Expat Life in Japan! – Ep #2: Cherry Blossom Adventures & Spring Projects

Expat Life in Japan! – Ep #2: Cherry Blossom Adventures & Spring Projects

Hey everyone, welcome back. This is episode two. We had so many things that happened this month. This was our first springtime in Japan. Loads of things happen in the video. We hope you enjoy, you’re entertained, you like and subscribe. Cheers. [Music] We are going to a really small restaurant in the mountains in Japan with our Japanese teacher Fukurasan. We’re way out of country. We’re in Okayyama City. We’re going to film the Sakura Festival. Enjoy. So, we’re down here in Okyama City right for the castle checking out the Sakura and uh filming for our channel for the Sakura videos that we want to accomplish. We are here for the Sakura Festival as well, which is right down there. And there’s like 50 food trucks. So, we’re going to go check it out. Street food time. [Music] Hello. Oldfashioned American dog. [Music] We’re uh down here in Suyama catching the Sakura at the festival at the Suyama Castle. Um, hope you enjoy are enjoying the video. It’s amazing. [Music] [Music] What do you um think about the Sakura at Suyama? Next time we’re bringing them picking a blanket now that we know about. It’s really beautiful spot. Lots and lots of people today because it’s a Saturday. But this is well worth the trip to Suyama. This is the best sukuro we’ve seen thus far. Yeah, it’s amazing. Check it out. [Music] [Music] So my friend, my good friend Akio bringing me out here to forage wild wasabi. Pretty amazing. Check it out. [Applause] So, we were on our morning walk to the shrine and uh up through the cherry trees and was kind of focused looking up at the at the sakura the trees and I looked down on the ground and I found a huge patch of morel mushrooms. Um there are are false morelss. I know that. But um I was pretty convinced, 99% sure that these were true morelss. And then I went back down to check the guide. Sure enough, all the distinguishing characteristics, single chamber, all the gills looked the right way. Everything looks great. Sportrint, all that. So we’re we found a jackpot. Let me show you. Um some of them are depending on like there’s a little one right there. And then there’s a bigger one over here. And then if you look up the mountain, you can see a little popping out of the grass. There’s Oh, they’re all over here. See, there’s one. There’s a beautiful one over there. A bunch of them all the way up the [Music] mountain. Yeah. So awesome. On the road. And we Thomas just stumbled on one of these mushrooms. And look at what we got. Yeah. A whole bag of morel mushrooms. Actually, two bags. This is my bag over here. Unbelievable. Unbelievable. So, I think we’re going to cook them up tonight. Do a little pasta. Yeah. Yeah. Doing the uh seafood pasta tonight. I’m probably going to do fetuccini. Rolled out some sheets here. Got my trusty pasta machine. Raquel’s cleaning the mushrooms over here. Making sure they’re devoid of any dirt. This is the forage that we did with the morels’s. I got some uh some cream. Um, some heavy cream, 50/50. Looks like 47% cream. Got the beautiful um, butter, unpasteurized butter. Got some prawns here. Some beautiful Japanese tiger prawns. Got my uh, Jack and Coke. It’s important when you’re cooking to have fun and listen to some good music. Uh, got the water boiling, boiling, alkaline, uh, nice alkaline water up here. Got it boiling. Um, and then uh going to simmer down the mushrooms with uh some yellow onion. I don’t have any um uh shallot right now. Couldn’t find any at the Japanese grocery store. So, we got yellow onion. We got some beautiful garlic. And uh that’s pretty much all we’re going to do. Yeah. Easy does it. Easy does it. [Music] garlic, onion, butter, olive oil, water ready, preps, got the prawns all chopped up and ready to go. Yeah. [Music] We are getting ready to christen the fire bowl with the first bonfire. [Music] Fire. All right. Ripping. What do you think, babe? Yeah. [Music] How are you doing? I’m toasty. [Music] Marui. Springtime’s here and so we have all this, you know, these weeds in our garden. Got a lot of weeding to do. Sons of Luckily, we bought this badass weed torch. We just got it today from Amazon. We’ll see how it works. What you doing over there? We’re picking dandelions. What are we going to do with those? Well, Thomas is going to make dandelion wine. It probably tastes like poop. But if it t if it if it tastes like I can say If it tastes like then I will distill it with a pot still and I’ll make liquor out of it. Deal. Look at the beautiful dandelions here though. Picking the dandelions so I can make a dine. I’ve got the champion. I’m going to make the wine