A very busy Tuesday is almost complete, and like on most Tuesdays I end up eating heavy at the end of the day - this time I dug into a bag of peanuts. Hint for you nut lovers out there on how to eat raw nuts: Extract correct portion (=handful) from bag and place in bowl. Munch on nuts from bowl. Avoid refills. What NOT to do: Bring whole bag of nuts with you to couch in front of TV, accompanied with glass of white wine. Avoid checking how many nuts remain in bag until there are no nuts left.

Today I consumed:

green smoothie
kumquats
string beans, cauliflower, and sliced zucchini with humus (lunch and dinner!)
giant green salad with different leaves, onions, carrot slices, diakon with lemon, balsamic, and olive oil
peanuts (please don’t ask how many…)
larabar (cherry nut)
white wine

I spent hours waiting in the immigration office today in Tachikawa, only to be told I was missing some tax forms. Silly moi, I stupidly assumed that because I had previously submitted them for another, different bureaucratic process, that they’d have them on file. Nope, no such thing as redundancy in government! They sent me back home with a smile, and thankfully stamped my passport for proof of visit (My visa runs out in a couple of weeks- was getting worried!)

Tachikawa City has some lovely “basement” food stalls. That wording conjures up cheap quality junk, but actually department store basement foods in Japan are quite top end. It’s just a tad strange in the case of Tachikawa, as the food stalls are on the second floor. But then, so is the station entrance, so I suppose there is logic there. Anyway, I found freshly baked (and overpriced, but what the hell) dark orange and dark purple satsuma potatoes. Yes, cooked, but these babies are loaded with nutrition and taste. What a treat! Munching on them brought back memories of my years living in Miyazaki.

Today I had:

green smoothie
baked Satsuma potato
dried figs
green salad (a melody of leftovers)
tea

Today I met with local my raw foodist friend Shinji, who kindly picked me up at Shinjuku station this morning to drive us (we were supposed to be three, but our third party was feeling ill), to the Alishan Café in Saitama. We met up with another mate, Yuka, at the station, took a walk along the water bank, and then ate a lovely vegetarian lunch at the café. Funny, even through Alishan’s fare is organic and veggie, the salad I end up ordering was not on the menu (I saw a woman next to us eating it and had to have was she was having.)

After eating we headed to the store in the next room, and I had to admit I was disappointed with the quantity at first glance. However, upon further inspection I found (and ended up buying) loads of raw dried fruits, raw nuts, agave syrup, Lära Bars, and organic sesame oil. All items were pricey, so it didn’t take me long to run up a bill of 10,000 yen!

After filling our eco bags, we headed out to Oukoku, a raw soy sauce sight-seeing spot, where tourists can see the soy paste fermenting, experience cold-pressing the soy paste, eat all sorts of soy-flavored items, including soy ice cream (I passed, and had natto instead), and of course, purchase the Yugeta brand of raw soy sauce.

Raw soy sauce is raw, of course, meaning it is unpasteurized (unheated) and has no additives chucked in to speed up fermentation as is common these days with regular shoyu (soy sauce). In addition, it is cold-pressed by hand (well, traditionally it was; I’m sure they have some heavy psyeudo-machinery to do the pressing for them now), where as conventional soy sauce again uses heat or other naughty processes to extract the liquid from the pulp.

Unfortunately, because there are no preservatives, this soy sauce has a shelf life. It can keep up to six months unopened, but once opened it is best kept in the fridge and consumed within a month. That said, the clerk at Oukoku said that it won’t go bad or anything if you kept it longer; it would just lose its flavor. There were two versions of Yugeta shoyu on sale at Oukoku. I bought the one with 20% less salt (and yes, they use sun-dried sea salt), shown here.

squeezing out the soy sauce by hand

vats of fermenting soy paste (moromi)

Today I had:

green smoothie
greet salad (Alishan-style)
a Laura Bar (cherry), and then a chocolate coffee one (90% raw) later (couldn’t help myself)
herbal lemon balm tea
natto with raw miso
dried apples
home made bread (from Shinji- yum!) and miso tofu (tastes like cheese)
a few droplets of remaining wine in my bottle

my natto snack at the soy sauce factory (before substracting mustard and adding soy sauce)

Got a lot done today- cleaned the apt., did some banking, checked out an apartment, had a trail EFL lesson for a nice couple living near by, and went out to meet new raw friend Eve in the city. We wanted to check out the Brown Rice Cafe, but alas, it was packed and they close early so we were declined. Headed instead to the Kaffir Lime (also too packed, but we could get take out) and ate our papaya salad on one of the quiet, trendy back streets of Omotesando. Can I just say how nice it is to meet another raw foodie, particularly one who is so upbeat!

