Blue Lotus

More pysanky

A few weeks back I blogged about my first pysanky (Ukrainian Easter egg) attempt in years. It had turned out to be harder than I remembered and the first two eggs didn't come out as I'd wanted, but I assumed after the first few practice eggs I'd get the hang of it. Well, it seems that all my eggs this year were practice eggs, and I think it'll be a few more years until I'm happy with my pysanky.

One of the problems was the new-style kistka (stylus) I ordered had too fine a tip. It was too late to order a coarser one so I set about trying to make a traditional kistka myself, figuring thicker lines would be easier than very thin ones.

This is what I came up with (and this, first picture from top, is what an old-fashioned of kistka is supposed to look like). I whittled a hole in a dowel, inserted a small steel funnel, and fastened it with copper wire. I was going to buy a small piece of copper sheeting and roll it into a funnel shape but at Yuzawaya, a large craft supply store, I found a small leather punch that looked like it would do the job. It did, kind of: the opening at the bottom make a nice thick line, but it let so much wax through that it was a little hard to control. Still, not bad for a complete improvisation.

The coarse kistka allowed me to try a very simple traditional pysanky design, using just yellow, red and black dye. Pysanky uses a resist wax dying process similar to batik: drawing on a white egg with melted wax and soaking the egg in a dye bath will keep the covered sections of the egg white, and the process is repeated through several different colours of dye, with each new colour being covered up with more wax. When the design is complete, the wax is gently melted and wiped off the egg to reveal the colours that were trapped under the wax.

Realizing traditional pysanky might be a bit too difficult I tried some non-traditional designs, like the pink ume (Japanese apricot) above.

This very simple design of red ume on a black background was my favourite.

I also like this fish egg, and it was the most fun to do. On the front is a big scaly fish, and on the back:

The big fish is chasing (or is being chased by?) a school of tiny fish.

A close-up of the scales.

Almost all of the eggs, which had been boiled before I started, cracked in the oven while I was trying to melt off the wax, so they will be thrown away soon (before they start to stink). I'll be kind of sad to part with the ume and fish eggs, but it's a good thing the others were duds or I'd be pretty bummed.

Oh well, I have a whole year to practice. Hopefully by next Easter I will have gotten the hang of it!

Easter

This morning I grabbed my trusty glue gun and put together a quick present for my niece Marya: a basket of chicks.

I had originally planned to give her some pysanky (Ukrainian Easter eggs) but it's been so long since I've done them that all the eggs I made ended up being practice eggs, either cracked or not good enough to give away. Maybe I'll have better luck next year.

Hideaki and I met his sister and her family for brunch at Roti, a restaurant in Roppongi. I ordered eggs benedict, because someone had to-- it wouldn't be a proper brunch without them. The other grown-ups ordered steak and eggs, a burger and fries, and a spinach and feta omelet.

Marya had the fluffiest pancakes ever, of which she took two bites before moving on to her dad's fries and four bananas from the breakfast bar. We were all happy to help finish off her pancakes, not that our own food wasn't excellent: it turns out Roti does a very nice brunch, and since Tokyo is sadly lacking in brunch places we'll definitely be back.

They also do desserts well too, and this blackberry crumble was good enough to keep us away from the nearby Stone Cold Creamery which we'd originally planned to visit for dessert.

Then it was back to Marya's place where we spent a few hours decorating eggs. We were all concentrating on our eggs so hard that there are no pictures of us at work, just the finished eggs.

Then it was time to play. Which of course means watch Marya play, but unlike last time she deigned to let us help put together the train tracks, and Hideaki was even allowed to touch the train a few times. Progress is definitely being made, and in a few years we may actually get to push the train around for a lap or two. It's such a cool train track set that we joked about buying a separate one for the adults so we could play too, but I'm guessing Marya wouldn't stand for that.

Then we all went out for a dinner of soba, a nice way to soothe our tummies after such rich food for brunch. I had tsuke-toro soba, which were cold buckwheat noodles with a dip made of soy-based sauce, grated yam, raw egg and and nori seaweed.

We were then given a bag of Easter goodies and sent on our way, and when we got home we had some of them for dessert:

Hot crossed buns! I didn't think it was possible to find them, but apparently the bakery Andersen carried them for a few weeks before Easter, or at least they did at the Aoyama branch. Thank you sister-in-law!

