Featuring the usual daily mid day hangin place: My office’s cafeteria.

I am working a building with about 4000 people employees in it. All work for the same company (don’t think that is so much as in the whole Japan, my office employs more than 35,000 people). In this building we have two cafeterias, a restaurant, a bakery and two coffee shops all run by the same company. All located at ground floor, surrounded by bamboo garden clearly visible from the surrounded glass wall.
At lunch time, to avoid people jammed at 12 o’clock, the office distribute the lunch hour. Say, floor 1-3 lunch time from 11:30-12:30, floor 3-5 from 11:45-12:45, and so on, rotate every month. The food run by professional catering company. Review by us every three years. From a year ago a company named Seiyo Food System in charged.

The two cafeteria got around 20 different main meal menu every day. Another 20 side dishes, dessert bar and the great salad bar. To fulfill the tastebuds of thousands head and our international guest or rare international employee like me, every day there are always variation of menu from Japanese dishes, Chinese, Italian (pasta), Indian (curry)and international (American). On a lucky day (like one or twice a month) Indonesian menu like nasi goreng or mie goreng or gado-gado is there.

The cafeteria is a self serve place. Take what you want, pay at the cashier. The salad bar is awesome. The only drawback is the less choice of fruits.
The restaurant which cost you a bit more (like 15%), require you just to sit and order and has a bit more fancy menu. Restaurant only carry set menu.
In all cafeteria and restaurant, each item is carefully labeled with the kcal (calorie) it contain. In side-dish bar, they even group the item base on the nutrition value of the food, like these dishes is high calcium, that contain a lot of vitamin A,B3,B16, etc.

My office subsidized somewhere around 30% of the food price. So, the price is really reasonable.
In each dining table, there are brochure of healthy food, calorie count, health, etc.
The business of food catering is in a tough competition market, so they got to keep up with the market and provide more service and facility. Seiyo just get accredited for ISO 14001 and part of it is to serve with a environment friendly way, which is not good for me as they removed the waribashi (diposable wood chopstick) which I definitely need to consume udon and soba as the usual chopstick is laminated and way too slippery for me who don’t use chopstick from my early years of life.

Having said the above, eating hundreds days in a year at the same place, me and my lunch group agreed that once a week we need a break and just go out and grab any easy food outside. Like onigiri (riceball) and tea and eat it in our nearby flying garden with many other office worker on a sunny day….that is another story.

Spring is in. Good bye terrible frosty days. Hello terrible pollen days.

I am among those 20 millions people in Japan who suffer cedar pollen allergic (hayfever). In the warm and windy days of Spring, my eyes will swollen like the eyeball want to jump out, red and itch. Nose will run as tap water between thousands sneezes, at night it clogged that hardly for me to breath, not dreaming to sleep.
Surgical mask and glasses are my survival tool, aside the daily doses of Allegra or another brand of antihistamine, eye-drops, eye-wash, nose-wash, tissue. Some people wear special goggles looks like diving goggles when go outside, but the stylish me can’t help it.

How do I get this? Doctor describe in easy language like this: in every human body there is a pocket. This pocket tolerants a particular amount of pollen (or dust, or else). Everybody has different size of pocket. Say, this year your pocket is not full, no guarantee that next year or in the future it will be full. So mine has been full since three years ago.

Last November, I got a set of eight immunization shots to prepare my body to handle the pollen season. But not so lucky me, I still get the symptoms only they are not as bad as last year.

The Cedar and Cypress Allergic is actually a new thing in Japan (and I heard from my Korean friends nowadays it is more and more ‘attacking’ Seoul and surround too). In 1950s as part of the huge reforestation after the WW II, the government planted their land and mountain with a tree called Sugi or Japanese Cedar. These trees are now covering 13% of Japanese Archipelago. Fifty years after (nowadays) they are mature and the flower from each tips of the branch will blown by the wind all around Japan.
From end of February till May, the situation is so prevalent that the pollen count on the air become the part of daily weather forecast.
The situation also hit the economic toll too. Every year it is said that the situation cost in average $2 billion(!) in medicine only. Not counting the indirect cost like people calling in sick and absent from work, or many people try to escape to countries outside Japan where the cedar pollen doesn’t exist.
Like me, last year, escaped to Europe for a month, only I was lucky that it was paid by my work as it was biztrip.

Image from Weathernews at Bigglobe japan

Lately, to exercise our 5 years old Raisa’s ability of explaining things, we like to play this family game. I or hubby will whisper a word in her ear. She got to explain that thing in sentences so hubby or I will be able to guess. If she succeed explaining a noun word, she will got one point. If the word is a verb, two points. Every mistake, minus one point. The calculation of points is her math practice too. Collected points will lead to a treat in the weekend after her piano lesson (like a cup of bubble tea or else).

Our intention is to make her able to express and describe things properly, in smart and easy to understand way.
But aside of teach her this thing, we also learn many things from her.
The honest and pure way things been seen from the five years old eyes.

This is how she explained things:

Bank - Office which sell money.
Bad mood - When I feel hungry or sleepy.
Pakistan - A place which is hot and got a lot of dust.
Love - If you feel so happy happy happy and want to kiss so much because somebody is so kind.
Nelly (our friend who wears jilbab) - A women who wear slayer on her head, but her hair always go out from that slayer.
Daddy (my hubby) - A man who is so kind but always always angry.

I think it is in the blood, my photography hobby. My father is a long time avid photographer. High-end in the amateur side, he even taught photography classes in Univ and some clubs. But unlike him, I am not much into outdoor hunting, mostly because the time limitation I have as full-time worker, wife and mother, withour helper. If by chance I am out side, I will snap some pictures, but the creative side rather develop at home. My photography is home photography. I like to do still-life, shot the common object in different prespective and angle to make it interesting. Utilize the different speed, lighting, appenture to get it right.

My favorite objects are those at my kitchen, in my refrigerator.
Click, click…then eat it.

2003’s Pea in a pod

2004’s Shitake

2003’s Egg

2004’s Mango