Blue Lotus

Spring Dinner

This was one of the few meals I've cooked this season that really took advantage of the delicious ingredients that show up in the spring, in this case new potatoes, new onions and fresh bamboo shoots. Clockwise from left: tako to daikon no nimono (octopus braised with daikon), shinjaga no nikkorogashi (new potatoes simmered in dashi and soy sauce with new onions), yaki-takenoko (sauteed bamboo shoots), rice, miso soup with wakame seaweed, bamboo shoots and mitsuba (trefoil), and daikon no happa itame (sauteed daikon leaves and peels with sesame seeds). The new potato dish is a favourite, and because it's easy and makes good leftovers I make it often. Recipe here if you're interested.

The tako to daikon no nimono is not really a spring dish, but a simple and hearty simmered dish like this is welcome at any season.

Takenoko (bamboo shoots) are definitely a spring ingredient, and the difference between the pre-boiled shoots available throughout the year and the fresh ones are dramatic. Freshly cooked bamboo shoots have a fresh and delicate aroma and a crunchy texture that don't survive long-term storage, but I usually only get around to preparing them about once per year.

I think I mentioned in a previous post that spring vegetables tend to require lots of work, and bamboo shoots are a perfect example: most types are inedible fresh and need long and careful preparation to remove their ample aku (bitter properties). They must be be partly peeled, then trimmed and scored, then simmered for an hour or so in water with rice bran and a dried chili pepper or two. And then they have to sit around in the simmering water for at least another hour until cool enough to handle (taking them out too early turns them bitter), then peeled and sliced. And only then are they ready to be cooked.

I like them best simply simmered in dashi and soy sauce, but since I already had two simmered dishes I decided to add the smaller bits to the soup, then sautee the rest in sesame oil, finishing with soy sauce and sake, and garnishing them with kinome (prickly ash leaves, from the same plant that gives us sansho pepper).

It was a lot of work for one meal, but with my first crunchy, fresh-tasting bite I knew it was worth it.

Kushiro Day Four

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

More pictures of the trip can be seen here.

Kushiro Day Three

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

  

 

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

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

 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

More pictures of the trip can be seen here.

Kushiro Day One

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

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

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

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

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

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

Here we are in the news studio.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

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

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

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

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

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

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

More pictures from the trip can be seen here.

Presents

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!

Easter

I've been madly decorating eggs for the past few weeks to use for a couple of children's classes and an egg hunt with my niece. The psanky style eggs I tried didn't turn out very nicely, unfortunately, but here are a few of our regular eggs. All of the really nice ones were done by Hideaki, who turns out to be quite talented in the Easter egg decorating department.

On the weekend we visited my sister-in-law and her family for the egg hunt and more egg decorating. Mayra was so into the egg hunt that we kept re-hiding the eggs just so we could watch her find more of them. She would do this little running dance thing every time she found one, and it was extra cute when she needed to be picked up to reach an egg up high, with her little legs frantically running in the air.

Lunch was sushi, which was an Easter first for me. Delivery sushi is not always great, but this stuff was really good and we felt so lucky to have had so much good sushi recently.

Dessert was also a treat: my mother-in-law had sent our favourite cake from Osaka, from a patisserie called Madame Shinko. The place's specialty is baum brulee, a variation of baumkuchen (a layered German cake very popular in Japan) featuring a crisp layer of caramelized sugar on top. The top stayed remarkably crunchy considering the journey from Osaka, and I couldn't stop at the small piece shown below. There were also Easter cookies and plenty of chocolate Easter eggs too.