Pysanky

It's been a long time since I've made pysanky-- nearly two decades, I think. I've been wanting to get back into for a few years but as the supplies aren't available in Japan and I never remember to pick some up on my visits home, I haven't been able to.

Pysanky are Ukrainian Easter eggs, and I learned how to do them at a class at the local museum/art gallery/archives where my mother worked. My mom had the coolest job in the world, at least in the eyes of a teenage girl with a fetish for old fashions and artifacts (corsets, crinolines and parasols would have figured prominently in my wardrobe if only I'd been able to find them). Through various exhibitions, events and classes I got to see and learn some very neat stuff, with my favourite probably being these wonderful eggs. I don't really remember the classes themselves, except for the time a Ukrainian Orthodox priest, in his long black robes, subtly tried to recruit me to his faith: he started off by pointing out our similar tastes in fashion.

But I do remember the eggs. The teacher's eggs were beautiful and perfect, and my first tries were so awful, but somehow I kept at it and was eventually able (at least according to my own memory, admittedly not the most reliable authority) to create some pretty good designs. I continued it for a few years but eventually my crafty tendencies turned elsewhere for gratification, and I pretty much forgot about pysanky.

Until last week, when I gave in and paid an outrageous shipping fee to have the materials sent over. I bought a couple of kystka (styluses), some beeswax and dyes, and with a candle, a hastily made egg stand a couple of practice eggs I was in business.

It's much harder than I remember. I don't seem to be able to make a straight line and have forgotten all the designs I used to do. That is to be expected, but making it harder is the fact that the materials are a bit different: I'm am having trouble getting used to the fancy new-style kistka, with its super-fine tip that tends to clog up produce an uneven wax flow. The stylus I used to use was a tiny cone made of copper sheeting wrapped to a wooden dowel with wire, almost primitive in its simplicity. And aesthetically the coloured sheets of beeswax, actually meant for making those rolled beeswax candles, is not nearly as nice as big chunk of pure golden beeswax I used to use (come to think about it the colouring in the wax might be what's causing the uneven flow in the kistka).

Still, despite the years of absence and these unfamiliar, new-fangled tools, I don't think these test eggs came out all that badly. And I've just noticed that there is a wealth of information online, so if I can find some good designs for beginners I think I can back into this.

Do any of you do pysanky? I would love to hear any tips, especially from those of you in Japan or other places where materials are hard to come by. Anybody ever made their own kistka?

ひな祭り

I teach a Thursday evening lesson that always ends with "tea time", where my students and I move to the living room (this class is in a private home) and chat over tea and snacks. Although our host provides the refreshments, at least one student a week will bring something, usually a souvenir from a trip or something seasonal. Last time all the snacks were Hina matsuri related:

Clockwise from bottom: kome okoshi (puffed rice bars); kompeito candy; kaminari okoshi (puffed rice bars from Asakusa, Tokyo); hina sembei (sugar-coated rice cracker); candy-coated puffed rice.

Hina matsuri, known as the Doll Festival, is on March 3rd. It is celebrated by girls and their families by displaying special Hina ningyo (hina dolls) and eating special food. Since I don't have kids it's not something I celebrate at home, but luckily I know lots of people with daughters and get to see how they celebrate it.

Above and below are the displays in the home of the lady who hosts my Thursday evening class. She used to have a full set of dolls that she'd arrange on a huge tiered display, but now that her daughter is grown up she doesn't do the full shebang.

Today we went to my husband's sister's house to celebrate Hina matsuri with her family. This picture, painted by my mother-in-law, was on display:

We were treated to a lovely lunch:

Date-maki (rolled omelet); kamaboko (steamed fish paste) with a Hina matsuri design; shrimp sauteed with shishito peppers; tandoori chicken and steamed broccoli; amazake (a sweet fermented rice drink); ushio-jiru (clear soup) with clams, shrimp balls and mitsuba (trefoil).

