There's always something interesting on display at the fish market in our local Super Value (a discount supermarket chain), but this won't be topped anytime soon:
A whole hammerhead shark, landed in Miyagi Prefecture and selling for a mere 3800 yen. Alas, we don't have a pot big enough to cook the thing so we had to pass, but I did learn a new word: "hammerhead shark" is shumokuzame in Japanese.
Yakiniku is often translated as "Korean Barbeque", although it's not really barbeque (usually being cooked indoors over charcoal or a gas flame) and, at least as served in Japan, is not truly Korean. It's not something I want to eat often, but when I do it's a craving that's hard to ignore. Recently I've really been craving it, and not being able to afford a visit to a yakiniku restaurant (good yakiniku is pricey) decided to do it at home. It's really easy to cook at home but we haven't done so in years as yakiniku at home has one major drawback: it creates a lot of heat and smoke, so can really only be done in the spring or fall, when it's warm enough to open all the windows but not so warm that the extra heat of the grill will make you sweat.
Luckily my craving came along during good yakiniku weather so I was free to indulge myself. This is how we do yakiniku at home:
From left: sanchu (lettuce used for wrapping cooked meat); kimchi (spicy pickled napa cabbage); kashira (pork cheek); a plate of three kinds of meat: kalbi (boneless beef rib, top), buta rosu (pork shoulder, left), and gyu momo (beef round, right); and namul (Korean style seasoned vegetables): zenmai (fern shoots, left), daikon and carrot (top) and mung bean sprouts (bottom). In the bottle and little dishes is yakiniku sauce. It's a lot of food, and lest you think us total gluttons let me assure you that we shopped with leftovers in mind, and didn't actually eat everything shown that night.
The sauce and namul were homemade but the kimchi is store-bought and all meat came sliced as shown and labeled yakiniku yo (for yakiniku), sliced at exactly the right thickness. Regular supermarkets sell convenient yakiniku sets with a few types of meat in the same package, but we had done the day's shopping at a discount market with no fancy sets but very very good prices. The pork was heavily discounted and the beef was half price, the only way we could afford good wagyu (Japanese top-grade beef). Eating yakiniku in a restaurant usually involves smaller portions and more cuts of meat, and a bigger emphasis on beef, but when you do it yourself it's hard to include everything.
Yakiniku often includes vegetables, but with us they tend to get neglected in favour of the meat and end up burning. So this time we skipped them, figuring the sanchu, kimchi and namuru added enough healthiness.
Here's a better look at the kalbi. The word kalbi comes from Korea, where it's actually pronounced galbi and usually served in long strips with the bone, requiring scissors be kept at the table to cut the strips down to size. In Japan kalbi is a little more refined: it's nearly always boneless and pre-sliced and often from very good well marbled beef, like the meat above. This is shinshu-gyu a brand (yes, beef here has brands: think Kobe beef) from Nagano that is fed on apples.
Here is the gyu momo, buta rosu and kashira cooking on the teppan (tabletop grill).
And this is some grilled kalbi, dipped in the yakiniku sauce. Since everything is cooked little by little at the table yakiniku is always a leisurely meal, and we spent almost two hours on this meal. When we were finally stuffed we cooked the leftover meat and packed it away in the fridge, marinated in yakiniku sauce.
And it made a very nice lunch a few days later, the meat reheated and served over hot rice and the namul (served in the tub that kimchi had come in) on the side.
Up until now I've mostly avoided blogging about gifts and souvenirs I've been given, thinking it a bit tacky or show-offy, but recently I've been in a grateful mood and wanted to share some of the bounty we've been lucky enough to receive.
A few weeks ago a very kind person, who read a confession of my love of red licorice on Facebook, sent me package of Twizzlers. It was totally unsolicited, out of the blue, and an act of kindness for which I'm extremely thankful.
The Japanese are not big on licorice, especially red licorice (with its day-glo colour, artificial "red" flavour and plastic texture, I can't imagine why), so it's almost impossible to find, and I find myself craving it more often than I'd like to admit. So this was a wonderful treat, and I'd like to say I savored it slowly, eating one piece (one twizzle?) per day, but that would be a lie: the entire package was gone within a few days. Shameful, yes, but it cured me of my cravings and I think I can last until my next visit home.
Here in Japan, such spontaneous presents are relatively rare. This is a gift-giving society, but the exchange of presents is usually done according to very specific rules and for very specific reasons. The present above was a return present, given to me by a student after I had given her a souvenir from somewhere. This gift kind of breaks the rules in that it was probably more valuable than the gift I'd given her (return presents are supposed to be about half the value of the original presents, although I think it can be more or less depending on the exact occasion).
This gift was a good example of the elaborate packaging used in Japan. I usually find all it rather wasteful, but I can't help but admire the beauty of this particular package.
Individually wrapped snacks also used to strike me as wasteful, until I discovered why it's done: Japan is very humid for much of the year, and any kind of packaged food goes soft and moldy if not eaten right away or wrapped individually.
These confections turned out to be choco-arare, or chocolate covered arare (puffed rice snacks, which are usually savory rather than sweet), in regular chocolate, matcha chocolate, white chocolate and strawberry chocolate. Choco-arare seem to be rather trendy now, but I'm afraid I wasn't crazy about these. If they were just spheres of chocolate lined with puffed rice I'd like them, but the deep-fried, sweet-soy sauce flavoured rice balls inside were too much. A shame, because I'm a big fan of sweet and salty combinations and I really wanted to like these (the way I like chocolate-covered pretzels or salted caramels).
Another sort of gift-giving is the exchange of souvenirs, which is done here a little differently than the way it is in the west. Back home a souvenir tends to be a meaningful memento of one's travels, bought either for oneself or one's close friends and family, while in Japan, omiyage (souvenirs) are only bought for others. Not that Japanese people don't shop for themselves while on vacation, it's just that those purchases are not called souvenirs.
Omiyage are almost always edible, and bought for nearly everyone: family, friends, coworkers, classmates, fellow club members, and anyone else who has been inconvenienced by (or even aware of) a traveller's absence. In the case of coworkers and classmates, individual souvenirs are not necessary, and most people buy a box of something to dole out.
The treats above were brought home from one of my group classes, where things have gotten a little bit out of control. From bottome left: sakura sembei (rice crackers flavoured with dried shrimp and preserved cherry leaves), mini sweet potato cakes (they had come wrapped in the green paper in the picture above), sakura daifuku (mochi stuffed with sakura flavoured sweet bean paste), and biwa (loquat) cake. The school owner already provides snacks and tea, and at least one student will bring something for each class. More often than not all four of them come armed with omiyage, and usually there are so many things to eat that we all end up bringing excess treats home, like the loot above.
Recently many of these omiyage are not actually from a trip (unless a trip to the nearest department store counts), and sometimes they're "recycled" omiyage from a student's family member or coworker (which is always fully disclosed and isn't considered bad manners). Of the snacks above only the sweet potato cakes and biwa cake were souviners, from Kawagoe and Chiba, respectively. Which were both day trips, just an hour or so from Tokyo. It must be a bit expensive for the students (I usually don't participate, bringing omiyage only if I've taken a real trip) but they all seem to look forward to exchanging and eating the snacks so it seems to be harmless fun. I think a lot of offices and other work environments have a similarly constant flow of omiyage, but perhaps not to this extent.
One of my private students is a retired kindergarten teacher who travels the world, and she never fails to bring me back something. She came back from a recent trip to India with a package of Darjeeling tea and a silk scarf for me. Her generosity astounds me, as does her thoughtfulness: she really knows my taste, and this scarf is totally me.
She also knows that I am a novice tea drinker looking to expand my horizons a little, and I can't wait to try this stuff. I just have to finish up the tin of Earl Grey I'm slowly going through. And now that I think about it, after eight or so years of serving her Earl Grey (she's a tea lover herself) maybe this is a hint that she'd like a change too.
Hand-made gifts seem to be quite rare, and the two above are among the very few I've received. The are straps (meant to be hung from a cell phone or to decorate a bag or wallet) made of scrap cloth and acorn caps, and they were given to me by my landlady. We have a kind of non-stop present exchange going on that goes in cycles, usually starting out with an omiyage from somewhere and continuing with "payback" gifts back and forth, to the point that I no longer what the original omiyage that started this current cycle was. The gifts are usually not fancy: I've received a bouquet of wildflowers and home-made marmalade, and have given homemade jam and cookies and excess fruit from a box full I had received from someone else. This kind of present exchange can be a real burden to some, especially better-connected Japanese people who have a long list of people to give to. But I don't mind this set-up at all, as my landlady is the only person with whom I'm caught in an endless gift exchange with. In fact it's a great way to share when I have lots of stuff, and if it keeps our relationship healthy (especially important since she lives right next door to me), then it's a good thing.