My niece Marya was a little less into the egg decorating than egg hunting, and ended up having more fun peeling the boiled eggs. But that's OK. The grown ups had plenty of fun decorating their own eggs (there were some great ones, I wish I took pictures). And maybe it was all the sugar from dessert, but she was extra sweet that day. She usually refuses to smile for the camera, preferring to make faces, but this time she let me snap away as she admired her loot. So here's a little sweetness for you to enjoy, too:

Marumasuya, or Hana Yori Dango

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Sushi lunch

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Mentaiko

Mentaiko (polluck or cod roe preserved with salt and red pepper, often called "spicy cod roe" in English) is one of my favourite foods in the world, but we don't eat if often because it's expensive. Or at least the good stuff is expensive, but as I've discovered the cheap stuff is cheap for a reason and just not worth buying. And then there's the really good stuff, mentaiko so rare you can't buy it in stores: you have to buy it where it's made, or by mail order, or have a very kind person send it to you as a present. Which is how we got this stuff:

It arrived in a refrigerated delivery truck, shipped from Hakata (a city in southern Japan famous for its mentaiko) inside two boxes. The inner box is meant to look like the wooden container mentaiko used to be sold in, and was actually reinforced on the inside with real wood. Typical Japanese packaging, with incredible attention to detail but rather excessive (and a real bitch to tear apart for recycling).

Inside were seven sacs of roe (you can only see six here because I'd already taken one out for sampling). These were bigger and more beautiful than anything I've ever bought, and according to the package made without artificial colouring (cheaper mentaiko is often dyed red).

There's a lot you can do with mentaiko, but the best thing to do with top quality roe is simply serve it over rice. So that was the first thing we did, and it was delicious. It tasted rich without being fishy, had a good level of spice, and although the texture was creamy, each roe managed to hold up well and pop in the mouth. Unfortunately it also had a strong sake odor, which my husband liked but I wasn't crazy about.

The rest of the mentaiko was served in ways that would reduce the sake smell. Here is rice with yakimentaiko (grilled mentaiko), cooked whole and sliced. The picture didn't turn out well so it's hard to see, but it is cooked on the outside and pink in the centre: I love the contrast of the creamy inside and firm outside. Yakimentaiko is also a great filling for onigiri (rice balls), which is exactly what happened to the leftovers from this meal.

My other favourite way to eat mentaiko is as mentaiko spaghetti. This is one of the simplest recipes in the world (although the dish has a million variations, some of them quite complicated), and involves nothing more than scooping out the roe from a sac or two of mentaiko, mixing it with melted butter, and tossing with spaghetti. Toppings, like chiffonade of shiso (perilla), crumbled nori seaweed or the sliced negi (long onion) shown here, are optional.

For a dish with such a short ingredient list, mentaiko spaghetti is ridiculously good. I'd eat it all the time if I could, and next time we're lucky enough to get a box of mentaiko I'm stocking up on spaghetti and butter. Or maybe I should just move to Hakata.

Tsumami

On Sunday Hideaki and I went to a local cherry blossom festival, which suffered from a lack of actual cherry blossoms; this spring has been cold in Tokyo and most sakura are blooming late. The festival wasn't a complete bust though: they were giving away sake, and we won a bottle!

This is the same sake we bought last year, called Oizumi and made from local spring water. We quite liked it and I was a bit bummed that I wouldn't be able to afford a bottle this year, so we were thrilled to win it.

When you drink in Japan, especially sake, it is mandatory to serve tsumami (drinking snacks). Also called otsumami (and for that matter, sake is also called osake; the "o" is an honorific), these snacks are flavoured more strongly than regular food and tend to be served in small amounts, and are eaten slowly while enjoying the alcohol. Some tsumami, like nuts, are good with nearly any type of alcohol but most are thought to go with a specific type, like edamame (green soybeans) with beer or cheese with wine. For sake seafood is big: think shiokara (fermented squid) or grilled himono (dried salted fish).

The two tsumami shown above are typical. On the right is hiyashi tomato, which literally means "cold tomato" and has a thousand variations; this one is drizzled with fragrant sesame oil and ponzu (citrus soy sauce) and sprinkled with crushed sesame seeds and black pepper. On the left is maguro no tsukudani (tuna simmered in soy sauce), and is one of the best examples yet of my recent drive to save money by using up all the excess food that's taken over my kitchen.

