls – 12 years old and 7 years old – and is working as a teacher assistant in Perth.  She also has studied baking here and we used to work at a bakery in Claremont together : that’s how I met her.

Homemade cake and freshly brewed flat white. 🙂

As she used to work as a kindergarden teacher in Shinjuku, Tokyo for 10 years before migrating to Perth, she knows a lot about babies/kids.  And, I knew I could get some advice on parenting (as I still don’t have much idea of it).

She gave me some Japanese books about baby’s food and health to read at home, and talking to her gave me a clearer idea of having and raising kids in Perth.  I didn’t know that kindergarden here is only for 1 year!  And, there is pre-elementary school?

In Japan, kindergarden is for kids between 3 and 5 years old.  Then, 6 years of elementary school followed by 3 years of junior high and 3 years of high school.  Here, 1 year of kindergarden (not compulsory), 1 year of pre-elementaly school, then 7 years of elementary school.  I see, I see…  I’m really glad I could talk to her about these stuff.   I can’t imagine Hiro going to school yet (how he is going to look like??), but it’s never too early for me to plan and prepare for what’s going on in future. 🙂

Nao Hair Salon

I had hair cut!  Yey♪( ´▽｀).

I’d been wanting to have hair cut and color for the past couple of months, and I finally made a booking at Nao’s salon in Canning Vale.  This is a home-based salon.

She recently moved into this house and renovated one room to make into a salon.  The room is fitted with a large mirror and reclining shampoo-chair which she bought from a hair salon in Perth.

As the tip of my hair was really damaged and Hiro started to grab my hair, I wanted to cut my hair short.  Short enough to not being able to be reached by Hiro’s hands, but long enough so that I can play around with wax and mousse.  I also wanted to color my hair to light brown for a change.

It took around 2 hours, and my head is much much lighter now!  My hair on the floor looked like a head of human. I was wearing that amount of hair…

Here is a brief price list :

– Cut (trim) $20

– Cut (without shampoo) $30

– Cut (with shampoo & blow dry) $35

– Colour (includes shampoo & blow dry)

• Short Hair $55
• Medium $60
• Long $70

– Perm(includes shampoo & blow dry)

• Short Hair $80
• Medium $100
• Long $120

– Bridal Set $60

etc…

When Nao was styling my hair at the end I thought the silhouette of my head looked little too round in the mirror, but it felt fine when I touched it. I can probably play with my hair a lot – with hair pins, wax/mousse, and hair accessories. 🙂

Nao had worked in Japan as a hair stylist for years before migrating to Perth, and at her salon she’s only uses Japanese products which she directly imports from Japan.  She contacts her friends regularly who are also hair stylists in Japan to update the news and knowledge, she said.

She told me the customer before me was Umeboss reader :). Glad to know someone read my blog and actually tries the place!

Oh, I loved the reaction of D when he saw my new hair style.  “Is this for real?!”

Nao’s Hair Salon in Canning Vale

→ Read my newer post about Nao’s Hair Salon

* The price list shown above is old, and it may be now different.

Look@MyBaby Mercy Hospital

Mercy Hospital Mount Lawley has just become the first hospital in WA to provide new parents with a live and secure video streaming service direct from the maternity cot.

Exclusive built-in hospital camera system sends a live broadcast of your baby in the maternity cot to family and friends locally, interstate or overseas. It is like ‘visiting’ your baby in hospital 24/7 at their convenience on computers and mobile phones. It is the Virtual Baby Visit!

I think it’s a great item for parents who have to leave their unwell or premature baby in the hospital, as well as for the families who live far away from the hospital and can’t visit to see the new baby.

Yum Cha and Shopping

The other day I needed to go to Carousel shopping centre, so D, Hiro and I headed there.  On the way, we stopped at a Chinese restaurant in Leeming to have Yum Cha.  The prices are bit more expensive compared to the restaurants in Northbridge, but their service is great and the owner is very friendly.

We had the usuals : prawn dumplings, shumai, spareribs, ginger tripes, fried squid, and chicken feet.  Yes, we are huge eaters! 😀

At Carousel shopping centre, I was surprised when a man came to us asking for $100. Yes, $100, not $10! Why did he think we’d have $100 to give to a stranger? I was in the car with Hiro, but I nearly jumped out from the car to say something to the guy and help D out.

And, surprisingly, it happened twice on the same day… Different guy, asking for money just before we wanted to leave.  Our car had already started moving, but the guy kept following us.(>人<;)
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Since when this area became so shady?  Now I remember there was a car burglar at this car park last year.  Ummm… we’d better make sure there’s no one around when you get into the car at car parks, and lock the door as soon as everyone got inside the car!

