豚のミルフィーユ鍋/ Hot Pot

今日のよるご飯♪
豚のミルフィーユ鍋

Today's dinner

Pork mille-feuille hot pot

もう最近じゃないか。一時期めっちゃはやったよね。今更ながらやってみた！

参考にしたレシピはcookpad: 691669

ゆずをおだしに入れるといいかも！って思ったんだけど、すだちな気分だったのですだちをスライスしてだしにいれて一緒に煮たら、めっちゃいいにおいがした！

白菜と豚肉からとってもいいお出汁がでて、家族はぽんず使わずにそのままお出汁と一緒にたべていました。

満足してもらえたみたいでよかったよかった。めでたしめでたし。

When winter comes, the hot pot becomes really popular since it's warm!

You might think the name of this dish is strange but that's what it's literally called in Japanese. It is because layers of Chinese cabbage and pork look like mille-feuille.

The hot pot dish is really easy to cook. All you have to do is basically cutting veges and meat and put them all in the pot. DONE haha

Since I put soya based soup from the beginning, amazing soup is created after being mixed with the extras of pork and vege. People often put rice or noodle after the hot pot dish, since the great soup is made. I'm looking forward to put rice in the soup tomorrow morning for my breakfast :)

My Outfit / Favorite Shoes

This year I've been training my skin to keep up with cold during winter. I don't wanna say 'I'm cold! I'm gonna be frozen!' thousands time. I don't know whether my training actually works or not, I feel Japan is not that cold this year yet.

Normally during winter I wear UGG 90% since they are the only boots which make my frozen toes warm but this year I haven't wore them yet.

Instead I enjoy wearing these which I bought my U.K. trip this summer.

Parkway Jessyca Slip On Shoe

When I found these, I also got interested in these.

Dr. Martens Karishma Shoe

I just couldn't choose one so I bought both of them.... lol

At the time, my suitcase was literally full and there was no more space at all but I just couldn't ignoring these. Well when I think properly, I can buy them in Japan as well.... haha

I guess Dr. Martens store at Covent Garden has some sort of power to made me make purchase... :P

I wear the Karishma one but it's turned out that Jessyca one fits more clothes I have.

Hat; Ben Davis

Scarf; ?? bought in Malaysia 

White shirt; Ralph Lauren

Black knit; Lena Slobe

Trousers; UNIQLO

Shoes; Dr. Martens

Jacket; Burberry 

I really like hats but they don't suite me.... I guess it is because of a shape of my head. 

But they actually warm me up so I bought this Ben Davis one.

I like it because of this monkey haha It's cute, isn't it? I bought the hat at Plaza and at the same time I bought these NOGLAM's pinky pink gloves which I kinda regret of my colour choice....

I really like pink but I personally think maybe it's time for me to move on to the different one. 

But every year I lose gloves quite often so pink would be easy to notice!

You can use smartphone with wearing these glove! You don't have to be panicked when your phone rings haha

Even though I said it's not cold, after the sundown, it gets really cold... These hat and gloves really help me on my way home!

クレープメーカー ドレミ Review

I bought 'crepe maker' the other day. I think in the U.K. people call it as pancakes.

I guess until three years ago, there is a crepe shop called Hediard in Ikebukuro which was my mom's and my favourite place for tea. Now it's replaced to Tokyu Hands.....
Basically after I came back from my study abroad, I can't enjoy crepe anymore in Japan :(

I had crepe in Nottingham at a place called Aubreys Traditional Creperie. It was just amazing and I really enjoy it! If you visit Nottingham, you definitely have to go there! 

Anyway after this wonderful crepe experience in Nottingham, I miss crepe more. Haha But there is no place to have good one close to where I live, I decided to buy the crepe maker! Brilliant idea right :p?

When I looked up the Internet, as always there are many and different prices. I just got confused and gave up choosing one. But my eager to have crepe motivated me to find the right one haha
This Do Re Mi is the one I came across at the beginning. Since this is really cheap, I wasn't quite sure whether this works well or not. I read some reviews saying the heat power is not good but there are many positive ones too. After being confused a lot, I decided to give it a go. If it didn't work, it just cost around 3000. 

One day after I replaced the order, it arrived! 