Later we walked aimlessly around and found (refound in my case) an overpriced organic store called Natural House on the corner of Aoyama and Omotesando, right next to Starbucks of course. Picked up some famous Haccho miso (traditional raw, dark miso from Okazaki City south of Nagoya- I used to live close to the factory, in fact!), famous for it’s intense flavor and anticarcinogenic properties. In fact the company (or Japanese government?) donated cases and cases of this miso to the 1986 Chernoble nuclear powerplant meltdown victims. The version of this miso we found was both raw and organic. Score! Also got some dried fruit and powdered kale juice. (For some reason can never find kale itself in Japan. Eve is currently looking for oat groats…. I’m not even sure what they are.)

Today I ate:

black olives (lots!)
green smoothie (spinach, banana, blueberries, honey)
giant papaya
apple juice
banana
spicy Thai papaya salad (raw, but likely roasted peanuts and who know what was in the dressing!)
green tea

I pulled my first professional blunder of this year this morning - I slept in. I had to taxi it all the way into work but still have to do a makeup class for having come in so late. The students deserve so much, though I doubt they want it! My tail is currently hanging between my legs. I did stay up until morning correcting papers, mind, but that’s probably what got me into trouble in the first place!

I have to report on my well being now - it’s unavoidable. Ever since I over-consumed alcohol last Saturday, I have not managed to regain the vitality I had prior to that evening. I am slowly feeling better, it’s true, but it’s amazing how sensitive my body seems to have become. This makes sense, actually, based on my previous experiences fasting. The hardest part about fasting is not the first few days (which are tough, no beating around the bush!), but actually breaking the fast. The literature says to stay as raw as possible for a long as possible, gradually introducing harder-to-digest and less pure foods into the diet again (although it’s ideal to stay raw). After a particularly long fast, the body is incredibly clean, so too quickly reintroducing crap into the system logically has unpleasant repercussions. Actually, having even good, raw food after fasting brings you down, as once you are well into a fast you feel… not sure how to phrase this… on a different plain of existence - serene, blissful, clear-headed, content, and unstressed. As soon as you eat anything- kaboom, you come down, like coming off cocaine I would imagine (can’t say that I know for sure, thankfully). Perhaps eating cooked food or poisons (e.g. alcohol) does the same!?

Clearly, and I have said this before recently, I have to reduce my fat and wine consumption. In retrospect, when I started eating raw a few months ago, I was eating way more fruit. Must get back into that grove!

I need to do an online shop for things like sprouts and agave, but the wallet is slim these days. In due time, though, I should be alright.

Today I ate:

green smoothie
mixed salad
raisins
chestnuts (cooked!)
humus (cooked beans!) with raw broccoli, carrot sticks, string beans, and
banana

I ate a baked potato today. Wasn’t rapturous or anything. I just had the craving and it felt right. I had a boring but successful day banking, apt. hunting, and completing a job interview. There may just be some fairly large changes in the next few months. If I get the job it means obviously less free time (a lot less free time- 5, 90 minute classes on Mondays!), but also enough money to move out of the apt. I am currently sharing with the roommate from hell! (You never really know someone until you either live or travel with them)

Today I had:

green smoothie
fancl kale juice
baked sweet potato
frozen raisins
green salad with avocado and balsamic and other raw bits and peices
white wine

I had medical tests at work. I have lost 10 kilos since exactly a year ago! I fit into a pair of pants today that I haven’t been able to squeeze into for a while, but I didn’t figure it’d be as much as 10 kilos. (note: the more overweight you are (and naturally big and tall to start with), the less changes in large amounts of weight seem to appear. Not to say 10 kilos is nothing to snere at, but I still have more than 30 to go. Yes, I have set a target for myself, and I want to be there by 2010.) Anyway, I guess it’s reasonable to assume that the weight was mostly lost over recent months. Yippie- the raw food lifestyle is working on the weight loss front- no dieting required.

What I am really looking forward to with regards to my medical checkup though, are the cholesterol test results. I am hoping that my diet will have changed things around. Will have to wait a week or so, I reckon.

Today I had:

green blueberry and banana smoothie
Asian slaw (really old leftovers, but tasted surprisingly great)
banana
ruccola, avocado and balsamic vinegar
humus and broccoli
peanuts
raisins
red wine