I've had frozen tuna in my freezer since last year, a gift from my sister-in-law from a trip to Miura Hanto (the Miura Peninsula in Kanagawa, famed for its tuna). We ate it at first as sashimi and it was delicious, but there was such a large amount we had to freeze most of it, and not knowing what to do with frozen raw tuna I kind of left it in there until I forgot about it. When I noticed it again recently I was relieved to see it had no freezer burn, and when I won the sake I knew I'd finally found a use for the tuna. It turned out so good that I wish I had a freezer full of frozen fish! If you'd like to try making it yourself, read on: the recipe is at the bottom of the post.

This picture probably looks odd to most Japanese people, since you're not supposed to drink alcohol--especially sake--with rice. Apparently tsumami are just snacks and once you have your real meal (which in Japan always includes rice) you have to stop drinking, since sake is made of rice and you wouldn't serve two kinds of rice with a meal, would you? Or something like that. But the fact is that most tsumami are also really good with rice, and since we really liked the sake we included the tsumami with our dinner and kept on drinking.

From left, maguro no tsukudani, hiyashi tomato, asazuke (quick pickles) of cabbage and cucumber, hiyayakko (cold tofu topped with soy sauce and bonito flakes) and gobo to toriniku no takikomigohan (rice cooked with chicken and burdock, also from the freezer).

And now for the recipe. First I should note that if you should not use really good fresh fish: save the good stuff for sashimi and use either non-sashimi grade fish or sashimi grade fish that is too old to serve raw. It also doesn't have to be tuna: buri (yellowtail), kajiki (swordfish) and other firm fleshed fish can be used as well. Finally, you could simmer daikon, negi (long onions) or other vegetables with it; I will definitely use both next time. Oops, one more thing: the flavourings are highly adjustable: eliminate the water to make the flavour stronger, add more water to make it weaker, and add more or less sugar to your liking. Taste as you go and adjust as you like.

Maguro no Tsukudani (Tuna simmered in soy sauce)

450 grams (1 pound) of tuna, in blocks
1 knob fresh ginger
120 ml (1/2 cup) sake
120 ml (1/2 cup) soy sauce
75 ml (1/3 cup) water
2 Tbsp mirin (sweet cooking sake)
2 Tbsp sugar

Cut the tuna into bite-sized pieces. If it is getting a little old put it in a sieve and pour boiling water over it and let drain. Peel the ginger with the back of a knife and slice thinly.

Add the sake, soy sauce, water, mirin and sugar to a pot and cook over medium heat until the sugar has dissolved. Turn the heat to low, add the tuna and bring to a simmer, then half cover with a lid and let simmer, stirring carefully once or twice and making sure liquid doesn't evaporate. Cook 30 minutes to 1 hour or more; the tuna is ready when it is infused with flavour and softened slightly. If excess liquid remains you might like to remove the tuna to a bowl and simmer the liquid on medium until reduced to your liking, then return the tuna to the pot and stir to coat with the sauce.

Serve hot or room temperature with sake. Will keep several days in the fridge (and will actually get softer after a day or two, so try not to eat it all at once).

Yubeshi

This is a package of yubeshi, one of my favourite types of wagashi (Japanese sweets). Yubeshi actually comes in many forms, all of which seemingly have little in common beyond the use of rice flour and soy sauce, with several areas in northern Japan claiming a different type as its own. The kind I like is a mochi-like square flavoured with sugar and soy sauce, covered with walnuts and dusted with a mysterious substance called oburato. It comes from Iwate, Miyagi and Yamagata prefectures.

This yubeshi was bought at a local supermarket and comes from Iwate. This is the first time I've bought it that way: I've mostly had it given to me as a souvenir from people who've traveled up north. I received it very occasionally for years, always really liking it and wanting to go buy more but never being able to remember what it was called. So I was never able to find it for myself until last year when I actually had a student who'd given me some earlier write down the name for me. I sent my husband on a mission to find some, and when he mentioned it at work half of his coworkers claimed it was the meibutsu (famous product) of their hometowns. They helped him locate some at a department store, and when he brought it home I knew I'd finally found the elusive treat I'd been looking for.

