First Time Watching Sumo Live!

Summer vacation is already here! Summer is always the best season for traveling. Nice sunshine with warm breeze crossing your face, and with all kinds of flower blossom it naturally brings you good energy and good mood to travel ! :)   
If you are planning a trip to Japan this year, I recommend you to include Sumo tournament into your plan! Not only it was lots of fun, you can also enjoy the one-of-a-kind cultural experience it provides!
About a year ago when I was living in Japan, I went to my first sumo tournament in Tokyo! It was an unforgettable memory for me. I still remember how excited I was when I just arrived Ryogoku. There are in total 6 times of Sumo contests in Japan every year, and Ryogoku is one of the locations for sumo contest in Tokyo area.

Just after you get out of Ryogoku station, this statue tells you right away this is a sumo place!

On the way to Ryogoku Kokugikan (Sumo Hall), there are many flags with each sumo wrestler's name on it. I was impressed by this colorful and spectacular flag decoration.

He is the first Sumo player I found!Yay :D

And more indoors! :D There are many ranks of sumo players. People can tell which rank they belong to by looking at their hairstyle and what they wear. These sumo players are wearing a bun on the head and yukata (the robe) and it means that they are still in a low position. They have no salary but only some pocket money. They don't have their own room so they need to all sleep together in a big room. And they only have 7 days to take part in each tournament. The other days they have to cook, clean and serve the higher rank of the sumo players!

The stadium was totally full. There are several types of seats and we got the second best type so we had a pretty good view.

With this type of ticket, although it's a bit expensive, besides getting a good view, you can also get a free bento box, some snacks and lots of souvenirs to take home! 

It's a tradition that sumo players wash their mouth before they fight.

Also before the fight, they spread some salt to pray not to get hurt during the fight. In tradition, Japanese people think spreading salt can evict demons.

Clap Clap

People cleaned up the accumulated salt on the floor

People were doing some advertisement before the game started, EACH ad cost 60000 yen. The way to advertise is just to walk around the ring for one round and then they had to go down the stage. The sumo player who won the game can get 30000 yen from each ad!

The more famous the sumo player is, the more ads they will have. This game had 40 ads. So it means the winner of this game can gain 1200000 yen!

Japan is such an organized and polite country with no exception even when the game is finished they cleaned up the ring right away and covered it with a piece of cloth as like the ring was treated with full respect.

After the game we went to the souvenir zone :) Manga is one of the culture representation in Japan and with Japanese people's creativity,

 everything that you can or cannot think of can be "cute."

Sumo T-shirt

This big bunch of good-quality Shitake mushrooms is an award for Sumo players, good nutrition support! :)

This is an award too from Coca Cola

The whole game last about 4 to 5 hours. And we got so much free souvenirs! (they came with the seat we purchased) So when we got home, we couldn't wait to  open and see what we have got in the bags! Guess what we have got?

Traditional Japanese sweets..but they didn't really taste good actually...:P

Sumo rice crackers! These were good! 

Sumo noodles

Sumo bowls..there was no sumo pictures on it, but the little fan in the middle is what the sumo judge is always holding during the game.

The last but not the least, Sumo Chocolate!! This is super! My favorite souvenirs among all of them! They are just so adorable and I felt bad to eat them :-P

If you are interested in watching Sumo tournament while traveling in Japan, booking your tickets several weeks in advance is recommended because Sumo is such a popular sports in Japan, no matter they watch it in live or just in front of TV.

There are 6 tournaments in total every year in Japan: 

• January in Tokyo
• March in Osaka
• May in Tokyo
• July in Nagoya
• September in Tokyo
• November in Fukuoka

The following is the link for purchasing the ticket in English:

http://www.sumo.or.jp/eng/ticket/index.html

Wish you a good summer vacation ♥：）

Poulet à la marocaine et couscous aux fruits

♥ Moroccan chicken with fruit couscous ♥

I love love this recipe! The yogurt with honey matches with the moroccan chicken so much and I also love the couscous garnished with cranberry, baked slivered almond and some cilantro. It tastes so refreshing! Cilantro (coriander) is one of my favorite herbs. It goes with many things and it's often used in Chinese cuisine. I always like to put some chopped cilantro into my soup noodle like chicken pho, chicken congee or thousand-year-old egg tofu salad. Small herb makes big difference! :D It just make them taste so good!