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Daily Deals

Scoopon, DealMe, OurDeal, AllTheDeal, etc etc.  There are so many websites that sell daily deal coupons online now.  The first one to do this was American company Groupon (www.groupon.com), and was founded in November 2008.

Groupon is operated worldwide, except Australia – some people should know the battle between Groupon and Scoopon.  Scoopon bought the domain “groupon.com.au” and forced Groupon to buy it at an insane price.  Groupon accepted it, but then Scoopon changed their maid – they’d only sell the domain and trademark if Groupon buys the entire Scoopon business.  The deal is off.   Groupon sued Scoopon, and Groupon is now doing the business in Australia under Stardeals (www.stardeals.com.au).

Anyway, I’m sure many people have already purchased at least one deal from one of these websites before.  Some of the deals are great!  They offer big discount (sometimes over 80% off) on food, entertainment, accommodation, beauty and more.  I’ve purchased once before, and now I’m waiting for a good deal on massages.  There’re so many similar deals and I don’t know which one to pick.

I was browsing Groupon Japan today.  They have deals on each prefecture across Japan (Tokyo has the most), from Hokkaido to Okinawa.  Tokyo has the deals on almost each cities.  Nice…

Autumn is Here!

It’s so good to have Internet back…  For the last few days the Internet connection was on and off at my house, and couldn’t check emails/websites at all since last night. It was so frustrating as I had to do something online and also was expecting an email from someone.

As internet connection is very important for D’s job too, we needed to fix it asap. Lucky it’s weekend and he didn’t need to work.  He called up ISP and it’s ok now, but I think we’d better to change ISP…

Since the rain 3 days ago, the weather’s really cooled down!  Now we are wearing sweater and ugg boots, and D took out a heater from the shed.  Such a sudden change..

I feel like I did a bit of things this week.  We finally received Hiro’s birth announcement cards which I ordered online few days ago, and sent off to my families and friends in Japan.  I printed out Hiro’s photos for making an album, bought some cosmetics online from Japan (because AUS$ is strong now) and had them send to my house (I will bring them back here when I go back home in few months), organised and filed some paperworks, etc etc.  Other time, I do some cooking in the kitchen.  I know I should be resting, but when I stay at home I just have to look for something to do…  it’s my personality, and it’s tiring (*_*).

The biggest worry I had few days ago was Hiro’s constipation.  I don’t know if it’s constipation, but he didn’t poop for 3 whole days…  before then he used to poop once or twice in 2 days.  The poop is not hard, so maybe I just worry too much, but every time I see his face goes red and trying to push something out, I just think that he may be in pain!

Another thing that’s been staying in my head is a HOLIDAY.  Not the holiday to my home in Japan, but somewhere else!  For some reason I started to think about Bali – and now I can’t wait to go there with three of us plus my dad and bro.  I don’t know when it’ll be, but I’m sure it won’t happen anytime soon.  Probably when Hiro is around 2 years old.  I also have a dream going to Disneyland (either in America or Japan) and stay at the Disney resort!  Staying in the Disney resort hotel has been a dream since I was young.  I’ve been to Tokyo Disneyland few times but it’s very long time ago, and I’ve never stayed in the Disney resort before.  I really want to go there with Hiro sometime, and stay at the hotel surrounded by Disney characters.  I know it’s not cheap, but it’s ok to do it at least once in a life, I guess.  Now I’ve gotta save up some money for the dream holiday!

Korean Ice Cream

I know I say this too much, but can I say it again?  …..  It’s soooooo HOT!!! (><)

People say that pregnant women feel hotter than normal people do.  I’m originally weak against hot & humid climate, so I’ve been staying in air-coned room all day.  It was rather depressing to see the glaring sunshine and feel the hot air at 7:30 AM.  …  Yeah, this might be the pregnancy thing –

The other day I got some Korean ice-cream from Hi Mart, one of Korean grocery chains.  They were selling some individual packs of ice-cream for “any three packs for $5.00” (my memory may be wrong – it may be $6.00?).  Cheap!  There’re 6~7 kinds of ice-cream in the showcase, and all of them looked so familiar – very similar to Japanese ice-cream!

This vanilla ice-cream sandwich with crunchy chocolate bits : This is my favorite!  It’s like Morinaga Choco-Monaka-Jumbo ice-cream , but more chocolate inside.  The texture of crispy chocolate and soft wafers are the best match.

I used to eat this Morinaga Choco-Monaka-Jumbo ice-cream quite often during summer in Japan.

