A Fish Out of Water

Midtown

A few months back we had a nice day out that I never got around to sharing, so before I completely forget:

On a nice day in early October we went to Tokyo Midtown in search of the baby swing rumoured to be there. And we found it, sort of, in the park (Hinokocho Koen) to the northeast of Midtown. It's kind of half art instillation and half swing set, with a few regular swings and one toddler swing.

 

It's not really a baby swing though, and any kid big enough not to sit snugly in the weirdly designed seat is probably big enough to use a regular swing.

Just look how fun this swing is. Also, the whole swing set is really low and obviously parents have bumped their heads on the top bar, so on one side someone has slapped some ugly yellow and black warning tape. Not the side visible to most of the park though- wouldn't want to interfere with art. How the designers didn't anticipate bumped heads is beyond me, but it does seem to be a tradition in Japan for things to be designed by people who have never used them (thus my useless washing machine, obviously designed by a man who has never done laundry). End of rant, thank you.

We did have fun just hanging out on the lawn though. I don't know if it's on purpose, but most of the lawn is clover rather than grass, which is totally OK. The park is nice, and the other playground equipment looks OK, and there's a little Japanese style pond and garden and it's just a nice place to hang out.

We didn't find any four-leaved clovers though.

We had lunch at Union Square Tokyo, which I'd been wanting to check out since it opened a few years ago. They have a really nice patio, which faced the park and was spacious and had a few other families, which made us feel a bit relieved about bringing a baby to a nice place, but he was an angel.

I had pasta with oyster cream sauce, which was very nice, but Hideaki won for best order:

A nice burger, juicy and perfectly done, with good crispy fries. We also had some good wine, and the waitress fussed over Shuma, and combined with the nice weather and atmosphere it was a really really nice lunch. We've been back once and were kind of disappointed (especially since they close their patio at the beginning of November, regardless of the weather) but that lunch, and the whole day, was wonderful.

More birthday stuff

Between August 20th and October 4th we celebrate Hideaki's birthday, our anniversary, Shuma's birthday, and my birthday as well. We also lean towards "birthday months" rather than big bashes on the days themselves, so please forgive me for kind of spreading out and jumbling up these birthday posts.

So I got a big surprise the weekend after my birthday- a delivery of ten fresh oysters from Akkeshi, Hokkaido! I'd dropped hints last year that, with a brand-new baby taking over our lives, went unfulfilled. This year Hideaki came through, and although they weren't my beloved Akkeshi kaki-emon oysters (which were apparently mostly wiped out in the tsunami) they were from the same brackish lake and tasted quite similar.

Aren't they pretty? He even shucked most of them for me, and I was nice enough to give him one. He doesn't like his oysters raw, so we cooked two in the microwave as recommended in the information that came with the delivery. Amazingly they were really good that way, just liked steamed but much easier.

These oysters are so flavourful that they don't need anything added, but a squeeze of sudachi citrus was nice for variety's sake.

The birthday dinner that followed was a humble but tasty meal of yaki-udon (fried udon noodles) and wonton soup. Hideaki uses fish sauce and ponzu to flavour his noodles and I'm totally addicted to that combination of flavours.

Dessert was a store-bought berry cake, and you can tell it's for my birthday because he hates these sour kind of berries. It's actually quite hard to find a simple cake like this, but since I don't like a lot of whipped cream and goo this is really all I want.

No candles or "Happy Birthday" singng, but then if those were really important to me I would have married a woman.

Then Shuma got a late and wonderful birthday present from some former students of mine who took us out for lunch. It's a birthday cake from Noe (pronounced "Noah", a much-loved cake shop in nearby Shakujii Koen). The chocolate heart says "Shuma-kun,Issai no Otanjoubi Omedetou" (Baby Shuma, Congratulations on Your First Birthday).

He was fascinated by the candle. He's recently learned how to blow but wasn't up for it so I took care of the candle for him (my wish was that he'd outgrow his dairy allergy so he could eat his next birthday cake).

He did get to eat his fill of fruit though, and his mom and dad really enjoyed the rest. Actually Noe cakes are the only ones I'll happily eat, cream, goo, and all. Yum.

Birthday

We recently celebrated Hideaki's birthday, and Shuma gave him the best present he's able to give: a whole day of very good behaviour.

For the actual birthday there was an ice cream cake, which looks awful here because we forgot to take a picture before eating it.

But it was delicious and was addressed in way Hideaki has never been cake-addressed before. I was afraid he'd think it was cheesy but he loved it. Shuma was his usual fussy self- the good behaviour was on another day (we like to stretch our birthdays out).

A few days later we had lunch at Girandole at Park Hyatt, which is kind of a fancy place so we were prepared to bolt at the first sign of fussiness, but it never happened. I wish we were always so lucky.

I started with salmon rillette and mixed greens with passion fruit sauce. It was really lively and fresh but would have been better with a few more of those crispy bread things to scoop up the salmon with.

My main course was pan fried kurodai (black sea bream) with Herbs with chive sauce, which was perfectly cooked and very tasty.

Hideaki had sirloin with Lyonnaise potatoes and Bourguignon sauce, also nicely cooked and delicious.

Dessert was next door at Peak Lounge, where Shuma started to get a bit wiggly but still well under control.

This was the same place we had high tea at last year near the end of my pregnancy, and Hideaki was tickled that we now had before and after pictures.

I had a blueberry tart and iced latte, Hideaki had a mochaccino and tiramisu, and Shuma had a few of our berries.

We stopped by the neighboring Shinjuku Chuo Park to reward Shuma with a little playtime. My sister-in-law tells me their grandmother used to live nearby and that they used to come here all the time as children. When I told Hideaki that he used to play here he was like "We were homeless?" That's exactly the kind of image this park has, but it turns out to have a really nice playground, complete with a splash pool.

We weren't dressed for the pool, but we did find one thing of interest:

That's right, a baby swing! Finally!

It's actually more of a toddler swing and he is way too small for it and probably was in danger of flying out of it, plus we had to wait our turn and then finish quickly because a whole bunch of other people wanted to use it. Maybe they should think about putting in a few more?

But we can't complain, finally finding a baby swing was a great end to a great day.

First Date, Family Date

Last month Hideaki and I went on our first date, just the two of us, in seven months. That's a long time to wait by North American standards and totally normal, if not early, by Japanese standards. It wasn't how I planned it- if I had my way we'd have been having a weekly date night since Shuma was born. But it turns out that Shuma is rather unbabysittable, as he doesn't know how to use a bottle and can only be fed by me.

But when Shuma was born our city gave us vouchers for free babysitting, and we finally realized we'd be crazy not to use them. So we dropped Shuma off at the government-approved babysitter around the corner and went out for lunch (for some reason the babysitters are only allowed to work until 5:00). We were tempted to just head back and spend our allotted two hours at home (nudge nudge, wink wink) but figured since we'd gotten all dressed up we might as well go out.

We originally wanted to eat at a newish Italian place nearby but couldn't get a reservation, so we went to Sakai, another Italian place a bit farther away. It's been around forever but is the kind of slightly intimidating old neighborhood restaurant that seems to stay in business due to the loyalty of its regulars, and we'd avoided it. Turns out it's a great family-run business, with an old-school Japanese-Italian menu, and although the interior is old and faded, the service a bit gruff, and the presentation a little sloppy, the cooking is great. That's my lunch above: spinach linguine with seafood in tomato sauce, and it was delicious. While we were there it seemed like everyone who came in was indeed a regular, and we wouldn't mine becoming regulars ourselves.

Predictably we spent most of the lunch talking about Shuma. We weren't exactly worried but were intensely curious about what he was doing and figured he was probably bawling his eyes out and driving the babysitter crazy. But when we picked him up after two hours she came to the door with our son, who was yawning and looking perfectly content. And then when he turned around and saw us he turned right back around and started crying! Ouch, that hurt.

He tried to cling to her as she handed him back. "So he's been crying the whole time?" we asked, but she said this was the first time he'd cried and that he'd been great. "We played for a while, then he got sleepy and I put him down for a nap. He's only crying because he just woke up." This is the same baby who has been completely unable to nap by himself (as in he has to be in my lap, on Hideaki's shoulder or in a carrier) since he outgrew his swing chair at three and a half months. I would think she was lying if not for the fact that Shuma had also napped the month before when we were in Osaka and my mother-in-law looked after him while I went to the doctor (his only other experience being babysat).

While I'm tempted to think these ladies are just having me on, it probably means that veteran baby experts know secret napping techniques, and that I am doing it all wrong. So although it was really nice to spend some time alone with my husband, it was also a bit of a blow to my ego.

Please, will someone share those secret napping techniques?

We eat out as a family a few times a month, and surprisingly the places we go to are not terribly different from before- the places we can afford tend to be family-friendly already. One Sunday we had lunch at Butcher's Table, a local burger shop. We started with some excellent onion rings that could have been a meal by themselves, and were made all the better with delicious home-made ketchup.

Next we had burgers. That's my avocado cheeseburger above, with fries that weren't quite as good as the onion rings but thanks to the ketchup were totally acceptable. The burgers were good but Hideaki found them a bit overpriced (I don't eat hamburgers often enough to know what their going rate is, but for what it's worth my burger and fries were 1050 yen). We sat on their tiny patio which was kind of nice but kind of not as it was right up against a narrow and fairly busy sidewalk and everone who passed by checked out either our food or Shuma.

Last week Hideaki had a day off right when Shuma's new passport was ready to be picked up in Ikebukuro. This is his Japanese passport (he won't be able to apply for a Canadian one until we get his proof of citizenship papers in a few months) and applying for it a few weeks before that was my easiest and most pleasant experience with Japanese officialdom ever. If only immigration and city hall were that nice to deal with. So anyway for the next five years Shuma will be using a passport with a picture of him at three months old, looking extremely grumpy. Yes, the pictures are nearly five months old: I meant to get the passport before Christmas last year but things got a little busy. Same goes for his Canadian citizenship, which I applied for recently after filling out the forms way back in December. He's changed since then, and going over the paperwork last week I had to cross out "Grey" in the box about eye colour and fill in "Brown". It actually brought a few tears to my eye, thinking about how much he's already grown.

After we got the passport we had lunch at Joe's Shanghai, way up on the 59th floor of Ikebukuro's Sunshine City. We got a little room to ourselves in the corner, with what would have been an amazing view if not for the clouds. A few minutes after I took this picture the cloud cover was complete and all we saw was white. Oh well.

Shuma charmed the pants off of our waiter, who kept coming to visit and make funny faces, and on our way out held him for so long that we wondered if he'd ever give us our baby back. That's not a complaint, by the way- we love it when strangers fuss over Shuma, because Shuma loves it.

Joe's Shanghai is known for its shourampo (xiaolongbao, or soup dumplings), and we had them filled with pork and with crab. Very very good, especially the crab, which was rich with tomalley.

On our way home we realized we should have taken a picture of the waiter with Shuma, because they both looked so happy, and also should have asked him to take a picture of us. We only have a few pictures of us all together, and there we were all dressed up. And those pesky clouds made a wonderful natural light source. I guess we'll just have to go back.

Mother's Day

On Mother's Day Hideaki's family had a lunch in honour of Ah-chan, his maternal grandmother. In attendance were his mother, who flew in from Osaka just for the event, his aunt, his sister Atsuko and her husband, daughter Marya and baby Yuuki.

We met at a restaurant called Tsukiji no Uemura in Mizonokuchi, Kanagawa (near Ah-chan's nursing home) and had a feast. It was tasty, and Shuma had rice in non-okayu (rice porridge) form for the first time and ended up eating nearly half my bowl. But we didn't much pay attention to the food, as this both Ah-chan and my aunt's first time to meet Shuma and Yuuki.

The kids were happy to see each other, and Marya proudly showed off her missing teeth (the picture sadly didn't turn out). I can't believe she's losing her baby teeth already, it seems like she was just born (yes, I realize I'll soon be saying this kind of thing about Shuma, and yes, it totally blows my mind). The babies spent most of the time engaged in hand-to-hand combat.

And Ah-chan was very happy to meet the babies. They loved her right back, and were generally charming and remarkably well-behaved. Ah-chan 94 (I think) and it was pretty incredible to have four generations together, with nearly a century between the eldest and youngest. I hope all four generations can meet up for many more years.

Birthday cake, curry and tea

Hideaki turned 41 last week, kicking off a month and a half of celebrations: his birthday, our anniversary, the baby's due date, and my birthday. From now on late summer and early autumn will be a busy time, but I do NOT want to be one of those families that celebrates everything all together. That's just lame.

It's hard to justify spending money on a present when there's so much to buy for the baby, so I decided my gift would be to make him a cheesecake. This was actually supposed to be a great big sacrifice, because I hate cheesecake and would be putting all the effort into something that only he could enjoy. I was in for a few surprises though, the first being that cheesecake isn't that hard to make.

Or maybe it's hard to make well- you can see that it's a little messy and I've gone outside the edges a bit with the filling. But for a first attempt by a cheesecake hater, it's not bad. This is an unbaked cheesecake (who wants to bake when it's 35 degrees?) made with mascarpone, cream cheese and cream, based on this recipe (substituting lemon zest for orange zest and omitting the orange slices). Yup, it's a kid's recipe, but perfect for a beginner like me.

I topped it with with nectarine slices macerated in a bit of sugar and lemon juice for a few minutes, and if you can ignore the mess on the crust it almost looks pretty. And it tasted amazing. That was the other surprise- I don't hate cheesecake! In fact, I quite like it. I probably still don't like the baked kind, or the unbaked kind if it was made with gelatin and lots of sugar, but this was delicious and I think I'll have to buy a cheesecake ring so I can make this again properly.

All Hideaki wanted for his birthday dinner was curry rice, and I was happy to oblige as I don't think I've made curry all year (I went off curry in my first trimester and even after my food aversions ended I didn't feel like cooking it). I made what we call keema curry, which is  based on Japanese style keema curry, which is very loosely based on actual keema curry. Our version uses ground pork, garam masala, and lots of onions and tomatoes and I love it because it cooks fast and doesn't need any of that nasty store bought Japanese curry roux. I'm sure it is nothing at all like real keema, but the name has stuck and that's that.

On the weekend I took the birthday boy out for high tea at the Peak Lounge in the Park Hyatt. I love their high tea and we figured this was our last chance to enjoy it for a very long time. He started off with an iced cappuccino, which I'm sure is hardly traditional but hit the spot on a very hot day (I had one later and it was the best iced cappuccino I've had).

The waitstaff were very nice, cautioning me not to fall down those stairs seen above when we entered (Japanese people are very concerned about pregnant ladies on stairs), bringing me a pillow for my back, and not seeming at all disturbed that I had way more caffeine than a pregnant woman should.

The weather was not quite clear enough for excellent views, but a blue sky and the buildings of west Shinjuku weren't bad to look at.

I started with a pot of Assam, and although I know nothing about tea I can tell this was good because that sugar cube in the picture went unused (I normally can't drink hot tea without loads of sugar).

The food began with the classic three-tiered serving of sandwiches, scones and cakes.

The sandwiches were shrimp and tomato, ham and cabbage and I forget the last; all were tasty.

The scones were mango and plain, both delicious and the proper British style that I love (I can no longer eat the giant, dry North American coffee shop kind). The mango ones were nice but I'd just as soon have both plain.

Served with the traditional red currant jam and clotted cream.

The cakes were very well made but were more of a treat for Hide. I may like cheesecake but I'm still not a big cake person.

After the above treats were gone we were periodically brought trays of sweet and savoury snacks to choose from, and we were soon stuffed. I forgot to take pictures of these supplementary treats, but I did make another discovery: I like panna cotta. I don't know if it's a pregnancy thing or not, but it seems I'm losing my hate for gooey, rich creamy things. I'm also not sure if this is a good thing or a bad thing.

So that's one celebration down, three more to go. Just think, the next birthday we celebrate will be an actual birth!

The Peak Lounge
03-5323-3461
Park Hyatt Hotel 41st Floor, 3-7-1-2 Nishi Shinjuku, Shinjuku-ku, Tokyo
Open weekdays 11am to 10:30pm, weekends and holidays 10am to 10:30pm

Suitengu

On the to-do list of most pregnant women in Japan is a visit to a shrine, to pray for a safe and easy delivery and pick up an iwata-obi (a stomach wrap to protect the baby). This is best done on certain dates and at certain shrines, and although I got the day wrong I did get the place right.

The proper date would have been the first inu no hi (dog day) of my fifth month of pregnancy, which is not quite as easy to determine as it would seem. First of all, pregnancy is counted differently here, and Japanese women are said to be pregnant for ten months. This is not quite as wacky as it sounds as the months are lunar months lasting exactly four weeks long, and ten lunar months is exactly forty weeks. Which is indeed how long a pregnancy lasts, no matter which way you count. But it can get a bit confusing as I am keeping track of my pregnancy both the Canadian way and the Japanese way and I always get them mixed up and have trouble answering people who ask me how far along I am (luckily health professionals here count pregnancies in weeks, just like they do everywhere else).

The other thing is that nobody around me knows when exactly these dog days are. My husband, who can always be relied on to know absolutely nothing about traditional Japanese culture, certainly doesn't know. Nor do his parents, who are not at all traditional (a blessing really), or my friends or students, who all know what inu no hi is but have no idea when it falls. The problem is that inu no hi doesn't fall on a fixed date but every twelve days, based on the old Chinese calendar, and the days are seldom mentioned on calendars. After a bit of web sleuthing it turns out that my date would have been April 6th, which had long passed by the time I figured it out.

A final problem is that the place to go for inu no hi in Tokyo is Suitengu, a shrine in Ningyocho, just down the street from where Hideaki works, and he doesn't relish the idea of hanging around his office neighborhood on the weekend. But last week we finally got around to it.

I'd never been to Suitengu before, and if Hideaki hadn't been there I might have missed it. It's actually a very small shrine and is completely dwarfed by buildings crowded around it.

