Milan Japanese school festival

Every year the only japanese school in milan, open the gate to let visitors in for the yearly festival.
The entrance is free, and once inside you can buy food and drinks.

The queue to get just one of the typical food sold at the festival

You can pay to try a kimono and get a pic with it.
There are typical games, and a lottery, they makes some typical shows, also about how to make food.

Butaman

Daifuku

Book Market

The entrance

We saw so many kids half italian half japanese and they look absolutely adorable *_*

Motivation

Has been about a month i'm missing the gym.
Because it has been closed for 2 weeks then i had my period, then i had a flue.
Now is time to go back, all the classes have already start and i really need to work out to get fit, my back is alrady hurting cause the lack of exercise.
There is nothing better to motivate myself , to see the result of all my hard work, i'm proud of it.
This is not a thinspo and i'm not a proana or promia.
I do eat, many times per day, and sometimes i also eat chocolate and sweeties and fried stuff (yummy!)
Just i don't overdo.
So i'm gonna show you, and this is an hard thing to do, how i was last summer and how i am now.
Covering my face if this pic is gonna get used somewhere else.

July 2011 on the left and September 2012 on the right
Wearing same top and same skirt, just no hoodie on the right one.

The way you wanna be, the way you wanna look, who you are and who you wanna be is all up to you.
What matter is just being happy.
So this is my choice and i am happy only like this and not the other way.

Sushi Party!

After we got ingredients from Poporoya we enjoided the self-made sushi and so we invited a couple of friend home, for a self-made sushi party (also known as fake-japan food party).
Yeah , fake because is made by us, can't be good enough to be called sushi ahahah :)

We went to Chinatown and we find everything we needed, japan rice for sushi, Nori seaweed, wasabi, rice vinegar, even the pot to boil the rice.

Nothing to say, this is not a food/cooking blog, my bf is gonna open one so if you wanna know how we made it, ask him!
For now, just pics!

Onigiri-My-Way

I found time today to try and make onigiri.
The title explains that is not the original onigiri, that's because.....i'm not so good at cooking so better to explain...that way i hope you don't get a trauma seeing my onigiri!
So what i used is listed in the post below..
oh...okay okay, I'm gonna say again:
Japanese rice, Nori seaweed, red bean cream (with pieces of bean inside), salt, sugar.
The recipe says to use rice vinegar, but i hadn't.
I cleaned the rice in water until the water was looking clean, then i let the rice to rest for 15 minutes

After 15 minutes has pass, i did put the rice with clean water in a pot on the high fire until it boiled, at that point i lowered the flame and let the water to dry.
when the water has gone, the recipe tells you to use the wooden pot, but i don't have so i just used a clean pot.

I should have melt the sugar and the salt (for 500g of rice is 2 little spoon of sugar and 1 of salt) with vinegar but i just used sugar and salt in the new pot and mixed it gently, because you don't have to break the rice or it won't stay in shape.

while mixing i flatter the rice to make it to cool down, then i covered it with a cloth and waited 10 more minutes.

After that i used my heart and star shape, i first put in them a little rice then in the center some bean cream and covered with more rice.

Turned it upside down on the seaweed and cut the shape.
The wet rice will glue the seaweed.
This is the result, not wonderful, but it taste good ;)

Shaped rice for onigiri

Today i decided to prepare my tomorrow lunch.

And pushed by this desire i used for the first time the...thingies to make shaped rice.

I got them to the Japan Center, in London, close to Piccadilly Circus.

They even put the instruction, in Japanese obviously, and everybody knows i'm fluent in Japanese, aswell i'm a great chef so i don't need any instruction...

So, yeah it is quite easy, first of all you have to cook some rice.

At this point is up to you, you can cook Japanese rice and make onigiri or whatever, or just cook whatever rice you have as long as it sticky.

Then Let it to cool a bit.

At this point you can just use the shaped thingies as a spoon and get rice in it, like this

Press it down like this

And close the clover for a few, like one minute.

On the back the thingies got a spot made to push the rice out, and this is the result, enjoy!

Food in UK

Here some pics of what we ate while in UK.
For all the other you can refer to my flikr :
Click here