I think this sort of casual back-and-forth of presents is much more common in rural areas or more established suburban neighborhoods (where people actually know and talk to their neighbors), with excess bounty from the garden or farm plot (or from gift boxes of apples or clementines like the one I mentioned above) frequently shared.
These grapes are going back in time a while. We received them early last autumn, and although I was a little too busy to blog about them I did keep the pictures. They are from Senbikiya, a luxury fruit store that's a favourite for expensive fruit gifts. Senbikiya is the kind of place that sells those two hundred dollar melons you've probably heard about, and although these grapes are not quite in that class of luxury they cost more than I'd ever consider spending on myself. Hideaki estimates that they were about 7000 yen (about $70 US).
They were delicious, of course--at that price they'd have to be. But I think most westerners, myself included, would prefer cheap Thompsons and concords from back home: although these were incredibly sweet and juicy, one of them had seeds and both had a very bitter, tough skin that needed to be peeled. And they couldn't be peeled by just popping them into your mouth like a concord, they had to be hand-peeled, a painstaking process that kind of took the fun out of eating them.
But they were beautiful and delicious and I'm glad we were lucky enough to try them.
It seems like people just can't stop giving us fish roe, and to that I say: bring it on. This is ikura no shoyuzuke (salmon roe cured in sauce) from Hokkaido, which is known for its seafood, including salmon. It was a special treat because we usually don't get to eat ikura except for the brief period in autumn when whole sacs of fresh roe are available and we can cure our own.
This ikura was made, along with thinly sliced shiso (perilla) into ikuradon (salmon roe atop rice). Ikuradon is at once a very simple food and the height of luxury, and we relished every bite of hours.
I don't think most of the people who were nice enough to give this gifts read this blog, but even so I'd like to say thank you. May your kindness be rewarded!
It all starts off with crab, a new tradition thanks to my brother-in-law. He lives in Hokkaido and is so busy that nobody has seen him in ages, but for the past few years he has been proving his existence by sending us fresh crab, which Hokkaido is known for. It seems to get better every year, and this time was the best yet with three types of crab: kegani (hairy crab), tarabagani (similar to king crab) and hanasakigani (literally "blooming flower crab", as its shape and colour is supposed to resemble a flower). They arrived already whole and already boiled (as is common in Japan, where most people don't have pots big enough to boil the larger ones) and sadly I didn't get a chance to take any pictures before they were cut up, but here is a picture of last year's kegani, and here are some pictures of hanasakigani (maybe you'll have better luck than me seeing the flower resemblance).
The kegani is the smallest and has the sweetest and most delicate flesh.
The hanasakigani's legs and claws were huge and extremely hard to eat, thanks to the giant spikes and very thick shell. The flesh richly flavourful with a firm, almost meat-like texture, and was the most similar to the crab I remember from Canada.
The tarabagani, claw shown on top, was kind of half-way between the two in terms of both taste and texture. I think I liked it best overall, but they were all fantastic.
One more thing to do with ume (Japanese apricot): make jam.
This is it on toast (that's my usual peanut butter and banana toast on the left). No, I didn't make it--a student of mine did, with fruit from her own ume trees. It is deliciously sweet and sour with a lovely ume fragrance, and I don't think it's going to last very long. It is great plain on toast and I have a feeling it will also make a good sauce. Thanks Mrs. A!
She used ao-ume(green ume) for her jam but most recipes call for ripe yellow ume. And since there are still yellow ume left in the stores I might just have to make a batch for myself. If you'd like to give it a try as well, Obachan has some basic ume jam instructions in English here, and these two recipes, although in Japanese, have enough pictures to make them understandable.
The basic process is the same as any other jam, but before you begin you'll need to detoxify the ume: soak the fruit in salt water overnight (or a few hours if you're using yellow ume) and then boil in water, removing the scum that will form, drain, and repeat the boiling twice. The soaking and boiling is not necessary when using fruit leftover from making umeshu (ume liqueur). The pits can be removed after the boiling (the fruit will still be firm so you'll need to cut them out with a knife), or midway through the jam making process when the fruit will be soft enough to crush with a potato masher. The crushed fruit can then be pureed for a smooth jam, or left as-is for a chunky jam.
If I don't get around to making jam with fresh ume this season at least I know just what I'll be doing with the ume leftover from my umeshu next year.
A few posts back I mentioned picking cherries while at a local park, and I thought I'd follow that up with some pictures from a more recent visit. (The park is actually two parks: Oizumi Chuo Koen in Tokyo and Wako Jurin Koen across the border in Saitama, so the title of this post is a bit misleading as not all of my foraging was actually within Tokyo's borders.)
This is a hebi ichigo (false strawberry), which looks like it would be delicious. The first time I found one here I assumed it would be similar to the wonderful wild strawberries we get at home, so it was a huge disappointment when I had a taste. Despite the colourful, juicy appearance, they dry and have virtually no flavour. Occasionally one will have a hint of sweetness, or a faint melony-cucumber flavour, but it's very subtle. They are fully edible, and don't actually taste bad, but would only be worth picking if you were starving. Still, I occasionally find myself popping one in my mouth, just because.
These are sakura no mi (wild cherries). They're ready when they're black and plump. Over-ripe cherries are slightly wrinkled and should be avoided: they're plenty sweet but likely to be chock full of bugs.
This is the queen of wild fruit, at least in my area: yama ichigo. Literally "mountain strawberry", these are actually a type of raspberry.
They are sweet and mild, and the seeds are lighter and softer than regular raspberries: they are pleasantly crunchy and do not get stuck in your teeth.
This is a yama ichigo flower, the centre of which will eventually turn into a berry. The plants are abundant at the park, but don't produce a lot of fruit--and what fruit they do produce is a bit hard to find, usually hidden under the leaves.
Unfortunately they prefer the same terrain as hebi ichigo produce fruit at roughly the same time. And because the berries look similar, at least from afar, they can be rather annoying to pick. Here are a few hints: up close, yama ichigo plants can be identified by the white flowers--hebi ichigo usually have smaller yellow flowers, and their flower season is long over when the berries ripen. The fruit of the yama ichigo is large and reddish orange, and usually grows off the ground, up to a height of about 40 cm, while hebi ichigo fruit is bright red, small and close to the ground.
These berries weren't very tasty.
Heehee, just kidding, but I did almost reach for one of these ladybugs. This particular tree, and this one only, was just covered with ladybugs--some brand-new and some still in the larval stage. They had an amazing variety of spot patterns and came in three different types: black with orange spots, black with white spots, and reddish-orange with black spots (the orange one at top right has just emerged and will shortly turn a bit darker). There are more varieties of ladybugs in Japan than this, but still the large variety of them on this one single tree was astonishing. I only wish I was able to get a picture with a bunch of them together, but they weren't very cooperative. So failing that this collage gives an idea of how heavily this tree was crawling with ladybugs.
This is what I came home with: a bag of sakura no mi, a bag of yama ichigo and kuwa no mi (mulberries), and a few sprigs each of ki no me (leaves of sansho, or Sichuan pepper) and yomogi (mugwort). There were a few more edible plants that I didn't pick: warabi (bracken fern), which was too mature, and tampopo (dandelion) which were too far out in the open (see warning below). And those are just the plants that I know and can identify. I wonder what other edible herbs and berries are out there?
Here's a better look. Clockwise from left: yama ichigo, sakura no mi, ki no me, hebi ichigo, kuwa no mi. I had originally planned to turn the berries into jam or liqueur but I ended up just eating them as-is. Hopefully the park will continue to produce berries for a few more weeks, and then I'll get to do something more exciting with them.
So if you live in Tokyo, don't assume that it's all a concrete jungle! Sakura no mi and kuwa no mi abound even in the city, and other edible treats may be lurking around as well. The next time you're at a park or even just walking through the streets, keep your eyes peeled. An easy way to find cherries and mulberries is by searching the ground for black splotches caused by fallen fruit: look up and you see fruit that is dark puple to black and looks like a berry, it probably is. One little bite will tell you if it's tasty or not.
* Caution: Poisonous berries are relatively rare and tend to look different from edible berries, and if you know what wild cherries, raspberries, mulberries etc. look like you'll be fine. Poisonous berries tend to be white, green or bright red and are bitter enough that you'll want to spit it out immediately. As far as I know there are no berries in Japan that can cause harm from just one taste, but do be cautious and don't eat anything that you can't identify.
A more practical warning is to steer clear of low-lying berries and herbs out in the open, especially in dog-intensive areas. I think you can guess why. Yama ichigo are safe as the stalks have thorns which dogs tend to avoid. Also, avoid berries that touch the ground, are mishapen or are discoloured as they are more likely to have extra protein in the form of slugs and bugs.