The visit was also a bit anticlimactic as all we did was the typical shrine stuff: ritualized washing followed by tossing a few coins, ringing the bell and praying. There are special ceremonies you can apply for, which involve paying a shinto priest in a comical hat lots of money to shake a paper-festooned wand at you, and you can also buy special amulets and charms to protect the baby and ensure a safe birth. We passed on that though, because, well, it's all very silly.

We could also have bought the traditional iwata-obi, but with a Japanese summer upon us I have no wish to have my stomach wrapped in layers and layers of constricting fabric. Actually, few women wear the traditional wrap-style iwata-obi these days, but most still do wear some kind of wrap or belt, believing that it will protect the baby from getting cold as well as from bumps and falls. These modern wraps are not so different from the pregnancy belts that some western women wear, but unlike in the west the reasons for wearing them are more for protection to the baby than for back support. I do have a belt that my mother-in-law bought for me and will wear it if my back starts to hurt, but I believe that a woman's natural defenses of skin, fat, uterus and amniotic fluid do a fine job of protecting the baby. So no iwata-obi for me.

Dog days are associated with pregnancy because dogs are thought to enjoy an especially easy labour (the lucky bitches). So the shrine features a little statue of a mother dog and her puppy surrounded by the twelve Chinese zodiac signs. Apparently you are supposed to find your sign and rub it, then rub the head of the dog and her pup to bring good luck to mother and child. We weren't sure if we were supposed to be rubbing our own zodiac signs or the baby's, so just in case we did all three (rooster for Hideaki, ox for me and tiger for the babe). It was the first time we'd thought about what our baby's zodiac will be, and Hideaki took it as a very auspicious sign that our spawn will be born in the year of the tiger, because like all good Osakans Hideaki is a devoted fan of the Hanshin Tigers baseball team.

Suitengu is also visited after a baby is born, and since this wasn't a dog day we saw far more families with newborns than pregnant ladies, and there were plenty of shops set up both inside and outside the shrine selling candy, toys and baby clothing. I'm sure there are a whole host of special baby praying days that I'll find out about months after the fact, and hope our kid doesn't grow up feeling deprived.

After we left Suitengu we walked around the neighborhood, and it was neat to see where Hideaki works. Ningyocho is an old area and has lots of little traditional shops, like stores selling nothing but hand crafted folding fans or scissors or sweets. Lots and lots of Japanese style sweets. Unfortunately the shops are all the kind of tiny place that once you step inside you feel obliged to buy something and since everything is hand-made it all costs a fortune, so we mostly just looked in from the outside.

The one place we did go into was a small restaurant called Tree's which specializes in something called soup curry, a variation of Japanese curry rice. Unlike regular Japanese curry, which is thickened to a glue-like consistency, soup curry is left liquidy and soup-like, and is thus much lighter. Hideaki has been eating at Tree's since he started at this job in January and raves about it enough that, although it didn't sound particularly appealing, I had to try it.

I had the tomato bacon curry, and it came in a bowl with a separate plate of rice (unlike regular curry rice in which the curry is served together with the rice). It was indeed soupy, much like a Thai style curry, but the flavour was closer to a Japanese curry. It is meant to be spooned over the rice little by little (or you can just dump the whole bowl of curry onto your rice like Hideaki did above) with pickled rakyo (shallot) and fukujinzuke (mixed sweet pickles) added as desired. It was very tasty and without being thickened by a roux it was quite light and I didn't feel nearly as full and greasy as I do after eating regular curry rice, which was nice.

Of course my midwives have warned me against eating spicy food as hot flavours are harmful to the baby (I wonder what they think women eat in Thailand or India?), so this was an illicit meal. May they never discover this blog!

Suitengu Shrine
2-4-1 Nihonbashi-kakigaracho, Chuo-ku, Tokyo
03-3666-7195
Open daily 8:00 am to 7:00 pm

Tree's
3-6-8 Nihonbashi-ningyocho, Chuo-ku, Tokyo
03-3639-2525
Open Monday to Friday for lunch 11:00 am to 2:30 pm and dinner 5:00 pm to 10:00 pm; Saturday for lunch 11:00 am to 3:00 pm

No lauds for Lauderdale

Ever in search of a good brunch place in Tokyo, I've been wanting to visit Lauderdale, a newish restaurant in Roppongi, for a while. Billed as a cross between a French bistro and an American diner, it's received good reviews in several newspapers, blogs, and magazines and seemed especially well liked for its weekday breakfasts and weekend brunch. So on Easter Sunday Hideaki and I met up there with his sister and her family.

And we were all terribly disappointed. Not by the food, which mostly lived up to the reviews, but by the atrociously bad service. But first, here's what we ate:

On the weekend brunch menu all main dishes come with two sides. Except that they weren't really side dishes: they ended up arriving long before their main accompaniments (and before any of our drinks). My sides were orange-glazed carrots and falafels with yogurt dip, on the left, and Hideaki's were fries and chili. The carrots and fries were good. The falafels turned out to be miniatures, which were cute, and although they were tasty and fun to eat they were overcooked and dry and really really needed the dip. The chili- well, one look will tell you that something is wrong with it, and upon tasting it I had to conclude that whoever had made it knew chili con carne in concept only and had never personally eaten any. Served with, for some reason, a few slices of pita bread. To be fair, it wasn't awful tasting, and Hideaki liked it. It just wasn't chili. Also, I should note that everything was nicely presented and any messiness shown above is because we'd already been picking at some of the earlier arrivals when I took this picture.

Lauderdale is famed for its souffles so I ordered one with mushroom and cheese. And this was truly delicious. The crust was crispy (thanks to a light dusting of sugar, which was a bit weird with the savoury flavours but not weird enough to detract from the dish) and the insides soft, fluffy and just a little bit gooey. The rich mushroom flavour was wonderful.

It was served with thick cream, to be spooned into the souffle once it was broken open. The souffle would have been good enough without it, but the cream brought it to a higher level of decadence.

Hideaki ordered buttermilk pancakes, which were very good. I thought they were fantastic actually, but Hideaki said mine were better (yeah, the two out of ten that I don't burn). He was surprised at the two tiny slivers of bacon that came with them: upon ordering he'd been given a choice of bananas, blueberries and bacon as a topping, and considering the price (1500 yen) had expected a little bit more than the tiny paper-thin shavings of bacon that he got.

We split two desserts: a brownie sundae, above, and a sweet souffle, below. I'm not much of a brownie- or sundae- girl, but the ice cream part I tried was nice and everyone else seemed happy with the rest of it.

The dessert souffle was flavoured with banana and pepper (the one other sweet flavour was sold out) and was very nice. I liked my savoury one better, but everyone else preferred this.

So the food was mostly good, even excellent. Now, the service. Hideaki had made reservations several days before, noting there was a young child and asking if there was some kind of booth or nice table for a family. He was told there wasn't. Since he wasn't asked to choose smoking or non-smoking, he assumed smoking wasn't allowed and didn't think to mention anything.

So we arrived at the restaurant just after Atsuko, her husband and her five-year-old daughter. They were seated on stools at one end of a large communal table, right next to the front door. I was a bit surprised at this, and more surprised to see that in the back of the restaurant there was indeed booth style seating, as well as many individual tables far more comfortable than ours, with actual chairs. As we got settled in, I noticed two more things: the cold wind blowing in from the door right behind us, and the cigarette smoke drifting our way from the bar that we were right next to. Why on earth they had sat a family with a child in such a place I have no idea, especially when we had reservations. When we asked to be moved the waitress promised to do so as soon as a table became available.

Our request was quickly forgotten, and as new tables opened up they were given to new arrivals, most of whom had no reservations (I know this because my seat next to the door let me hear everything). I couldn't help but notice that all the other parties at the comfy tables were either foreign families or mixed Japanese and foreign groups (there were some Japanese parties, but they were relegated to the bar or the chilly patio). I also noticed the way that the foreign parties seemed to be fawned over by the waitstaff (all Japanese), while we had trouble attracting any one when we needed them. Could this restaurant really be so blatantly treating foreigners better than Japanese? We could only conclude that this was the case. Sure, I'm foreign, but had arrived after my Japanese in-laws and I can't help but think that if I'd made the reservation in English and showed up first we wouldn't have been stuck at such a crummy table and received such crummy service.

It didn't end with the seating. When I ordered my souffle the waitress warned me that it took 20 to 25 minutes to cook, to which I said fine, but just to be sure she asked if I was really OK with that. Of course I was. The 20 to 25 minutes had already been mentioned on the menu. And on the restaurant's website. And in every single review I'd read. And it was, you know, a souffle, which nobody expects to appear instantly. And besides, it's Sunday brunch, I was there for a leisurely meal and didn't mind waiting. And indeed, we did wait. Our side dishes slowly came, one by one, and then our drinks. And half an hour later, my souffle came. Nobody else's main dishes, none of which had come with warnings about how long they'd take, had arrived yet. And although I ate as slowly as possible, the souffle was long gone by the time everyone else's food arrived. I've given up on expecting restaurants in Japan to serve main dishes at the same time, but found it really strange that the one menu item that was supposed to take the longest actually arrived long before the other main dishes.

Hideaki's pancakes arrived when he and my brother-in-law were out on a smoke break (they'd asked if they could smoke on the balcony but were told to smoke at the bar, and since they didn't fancy blowing more smoke our way were forced to go out and walk down the street to find a suitable place). And they were covered with bananas. The waiter had already vanished but I tracked him down and pointed out that it was supposed to be bacon, not bananas. Ignoring me, the waiter looked at Atsuko (although he didn't seem to have a problem communicating with the other foreign diners) who confirmed this. So he picked up the plate and shoved it in the face of a random foreign guy waiting for a table behind me and asked him if he did indeed order bacon (I guess my sister-in-law and I didn't look very trustworthy and he needed further confirmation).

When he finally realized that the poor, confused guy didn't belong to our table and hadn't ordered the pancakes, he disappeared, coming back a minute later (the fastest service of the day) with the correct topping. It was the exact same plate, exact same pancakes, misted with the exact same random foreigner's breath, just with the bananas removed and bacon added. I could still see the moist imprints where the bananas had been. Thank goodness Hideaki doesn't have a banana allergy.

The bill arrived while the others were still eating their main dishes, and 15 minutes after that came our desserts. And while were eating those there came a long-forgotten cocktail my brother-in-law had ordered with his main dish.

I've become used to oddly-timed courses in Japan but this was by far the most outrageous I've experienced. And a place that charges this much should really be able to get it right. I would normally be able to give a restaurant the benefit of the doubt and figure that they'd been caught understaffed on a very busy day, but we were also treated shabbily and there's just no excuse for that.

The souffle was so good (and where else in Tokyo can I get souffle?) that I may end up giving Lauderdale another chance. But I'll make sure it's on a weekday and, just to be on the safe side, make sure I'm in a party of foreigners.

Lauderdale
03-3405-5533
Keyakizaka Terrace, Roppongi Hills, 6-15-1 Minato-ku
Open daily 7:00am to 11:00pm

Christmas

I thought Christmas 2009 was going to be different. I went out of my way to decorate the house and feel Christmasy, unlike in 2008 when the only decoration was a tiny poinsettia that a student gave me a few days before the big day. Back then I had decided that all the fuss of decorating and cooking holiday treats wasn't worth it and wanted to see what a no-effort Christmas was like. Not surprisingly Xmas '08 made me a little sad, and I realized two things: one, that you do have to put in some effort to get that special Christmas feeling. And two, that even as a fully grown-up person, without kids, and an atheist to boot, I actually still wanted that special Christmas feeling.

So this time around I put up decorations and we even fashioned a kind of tree out of some branches (two trees actually: one on our balcony made of sticks from the park, and one inside made of a fancier branch from the florist's). I played Christmas music 'till my ears hurt, got my Christmas cards done early, and made Hideaki put up Christmas lights in our bedroom window and on our balcony.

And still Christmas never really came.

The first bad sign was after I'd done my Christmas cards, I was literally on my way out the door to mail them when I did a quick email check on my phone and got an email from my mother telling my Uncle Bill had died. Bill was to turn 100 on January 13th, and although I already had a birthday card picked out I thought I'd send him a Christmas card too, writing giant letters (an empty gesture as he was too blind to read) and hoping he'd remember who I was.

Uncle Bill had an interesting life, especially during the war. He flew with the Royal Canadian Air Force and spent time in Finland, involved in a mission so top secret that he still wouldn't discuss the details six decades later. After the war he married and lived in the Parkdale area of Toronto, where he'd grown up.

He was actually my great uncle by marriage, the husband of my father's grandmother. We weren't particularly close and I'd only met him a handful of times, but he'd kind of become part of our family in recent years. We'd been out of contact with him and his wife for decades, only getting back into touch several years ago. Aunt Mabel died ages ago, they never had kids, and our family was his closest kin, so when they regained contact my dad took responsibility for him, visiting him often at his home in Toronto and eventually moving him to a home nearby in Brampton. He was a bit senile but fairly lively for his age, with a newly developed forbidden love for chocolate and sweets (he wasn't allowed to eat them for health reasons, but dad figured at his age he deserved the pleasure and would smuggle in occasional treats for him), making jokes about how he likes to keep after-dinner mints around "for the ladies" and even once goosing a female attendant. On my last visit he had done what he always does to younger visitors: held up both fists and asked me, of my dad, "Is he giving you any trouble?". Apparently when my brother or other males visited the fists would be twirled around in an old-fashioned boxer's move, a treat I never got to see.

So although we weren't close I was really sad to hear about his passing. The timing was also sad, since he just missed his 100th birthday, but as my mom pointed out he already believed he was 102 or 103, so in his own mind he'd already passed that milestone.

The news didn't ruin Christmas though, and I was mostly just glad I'd had the chance to visit recently and that he had lived such a long life. But still Christmas didn't come. Oh sure, we tried to do some Christmasy things, starting with a visit to an event at the Tokyo International Forum (a good place to visit even when there's no event, as the building is amazing and the surrounding neighborhoods always have nice Christmas decorations). Called the "Strasbourg Christmas Market in Tokyo", it was an attempt to recreate the famed Alsatian Marche de Noel. It sounded great, with booths and artisans directly imported from the original market, Alsatian delicacies on sale, free concerts and give-aways of Alsatian wine. Alsace is one of my favourite wine regions but I haven't had a chance to try the food, so I was really looking forward to that (OK, it was the free wine that really got my attention).

I met Hideaki there after he had a job interview in the area, and we were both underwhelmed. We were too early for the concerts, no free wine was to be had, the stuff for sale in the booths was way overpriced, the tarte flambes were sold out, and the very tempting charcuterie cart above was closed without explanation (it re-opened just as we were leaving, when we were already full).

So I took a picture of the Christmas tree, imported (along with its decorations) from Alsace. As I did so passersby looked around in confusion, wondering what I could possibly be taking a picture of, as the tree was extremely tame by Japanese standards- it didn't even light up! Then we bought some overpriced grub at the one food stall that was open, eating it while we froze at the outdoor tables provided (no heaters or blankets offered).

Clockwise from top left: a nice bread with bacon and onion; some kind of potato dish with cheese, mulled apple juice, wine (variety unknown); choucroute; and quiche. The choucroute was delicious and I may have to rethink my hatred of sauerkraut (or maybe the Alsatians are just the only ones who do it right). The other stuff was good but not very hot when served and quite cold by the time we ate it.

Now that I think about it, I don't think it was the food or booths or other stuff that failed to impress me, it was the crowd: the very few people there looked miserable, which is completely normal for Tokyo but just doesn't work for a Christmas market.

December 23rd is the Emperor's birthday and thus a national holiday, so when Christmas (which of course is not a holiday here) falls on a weekday lots of folks choose the Emp's birthday to celebrate. We did so by meeting Hideaki's sister Atsuko and her family at the Tokyo Hilton for brunch. We go there every once in a while for special occasions because they put on a nice spread, but hadn't been a few years. In the time that we'd been away the place had renovated, raised both the level of their food and their prices, and been declared the best hotel buffet in Japan (a title way better than it sounds, as tonnes of hotels here do buffets and most are very good). I'd read that the buffet now included raw oysters and even had Hide call and ask, and he was told something odd: that they do have oysters but they're not actually raw, having been treated to render them safe. We'd never heard of this so were curious to see what they meant.

Sure enough, there was a mound of oysters on the halfshell over ice, and they looked like normal raw oysters. I picked a few up on my first trip to the buffet, failing to notice the sauces, and ate them plain. That's how I ate the Akkeshi oysters in Hokkaido and at that time I couldn't imagine adding any kind of flavour to an oyster. But it turns out that not all oysters are equal to Akkeshis, because these had almost zero flavour! Was it the variety of oyster or the mysterious treatment they'd undergone that did it? No idea. They had the same texture as regular raw oysters, a bit of a briny odour, but close to nothing on the palate. I later went back for some sauce, and once they were dressed up they suddenly tasted like oysters again. I think I must have had nearly twenty, which I later regretted- oysters go down so easily but are deceptively filling.

The rest of the food was good, and although the others were most impressed with the desserts, I thought the salad bar and appetizer bar was the best and also offered the biggest bang for the buck. I was already stuffed by the time I got to the hot food, above, and couldn't finish my plate.

Afterward we checked out some of Shinjuku's Christmas decorations, which Marya especially was impressed by. Believe it or not, this was the first proper light display I'd seen this Christmas- I really don't get out like I used to. We then started an Ultraman stamp rally (a stamp rally being a unique Japanese custom of bringing a special flyer around town to various locations to get a stamp from each one, usually with a reward when you've got all the stamps), Marya being an Ultraman fan, but had to cancel halfway through when I suddenly came down with a cold. Just like that- I was feeling fine one minute and the next felt like hell. So straight to home and to bed it was.

Christmas Eve I downed enough cold meds to get through the night and met my friend Emi for dinner. We usually go to Nasu to celebrate but I couldn't afford it this year, so dinner it was. We were a bit curious to see what it would be like to have a nice dinner together on this night, since Christmas Eve is considered THE date night in Japan. Women without dates on Xmas Eve are supposed to stay home in shame, and the lucky ones who do snag a date can expect an expensive present, a fancy dinner, and a few hours at a love hotel (if the guy has was smart enough to book a room months in advance, that is- Christmas Eve is the busiest night of the year for love hotels).