There was also chirashi-zushi (scattered sushi) topped with shiitake, renkon (lotus root), carrot, ikura (salmon roe), smoked salmon, thin omelet, and mitsuba. All of the food (with the exception of the chicken) are special Hina matsuri dishes, and it was all delicious. The chirashi-zushi and ushio jiru were especially tasty and I would have eaten more if Marya, my niece, hadn't finished lunch early and demanded we play with her. And by "play" she meant "sit quiet and watch me play and don't you dare touch any of my toys". In a cute way, of course-- she's 3.

Dessert was mitarashi dango (rice cake balls with a sweet sauce); sakura-an dango (rice cake balls and white bean paste flavoured with cherry leaves); and sakura mochi (red bean paste-stuffed sticky rice wrapped in a preserved cherry leaf), all homemade. There was also a cake sent by my parents-in-law that I didn't get a picture of because I was busy "playing" with Marya. It was all lovely though and we were sent home with a nice sugar buzz and enough leftovers to have the same thing again for dinner.

I didn't cook at all and yet I got to eat all kinds of great stuff-- that's my kind of Sunday.

Jerks, nuts

In my previous post I mentioned spending yesterday morning shoveling the sidewalk in front of our apartment building. Well, yesterday's snow lasted all day and caused all sorts of chaos in the city, with injuries and delayed trains and canceled flights. Snow is relatively rare in this part of Japan, and Tokyoites don't seem to know how to deal with it.

As a small example, very few people bothered to shovel their walks, except for the odd shop and restaurant. Most people seemed to stay home, and the passersby that did venture out on the path in front of our apartment building pretty much ignored me as I was shoveling. I found that odd as back in Canada the snow brings out a certain camaraderie in people, and even people who normally don't greet strangers become a bit friendlier. But here people walked right on by without comment, some even looking annoyed by my presence.

Among the ignorers was an upstairs neighbor who didn't bother returning my "ohayo gozaimasu" as she scampered out of the building wearing this season's uniform: over sized sunglasses worn round the clock, a fitted parka with a fur-trimmed hood, ultra-short dress shorts, bare thighs, thigh-high stockings, knee high spike heel boots. It's a look that I despise, as logic dictates that if it's warm enough for shorts you don't need boots, and I prayed that she'd slip in the snow, but alas I'd already carved a path for her and she did just fine.

She was a sweetheart compared to the next guy who came by though. He was on a bike and passed by Hideaki first, who was busy shoveling. As the guy rode along the cleared section of the sidewalk he had to slow down to wait for my husband. And as he passed he gave my husband a look so dirty I thought I was seeing things-- surely nobody is that rude. But then as he passed me, perhaps to make sure I got the point, he gave me a dirty look too. And continued down the sidewalk, carefully sticking to the shoveled section.

I thought we'd reached our daily asshole limit, but I was wrong. We went out to do some errands and found someone's cell phone in the snow. It was still working but we thought it would be a bit of a hassle to track down the owner ourselves, and as luck would have it we were just across the street from Au shop. And it was an Au phone, so we brought it in, because of course they'd be happy to help out one of their customers. Nope. The girl at the counter refused to take the phone and said it was up to us to return it.  No biggie, we just took it to the nearest koban (mini police station) and they were happy to take care of it. It was just a shock, as an Au user myself, to learn how dismal Au's customer service.

From then on we only met nice people. We took a break at our favourite kissaten (coffee shop) and were treated to a free little cup of amazake (a hot sweet drink made of fermented rice). I think it was because it was snowing, as sometimes businesses offer little freebies during bad weather. And our coffees came with little hand-made paper cones filled with roasted soybeans, in celebration of Setsubun.

Under the old calender, Setsubun was considered the day before Spring, and was also part of the New Year celebrations. It is mainly celebrated by throwing soybeans, and sometimes other small objects, to bring good luck and purge evil. The beans are also eaten, one for each year of your age, to ensure a good year. This little cone of beans weren't quite enough to cover all my years, but it was a nice little treat that cheered us up after all the jerks we'd met.

Back at home we were ready for a little bean throwing ourselves. Mame maki, literally bean scattering, is traditionally done with roasted soy beans and that's what we've always used, but I've heard peanuts are acceptable too so this time we tried throwing peanuts in their shell. I figured the clean up would be much easier, and I was right-- and they can still be used.