Top quality yubeshi from a good wagashiya (Japanese sweet shop) is a special thing. It has a slightly chewy texture, softer than mochi but elastic enough to give it good bite. The addition of soy sauce to a dessert seems odd at first, and indeed I've tried a few that were too heavy on the soy sauce and and didn't taste very nice, but restrained use of soy sauce is quite nice and goes with the walnuts well. Most yubeshi is just sweet enough to qualify as a dessert, but not overly sugary the way some Japanese sweets can be.

The sparkly stuff seen above is the oburato, a starchy substance used to encase medicine and wrap sticky sweets. It is most often found in small very thin sheets or tiny baggies, in which powdered medicine is poured before the baggie is sealed and swallowed whole (medicine is still commonly dispensed in powdered from in Japan, and wrapping it in oburato prevents you from having to taste it). A few kinds of wagashi are wrapped in these sheets or sprinkled with a flaked form of oburato; in either case the oburato is completely edible and won't affect the flavour of the food it encases as it has no taste of its own. It is a nice alternative to the powdered sugar used in the west or the rice flour more commonly used in Japan, because it doesn't make a mess and adds a pretty sparkle to whatever it's used on.

Unfortunately, this yubeshi wasn't great. It seems that the supermarket is not the place to buy it, so I'll have to wait until my next visit to a department store (or the next time a student makes a trip to northern Japan).

Back to food

There hasn't been much food around here in recent months so I think it's time to show you what I've been eating lately. And lately it's been lots of stews and nabe (hotpots), which are warming, easy to make and usually can be stretched into several meals: perfect for cold weather and a period of my life when I'm busy and not really into cooking.

We'll start with the gyusuji nikomi (stewed beef tendon) above, which was simmered for hours until tender in soy sauce and sake along with daikon, shiitake, negi (long onion), shirataki (konnyaku, or devil's tongue jelly, noodles), and eggs. Served with rice and chopped okra mixed with katsuobushi (bonito flakes) and soy sauce, this was a healthy meal: beef tendon is so extremely flavourful that we only ate a very small amount of meat but enjoyed its rich flavour in the food it was simmered with.

It made a few days worth of leftovers. Here tofu and stronger seasonings have been added, making it good for eating with rice. And when the solid ingredients were gone we ate neko manma, a slightly naughy indulgance. Neko manma literally means "cat food" (manma being baby talk for solid food) and it refers to the dish that results from mixing the leftovers of a meal together, which is then fed to the cat. It's usually rice mixed with miso soup or the liquid from stews like the one above and happens to be an absolutely delicious way to finish a meal, but it is bad manners both to mix food and to add stuff to rice (people here have a weird thing for the sacred purity of white rice and would drop dead with shock if they saw a westerner pour soy sauce directly onto her rice). So even everybody loves eating this way, they all know it's bad manners and continue to call it cat food. Even when there's no cat and they have every intention of eating it themselves. Anyway, try neko manma for yourself, but do it at home--this is not something to do in company.

Here is oden, a stew of daikon, and any number of other foods, usually fish or tofu related. The bowl above includes egg, hampen (steamed fish cake), yaki chikuwa (a steamed and grilled tube of fish paste), yakidoufu (grilled tofu), chikuwabu (a chewy tube of wheat gluten), konnyaku (devil's tongue jelly), and daikon. There was plenty more in the pot and this is just a small sampling of oden, but you can probably imagine that it's warming and healthy. But it's also far more satisfying than many healthy foods thanks to all the variety (and also thanks to the delicious broth, made with kombu and katsuobushi and flavoured with sake and light soy sauce). It can be a very budget-friendly food, and this meal is especially so: the daikon greens were sauteed in sesame oil, flavoured with soy sauce and sesame seeds and added to the rice, and a side dish was made by simmering the daikon peels with the kombu (kelp) and katsuobushi (dried bonito) used to make the oden broth. The greens and used kombu and katsuobushi tend to get thrown out in modern Japanese households, but taking the time to turn them into something edible is so rewarding.