Like most stereotypes, this turns out to be not quite true: nobody looked as us funny and we saw lots of other women who were obviously not on dates, in groups, pairs, and even alone. The male-female couples in our restaurant, however, stayed true to the stereotype and each girl was handed a present by her man (a cashmere scarf for one and jewelry for the others, the lucky bitches).

Anyway, we ate at Cafe Table, an interior goods shop in Omotesando (selling pop-art type stuff they call "Sweet French Style") with a French restaurant decorated with their wares. It was a very cute looking place and the food was way better than my initial expectations were, although a bit gimmicky. The Christmas wreath salad had lovely bits of pate and scallop mousse, and the "cappuccino style" soup below was made with soy milk and mushrooms, with a very rich flavour and no evidence of icky soy milk.

Next was seafood (a large shrimp, squid and raw scallops) atop pesto risotto with a red pepper sauce, just lovely.

The roast beef with "Maria Maricia" sauce was less impressive, as the sauce turned out to be chocolate-based. Not like a complex and very slightly chocolaty mole sauce, but really really chocolaty. 

The dessert was a mini white yule log and ice cream with balsamico reduction. There was way too much of the sauce and the ice cream was rendered far too sour and savoury- I found myself wondering if the chef had mixed up the sauces for the meat and dessert courses.

Still, it was a very nice meal, and they gave us each a free coffee mug as we left. It's still under my Christmas tree (I mean branch), waiting for our real Christmas to come).

After dinner we checked out the Christmas lights along Omotesando. These lights were once a famous sight in Tokyo, but this is the first time they've been up in over a decade: local merchants disliked the crowds that the lights brought (at the time such displays were rare here) and worried about damage to the trees, so put an end to the displays. In the years since, the shopkeepers have looked on in envy as other neighborhoods in Tokyo started putting up lights, with displays becoming more and more elaborate and the crowds getting bigger and bigger, and I guess they realized that massive crowds are better than none at all, and the lights are back up.

The display was pretty, but it was hard to get a good view as the pedestrian bridge was closed, the street was lined with parked cars whose occupants were taking pictures, and the curbs were strewn with trash bags (must've been garbage day on Christmas).

Meanwhile, back at home, Christmas didn't develop much past the decorations. With Hideaki's job situation as it was, we weren't doing presents for each other, and of the three parcels my mother had sent only one had shown up. There were no traditional Christmas Eve presents, and the next morning we opened stockings (his was full of lame stuff from the local convenience store that I'd hastily bought on my way home the night before, mine with treats from all over that Hideaki had actually been collecting for some time- he's getting really good at Christmas!) had then one present each from my parents (the only two that made it from home). No mimosas in the morning or champagne at dinner, no turkey or even chicken- knowing that I had to recover from my cold before my upcoming ski camp job, I took it easy and let Hideaki do dinner. He did tiny but beautiful wagyu steaks, and although I could barely taste them I could definitely appreciate the melt in the mouth texture (you'd have to be near death not to appreciate that).

So, despite a lot of good eating, it was kind of a sad non-Christmas after all. It's highly embarrassing to realize that at 36 years of age I still rely on my mother to make Christmas happen, and also rather disappointing to know that I really do need all the presents, traditional cooking and other bells and whistles. How The Grinch Stole Christmas was wrong. It didn't come without packages, boxes and bags!

Wait, I'm exaggerating. I had some nice times with friends and family, the present from my mom was lovely, and we did get one very special present on Christmas: a phone call for Hide, from the company he interviewed for the previous week. He got the job!

He starts this Tuesday, and hopefully the boxes from home will arrive around the same time he gets his first paycheck, and we'll have a proper Christmas after all. A month or so late, but I'll chalk that up to the time difference.

Hope you had a merry Christmas, if Christmas is your thing! And if you're interested, a few more holiday pictures can be seen here.

Hokkaido

In September Hideaki and I were invited back to Kushiro, Hokkaido to visit his brother Hidetoshi. We had really wanted to go in the summer but couldn't find the time, so by the time we made it the weather was already turning cool. Still, there was abundant greenery, the trees still had their leaves, and the temperatures were mostly warm, so it was quite different from our springtime visit.

The first thing we did was drive to Akkeshi, the oyster-producing town we'd visited on our first trip, to pick up a few dozen oysters. Things got far too messy while we were shucking them to take pictures, sadly, but they were lovely and delicious inside and we ate them in all sorts of ways, from raw and naked to grilled with black pepper and ponzu.

The next day we drove up to Akan National Park, stopping on the way at Soba Doraku, an excellent soba (buckwheat noodle) restaurant we'd visited last time. Only this time we weren't just there to eat: we took a soba making class, learning how to turn sobako (buckwheat flour) into noodles. Again, things were too hands-on to take pictures, but my first soba making experience was lots of fun. It was much harder than I thought it would be, but under the guidance of our instructor we did a pretty good job.

When we were finished kneading and cutting the dough we sat down to wait for our handiwork to be boiled and served to us. Those are our noodles, above, and we thought they were very tasty and were really proud of ourselves for doing such a good job on our first try, until we decided- just for fun- to order a regular serving of soba. That is, soba prepared by the pros in the kitchen. And we realized we'd been fooling ourselves, because compared to the soba we'd made, this stuff was a thousand times better. The flavour wasn't so different, but it obviously takes an experienced set of hands to make soba that doesn't fall apart when boiled, has a springy, chewy, and slippery texture.

Note that the soba was served with a slice of yubari melon instead of the potato we got last time. It's a nice touch to have a side dish that changes with the seasons.

Continuing on to Akan National Park, we stopped at a hilltop that offered a view of Kusharo-ko, one of the park's famed lakes that we'd seen close-up in the spring. We'd walked right around the island-like peninsula seen above, and it looked much bigger from here than when we were on it.

The clouds hampered the view a little bit, as clear skies would have shown the lake's beautiful colour as well as bringing distant mountain ranges- a few of which apparently were already capped with snow- into view.    

The surrounding hills were covered by low-lying bamboo grass, which looked dry and scraggly up close but very lush and inviting from afar.

We then went to another viewpoint to see another lake, Mashu-ko, below From this spot part of Kussaro-ko is also visible, above.

Mashu-ko is a caldera lake, with banks so steep that there is no access at all to its waters. It's extremely rare to see any shoreline in Japan without any kind of development, and my disappointment at not being able to get close to the water was balanced by the beautiful sight of the pristine shoreline.

It would have been nice to have clear skies to see the famed deep-blue colour of the water by, but at least we could see the lake- apparently it's often obscured by fog.

After driving back to Kushiro we were taken to a hill with a coal mine on one side and the city on the other. Until a few years ago the hill was the coal mine's a slag heap, but a retired employee of the coal company has been planting the hill with grass and cosmos and has managed to transform the former eyesore into a very pretty spot.

The same coal company created this lake:

My brother-in-law's apartment is on the other side of the lake, and on the side this picture was taken the same retiree has created another garden, this one featuring a variety of trees and shrubs. At first the man worked alone, but now is helped by a few volunteers, including Hidetoshi.

It's a work in progress, with most trees still quite small, but it's easy to imagine that one day it will become a very nice park or garden. It's already a pretty place, especially in the spring as many of the trees are cherry trees.

Dinner was at my brother-in-law's place, starting with sanma (Pacific saury) sashimi. This was locally caught and perfectly in season, and while I'm not normally a fan of raw sanma I loved this (and ate nearly the entire plate of it myself).

Then out came a couple whole sanma, along with the hibachi. Hidetoshi cooks most of his dinners over charcoal (with the fan on and windows open, of course), and he cooked the sanma to perfection.

We'd been given a couple steamed cobs of corn at the soba restaurant earlier, and these went on the grill with a splash of soy sauce.

The meal ended with soup and rice, and sanma featured here as well, being ground, shaped into tsumire (fish meatballs) and added to miso soup. Tsumire is not something I trouble to make often, as it's a lot of work, but this reminded me that I need to do it more often.

After dinner Hideaki tried on some of the gardening gear that his brother uses to help out in the garden across the lake. That's one heavy duty weedwhacker!

The next day started with a hearty breakfast at our hotel. The buffet included robata-yaki (charcoal-grilled fish, meat and vegetables), which is hugely popular in Kushiro (not usually for breakfast though!), in the plate at bottom right.

Then we drove east to Shibetsu, a coastal town known for its salmon industry. Our destination was Shibetsu Salmon Park (English PDF here), a hatchery with a museum, shops and restaurants.

First up was lunch. I had the seafood curry, which came topped with salmon katsu (deep-fried salmon "cutlet"). The curry was great and the cutlet, well, although I can think of about a dozen ways that I'd rather eat salmon, it was interesting to try.

The boys had seafood ramen, which was a big hit.

Passing through the shop, it was tempting not to buy a whole salmon- these were going for about 2000 yen each, an impossible price in Tokyo. Hidetoshi picked up a few things though, which turned up later at the dinner table.

The museum is located next to the Shibetsu river, not far from where it meets the Pacific, and both ocean and river are visible from the museum's tower. We then walked over to the bridge, hoping to see the river busy with salmon on their way upriver to spawn.

Unfortunately this is not a good year for salmon in Shibetsu, and where normally you'd find the river clogged with salmon and get to watch then jump over the hatchery's barriers, there were just a few to be seen here and there, and none of them in a jumping mood.

Back at the museum we got to watch a handful of salmon that had been diverted from the river. These were a little more active and made a few jumps, but none made it over the barriers. Still, it was neat to see them up close and try to identify them by species and gender. I got quite good and would have been happy to watch for hours (this picture doesn't do the exhibit justice, it really was quite cool).

There was more to the museum but we zipped right through it without pausing to take pictures. Most information was in Japanese, but a few English language posters caught my eye. On closer inspection I was tickled to see they were Canadian Ministry of Fisheries posters. I really regret not taking pictures (or swiping them).

On the way back home we did some shopping at a "home centre" (like a big DIY or hardware store) and I noticed this display of salmon-related goods near the entrance. Behind me were fishing supplies, and the products in this picture are all for storing, transporting, shipping (as gifts), and preparing both salmon and salmon roe. It's easy to see what a big deal salmon are in this part of Japan.

Dinner started with shake no kunsei (smoked salmon). This was much smokier and firmer textured than European style smoked salmon, and was so packed with flavour that it had to be eaten slowly, nibble by nibble. This was easily one of the most delicious ways I've ever eating salmon.

Next up: jingisukan (Genghis Khan, similar to Mongolian hotpot). We cooked thinly sliced lamb and bean sprouts on an iron grill with a sweetish, vaguely Chinese flavoured sauce. Lamb is sadly not very popular in most of Japan, but happily Hokkaidoites love it, especially as jingisukan.

This is what my brother-in-law had bought earlier in the day in Shibetsu: two kinds of ikura (salmon roe). On the left is ikura no shiozuke (salt-cured roe), on the right is ikura no shoyuzuke (roe cured in soy sauce).

To compare them, we had ikuradon (hot rice topped with salmon roe) with one type on each side, separated by a garnish of nori seaweed. Both were delicious, but I thought the shoyuzuke on the left had a mellower flavour that went better with rice. I also thought I was a very lucky person to be able to be conducting such a taste test!

I'll blog about the rest of the trip soon, and in the meantime you can check out more pictures here.

Food

As a companion to my recent catch-up post, here is a post all about what I've bee eating since my blogging semi-hiatus. We start all the way back in May, just after our trip to Kushiro to visit Hideaki's brother. I had returned to Tokyo first for work reasons, and when he came back a few days later he was loaded down with souvenirs from his brother, all of them edible. So we ate like royalty for over a week after the trip, starting with this meal:

Mentaiko (spicy pollock roe); ikura no shoyuzuke (salmon roe preserved in soy sauce); noyasai no nibitashi (blanched wild greens flavoured with dashi and soy sauce); kyuuri no kombuzuke (cucumbers quick-pickled in salt and powdered kelp); kogomi no itame (sauteed fiddle heads), and hiyayakko (cold tofu) and spinach topped with katsuobushi. The mentaiko and ikura were gifts from BIL (my brother-in-law), the wild greens (a watercress-like plant of unknown species) were picked by Hideaki in Hokkaido and cooked by BIL, and the kombu powder was also from BIL. Kombu, like ikura and mentaiko, are a meibutsu (famous product) of Hokkaido.

The meal was finished off with white rice (merely a vehicle for the mentaiko and ikura) and two types of salt-grilled fish: sake (salmon) and saba (mackerel), both gifts from BIL.

The next day's dinner started off with three Hokkaido cheeses (bought by BIL on a visit to the cheese maker): monvizo, scamorza and tenerello. All were delicious and although on the mild side seemed closer to European cheeses than Japanese, and I never would have guessed they were made domestically if I hadn't already known.

The cheese was followed by a salad; the same mentaiko and ikura as before; sliced shiso (perilla) to eat over rice with the roe; a trio of pickles; soramame (fresh fava beans); and more of the the mackerel and salmon from the Hokkaido.

The next Hokkaido-themed meal was jingisukan, the Mongolian hotpot-like dish named after Genghis Khan. We started by cooking onions, green peppers, kabocha squash, shiitake, and eringi mushrooms on our electric skillet.

When the vegetables were partly cooked we added bean sprouts and marinated, thinly sliced lamb. The lamb was from--you guessed it--my BIL, and came frozen and already flavoured in a slightly sweet and spicy soy based sauce..

 

The skillet was covered and the jingisukan steamed until the lam was cooked, then it was stirred up and eaten with rice. We already love lamb and have even made jingisukan at home a few times, but this was the best ever.

Another BIL souvenir: Sanpouroku, a confection made in Obihiro, west of Kushiro. It's a variation of bamukuhen, Japan's version of the German baumkuchen, that takes the resemblance of the cake to a tree (the German name literally means "tree cake") one step further. The outside of the cake is glazed with white and milk chocolate in a marbled pattern resembling the bark of shirakaba (white birch), a tree that grows abundantly in Hokkaido.

We got one cake each of plain and chocolate, and both were as tasty as they were pretty.

This is something we bought for ourselves, being curious to try nama caramel, Japan's latest sweet obsession. Literally "raw caramel", it seemed to be an arsenal caramel that is very soft and rich tasting, and is usually sold at shockingly high prices. I think we paid about 1000 yen for the box shown above, which is a bargain by Tokyo standards (there were cheaper caramels at the souvenir shops in Kushiro airport but a quick check of their ingredient lists showed that were of inferior quality).

It turns out that nama caramel is exactly what we thought: a very rich, soft caramel. It was certainly delicious, and obviously made with quality ingredients, but it's basically just a soft caramel. I don't get what all the fuss is about or why people are willing to pay so much money for the stuff.

The last souvenir from Hokkaido was horumon, which means "throw-away bits" and refers to intestines, both beef and pork. It's eaten as horumon-yaki (grilled intestines) and is very popular in Hokkaido. When well prepared it's very good, even for people like me who aren't into organ meats, but it stinks to high heaven during cooking so we decided to have a barbeque in the park to eat it.

It came with a spicy dipping sauce, so we cooked it plain, along with asparagus, kabocha and eringi, then dipped it before eating. It looks kind of burnt above, but as it's very very fatty it's better to overcook it a little to let as much fat out as possible and to make it nice and crisp. Luckily we were the only ones barbequing that day (Japanese tend to consider barbeque a summer and autumn thing, so May is not the right season for it), but I'm sure more than a few passersby had to breathe in some unpleasantly flavoured air.

Next up: scallops and sazae (turban shell). The scallops were left on the half shell and cooked in sake and soy sauce, and the sazae were chopped up and poached in the other scallop shell halves in the same sake and soy sauce. Man, I love Japanese style barbeque!

Wanting to return to simpler food, but still not ready to take a seafood break, we went to a local soba (buckwheat noodle) restaurant. I had nishin soba: soba noodles in hot broth topped with nishin (dried herring) and mitsuba (trefoil), negi (long onion), and kamaboko (steamed fish cake). This is probably one of my favourite ways to eat soba, but I usually only get to eat it on New Year's Eve (soba is a traditional new year's dish, and my husband's family always eats it with nishin).

We had a more down-market version of soba at Hanamaru Udon, a popular fast food chain that specializes in sanuki udon (a regional style of udon, or wheat noodles). Hanamaru's main draw is its low prices: it's possible to buy a small, plain bowl of noodles for 105 yen, and although few people could be satisfied by such a small serving, you could still order a larger bowl with a few toppings for well under 500 yen.

You also aren't limited to udon and can opt for soba instead, which we did on this visit. Above, I ordered a medium sized kake soba (soba noodles in hot broth topped with negi) withe shungiku (chrysanthemum greens) and uzura tamago (quail egg) tempura on the side. At the do-it-yourself topping station I added katsuobushi (bonito flakes), sesame seeds and shichimi (seven spice mix).

The tempura is served cold so I usually avoid it, but I make exceptions for things that tend to keep their crunch, like shungiku. The uzura tamago was recommended by my husband, a Hanamaru Udon regular, as the ultimate noodle topping.

He was right. The eggs was cooked hanjuku (soft boiled), and the yolks oozed into the broth to add a rich, sweet flavour. It was a very fancy touch that made my meal seem like I'd paid a whole lot more than 400 yen for it.

400 yen doesn't quite pay for a latte at my favourite Kichijoji cafe medewo and dine (OK, I've only been there a few times, but it's still my favourite). But there's nothing wrong with splurging every now and again for a tasty cup that comes decorated with a bunny.

The shrimp dish above is based on Epicurious's garlic shrimp recipe, using shelled shrimp instead of the shell-on shrimp called for in the recipe (I'm not a fan of shelling shrimp at the table, especially in a greasy, messy dish like this) and skipping the garlic chives, which seemed redundant. The shrimp themselves were fantastic and I couldn't believe such a short ingredient list could produce such an amazing flavour. But after a few bites we realized we were going to have way too much sauce left over--we did have bread ready for dipping but we would have needed loaves of it to use up all the garlicky oil.

