Takoyaki Party

Following the gyoza party, I had a takoyaki party with some other friends. This time, instead of dumplings we made takoyaki (literally grilled octopus, but it's more of a clump of dough with a small piece of octopus in the middle). Since I'm not the biggest fan of octopus, we used wieners instead, which were delicious!

At the end we played "Russian roulette." We put kimchee in one, peanut butter in another, and mustard in another. Then we mixed them up with normal ones and took turns eating. It was fun. I lucked out with a normal one, but I tasted the kimchee, it was great!

Gyoza Party

Last week, I had a couple of Japanese friends over and we made gyoza. Well, they made the stuffing, I just stuffed and sealed the pouches. You can buy the gyoza skin in the supermarket, so it as all pretty easy.

My friends also brought some pizza stuff so we made pizza gyoza. Their version of pizza gyoza was not what I had in mind though. When they suggested it, I was thinking "pizza roll", but they just made them flat. While those were delicious, my specially made pizza roll style was perfect. It was no pizza roll, as I didn't have real pepperoni, cheese or grease, it was delicious.

Termites

Termites- in Japanese, 白蟻、or white ant.

I had termites! One day I was vacuuming and found this really weird dirt-like crud under a floor chair (see below). It was gross and weird. Thankfully, the same day the apartment maintenance guys were next door and came to take a look. They took one glance and instantly knew- termites.

They pulled up the tatami and thousands of little termites were crawling around eating my floor! They were quickly cleaned up, medicine was put in and the tatami mats were put back. That was that. No tent. No fumigation. So far so good, no more termites.