Here are the ingredients to one of the many nabes I made this winter. Hakusai (Chinese cabbage), salmon, ground chicken mixed with garlic, ginger and other seasonings (to be spooned into the broth as meatballs), thinly sliced pork, grated daikon, shungiku (chrysanthemum leaves), atsu-age (fried tofu), negi (long onion) and shiitake.

Here are some of the ingredients ready to eat, cooked in kombu dashi (kelp stock) at the table. The good is added to the broth and taken out to eat litle by little, with the stock being monitered: extra stock will be added when it gets low, and periodically the foam that rises to the top will be skimmed off (the pot above is due for a skimming).

With some nabe the food is plucked from the pot, placed in a bowl and eaten as-is, but we usually add flavourings. In the bowl is grated daikon and ponzu (soy-based citrus sauce), and the food gets dipped in that before eating. Eventually the stock becomes so tasty from all of the ingredients that little extra flavouring is needed, and when the ingredients have run out udon noodles or rice is cooked in the leftover broth. In our house this is usually done the next day or the next day after that as we like to stretch the nabe into a few meals. We also cook extra ingredients in the nabe and serve them the next day as a kind of stew, so when you see the huge amount of ingredients in the pictures above and below don't assume we ate it all at once--we're not total pigs.

Another nabe, a bit classier but featuring many of the same ingredients. The hakusai, shiitake, tofu and pork are the same as usual (they show up for practically every nabe at our house), and there are a few special ingredients, including a mystery green (there are so many types of leafy greens in Japan that I haven't even tried half of them, and totally forget what this new one was) and enokidake mushrooms.

Kuzukiri, noodles made of kuzu starch. They are flavourless but are very good at absorbing flavours and have a nice jelly-like texture. They are pre-soaked before being added to the nabe and left to simmer for several minutes, and when they're ready they must be eaten quickly before they turn too soft.

Fresh oysters. This is not my favourite way of eating oysters but they add such a wonderful flavour to the broth.

Buri (yellowtail) sashimi. I sliced it myself with my knew knife, and while I wouldn't call this an expert job it's the best I've done so far. The sashimi can be eaten as-is or dipped in the nabe.

And there it is ready to eat. The sashimi to be eaten up that night, but the other ingredients lasted for another meal.

The next day udon and egg were added to the broth to make this rich udon soup. I almost like this better than the original nabe.

And that's a brief summary of our recent dinners. There is still a month or two of nabe and stew weather and I intend to make full use of it, and at the same time I'm looking forward to lighter spring fare. Hopefully you'll be seeing more yummy stuff on this blog.

Hina Matsuri

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Marufuku

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

JapanSoc it!

Oshogatsu

This is New Year's Eve dinner at my in-laws' house in Osaka: me, my sister-in-law, her daughter and husband, and my parents-in-law (and of course that's Hideaki behind the camera). We go there every year to celebrate oshogatsu (the new year), and those celebrations mostly consist of eating. 

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.

It's not just the legs that are eaten in Japan: the body is served as well, in order to scoop out the kanimiso. Kanimiso is often incorrectly translated as "crab brains", perhaps because that's what most Japanese think it is (miso is a common euphemism for brains). Well, I've always wondered why there is so much miso in each crab considering their level of intelligence (they walked right into the traps, after all), and it turns out that the miso is actually the liver and other internal organs, and their actual brains are as tiny as you'd expect.

Not that guts are any less gross than brains to the squeamish among you, but the seafood lovers and offal fans out there will surely believe me when I say that it kanimiso one of the finest delicacies in the world. It's extremely rich and sweet and has a creamy texture, like the foie gras of the sea. And each type of crab has a different flavour: this time we found the kegani was the lightest and creamiest, with the hanasakigani being rather strongly flavoured, and the tarabagani being rich and flavourful. This is not something you can eat a lot of, so after a few spoonfuls we were done.