So I boiled some pasta (angel hair--we were too hungry to wait for anything else) and added a few cherry tomatoes and basil leaves, and it became a delicious pasta sauce. Maybe some day I'll come across whole serrano chiles and reasonably priced long-grain rice in Tokyo, and thus be able to enjoy the original recipe as it was meant to be served, but until then this will be my go-to shrimp past recipe.

Sadly I have no idea where I got the recipe for this chilled tomato soup. The soup is a slightly chunky puree, perhaps with roasted peppers or other vegetables, and that's basil oil on top, but I've completely forgotten where the recipe came from. It was really good and I remember thinking it would be fine hot as well, so I'd really like to make this again. Can anyone help?

During my five weeks of summer camp I ate lots of kid-friendly Japanese cafeteria food. At one of the camps we cooked all of our own meals, but the other four we made breakfast only and ate at the campsite's cafeteria for lunches and dinners. The food was served buffet-style and was pretty good, with far more vegetables and healthy options than you'd find at a similar place in Canada, but camp counseling is hard work and I was rarely successful with my plans to avoid the fried foods and second trips to the buffet.

Above, from plate on left: napolitan spaghetti (a Japanese classic made with tomatoes--or more often ketchup--along with onions, green peppers and ham); fried fish of some kind; and marinated cucumbers, bean sprouts and carrots; fruits mitsumame (a dessert of canned mandarin segments and agar jelly cubes); salad; miso soup with negi and tofu.

From plate on left: marinated tomato, mitsuba greens and thinly sliced omelet; nimono (braised dish) of chikuwa (grilled fish paste), takenoko (bamboo shoots) and sato imo (taro potato); yakisoba (fried noodles) and fried mackerel; dessert of yogurt and canned peaches; salad; and miso soup with cabbage and abura-age (fried tofu).

From plate on left: fried squid tentacles; yakisoba; macaroni salad; cabbage rolls; miso soup with abura-age; and salad.

From plate on left: chicken and lettuce salad; fried fish; rolled cabbage; napolitan spaghetti; hamburg steak; green salad; miso soup with nameko mushrooms.

From plate on left: green salad; marinated harusame (glass noodles) with ham, wakame seaweed and thinly sliced omelet; ramen; curry rice.

On outings we had bento (lunch boxes) made for us. I ate the prettily packaged one above for four weeks.

Inside was white rice topped with karikari-ume (crunchy pickled plum) and black sesame seeds; six pieces of kara-age (Japanese style fried chicken); star-shaped tater-tots; some kind of vegetables below the taters; a slice of orange, and pickled daikon. It was delicious the first time but less so the fourth, and I never thought I'd say this but I'd be happy if I never had cold fried chicken again.

At least that bento had some vegetable matter--check out the one below:

Rice topped with thinly sliced beef and two giant tempura shrimp. Oh wait, I think the beef was gyuudon style (cooked with onion and flavoured with dashi and soy sauce), so there might have been a few molecules of onion. This was actually really tasty but left me feeling dirty and ashamed.

In September we were invited back to Kushiro (I'll blog about that soon) and came back loaded down with more Hokkaido souvenirs. We got two types of ikura: shoyuzuke (cured in soy sauce) and shiozuke, shown above. The shiozuke was unlike anything we'd tried before: it was dry, very firm, and had a very clean but strong flavour. It was even wrapped up in cotton fabric, presumably to absorb any excess liquid.

The shoyuzuke was easy to serve, since it naturally goes well with rice. Above: potatoes with butter and miso; flaked Hokkaido salmon; yakinasu (grilled eggplant) topped with katsuobushi; komatsuna greens flavoured with soy sauce and sesame seeds; miso soup with tofu and myoga (ginger buds); and ikuradon (rice topped with ikura and nori seaweed).

Thinking the shiozuke ikura might go better with western style cooking, I made Lemon and Salmon Roe Pasta, another Epicurious recipe as a special dinner for my birthday. I don't make cream sauces often so I stuck exactly to the recipe, and while it was good I think it was designed for people who don't really like salmon roe, as the lemon completely overwhelmed the roe. It was a nice idea though, and the dill went really nicely with the ikura, so I'd make it again without the lemon.

On my birthday Hideaki surprised me with flowers and sweets from Planetes, our local cake shop. He really shouldn't have--just cooking me dinner would have been enough (and he did cook dinner, of course--gyoza), but I didn't mind at all. From left: assorted chocolates, coffee and chocolate macarons, and almond snowballs (perhaps my all-time favourite cookie).

I had meant to lovingly photograph everything before eating but only managed to snap the chocolate macaron.

This had a very good shell-to-filling ratio and the perfect texture, slightly crisp on the outside, slightly chewy on the inside. I could have eaten a dozen of these.

We had a post-birthday lunch (we're very big on birthdays around here) at our favourite local restaurant, Marufuku. I had the kinmeidai no nitsuke (poached alpnonsino) set lunch, which came with salad and chawanmushi (egg custard), not shown, and pickles, rice and miso soup. Very good as always, especially considering the price (about 800 yen). But the real reason I went was the oysters:

This is the first time I've visited when they've had raw oysters on the menu since I fell in love with them in Kushiro this spring. I used to only be able to eat them cooked, and we'd often order them at Marufuku deep-fried, but this time I just had to have them raw. They were from Miyagi in northern Japan and were huge, but cost just 100 yen each. They came topped with negi, momiji oroshi (grated daikon and hot chili pepper) and splash of rice vinegar and soy sauce, and I was a bit nervous because I'd previously only had them in Hokkaido, perfectly plain, and I was worried that maybe I only liked that particular kind of oysters or wouldn't like them with fancy toppings.

But they were delicious. Quite different from the Akkeshi oysters I'd had in Hokkaido, but lovely in their own way, and really elevated by the toppings. These five were gone in no time and I was tempted to order more, until I realized I was getting full--these were actually big enough to be filling.

I'm looking forward to long life of oyster eating, and it's great to know I can find such cheap and tasty ones right here in my neighborhood.

Mikurajima

I really shouldn't have done it. Good wives are not supposed to take off on frivolous trips while their husbands stay home looking for work. Especially when they've barely gotten back from a one-month visit to Canada and can hardly claim they're starved for a vacation. Especially especially when their summers consisted of working five weeks of summer camps with just a weekend between each one, leaving very little time to even keep up with the laundry, let alone have quality with said husbands. But something keeps drawing my back, and I did it. I went to Mikurajima.

Mikurajima is a small island south of Tokyo, part of the chain of islands known as the Izu Seven Islands. It was my third visit, having gone last year and two years before that. I don't know if that quite qualifies me as a regular, but I'm beginning to feel like it (hell, google "Mikurajima" and my blog comes in second from top). And I mean that in a good way. It's a tiny place with an equally tiny population, and it doesn't take that long to feel like you know the island.

I went with my friends Emi and Etsuko and Etsuko's boyfriend Jeremy. We left on August 6th (figuring we'd take advantage of the brief time in early August when the water has warmed up but the jellyfish haven't arrived yet) by overnight ferry, which is the only direct way to get there from Tokyo. It is possible to get there from neighboring Miyakejima by fishing boat, and you can also helicopter over from Izu Oshima, which I almost did since I was already on Oshima that day finishing up an English camp. But then I saw how much it cost and realized it would be far cheaper to ferry back to take a ferry from Oshima to Tokyo, wait a few hours, and get on another ferry to Mikurajima. Quite a waste of time, but not only was the transportation itself cheaper that way, but by sleeping on the ferry I saved paying for a night's lodging. Plus Hideaki was nice enough to come to the harbour to not only pass the time between ferries with me, but to take home my dirty camp clothes and wash them for me. Either I'm a very bad wife, or I have a very good husband.

But you get what you paid for, and the seats on the ferry were about as comfortable as airplane seats, meaning I didn't get much sleep. At least my motion sickness meds worked though: Etsuko's didn't, so even though she and Jeremy were able to stretch out to sleep (albeit on the floor), she got less sleep than I did. Emi, going all out as she usually does, slept like a baby in her bunk and barely got off the ferry in time (it went on to the distant island of Hachioji after Mikurajima). The above picture is taken at dawn as we pulled away from Miyakejima, Mikurajima's closest neighbor.

An hour after leaving Miyakejima we landed on Mikurajima, shown above. Note the steep sides of the island: there are no beaches, a fact that mostly kept tourists away until the dolphin tourism boom started about a decade ago. Tourism is still well controlled by both the inaccessibility of the island and the islanders' dedication to conservation, with strict rules governing what tourists can do on the island.

We stayed the first night at our favourite minshuku (family-run inn), Nishikawa, shown below. Like most buildings on the island it is of utilitarian construction, but you don't go to Mikurajima for the architecture.

While everyone else spent the morning in the water, I had a refreshing nap (vowing, as I nodded off, to shell out for a first class ferry ticket next year). Then we all met up again for lunch at Yamaya, one of just three restaurants on the island. I had a bowl of ume shiso reimen (cold Korean style noodles with pickled ume and perilla) which turned out to be one of the most refreshing dishes I had all summer, with a tart, tangy kick that shook off the last of my sleepiness.

And then Emi, Jeremy and I headed out to see the dolphins. The only way to see them is by snorkeling in the open water (scuba diving is prohibited), and the only way to get out into the water is by tour boat. There are about a dozen to choose from and we went with Sirius Nature Tours, which we like for its small and relatively comfortable boat (it holds a maximum of seven people) and skilled captain. There are further restrictions about how many times tourists can go out per day and how long each tour lasts, but my plan of one tour per day was well within the limits.

There are about 100 dolphins in the waters surrounding the island, split into several groups which are constantly on the move but usually stick close to the shore. We had to travel halfway around the island before we spotting them, and for a while all we could do was watch them from the boat, since they were swimming erratically and it was hard to tell which direction they were headed. Dolphins are very fast swimmers, and often by the time the captain sees them, slows down the boat and sends his passengers into the water, the dolphins are long gone. So we just watched them come up for air and do the occasional jump above the surface for a while.

Finally the timing was right and we could get in the water. Sirius's captain is really good at predicting which directions the dolphins will swim and stopping in front of them, so we can see them coming and going, whereas other tours we've been on just dump us near the dolphins as they pass, which usually results in great views of their tails as they swim away, and nothing more.

Visibility wasn't great, as there'd been stormy weather the day before, but we still got to see lots of dolphins. Unfortunately my waterproof camera decided to stop being waterproof after just one picture underwater, so most of these pictures are Emi's. My camera was ruined but I had little time to think about it as I tried to keep up with the dolphins (and as luck would have it, when I finally had time to deal with it last month Pentax replaced the camera for free).

Back at our minshuku, after cleaning our gear and showering, we had a dinner so homey and local it could have been on the table of any family on the island (and I mean that in a good way). Clockwise from bottom left: chilled ashitaba somen (thin noodles made of wheat and ashitaba, a fast-growing plant with edible leaves found all over the Izu Seven Islands), served in a soy-based broth and topped with noriashitaba to tuna no aemono seaweed; (ashitaba greens dressed with tuna); potato salad; grilled takabe (a local fish called yellowstriped butterfish in English); kinmedai (alphonsino) sashimi; pickles; and mabodofu (tofu in spicy pork sauce); with rice available self-serve. It was all good, and I loved the bitter, fresh flavour of the ashitaba.

The next morning we woke up early to the breakfast above: shumai (pork dumplings), cheese-stuffed hampen (fish cake) and sauteed peppers on the large plate; rice; grilled salted salmon; mango pudding; miso soup; simmered satsuma-age (fried fish cake), carrot and konnyaku (devil's tongue jelly); pickles, and komatsuna greens simmered with egg.

And then we headed out for another dolphin tour. The day started out clear, with a nice view of Miyakejima to the north, and I came armed with my waterproof cell phone.

Which took really crappy pictures. The one above was taken in the middle of a big school of takabe, the very same fish we'd tried the night before. Below is Emi with her camera safely inside its waterproof casing, and the rest of the dolphin pictures are hers.

 

By the time the tour ended the top half of the island was covered in cloud, which didn't bode well for the hike we'd planned in the afternoon.

Lunch was at Yamaya again, but as I was still full from my giant breakfast I opted for matcha azuki kakigori (shaved ice flavoured with sweetened matcha tea and adzuki beans).

Hiking on Mikurajima is as strictly controlled as dolphin watching, with most routes requiring a guide. I had planned on doing a short hike on one of the routes not requiring a hike, but when Jeremy realized he and Etsuko's guided tour fell on the same afternoon,he kindly offered to pay for me to join. I was glad I did, as I learned a lot about the island's nature and history that I otherwise wouldn't have. And even though my camera was broken, I still got some pictures, as Jeremy lent me his camera.

We started by driving out of the village and into the mountains, stopping first at this giant sudajii (Castanopsis sieboldii, a member of the beech family).

Walking around its base we came upon this empty eggshell, once home to an oomizunadori (Calonectris leucomelas, or streaked shearwater) a seabird that nests on the island.

We continued driving, stopping occasionally for the view (unfortunately the cloud cover remained and we didn't enjoy the view of the ocean and distant mainland that the tour usually affords) and finally at this little roadside shrine. Next to the van was a patch of the ever-present ashitaba, and we were instructed to pick a leaf and bring it to the shrine.

The leaf was placed on the altar and covered with a rock as we prayed for a safe journey. This is apparently the traditional thing to do when venturing into the mountains on Mikurajima, with travelers returning to the shrine on their way down to remove the leaf being and give thanks to the gods for their safe return.

Then we walked into the forest, passing more giant trees as well as giant ferns, and plenty more eggshells.

Not everything was giant, and although I wasn't used to the camera and couldn't get any shots of the many pretty flowers and plants we saw, I did get some shots of the pretty tama ajisai (hydrangea involucrata, or ball-shaped hydrangea). These look like regular gaku ajisai (lace hydrangea) when fully bloomed, but start off quite differently with the flowers tightly wrapped in a white ball. They bloom throughout the summer, later than regular hydrangea, and although they can be found on mainland Japan they are especially abundant on Mikurajima.

We eventually made it to Oojii, a giant tree said to be the largest sudaji in Japan, which is protected by a fence and very hard to get a good view of (but that's it behind us). 

We hadn't been able to reserve our second night at our minshuku, so we had to move to Mikurasou, the island's only hotel. I don't like it as much as Nishikawa,but the meals are totally different, so it was nice to experience both home-cooked food and fancy food in the same trip.

Clockwise from bottom left: ashitaba dressed with local kikurage (cloud ear mushroom); locally caught kinmedai and summer vegetables in sweet and sour sauce; oven-baked chicken and local potatoes; kampachi (yellowtail) and ama-ebi (sweet shrimp) sashimi; miso soup with limpets; itoyori-dai (threadfin bream) over spinach in a tart "Japonaise" sauce, topped with deep-fried glass noodles.

After dinner we saw the sunset as we walked down to Camburi, Mikurajima's only bar (which we'd visited earlier for coffee as it turns into a cafe during the day). It's a nice place made of local wood and has been around for just a year, and we enjoyed our cocktails and snacks very much. Below is takabe sashimi, yet another form of the local fish.

The next morning was our last dolphin swim. This time we were all together (Etsuko had canceled the previous day's tour due to her seasickness) and the dolphins were more active than we'd ever seen them.

By active I mean sexually active, and we saw quite a bit of dolphin foreplay. It was mostly groups of two or three males (visibly excited, as can be seen in two of the pictures before playing around with a single female, or each other. They completely ignored us swam in circles, which was neat because it allowed us to watch them for a long time, but also weird because, well, we were watching dolphins get it on. I felt a bit like a pervert then, and now that I'm posting dolphin porn I feel like a pervert all over again.

 

Breakfast had been served while we were away and was packed up for our return. Our little breakfast packs consisted of rice topped with okaka (bonito flakes flavoured with soy sauce) and kurogoma (black sesame); ashitaba dressed in soy sauce and sesame seeds; grilled mackerel; pickles and atsuyaki tamago (thick omelet).

Then we walked down to Minminan, another restaurant, where I had an iced coffee (all I could fit after breakfast) while the others had lunch, then on to the third restaurant on the island, Marufuku, for a gelato cone to eat on the way down to the dock to meet our ferry. It was sad to leave, even sadder still knowing we'd arrive back in Tokyo late at night and I'd be waking up early the next day for another week of camp. But it was a wonderful trip, and just like to say thank you to Emi for organizing it, and to Etsuko and Jeremy for bringing me along on their hike and letting me use their camera, and to Hideaki for his laundry services and good husbandry. I hope he'll come with me next year.

 

To see more pictures from the trip, check out my Mikurajima album on Flickr.

Past trips to Mikurajima: 2006, 2008.

Tokai Kisen has a daily route from Takeshiba Sanbashi Pier in Tokyo to Hachijoji, stopping at Miyakejima and Mikurajima on the way. The ferry departs nightly 10:20, arriving in Mikurajima the next morning at 6:00. The return ferry departs from Mikurajima at 1:15am and arrive in Tokyo at 10:30pm; one-way tickets start at 7200 yen for seats or floor space and 10,810 yen for second class bunks.

A night at Nishikawa costs 8000 yen per person, breakfast and dinner included; other minshuku range in price from 6900 to 8500 yen per night including breakfast and dinner; Mikurasou charges 10,500 per person (based on double occupancy) including breakfast and dinner; Bungalos are 2000 yen per night with no meals or amenities (bedding and cooking equipment must be rented, showers are pay-by-the-minute).

All dolphin tours costs 7000 yen, including pick-up and drop-off from hotel, but service varies between tour companies. I highly recommend Sirius Nature Tours.

Canada, week four

My last week in Canada began with lunch for everyone at Kingsley, a Chinese restaurant in Brampton with all-day dim sum. This was a very big treat for Hideaki and me: dim sum does exist in Japan, but it's done a bit differently. Customers ordering from menus rather than choosing dishes from passing carts, which is way less fun. The one time we found a proper dim sum place in Tokyo, with carts and all, we loved it, right up until we were hit with the $80 bill.