Taiyaki-shaped (taiyaki = a Japanese fish-shaped cake) coated with thin crisp wafers.  The inside contains vanilla ice-cream and azuki bean paste.  We have few Taiyaki-shaped ice-cream sold in Japan, and I guess this is the Korean version of it.  I thought the amount of azuki bean paste was too little compared to the amount of vanilla ice-cream.

The original Taiyaki-shaped ice-cream in Japan is Imuraya brand.  They have black (dark sugar) and pink (strawberry) versions.

This is cookie n cream sandwich ice-cream.  The ice-cream was quite sweet, and the thin layer of sponge cake was soft and fluffy.  I preferred the above two to this one, as it is too sweet to me, and there was no texture in the ice-cream.

I want to find more delicious ice-cream!

Pregnancy Photo Shoot and San Churro

Yey, week 35! ♪  It’s finally the last month of my pregnancy…

I’ve wanted to take some photos of myself with this biggest-ever belly.  At first I was thinking to take a pregnancy photo shoot at a studio, but I rather have it for my baby after he is born, so I asked D to take me to Kings Park and shoot some photos of me and belly.  Kings Park is the place where we had our wedding photo shoots too.

It was a shiny day with cool breeze – actually it was rather windy.  The sunshine was strong though – so we had to walk in the shade.  My pelvic bone hurts when I walk too much, so we sat down several times to rest during the 1 hour walk, and took around 50 photos.  I’m quite happy with the result. 🙂

We needed something cold to chill our body down afterwards. First I was thinking about Gloria Jeans, but we headed to San Churro in Subiaco instead.

We had an iced chocolate and a kid’s churros.  The smell from Jus Burger next door was really tempting, but we were after some sweets only – probably we eat burger then enjoy the sweet chocolate next time!

Australian Day 2011

Aussie day!  I headed to my sister in-law’s house for BBQ lunch.  We started with happy soda slushie that she made.  She bought a proper “happy soda” syrup from asian grocery shop in Canning Vale and it really tasted rose.  Yum!

Flamed grilled meats – lamb, steak and sausages!  I knew they wouldn’t have prepared any salad (Aussie BBQ = meat), so I brought a bowl of greens.  The meat was great.  She made sure the meat was cooked well-done for me.  The flame-grilled steak… it was so great.  I also loved the spinach, cheese and pine nut sausage.

Since I came to Australia, every Australia Day was always hot and fine day.  It was cloudy and drizzling until yesterday, but today it was hot and dry!

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Please Help QLD Flood Victims

Perth residents!!  Please help QLD flood victims by donating some goods.

GKR Transport office in Welshpool WA 6160 will be accepting the donations and trucking them over to Queensland.  As there will be currently no way of crossing into these areas as yet, there is plenty of time to gather & drop off donations to the GKR depot.

ALL SMALL ITEMS CAN BE DONATED:  non perishables, anything like toothpaste,shampoo, bottles of water, medical supplies, toys, prams, nappies towels, linen, clothing for young and old, small electrics appliances , kettles toaster etc.

Please speak to Teagan at the GKR Office for more information.

Original Ad

GKR Transport
80 Dowd Street
Welshpool
(08)93518000

View Larger Map

Buying Japanese Foods in Perth

Since  I started living in Perth I noticed that Japanese foods sold at grocery shops are very pricy here.  Chocolate, snacks, drinks, seasonings, etc…   Korean grocery shops sell similar items much cheaper.  I wonder why the price is so different between those items imported form Japan and South Korea.  I understand that everything in South Korea is much cheaper than in Japan, but the items are so similar (sometimes same name and same brand).

Some items such as daifuku (a Japanese sweet), naruto (fish cakes), natto (fermented soy beans) and other specific food items are made in Japan, and in that case the cost will be expensive. I understand that the grocery shops have to mark up the price in order to cover the cost of import and inspections by Aus government, it’s surprising that a pack of rice crackers I used to eat in Japan costs almost $10.00 here while the price in Japan is around few hundreds yen.  But even though the price is more expensive than other similar products that are imported from China etc, products of Japan still have demand.

Some products of Japan specify where the items are from on their packaging.  For example, this katsuo-no-tataki (bonito tataki) is a product of Yakitsu, Shizuoka Prefecture.  Japanese people know that Yakitsu is famous for bonito fishing, and Yakitsu-branded bonito is known for its delicious fat.  (I bought this frozen tataki at Super Fuji in Victoria Park.)

The other day I bought a pack of kinako (soy powder) from Maruyu and ate with dango I made (recipe).  This kinako is also a product of Japan, from Hokkaido.