I'm not sure how a one-week holiday turned into a two-week absence from this blog. Maybe going on vacation disrupted the rhythm of my life and it's taking some time to get back into the swing of things. Maybe I'm suffering from a severe case of the blahs. Maybe my very mild but long-running cold is sapping all my extra energy. My best guess is a mixture of all three. But what I do know is that it's time to post something. So here we go: a recent late night snack:
Some sashimi I bought on my way home from an evening class last week (half-price due to the late hour). Clockwise from bottom left: kibinago (a small type of herring called banded blue-sprat); katsuo (skipjack tuna); aji tataki (chopped horse mackerel); and buri (yellowtail). The tsuma (garnishes) were all included with the sashimi: shredded daikon; shiso (perilla leaves); hojiso (stem of shiso buds); and grated ginger.
Sashimi is commonly sold in supermarkets here already cut up, with a few different kinds of fish packaged together complete with garnishes. I don't often buy sashimi that way, partly because my husband doesn't like it much, and partly because I can never find a selection that appeals to me (tuna and/or squid tend to be included in most assortments, and with supermarket-quality sashimi tuna and squid are really just filler). And maybe also because I do a lot of shopping at night and hours-old sashimi just seems like something to avoid.
But slap a half-price sticker on a lovely selection like that above and I'm sold! This was good stuff, with the quality of the garnishes a little better than the average selection. The kibinago was a bit on the bland side and could have been fresher: it really is best eaten perfectly fresh in early summer. But the buri was fantastic, still rich with fat despite its season being over.
Best of all, Hideaki wasn't in the mood for sashimi so I had it all to myself. It was a lot of fish but I could easily have eaten more: I can never tire of good sashimi. Years ago I failed at the South Beach Diet, but if ever I can afford to eat fish like this every day I think I'll have to give it another go.
Today was Showa no Hi, the birthday of the former emperor Showa (Hirohito's posthumous name). Why exactly we celebrate his birthday I'm not sure, but this was the first of four public holidays that make up Golden Week and I'm not about to complain.
Hideaki and I made a visit to Kichijoji to run some errands and while we were there had a quick lunch at a Chinese place called Kisshousaikan. We both had lunch specials, with me getting kurozu no subuta (sweet and sour pork with black vinegar) and my husband had pork stir-fried with matchstick potatoes. Both were excellent, and the potatoes were a surprise as I'd never had them cooked that way before, and had no idea what they were when I first tried them (I hadn't heard my husband's order), thinking maybe they were zasai pickles or bamboo shoots. They were soft and giving but had a slight bit of a firm crunch left: very nice. Both our lunches came with egg drop soup, zasai, salad, rice and annin-doufu (almond jelly) with mango sauce, all of which are surprisingly good, considering they are usually afterthoughts with this kind of set lunch.
On the way home we stopped at Planetes for a treat to bring home. My raspberry tart got banged up quite a bit on bumpy ride home but Hideaki's "chocolate royal", while arriving home a bit worse for the wear, stayed mostly intact. It contained three rich layers of chocolate, plus the chocolate fans and gold leaf on top: very decadent. My tart, while not much to look at, was super and had the perfect crust. Really, it's mostly the crusts that I buy tarts for--if they just sold empty crusts I'd buy them by the dozen. Not that I mind the filling though (and besides, if I only bought the crusts I'd miss out on the raspberries, and lord knows how hard they are to find in Tokyo).
So about this Golden Week. The holidays don't all run together, so unfortunate should like my husband are back to work tomorrow for three more days until the holidays resume, but a few lucky folks like myself have the whole week off. I'm headed tomorrow to the in-laws in Osaka, where I'll hopefully be able to keep you updated with a moblog post or two.
Wishing you all a week as golden as mine!
Kisshousaikan (Japanese link)
0422-41-0628
Uchida Building 3rd Floor, Kichijouji Minami-cho, Musashino-shi, Tokyo
Open daily 11:00 to midnight (last order 11:00)
Patisserie les Planetes (Japanese link)
03-5933-1233
5-8-20 Oizumigakuen-cho Nerima-ku Tokyo (Also outlets in Omiya and select Tokyo department stores)
Open 10:00 to 7:00, closed Wednesdays
Those of you outside of Japan might not know about the latest food scare here, but the news this week has been dominated by gyoza-- specifically, frozen, made-in-China gyoza contaminated with pesticides.
Gyoza are Japan's version of jiaozi (Chinese dumplings) and were extremely popular in Japan until the story broke last week. Now mass hysteria has taken over and people have been avoiding gyoza, and Chinese food in general, like the plague. Doesn't matter that the poison gyoza were traced to a single factory in China, or that a Japanese fact-finding mission failed to find any traces of the pesticide at the factory, or that Chinese farmers' overuse of pesticides, many of which are banned in Japan, has long been common knowledge. Suddenly all gyoza and Chinese food, no matter where it is made and with what ingredients, are bad. Gyoza sales at supermarkets and restaurants are way down, and Chinese restaurants are suffering.
Partly as a show of support, and partly because seeing all the gyoza in the news has induced a major gyoza craving, Hideaki and I ate at our favourite local Chinese restaurant on the weekend. On the way there we passed a gyoza restaurant which was completely empty and we were tempted to eat there instead out of pity, but as it's a chain shop and the Chinese restaurant is a mom-and-pop place we stuck with our plan. The normally packed little place had just one customer and one cook on duty-- the emptiest I've ever seen it. We started with a double order was gyoza, and boy were they good (so good we'd already eaten a couple before I remembered to take a picture). I wish I could eat here, and all the other empty Chinese restaurants, every day.
Don't get me wrong-- I have no intention of defending China. In fact I actively avoid buying many Chinese products due to concerns I have of the safety of the products themselves and as a kind of boycott against the country's lax safety controls. But I don't like how this issue, just one of many food scandals in recent years, has taken on an ugly anti-China tone.
On a positive note, people seem to be starting to question Japan's reliance on imported food, which is a really important issue that desperately needs to be addressed. But sadly there doesn't seem to be any discussion on the growing reliance on convenience foods. I've always admired the respect Japanese people have for food, with shopping for fresh food still a daily activity for many people and appreciation for seasonal food instilled from an early age. This is changing though, as evidenced by the increasing size of supermarket frozen food and prepared food sections, packed with ready-made food of all kinds. Most of the frozen food is okazu (side dishes) rather than the complete meals sold in the West, as no self-respecting Japanese home cook would serve a meal entirely consisting of frozen convenience food. More typically a single frozen okazu will round out an otherwise home-cooked meal; many working moms and busy housewives are apparently rely on this ready-made food.
I think something is very wrong here. As lifestyles are changing and more women joining the work force, it is understandable that fewer people are able to cook traditional home-cooked meals. But I find it sad that frozen prepared food, chock full of additives and made from who knows what, is seen as the solution. Why not work towards abandoning outdated concepts of what a woman's role is or what a proper meal should consist of?
As it is, women are still overwhelmingly responsible for all of a family's housework, including cooking, regardless or whether they work or not. Help from husbands and children quite rare, and serving take-out or delivery food is frowned upon. Yet there are countless rules for meal preparation which require a huge investment of time in the kitchen. Bento (boxed lunches) need to include a certain amount of food and a certain number of colours and cooking styles. The typical "simple" home-cooked meal is called ichiju-sansai, which means "one soup and three side dishes" (aside from rice and pickles). The meal should also reflect the season and contain a wide variety of ingredients, with each side dish incorporating a different cooking style (one steamed, one sauteed and one grilled, for example). Everything is served in separate tiny dishes, and the majority of homes have no dishwasher (other than the lady of the house, of course). No wonder people turn to frozen food to help shorten the time in the kitchen.
Serving simpler meals or demanding that their families help out would require guts, something that, I'm sorry to say, modern Japanese seem to lack. Frozen okazu are a far more attractive alternative, and it saddens me that this latest food scandal will do little to change that.
One of the many preparations for New Years in Japan is the displaying of kagami mochi, which was traditionally two round slabs of mochi (rice cake) placed on an altar. As homes grew warmer in Japan, the mochi tended to get moldy instead of drying out, and at the same time fewer and fewer people bother to make their own mochi. So now lots of people buy pre-formed kagami mochi conveniently encased in plastic. Kagami mochi is meant to sit on a wooden altar, be topped with a daidai (a small, sour member of the citrus family) and be strewn with a variety of auspicious decorations. These days most people make do with a regular old mikan (mandarin) and the plastic kagami mochi usually includes as few decorations and a cardboard altar. Our kagami mochi, shown above, is fairly typical (except that it's mixed up with Christmas decorations, which are normally taken down as soon as Christmas is over-- often on Christmas Day itself).