Another first was eating miso peanuts (peanuts coated in miso) instead of the usual soy beans. They were tasty and it was much easier to eat 34 peanuts coated in crunchy, slightly sweet miso than 34 dry and tasteless soy beans. I think a family tradition has just been born.

For more on Setsubun, see this slightly more informative post from a few years ago.

Snowy Setsubun

Another snowy day! This is certainly turning out to be one of the wintery winters I've experienced in a while, and I'm actually enjoying it. I was so excited about the snow this morning that I asked the landlords (who live right in the apartment next door) if I could borrow their shovel. And then shoveled the sidewalk in front of the building, feeling all nostalgic about Canadian winters. Hideaki soon brought out a nice hot mug of coffee and took over, and when we'd cleared away all the snow we got to work on the snowman above. Doesn't look like much in the picture, but it was big and so heavy it took the both of us, using all our strength, to roll it into place. Like all Japanese snowmen, it only has two parts, which was a big relief-- we were too tired out to keep going.

So it wasn't even 11 am yet and we'd completely tired ourselves out. An early lunch was in order, so I set out to the conbini (felt great to walk on the sidewalk I'd just cleared) and bought two ehomaki. Because today is Setsubun, and eating these great big sushi rolls is one way to celebrate.

Ehomaki contain seven ingredients (representing sichifukujin, the seven lucky gods) and must be eaten uncut, with your hands. You also have to face the year's lucky direction (South Southeast), which we accomplished thanks to the handy compass on my cell phone-- Hideaki was rather disappointed that South Southeast faced away from the TV. And just to make things even harder, you must eat the ehomaki in complete silence.

The Setsubun celebrations aren't over yet, but we're putting them on hold and heading back out. The snow is still falling, and we've some playing to do!

Kagami biraki

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.

After New Year's

It was inevitable: my husband doesn't consider a visit home complete without at least one wagyu (Japanese beef) feast, so we took a bread from all the seafood and pigged out on teppanyaki (food cooked on a table-top griddle).

The star of the meal was a big pile of very well marbled and thinly sliced beef, but there was also tofu, nama-fu (wheat gluten cakes), cabbage, shiitake, shimeji mushrooms, eringi mushrooms, and hampen (fish paste cakes).

Once cooked it was dipped into a mixture of daikon oroshi (grated daikon) and ponzu (citrus soy sauce) and you better believe it tasted fantastic. The beef will almost certainly be the best we'll have all year, so it's kind of a bummer to know that it's all downhill from January 3rd. We definitely weren't complaining at the time though.

On the fourth day of the year I'd recovered enough to go out for a bit, so we all drove out to Kiyoshikoujin Seichouji, a temple near the Takarazuka theatre in Hyogo Prefecture, for hatsumoude (the first visit of the year to a shrine or temple). After offering our prayers for the new year we bought omikuji (fortunes), and I got stuck with kyou (bad luck). Good thing I don't believe in silly stuff like that, or I might be in for a bad year.

Or maybe it was true after all: shortly afterwards we stopped by a soba shop for lunch. My in-laws had been there before and said it was good, but after waiting over half an hour out in the cold we were treated to a mediocre meal. It seems the shop follows the despicable practice of subsituting inferior ingredients on busy days: although usually the shop only sells teuchi (handmade in-house) soba noodles, on this day the the regular menu items all came with noodles purchased elsewhere. Only the more expensive lunch special came with teuchi noodles, but there were no signs or notices on the wall warning customers of this. We only found out because one of us happened to order the special and it was completely different from everyone else's, which prompted us to ask the waitress. Who cheerfully explained the sneaky substitution.

That night's dinner more than made up for the crappy lunch, and was of a kind I really love: many little dishes of various treats served with endless bowls of rice. Delicious, sweet, fluffy rice, the kind I never seem capable of making at home. This was an especially fancy version of the many little dishes type of meal, with ikura (salmon roe) and mentaiko (spicy cod roe) included in the already impressive spread.

And the next day we flew back to Tokyo, and on the bus home from the airport enjoyed some pretty nice views-- it was already dark and Tokyo looks so much nicer at night. Sadly all my attempts at pictures came out fuzzy, but I kind of like the way the lights on the building above look all spiky.

Osechi

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.