and get drunk on my own. Got the nice [Music] Japanese. So many. I want the big ones though. There’s some nice juicies right there. I know. Just going to make me some dandelion wine. I’m going to get drunk. Yeah. All right. Let me show you what we’re doing here. We are snipping off this back part of the flower and we are getting rid of all the green around the petals cuz the green is bitter. So, we want about three quarts just of these yellow petals like you see here. Pure petals. And that’s what we’re doing from that to that. It’s tedious. Starting off with three quarts of petals only. It’s tedious. All right. So, after that labor intensive petal job, we’re now boiling a gallon of water. Once this comes to boil, we let it rest and then we’re going to pour it over the petals. And then this steeps for about 3 days to extract all the sugars. Okay. All right. Water. Here it [Music] goes. Wow. And we got to stir it in there and then cover it with a towel or cheesecloth for 3 days. We keep it in there. Nice. Look at all that goodness. Wonder what it smells like. Smells pretty purple. We’re in downtown Katsuyama historical district on a Wednesday evening and it’s just beautiful and there’s no one present. Chinese food. We’re going to eat Chinese food. Yeah, look at Katsuyama. Love Katsuyama. Boom. [Music] [Music] Hi. Hey. So, our good friend Yuki Chan came over today and gifted us this. This is something very seasonal. It’s called Sakura Moi. And it’s um it’s a rice and bean dessert that’s flavored with Sakura blossoms and then wrapped in Sakura leaves. We haven’t tried it yet, but it smells it smells really nice. Pull out and eat it. Okay. So, I asked her, “Do you eat the leaf?” And she her response was, “Some people eat the leaf and some people don’t like it.” So, I’m going to try it with it. I would have probably taken the leaf off myself, but Mhm. It’s very mild. It’s good. Is it good with the leaf? Mhm. I don’t think I’m going to eat the stem part of the leaf, but I’m going to eat both sides of it. But it’s good. [Music] Hey, so it’s a beautiful day outside today. Weather’s great. So, I am doing the following. We have some delicious sun tea going on. And then the next project is planting all these beauties. We have some lavender, a deranium in the background there, some dill, cuz dill is really hard to find in the grocery store. And then we have a variety of some tomatoes and some peppers and some cilantro. Let’s get going. So, I’m finally taking a break. I’m enjoying some of my sun tea. [Music] Um, pretty much got the deranium, the lavender, and you see over there, the tomato, the basil, the dill repotted. I’ve got to do the cilantro next. Um, not worried at all about the tomato or the basil, the dingham, lavender. Not worried about those. I’ve had a lot of success with those in the past. But the dill and the cilantro, honestly, I’ve never successfully grown those. So, if you guys have any tips or tricks or you’re a big green thumb, let me know what your secret is. So, we found this crazy amazing iron like big old like bowl, which was the perfect thing that we needed to have a fire pit with. So, we built a fire pit and I’ve been collecting these amazing stones from the river. These white stones, like a white granite, but this is our fire pit that I’ve built out. Anyways, fire pit project complete. These are some stumps we are going to sand and lacquer and make really beautiful for our living room. We wanted it to be natural items and beautiful high quality stuff. So, we’re going to work on this. We got a sander. Get to work and we’re going to create these beautiful pieces of furniture. Heat. Heat. [Music] This one’s just getting started. That one is already done. Not lacquered yet, though. Just sanded. We had to stop because it started to rain, but we will continue this project tomorrow. Yeah. Stump project. Homemade furniture. Is that [Music] good? We’re in downtown Katsuyama headed to the uh sake festival. Go Zenshu sake festival. We didn’t think it would be much, but actually they have some stuff going on down here. It’s check it out. Uh we have here and we can mix uh these uh these. You can choose a ratio 2 one1 or 311. I should probably taste it smaller. You can you can uh try in your uh your table. Oh, okay. Let’s go get a Let’s go get a table. So, we’re doing a sake blending to create our own model of sake at Gozenu sake, which is a a few hundred-year-old sake brewery right close to our house about a 5 10 minute walk from our house. They give you three sakees. one that is um I think what he said it was uh sour, dry, and sweet. Yes. And you’re supposed to create a ratio with this little spoon in this cup. And then you give them how many uh spoonfuls in that ratio