The kagami mochi is displayed until January 11th, which is the day for kagami biraki: the cutting of the mochi. It is then eaten, often in oshiruko (a sweet soup made with adzuki beans). My boss, Mrs. K, makes excellent oshiruko and this year gave me a little to take home, so after cutting up our mochi we had the oshiruko along with the isobe yaki (grilled mochi wrapped in a sheet of nori seaweed) I'd been planning.
Nothing is easier to make than isobe yaki. Just grill the mochi in the toaster oven (watch it carefully though, as it's liable to suddenly puff up and it will burn if you don't smoosh it back down) until soft all the way through, dip it in soy sauce, and lay it on a piece of nori. Mochi happens to go very nicely with cheese, so as a special treat add a slice of cheese to the mochi when it's almost finished cooking; as soon as it melts you can proceed.
The first meal of the new year is osechi, traditional food that is eaten to ensure a good year. They are heavily seasoned in order to keep well, and are supposed to be eaten at every meal for the first three days in order to give the women of the house a break. My in-laws just eat it for breakfast and lunch, and don't bother with the elaborate layered boxes tightly packed with a myriad of colourful little morsels (these pictures will give you an idea of what typical osechi looks like). Osechi is widely hated in Japan, as the flavours are too sweet and heavy and eating it non stop for three days is tiresome. So my mother-in-law only serves the dishes that everyone likes, served in a lovely set of dishes atop a lazy suzan. And as she keeps most of the osechi in the refrigerator she uses a lighter hand with the seasonings.
This is kazunoko (herring roe), which symbolizes fertility and prosperity.
Kobumaki (kelp rolls) is eaten to bring happiness in the new year.
Datemaki (rolled omelet) resemble rolled scrolls so symbolize wisdom and academic success.
This is tainoko (sea bream roe) which I've never seen anywhere except my mother-in-law's table. It is eaten for the same reasons as kazunoko and is my favourite osechi.
Ozoni is a soup made with mochi (rice cake) and each region, or even each family has its own way to make it. My in-laws use a clear broth with vegetables and chicken, with the mochi cut in squares (most families in the Kansai area use round mochi).
We also eat kamaboko (steamed fish paste), gomame (tiny dried fish "caramelized" in sweet soy sauce), kuromame (simmered black beans), kuri kinton (chestnuts in sweet potato mash) and a few more kinds of sweet beans. I am not crazy about the sweeter forms of osechi and this year I was a very naughty girl and skipped them entirely (you are supposed to try a little of everything). But I'm pretty sure I ate enough overall to make up for it-- more than enough. Overindulgence in mochi, alcohol and other high-calorie treats causes almost everyone in Japan to begin the new year with a few kilograms of extra flesh, and I am no exception.
I think you can guess what my new year's resolution is.
Dinners on the first three nights involve a different kind of osechi: savoury foods with less sweetness and bolder flavours, all the better to match alcohol.
The first dinner is always yaki tai: grilled sea bream. It is bought already prepared (like most Japanese, my in-laws don't have an oven big enough to do the job) and is of a quality hard to find here in Tokyo, caught wild in the Seto Inland Sea. It is delicious and suitably festive, as it needs to be "carved" at the table by my father-in-law, just like roast turkeys and hams do in other parts of the world. Along with it are dishes of other wonderful treats like the uma-ni from the night before, tori no hakkakuni (chicken braised with star anise), and homemade kimchi. As I was sick and usually pretty tired by the evening I didn't take pictures this year, but here is a picture of last year's tai.
The next morning's ozoni is made not of chicken broth, but of broth made from the bones and leftover meat from the tai. The delicate, subtle flavour of the tai is balanced with a deep flavour from the charred skin and the resulting ozoni is a dish that I look forward to all year.
This time, perhaps because my appetite was a little less voracious than usual, there was plenty of broth leftover, and lots of tai meat from the night before. So it was used up at lunch as tai chazuke, a variation of ochazuke. Ochazuke is hot tea poured over rice, usually with with wasabi, umeboshi (pickled plum), flaked salmon or other flavourings. Tai chazuke replaces the tea with tai broth, creating a richer, more filling dish. To top it off, flakes of leftover tai meat and chopped mitsuba (trefoil) were added.
If I thought tai ozoni was the best New Year's dish, it was only because I'd never tried tai chazuke: I have a new favourite now. And I'm not going to wait all year to try it again, either. Despite Tokyo's inferior seafood, it shouldn't be too hard to create something similar at home. Can't wait.
Tai-meshi is a celebrated dish in Japan, usually made by placing a whole tai on top of rice and cooking them together. The bones are removed after it's cooked, and then the fish is mashed into the rice. It's something I've always wanted to try, but it would be hard to find a fish small enough to fit in my rice cooker or donabe (clay pot) so I've never attempted it. But as I discovered in this Obachan post, it can be done with pre-sliced tai as well.
The supermarket was selling tai no ara (the heads, collars and other throw-away bits) cheaply, so I picked some up to make the soup. It made a wonderful broth, which more than made up for the amount of work required to fish the paltry meat out of the head. If there had been leftovers it would have been heavenly poured over the tai-meshi, like a decadent ochazuke (hot tea poured over rice). Next time I'll make extra.
These lovely pomegranates, called zakuro in Japanese, were a gift from a student of mine. Many of my students have gardens with fruit trees and it's not uncommon for them to share their bounty with me and their fellow students. I've received persimmons, sudachi (a tiny lime-like citrus fruit), mandarins and various other types of orange, all of which are received gladly by everyone. But this is the first time a student has shared pomegranates, and somehow the other students seemed far less enthusiastic than I was. I think the pomegranate fad never made it to Japan, where they grow widely but are not well appreciated due to their tartness. In Japan, the sweeter the fruit the better, and with so many options people don't tend to bother with the sour stuff. I think the general consesus was that these zakuro would make lovely seasonal decorations but they weren't fit for eating. The lady who gave them away even seemed a bit apologetic, saying they were just going to be thrown out otherwise.
But I was just thrilled to be given these, and for free-- I'd have to pay at least $5 per piece (assuming I could even find them). Not only is it a delicious fruit, but it's incredibly beautiful. And I love the way it takes me back to my childhood: I have vivid memories of eating them when I was little, how I'd grow frustrated at all the work involved just to get a small amount of flesh, but never be able to stop myself. Strangely, it was one of the few exotic fruits (exotic by Canadian standards, anyway) I remember eating as a child-- I didn't taste mangoes, papaya, starfruit and the like until I was far older.
Japanese pomegranates seem to have browner skins and paler seeds than the ones I'm used to, and are a bit more sour than I remember. They take the same amount of work to eat though, and after eating half a pomegranate's seeds I realized I didn't have to patience to continue. So I made pomegranate juice.
This is what I got from one and a half pomegranates. The top is pink and foamy because my juicer is part of my Magic Bullet mixer and I can't get juice without a bit of whipping action. No mind, the foam was pretty and may even be normal for pomegranate juice for all I know. This was the first time I've had it fresh (and only the second time to have pomegranate juice at all-- like I said, the stuff never became trendy here).
It was terribly sour, but once I'd sweetened it a bit it was so so good. If I could drink this stuff every day I would be a happy girl (and healthy too? I have a vague idea that this stuff is good for you but don't know exactly how). Next year I think I'm going to offer my student cash for her whole crop...
After my sister, niece and nephew flew back to Texas I had a last relaxing week at home. I finished up my shopping, thrilled to be able to find things in my size (and not so thrilled at the lack of variety available, with dozens of different shops selling exactly the same stuff). I ate well. And I took a few walks around the neighborhood, especially down to the creek.
The creek is surrounded by parkland and is full of flowers, birds, and bugs, like this tiny woolly aphid, which being just a few millimetres in size I originally mistook for a little fluff of cotton.
It is also full of fruit, like red raspberries, saskatoon berries and these black raspberries. The black raspberries were especially abundant, and since nobody else seems to know about them there were always plenty ready to be picked.
My brother did a few more excellent barbecue meals, like this roast. It was done on a spit (yup-- he actually has one of his grills set up with a rotisserie) with the juices falling into a pan of potatoes underneath. The meal started with a thick minestrone-like soup made by Sherry and a salad made by me-- pretty much the only "cooking" I did all month.
Greek food is a must on my visits home, since it hardly exists in Japan. This time my Mom took me out for lunch and I had dolmades, which are grape leaves stuffed with ground lamb and rice, served in a lemony cream sauce. This is what it looks like inside, and it tasted even better than it looks.
