Today we went to a new years cooking party. 5 different countries foods were represented: Phillipines, Mexico, Japan, Kenya and me, U.S. The food I was ordered to make was chocolate cake. My japanese teacher, who has now become more of my japanese teacher who comes over to my house to gossip and cook and not teach japanese, asked me months ago to make a cake. I said yes, but as time grew nearer, I worried that there might be some issues- like ingredients, pans, recipe. We, and most people, don't have an oven, so I had no idea how a cake would even turn out. Although there are plenty of cakes available to buy here, nothing ever lives up to my standard of what good cake should be. This fact alone led me to think that the possibility of being able to make one was slim. Then, day before the party, Yoko called to tell me that I needed actually to make 4 cakes! Even more worried, I kept asking about what kind of pans there would be to use, but my only answer was repeatedly "ok, yes, see you, make 4 cakes, bye!" over and over. Then when I got there, there were no pans to be found anywhere.
Finally, we managed to dig up 2 sheet cake pans. Two other JET girls really did most of the work, I mainly supervised and laughed nervously when everything seemed to constantly be seperating in the bowl and looked nothing like any cake batter I've ever seen. But, in the end, although it wasn't really, exactly cake, it turned out. Enough frosting seemed to make everyone happy. It kind of turned out more like a brownie, or something in between. All of the food, cake included, was very good, especially the Mexican lentil soup. Alex had a really fun time playing with a little girl there, he even shared his new, coveted sticker book with her. Afterwards, we all played bingo. Nate won two Asahi beer mugs and I got a new towel to wipe down the windows with and a cheap velcro wallet- SUGOI NE!
Also, check out more pictures on Flickr
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