This is an easy recipe for Anzac biscuits. If you want a more difficult one, just ask your wife or mother to give you advice while you cook.
Ingredients:
125g butter
150g plain flour
90g oatmeal
65g desiccated/shredded coconut
150g sugar
2 tablespoons golden syrup (or honey is okay)
1/2 teaspoon baking powder
1. Melt butter with golden syrup, then mix all ingredients together
3. Make balls, about 5cm diameter
4. Put on tray, put in oven
5. Cook at 150 degrees for 15 - 20 minutes
Easy!
If you`re not Japanese, you probably don`t know about `White Day`. In Japan, girls often give chocolate to guys on Valentine`s Day, then guys can give chocolate or cookies/biscuits to girls on March 14, White Day.
I made these biscuits for my workmates. They`re called ANZAC biscuits. I`ll post the recipe soon.
Today my wife & I went to see `Sherlock Holmes - A Game of Shadows` at the cinema. We haven`t been to the movies for ages (ages = a long time). In fact, I think the last movie we went to was the first Sherlock Holmes movie! Anyway, like the first one, it was very entertaining.
The lead actor, Robert Downey Junior, is very good, although his character, like many things in the movie version, is quite different from in the original stories by Arthur Conan Doyle. Have you read any of them? I`ve read them all - they`re great!
Japan`s women`s football team beat the United States 1-0 to reach the final of the annual Algarve Cup in Portugal - excellent! Unfortunately they lost 4-3 to Germany in the final, but I think they can be proud of that result. Well done, Nadeshiko! And well done Aya Miyama - she received the tournament`s Best Player award.
Did you watch any of the games?
I guess this is what you get if you leave two cars in the same garage together for too long!
More likely it`s what you get from a mechanic with free time, spare parts, & a sense of humour.
Because the engine is in the back of VW Beetles, there must be quite a lot of space under the bonnet/hood in this car - pretty handy.
What do you think of it?
Today`s my birthday. I won`t tell you my age, but if you want to know, you can look at the calendar in my classroom - some students kindly wrote my age there in big numbers. Thanks, guys!
As you can see, some students also wrote birthday messages on my whiteboard.
My students really like me, don`t they? I guess they must also like getting extra homework...
If you`re bored with the standard 2 swings [blanko] and 1 slippery slide [suberi daiso] at your local park, how about checking out this place? It`s next to the planetarium (*my previous blog post).
It was a bit too difficult for Owen, who has only just turned 3 years old, but he still seemed to enjoy trying the different challenges with my help. I think it`s more suitable for kids aged between about 4 and 11.
My wife told me she went there when she was a kid, so it`s been there for a long time... Do you know it? Have you ever been there?
Here`s a link:
http://hamada-sports.com/ichinomiya_chiikibunka/ichi/facility/athletic.html
Did you know there`s a planetarium in Ichinomiya? I didn`t!
This is the website:
http://hamada-sports.com/ichinomiya_chiikibunka/ichi/index.html
We went there on Sunday. The last time I went to a planetarium, I fell asleep as soon as the lights dimmed. But not this time! This time I stayed awake. For 10 minutes. Then I fell asleep. And snored [ibiki o kakita], according to my embarrassed wife.
Anyway, it was only 60 yen to enter - really cheap. And it was pretty interesting (well, the first 10 minutes was anyway!). So if you have kids, or you`re interested in astronomy, or you can`t sleep, I suggest visiting Ichinomiya Planetarium.
I like the character `Crayon Shinchan` & Owen likes the cartoon `One Piece` (even though I hardly ever let him watch it, because it`s so violent) so my wife bought this special toilet paper, which she noticed at the supermarket - cool, isn`t it?
Speaking of which [so ieba], did you know Teragoya sells `Let`s Study English` toilet paper? My wife bought a packet of that too... We have a lot of toilet paper in our house now!
`Yaku` means `calamity` (a disaster) and `toshi` means year, so `yakudoshi` kind of means `bad luck age`.
For Japanese men it`s the ages 25, 42 and 61, and for women 19, 33 and 37.
Men who don`t usually join the Konomiya hadaka matsuri sometimes decide to join it when they reach these ages, in order to get rid of this `bad luck`.
Anyway, on Sunday I attended a special ceremony at my local shrine for people of `yakudoshi` age. About 70 people attended. It was an interesting ceremony - the priest read some mantras [shingon] , then some guys threw black beans around the room (one got stuck behind my ear. Fortunately the lady in front of me didn`t see it - she was excitedly picking them up & putting them in her pockets), then he read all our names. That took a while; I almost fell asleep...
Afterwards we received these gifts. I`m not a big fan of dried black beans, but I love Ichigo Daifuku (strawberries in soft ricecake) - yum!
Have you ever attended this kind of ceremony?
- If you are a bloguru member, please login.
Login
- If you are not a bloguru member, you may request a free account here:
Request Account
PSPINC JP 
birdy 
yukio 
エメラルド 
内倉憲一 
bokushi 
mokomoko 
KUMA 
田仲なお美