One busy evening we got take-out at the local grocery store: a whole roasted chicken, wings and potato wedges, served with wild rice mix and salad. I love the take-out available in Japan, but it's hard to beat a rotisserie chicken when it comes to both convenience and deliciousness.
My Dad took me out for Indian food, to a place that had been recommended to me by a very friendly taxi driver. He said it was cheap and good, but I wasn't prepared for just how cheap and how good it was. The place is called Village of India, and if you live in or near Brampton I highly recommend a visit (address is here-- be sure to watch the video of their commercial). We were halfway through our meal when we realized that the food was vegetarian, and we didn't miss the meat at all.
The desserts were a bit bewildering, since I know nothing about Indian sweets. But I did try a few and really liked this one, called gajar halva, made with cashews and carrots and flavoured with cardamom and lots of sugar. And my Dad loved his handful of fennel candy so much that I regret not going back and buying him some (the place also sells sweets and candies to go).
We also got take-out from a local Jamaican place. This is escovitch fish, a whole fried snapper with onions and a tangy sauce, served with rice and peas, cole slaw and fried plantain. We also got some patties and oxtail soup with spinners, which was fantastic.
On my last full day we celebrated my Dad's birthday. We began with a selection of his favourite stinky foods: cheese, olives, pickled herrings and pickled eggs. Then I taught him how to grill squid, something he loves but doesn't get to eat much of as my Mom doesn't like it at all.
This was followed by a salad, our first taste of the year of local corn, and a delicious stewy dish of clams, chorizo and tomatoes. Since I now know where to find chorizo in Tokyo, I'm looking forward to making this soon.
And then before I knew it, my trip was over. And the good eating stopped. I had requested low-calorie meals on both flights, and instead of the reasonable good food I'd had on the Tokyo to Toronto flight, this time I was served the exact same awful meal twice. Ugh. And when I got back home jet-lag, a cold and the heat all took away my appetite, an extremely rare occurrence. Not that I'm complaining-- after my trip back home I could stand to use a kilogram or three.
When Julie, Aaron and Zoe headed back to Texas, we made a trip out of taking them to the airport. This made sense because rather than flying out from the nearby Toronto Pearson airport they used the Buffalo Niagara airport a few hours' drive away (a move that saved them quite a bit of money). And Niagara Falls is an attractive destination for certain members of my family, thanks to its casinos.
We didn't actually go to the falls this time ("I've already seen them" was Aaron's view), so the picture above is as close as we got. Instead my Mom and Julie went gambling and my Dad and the kids went swimming in the hotel pool (the best thing about the Niagara Hilton). And I, recovering from LASIK and not able to go in the water, relaxed in our room.
Flipping through the channels on TV, I came upon NHK (Japan's public broadcaster). It was near the end of my visit home and I had been feeling a bit homesick for Japan, so it was kind of a treat to hear Japanese. The show itself was less of a treat: their normally excellent cooking show featured sauteed pork with ice cream sauce.
Dad and the kids came back just in time for a little sumo wrestling, and after tiring of watching that (it doesn't take long) we went for a walk. These beetles were all over the place, and apparently it was mating season. After looking them up online, I discovered they were called Japanese beetles, which is odd because I've never seen them in Japan.
The view from our hotel wasn't great, with the Fallsview Casino blocking the falls. After coming home from dinner though, it was a bit spiffier.
And here's the early morning view, with the Skylon Tower.
After crossing to the American side on the way to the airport, we searched for a truckstop or roadside diner like the kind we used to eat at decades ago on our stateside road trips. But there were none to be found so instead we stopped at Denny's and I had the biggest breakfast I've had in ages (aside from the two eggs, two slices of bacon, two sausages, two pieces of toast and two orders of hash browns above, I also put a big dent in my Dad's stack of pancakes).
After saying good-bye to Julie and the kids we returned to Canada and did a quick tour of the Niagara Wine country and the quiant town of Niagara-on-the-Lake. We hit three wineries, tasting plenty of wines at each, and especially liked Pallatine Hills with its delicious Gewurztraminer icewine which I regret not buying a bottle of. My Dad did though, and if he is nice he will hold off on opening it until my next visit home...
When we got back from Sauble Beach nobody was in a cooking mood, so we ate take-out from a fish and chips shop. The traditional cod has long been in short supply so we had halibut, haddock and polluck, and for chips we had both plain and poutine (fries covered with cheese curds and gravy, a Quebec specialty).
The next day my sister spent hours the kitchen making a huge batch of tomato sauce, which was put to use a few ways. First she made a wicked appetizer (it had a silly name that I can't recall now) with slices of goat cheese nestled in the sauce and baked. This is something I will definitely be recreating, and without worrying about goat cheese haters: the heat and sauce mellow the cheese out enough that anyone would love it.
Next, the sauce showed up on spaghetti. There are two versions, one with cream and one without, and they were both fantastic.
During my visit Sherry had her ice cream maker out often, usually to make strawberry sorbet. It was delicious plain, and even better topped with hand-picked berries. It made me seriously consider buying an ice cream maker, but the idea was rejected when I realized I'd need a bigger freezer (and for a bigger freezer I'd need a bigger kitchen, and for a bigger kitchen I'd need a bigger apartment, and for a bigger apartment I'd need to not live in Japan).
And here's something I'd really been waiting for: spinach-stuffed salmon. My Mom makes this with a classic recipe from the Provincial France book of the Time Life Foods of the World series (she has almost the complete collection), and it is just amazing. She had to go to a few places to find a suitable whole salmon, and the one she bought (at the local Asian market, after overcoming a bit of a language barrier) was so big it had to have its head and tail removed to fit in the roasting pan.
This is the best I've ever had it, with the salmon extra fresh and fatty. Served with the stuffing and a rich sauce made from the cooking juices, it only needed a few simple boiled vegetables on the side.
On the Canada Day weekend we threw a little party in the backyard, during which I had such a good time catching up with friends and family that I almost completely forgot to take pictures. This was the first time I met Maggie, the 17-month old daughter of an old friend, and I'm really regretting not getting a photo of her. Before the party I did manage to get a snap of the two berry flans my Mom made though.
I flew up to Ottawa for a short visit with Krista, a friend since kindergarten. At the time Canada was hosting the FIFA U-20 World Cup (for all you non-soccer fans, that's the world cup for the International Federation of Association Football's division for players under 20), and Krista had tickets to the Panama vs Argentina game. Not knowing much about soccer, and nothing at all about either team, it was a bit hard to follow, but it was fun to watch and interesting to see the fans get worked up. Argentina was so good, winning 6-0, that it was hard not to feel sorry for Panama.
Krista and her boyfriend Bruce made falafels, which was a huge treat. Once upon a time I practically lived off falafels, as they were pretty much the only vegetarian lunch option within walking distance from high school. Never having seen them in Japan, I'd almost forgotten about them, but now that I know they can be made at home I hope to be eating them regularly again soon (I even brought a box of falafel mix home to Japan). Again, I didn't get so many pictures from the trip, but this time I have an excuse: Krista kept making funny faces, making me laugh so hard I couldn't keep the camera still. This is the most normal one I got of her.
Back in Brampton I enjoyed this lovely dinner, featuring steak with fresh green peppercorn sauce. The peppercorns were new to me and really nice, and I'm wondering if I can get them in Japan.
Back home again, Julie, Zoe and I hopped on a train for a trip to Toronto. We started with a visit to the St. Lawrence Market, having a mandatory breakfast of delicious back bacon sandwiches and buying a bunch of olives and cheese.
It was a hot day and we got tired out pretty fast, so after a few more hours of shopping and walking around we headed home. I did get a few great pictures, but you'll never see them-- along with all the pictures from the next few days, they were accidentally deleted when I tried to burn a CD on my parent's crummy computer. This isn't the first time I've lost pictures, but it still hurts-- because these ones were especially precious. I took fewer pictures than usual this trip, and as always there were very few people pictures. But the ones I lost included some excellent shots of my family out to dinner, having fun and looking happy. I guess I'll just have to keep those memories the old-fashioned way-- stored in my brain.
Inspired by a TV show we saw on Wednesday (NHK's Tameshite Gatten), I conducted a bit of an experiment in the kitchen yesterday. The show was about tomatoes, specifically Japanese tomatoes, and how to cook a good tomato sauce with them. Not a rich meat sauce or arrabiata, but a simple fresh sauce, the kind that is popular in the summer, loved by the Japanese, and rather hard to recreate well at home. Unlike the restaurant version, the home-cooked version tends to be watery lacking in flavour.