I don’t mean that products imported from Japan are all better than other foods though.  Korean/Chinese grocery shops may sell the same products (the packagings are in Chinese or Korean, and the manufactured country is the same) at half the price.  Products from South Korea such as soy sauce, nori seaweed sheets and rice are very similar to Japanese ones and the prices are usually cheaper.  If you are not looking for something particular (e.g. Tokyo takuwan pickles, Hokkaido potato chips, Okinawa black sugar candies) you can browse around Korean grocery shops such as Hi Mart and Seoul Mart, and other Chinese grocery shops such as Kong’s Oriental.  Some well-known Japanese food such as Kikkoman soy sauce and Pokka drinks are from Singapore anyway (not products of Japan)!

It’s very hot in Perth. How is your place?

It’s another hot day….  I can’t sleep without air-con now.  Apparently Perth was the hottest city in Australia yesterday (Darwin and Cairns were around 27~33°).  Today is going to be around 37° again here!

The flood in Brisbane looks terrible…  I’ve never experienced flood in my life, but watching the flood swallowing many cars on the street tells me how awful it is for people living there and I feel sorry for their loss.

This is one of the most amazing photo…..  9 News shows a green frog hitching a ride on the back of a brown snake.

I remember the terrible hail storm Perth got last summer. Although I wasn’t in Perth during the hail storm by the way, but my husband was right there and showed me what was happening.  Sometimes we can’t avoid natural disaster and it tells us how powerless we are against the big nature.

On the other side of the world it seems to be all white and cold.  Well, that’s the normal January I know, but I can’t imagine the cold snow and eating mandarins in kotatsu from here.

Hello 2011

２０１１年、明けましておめでとうございます(^0^)

Happy New Year!!

It seems that Japan is getting lots of snow since yesterday.  My mum said it started to snow yesterday morning in her city in Shiga, and in the evening she couldn’t move her car because of the snow which had been built up.  My friends also said that it’s snow storming outside.  Regardless of whether they are enjoying the snow or not, I do miss snow and wish I was there!

Perth is, on the other hand, in middle of summer.  I had Nachos and watermelon for dinner yesterday.  Oh yes, I didn’t forget to eat toshikoshi-soba 年越しそば this year too.  It’s just one of Japanese tradition I don’t want to miss.  I remember eating soba on the New Year’s eve two years ago at my house with my family, while watching a countdown to 2009 on tv.

In the morning of New Year’s Day, we eat special food called osechi, and zenzai or ozoni in Japan.  Zenzai is a sweet red bean soup with mochi (rice cake), and ozoni is sweet miso soup with mochi.  I had delicious osechi food and ozoni in Perth last year at my friend’s house (I wrote about it here), but this family has gone back to Japan for good and I can’t experience it anymore.

I was actually going to make zenzai at home, but just couldn’t find time.  It’s too hot to make hot azuki soup here anyway…  So, instead, I made mitarashi-dango.  (rice flour dumpling with caramelised sauce)

The process of making dango was fun.  But, after eating just a couple of these I became so full!

Well, at least I started this new year with some Japanese traditional food.

My family is going to visit a shrine for hatsu-moude 初詣 to pray for a new year tomorrow.  My mum said she will pray for me, D and my baby, and buy an amulets and send it to me.  I really wish I was there too.

Today is a start of new year.  My New Year’s resolution is to be honest.  I want to be honest to my feelings and try to share it with other people.  I hope this year will be one of the wonderful year of my life.

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Christmas Party 2010

Christmas is just around the corner!  People must be busy for attending Christmas parties at this time of the year. 😀

My friends and I had a small Christmas party last weekend.  One of them are flying to Taiwan and Malaysia soon to spend her Christmas and New Year’s Day there.  Other friends have been already back to Japan.

We brought so many food….  Temaki-sushi (hand-rolled sushi), pupusa (El Salvador’s food), roasted pumpkin salad, Japanese style roast beef, osuimono (soup), and KFC (who brought KFC chicken!?)

I was the first one to arrived my friend’s house, and started to prepare the food on the plates.  I was munching on the pupusa and edamame, with lemon lime n bitter, so by the time everyone arrived I was pretty full.  

As friend told me that her house might get stuffy and hot, I told everyone to wear bikini on the day.  I could be fun, right?  It’s a gathering of just girls anyway.  But, no one did. :p  Maybe next year?  We could be wearing yukata too. 

Itadakima~su!  

Merry Christmas to everyone (^0^)/

Happy 4th Birthday!

… I know I’ve been writing similar topics over and over!  There are so many people born this month around me… (^^;)

Last Friday was D & D’s nephew’s birthday.  (Yap, uncle and nephew born on the same day)  We had family dinner at a Chinese restaurant, and shared a birthday cake together at home.   This is one of the thing I admire about his family –  they always get together for family’s birthday, and shoot a video of cake-cut each year.  (with candle-blowing and singing “happy birthday”.)