Everything was delicious, with stronger flavours compared to Japanese dim sum, which is usually lightly flavoured and always dipped in a sauce before eating. Here, although soy sauce was available for dipping, nothing really needed it (and the short, unbroken journey from plate to mouth was a big relief for those of us not used to slippery, blunt-ended Chinese chopsticks). Above is beef rib in black bean sauce with sticky rice (which came wrapped in a lotus leaf, unlike Japanese chimaki which comes wrapped in a bamboo leaf).

The two vegetable dishes, ordered from the menu, were a welcome break. On the left is baby bok choy with garlic, and on the right are snow pea greens with garlic.

This was my favourite dish: eggplant stuffed with minced shrimp. A tad on the greasy side but so, so good.

The garlic chive dumplings were very good too, stuffed with a mixture of pork, shrimp and a restrained amount of garlic chives, compared to the usual Japanese nira manju most often made with pork only and an aggressive amount of garlic chives.

The only disappointment was that many of the dumpling style dishes came with broken wraps, as shown above. This is probably the only way that Japanese style dim sum is better, and I wonder how important it is. Are broken wraps a major flaw in authentic Chinese cooking? All in all, I vastly prefer Canadian style dim sum, Kingsley's included, to Japanese style. But which is more authentic?

We finished with two of my favourite sweets: sesame balls (which came stuffed with lotus seed paste instead of the sweet bean paste found in Japanese goma dango), and egg tarts (which for some reason I've never seen offered at any kind of Chinese restaurant in Japan).

My sister Julie with my nephew Aaron and niece Zoe.

My dad and Julie.

Me and my mom.

Back at home, I spent some quality time with the cats. Below is the newest member of the family, Toki (I can't take credit for the pretty picture, unfortunately: it was taken with my brother Greg's camera, either by him or his girlfriend Sherry):

I don't remember exactly how Toki entered our family (we have so many cat acquisition stories that it's hard to keep them straight), except that she was a kitten in need of a home and my family happened to have a cat vacancy at the time. After a trip home last year I blogged about Angus, the handsome cat who was the newest member of the family at the time. Sadly, just a few weeks after that post, I was told that Angus was hit by a car. It was devastating, but a few months later there was more news: a brand new kitten was working some kitten magic on my family, and although Angus will never be forgotten, his replacement was pretty awesome.

Toki gets along with Cocoa, the earless and not very photogenic (but really cute in person) cat shown above. Cocoa is a very easy going and and affectionate cat, who also got along really well with Angus. Toki is not quite as loving as Cocoa, but she's also not quite fully grown, and her kittenish antics are lots of fun to watch.

For more pictures of Cocoa, Angus, Toki, and other kitties I've known, see my Cat Album. 

I got to see some cats of a bigger kind when my dad took Aaron, Zoe, Hideaki and me for a trip to the Toronto Zoo. It was Hideaki's first time, and my first visit in over a decade, and as usual we only got to see a small part of it.

Also as usual, most of the animals were napping, but there was a bit of excitement when this tiger stalked and chased a chipmunk. Above it's cooling down after the hunt (the chipmunk escaped), but in full sprint it was amazingly fast.

Our trip was just a few days after we'd read in the paper about the death of one of the oldest elephants. She had died in an accident, after being knocked over by another elephant during feeding time and not being able to get back up. Watching a few of them eating peacefully it was hard to imagine the aggression that would cause such an accident.

 

Not all of the animals were in cages:

Caged and not, there were plenty of happy couples (some of them were really happy):

More zoo pictures can be found in my Zoo album.

Soon it was Canada Day, and we celebrated with a backyard get-together. We started by being underwhelmed by a Mentos soda-pop geyser:

Then were blown away by Greg's bbq ribs:

Along with burgers and other good stuff:

Then we were blown away again when Greg and his friend Jim did these fireworks:

And then I was underwhelmed again when I saw the pictures:

  

Oh well, fireworks always look better in real life.

I took a couple more trips downtown, once with Hideaki, Julie and Zoe for some rainy day shopping. Nobody got lost on this trip, and we even had time to admire Union Station. It looks really different from a tourist's perspective, especially looking up above the utilitarian signs and booths. I never noticed that each province's flag is displayed and that the names of major train stations across Canada are carved into the walls.

On the last trip downtown I returned to the Royal Ontario Museum with my friend Aspasia and checked out the old lobby, which I'd missed on my previous visit with my dad.

The stained glass windows and mosaic ceiling were just as impressive as ever, as were the totem poles that guard the stairs.

But we were there to see the Wedgewood exhibit. I'm not really a Wedgewood fan and my impression of the company was mostly as a maker of pricey wedding gifts, so I wasn't expecting to be particularly impressed. But I really enjoyed it and some of the pieces, especially the older ones, were breathtaking. I had no idea that Josiah Wedgwood was such a forward-thinking innovator, nor did I know of his relation to Darwin.

Sadly, the lighting made the exhibit hard to photograph, but here are some of the pieces I liked (and Aspasia shows her pictures here on her blog Domicile).

 

Apparently the exhibit has been extended and will be open until Spring 2010.

After the Wedgewood show we saw a bit more of the museum. I liked the section showing early plastic items, especially the plastic shoe heels in the picture above. I'd love to have a pair of these! 

I was also intrigued by this early timepiece, dating from the 16th century and featuring a rotating globe instead of a flat face. A figure of a black child (or baby faced man?) in a Roman gladiator costume holds a staff, the tip of which shows the time; meanwhile a weasel-like creature runs by his feet. What does it all mean? The black child seems majestic and dignified, which seems odd considering what Europeans were doing to Africans at the time. Or is the childish face and silly getup condescending? It is certainly nicer than the lawn jockeys that would be popular centuries later, but something seems off. And what's going on with the weasel?

More museum pictures can be seen here.

I continued to fill up on good food during my last week, including a long awaited Greek meal, Greek restaurants being a rarity in Japan. I fought with my family over yummy appetizers like the calimari above before settling down to a Greek salad, while Hideaki had his very first taste of moussaka, below.

He loved it and has requested I make it for him, pointing out that it's a lot like sheppard's pie so it really couldn't be so hard. We'll see.

I accompanied my Mom on a Costco shopping trip, which probably sounds boring to most people but for me, a Costco addict, was great. I was fascinated to see the differences between the Costco cafeteria menus in Brampton and Tokyo. The whole Costco experience tends to be extremely similar no matter where in the world you are so I've always assumed the cafeteria is the same too. But there aren't french fries at Japanese Costcos, and certainly not french fries with gravy, and definitely not poutine. Also, cheeseburgers, chicken strips, and Montreal smoked meat sandwiches. I do love the bulgogi bakes at Japanese Costcos, but I'd gladly trade them for poutine. Or at least a tub of gravy.

We'd been lusting over the summer edition of Food and Drink, the wonderful free magazine put out by the LCBO (Ontario's government controlled liquor retailer) when Sherry suddenly surprised us with a dessert made with the magazine's recipes (a big surprise, as I tend to treat food magazines as food porn rather than actually trying their recipes). Based on the Nectarine and Apricot Cookie Crumble  (page 169), but with strawberries, peaches and apricots. It was delicious, and although she thought there was too much liquid, I thought it was wonderful that way.

My mom made her famous lasagna and caesar salad based on a request by Hideaki (sloppy plating my fault). I thought it was a silly choice for summer, but the weather was so cool that it all worked out.

More classics: bacon-wrapped scallops and bacon-wrapped water chestnuts. They never went out of style as far as I'm concerned.

Another first for Hideaki: crumpets. I've never seen one in Japan, which is crazy considering how good they are. Maybe I should go into the crumpet business.

But we waited for Hideaki to leave (he went home a few days ahead of me) to eat the really good stuff. We bought live clams, mussels and lobsters from the Asian market, and while none of them were local (we live in southern Ontario, after all), they were a huge treat. Proper lobsters, with claws, are extremely rare in Japan, and although I occasionally come across mussels, I've never had a good one.

The lobsters were steamed and served in halves with garlic butter.

The mussels were steamed in wine and served with a baguette.

And my mom put the clams went into a pasta sauce, along with cherry tomatoes and pancetta. Yum!

For dessert, Sherry made strawberry shortcake with fresh local strawberries. Mine above was done with just a touch of cream as I'm not a whipped cream fan, but even if I was I wouldn't need much as our Ontario berries need no embellishment.

And suddenly I found myself on a plane home, my belly full of good food and my head full of happy memories. I can't wait for the next visit.

See more pictures from my visit here.

Tobermory

While we were at Sauble Beach we drove up the Bruce Peninsula for an afternoon of hiking, stopping first for lunch in Tobermory, at the tip of the peninsula. We ate at a pirate-themed restaurant called the Shipwreck, with a cheese factor that was outweighed by the good food (and the cute pirate waiters).

We started with fried pickles, a delicacy that was new to me but stayed true to the "anything can be good when deep-fried" rule, and then went on to fish & chips. We all chose the local whitefish and were rewarded with a very tasty fish, with a mild, slightly oily flavour and delicate flesh, unlike anything I can get in Japan (where river and sea fish are plentiful but lake fish rather rare).

Then we drove to the Bruce Peninsula National Park for a few hours of leisurely hiking. It was a beautiful park bordered by rugged cliffs and the occasional rocky beach along Georgian Bay on the east and Lake Huron on the west. There isn't much explanation needed, so here's an uninterrupted stream of pictures:

I was impressed by the washrooms, which were much nicer than the usual toilets found in parks. Large open windows let in light and offered ventilation, the wooden construction looked nice, and best of all there was no running water: instead of flushing away waste it stayed where it was and, with the help of woodchips, turned into compost. I'd love to see this type of toilet in Japan.

I slept through most of the drive back to Sauble (I had insisted on carrying a backpack full of beer and water for the hike, which made an easy hike into a tiring one) but woke up to take a picture of this very pretty field of canola flowers:

Note that some of these pictures were taken by my brother Greg and his girlfriend Sherry. See lots more by them and by me in my Sauble album at Flickr.

Canada, week three

This week's park was Jack Darling, another Mississauga waterfront park. We really liked this place and again wished we'd brought a picnic, so we could join one of the many families who'd set up for the day on the grass. A lot of these people were serious picnickers, who'd brought a backyard's worth of outdoor furniture, gas grills and hibachis, parasols and tents, and even hammocks. We really have to do that someday.

There are also sandy beaches, some of them even swimmable, although the beach above was completely taken over by Canada geese.

The park is next to Rattray Marsh, a pretty wetland that can be explored from raised wooden boardwalks. The paths continue into a forest, which was very nice and cool on this hot day, and although it was a weekend and fairly crowded we managed to see some neat stuff, including a family of weasels. OK, I didn't actually see them myself, but everyone else did and seemed to think they were neat.

The visit ended in the traditional way, with sausages and pop from a hot dog stand. Hideaki was really impressed with the stand and wished we had them in Tokyo. I guess I'm lucky to have such an easy to impress husband.

My sister had recently arrived from Texas, making this a complete family reunion. She and my Mom had stayed behind while we went to the park, and when we got back there was a feast waiting for us. It started with the amazing appetizer above, which was prosciutto-wrapped dates stuffed with blue cheese, broiled and topped with almonds and honey. This seems to be a popular recipe, judging by a search I just did, but I'd never heard of it before and was blown away. It was just amazing and very hard not to eat it all myself.

Then I put together some more traditional appetizers, and since this was Fathers' Day, these were Dad-oriented stinky canned and pickled things (and happily my Dad and I share similar tastes). Smoked oysters, smoked mussels, several kinds of sardines, pickled beets, pickled onions, dill pickles, plus crab dip and crackers. Most of this stuff can't be easily found in Japan, so I was probably even happier than Dad was.

After Fathers' Day festivities dinner was served. This was a whole salmon (head and tail cut off only because we didn't have a pan big enough for it) stuffed with spinach and baked. This is another dish I request often, and this might have been the best version ever (I think I say that every time, but this time I really mean it). The salmon came from Ocean's, the new(ish) Asian market in town, and seemed to be better than any we've bought in recent years. Great new Asian markets have popped up all over recently, making visits to the old dingy one unnecessary. Funny how things improve after I move away.

This is the salmon and its stuffing, served with new potatoes and green beans. I regretted eating all those appetizers, because I could have had three plates of this.

And more regret when dessert came: a fancy chocolate cake, apple tart, and fresh local strawberries (or what was left of them, for as soon as they hit the table hands were grabbing them).

Another night we went out for dinner, to Osso Bucco's, our local casual Italian place. Here Julie doles out the mussels for Zoe.

The mussels here are fantastic, but have a mysteriously Thai flavour. The sauce is billed as a spicy white wine cream sauce, and indeed it is, but there also seems to be coconut milk and curry. We always order these, and then everyone discusses what's in the recipe and we all vow to try making it ourselves. So far no one has, but one of these days...

Baked goat cheese, which you've all probably seen a million times but I can't get enough of it (goat cheese not being terribly popular in Japan).

I've always thought there's something wrong with people who order a soup or salad as their main dish at a nice restaurant. Why would anyone pass up delicious pastas, steaks, and other wonderful things for a boring dish that anyone can make at home? Well, something strange possessed me that night and I found myself ordering zuppa di pesce (seafood soup).

Possibly the giant servings at Osso Bucco had something to do with my odd behavior: I knew most of the main dishes would leave me stuffed beyond comfort, and I also knew that everyone else would have so much food that they'd be happy to share once I got tired of my soup. But there was no getting tired of this soup, it was fantastic. Yes, I did sample everyone else's dinners, but only to assure myself that I'd ordered the best thing on the menu. Bonus: I was able to finish it all and didn't feel like exploding afterward.

Another night it was Sherry's turn to cook dinner. She made a Korean feast of miso soup, bulgogi beef, rice, sauteed greens of some kind and garlicky broccoli. It was wonderful, and I was especially happy to eat white rice and miso soup as I was starting to miss Japanese food. But I got a shock when I tried the soup: it was spicy! It looked just like Japanese miso soup, with tofu and green onions floating around, but it turned out there were green chillies lurking at the bottom. Once I got over my surprise I realized it was delicious. Chilli goes really well with miso, and it's such a genius combination that I'll be making it myself soon.

Another day Hideaki and I hitched a ride into Toronto with my Dad. We all parted ways in the morning: Dad for an appointment, me to meet my friend Aspasia, and Hideaki to explore the city by himself. I had a great day roaming the city, doing stuff like eating the excellent pho above, lots of chatting over lots of coffee, spending my useless Canadian dollars on pretty clothes in Kensington market, and a fruitless search for a certain kind of tomato that apparently doesn't exist in Toronto.

Hideaki also had a good day, mostly, and upon looking at the hundreds of pictures he took (typical Japanese tourist, hehe) I realized he went to many of the same places we went, mostly at the same time. It's amazing we didn't bump into each other, and when I heard about his later misadventures I wished we had (or at least I wished we'd had cell phones).

His route took him from the Tourist Information office at Yonge and Dundas (where I set him up with a map and left him to it), over to Little Italy at College and Bathurst, where he had lunch, above.

Then he headed down to Kensington Market, then Chinatown, then along Queen Street West, then down to Front Street and on to the St. Lawrence Market.

And finally he ended up at Union Station. Not particularly impressive, except that it was all on foot, on one of the hottest days in June. I'd given him tokens for the TTC (Toronto Transit Commission, consisting of buses, streetcars and subways) but he hadn't used them for some reason.

Unfortunately I been told that the GO (Ontario public transit) trains to Brampton ran all day, and had supplied Hideaki with the same incorrect information. I had had a little trouble myself getting home, having just missed the last train but not knowing it until I was almost on the platforms. Funny how when I asked the teller for a one-way train ticket to Brampton she didn't tell me there were no trains. Of course there are buses, which cost the same, so it's all the same to her, but that (plus the typically Canadian lack of any kind of useful signage) led to some confusion and I barely managed to find and catch the right bus home.

And if I, as a native English speaker who actually used to live in Toronto, had trouble, I figured Hideaki would too. I hoped that he had gone home early and managed to catch a train like I told him.

But when I got home he wasn't there, and it was a suspenseful few hours until we heard from him. When he finally called I was ready to call the police to report him missing, but he was fine, having gone through nothing worse than falling victim to a couple of useless transport systems staffed by useless people.

Just like me, He'd bought a ticket to Brampton after the trains had stopped, and also not been told there were no trains. He'd also later been unable to find the (nonexistent) platform and asked a GO employee what to do, and was told to take the train to Bramalea (the stop before Brampton) and then take a Brampton Transit bus to Brampton station. A completely different (and completely asinine) answer to the same question I had asked.

So he did what he was told (having a snack of timbits and iced coffee first at his favourite place in the world, Tim Hortons), and at Bramalea tried to find a bus to take him to the Brampton GO station, but none of the maps and schedules could help. He did ask the teller at the terminal and two bus drivers, and was told by all three that there is no bus to downtown Brampton. True, and so far so good. But two of those three didn't know which combination of buses would get him there (and didn't bother to find out) and one of them did, but Hideaki couldn't understand and/or remember the instructions. I suppose he could have tried writing them down asked the driver to repeat the instructions or speak more slowly, but I'm just proud of him for overcoming his gender and asking for directions in the first place. He could also have called us at that point, but again: Y chromosome and all that.

So he just gave up and took a taxi to the downtown Brampton GO station, then called us for a ride home as planned. Little did he know that Bramalea is a 10-minute drive from our home and that he could have called us from there and saved himself the twenty-five dollar cab fare.

OK, a long, not very interesting story, but after over a decade of living in Japan I found it all shocking, as Tokyo and its suburbs have a transportation system that's a hundred times bigger and more complicated yet is far easier to navigate thanks to well-coordinated systems, sensible design, good signage, and employees who are generally very helpful and extremely knowledgeable. It's not perfect in Japan and I've gotten lost plenty of times or occasionally dealt with a nasty driver or teller, but every time I've asked a question to any kind of transportation official he's either immediately given me a clear and correct answer, or directed me to another who could do so.