I paid attention from the beginning, since I've always complained about the tomatoes here, much to the surprise of most Japanese: people here are very proud of their tomatoes, especially the momotaro variety. They love the sweetness of these tomatoes, but I find the flavour bland and un-tomatoey, the pinkish colour unappetizing, the texture mealy, and the quality unreliable. Even during peak tomato season Japanese tomatoes suck. Whenever the subject of Japanese tomatoes comes up with my students (more often than you'd think, since food is a perennial favourite topic), you'd think we were each talking about a completely different vegetable. (Or completely different fruit. Depends on your classification system).
Turns out we kind of were. According to the TV show we saw, the typical supermarket Japanese tomato, including the momotaro variety, is grown in a greenhouse and picked while still green, which could explain not only the mealiness and blandness, but the fact that they never seem to come into season. What my students are probably talking about is the home-grown version, or the expensive kind that have to be ordered privately (nearly all of my female students are gardeners, and many get their produce delivered from private food co-ops). Roma tomatoes, however, are usually vine-ripened, and although this doesn't necessarily affect the sugar content (tomatoes will continue to ripen and sweeten on the shelf) it does affect the glutamic acid content. The show measured both Japanese and roma tomatoes, and the vine-ripened romas had a far higher level of glatamic acid. Which may mean nothing to you, but glutamic acid produces the savoury flavour compound called umami, one of the five basic tastes (think of it as nature's MSG).
Still, this show claimed to have found a technique to produce a good sauce with typical shelf-ripened Japanese tomatoes. Skeptical, I headed to the supermarket yesterday morning to find tomatoes for a taste test.
Here I should mention that the variety of tomatoes in Japan has improved a bit recently: years ago the only choices were the pink mealy Japanese tomatoes and cherry tomatoes (called mini-tomato here). Now you can buy midi-tomato, which are a bit bigger than cherries but taste the same; fruit-tomato, which are extra sweet and very good to eat raw; and roma tomatoes, which are usually called ryouri-yo-tomato or italian-tomato. The selection is still nowhere near as good as back home, but I was confident I would be able to find what I needed.
And I was able to find roma tomatoes. But there were no regular Japanese tomatoes at all, which I should have anticipated as foods often sell out quickly after being mentioned on health or cooking shows. What I bought instead was koutoudo-tomato (high sugar-content tomatoes), which are a special extra-sweet, vine ripened variety of momotaro. Both were domestically grown, a bit more expensive than regular tomatoes (and tomatoes are already very pricey here), and were in good condition, although the Japanese tomatoes seemed a bit fresher.
When I got home, I tried both of them raw. The roma was bitter and yucky, which I expected as it's not meant to be eaten uncooked, and the Japanese tomato was delicious: amazingly sweet and juicy and I was tempted to cancel the sauce cook-off and just make a salad. I finally understood what my students are talking about. This is a tomato that the Japanese can be proud of.
It seemed a little unfair to use these special tomatoes against the plain old romas, but I went ahead anyway. The picture above shows the sauces being made: the Japanese tomatoes on the left, and the roma sauce on the right (the seeds and liquid that were removed are in the bowl at top right, and you can see how omitting them makes much less sauce).
With the romas, I followed the regular technique for a simple fresh tomato sauce: I peeled them, removed their stems, cut them in half and scooped out the seeds and liquid with a spoon. Then I chopped them in a blender and simmered them in a pan for a few minutes, until the sauce was reduced with there was no separation of liquid and solids.
The Japanese tomatoes, however, weren't peeled or seeded. Normally tomato seeds and skin are removed for two reasons: they are unpleasantly bitter and hard, and they make the sauce too watery. But the show explained that, contrary to popular belief, the seeds don't really contain more water than the flesh (this was measured, with the flesh consisting of 94% water and the seeds 95%, a very small difference indeed). Not only that, but the skin of the Japanese tomato is thinner and softer than other varieties, with the skin and seeds being just as tasty as the flesh (the featured chef even said the seeds were the tastiest part of the tomato), containing more umami and contributing much needed tartness and just a touch of bitterness. Finally, the skin and seeds contain pectin, which if you've ever made jam you'll know is a gelling agent and would therefore help thicken the sauce and keep it together.
So I simply removed the stems and pureed them, and simmered the sauce in a pan. The show recommended 20 minutes, but it was thick enough in 15 and I thought any more cooking would ruin the fresh flavour.
Both sauces were finished with a pinch of salt and splash of good-quality extra virgin olive oil, with freshly cooked spaghetti added to the pan and mixed up to distribute the sauce evenly.
This is the sauce made from roma tomatoes.
And here is the sauce with the Japanese tomatoes. Although my presentation skills leave much to be desired, you can see that the two sauces look quite similar.
But they couldn't have tasted more different. On the first try, I preferred the Japanese tomatoes. The sweetness was immediately appealing, and it was balanced with a nice acidity (which I hadn't noticed at all when I tried them raw). The roma sauce didn't have the same big impact, and seemed a bit dull by comparison at first bite. But after a few more bites, I noticed that what the roma sauce lacked in aggressive sweetness and tartness was made up for by its tomato taste: that summery, viney, slightly bitter flavour that conjured up memories of sitting in the garden on a sunny late-summer day and biting into a just-picked tomato. (Never mind that I don't actually have such memories, since I used to hate raw tomatoes and always shunned the lovely ones my Dad grew. This fake memory just goes to show you how tomatoey this sauce tasted.) And after a few more bites, I noticed this sauce also had a certain hard-to-describe depth of flavour, which must have been the umami from the glutamic acid.
The Japanese tomato sauce I liked less and less. Its initially pleasant sweet and tart flavours intensified until it started to taste like ketchup, with little depth or true tomato flavour.
By themselves, I actually think both sauces would have been excellent, but trying them together really highlighted each sauce's strengths and weaknesses. The main drawback to the roma sauce was a slight mushy, mealy texture, which could have been due to the quality of the tomatoes, so I'd like to try it again with really good romas. And my tendency to use too much sauce probably contributed to the ketchupy flavours I found with the Japanese tomatoes, and a better sauce/pasta ratio would likely help a lot. So would using regular Japanese tomatoes rather than the high-sugar variety.
So overall, both Hideaki and I preferred the roma sauce, but also really liked the Japanese tomato sauce. For now I'll make fresh tomato sauce with Japanese tomatoes, unless I can find good romas. And I want to do several more experiments: I still want to try it with regular Japanese tomatoes, not the high-sugar kind. I want to see what happens if I use whole roma tomatoes, without removing the skin and seeds. I want to compare fresh romas to canned. And I want to try mixing romas and Japanese tomatoes, to get a sauce that hopefully highlights the best of both types: sweet, tart, and full of umami and tomato flavour.
I received a package from America full of yummy canned fish and fancy cornmeal from Sera, a Flickr friend . All I sent in return were some haramaki and a few knick-knacks, so I definitely got the better end of the deal.
Included was a hand-written copy of a hush puppy recipe from her grandmother's 1950s Betty Crocker cookbook. I've never had hush puppies and I can't wait to try them, but the day the package arrived I was in a lazy mood so I put that off for another day.
Instead I sampled some of the fish and put together some cleaning-out-the-fridge-and-freezer snacks. The kippers, sardines and smoked mussels were just as tasty as I hoped, and went nicely with Ebisu's "The Hop" beer (the brand-new, extra-hoppy stuff in the green cans, which turns out to be not terribly different from their regular beer).
Thank you Sera!
The 5th day of the 5th month is Tango no Sekku (the Boys' Festival), also known as Kodomo no Hi (Childrens' Day), a day families all over Japan celebrate their male children. It is a national holiday, usually marking the end of a week-long string of holidays called Golden Week.
Since we don't have children, we don't need to follow traditions like hanging koi-nobori (carp streamers) outside or displaying a kabuto (samurai helmet) in our living room. But I figured I'd show my appreciation for the boy of the house by bringing up a little treat.
The lines for the traditional chimaki (sweet mochi wrapped in bamboo leaves) and kashiwa-mochi (sweet mochi wrapped in an oak leaf) were long, so I bought some cute fish-shaped sweets instead.
These simple wagashi (Japanese sweets) were made of a thin, pancake-like wrap folded over a piece of sweet mochi (sticky rice cake) and stamped with eyes and scales. They are supposed to look like koinobori, and this is the only time of year they are sold (although you can find similar sweets shaped like different fish throughout the year). They were delicious and we weren't satisfied with just three to share. Three each would be better-- remind me next year.
On my second morning in Hakone (see here for my first day), I was awoken at 5:00 am by the most beautiful, clear birdsong I'd heard in a long time. The birds were uguisu (bush warblers) and by the sound of it there was a gang of them right outside my window. Their music was as loud as it was beautiful, and after a half hour of trying to sleep with the pillow over my head, I gave up and used my camera to record the uguisu's birdsong. (And I got a few really good clips, only I have no idea how to upload them to this blog, so you'll have to check out this collection of someone else's uguisu recordings).