But the fun wasn't over, as my niece Marya discovered that crab claws fit nicely on fingertips. She found it hilarious to hold out her claw-hands menacingly and chase us around, and if only she could have held still for a second or two I could have gotten some very cute pictures.

There was also sasazushi: a traditional type of sushi wrapped in sasa bamboo leaves, which have antibacterial properties said to help keep the sushi fresh. There was ebi (shrimp), tai (bream) and sake (salmon), and I normally would have been a bit more excited about it all, but this stuff just couldn't compete with the crab. I only tried the salmon, which was good, but it wasn't, you know, crab. 

Later on, when we'd had a bit of time to digest, the final meal of the year was served: toshikoshi soba. Literally "year crossing noodles", eating these buckwheat noodles will ensure a life as long as the noodles themselves. There is no particularly traditional type of soba or way of serving toshikoshi soba (although some people buy special extra-long soba noodles, to increase their luck), and at this house we usually get nishin soba, is a bowll of soba in hot broth, topped with migakinishin (dried herring). Nishin soba is popular in Kyoto, which is landlocked and traditionally could only get sea fish in dried form; nishin came from Hokkaido, which Kyoto enjoyed a thriving trade with, via the Sea of Japan. Interestingly Hokkaido also produces a lot of kombu (kelp, used for making stock), and this helps explain why the cuisine of Kyoto and surrounding areas is lighter than that of eastern Japan: kombu was more readily available there than the richly flavoured katsuobushi (dried bonito) used for stock in Tokyo and the rest of Japan. Anyway, as Osaka is next to Kyoto a lot of the food is similar, and the herring on the soba, as well as the light flavour and colour of the broth, show Kyoto's influence very well. 

Shortly before midnight the TV comes on, as NHK (the national broadcaster) features beautiful live footage of temples and shrines all over Japan. Just as the New Year begins, the temples begin joya no kane (ringing of the temple bells), with the giant bells being struck 108 times, so as to cleanse away the 108 earthly desires built up over the previous year. We also open a bottle of sparkling wine, which is not traditional  but brings a bit of fun to an otherwise rather somber occasion.

The next morning is when the celebrations really get underway, with a breakfast of osechiryouri (traditional New Year's food, also called osechi). Usually consisting of dozens of little morsels beautifully arranged in a fancy three-layered box, the osechi at my in-laws is a little bit unorthodox: just a select few osechi favourites, served rather casually in the lazy suzan shown above. I think this makes sense: rather than fussing over a whole bunch of food nobody really likes (and osechi is almost universally detested in Japan), it's a simple display consisting of just the osechi the family actually likes.

So why is osechi hated so much? It was originally prepared over the last days of the year, the idea being that having food already cooked will give the women of the house a break during the first few days of the New Year. But in order to last several days without refrigeration (as there were no fridges way back when this tradition started) the food needs to be well-cooked and heavily seasoned. Which meant that for three days people ate a lot of very sweet and very salty food, with little to no fresh produce. Also, the food served must be auspicious, with its appearance or name symbolizing a number of wishes for the New Year; thus the food is chosen not for how good it tastes, but how much luck it will bring to thediner. Finally, diners are encouraged to eat a bite of every food, in order to bring good luck, and no exception is made for picky eaters. 

Why this tradition continues virtually unchanged despite the invention of the refrigerator is beyond me, but I'm glad I didn't marry into a traditional family. Most of the osechi I can tolerate, and some I really like and would eat all year around if I could.

Here is the osechi we ate:

Kamaboko, a steamed fish paste eaten for its colour. The combination of red and white (yes, pink is considered red) is auspicious, going back to the ancient Shinto practice of offering red and white rice to the gods. Alternate layers of red and white are especially lucky (think of the old rising sun flag of Japan) so the kamaboko is always arranged as above. Kamaboko is nearly always store-bought, as it is difficult to make at home.

