i eat too much
I did super cleaning and rearranging in the morning, and then!
I made 40+ dumplings (pork, napa, and scallion) loosely from this recipe:
And then I tried out this recipe for red velvet cupcakes. I tend to have a lot of baking mishaps, but this turned out perfectly!
I may have overdone the food coloring, though. The batter almost looked like marinara sauce:
But the finished product was pretty and yummy. I didn't do the frosting this time, but it's kind of necessary. I had forgotten how this requires cream cheese frosting.
Still, they're pretty and moist and I think fairly unique. You don't really see cupcakes in Japan as it is, so hopefully the office will appreciate my attempts to Americanize them in a few weeks!♥
There is no good daytime TV on the weekends, so I was watching a news special on this local woman who was recently arrested and suspected to have been involved in the mysterious deaths of at least 5 men. 3 or so had traces of sleeping medicine in their bodies. Anyway, the scary part---
In Japan, the decision to do an autopsy on a corpse is entirely up to the policemen at the scene. Since not all policemen are trained in recognizing death irregularities(/stuff that coroners would be able to tell), the rate at which autopsies are actually performed on dead people in Japan is comparatively very, very low. There are only three cities in all of Japan where a coroner/medical specialist inspects the bodies and gives a second opinion.
Since all dead people are cremated, this means that if a policeman doesn't catch an irregular death, that window is gone. If it looks like that person died naturally enough and there is no glaring evidence to the contrary, it sounds like it would be extraordinarily easy for foul play to slip under the radar.
This combined with previous realizations that: A) Japanese prosecutors are so afraid of losing in court that they only prosecute sure cases and B) THERE IS A STATUTE OF LIMITATIONS EVEN ON MURDER(!!!!!) means that I don't know how these people sleep at night. Yes, the crime rate is relatively low, but that doesn't mean it doesn't happen.
Imperialists demanded extraterritoriality for a reason, man. It was because your legal systems suck. These are not 21st century standards! I don't know how I feel about the way the American legal/judicial system is carried out, but I do have a lot of confidence in the way it is set up.