There was nothing to do but start my day, so I packed up and headed for the Hakone Kyukaido, a stretch of the old Tokaido Highway that connected Tokyo to Kyoto in the Edo era. The section that runs through Hakone still has many of the original ishidatami (cobblestones), which were originally laid in 1618.
It was a cold and foggy morning, and although the fog doesn't really show up well in these pictures I hope you can get some idea of the somewhat eery atmosphere this place had in the early morning. It was also really beautiful, with moss clinging to the rocks and trees and plenty of spring flowers in bloom. I'd love to come back in mid-summer, when the vegetation be more lush, and I'd be more appreciative of the cool temperature.
The Kyukaido runs from Moto-Hakone to Yumoto for about 10 km, and I did about half of it. After an initial uphill climb it is mostly downhill, but it was more difficult than I thought. The stones are not exactly flat and as they were damp from the fog it was tricky finding my footing, so I mostly stuck to the narrow dirt path that ran along the side. If this is what Japanese roads used to be like, then modern Japan's love affair with concrete is somewhat understandable. I can only imagine how hard it must of been to walk this path in traditional Japanese footwear.
After an hour or so of walking I came upon the Amazake-chaya. This teahouse has been serving travelers for hundreds of years and its ownership has been passed on to the same family for 12 generations. I was thrilled to see it open at such an early hour, as I was famished.
As its name suggests, it specializes in amazake, a hot drink made of fermented and sweetened cooked rice. When done right it is thick and warming and perfectly suited to cold misty mornings. And Amazake-chaya certainly did it right: the perfect amount of sugar, and served with a tiny plate of salty pickles to balance the sweetness. At a pricey 400 yen, it had to be good. I also ordered miso oden (simmered balls of konnyaku jelly with a sweet and salty miso paste), 400 yen, and uguisu-kinako mochi (sticky rice cakes coated with sweet mung bean flour), 450 yen. All were tasty and very traditional, so it was easy to imagine weary Edo era travellers eating the same things. The interior had a wonderful rustic feel, with a traditional dirty stone floor, dark wooden beams above and tables and chairs made of polished tree trunks, with all available surfaces charmingly cluttered with old artifacts and mail sent by happy customers from around the world. Unfortunately it was too dark for my pictures to turn out, but here are a few that someone else took. The two men staffing the place were incredibly kind and hospitable, which sounds like a given but in Japan it really isn't. Cold treatment by grumpy staff is sadly common in this country, even in tourist areas, so the warm welcome and friendly conversation I was offered at Amazake-chaya was a nice surprise.
When I paid for my breakfast the total came to 850 yen, 400 yen less than I'd figured. The owner explained that the first person to arrive on foot each day is served amazake for free, and today that was me. So I guess my 5 am rude awakening had its upside.
From the Amazake-chaya it was just under an hour walk to Hatajuku, which is the mid-point of the Hakone Kyukaido. The ishidatami was in poor repair for much of the way, and the path frequently joined up with the busy main road. Having trucks speed by me on the curving mountain roads was not pleasent, but not having to navigate the bumpy cobblestones allowed me to slow down and admire the view, which was lovely. Lots of spring flowers were blooming, and I counted about 10 varieties of violet, including this white one.
These tiny purple flowers seemed to be some kind of mint, but I've yet to identify them.
And as much as I loved the just-emerging bright green spring foliage, I thought this red-lined momiji (Japanese maple) was the most beautiful of all.
I was soon at Hatajuku, where I found two of these mysterious mossy domes. I have yet to figure out what exactly they are, but my initial guess that they are tombs (they are somewhat similar to the ancient burial mounds of Japan) seems to be wrong. Wonder what they are...
A nearby run-down cemetery was fully of shaga (Iris japonica) blossoms. I hoped the spirits enshrined there wouln't mind me tottering around their gravestones in search of flowers to photograph, but I suspect that the rain storm that started soon afterward was their revenge.
Hatajuku is full of zaiku (marquetry, a decorative woodworking technique) workshops. Hakone is famed for its zaiku, and most of it comes from Hatajuku, but somehow I wasn't really in the mood to visit galleries and workshops. Instead I followed some intriguing signs to meoto-zakura (a cherry tree "couple"), supposedly a famous sightseeing spot in the area. After a very steep and seemingly endless climb, I came upon the couple-- two very large but otherwise perfectly ordinary cherry trees, somewhat near to each other. Rather anti-climactic, especially considering they had already dropped most of their petals. But the view was stunning, and plenty of other cherry trees in the surrounding hills still had their petals. The picture below shows the branches of half of the couple (don't know if its the husband or the wife) with the fog-shrouded hills behind them.
This is when the rain started, so I ran to the bus stop and hopped on a bus back to Moto-Hakone. I had planned to travel north from there and visit Sengokuhara, which boasts wonderful milky-white onsen (hot springs) and the awkwardly named Botanical Garden of Wetlands. But the rain changed my plans and instead I stayed at Moto-Hakone and had a snack at Shinshou Soba. I ordered soba-jiruko, 670 yen, an interesting variation of oshiruko (sweet red bean soup with dumplings). Instead of the usual smooth rice flour dumplings, soba-jiruko has dumplings made of soba (buckwheat) with a fluffy, slightly chewy texture similar to soba-gaki (a savory soba dumpling). Served with hot tea and finely chopped shiba-zuke (cucumber and eggplant pickled with red shiso leaves), it hit the spot perfectly.
Next I walked down Moto-Hakone's main street to the suginamiki (cedar-lined road). This is another section of the Kyukaido, shorter than this morning's section and lined with ancient cedars that were planted back in 1618 to provide shade to travelers. The rain prevented me from getting any pictures of the suginamiki, but it was a nice walk. The path ended near the old Hakone Sekisho (Hakone checkpoint), which features a musty old museum and a newly built recreation of the old checkpoint buildings. Everyone who traveled along the Kyukaido during the Edo era had to stop at the Hakone Sekisho for inspection, and that was a lot of travelers: aside from the many pilgrims headed west to Ise Jingu Shrine (pretty much the only trip colmon folks were allowed to take), there were the Daimyo (feudal lords) and all their attendants, who were required by the Shogun to report to Edo once a year. The Hakone Sekisho was one of many checkpoints established to control the Daimyo and other travelers, with the aim of preventing uprisings. Attempting to avoid the checkpoint by sneaking through the mountains was punishable by death, as was a host of other offenses. The Hakone Sakisho paid particular attention to female travelers, and those deemed to have broken the rules were punished cruelly, often having their heads shaved and then given away as slaves to any man who wanted them.
The original structures were destroyed at the end of the Edo era in 1868; in 1999 excavations began and after a long reconstruction project the site was finally re-opening this spring. The buildings are presented as an open-air museum, with most of them viewed from the outside only. Although the recreation is impressive and the history interesting, neither the buildings nor the museum have much English information. If you're not a history buff and can't read Japanese, the Hakone Sekisho will be of little interest. Admission is 500 yen (Hakone Freepass holders get a 100 yen discount).
Finished with the checkpoint, I hopped on a bus headed for Hakone-Yumoto and got off a few stops early at Oku Yumoto. From there I walked along the Sukumo-gawa river to the grounds of the Hakone Yumoto Hotel, where I found a soba restaurant called Hakone Akatsuki-an. I ordered the soba set lunch, 1500 yen, which came with yaki-miso (a wooden spoon spread with miso and broiled until charred), pickles, hiya-yakko (cold tofu), a bowl of soba in hot broth, and buckwheat cake. It was the best meal of the trip. Yaki-miso is a favourite of mine, and although it would have been better accompanied with sake I resisted, wanting to stay sober for a dip in an onsen. The tofu was wonderful, and the soba was te-uchi (hand-made) with a chewy but slippery texture and nutty flavour. Both the soba and tofu are made with local spring water, which is supposed to be why they are so good. I'm not sure if the water is the only reason, but this was good food.
The staff were also very nice and let me stay on while waiting for a free shuttle bus to Hakone-Yumoto station, refilling my teacup while I waited.
Once at the station, it was a few minutes walk to Hakone Dochu Yajikita no Yu, where I was greeted warmly in English (of the faulting but extremely earnest variety). Yajikita no Yu is an onsen featuring six different hot spring baths and a sauna, at least on the women's side (I'm assuming the men get the same or better, as is the norm). The rotemburo (outdoor baths) were especially nice, but the jacuzzi seemed to use regular tapwater rather than onsen water. There were two cute little wooden barrel baths with lower temperatures that would be great for onsen beginners (here are a few pictures). 2 hours costs 900 yen, not including towel rental (you can bring your own), and they have a nice waiting area with tatami-covered benches that are perfect for relaxing with a beer after your bath.