I made the birthday cake, as usual.  As D requested, I made a simple sponge+cream+little fresh fruits cake.  Just for a change, I made it into a dome-shape : just like a snow mountain!

Each year, nephew’s birthday party change its theme : for the first birthday it was Ratatouille, on 2nd birthday it was Elmo, and third birthday was jumping castle (sister-in-law hired a jumping castle for kids).  This year, it’s fire truck.  She hired a fire-fighter Kevin to come to the party (not a real fire fighter, of course!).

Kids rode on the fire truck and circled around the house.

Nephew taking a photo in a fire fighter costume.

Kevin gave nephew a certificate as well!  

Christmas Shopping and Yum Cha

Although it was very very hot during the week, the weather was pretty comfortable on the weekend.  Cloudy and little shower, but it’s better than 40 degrees!

Parents-in-laws went to Bunker Bay from Saturday to stay over night with sister family, so it was only me and D at home –  yey ♪

After making some bagels, we headed to Northbridge for lunch.  I felt like something dry – something similar to gyoza.  The thing I could think of was Yum Cha… 

D ordered the usuals – chicken feet, pork spare ribs, fried squid and ginger tripes.  GInger tripes are my favorite!  I usually eat chicken feet and squid, but I couldn’t eat any fatty stuff (especially deep-fried food) so I ordered some steamed prawn dumplings and prawn rice paper rolls.  I ate sooo much… as usual.  I always overeat when I go for Yum Cha.

On Sunday, it was raining and there were many people at Borders in the city.  You can get $20.00 voucher when you sign up for the Border V.I.P membership – so we both signed up online on Saturday and headed to Border on Sunday to browse what to buy.

I love the goods sold at Borders – not only the books, but also some gifts and zakka things.  I saw some cool stuff, but I couldn’t decide what to buy in the end…  We decided to come back next week, as I can’t stand walking around for too long now: my body gets really tired and I feel very sleepy afternoon.

I say this every year, but I really miss Christmas in winter!  Next year…

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Massage and Hair Cut

My craving for this week is laksa noodle!  I had laksa last week, and I just can’t stop thinking about the creamy spicy soup…  I think I will get takeaway tonight.

Most people (especially women) love getting massage, I think.  I actually got two vouchers (one for me, one for husband) from my friend for a massage few months ago.  Around that time I already knew I was pregnant, and I also knew I should avoid getting massage during the first trimester (just to be extra careful).  So, I kept the vouchers until today.

Now, although I can’t lie face down on the massage table anymore, I can still get massage on my neck, shoulders and legs, I think.  My body is really stiff now.  I really need a massage.

I was about to make a booking for the massage.  The massooth is Japanese who does mobile massage in Perth.  When I was about to phone her, my friend told me that she is actually pregnant now!  Oh no… then she can’t do the massage anymore?

I also recently had hair cut by a Japanese lady.  She does mobile hair services in Perth, so I asked her to come over to my house to cut & color my hair.  I could go to her house instead, but I thought it’s better to do it at my house so that I could do all the housework and start roasting the chicken in the oven before she comes.  Then, the chicken would be done when my hair is done!

I cut my hair to medium length, and colored to light brownish color (not too light).

If you are interested in having hair cut by this lady ↓↓

Name: Nao san

Mobile: 0430 927 880

<Price List>

Baby Goods, Markets and Popcorn

Ummm I’m little exhausted… Exhausted from searching all the information related to the baby, and also making a list of what I need to prepare before the birth.  I think these things are never too early to be sorted out.  (and if I don’t do it now I may forget to do it later)

Luckily, my sister-in-low was about to give away or sell all the baby goods (eg: changing table, baby wraps, bottle sterilizer, un-opened box of breast pads, heaps of towels etc) that had been in her shed for 3 years, so I could take whatever I think we need for our Jr.  This helps us a lot!

When I went to her house to pick up the stuff (only what I could fit in my car), she gave me a half a bag of popcorn that she got from Canning Vale Market …  

She was telling me about this popcorn the other day.  She said it tastes salty and sweet at the same time, and very delicious.  When I munched on it, it was so nice that I couldn’t stop eating.   It’s very addictive.  It does taste salty, and sweet!

On the same day, we headed to Spud Shed in Jandakot.  It’s newly opened, and open 7 days, from 7am to 9pm!