So this Moroccan chicken is really fast and easy to make. It takes me about 20 minutes to bring it on the table. If you don't have much time to prepare dinner after a long day, or just want to have some light and simple lunch for the weekend, Please give this recipe a try! :)

(For 4 people)

Ingredients: 

• 900g of chicken breast
• Moroccan spices (p.s 1)
• 250g of couscous
• 50g cranberry
• 50g slivered toasted almonds (p.s 2)
• 1 bunch of cilantro, roughly chopped
• 150g of yogurt (nature, without sugar)

How to:

1. Sprinkle Moroccan spices and a bit of salt onto the chicken breast and sauté in frying pan.
2. Meanwhile, add 300 ml of water in a pot and boil it. Add couscous(250g) into the boiling water, cover the lid, remove from the heat and wait for 5 minutes until all the water is absorbed. 
3. Season couscous as you like. ( I only added some salt) Put the slivered toasted almonds, cranberry and cilantro into couscous. Use a fork to gently stir.
4. Place the chicken on top, garnish with some yogurt and honey.

Enjoy your meal! :D

p.s 1 Moroccan spices can usually be found in the supermarket.

p.s 2 You can find slivered almonds in the supermarket too, or make your own! I made my own slivered almonds by following this recipe. And they turned out good! :)

http://www.food.com/recipe/how-to-blanch-split-sliver-almonds-369495

Feuilletés au mascarpone et aux fruits rouges

The cake in France will bring you to paradise! French and Japanese cake are the best cake I have ever had! They are just so delicate with nice aroma and taste so so good! So recently I bought a French cooking book and decided to make my own...And here is the result..∩▂∩

Recipe (for 4 people)

What you Need:

• 300g of frozen raspberries and blueberries (I used fresh ones)
• lemon liquor
• 50g of icing sugar
• 1 puff patry (Pâte feuilletée pur beurre)
• 200g of mascarpone
• 125ml of fresh cream
  
  P.S I can not find lemon liquor, so I use coulis de framboises instead, something like this  http://courses.carrefour.fr/static/wlpdatas/display/000/014/545/145456.jpg

How To:

1. Mix the fruits, lemon liquor (or Coulis de framboises) and 1 tablespoon of icing sugar. Preserve in the fridge.
2. Preheat the oven at 200C.
3. Cut the puff pastry into rectangle or any shape you like and sprinkle some icing sugar on the pastry. (This step should be done very fast right after you take the puff pastry from the fridge. Otherwise, the pastry will be very soft and become hard to deal with. I failed the first time because I played with it too long...)
4. Line them on baking paper, bake about 10 minutes, take it out and let it cool. 
5. Beat the mascarpone, the creme and 2 spoons of icing sugar in a bowl until the cream forms stiff peak.
6.  Create the small sandwich with the puff pastry, mascarpone and the fruits. Sprinkle some icing sugar on the puff pastry.

Per portion: 572 kcal

This is a 15-minute recipe and the cake tastes pretty good. To be honest, although you can't compare it with the pâtisserie here in Paris, when you have some guests visiting you, it's sure good enough to impress them! 
Good luck!  (^_-)-☆

Self-introduction

Have been thinking to build up a blog for a long time...This idea has been sitting in my mind for a while, but I am always so occupied by being a full-time mummy and housewife, there are always endless things to do...

BUT!! Today I am going to make it come true!

So I am going to start by doing a simple self-introduction...

I was born and raised in southern part of Taiwan. After completed my bachelor degree in Taiwan, I went to the states to study for my master. Not only that I got my Master, I also found my Mr. there! (≧▽≦) 

I met one Japanese man and got married with him...which I could never imagine before...This is because..

Since I was little, I watched many western movies like Roman Holiday, The Sound of Music, My Fair Lady..etc. with my mom at HBO channel every weekend and in the eyes of a little girl, I've always thought Western people are so good-looking!! And since then I dreamed of getting married with a western guy..hahahaha..how funny..

Anyways, back to the main topic, so I was living in the States (both East and West Coast) for 4 years. After getting married with my husband, we moved back to Japan and then I started to learn Japanese! 

After almost 1 year later, because of a job opportunity of my husband's, we moved to Paris! And I had my first baby born in Paris too!

Life is full of surprises!! So in this little blog, I would like to share with you all the living experiences and culture differences in those countries I had been living in! At the same time, because of living in different countries, I have dealt with plenty of paper work and it's never fun!

So I would also like to share my paper work experience so that might help you out a little bit if you are struggling in what documents to prepare and where to go! 

The paper work that I have dealt with includes how to get married with Japanese, apply Social Security (government health insurance) and Mutuelle (private insurance) in France, how to get a birth-certificate for your new-born in France...etc.

Besides the boring paper work, of course I will also include the gourmet and sceneries! :D

P.S My native language is not English, so if I made some mistakes in English, please correct and teach me! (bow) :)