With the rain still falling and my legs sore from the morning's walk, I decided to head home. At Hakone-Yumoto station I took the Odakyu Romance Car, which was not particularly romantic but very fast and comfortable. It is not included in the Hakone Freepass, but the 870 surcharge was well worth it. In just 1 hour and 25 minutes I was in Shinjuku and on my way home.
See more pictures of my trip to Hakone on my Flickr Hakone album.
JNTO has more information about Hakone, and the Odakyu site has comprehensive info about the Hakone Freepass.
Look what the Easter Bunny brought! These are the classiest Easter chocolates I've ever received, and I'm surprised to see how sophisticated the Easter Bunny has become. This is a far cry from the giant chocolate bunnies with those creepy yellow candy eyes, or those awful tooth-achingly sweet Cadbury creme eggs (I do miss the commercials with the clucking rabbits though-- do they still run those?).
Another surprise: it turns out that the Easter Bunny is 80cm tall and looks just like my niece Marya. Not at all bunny-like, but much cuter than I imagined.
Easter is not really celebrated in Japan, and because we're all too busy to cook an Easter feast at home Hideaki and I met Marya and her parents at the Tokyo Hilton, one of the few places in town to offer an Easter brunch. It actually wasn't very Eastery at all, with no ham or lamb or any kind of special Easter food at all except for hot cross buns. Those were really yummy (I don't remember ever eating them back home), and the food was OK, but the best part was watching Marya. She was far less interested in the food than in hanging out in the play area with the other kids. Little flirt that she is, she got on especially well with an older blond boy, who gallantly shared his cup of popcorn with her. It was very cute to watch and neither of them seemed to notice or care that they spoke different languages and looked quite different from each other. It's amazing how young children are so oblivious to that stuff.
I, on the other hand, am not oblivious at all, and freely discriminate based on colour. And I am no fan of white chocolate, so the milk chocolate chick on the left is all mine...
March 14th was White Day, the day that men give chocolates to women, in return for the ones they received on Valentine's Day last month. At least that's the way it's supposed to work, but in fact very few men actually do it (perhaps they feel it's silly, made-up holiday designed to make the chocolate companies rich, but I suspect they just simply forget). And the men who do bother don't seem to put nearly as much thought into it as the women did last month.
Case in point: the chocolate frog above, which one of my students received from a coworker. She hated it, of course. And unable to even look at it, she passed it on to me. Somehow her colleague has made it through life without knowing a well-known fact about Japanese women: they are all deathly afraid of frogs. I'm serious, every one of them. I realize that women all over the world tend not to like certain creepy crawlies, but we mostly save our phobias for the truly wretched creatures. You know, the ones that look evil, or carry germs and poison, or have a tendency to bite or sting.
But Japanese women have a special horror of frogs, which the rest of the world knows to be cute, harmless and lovable little creatures. Don't ask me why. They just do. And as silly as it is, I'm not complaining, since this irrational fear has led to me receiving free chocolate (the only White Day chocolate I got, not that I'm keeping track or anything).
Miso ramen (ramen noodles in miso-based broth) topped with menma (bamboo shoots), tororo kombu (dried shaved kelp), and char siu (Chinese bbq pork). With a salad, komochi shishamo (smelts with roe), deep-fried oysters and a can of Tokyo Black.
I bought these noodles at a "Hokkaido Fair" at a local department store. These fairs are freqent and feature local foods from different areas of Japan, and sometimes from other countries as well. The wares are never cheap, but there are always free samples and it's fun to try local and unusual delicacies. I usually end up buying something, and the Hokkaido Fair was no exception. Hokkaido is known for its miso ramen, so I bought some fresh ramen noodles with packs of broth. It was really delicious and when our bowls were empty I wished I'd bought more.
Oh well. There will be another fair soon enough, no doubt with food just as delicious.
Today we celebrated Hina Matsuri (Hina Doll Festival) with Marya and her family. On Hina Matsuri, families with girls will display a special set of dolls, serve special food, and generally celebrate having girls. I forgot to take a picture of the lovely pair of dolls that were displayed, but Marya is a bit of a doll herself so I think you'll forgive me.
Here she is trying to decide what to eat first, among a selection of arare (sweet rice crackers) and cookies. Atsuko, Marya's mom, made the cookies: they are shaped like sakura (cherry blossoms) and have three differently coloured layers, like hishimochi (another traditional sweet with pink, white and green layers). Atsuko, being health conscious, avoids artificial dies so the colours are much softer than they would normally be, but the cookies were still beautiful and very tasty.
There are plenty of foods associated with Hina Matsuri. Aside from the arare and hishimochi mentioned above, there is amazake (a sweet sake with fermented rice, served hot), chirashizushi (scattered sushi), ushio-jiru (clam soup) and sakura-mochi (rice cake filled with sweet azuki bean paste, wrapped in a cherry leaf). And we had them all, except for the hishimochi and chirashizushi!
We hung out and played for a while, and Marya showed us her new bike. She hasn't quite got the pedaling down yet, but she's quite the speed demon!
For dinner we mostly avoided Hina Matsuri food, instead eating fun stuff that Marya, who's just 2, can eat. We had a salad of thinly sliced daikon, kaiware-na (daikon sprouts), bacon, and mushrooms; kara-age (fried chicken); chawan-mushi (savory egg custard); and sekihan (rice with red beans).
There was also ushi-jiru, with clams, namafu (wheat gluten cakes) shaped like ume (Japanese apricot blossom) and mitsuba (trefoil). It was all delicious, and all made by Atsuko, who must have been working for days to prepare everything.
For dessert there was home-made sakura-mochi, topped with a salted sakura blossom. The store-bought kind is usually bright pink, but I really prefer this softer dusty-pink colour, which Atsuko made with a natural die.
Finally we finished with pomegranates. I haven't had one in years so it was a real treat-- especially since we had them Iranian style. They came with plastic bags and straws, and we had to seal up our pomegranate in a bag and squeeze it for several minutes, without breaking the skin. When the insides were crushed, we stuck a straw through the bag and into the pomegranate and drank. There was a surprising amount of sweet juice in there, but even after we were done we tried squeezing some more to get as much out of it as we could. No idea if this is actually how it's done in Iran, but it was fun and really delicious.
February 3rd is Setsubun, a holiday marking the mid-point between Toji (the Winter Solstice) and Shunbun (the Vernal Equinox).* I described the holiday a few years ago, but briefly it involves mamemaki, the throwing of beans to rid a dwelling of evil spirits and ensure good fortune for the coming year. This is done by tossing fukumame (lucky beans-- dried soybeans to be exact) out of the doors and windows of a home while yelling "Oni wa soto!" (Devils out!); "Fuku wa uchi!" (Fortune in!) is yelled while throwing the beans in each room.
Fukumame are usually sold in little plastic bags, but this year I sprung for beans attractively packaged in a masu (wooden sake cup). The masu is made of hinoki (a type of cedar) marked with the kanji for fuku (fortune). It also smells fantastic, with the piny-lemon scent that hinoki is famous for. Tomorrow I think I'll have to buy some nice sake to put this masu to good use.
After tossing the beans around the thing to do is eat a fat roll of sushi, variously called marukaburi-zushi and eho-maki. This is a local custom from Kansai (the region around Osaka, Kyoto and Kobe) that has recently become popular throughout Japan, thanks to the marketing efforts of supermarket and convenience store chains. It's kind of thought of as a fake consumerist holiday like Valentine's Day, but plenty of people, including me, grudgingly buy them. I'll take any excuse to eat more sushi, even if it's cheap mass-produced sushi.
This is the eho-maki I picked up at a local convenience store. We had to eat it whole, without cutting it while facing this year's lucky direction (North-North-West). We also had to finish the whole thing without talking, which is far easier than it looks. These are huge rolls, and it took us over five minutes to finish them.
What with our yuzu-buro (dip in a citron-scented bath) on the Winter Solstice, all the osechi (auspicious New Year's foods) we ate at New Years, hatsumode (the first prayer of the year at a shrine or temple), eating nanakusa-gayu (rice porrige with seven herbs) and now this, we're guaranteed to have a lucky and prosperous New Year. I wish the same to all of you!
* I find it interesting that the timing for Setsubun is the day after groundhog day, and both are celebrated in rather silly ways. The connection seems flimsy, but groundhog day is a modern extension of Candlemass, which, like Setsubun, was held at the half-way point between the Winter Solstice and Spring Equinox. They fall on different days due to minor differences in calenders, but both Setsubun and Candlemass originally celebrated the same thing.
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