I'm actually kind of glad it happened though, because Hideaki has fallen in love with Canada and I don't want him to be too impressed, lest he be disappointed later. Better to let him see the faults from the beginning.

Back at home we were keeping ourselves amused with Sorry, our favorite board game. Dad likes to keep it interesting by adding little extras to the board, but it soon became clear that Sorry wasn't going to be enough: it's made for four players but there were eight of us.

So I searched my Dad's office (which was doubling as our guest room) and found an old piece of poster board (with a chart on one side made by my Mom for a PTA meeting 30 years ago--Dad is quite the pack rat). After hours of excruciating mathematical calculations and several re-dos (I'm math-challenged) Zoe and I designed a bigger and better board with room for eight players. We all took turns decorating each player's home base, and then we gave the board a try.

Or rather, the board was put away and tried a week later, as nobody really seemed that impressed for some reason. I think it's pure genius, with extra slides that take players all the way to the other side of the board and certain places that allow you to trade positions with other players (without which the game would take longer than Monopoly to finish). When we finally got around to playing it, with clips, chopstick rests, erasers and other pieces we'd found around the house, I loved it. And although everyone else fell asleep at the table I think with a few refinements this could be a winner. I'll be contacting Parker Brothers soon, and within a year or two I'm quite sure I'll be retiring as a billionaire. Contact me if you're interested in a partnership.

Canada, week two

Another week, another park. This time we drove down to Mississauga's Lakefront Promenade Park, a collection of parks and trails running along the shores of Lake Ontario.

The area used to be dominated by the four ugly smokestacks of the Lakeview Generation Station, but as it was demolished two years ago the focus is on the parks, as well as on the lake itself. It turns out to be a pretty area, and I wondered why I'd never been before, despite going to high school (Cawthra Park) just blocks away for a year. Maybe I never ventured down to the lake because the smokestacks didn't prome much, or maybe much of the parkland just didn't exist then: I've read that many of the parks along the waterfront are relatively new.

We saw a bunch of swans, including a family with an aggressive daddy, shown charging seagulls below. But without a picnic there wasn't much to do, so once we'd walked all the paths and munched on some sausages from the requisite hot dog stand, we headed home.

This is the view from the west-facing side of our house, and once upon a time we could see clear across fields and valleys. But little by little, starting with a distant Walmart and ending with this school across the street, the view has disappeared. It's still a million times better from the view from our apartment in Tokyo though, and I saw more sunsets in my month-long visit than I normally do in a year.

Things continued to go well in the eating department. Above are some bbq shrimp done my brother Greg, who is in charge of the outdoor cooking.

Indoor eating happened more often than we would have liked (thanks to the cool and rainy weather), but we didn't mind, because my Mom served us yummy stuff like the dinner above: orzo with parsley and lemon, prosciutto-wrapped halibut, grilled fennel and carrots. The full meal (minus the carrots, meant for those who don't like fennel) was taken straight from a wonderful new cookbook of hers called The Main that features main dishes with suggested sides. It was all good, including the fennel, which I'd never had before. I wonder if I can find it in Japan?

I request Swedish meatballs every time I go home for a visit and my Mom, who is half Swedish, is usually happy to oblige. Here they are served with cranberry sauce (we were out of lingonberry sauce), new potatoes, pickled red cabbage, pickled beets, and asparagus.

Swedish food tends to bring on pangs of nostalgia in my Mom, which for some unfortunate reason can only be eased by playing Swedish folk music. Luckily we only have the one album, and a few songs (preferably including the classic "Ack Varmeland, du Skona") usually do the trick. To help keep things interesting, we read some liner notes my Dad wrote years ago when he made tapes of the album for non-record player owning family members.

For one short day I flew up to Ottawa to visit my friend Krista and meet her new baby boy. He has beautiful blue eyes and is one of the happiest, cutest, and most laid-back babies I've met. I still don't really know what to do with babies (as in, how to hold them, what to say to them, etc) but this little guy was fun just to watch.

They're about to move, so I got to say good-bye to their lovely old house and see their even lovelier new house. Well, new to them I mean: I think it's about 80 years old and comes with beautiful wood finishings, stained glass doors and windows, and a shady back garden. I would love to have a house like this someday.

Just before I left, Krista's parents came back from a visit to Thunder Bay, and among the souvenirs were these pastries. Called Persians, they're a bit like a cinnamon roll but topped with pink strawberry icing, and apparently a Thunder Bay institution.

Another day was spent with my Dad and the kids at the ROM (Royal Ontario Museum), checking out the Book of the Dead exhibit in the ancient Egypt section (it was too dark for any pictures), the gems and minerals exhibit, and of course the dinosaurs.

I could have spent hours in the Earth's Treasures gallery looking at the minerals, the vast majority of which I'd never heard of, and the adjoining gallery's Light & Stone: Gems from the Collection of Michael Scott was just stunning.

These are tourmalines, which come in way more colours than I knew about.

This bust, called Mephisto, was carved from a single ruby, set on an obsidian base, and embellished with gold.

I don't remember what these are. The colour of the stone on the left looks like amethyst, but the crystal in the middle is the wrong shape and the stones seem too sparkly (although the stones were so well lit that they all sparkled beautifully).

This looks like a cameo cut from a seashell but is actually an agate, carved to take advantage of the differently coloured layers.

This mouse is also agate, with sapphire eyes, an aquamarine sheet of ice, and gold whiskers, tail and skates.

The dinosaurs were in the new Michael Lee-Chin wing, and whatever you might think about the architecture from the outside, I think it's a nice looking space from the inside, well suited to to the old bones housed there.

The gem exhibit will be at the ROM until November this year, so don't miss it.

When it was nice enough to eat outside again, Greg set up a complicated fajita station. He grilled some steaks, chopped up some vegetables, sliced up the steaks, the fried them with the veggies.

We each got to grill our tortillas and top them with the beef filling and our choice of guacamole, four kinds of cheese, and three kinds of salsa (plus cucumber salad on the side).

And then of course there were the hot sauces. I really liked Mountain Man, but the rest were way too spicy for me.

Here's mine before wrapping, and wow was it ever good.

The Brampton Farmers' Market is held every Saturday throughout the summer, with the opening day in mid-June featuring an and all-you-can-eat pancake breakfast. Big and fluffy and topped with real maple syrup, they were delicious, but sadly the first two I got were all I could eat.

Oh yeah, there's Hideaki. He came for a two week visit during my stay, his first trip to Canada in four years.

There wasn't as much produce as I'd hoped (did I mention the crappy weather? yes? well, it had been going on long before I arrived, and caused crops to be late) but I consoled myself with a back bacon sandwich.

It started to rain so we gave up on the market as soon as we'd bought our stuff, and after finding some bargains at a church bazaar we went to the nearby Art Gallery of Peel. Part of the Peel Heritage Complex, where my Mom used to work, it was holding an exhibit called Arresting Images that featured mugshots from the Ontario Provincial Police Museum.

We stopped to pose as jailbirds in front of the gallery, and Aaron played the part particularly well. The museum adjoining the gallery is housed in the old Peel County Jail, built in 1867, and a quick tour of the museum's jail exhibit went well with the mugshot exhibit.

The collection was fascinating, with mugshots dating from the 1880s to the early 1900s. They were all proper portraits, most of them beautifully done and featuring studio backdrops. In most cases both the front and back were displayed, so we could see what details were thought to be important enough to record. This information included complicated body measurements (head width, forearm length), whether the suspect could read and write, and details about facial features ("nose: good"). It was also an interesting look at the writing of the time, with much of the script unreadable and a surprising number of spelling mistakes.

My favourite was this double mugshot, and if you look carefully at the man on the left's right hand (click here for a larger view) you'll see why.

There were just two or three women (all sporting great hats), including this lady who was apparently arrested for being suspicious.

Many suspects were from the US, but there were also a few overseas foreigners as well, including this gentleman from India who was suspected of fraud and the young suspected thief from Italy below, whose card notes he "speaks good English".

There were three mugshots of black suspects, and these two were especially poignant. The remarks on the card above say "This Nigro was Arrested on Suspicions of Commited Murder in Washington DC..." followed by "Not the Man" and "Discharged" (hopefully I misread the writing, and the spelling and grammar are not really that atrocious). The man below was also arrested on suspicion of murder. He was a horseman with the nickname of "Peewee", he couldn't read or write, and he ended up with a life sentence. His mugshot not only shows him in handcuffs, one of just a few mugshots to do so, but has him holding an actual gun.

The gallery had an old-fashioned backdrop set up along with a small collection of old timey clothes and hats, so we went ahead and took some mugshots of ourselves. Here is Zoe, very much in character, next is my brother's girlfriend Sherry, who is the least likely of all of us to ever end up in a real mugshot, then Aaron, rocking the bowler hat (not, it's not a miniature), me, a little too happy to be in a mugshot, and Hideaki, looking right at home.

The Arresting Images Exhibit is already over at the Art Gallery of Peel, but will be travelling around Ontario for the next year or so (click the link above to find a schedule). It's definitely worth a visit if it comes near you.

See more pictures from the ROM and the mugshot collection in my Museum and Gallery album, and more pictures of my visit in my Canada 2009 album.

Canada, week one

My trip to Canada last month started as it always does, with a dose of jetlag. But I don't know if it was the result of a pleasant flight (did I really just describe a 12 hour flight as "pleasant"? why yes, yes I did. thanks Air Canada and your endless stream of movies and TV shows) or the homeopathic anti-jet lag pills I took, but this time around I had the mildest jet lag ever. The worst I had to deal with was a week of early nights, spontaneous naps and very early mornings, which wasn't bad at all. And I have a feeling that even without jet lag I'd be waking up at 4:00, because that's when our backyard starts to come alive with robins and other birds announcing the coming day.

The early mornings were also a nice for walks in the nearby park, as that's the best time for picturesque fog, dewy flowers and active birds. The birds (and a local beaver) eluded my camera but the snails, which seemed to be everywhere thanks to some very wet weather, obligingly stayed still for me.

That wet weather kept us indoors more than I would have liked, but as a consolation there was lots of good food. Some of the biggest cravings I get in Japan are for simple, humble food like Jamaican hot patties or perogies, shown above.

I also miss Mexican and Tex-mex food, which although available in Tokyo is either prohibitively expensive or not very good. Luckily my brother Greg and his girlfriend Sherry are masters of Mexican cooking and whipped up several excellent meals for us. Above are condiments for quesadillas: mango salsa, sour cream, mild tomato salsa, guacamole, hot salsa and a side dish of (why not?) sauteed gai lan (a rapini-like Chinese green).

These were chicken quesadillas, cooked up on the barbeque and so, so good.

And of course no trip back home is complete without a few big breakfasts.This one was at Cora's, an lovely breakfast chain that originated in Montreal but has happily spread across Canada. Tempted by waffles and omelets, I chose brioche French toast topped with a poached egg, bacon, and mounds of fruit. Yum.

My niece Zoe and nephew Aaron flew up from  for a visit shortly after I arrived and we tried to keep them busy, starting with a trip with my Dad to Belfountain, a local conservation area with some nice and easy hiking trails. The area once belonged to a wealthy and slightly eccentric inventor, who in addition to building a house and trails also put up a fountain topped with a bell (get it?),

 a small and mysterious cave, (called Yellowstone Cave, and said to be modeled after a similar cave in Yellowstone Park, although I don't know if such a cave actually exists),

a miniature Niagara Falls,

and a suspension bridge (also shown in the previous post).

One of the trails is a loop that runs along the West Credit River and takes about an hour to complete, so we had a nice little walk.

There were flowers blooming everywhere, from the exotic yellow lady slipper orchids, below, to mundane but pretty buttercups and brassicas.

We were also lucky enough to see three salamanders, which I think were easter redbacks. Not much wildlife otherwise.

Except for the kids, of course.

See more pictures from Belfountain in my Hikes and Walks album, and all the pictures from my visit in my Canada 2009 album.

Kushiro Day Four

My last day in Kushiro started at Washo Ichiba, the city's famed market. Seafood is the main draw, attracting both locals and tourists, the latter wandering the market with bowls of rice in hand, the better to sample the wares with. We did the tourist thing, of course, but first we had a good look around the market.

Beautiful whole salmon were everywhere. The ones shown here were priced between 6000 and 10,000 yen, although I saw a giant one going for 36,000 yen. All were caught wild, either in Hokkaido or Russia.

Some merchants specialized in one type of seafood, while others had a little bit of everything. The scallops above were lovely and if I had access to a kitchen I would have bought them (I bet they'd be wonderful sauteed in Hokkaido butter).

Crab was almost as plentiful as salmon, and I imagine there would be even more of them in the winter when they are in season. In the foreground above are whole tarabagani (king crab) going for 4300 to 9800 yen, in the background are bags of tarabagani legs for 1500 and 2500 yen, and in the background are whole kegani (hairy crabs), priced at about 3000 to 5000 yen each.

There were also a mind-boggling array of shellfish. Above, from front left are bags of shucked oysters at 650 yen each, giant hokki-gai clams for 300 yen apiece, and iso-tsubu (a variety of tsubu-gai, or whelks) at 140 yen per 100 grams. The row behind that has asari (littleneck clams) for 120 yen per 100 grams, a small tray of asari for 400 yen, a tray of shijimi clams for 300 yen, trays of shelled hokkigai for 600 yen, and trays of iso-tsubu for 500 yen. Behind that row are shijimi for 140 yen per 100 grams, and to the right are bags of shelled and cooked tsubugai and trays of shelled and cooked scallops, with roe and frill still attached.

This shop carries himono (partly dried fish). The whole flatfish are karei (flounder), the whole fish in the foreground are sanma (Pacific saury), the split fish are hokke (atka mackerel), and the small fish on sticks in the background are shishamo (smelt).

Getting into more unusual stuff, on the left we have sujiko (salmon roe sacs), much smaller than the usual size. I've never seen them so small but I suppose that's the size they are this time of year (spawning not occurring until autumn). Or maybe they just came from midget salmon. Those big chunks of meat are fresh whale, priced at 180 to 450 yen per 100 grams. I'm not sure what the difference in price is for: different species, different cuts, or different levels of freshness? As is the norm in Japan, the species is not identified.

One of the few non-seafood merchants had variety of local and imported meat: lamb from Hokkaido, iberico pork from Spain, and local higuma (Japanese brown bear), packaged in a not very appetizing way.

And having seen the sights, it was time to do the tourist thing and have kattedon, which is a donburi (bowl of rice) topped with whatever little bits of seafood you fancy. It's a brilliant concept, as I've often find myself walking around a market and accepting samples here and there, thinking those samples would be so much better with a bowl of rice to enjoy them with. Unfortunately the free samples aren't forthcoming once you've got your bowl of rice, and the merchants sell tiny amounts of their wares for kattedon-toting tourists. You can end up paying a lot, but it's still a neat idea.

The done thing is to buy a styrofoam bowl of rice (priced from about 100 to 300 yen depending on the size) and wander around the market, buying toppings here and there.

We were in a bit of a rush so ended up buying everything at the place above, which had everything we wanted and more.

The seafood was packaged in single servings, and the merchant simply grabbed each little container as we chose it and emptied it onto the rice.

Once we'd finished choosing it was all topped off with soy sauce and the price was calculated. We ended up paying just under 1000 yen each, including rice, which is by no means a bargain but not a good deal considering the quality of the ingredients. And as a bonus, the merchant slipped an extra slice of tuna onto my kattedon, so I'm not complaining.

My kattedon consisted of, from bottom, salmon, tuna (not local but it looked good), ikura (salmon roe), tarako (pollack roe), crab meat, and saba (mackerel). It was very, very good, although the crab was a little too doused with soy sauce to fully enjoy it.

With breakfast over with, we drove west into the countryside to visit a farm. Like almost everywhere else we'd been so far, there were cows all over the place, but it wasn't a dairy farm we were headed to.

We went to Hitsuji Marugoto Kenkyusho, a sheep farm run by Shogo Sakai, an acquaintance of my brother-in-law.

We came during a sheepshearing session and got to watch the ewe above get a very complete haircut.

She was pregnant and didn't put up much of a fight, at least not the way I've seen the few times I saw sheepshearing on TV. Of course Mr. Sakai was quite a bit more gentle than those sheepshearers, and managed to relieve the ewe of her wool while leaving barely a scratch.

Her wool came off in one big piece, and was placed on a rack to be graded and have any debris picked off, a job usually performed by Mrs. Sakai.

He picked off a small tuft of wool and deftly spun it into yarn the old-fashioned way. It was amazingly strong and soft.

Meanwhile, the ewe showed some mild interest in her former coat, but didn't seem to upset at loosing it.

Next we visited a barnfull of lambs born last year. I think a good number of these are destined for the dinner table.

And then we got a look at the sheepskins. Called muton (from the French mouton) in Japanese, they looked so soft and inviting that I couldn't help but dive in to the pile.

They felt just as nice as they looked, and Hideaki's brother ended up buying three of them for us: the soft cream coloured and short black ones shown above and a curlier, fuzzier cream-coloured one. I'm sitting on that one right now, and wow is it ever comfortable. If I could I'd cover all my chairs and sofa in sheepskin, cover the floor in sheepskin rugs, and have my sheets made of sheepskin too. It's wonderful stuff. I can even understand the Uggs craze a little.

Next we hit a cheese factory, which as luck would have it was holding a small festival. It was a perfect time for lunch, so we had a lovely meal of lamb stew, grilled kabocha squash, pate, cottage cheese and bread, and a just-grilled lamb kabob. And to go with it, cheese-filled buns baked in an improvised brick oven. Eaten under the warm spring sun, this was a lovely, lamby lunch.

We drove back to Kushiro along the coast, stopping at a lookout point for a view of the ocean.

 

There were more wildflowers up there, like this kikuzaki-ichige (Anemone pseudoaltaica), and the kibana amana (yellow star-of-Bethlehem) below.