年賀状

This year's nengajou (new year's postcard). Pretty lame, but I was way too busy this year to make it with stamps as I usually do and it just so happened that Hideaki got me a photo printer form Christmas so I caved in and printed them (just like 90% of people here do). The one in the picture was the practice run, so those two lines at the top aren't in the good ones.

We only had a few hours to do it so we used a free image we found online-- not the coolest design but the best we could find. To make it just a little more personal I wrote "Happy New Year" by hand and added a sticker or two, and the blank space is for a short individual message (in Japan the back of the postcard is for addresses only, so all correspondence must be done on the front.

And wouldn't you know it, after all that work they were mailed late. Between getting home from ski camp and leaving for Osaka I only had 8 hours to unpack, re-pack and sleep, so not surprisingly I forgot to pack the half-finished postcards (we usually finish writing the addresses in Osaka). Nengajou are best finished and mailed before New Year's Eve so they can arrive on the first day of the year, or at least within the first three days. Ours will be a week late, a major breach of etiquette-- I hope we are forgiven.

2008 is nezumi doshi, or the Year of the Mouse. "Nezumi" actually means both mouse and rat in Japanese (which I can't quite fathom as to me they are two completely different creatures) so I'm not sure what the official English translation is. Somehow in Japan "nezumi doshi" is usually translated as "Year of the Mouse" and most references to "Year of the Rat" seem to be Chinese in origin. So although both countries use the same zodiac there are slight differences between the two countries (for example, last year was the Year of the Pig in China but the Year of the Boar in Japan). Can anyone help clear this up?

Anyway, I'd like to wish all of you a Happy New Year!

New Year's Eve

So Hideaki and I arrived at his parent's house in Northern Osaka on December 30th, and on that day there was another arrival: 3 crabs from Hokkaido, where my brother-in-law lives. We haven't seen him in years, but apparently he still remembers he has a family and last New Year's he sent us some crabs. It seems word got back to him that we liked them so he did the same thing again this time, and we're hoping it becomes a tradition. It would be great if he himself could make it down for a visit, but as long as the seafood keeps coming I have little complaint.

On the left is a tarabagani (king crab) and on the right are two kegani (literally "hairy crab", called horsehair crab in English), both arriving boiled but very fresh. The picture makes them look quite small but keep in mind they are on large serving platters.

Here is a closer look at the kegani, just in case you were wondering where the name comes from.

Before eating they were broken up, with the body served along with the legs. There is plenty of good meat in a crab's body, not to mention the kanimiso (tomalley), and in Japan it is all eaten as-is or dipped in ponzu (citrus soy sauce). Which is exactly how we did it, and it tasted so good I had no wish for the garlic butter we use back home.

Kegani is probably the best-loved crab in Japan, due to its delicate flavour and rich kanimiso, and last year we all agreed that the kegani was superior (although I think kegani loses points for the way the flesh flakes out the shell rather than staying in one big, juicy piece). This year, strangely enough, the opposite was true: both the meat and kanimiso of the tarabagani was better. Do crabs have good and bad vintages? Both were fantastic, mind you, so it was a close call and we were happy just to have the rare chance to compare two types of crab.

My niece Marya was her usual cute self, but sadly as I was sick I wasn't able to play with her as much as I wanted. Almost three, she's at that age where she has very specific ideas about how things should be done, so once she learned a new game it had to be done in exactly the right way, by exactly the right person. The tucking-in above was my work, as was "eentsy-weentsy spider", the train crossing game, and the shopping game, so I tired myself out a bit on those. Luckily I wasn't allowed to participate in other stuff, like dancing to the Winnie the Pooh song, so I did get to rest occasionally. Kids are so funny.

New Year's Eve the shellfish indulgence continued, with a whole ise-ebi (spiny lobster) each. The uma-ni (braised vegetables) beside it is a traditional New Year's dish and includes kuwai (arrowroot bulb), a round potato-like vegetable with a spike on top that is considered auspicious for some reason that I can't recall.

The meal was finished off with the traditional toshikoshi soba (literally "year-crossing noodles). It is said that the long noodles symbolize a long life, but the exact reasons for eating toshikoshi soba are not exactly clear. The soba was supposed to be topped with ebi tempura (shrimp tempura), which continued the shellfish theme, but as much as I love ebi tempura I can't stand it in my soba-- I hate how the crispy batter gets soggy. So I opted for nishin soba (soba topped with braised herring) instead.