I failed the first one of course but when it comes to the forth try, I made this good crepe!!
I like banana chocolate custard crepe the best so I used Nutella ( I bought when I was in the UK) and I made custard.
When I cook, I always look up to CookPad ( jp recipe site) and I found a really good recipe for custard. 
The recipe ID is 2892140 so you can have a look if you're interested in :)

It seems like the heat at the centre of the plate is a bit weak.

As you can see, the edge of dough becomes a bit burned when the centre is ready. 
Anyway I can make crepe easily with this maker and I am really happy with this.

The second time I made crepe using this machine, I didn't have milk to make dough so I used yogurt drink instead of milk. It tasted sweeter than normal but still acceptable. If you have a trouble of running out of milk to make dough, you can use yogurt drink if you have it!

I would like to make crepe with not sweet things such as chocolate and fruits. Maybe I can put tuna, sausages and cheese. I'm thinking to find a good recipe for it.

If you wanna make crepe at home as well, I recommend this to you :)   

How to Choose University / 大学の選び方

Recently I've been complaining a lot about my uni. I just can't stop it so I've decided to write a post about it. I hope this helps someone not making anyone annoyed.
最近自分の大学に対して文句しかなくて、とめられないのでまとめてみることにしました。読んでる人が嫌な思いをするのではなくって、大学選びの参考にしてもらえれば良いです。


To begin with, I won't tell directly which uni I go to but I'm just gonna list up characteristics of it.
まず、私の大学の特徴を。

-Girls University (well I do know the choice is limited now haha)
-女子大（選択肢がとっても狭まれられました笑）
-Used to be famous for its English education
-かつては英語教育で有名だった
-Location is bad
-キャンパスの場所が最悪

I think every complains come from the first fact, girls uni. It automatically becomes small scale. Only one faculty, limited access to everything.
Now I'm writing my thesis and what most irritates me is limited access to references. I'm interested in Sociology of Religion. There is no professor in my uni who does this study which means really really limited books in uni library. Well maybe you think why on earth I'm studying something no professor in my uni does. Well I got interested in religious studies when I did a study abroad in Bristol. I just wanted to keep doing it. Also my department focuses on international relations. I think religious studies should be in as well. This "International Relations" is really tricky thing in Japan. You basically can't study anything deeply. Basically you just get to know many things from the surface. How can you compare more than two countries or cultures even if you don't know fully about one? 

These whole complains caused by me. Well I just didn't choose my uni carefully enough when I was a high school kid. In Japan, it's just bloody difficult to enter a university. You've got to remember so many stuff to get good marks which is ridiculous and meaningless personally. So lazy Ayah chan thought, if I choose only girls uni, simply I don't have to compete guys which means less people!! haha 
Well for the sake of myself, I also add I was fascinated by the founder of my uni back then. I still think she is admirable but the followers haven't done a good job to preserve her good will. Anyway so I didn't research anything about universities. I just wanted to get in. I didn't know what I wanted to study, I just did know I wanted to keep studying English and do a study abroad.Apart from these, I didn't think seriously anything further so I just chose a subject which I can decide my major later on. As I mentioned before, this idea was terribly wrong.... 
Well I personally think if you take current Japane education, it's very difficult to know what is sociology? Business? Marketing? Everything. All I did was bloody memorising histories. Basically all you have to do is to get a good mark and get in a uni with a good reputation. it doesn't matter what you do at uni. 
I hated the Japanese university idea of doing nothing. I wanted to study something even though I didn't know what I wanted to study apart from English. Well it turned out that if you want to study something, you need a good environment to do so. To make research, you need references, books and teachers. It is sad that university also needs the funds to gain all the facilities. Big well known unis have money to have all of them. 
In the end, it might be true that going to famous uni is nice.... Well I just want anyone to think back the uni's facilities if you are choosing your future uni now.