Oh my gosh… there were soooo many people (maybe because it was Sunday afternoon).  And, the shopping cart was so huge (I couldn’t reach the bottom of the cart as it was too deep) :p

As I had heard, things were pretty cheap.  For example, potatoes ¢29/kg, carrot  ¢68/kg, Chinese vegetables ¢70 (?)/each, apple ¢99/kg, chicken breast $9.00/kg, frozen corn ¢99/kg etc etc.  It’s like a supermarket (one building) and they also sell other things such as snacks, drinks, ice cream, frozen seafood etc.  

Many people were gathering around the meat section.  You can buy a big chunk of meat (the size of those used in the restaurants) at cheap rate.

This place is not too far from my house, so I will be going back there often, I think.

630 Karel Avenue, Jandakot (Airport)

Bento and Antique Shopping

Last week I packed a o-bento and headed to a park with my husband.

We didn’t really make destination, but ended up going to Lake Mongar area.  It was such a beautiful day, and we sat down on the grass and enjoyed the view of the lake and many birds.

I didn’t have any ingredient for bento at home, so I just made onigiri (rice balls), dashimaki (omelet), horenso-ohitashi (seasoned spinach), naruto (fish cake), and hijiki-no-nimono (seasoned hijiki seaweed).  If I had more time, I wanted to make some meat dish for my husband (karaage or meatballs) and other food.   🙁

After lunch, we went to Mt Lawley area to shop at antique shops we saw from the car the other day.  There’re few antique shops on Beaufort street.

There’re some interesting things at the shops, but some of them are quite pricy.  But, at one shop, we found some antique gadget at reasonable prices.  They are plates, kitchenware, and some ornaments.  I bought one little vase at $2.00 (it was made in Japan!), and my husband bought an antique Kodak camera.

It was pretty dusty when we bought it, but he cleaned it up and polished the leather area.  This camera was made in 1960s (?) and no longer works, but it looks good as an ornament.  

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Baking, Window Shopping, and Reading

It was another relaxing weekend for me.  The Saturday was hot, I didn’t need to wear a jacket and I saw many people enjoying the marine sports at the Swan River from freeway.

I had many banana left which were starting to have black spots, so I used them all up to bake banana bread.  It turned out to be good, I could smell the delicious cinnamon from the oven while baking.

Just after I took it out from the oven, one of my sister-in-low and her husband visited our house.  They just came back from Dubai and gave me this souvenir from Daiso which I’ve asked them to buy for me.

Wood clips.  I actually wanted a simple one (like the one Kiki-K sells), but they said that’s all they could find at Daiso.  

The left wooden clip got a motif of chef, because they know I like cooking 🙂  and, I can probably take of the rings from the wooden clips (centre on the photo) to use for papers and notebooks.

I gave them a half of the banana bread as a “thank you”, and I brought another half to another sister-in-low.  Last week she gave us tuna bake for dinner (she said she cooked too much) and it was delicious.  This banana cake was a “thank you” for the tuna bake.

Then, we headed to Subiaco.  There wasn’t anything particularly we wanted to do in Subi, but just wanted to walk around and do window-shopping.

We walked into Henry Hiccup – a toy shops for kids.  We loved the image of the shop and the product range.  

We sat down at Oriel cafe to have a cup of drink.

It was a pretty windy day, so we sat down on a couch inside.  He ordered flat white, I had fresh OJ, and a pecan tartlet to share.

At the cafe we talked about many things – this is one of the reason why we go out for a cup of coffee sometimes.  We can talk more things outside compared to when we stay at home.

After the pit-stop, we went to Borders to get inspiration from the books, and stayed there until late.   In the end of the day I was tired, but it was a good day.

How I spent my Long Weekend..

I didn’t do much in this weekend, but I could totally relax.  On the second day the cousin and her son couldn’t visit our house again, so we headed to South Fremantle to walk around the beach.

It was a great exercise for both of us.  We should do that more often…

At home I made some steamed buns with pork soboro.

The dough is very chewy.  It’s called “mushi-pan” in Japanese, and it normally contains sweet fillings such as sweet beans and sweet potatoes.  I love the chewy texture on mushi-pan (I used to buy them from convenience stores a lot).  I had some pork, so I thought I could make savoury mushi-pan rather than the sweet ones.

It didn’t taste like those Chinese style cha siu buns.  First of all, the bun is chewy.  My husband seemed not like it much .. :p

I will update the recipe some other time!  If you want to try making those…

Thanks to the weather, our tomatoes are booming in the garden!

Chilled tomatoes taste so great.  It cools down the hot body in summer.  Chilled tomato (hiyashi-tomato) is a typical Izakaya menu in Japan, it’s just sliced chilled tomato served with salt, but it’s just a great hashi-yasume ( “chopstick resters”).

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Long Weekend – Lazy Day

It is a beautiful long weekend for Perth people!  The weather is perfect.  Is it summer already?  So warm and sunny.