Gomame, also called tazukuri, is abig family favourite, made baby sardines cooked in sugar and soy sauce until crisp. Traditionally baby sardines were used as both food and fertilizer, eating it at New Year's was thought to bring a good harvest. This was home-made, and seems to be one of the easiest osechi dishes to make.

Kobumaki, or kelp rolls, involves a play on words: kobu (a variation of kombu) means both "kelp" and "joy". The filling is most often sake (salmon), nishin (herring) and anago (sea eel), and the rolls are tied with kampyo (dried gourd). We eat all three types, starting with salmon, shown above, on the first morning. These are store-bought.

Kazunoko (herring roe) can be served by itself or mixed with thin strips of carrot, dried squid and kombu to make matsumaezuke, shown above. The hundreds of tiny eggs in kazunoko represent fertility and prosperity, and it is one of the most popular osechi in Japan--I doubt there's a household in the country that doesn't serve kazunoko or matsumaezuke. This dish was home-made, and in fact my husband remembers eating matsumaezuke year-round when he was little, and it remains a big favourite of his. Unfortunately kazunoko is one of the few foods I hate, so I just eat around it and gave the yucky chunks of roe to Hideaki, who is happy to help.

The origin of datemaki (a thick omelet-like roll made of eggs and fish paste) is unclear, but one common idea is that the shape resembles rolled scrolls and thus symbolizes wisdom and knowledge. This is storebought.

Kurikinton, one of the family's beloved osechi, is made of finely mashed satsuma-imo (sweet potato) and kuri (chestnuts). The colour is thought to resemble gold, so kurikinton represents wealth. This is another one I don't like, which is odd because I actually love sweet potatoes and chestnuts. But I can't stand the mushy, textureless consistency of the sweet potato and so much sugar is added that my teeth hurt just looking at it. I usually just grab a very small chunk of chestnut and try to scrape as much sweet potato off as I can. This one is home-made, usually with the help of whichever man is around, as mashing the sweet potato through a fine strainer takes quite a bit of muscle.

Kuromame are black beans simmered in soy sauce, eaten for a double play on words: mame means "bean" as well as "health" and "diligence". These are homemade. 

Shiromame (white beans), eaten for the same reasons as kuromame. These are very sweet, so I'm not a big fan.

And now for my favourite: tainoko (sea bream roe). This is a regional osechi: eaten in the parts of western Japan that border the Inner Sea, where sea bream is bountiful, and unheard of in the rest of the country. The roe is simmered in sake and soy sauce and has a rich flavour and wonderful soft yet slightly crunchy texture, similar to tarako (cod roe). This is homemade. 

I may skimp on the osechi I don't like, but I more than make up for it with tainoko. I wish it was available in Tokyo because I could easily eat it every day.

Here is my first serving of sechi. The chopsticks are brand-new and come in a special New Year's wrapper, which is traditional (people also often wear brand-new clothes on this day). The ochoko (tiny sake cup) contains otoso, a spiced and sweetened sake that is said to ensure good health in the New Year. Indeed it tastes rather medicinal, and is often cough syrup sweet, but this year both the sugar and spice were toned down and I rather enjoyed it. I find it similar (in concept more than flavour) to the mulled wine drunk by Europeans at Christmas.

My next serving is above (the servings after that consisted entirely of tainoko).

When the osechi is done it's time for ozoni, a soup containing mochi (pounded rice cake) and other ingredients. The recipe for ozoni varies tremendously from region to region and family to family, but my mother-in-law's is a clear chicken broth with hakusai (Chinese cabbage), mitsuba (trefoil), chicken, naruto (fish paste) and a square piece of mochi. It's actually an Eastern Japan style of ozoni, albeit with a lighter broth.