And after a good game of hanafuda the new year began, and with Marya in bed we had the TV tuned in to NHK, which had live broadcasts from dozens of temples and shrines throughout Japan-- always a treat to watch and a stark contrast to the horrible programming on offer during the rest of the holidays. Thank goodness Marya doesn't watch TV so as long as she's around the idiot box stays off, but just this once I enjoyed seeing the picturesque shrines and hearing the sound of temple bells all over the country as they were rung 108 times to welcome the new year.

Christmas in Nasu

Christmas fell on a weekday last year, which meant it was just another workday in Japan. I had the day off but Hideaki went to work as usual, and as I couldn't stand the thought of staying home alone on Christmas I headed up to Nasu, a resort town in Tochigi Prefecture, with my friend Emi. It made sense as Nasu happens to be the location of the English ski camp I was to work at starting from the next day. And Emi is from Tochigi and frequents a certain fancy hotel often enough to get us a super discount. So I was able to enjoy a lovely day of relaxation before the four-day ski camp and week-long visit to the in-laws.

Upon arriving in Nasu we stopped by a soba shop for lunch. I ordered gobou-soba, soba noodles in hot broth topped with gobou kaki-age (burdock root tempura). It was fantastic, and the gobou kaki-age (a first for me) had a lovely earthy flavour and crisp texture.

We stayed at Hotel Epinard, a large resort hotel with a nice onsen (hot spring bath). The lobby was decorated for Christmas, but there was surprisingly little going on-- I guess because it was a weekday. The only Christmas-related entertainment on offer was a hand bell concert, which I skipped in favour of getting an early sleep (I knew I wouldn't getting much sleep during camp). Emi stayed up past one, getting spa treatments and soaking in the rotemburo (outdoor hot spring).

Christmas dinner was shabushabu, a tradition when we stay at this hotel. Above is the shabushabu nabe (shabushabu pot, modeled on the Mongolian hotpot) with three dips: the usual ponzu (citrus soy sauce) and goma-dare (sesame sauce) along with a new one: yuzu-miso (yuzu citrus and miso).

The beef was local and very nicely marbled. It was less rich than top quality wagyu but still very good, and best of all it was all-you-can-eat. We managed two and a half plates.

The veggies are also said to be local and are really good, but you only get the one plate. Included are shiitake, hakusai (napa cabbage), shungiku (chrysanthemum greens), nira (garlic chives), chingensai (bok choi), negi (long onion), nasu (eggplant), shimeji mushroom, enokidake mushroom, and a few decorative slices of carrot and daikon. Also included are yakumi (flavourful garnishes) for the dips: negi and momiji-oroshi (daikon grated with chili pepper).

Shabu-shabu is cooked by taking a slice of beef with your chopsticks and swishing it around in the hot broth for a few seconds until it is cooked to your liking (a little on the rare side is best; good beef like this is perfectly safe to eat raw). The vegetables are left to simmer in the broth and taken out and eaten whenever you feel like it.

At this hotel the shabu-shabu is finished not with the traditional udon noodles, but with ramen. Salt and light chicken stock are added to the remaining broth along with ramen noodles, negi and bean sprouts. It is utterly delicious and I could have finished up all of the broth, if not for a little accident:

While Emi was passing me the pepper shaker (nothing is better with ramen than black pepper) one of us-- we are still in dispute about exactly who-- dropped it into the broth. I would have been happy to ignore it and keep eating but we were advised not to. so our dinner ended there. Oops.

The next morning I woke up early enjoyed the above view of the mountains where I'd soon be skiing. Not much snow yet for this time of year, but pretty nonetheless.

Breakfast was buffet-style, and if you've never had a buffet breakfast at a good Japanese hotel you're missing out. The above plate was all I had time to eat, but represented just a quarter of the offerings, most of which featured local food (especially eggs, dairy products and vegetables). Very good and it sustained me over the next several hours, as I said good-bye to Emi and headed to the campsite to prepare for the ski camp.

Hotel Epinard Nasu
0