We went to this cute yakitori-shop in Shimokitazawa, and the food was really good quality, so I wanted to post a couple of pictures.

Shitake & piman! Perfectly grilled.

Everything was super-juicy and really nice. Even the quail-eggs were perfect and not to dry.

Good tuesday to you! Today the sun is shining in Tokyo, and I will go and pick up my new foreigners card at the city office.

I am finally getting into holiday mode. Just have to make sure it is not to holidayish just yet, I have my JLPT coming up. Yesterday I managed to spend several hours in a coffeeshop just reading and drawing for the first time in 2011! Hope you are all enjoying your day.

I have been wanting to make a book post for a little while now, here are some of the books I am planning to plow through this summer. Binka wrote a good entry (Norwegian) a little while ago, admitting to not be the most avid reader, and I definitely fall into the same category, at least when it comes to fiction. I simply can.not.read.fiction anymore. I used to read a lot of it. I am not sure what happened. It is not that I do not want to, but there is just nothing that holds my interest long enough for me to finish a fiction book. I have been in this state for about 2 years, and it does not seem to change any time soon. I have solved the problem by reading non-fiction, for some reason I have absolutely no problem getting through books as long as I feel like I learn something concrete. (I am not implying that you do not learn things from fiction, I am merely saying that I do not have the patience for them these days.) So here are some non-fiction books I will be reading this summer:

Dale Carnegie – How to Stop Worrying and Start Living: I definitely belong to the group of the population that worries too much, but I am working on it, and I have made an active choice and change it. As Mark Twain said; “I’ve had thousands of problems in my life, most of which never actually happened”. Now I am trying to find books and solutions to the whole cycle of worrying. This Dale Carnegie book seems pretty straightforward and useful, with concrete examples and good structure.

Dan Ariely – Predictably Irrational: Dan Ariely is my absolute favorite speaker I have heard from TED conferences, and he actually makes behavioral economics fun. He explains why we behave irrational and make bad choices for ourself – again and again – in a highly predictable pattern. All of his work is based on experiments, and the way he describes them makes it fun and easy to read. I read the first 91 pages today while drinking coffee, and I can not wait to read the rest of the book. Highly recommended if you are interested in human behavior and choice!

Jonah Lehrer – How We Decide: I do not know much about this book yet, but the beginning of it seems promising. Jonah Lehrer explains why we in fact need our emotional side in order to make choices at all. This is an excerpt from amazon.com: “Our best decisions are a finely tuned blend of both feeling and reason and the precise mix depends on the situation. When buying a house, for example, it’s best to let our unconscious mull over the many variables. But when we’re picking a stock, intuition often leads us astray. The trick is to determine when to use the different parts of the brain, and to do this, we need to think harder (and smarter) about how we think.”

Steven Pinker – How the Mind Works: I have to be honest, I don’t particularly like the way Steven Pinker writes – he uses a lot of words to get to his points. However, when he gets to his points, and he does, it is a really great read. From amazon.com: “MIT’s Pinker, who received considerable acclaim for The Language Instinct, turns his attention to how the mind functions and how and why it evolved as it did. The author relies primarily on the computational theory of mind and the theory of the natural selection of replicators to explain how the mind perceives, reasons, interacts socially, experiences varied emotions, creates, and philosophizes. Drawing upon theory and research from a variety of disciplines (most notably cognitive science and evolutionary biology) and using the principle of “reverse-engineering,” Pinker speculates on what the mind was designed to do and how it has evolved into a system of “psychological faculties or mental modules.””

Stephen Hawking – The Grand Design: I am so looking forward to reading this book! Since i haven’t read it myself yet, here is a clip from amazon.com: “In The Grand Design we explain why, according to quantum theory, the cosmos does not have just a single existence, or history, but rather that every possible history of the universe exists simultaneously. We question the conventional concept of reality, posing instead a “model-dependent” theory of reality. We discuss how the laws of our particular universe are extraordinarily finely tuned so as to allow for our existence, and show why quantum theory predicts the multiverse–the idea that ours is just one of many universes that appeared spontaneously out of nothing, each with different laws of nature.”

If any of you have any good recommendations for non-fiction books, I would love to hear them! I am interested in everything from math and science to psychology and emotions, but I have a particular soft spot for anything that has to do with the human mind.

A little drawing I am working on, I am not very good drawing with pencil and color pencils, so we will see how it goes. Will scan later!

And oh joy! 3 memory cards for under 2000 yen! (About 140 NOK /  25 USD for all three of them together. )

Bangs or no bangs? I can never decide.

& this is Oppie. He lives in our plant and is about the same size as the memory cards.

A couple of little accessories I bought a couple of days ago. When I was younger, one of my favorite things to photograph was all the faux jewelry I had. Good times.

We went to Shimokitazawa on Saturday, and despite it being really close, I had never been there before! It was a really cute neighborhood, lots of young people, but not the same type of young people that would find in Shibuya/Harajuku. These young kids were more like the alternative mori-girls and reminded me a lot of the people you would see around Ogikubo and Kichijoji. A bit more quiet and quirky and cute imho. There were lots of cute little back allies with shops filled to the brim with frilly lace dresses.

Look what I spotted on my way to the station! A circus truck!

I have no idea what they are selling in this store, but I suppose it is just as good to not know.

super cute crepe-stand at the entrance to an outside seating area.

Hey mom, this picture is for you! The funny thing is that right next to this bar, there used to be a cafe called “Little Bergen”.

My escapades in the kitchen continues! This is a frittata, and it is super-easy to make. It is kind of like an omelet, except it is much better. I don’t really know how to write up recipes since I am not that good with describing what to do with the various food-stuff that goes into cooking (I am ok at describing food when eating it though!), but I thought I would give it a go anyway. Here is now you do it:

1. Cut up the veggies you want in it. I used white onion, asparagus, mushroom and tomato. You can put whatever else you want in it, like cheese or ham or even cooked potato. It is a great way to get rid of whatever leftover veggies you have in the fridge.
2. Fry the vegetables in a pan (onion first, then toss the vegetables that doesn’t need much cooking in). Don’t toss in the tomatoes just yet.
3. Crack six eggs in a small bowl, mix them with a fork and add some salt and pepper to the eggs, then pour the egg-mix over the vegetables in the frying pan.
4. Wait until the eggs solidify around the edges and the bottom of the frittata, and then you toss the tomatoes on top, and cook it on the stove at low temperature for 5 – 10 minutes.
5. The egg-stuff on top will still be liquidy, so I just put the entire pan in the oven for 5 minutes to make sure the top of the frittata got cooked as well. Those frying pans with the handles you can take of are awesome. Let it cool down, cut it into something that looks like pizza-slices and serve it either warm or cold.

Tada! Finished! And if it is easy enough that I can do this, anyone can make this. And it even looks delicious.

I went back to the shrine for the god of gambling in Shin-Okubo the other day. I don’t gamble, but I found these cute mini-shrines.

Look at how tiny they are, they reach me to my knee.

Couscous and salad. You can buy these sun dried tomatoes in olive oil, and if you add the entire package in, including all the oil, it prevents the couscous from going dry, and adds a really nice flavor to it as well.

If you have never tried natto, you need to try it. Natto is Japanese fermented soy beans. You need to try it about 5 – 10 times, so you can get over the fact that it smells like old gym socks, and realize that natto is not the work of the devil, but actually taste really good.

Simple grilled fish dinner with asparagus and rice and tomato.