Do It. Throw Yourselves.

Dear ones,
I am experiencing a transition. My life is changing. So. I am excited and of course, scared. As some of you may know, I had planned to go to India but after being unable to get the correct visa, I’ve had to amend my plans. There’s also something else – something which I can’t tell you about (just yet). It’s overwhelming but good (I think). For the time being, please bear with me. Or is it bare? I don’t know.

So. As always, I have taken solace in literature. C. JoyBell C comforts me with this:

“The only way that we can live, is if we grow. The only way that we can grow is if we change. The only way that we can change is if we learn. The only way we can learn is if we are exposed. And the only way that we can become exposed is if we throw ourselves out into the open. Do it. Throw yourself.”

I am throwing myself. I am taking a leap of faith and letting life happen.

Travelling is amazing but it is getting harder. I have a few plans. Next, I will visit my auntie (whom I have never met but talked to several times over the internet and who seems like the most incredible woman) and her family in Geneva (Switzerland). From there, I might visit my friend Anita(a beautiful Italian girl who I worked in NZ at Cafe Valentino with)’s mother at their holiday home in Antibes (France), and hopefully, Laura (my WordPress friend who visited me in Mimasaka) in Brussels (Belgium).

I am struggling to live in the moment. I must practice mindfulness. I keep thinking of the future. What will I be doing after my travels are over? Will I settle down in NZ or some other place? What will I do for work? Can I make it as a real writer? So many unanswered questions. Sarah Dessen comes to help: “It was amazing how you could get so far from where you’d planned, and yet find it was exactly were you needed to be.”

I will be patient. I will be positive. I will be joyous. I will expect good and I will throw myself.

Lastly, my blog has turned two. So I want to say thank you. From the bottom of my heart, from the mountains of rural Japan and the rivers in Galicia. Merci (farsi not french), gracias, thank you and arigato for flying with me. For being a listening ear, an understanding heart and the best travel companion a solo girl could wish for.

At each step I have longed to share my life with you. This I hope I have achieved and will continue to achieve, in the truest way possible. And, I hope that at the same time, I have given and will continue to give, some sunshine too.

The World Needs More Of You In It

During my year and a bit here, it has been extremely difficult to pursue my passion for healthy eating when the notion of healthy food is so scarce in the Japanese countryside. However, I have preserved. Through “bird” and “rabbit” nicknames from my colleagues for eating nuts, seeds and raw vegetables. Through lack of brown bread. And through unbelievably dare fruit prices. Often, I have made my friends and colleagues healthy cakes explaining that they’re free of gluten, dairy and sugar only to be looked at with wide eyes and responded to by: “but why?! are you on a diet?” Don’t worry I’m not blaming them, I mean, it’s not like I myself came out of my mother’s womb screaming: “quinoa”!

So, as hard as it has been, I have stuck to doing what I love. It has’t been easy and I haven’t had access to the majority of things (both ingredients and cooking materials) that I had back at home but, I have not given up.

Kate Borstein says, “Your life’s work beings when your great joy meets the world’s great hunger.” Taking that literally, my great passion does exactly that. Am I right? (Haha) but really, I know healthy food/mindfulness isn’t the answer to Trump, poverty, terrorism and homophobia but it is still something. My little something to the world.

I would like to think I have had many successes here, in changing attitudes to food (and other) but here are three recent examples of them. First, a picture sent by my neighbour who made the same vegan eggplant and tomato spaghetti that I made her, for her daughter. Next, my friend’s smoothie-bowl attempt after eating two or three in my kitchen. Last but not least, do you remember the burger place in Tottori I posted? Well, I added the chef on Facebook (because I’m creepy like that) and begged the poor dude to make me a vegan burger. Being Japan where customer service is beyond immaculate, he dutifully delivered. The patty was delicious, a little too wide and a little too flat but it was his first try and he promises to work on it.

 

My Japanniversary!

Today is my one year japanniversary. Looking through my blog and pictures, I can see I have achieved a lot of things. Some of which include Asian babies, giant fruit, new friends, of course teaching, cycling through the countryside, playing dress-ups, a couple typhoons, a few failed tinder dates, learning to kill a cockroach, open a jar, and to fetch the remote all by myself, and all of which include food: sourcing it (still haven’t found beetroot) cooking it and eating it. Sometimes with friends, most times alone. The latter not a good feeling. Basically, it hasn’t been easy since I live really rural and I can’t speak the language. But, (prepare for the cheese) it has been real. I have achieved what I set out to do – which was to gain more life-experience, in order to grow both as a person and as a writer. And, I have enjoyed. Now, if there’s one thing I’ve learnt from my year in Japan, it’s this: we must never settle. Though not in the physical sense of the word. What I mean is, to have an open mind about the world, our world, its people and our experiences with it/them. And to be accepting of change, of transformation. For not only is change good, it is growth. And the only way we can change is if we become exposed. And how do we become exposed? We throw ourselves into the open, into the unknown. Though by this, I don’t necessarily mean a geographical point. For even opening our minds to viewing a single minuscule thing in a different way is throwing ourselves. In the words of C. JoyBell: “we can’t be afraid of change. You may feel very secure in the pond that you are in, but if you never venture out of it, you will never know that there is such a thing as an ocean, a sea. Holding onto something that is good for you now, may be the very reason why you don’t have something better.” Ari-ga-to!

So I have a confession to make…

But it is not really a confession. More like a realisation. A sad and rather disheartening discovery of self, if you may. Okay, here it is:

Chef Anisa is not really a Chef.

Allow me to elaborate, in pictorial evidence. The following are “Chef” Anisa’s recent creations: a Mediterranean brunch featuring shakshuka and cannellini-bean dip, a vegan smoothie bowl (1) (2) (3) (4) (5) (6) (7) (8) and a vegetarian lasagna.

Do you SEE what I’m sayin’? I don’t know how to cook. I just know how to cook three/four meals, anew.

Ah, the shame. The utter downright ignominy of it all. I’m Persian for goodness sake. Where is the saffron? The pistachio nuts, the glistening fried barberries atop the fragrant jasmine rice and the mint fried onions swimming in my ASH*?

New Year’s resolution TWO: cook new stuff.

*Ash is an traditional Persian soup. It is green and chunky and full of the good stuff: legumes, meat, noodles, herbs and spice.