日報

I had known about the "Bunbun Chopper" for a long time, but I hadn't used it until recently. Before using it, I somehow thought that vegetables should always be finely chopped with a knife. But once I used it, I was amazed by how convenient it was, and in pursuit of even greater convenience, I ended up buying an electric mill.

It's not just about cooking tools; new appliances and new systems often face irrational resistance before we try them. But once they become ingrained, we often find ourselves unable to go back to the old ways. Why is that?

Recently, ChatGPT and Gemini are good examples. People who use them say they're incredibly convenient, but I still can't quite bring myself to try them.

I looked up what genre ChatGPT even falls into, and it's called generative AI or multimodal AI.

...Oh, the moment I heard "multimodal," I felt this urge to shut down mentally. I've had this feeling many times before! It was the same feeling I had when I first learned about electric kick scooters: "Why bother? Isn't a bicycle good enough?" Now, I actually quite like electric kick scooters.

Since it's bound to be convenient if I use it, I should just use it already, right? So, acting on that thought, I opened ChatGPT and asked, "Do you know 'kikkake'?"

It replied: "Yes, the word 'kikkake' is a commonly used word in Japanese. 'Kikkake' refers to the cause or event/factor that triggers the start of something."

That made me realize I need to try harder.

I'm back to normal operations after recovering from the cold I had yesterday. I hadn't eaten almost anything all day, so I thought I might have lost some weight, but when I stepped on the scale, it hadn't changed at all. That's odd. Physically odd.

Sometimes, even after eating a lot the day before, I nervously step on the scale and find it hasn't changed. I'm vaguely aware that local environmental changes don't cause physical changes.

I know that if I want to lose weight, I need to make long-term changes, meaning I need to fix my lifestyle habits, which is to say, fix myself. But that's easier said than done.

I've only ever managed to fix one thing about myself in the past: I learned to "tidy up." After reading and practicing "The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up" a long time ago, I've continued to tidy up without stopping. It truly became ingrained in me and I've kept it up ever since.

I don't know why I was able to do just that one thing, but since I have a track record of being able to fix myself once, I believe I can fix other things too.

So, I should be able to lose weight as well. I believe in myself. However, I'm just recovering from an illness today, and if I don't eat properly today, I'll cause trouble for everyone. I'll think about it after I'm feeling better tomorrow or later.

I've caught a cold.

For a few days, my eyes had been hurting and my throat felt a bit constricted, so I thought it might be autumn hay fever, but it turned out to be a cold.

I always tell myself I'll never give in to a cold! Whenever I feel like I'm about to get sick, I try to eat a lot and sleep a lot! But now I've completely lost my appetite and don't feel like eating.

I vaguely remember reading somewhere a long time ago that when you catch a cold, you lose your appetite and crave easily digestible foods because of something related to enzymes.

Apparently, the body has digestive enzymes and metabolic enzymes. Digestive enzymes, as the name suggests, digest food, and metabolic enzymes fight colds as part of the immune system. Since these two enzymes are the same, when metabolic enzymes are active, resources can't be allocated to digestive enzymes. So, to minimize the use of digestive enzymes, one eats easily digestible foods.

Doesn't this seem strange? If you think of the human body as a company, the department that fights colds and the department that digests food are handled by the same personnel. So, when one is busy, the other is neglected. If I were the CEO of this company, I would decide to allocate abundant personnel to both, even if it meant incurring costs.

... I was thinking about this while lounging around, but my cold isn't getting any better, so I'm going to eat something digestible, take my medicine, and go to sleep.

Since opening the kikkake online shop in April, I've been writing my thoughts daily in this "dairy" space. Since it's Monday through Friday, it's actually five times a week, and five months have passed, so that's about 20 times a month, meaning I've written about 100 entries, I guess?

I've decided on my own that this is a space where I can write anything, so it could be product introductions or just a diary. However, since I can't just write completely random things, I've focused on writing about cooking.

Regarding writing every day, before starting the online shop, I had planned to accumulate content in advance and write systematically. In reality, I did plan ahead for about the first two weeks, but after that, it became a daily process of thinking about what to write and then writing it.

Writing something every day is much harder than I imagined. I brainstorm and write every day, but I'm also starting to feel the meaning behind it.

First, and it's obvious, you can't write something without thinking about it, so I think deeply once a day. One might think, "Don't people live thoughtfully even without writing?", but to convey something, to find what you want to convey and what's worth conveying and put it into words, requires a fair amount of thought. So, I feel it's a great exercise to keep my brain active every day.

Also, to write, I recall what happened today and look for topics, which results in me reviewing my day. This is quite good, because when I review my day, I not only look for topics but also simultaneously reflect on areas for improvement, so it turns out to be a good opportunity for self-reflection. I've never kept a diary, but I'm sure it serves a similar purpose.

The act of searching for something to write about ultimately increases the opportunities to think and, I believe, makes me stronger. So, I intend to continue writing as long as I can, and I would be very happy if you would join me on this journey.

I made mentaiko pasta for a video shoot scheduled for release tomorrow.

It was a simple pasta dish with mentaiko, taihaku sesame oil, soy sauce, a sprinkle of sansho pepper, and topped with green onions, but it was incredibly delicious.

When I think of tarako pasta, I usually imagine a rich, bold flavor with plenty of tarako and butter. However, since mentaiko itself has a stronger flavor than tarako, I thought butter might not be necessary. Also, given its strong Japanese image, olive oil might be too fragrant, so trying taihaku sesame oil turned out to be a good choice.

I also wanted to add another twist. I was going to use Sichuan peppercorns, which I'm currently into, but the videographer, Kogengi, suggested, "How about sansho pepper?" It's true that for a Japanese-style dish, sansho pepper would probably fit the atmosphere better than Sichuan peppercorns, and I think that was also an excellent choice.

This Japanese-style mentaiko pasta was truly delicious, offering not just the straightforward spiciness of mentaiko but also a subtle tingling sensation on the tongue from the sansho pepper.

You can find the detailed cooking method and recipe on our YouTube channel, updated on Saturday, so please check it out if you can.

This weekend's YouTube videos are all about pasta, so I've been filming myself making various kinds.

I started cooking by making pasta, so it's something I love and I'm good at. I want to feature about five different types of pasta in the videos, so I've been making and filming them daily. But after eating pasta every day for about three days, I honestly got a little tired of it.

I usually film during the day, so today I was filming pasta videos at lunchtime. But the incident happened at night. I only realized it after everything was over, but for dinner... I ate pasta again!

I had plans in the evening and went out. On my way home, when I was thinking about what to eat, I suddenly realized my favorite pasta restaurant was nearby. I had the "clams and shimeji mushroom garlic sauce," and on my satisfied walk home, I realized it.

I messed up. I thought I was tired of pasta, but it was pasta for lunch, pasta for dinner, and then more pasta for filming tomorrow's lunch.

Well, I'm making completely different types of pasta, so the flavors are different, and it's fine. Tomorrow, I plan to make mentaiko pasta.