I did lots of washing yesterday.  It’s time to put back our thick coats and jackets in the closet and pull out the summer clothes.

When I stepped outside, I realised the weed grew so fast in the last couple of days.  Our yard looks so … bushy.  I started weeding, but I couldn’t keep it up under this sun.  I almost got sunstroke.  There’re still some worms around my house so I didn’t want to go too deep into the garden.

Yesterday my husband’s cousin and her son from Hong Kong were supposed to come to our house, so I was tidying up the house whole morning.  I made cherry and walnut cake too, just in case they want to eat some snack.  But, she texted us that her son didn’t feel good and they went to hospital instead of visiting us.

I was kind of tired from the weeding and cleaning, so I laid down on the sofa until 2 pm, watching Sho-gun on tv.  It’s a long movie…  We decided to go outside a bit for shopping.

There were so many people gathering around the tv section at Myer watching the football final.  Even the shop staff.

His pitstop at Macdonald’s $2.00 burger.

That’s it.  It was my lazy day and I liked it.  I did almost nothing (except for those weeding and cleaning), and after we got home I laid down on the sofa again and started watching tv.  My husband cooked dinner for me – we had nacho night. 🙂

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My Weekend

I’ve been not to try to make any plan ahead for the weekends lately – just do whatever I feel like on the day, and I think it’s the best way to spend a relaxing weekend.

On Saturday we started the car engine around noon.  I bought a set of new quilt, pillows and sheet from Target the other day but I forgot to buy the quilt cover, so we headed to IKEA to buy a cover for the quilt.  

When we arrived at IKEA we noticed that they’re doing something near the entrance escalator.  $2.00 donation and you can get a copy of IKEA catalog with your photo!

Here is our 2010 IKEA catalog! 🙂  

After shopping, we headed to Scarborough beach.  We sat down at the stairs and watched the big waves.  At the beach the wind was little cold, but there’re people playing with water. I saw many lady bugs there.  I wanted to play with it (I can touch lady bugs) but they just ignored me and kept walking… 

My husband had a hotdog at IKEA, but we went to Jimmy Deans Diner in Scarborough to have burgers again.

A tall burger stacked with 150g beef patty, lettuce, tomato, mayo and tomato sauce.  

He ate with lots of extra sauce…  Mixture of BBQ sauce, chili sauce and American mustard.  I need to do something about his “sauce” addiction.  Too much is not good! 🙁

I like mustard, so I added heaps to my burger and ate it all up.  

… I didn’t have dinner on the day.  The big burger stayed in my tummy until Sunday morning.

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Showcasing Japan’s Freshest Anime　　

Luna Palace in Leederville is screening 5 Japanese anime films for a limited 2 week season from 16/Sep/10 (Thu) ~ 29/Sep/10 (Wed).

“Reel Anime” is a anime festival held in Australia and New Zealand.  All the fils will be screening in the original Japanese with English subtitles.

These 5 films are:

• EVANGELION 2.0: YOU CAN (NOT) ADVANCE
• EVANGELION:1.0  YOU ARE (NOT) ALONE
• SUMMER WARS
• KING OF THORN
• REDLINE

A Spring Day

What a beautiful day!  I just went outside to check the mail, and realized the weather was my favorite one.  Sunny but not hot, and lovely spring breeze 🙂

Like this day, I used to go walking with my dog in Japan and sit down at the mountain, overlooking the hills.  I sometimes brought some snack and my drawing kit (I like drawing and painting).

It’s funny that people in Japan are saying it’s finally getting cool and they see dragonflies everywhere, and here in Perth I enjoy watching butterflies.

There is something I want to say out loud, but I don’t know…  Should I?  Some of the Umeboss viewers know about this already, but I actually haven’t told any of my friend yet!  

Delicious shots from Japan:

Miso ramen at Ramen Daigaku (one of the franchise ramen shops in Japan).  They use the miso from Hokkaido, and the locally grown pork to make char siu.  The cha siu is used in the cha-han (fried rice) too. Ummm looks delicious.

Funa zushi.  This sushi is one of the origins of sushi, and is a speciality food of Shiga!  Unlike other sushi, funa zushi is served anything but fresh.  The fish is fermented, and it smells like Roquefort cheese.  Very strong!  And, yes, it looks little gross…  the meat of funa (fresh water fish) is covered with white stuff.   But this food is considered as a gourmet food in Japan.  (although people in Shiga eat this sushi quite often, and is one of the food you see on the dining table at home).  Ha-Lu in  Mt Hawthorn used to have this funa zushi on their takeaway menu, but I don’t see it anymore so I guess they took it off the menu.