多分女子大で学部が一つ、規模がちいさいっていうところが結果良くないんだと思うんだけど、とにかくすべてが不便。今卒論を書いていて一番イライラすることが本や文献にアクセスできないこと。勉強する環境がまったく整っていないのになぜか施設維持費は毎年たくさん徴収される謎。私が勉強している分野の先生が私の大学にはいないからそこからもうなんでこの大学を選んだのかしらっていうミステイク笑。それは私がとっても安易に大学を選んだから自分のミスなんだけど。留学してイギリスの大学でとった社会宗教学にとっても興味もって日本にかえってきてからもそれを勉強したいって思っただけなんだけど、まあ気づくのが遅すぎたね。そもそも、女子大を選んだ理由が高校生の時にあんまり勉強したくなくて女子校の方が競争率低いだろうとか思ったからというほんとに最悪な理由なので、もし今大学を選んでいる人がいましたら、少なくともどんな勉強をしたいかはやっぱり考えるべきなのかなと思います。
が、しかし、日本の高校教育だといまいち商学部？社会学部？経済学部？のイメージがわきにくいんだよね。少なくとも私はなんのイメージも抱けずとりあえず英語といろんな文化が学べそうな国際関係学部へ。しかし、国際とつけばなんでも学べるというとっても素敵なこの学部では、結果どんなことでも薄い知識しかつけることができないという落とし穴があることを私はしらなかったわけです。もちろん、やりようによってはちゃんと勉強できるし、国際関係学部ですばらしい成果を残している人もいるけれど、個人的にはやっぱりいろんなものを比較するときに少なくとも一つのことに精通している必要性があるとは思って、もし国際社会をやりたいのであれば、土台となる社会、私の場合だったらやっぱり生まれ育った日本社会のことをちゃんと勉強する必要があるんじゃないかと思うのです。でも、この一つの社会を学ぶのでさえもとっても奥が深くてそれこそ一生かかるのに、違う社会もってなるとなんだかやってることが少し浅いのではないかと今までの私の大学生活を振り返って思うわけです。
ここで、何を勉強するかよりも大学選びでは規模や施設の充実さが何よりも重要ではないのかなと。悲しいけれど、結局大学もビジネスの一つ。お金がなければよい設備を整えられない。結局有名な大学に行くのがいいってことになってしまうかもだけど、この設備という面から大学を選ぶことを考えてみては？？

Edinburgh Trip in September/Haggis

After long long long flights, I arrived in London Heathrow at around 14. I took a bus to Stansted to take a flight to Edinburgh on the same day lol
Anyway here I was! Edinburgh!

To be honest, I did not know much about the city. Since my best friend cannot go out of the U.K. because of the Visa problem, we chose to go to Scotland. 

We were really amused by this beautiful city!!!

Only thing I knew about Scotland was haggis. My Scottish friend love it, but my Australian host family hate it. They told me it would be like vegemite. Because I don't like vegemite, I was really scared to try it but I thought I should give a go!!!

So I tried it!!!!! 

And I LIKE IT! I LIKE IT A LOT!!!! (Well I really miss it now :()

Even though my friend told me I can have a good haggis everywhere but I really wanted to try a good one. We decided to try Whiski Rooms's one. The place looked very busy and we could only get a small table but the food was really nice! Apart from the tiny table, the atmosphere was really nice as well :)

Next day, we climbed Arthur's Seat. 

It was a good walk and I enjoyed beautiful nature!

You can tell from the pic but standing there was actually scary!

When my friend dared me to climb it, I though there was a actual seat on top of the mountain? or hill?.

I was looking for anything can be a seat and I found it!

I completely believed that it was the seat lol

but seems like the mountain itself is 'Arthur's Seat'

At the bottom, there is the palace of Holyroodhouse.

Since the audio guide was included, I learned some history and more information about the each room. Personally I really like this palace more than Buckingham Palace. 

We also had a tea break there!

I look super happy in the pic! I miss the tea time in the U.K. now.....

(In Japan, well especially Tokyo, you can have a relaxing tea time since there are so many people and it's difficult to get a seat in the first place.)

Seems like the week we were in Edinburgh, the weather was really nice. 

We enjoyed the sun at Princes Street Gardens wearing very Scot's clothes haha

When I was in the museum, the staff pointed at my clothe and hers saying 'same :P'

I was really interested in the close in Edinburgh. I just couldn't understand how to build the upper city at that time. To learn the history more, even though I really don't like any horror thing, I decided to go to The Real Mary King's Close.

Unfortunately I couldn't understand well what the tour guide explained at each spot.... (My English skill.....) That made the tour less scary I guess.
Every time I study history, I'm a bit confused and disappointed cause I never know what exactly happened in the era and I have to imagine people's life. But I'm so bad at imagining.

At the same time, I believe that it's just impossible to know what exactly happened but studying history triggers my curiosity. 

So this is my Edinburgh trip pretty much!

Hope you enjoyed a bit!

I miss the U.K......... (Edinburgh would be freezing cold now though)