We then stopped at a roadside seafood market that also happened to have soft-serve ice cream, and I had my last Hokkaido ice cream of the trip on the beach. It was early evening by now and freezing cold, but ice cream on the beach is nice any time so I didn't mind.

One last stop was at a fishing pier in Kushiro, featuring yet another salmon-themed manhole cover.

Back at my brother-in-law's house I had a quick dinner (they would do their real eating--and more importantly drinking--after I left), starting with sake-steamed clams and then moving on the tail-end of the hokke we'd had a few nights before.

It was grilled at the table, as was most of the food we'd eaten on the trip. I haven't really explained the grilling, so now is a good time: for nearly every night of the year my brother-in-law grills his dinner with charcoal, either on the camp-style hibachi shown in previous posts or the shichirin grill shown above. He uses top-quality charcoal and fires it up in the stairwell, and when it's ready brings it inside (being careful to keep the fan on and windows open). He has a camping table with a sunken middle set up in his dining room, and the grill is placed in the middle and the food is slowly grilled, while the alcohol and conversation flows.

It is slow food in the extreme, and the meals we had there were all four or five hours long. It's a very nice, civilized way to eat, and although I wouldn't want to do that every day (nor would I have the time), it's great to see people doing this.

With a bowl of rice topped with umeboshi (salted plum) and pickles, the meal ended and it was time to go. I flew back to Tokyo with a very full tummy feeling tired but satisfied (Hideaki stayed on for a few more days). I'd had a busy four days, filled with stuff that a regular tourist would never get to experience. Thanks for the wonderful trip, brother-in-law!

More pictures of the trip can be seen here.

Kushiro Day Three

On the morning of our third day in Kushiro we had a little time to look at the area we were staying in. Above is the Kushiro River as seen from our room, and below as seen from the north bank, looking at the Nusamai Bridge and one of its four famous broze statues. The statues apparently depict the four seasons, but we never got a chance to see them up close and they appeared to be nothing more than four naked ladies in different poses.

The banks of the river were often crowded with tourists looking for Ku-chan, an otter who had lately taken to hanging around the area. I was only able to see Ku-chan once, from across the river, and apparently the otter disappeared altogether the day I left, eventually showing up again in another city of Hokkaido. It must have been a crushing blow to Kushiro's tourist industry, which seemed to have been relying heavily on Ku-chan to bring in the tourists in recent weeks. So beloved was the otter that it was became the latest animal celebrity to receive an honorary juminhyo (national registry) entry , an honor I am not eligible for (being not cute or Japanese enough).

Salmon are a more traditional local obsession, and they are honored with statues, salmon-shaped street lights, and sewer grates.

After our brief look at the river, we drove up north to Akan National Park. We stopped on the way at Soba Doraku, a locally famous soba restaurant surrounded by farm fields, many of them growing buckwheat (the raw ingredient of soba noodles). They make their own soba, and the water wheel out front (traditionally used for milling buckwheat and often found outside soba restaurants) actually appears to be functional (a rarity as these water wheels are usually purely decorative).

I ordered the inaka soba ("country style" soba made with coursely ground soba), which came with the usual cold dipping sauce, garnish of wasabi and sliced negi (long onion) and pickles. There was also a surprise: half a boiled potato, which is not something you would expect on the mainland. But this is Hokkaido, where potatoes seem to grow very well and are therefore very popular. And very good: regular Japanese potatoes are usually disappointing and I'd never happily eat a plain boiled one, but this was delicious just as it was, no seasoning necessary.

The soba was even better, with the thick, chewy noodles tasting strongly of buckwheat, just the way inaka soba should. This was some of the best soba I've had, and apparently lots of locals feel the same: the shop was extremely crowded, and soon after we sat down a long line had formed outside. Soon the old couple and part time girl running the place were completely overwhelmed and even people who got a seat had to wait a very long time for their food. But rather than get annoyed or start complaining like city people, the customers (or at least the female customers) started helping out, carrying trays back to the kitchen and washing and drying the dishes. That's something I've never seen in Tokyo--or anywhere else, come to think of it.

Akan National Park has three lakes: Akan-ko, Masshu-ko and Kussharo-ko. The first two are famous throughout Japan and I was looking forward to seeing them, but it turns out we were in fact going to Kussharo-ko, which is the biggest of the three. My brother-in-law explained that the two more famous lakes would be extremely crowded with tourists since it was Golden Week, and he went on to say that the popularity of those lakes is not really justified: they are pretty but there's not much to do except look at the lakes from an observation deck.

Kussharo-ko, apparently, is as beautiful as the other lakes but remains largely unmolested by tourists, and has more to do. We first drove along a gravel road to get to a beach with a beautiful view of the lake and surrounding mountains. It was was completely deserted, as promised.

Akan-ko is famous for its marimo (algae balls, which grow larger in the lake than anywhere else in the world), but Kussharo-ko has a similar species of algae balls. We found a number of them in the shallow water, and while they weren't big and green enough to pull in thousands of tourists they were definitely neat to see.

The weather was the warmest we'd experienced so far and I just had to try out the water. It was as cold as it looks, but if it was summer I'd be swimming.

Hideaki stayed on land and I came out soon too, after noticing a big pile of deer poop next to the water. I'm guessing this beach gets more traffic from deer than from people, and in fact on our drive back out to the main road we saw three deer next to the road.

Next we drove to Wakoto Hanto, a peninsula on the lake. With a parking lot, visitor's centre and campgrounds, there were a few people here, and my brother-n-law declared it "crowded". We headed straight for the hiking trail that runs along the peninsula and soon the "crowds" thinned, and we hardly saw anyone else on our hour-long hike.

  

 

Aside from pretty views of the lake and ancient trees, the trail offered plenty of wildflowers. Above is hime-ichige (Abemone debilis), as we'd seen the day before.

I finally found out what the purple flower I'd been seeing along the road since we arrived in Hokkaido was: ezo-engosaku (Corydalis ambigua), which actually comes in both blue and violet.

 

This is fukujusou, (Adonis amurensis, called adonis in English), a cheerful little flower.

I had seen a plant the day before with leaves and a single bud that looked a lot like a trillium, and I finally found one in bloom. It was a trillium after all, probably shirobana-enreisou (Trillium tschonoskii Maximowicz, called Tschonosk trillium or Japanese white trillium in English. These were plentiful but I only found one in bloom, so I bet right around now Wakoto is covered in blooming trilliums.

Near the end of the peninsula the water, glimpsed through the trees, changed colour to green. Soon the trees thinned and the ground was covered in moss, and suddenly we could hear a chorus of insects, the first we'd heard in Hokkaido. The ground here is several degrees warmer than normal, heated beneath by hot springs, and is warm enough to support a colony of tiny crickets year-round.

The shore is not accessible from land, but there was a family there who'd arrived by canoe. Apparently they were boiling eggs in the hot spring.

On the way back to the car we passed a marshy area, once again filled with mizubasho (Lysichitum camtschatcense, or skunk cabbage).

Dinner that night was lamb, one of the foods that Hokkaido is known for. Lamb is not very popular in the rest of Japan, with most people claiming to dislike the flavour, but in Hokkaido it is the meat of choice and most often cooked as jingis kan, a hot pot named after Genghis Khan for some reason.

There are two types of jingis kan, and we had both. The first, and the way I prefer, has slices of lamb cooked over charcoal and then dipped in a sauce. The most popular sauce comes in a red can, as shown above, and is a rich, sweet, garlicky and mildly spicy, with a vaguely Chinese flavour. Another type of sauce, shown in the jar two pictures up, has similar flavours but with the addition of gyoja-ninniku, a wild leek similar to ramps.

The other method of cooking jingis kan has the lamb meat along with its marinade (a sweetish and mildly spicy sauce with a vaguely Chinese flavour) placed in a pot on top of a layer of vegetables, in this case bean sprouts, and slowly cooked. This style is the most popular in Hokkaido and the only style used in the rest of Japan (where jingis kan has become more well-known in recent years).

As if we hadn't had enough protein, out came the two half-steaks of the salmon that we didn't get to eat the night before.

This is a type of salmon called tokishirazu, also known as tokizake, that I'd never heard of before. The name literally means "don't know the time", and refers to chum salmon with bad timing, either failing to swim upstream to spawn or swimming upstream at the wrong time. They are rich in fat and have juicy soft flesh.

We ate it over rice, along with a clear soup made with asari clams and aosa seaweed. The salmon had been flavoured with nothing more than salt, but with its rich flavour and perfect grilling was truly fantastic. I have no idea if tokishirazu is available in Tokyo (or if the salmon in other countries have salmon with a similarly poor sense of timing), but I'll definitely buy it if I see it again.

This was my last full day in Hokkaido and I was already feeling sad. And very, very full.

More pictures of the trip can be seen here.

Kushiro Day One

This Golden Week Hideaki and I were whisked away to Kushiro, where we spent the holidays visiting his brother. Kushiro, though the largest city in eastern Hokkaido, is not a major tourist destination, but my brother-in-law was able to show us some fantastic places and feed us some even more fantastic food. It started with ramen at a local place called Maruhira Ramen, which has just two items on the menu: shio ramenshoyu ramen and . I went with the shio (salt flavour), shown above, and Hideaki had shoyu (soy sauce flavour), below.

It was very simple but amazingly good, like what I imagine ramen to have been like 50 years ago. I've never really understood why Japanese people are willing to stand in line for food, but the 10 minute wait inside the tiny cramped restaurant were totally worth it.

Next we went to Yonemachi Koen, a small park with a lighthouse overlooking Kushiro harbour. Most of the city's shoreline is industrialized so this wasn't the most beautiful view in the world, but it was a good look at the city.

The houses are a bit bigger than in Tokyo but not as large as I expected them to be, given how large and unpopulated Hokkaido is. They were also extremely utilitarian, and the only attractive houses I saw were a few wooden ones built when Kushiro was first settled, most of them falling apart.

Then it was off the Kushiro's NHK building where my brother-in-law works. NHK (Nihon Hoso Kyokai) is Japan's public broadcasting organization, and because it was nearly abandoned due to the holidays we got a quick tour of the place.

This is a view of Kushiro River from NHK's rooftop. Note the two little buildings with false fronts on the bottom right: these were once stores of some kind, likely small businesses run by a family that lived in the back. This style of architecture could be seen all over Kushiro, most of the stores sadly no longer in business. Kushiro's economy is in rough shape, partly due to the flood of young natives who head for Sapporo, Tokyo and other bigger cities.

Here we are in the news studio.

Next we drove east to Akkeshi, stopping on the way at Moritaka Bokujo for a soft-serve ice cream cone made from local milk (Hokkaido is famous for, among many things, its dairy products). This was probably the best soft-serve I've ever had: smooth, not too rich or sweet, tasting of milk and nothing but.

Akkeshi is the name given to the bay and the brackish lake it is connected to, both rich in sediments and plankton which make it an ideal area to raise shellfish. Oysters are available year round, thanks to the different temperatures of the lake and bay which allow the farmers to move their oysters around as the seasons change. Along with oysters, other seafood is caught and raised in Akkeshi, chiefly asari (littleneck clams).

We visited Hidetoshi Nakajima, acquaintance of my brother-in-law's who is apparently legendary in the oyster world. A fourth generation oyster farmer, he raises both clams and oysters, with oysters of the local kaki-emon variety his specialy.

This tray holds asari of a size typically found in Tokyo.

The next tray contained much larger clams, so big we assumed they were hamaguri (a larger type of clam). But we were mistaken, and apparently the locals like the big asari while the smaller ones are shipped off to Tokyo and other places.

Three of these big ones were expertly shucked by the owner and handed to us. I was hoping it was just for inspection, but when I realized we were meant to eat them I had flashbacks of being tricked into eating live clams and oysters as a child. I had wandered into the garage where my dad and our French-Canadian neighbor were sitting around a couple of buckets, each with a beer in one hand and a knife in the other. Apparently the neighbor had just come back from the east coast and was sharing the shellfish he'd brought, which must have made my dad very happy. I liked seafood at the time and I think I was eager to try some, and while I don't remember if I liked it or not I do remember I was horrified to learn that the clams I'd just eaten were alive (or had been alive until very shortly before I'd swallowed them). I felt like a dirty trick had been played on me and the idea of raw shellfish has grossed me out since then.

But it would have been rude to refuse, and the sight of Hideaki, no fan of raw shellfish himself, bravely downing his clam gave me courage. I popped the clam into my mouth fully expecting to be grossed out, but instead found it to be tasty: the fresh, pure flavour and softly chewy texture were quite different from cooked clams. I was in no hurry to have another though, because as good as it was I still think clams are better cooked.

We turned to the oyster tank, and with growing dread I prepared myself for the raw oyster tasting I assumed would follow. Raw oysters gross me out more than any other raw shellfish, and although I've tried to like them over the years (people look so happy when they eat raw oysters) it's always failed. They just make me gag. I've also never understood why North Americans go crazy for raw oysters while shunning sushi and sashimi: oysters are pretty much the most dangerous sea creature to eat raw, for worse than the tuna and other fish commonly eaten as sashimi in Japan. It's especially ironic that here in Japan it's far more common to find oysters cooked than raw, precisely because people here are well aware of the dangers.

But if any oysters are safe to eat, it would be these ones. Freshly plucked from the lake across the street and kept in a special brine until shipped to retailers across the country, these were as clean and safe as you can get.

My brother-in-law bought 60 oysters at what I can only guess was a huge expense (but a fraction of the price they'd go for in Tokyo, he assured us). And while they were being counted out and hosed off we were presented with a freshly shucked sample.

If you read the previous post it's no surprise what happened, but if you're just tuning in let me tell you what happened: I fell in love with raw oysters. There was about a half second of disgust as the soft, cold flesh slid into my mouth, but it disappeared as soon as my tastebuds detected that sweet, salty, umami goodness. I had expected I'd want to just choke it down as soon as I could, but instead I gave it a few little chews and discovered the lovely various textures that are far more apparent raw than cooked. And then I swallowed, and immediately wished for more.

Hideaki also reported he enjoyed it, but not as much as I did and he still prefers them raw. But at least he gets it now. And so do I.

We headed back to BIL's apartment in Kushiro to prepare for dinner (or rather, he prepared dinner while we waited in agony). Above are oysters to be shucked at the table.

The tools are a pair of thick cotton gloves, an oyster shucker, and glasses for champagne (which apparently goes very nicely with oysters). As an appetizer we were served crackers topped with local Hokkaido cheese and freshly picked parsley (BIL is quite the gardener, and his apartment was full of edible plants).

This oyster was shucked by my BIL, and was every bit as good as the one I'd sampled earlier.

 

And this is my first attempt at shucking. Opening an oyster is a lot harder than it looked, and I never did get the hang of it. Every one I opened had to be painstakingly picked free of bits of shell that I'd crumbled, but luckily Hideaki and BIL generously supplied me with plenty of shard-free oysters. I probably ate half of the ones shown above, and would have eaten more if shame hadn't slowed me down a bit.

The oyster feast didn't end with the raw variety: we were soon served kaki no sakamushi (sake-steamed oysters).

These were great, in a different way from the raw ones: they were soft and plump with sake and had a deeper flavour. Hideaki liked these best.

Next up was shabu-shabu, with freshly shucked oysters cooked briefly in kombu (kelp) broth). Once cooked they were dipped in ponzu (soy-based citrus sauce), which complimented the oyster flavour very nicely.

The meal ended with soup made of broth leftover from the steamed clams and kaki-gohan (oyster rice), topped with thinly sliced nori seaweed and benishoga (red-pickled ginger). Both were lovely, and while I was half hoping for some kind of oyster-related dessert, I was more than satisfied.

I'm glad I finally get what the fuss is about raw oysters. And yet, I almost wish I hadn't liked them: where am I going to find such food, fresh oysters as the ones I had in Hokkaido? And how will I be able to afford them? If Hideaki doesn't find a job soon I think we're going to have to move to Akkeshi and become oyster farmers.

More pictures from the trip can be seen here.

Hello from Kushiro

Hello from Kushiro, Hokkaido, where a few hours ago I became a raw oyster lover. That's bad news for the couple dozen oysters I just downed, but I'm pretty happy about it.

Marumasuya, or Hana Yori Dango

"Hana yori dango" is a phrase you'll hear a lot in Japan around hanami (cherry blossom viewing) season. Dango are sweet rice flour dumplings, a popular snack sold by vendors at festivals or packed into hanami bento (cherry blossom viewing lunchboxes), and the phrase literally translates as "dango before flowers". Which refers to the way some people are more interested in the snacks that accompany hanami than the blossoms themselves.

Normally the expression doesn't really apply to us, as we love the flowers as much as the food that goes with them. But this weekend we had an attack of hana yori dango: we were on our way to have a little hanami party for two, and during the one minute walk to the park we got a phone call inviting us out to dinner. And the picture above of the cherry tree-lined street that borders the park shows the extent of our hanami that day: knowing how long it would take me to get ready, we turned right around without even entering the park. No big deal, we knew the sakura would still be there the next day.

So at home we unpacked the quickie bento I'd put together earlier, and had a quick bite to tide us over until dinner, leaving the rest for the next day's breakfast. I had packed onigiri (rice balls) flavoured with homemade shirasu furikake (a savory rice topping made from baby sardines and sesame seeds): two consisted of rice stuffed with the furikake, and for the other two the rice was simply mixed with it, and all four wrapped with nori seaweed. On the side was kyuri no asazuke (quick-pickled cucumber), cut fruit, and hot green tea. Extremely basic for a hanami bento, but in the end it was just as well I hadn't gone to much effort because we had a giant dinner afterwards.

We ended up at a restaurant called Marumasuya in Akabane, a northern Tokyo neighborhood I'd never been to before. The area had a shitamachi (literally "low town", these are old neighborhoods in Tokyo populated by the common folk) feeling that I liked, and the streets around the station abounded with little bars marked with akachochin (red paper lanterns). When we got to the restaurant there was a line to get in, and I took it as a good sign when an old man waiting behind us started talking to me in Japanese, and a few minutes after he got in (having come alone he was seated quicker), another old man chatted me up. It's extremely rare for this to happen to me, as most people here seem convinced that Japanese is an impossible language for foreigners to learn, so for not one but two strangers to just start talking to me in their language, apparently just assuming I could understand them, was very cool.