Ume’s Today

This morning I went to see my doctor.  She called me up yesterday saying that she wanted to talk to me about my blood test.  I was so worried if something was wrong!

She said that Vitamin D level in my blood is quite low, and suggested I should take Vitamin D supplement.  The average level of Vitamin D level is 50 – 120, but mine was 40.  It’s not really a dangerous number, but if the number doesn’t change in future my body will have some problem, such as breakable bone.

You get Vitamin D from the Sunlight (natural Sunlight generates Vitamin D in your skin)  But, I don’t normally go outside in the Sun, especially in Perth, just to stay away from the UV and having skin problems.  If I do, I’d wear sunscreen or some jacket to cover the skin.  I actually haven’t been outside much since I started to work , around 15 years old.  That could be the reason..

After seeing doctor, we went to Emperor’s Kitchen in Leeming Shopping Forum to have Dim Sum.

There are things I always and only get when I go to have Dim Sum.  Fried squid, steamed prawn dumpling, chicken feet (if I’m with my husband), and ginger tripes (if I’m with my husband).  But this time, we were starving (probably from the worry I had since the doctor called me), so we ordered A LOT.  Perhaps we ate equal amount to what 4 or 5 people eat.  I ordered some vegetables too, just to help cleansing the oil in my body from those oily Dim Sum food.

The price was more expensive than the place we normally go to in Northbridge, but we were satisfied 🙂

Can you see this?  ….  maybe not :p  When we were at the house someone released tens of balloons to the sky!  There are many balloons … but by the time I grabbed the camera they’re too far already.

Happy weekend to everyone!

IKEA and Ho Fun

We headed to IKEA last Saturday and had some light breakfast.  As IKEA’s hot breakfast is $1.95 at the moment, there was a long queue of people when we arrived.  This is “early bird” offer and only between 8 until 9 am on Saturdays.

On this year’s catalog, some products are cheaper than last year.  I bought a table and some little things for the house.  Oh, I bought a clock for the office. The one we had was around $40.00 from a stationery supplier and it broke after 1 week, but this $1.95 IKEA clock seems to be working fine.  

By the way I’m currently so into this game on my mobile and I can’t stop doing it.  I’m addicted..  Two nights ago I played this game in the bed for 5 hours!  My eyes… (>0<)  My eyesight became bad when I was little because of famicon, so I have to be careful!  I don’t want to get lasik again.

Like, the other day when I was waiting for my husband’s business meeting at their office, and I had nothing to do so started to playing game.  The meeting was going to be for no more than 30 minutes, but I ended up waiting for 2 hours.  My eyes were so tired!  And I was hungry.  We went to Vin Hong to have a quick lunch.

I had fried Ho Fun in egg gravy.  I love this dish, but I didn’t really like it at Vin Hong.  It tasted different from what I was looking for!  Where did I eat Ho Fun the first time?   I don’t remember, but it was so good and I loved it.  I had Ho Fun at Ten Ten Cafe the other night too, but it was little oily to me.  My ideal Ho Fun is not oily, and with lots of seafood and tasty, mild sauce.  Where is the best place to eat such Ho Fun dish in Perth?  I heard Penang in Northbridge was nice few years ago, but the owner seems to be changed and I don’t know now.

1 Year

Today is our wedding anniversary!  I can’t believe it’s been a year.

Although we didn’t plan what to do today much, it was going to be a great day for both of us.  …. “was”.   We were going to wake up at the same time, have breakfast together, and head to Down South for a drive and have a relaxing day.  I was also going to make cake yesterday, but I couldn’t.  We were out all day yesterday, and at night I can’t stay awake too long now.

The morning started as we planed.  We woke up together, and had breakfast and did bit of work at home.  We left home around late morning.

We head to Macadamia Nuts Farm in Rockingham first.   The weather was wonderful.

When we were driving to Mandurah, we started our argument.  It continued for few minutes, and then he stopped the car somewhere and went outside to smoke. Smoking is the only one thing that can calm him down.

After that he was little ok, but I wasn’t.  I was not angry, just didn’t want to talk.

We were already there anyway, so we went to the beach.

Just walked around a bit, and in the end we headed to home.

Umm….  we always have argument when we try to go somewhere.

My Favorite Shops in Perth

Remedy

Remedy has been one of my favorite shops since it opened.  Few steps away from the busy Fremantle cappuccino street, this store is secretary but very popular among those people who find joy in collecting nice homeware, kids toys, accessories and gifts.

95 high street  fremantle wa 6160 … 08 94317080

131 oxford street leederville wa 6007 … 08 94448818 Read the rest of this entry »