and and then they blend the sake for you. How fun. Let’s do it. Let’s do it. One of these. So, we got eight of these, two of these, and one of these. So I I apparently like subtly sweet sake I suppose better better but I’m not satisfied yet these stickers are they these have this place yeah this actually this one is Oh yeah it goes on there this one logo I like this one. You can try. My kanji isn’t very good. This one is the new one. It’s time limited edition. Very good. I want that one. You want that? 65% polish. This is This is a 2015 vintage sake. Same polish. Let me taste that. Oh, that’s really good. Subtle sweetness. Nice and smooth. And this is the 2015, so it’s got some 10 years of age on it. Wow. Strong, nutty, rich, really long finish. Ricey, like a barley flavor. M. Good. Yeah. Kind of fun. Uh, so some random Japanese guy just came up to me and apologized. I think maybe I was hanging out with him when I was really drunk or something. He apologized that um he didn’t like wine or didn’t suit his taste or something. I don’t even know who he is. I think he got I think he was one of the people that I invited to the house one time and he got drunk and got in a fight at my house. I don’t know. walking distance from our house and they have the best woodf fired pizza like in the entire area and it’s so good. They have a bunch of pasta too and I haven’t really ventured into that realm. We haven’t tried any of the pastas but the salads and the pizzas and the beer are fantastic. Their salad dressing is really yummy too. Cafe bird pizza and manwashi katyama. Not only is it a pepperoni pizza, but there’s corn on it, too. There’s corn on it. We call it corn. And some purple onion. Beautiful. Beautiful pizza. Okay. Now that the dandelion petals have been steeped for 3 days in a gallon of water, which we boiled that gallon, it’s time to start the fermentation process. So, I’m going to empty out that into this large ceramic um pot that I found yesterday at a really cool thrift store here in town. Very It’s pretty large. I think it’s probably about I don’t know that’s probably about 3 to 4 gallon jug. I’m going to put that in there. It the recipe calls for 3 lbs of sugar, a package of raisins, um I think it’s two oranges, one lemon chopped up, and then champagne yeast, which I was successfully able to order on Amazon Japan. It’s uh the brand is called Red Star. Where do the packages look? Red Star Champagne yeast. Anyways, we can get the fermentation started. So, I’ll keep you updated. I think it’s like 2 weeks it’s supposed to ferment. Um yeah. Yeah. Mini [Music] truck. Check her [Music] out. Yeah, we’re going to be mobbing this all over the place, man. Up to the hot springs. Yeah. Out to the beach. Driving in my mini Japanese truck. Driving in my mini Japanese truck. Got a mini Japanese truck. Driving in my Japanese truck. Come on, man. Let’s do this. Woohoo. [Music] Yucky yucky yucky no yucky yucky nie yucky yucky chick yucky yak naki. Oh sh no yucky. [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] So, our homemade dandelang wine has been fermenting in this pot for just over two weeks now, and it looks like to be completed fermenting. Um, I’m going to now strain it into here and then probably cheesecloth it to get it as fine as I can possibly get it and filter it. And then I’m going to bottle it in small bottles and then put balloons on top so I can see if the fermentation has been completed. Once the balloon, I suppose what they say is once the balloon like kind of like deflates, that’s when you know that’s not no longer fermenting at all and the yeast is now arrested. And then we’ll have our wine and then we’ll uh we’ll cap it up and cork it up or bottle it up the way we want it. And um it’s been a interesting project. We’ll see if it tastes good. That’s the main thing. Probably tastes disgusting, but we’ll see. Okay. It smells good. It does smell good. Smells like wine. It looks like swamp water, but it smells good. I’m making a freaking huge mess here. That’s all right. It doesn’t smell like swamp water. Oh, it looks like swamp water. Yeah, the color is not looks like unfiltered apple juice. [Music] We’re uh setting up for our party. Yeah, it’s in a week. We’re having a friends party, a kind of a um open house type thing. The 26th, kind of a housewarming party, and we’re uh setting up the fire pit area. We just put up some really cool LED lights and uh still cleaning up back here, but it’ll be uh it’ll be pretty fresh. But it’s [Music] [Applause] [Music] You having you having fun yet? I’m always having fun. You having fun? You having fun in Japan yet? Oh, yeah. I am barbecuing drinking wine. This is actually the second take of this video. We did this whole video