Sleeping Jellyfish

I apologize for my tardiness but we had a round of quizzes and tests these last two weeks and then our phenomenal AIU Festival this past weekend, which I will discuss later, but for now, I am going to try to get in a few short posts over the weekend to catch up for some lost time. I feel that maybe if I keep the posts shorter people will be more inclined to check regularly and maybe to leave comments too. I like to be efficient and economical when it makes sense to. So, for today I will briefly show you how to make coffee in my room.

Step 1) Fill kettle with water.

This is my kettle. It is extremely useful for most types of cooking. Boiling water for coffee or tea, making noodles right inside of it, boiling an egg or two, anything really. Our Heatec hot plate uses IH style heating, which is more energy efficient (and seems to heat up faster) than conventional stove tops, but the drawback is you must use the specific IH pots, pans, and kettles. No ceramic or glass either.

Step 2) Heat water.

As you can see the directions are of course in Japanese and the temperature in Celsius but no problem with the help of our two best friends: a good dictionary and trial and error. The button I’m pressing turns it on, then the pink framed button just a bit to the left turns the actual heating mechanism on. Adjust temperature as needed, again mostly guessing. C= 9/6 + 32F, right?

Step 3-5) Get dripper from shelf, put on top of preferred mug, take filter from shelf and insert into dripper.

I hope this photo set accurately portrays the next few steps. The dripper I got for a dollar from The Daiso, its kind of like the Dollar Tree or something of that sort. They have ceramic ones too at tea shops and other stores which I might invest in because I’m always concerned about hot water leeching chemicals from plastics. But in all other manners, I think this is pretty creative. I’ve made drip coffee with some pretty creative tools while camping but this system works so well, I don’t know if I can go back to the machine. Speaking of I did look at, but I didn’t feel right dropping 40-50$ US on a coffee maker I would use for a year, and yeah I could probably sell after the year, but whatever. This cost me a few dollars and it works great.

Step 6-8) Grab coffee from shelf and deposit into filter, amount depending on preferred taste. Pour hot water from kettle into filter, and enjoy the beautiful sound of the luscious liquid chocolate drip drip dripping into the cup. Usually repeat steps 7 and 8 for a full cup.

Theres this import store in the mall where you can get cheese, salsa, Spam, European wine, Cambell’s soups, and various teas and coffee. Me and Michal also found this great tea shop/ coffee shop the last time we were in Akita City, where the owners sat and talked to us and had us sample some of their favorite teas. Just wonderful cheery people who were very happy that we were interested in learning about their language and culture and were of course very curious about us as well. My friend Dan who spent most of the summer in India complained about the lack of dark coffee, and I will agree, in most restaurants, bars, and teashops, its a bit uncommon. There are quite a few Tully’s and Starbucks in the bigger cities but we all know that is not real coffee. I feel bad for Dan and am very thankful to stumble upon fresh ground coffee in a few shops like the one I described.

Step 9) ENJOY!

I try to stick to only one or two cups a day, and I think now that it is getting pretty cold, I should buy some cocoa to help subside the urge to just make another cup of delicious hot coffee. I also have some tea put haven’t gotten any bags or a pot, just the herbs, so soon I will investigate some of those nifty tea pots they have at the tea shop.

Hope this finds everyone well and ready for the beautiful Autumn! I’d love to hear any great coffee stories or what your preferred method of coffee making is! French press? Italian? Instant? Let me know!