From the outside Marumasuya looks like its been around forever (not necessarily in a bad way) and seems to be a local institution. Inside, the place was cramped, crowded and cozy, its walls plastered with hand-printed signs listing the menu items (like a lot of older places Marumasuya has no actual menu). It was packed with all sorts of people, most of whom were older and nearly all of whom appeared to be regulars. Or maybe it was just the friendly vibe of the place that made instant regulars out of everyone. The waitstaff acted more like mothers (or grandmothers, as a few appeared to be in their sixties or seventies) than waitresses, and there was a good deal of interaction between both them and the customers and between the customers themselves, or at least the customers at the counters. A good portion of the diners had come by themselves, but none of them were actually alone. It felt exactly like what a good old shitamachi restaurant should, and that's an atmosphere you just don't find in newer parts of Tokyo. Of course, since this is a nomiya (a drinking establishment) and everyone either had sake or beer in front of them, alcohol probably went far in encouraging the friendly feeling of the place.

According to the sign outside, the place specializes in unagi (freshwater eel), which I was excited about, and koi (carp), which was a bit less exciting. Koi is far more popular in ponds than on menus, and with good reason: it's not very good. Or rather, most people think it's not very good, but there is a small population of people who love it, and Marumasuya is happy to cater to those people. The classic koi dish is koi no arai, shown above, which is carp "sashimi" served with a vinegar miso sauce. It is not true sashimi as it's been boiled, which is probably done to render it safe to eat (freshwater fish has too many parasites to be safely eaten raw) and remove excess carp flavour.

I'd tried koi once before, but it was a very small dish of tiny slices dressed with miso. With a pleasantly chewy texture and no apparent flavour of its own, I liked it just fine but didn't add it to my list of favourite foods. This time around was a little different, with huge undressed slices of the fish that because of the firm texture had to be eaten whole. That really forced me to actually taste the fish, which tasted, at first, of nothing. And after the nothing came another flavour, which can be best described as "muddy". It pretty much tasted exactly what you'd expect a fish that lives in murky ponds to taste like.

I'd probably eat koi again, if I was starving to death and that was all I could catch, but I wouldn't prepare it like this. There are probably a dozen ways to cook koi that are better than sashimi (and to be fair Marumasuya did offer several of them, and I'm guessing that their deep-fried koi is not bad).

The next dish more than made up for the koi disappointment. It was kawahagi (filefish) sashimi, which is firm and delicate in flavour, often compared to fugu (blowfish, a far more expensive--and slightly dangerous--fish). We got the flesh from a whole fish, served on a shiso (perilla) leaf and pile of thinly sliced daikon and carrot that covered up what was left of the body, which was artfully arranged so that only the fins and tail (a surprisingly bright blue) were visible. Garnishes on the right are negi (long onion), momiji oroshi (daikon grated with hot pepper) and a sprig of shiso buds, and on the left is a paste made from the fish's liver. To eat it, you add the garnishes to a dish of soy sauce then lay out a piece of sashimi, smear a small dab of liver in the middle, roll up the fish and dip it in the soy sauce. I'm not big on organ meats, but there are a few types of liver that I like (namely ankimo and fois gras), and now I can add filefish liver to that list. This was fantastic, both the rich, sweet liver and the mild sashimi, and I can't believe I've never had it before.

Aside from koi and unagi, Marymasuya has a number of meibutsu (famous products). One of them is deep-fried fried garlic, which comes as a whole head with a dab of miso as a garnish. I had a first aid class the next day so I tried to avoid the garlic, knowing that garlic breath doesn't go well with the close contact involved in learning CPR and splinting techniques. But I just couldn't resist and ended up having a few bites. I was glad I did (probably much more glad than the other participants in the first aid class) because it was delicious. Similar to roasted garlic, but with a more assertive garlic flavour. It lacked a bit of the sweetness and deep flavour that roasting brings, but the miso seemed to make up for that, and I only wished I had a nice baguette to spread it on.

Next up were gesoten (deep fried squid tentacles, another meibutsu) and basashi (horse sashimi). The gesoten, which I didn't get a picture of, tied with the kawahagi as my favourite item of the evening, surprisingly tender and tasty with just enough bite to remind you it's squid. The basashi was also excellent. Horse is hardly consumed in North America, and although most people there feel horses should be ridden and not eaten, the simple fact is that it's a very tasty animal. It's very similar to beef, but sweeter, richer, and somehow cleaner tasting. This sashimi was a good example, and the heavy marbling seems to indicate that this particular horse was raised to be meat, which will hopefully be reassuring to horse fans (who apparently find it outrageous that some retired racehorses of North America end up shipped overseas to become someone's dinner).

The meal finished with unaju (eel grilled with a sweet soy sauce, served in a box of rice) with pickles and kimosui (eel liver in clear soup). This was a delicious and rare treat: unagi is rather expensive and we haven't had it (or at least good unagi in a restaurant) for a few years. The soup was surprisingly good too. I didn't like kimosui the first time I had it (like I said, I'm not crazy about offal), but this time it was mild and tasty. I guess that's a fourth type of liver I like.

This was one of the best meals we've had in a long time, and one that I was happy to give up hanami for. Hana yori dango, indeed.

Marumasuya (まるます屋)
03-3901-1405
1-17-7Akabane, Kita-ku, Tokyo
Open 9:00am to 9:30pm, closed Thursdays

Sushi lunch

A month ago I blogged about the 10,000 yen payout I got from my supermarket point card, and last week we finally spent it (half of it actually) on lunch at Kantarou-zushi, our favourite neighborhood sushi bar. That's it above, with all the signs-- so many that you can hardly see the restaurant itself. The place didn't used to be like this, and I really hoped it's not a sign that things aren't going well. Once we were inside and had our lunch in front of us I felt better, as it was as good as always.

This place unfortunately doesn't have lunch sets (many sushi shops do and they can be quite a good deal), so we each ordered a regular 2000 yen set. I'm not sure what it normally comes with-- we asked for any shellfish to be replaced with something else (neither my husband or I are big on raw shellfish), and what we got was, from top left, ikura (salmon roe), tobiko (flying fish roe), tamago-yaki (thick omelet), tekkamaki and kappamaki (tuna and cucumber rolls), chuutoro (tuna belly), tai (sea bream), ama-ebi (sweet shrimp), maguro (tuna), hamachi (yellowtail) and ika (squid).

It was all good, but my favourites were the chuutoro and tekkamaki. Which is strange, because while they are both made of tuna they are on opposite ends of the fanciness and price scale: chuutoro is a luxury while tekkamaki is one of the humblest types of sushi there is. Also strange because I'm not a tuna fanatic (and also tend to avoid it due to concerns about overfishing and mercury levels), but this place really does have excellent tuna and I couldn't help but love it, even the plain but excellent tekkamaki. Also humble but delicious was the soup, a freebie given because we're regulars (if a visit every year or so counts as regular). It was arajiru, clear soup made with fish scraps and topped with mitsuba, an aromatic herb, and fu (wheat gluten), but was amazing: it tasted like fish without being fishy in a way I'm never able to replicate at home.

Here's a close-up of the wonderfully marbled chuutoro. Beautiful, isn't it?

We were slightly disappointed that the set didn't come with any hikarimono (literally "shiny fish", this refers to silver-coloured fish like mackerel), since that's what this place does best. So we ordered a couple pieces of kohada (gizzard shad) to finish off the meal. It was perfect, with its gentle marinade in vinegar and kombu (kelp) lending it just the slightest boost of flavour and umami while removing all assertively fishy taste. This is sushi on a completely different level than when we normally eat at cheaper places, where the fish is either just raw or, in the case of hikarimono, dunked in vinegar. In fact, we kind of regretted getting the set and vowed to just order hikarimono (and maybe some of that lovely tuna) next time.

Lunch came to just under 5000 yen, so to get a nice round number we stopped off at Planetes, our neighborhood cake shop, to pick up dessert.

Their amazing cakes are beyond our budget but we were more than happy to make do with cookies: almond balls, a cinnamon almond cookie, and some kind of fat cookie seemingly consisting of 90% butter (I mean that in a good way).

The remaining 5000 yen will be spent wisely when we need it: it's been put in an envelope and hidden away, and if things ever get so bad that we can't afford to feed ourselves or pay a bill it will come in handy. Hopefully though things will get better and it will eventually be used for another sushi lunch.

Hina Matsuri

We interrupt this broadcast to bring you pictures of cute kids and pretty food; hopefully it will be a nice change from the whining of the previous posts. Thank you for your many kind and sympathetic comments. They really helped cheer me up, as did hibernating at home (where bad things never happen) for a couple of days. And today the sky is blue and the sun is shining and I'm so over my crappy February and its leftovers. It's going to be a good day and a good month and damn it, I'm going to live happily ever after.

So March 3rd was Hina Matsuri (Doll's Festival or Girls' Day) and on Sunday we were invited to my sister-in-law's place to celebrate. I'm not too sure what Hina Matsuri is all about, since it's a festival aimed at little girls and I was already a big girl when I first came to Japan, but here's an explanation if you're curious. Anyway, the day involves food so understand it or not, I'm happy to celebrate.

I had forgotten to charge my camera's battery (February leftovers at work) and somehow my phone, which is perfectly capable of taking decent pictures when it wants to, was not cooperating. So even with mounds of awesome food, an adorable four year old niece, and a fancy display case full of Hina dolls, I ended up with just these two pictures.

Above is Marya looking devious in front of a table full of food. The main savory dishes served for Hina Matsuri are chirashizushi (sushi rice scattered with various toppings, in this case including salmon roe, scallops, carrot and sliced thin omelet) and hamaguri (clams, in this case served in clear soup), and other than that anything that is cute and child-friendly. Above is koyadoufu (freeze-dried tofu) topped with namafu (raw wheat gluten); strawberries and camembert cheese; datemaki (sweet rolled omelet); and roasted vegetables. If only the chirashizushi and clam soup pictures had turned out--they were gorgeous.

This is Girls' Day though, so sweets are really the main event. First there's amazake (a sweet drink made of fermented rice), then arare (tiny sweet rice crackers), and then my favourite: sakuramochi. Shown above, it's steamed mochigome (glutinous rice) stuffed with anko (sweet red bean paste), wrapped in a salted cherry leaf and topped with a preserved cherry blossom. Store bought ones usually use food colour to get the mochi bright pink, but these are home-made with natural colouring and thus the pink is very subtle. These are so much better than store bought.

I'm not sure if it's usual to buy presents for Hina Matsuri, but we'd missed Marya's birthday in January so we gave her something. We had been totally stuck on what to get her and were wandering through the toy store when we came upon an entire aisle dedicated to Sylvanian Families. I was surprised and delighted as I remember Sylvanian Families from when I was a kid and didn't know they were still around. Wait, scratch that, apparently I remember them from my early teens and my best friend did not have the entire collection that made me so jealous: Wikipedia has just told me Sylvanian Families have only been around since 1985. And not only that, but they are from Japan! Alright, my faulty memory is no big surprise, but Japan? I never would have guessed. I don't know where I thought they from--Sylvania? But I never imagined they were from Japan. What's next--am I going to find out that Monchichi and Transformers come from Japan too? (Kidding, but I swear to god I just googled the Cabbage Patch Kids to check their provenance.)

Anyway, it seems that Sylvanian Families is still big here, and we ended up getting Marya a school bus along with a couple of little students and a driver: not quite the whole collection but a nice start and well timed as Marya is starting junior kindergarten next month. She seemed to like it, and I hope her parents--who prefer toys made from sustainably harvested wood and organic cotton--forgive me.

Well, I'm done here. It's time for me to go out and have a wonderful day. I hope you do too!

Marufuku

I don't know quite what it is-- maybe we don't eat out often enough, or maybe our neighborhood just doesn't have enough good places to eat--but we don't really have any favourite restaurants. Sure, there's a fantastic sushi bar nearby but its high prices prevent us from become regulars; a local udon shop and Chinese restaurant serve good cheap food but nothing fantastic enough to consider them favourites; and there are a number of chain restaurants around here that have good food at good prices, but t doesn't feel right to have a chain shop as our favourite restaurant.

But that's all come to an end, because we've discovered Marufuku, a restaurant next to nearby Oizumigakuen station specializing in seafood. Very fresh seafood at very low prices, low enough for the place to be locally famous and get occasional mentions on TV. It was a recent TV appearance that inspired us to visit on a Sunday last month, and we weren't disappointed.

The lunch menu is six photocopied pages like the ones above, with a huge number of teishoku (set meals) priced between 680 yen and 980 (and one special of the day, Indian Ocean tuna for 1580 yen) and a handful of a la carte items, like oysters for 100 yen each. It took some time to decide, but I finally settled on the kanburi sashimi (winter yellowtail) teishoku while Hideaki ordered saba miso (mackerel simmered in miso sauce).

A cup of very good hojicha (roasted green tea) and hot towl had arrived as soon as we sat down, and within a minute of ordering we were given a bowl of chawan mushi (savoury egg custard) and a small salad, slightly unusual as a teishoku meal is usually served all at once. The salad was mostly iceburg lettuce but had a very nice oniony dressing, certainly better than the usual teishoku salad. The chawan mushi was made with very humble ingredients: shiitake and shimeji mushrooms, kamaboko (steamed fish paste) and a few chunks of fish of some sort. None of the typical shrimp, ginnan (ginkgo nuts) and other fancy ingredients, these were obiously ingredients that were bought cheaply or were trimmings and leftovers from the kitchen. Yet this was among the best chawan mushi I've had, flavoured with a good fish based stock the earthiness of the mushrooms. I was already sold on the place.

The rest of my meal arrived looking beautiful. I think my lunch was 780 yen, and for that price I definitely wasn't expecting this kind of presentation. The kanburi came with a bowl of rice topped with chopped shibazuke (cucumbers pickled with red shiso), homemade nukazuke (vegetables pickled in rice bran) of daikon, cucumber, carrot, and daikon greens, and miso soup.

The kanburi sashimi was just beautiful, as richly marbled as I've ever seen it. The seven large slices were presented like they were precious gems, on a sasa bamboo leaf set on a platter of crushed ice, along with a shiso leaf on a pile of finely sliced daikon held up buy a little twig fence. Finished off with a sprig of shiso buds and a pile of wasabi on a cucumber slice, this wouldn't be out of place in a kaiseki (haute cuisine) course priced at ten times the amount we paid.

It tasted as good as it looks, the fish being very fresh and having that rich, sweet flavour that only yellowtail caught at the peak of its season has. The whole meal was delicious, and I even enjoyed the pickles (I don't normally like the sharp fermented taste of nukazuke, but these were quickly pickled and not strongly flavour). For 780 yen it was an outstanding value, and I can see this meal--or even just the sashimi by itself--going for 2000 yen or more elsewhere.

Hideaki enjoyed his meal as well but was disappointed by the amount, as he only got two small pieces of fish. He was similarly impressed by the value but vowed to try something else on our next visit. I was happy to hear he wanted to come back--he's come a long way since I met him, and I remember I time he shunned fish and thought chili cheese dogs were the finest food in the world.

He was still so hungry we decided to have dessert at a nearby Mister Donuts. I ordered a chocolate dipped old-fashioned and their newest kind of donut, made with rice flower and topped with crunchy puffed rice, which supposedly make this a "Japanese style" donut (don't ask me what the other two donuts are: I'm not a fan of the fluffy and gooey kinds of donuts). I took one bite of the Japanese style dooughnut and liked it: it was much denser than regular wheat flour donuts, and both chewy and soft at the same time. But my eyes were bigger than my stomach, and the richness of the sashimi caught up with me and reminded me I was way too full to eat another bite. Hideaki was glad to help clean up.

Looking at Marufuku's business card along with a little internet searching showed that the place was owned, along with two local sushi bars, by a fishmonger. I've actually been to one of the sushi places a few years ago (and tried an alarming appetizer that I imagine only a well-connected fishmonger could obtain) and although liked it didn't knock my socks off like Marufuku did. Apparently at night the place is more of an izakaya, pairing the seafood with sake, and although it seems it's always a good value, their cheap lunches are what makes them famous. We vowed to go back for another lunch, and a few weeks ago we did.

This time I got the kaisendon (seafood bowl) teishoku, which seems to be what they are known for. It came with the same side dishes as before and cost 980 yen.

It was a large bowl of sumeshi (sushi rice) topped with sashimi and tamagoyaki (thick omelet). Unfortunately my sashimi-identifying skills aren't super but I think the fish included katsuo (skipjack), tuna, salmon belly, some kind of snapper, amaebi (sweet shrimp), scallops, and one more variety (under the wasabi) that I totally forget. It was all very good, and I even liked the scallops (I normally dislike raw shellfish), although I did give the amaebi to Hideaki. But somehow there were just too many different kinds of fish, and the variety overwhelmed me. I'd prefer larger amounts of just a few kinds of fish, something that I really liked. I think the kaisendon is for people who are a little less picky than I am.

Meanwhile, Hideaki was eating the kakiage (fried oyster) teishoku. The oysters were perfectly done and full of juice, and although it's hard to tell from the picture, they were huge--big enough for Hideaki to actually fill up on. No dessert necessary.

So Marufuku is now our favourite restaurant and I can't wait to get back. The best part is that their lunch prices stay the same all week, unlike many other restaurants that have cheap lunch specials during the week but higher prices on weekends. I'm not sure if it's worth going out of your way for, but if you find yourself in Oizumigakuen (or nearby on the Seibu Ikebukuro line) I highly recommend lunch at Marufuku.

Marufuku
03-3925-1345
4-2-2 Higashioizumi, Nerima-ku, Tokyo
Open weekdays 11:30am-12:00am, Sundays and holidays 11:30am-10:00om, closed Mondays

JapanSoc it!