prior and then like my camera and my camera wasn’t recording. So hopefully that doesn’t happen again because the third version would be really sloppy. Okay. Look at this. It’s like big ley beautiful. It’s ley. Rambutan, luchi, like tropical notes. Star fruit. It’s a sweet, but it’s a off sweet. It’s not a sickening sweet. White cherry, like a like rainier cherry. Liy is really coming through. Green strawberry. It has like a green strawberry note to it. We are deep in the mountains of Mania City in Okyama Perfecture going to the Daigo Sakura tree which is a thousand-year-old cherry tree. cherry tree that was planted by Emperor Godo a thousand years ago. Yeah. [Music] Hey guys. So, some of you may know that we’ve been actually looking for a second house here in Japan. We’ve really been eyeballing a beach house. That’s what we really have our heart set on. But something very unexpected has come up today. Our friend is coming by to pick us up to drive us to go check out a free house by an onsen. What all does that entail? We’re not quite sure yet, but we’re going to go check it out. So, we’re going to show you what it looks like. A lot of these free houses are in like total disarray and just a repair and need new foundations, new plumbing, new roofs, new walls, new everything. But, we’re going to check it out. We’ll we’ll let you guys see right now what uh a place that’s supposedly free. A free IKEA house. Come with us. We’ll show you. Yeah, we’ll check it out. This is an absolutely incredible property with an incredible view right next to a onen. He said the 200 owners are almost dead. Ao is just buying his time. He’s waiting. Ultra Teal water. Gorgeous. It’s beautiful. Little cold, but two more weeks. Time to get busy. Time to mow some [Music] [Music] Finally done with this bottom part here. Was a freaking jungle. I mowed it all down. Trying to be a good neighbor. Um, this isn’t my property. Uh, but it’s uh the property below us. The house below us is uh kind of abandoned. Um, so I decided to take it upon myself and clean this area so it would be such a nice. There’s some really nice houses back here and I think they’ll appreciate that. Got some more work to do on this side of the house over there. I’ll get started on that, but I’m going to take a break uh from the hard labor and do some internet So anyway, this is the final product, my dandelion wine, me and Raquel’s Dandelion wine. About a 14-day fermentation with champagne yeast. Then about uh we strained it and kept it in a large jar covered uh tightly covered uh for about about a week and uh it’s beautiful. It tastes delicious. It’s pretty complex. Let me do a little tasting note for you. Bright citrusy deep complexity. It’s amazing. Hope you enjoyed all that, friends. It was a amazing month. Uh packed full of adventure and action. We uh actually filmed much more this month than what’s in this last this uh episode 2 video. We went to Coobe, went to Himi Castle, we went shopping around for houses. I’m going to link those uh videos up right now so that you guys can see what else we did this month. I just didn’t want to make the episode too large. Hope you enjoyed it. It was a lot of fun for us. We crafted a lot of things. We’ve foraged mushrooms. We foraged wild wasabi. We we made dandelion wine. Actually made pickles, too, that weren’t that good. They were a little bit soggy. But um we’ve uh been doing a lot of uh foraging around and uh creating things. And we continue to uh update the house. And you guys, you can see with the project I showed you with the the furniture pieces, we’re doing a lot of cool things like that. So, hope you enjoyed everything, guys. Cheers. Heat. Heat. [Music] [Music] [Applause] [Music]

🌸 Join us for our second Expat Life episode in Japan! Experience our first cherry blossom season in Okayama Prefecture, exploring Okayama City, Kurashiki, Tsuyama Castle, and the majestic Daigo Sakura, the largest cherry tree in the region. 🏯 We foraged morel mushrooms, made homemade pasta, and crafted dandelion wine after hours of flower-picking. 🪵 Restored old tree stumps into stunning furniture, painted our garage and home gym, bought a Japanese mini truck, and built a fire pit. Savor traditional Japanese herb cuisine from local foragers and relive our epic friends’ party! 🎉 Perfect for fans of expat life, Japanese culture, and spring adventures. Subscribe! #ExpatLife #JapanVlog #CherryBlossoms #okayama

🌸 日本の外国人生活の2番目のエピソードにご参加ください！岡山県での初めての桜のシーズンを体験し、岡山市、倉敷、津山城、そして地域最大の桜の木、大五桜を探索します。🏯 モレルキノコを採取し、手作りパスタを作り、何時間も花を摘んでダンデラインワインを醸造しました。🪵 古い木の切り株を美しい家具に復元し、ガレージとホームジムを塗装し、日本のミニトラックを購入し、ファイヤーピットを建設しました。地元の女性が採取した食材で作られた伝統的な日本のハーブ料理を楽しみ、友達との盛大なパーティーを開催！🎉 外国人生活、日本の文化、春の冒険に興味がある方に最適です。チャンネル登録を！ #外国人生活 #日本Vlog #桜 #岡山