I really like to make gifts for my family by hand, rather than just buying things. It’s a great excuse to craft, and it also allows me to make something really one-of-a-kind. Unfortunately, since I’ve been working in Japan, I haven’t had as much free time for crafting. I do so when I manage to find the time, but I still long for the times when I could just spend three days straight learning some new skills to make an army of porgs for my sister.

I’d played with clay when I was little, but my creations were less than well-made, suffice it to say. My mother’s pretty good at sculpting with clay, plus she’s a fantastic painter, so she’s always known how to make really cool clay sculptures, utilizing both colored clays and paints to make her masterpieces. Her seminal work is surely the elephant with an ant on its butt. Unfortunately, I don’t have any photos of that, but trust me when I say that it’s perfection.

One Christmas a couple years ago, though, we cracked out the clay again, and I went at it with a lot more fervor and creativity. I was determined to create a porg army for my sister, who thought porgs were cute (quite correctly). So that’s what a did! I spent three sleepless and nights days hunched over a table sculpting and painting teeny tiny porgs, plus some other Star Wars paraphernalia. I painstakingly sculpted the porgs, then cooked them oh so carefully in the oven, before painting them. Some parts were big enough to use a paintbrush, but for the most part my creations were too small even for my smallest brush; so, I instead painted them with toothpicks. The end result isn’t professional or anything, but I think their kitsch makes them even cuter.

In the end, I made 24 porgs, a Star Destroyer, 6 Death Stars, Bor Gullet, BB-8, and BB-H8. The porgs and the droids definitely turned out the best.

I’d love to make an army of Companion Cubes one day…

A Japanese stew called “Nabe”.

日本スタイルの鍋料理のことを鍋料理とよびます。

11月7日は、鍋の日。

寒くなってきたので鍋料理がうれしいですね！

みんなはどんな鍋が好きですか。

鳥すき、水炊き、ちゃんこなべ、寄せ鍋

変わったところでねぎま鍋、どじょう鍋、すっぽん鍋などありますが、

私は、豆乳鍋や、トマト鍋、キムチ鍋なども好きです。

そしてお鍋をやった後のおうどんや、雑炊は楽しみで

テンションがあがります。

日本には鍋奉行なんて言葉もあるほど

鍋のやり方は、好みがあって、何から入れるか、いつ蓋を開けるかなど

こだわりはつきません。

でも一番　おいしく食べる方法は、おなかをすかせておくこと！

スポーツの秋と食欲の秋に、お鍋の盛り付けにちからをそそぎ芸術の秋に

してみませんか。

おいしそうなのが出来たら見せてくださいね。

I live near a pretty popular Japanese sweets shop in Nagoya.  Their specialty is daifuku, but they also sell a wide variety of traditional Japanese sweets.  Just before Halloween, we went to pick up some daifuku as a gift for our new neighbors.  Their featured item that day was a set of very cute Halloween sweets!  I’ll be honest, I’m not very knowledgeable about Japanese sweets, so I’m not exactly sure what they were.  But I did enjoy eating them with my wife and son.  I know it’s already a week past Halloween, but I had to share this cool little discovery.