Mochi is a major part of New Year eating, showing up not only in ozoni but in snacks throughout the day. This mochi was made by my sister-in-law's husband's family in Chiba, and like all home-made mochi it's far superior to the plastic-like variety sold in supermarkets and thus is hard not to overeat. In fact, most Japanese people do gain weight over the holidays and the blame lies on squarely on mochi, which is surprisingly high in calories (another problem with mochi is its extremely dense and sticky texture, and choking deaths that result are reported in the news in a grim sort of holiday tradition). Other than ozoni, mochi can be served in a number of ways, both sweet and savoury; my favourite is isobe-yaki (grilled, dipped in soy sauce and wrapped with nori seaweed). Above is a special version, dipped in shichimi-joyu (soy sauce with seven-spice mix).

To take a break from eating there are a number of traditional games to play, and in this family the game of choice is hanafuda. There are dozens of variations of the game, all with rules too long and complicated for me to explain here, so I'll just show you the pretty cards.

Hanafuda is most often a gambling game, but instead of cash we use sweets. This year's prize lot consisted of chocolates (a gift from my family to the in-laws--thanks Mom!) and cookies (received by the in-laws as an oseibo year-end gift: thanks strangers!). I'm not a great hanafuda player but I'm not bad, either, and I ate enough of these treats that I won't be able to blame this year's weight gain on mochi.

This is our first dinner of the year (yup, I'm still on January 1st). The food served is still osechi, but it's mostly the more substantial, savoury dishes.

The main event is yakitai (salt-grilled sea bream), which is bought already cooked (all other dinner food is homemade). The sea bream, caught wild in the Inner Sea, is better than anything we can get in Tokyo, although this year we found that it was overly salty. Tai is eaten because of a play on words: it sounds like the last part of medetai (which means a happy event or celebration).

This is one of my favourite osechi (actually, all the dishes served for the first dinner are my favourites), called chuuka sarada. It means "Chinese style salad", although it doesn't strike me as either Chinese or salad-like: it is a stir-fry of shiitake, carrot, renkon (lotus root), gobo (burdock root) and shirataki (yam jelly noodles), very lightly flavoured with soy sauce, rice vinegar and sesame oil. 

I have no idea what the proper name of this dish is, we always just call it tori (chicken). It's not terribly attractive to start with, and this picture certainly doesn't do it any justice, but it tastes amazing. It's chicken thighs (and possibly other dark meat) slowly braised in a rich broth of... I have no idea. There's probably soy sauce, black pepper, star anise, negi (long onions), ginger, sake and vinegar, but from there I'm really not sure. The bones are removed before serving but the abundant jelly is kept, and the flesh is so soft and delicious it's hard to stop eating. I'm going to have to watch my mother-in-law make this one of these years, because I really want to know how to make this myself.

This is nishime, a simmered vegetable dish. Pretty much every family serves this (or a similar simmered dish called chikuzen-ni), and although the ingredients may vary there is usually kuwai (arrowroot, a relative of water chestnuts), which is that potato-like thing on the right with the long sprout. In Japanese, the sprout is called me, which brings two puns: medetai (celebration) and me ga deru (bring good luck). The other vegetables are carrot, shiitake, renkon (lotus root), takenoko (bamboo shoots), daikon, konnyaku (yam jelly), and thin strips of beef. I usually eat bowls and bowls of this, but this year my niece gave me a bit of competition, going through several bowls herself in a very systematic way: picking out and eating all the daikon, then the carrot, and then, somewhat reluctantly, the rest of the ingredients.

And finally, kani sarada (crab salad). This is normally made with canned crab, but this time leftover meat from last night's crab was used. We alsways jump on this, as we're thrilled to see fresh vegetables.

The next morning brought more osechi, this time with a different brand of datemaki (it was firmer and less sweet than the previous day's, and I liked it better) and new kind of kobumaki (stuffed with herring).

This is namasu, a refreshing and crunchy dish of carrot and daikon dressed with vinegar. It's a very welcome addition to the New Year's table, which seriously lacks vegetables--especially the fresh, crisp kind. This is another osechi that gets its good luck from its red and white colour (yup, orange was considered a shade of red).

The broth for the second day's ozoni is always made from the previous night's yakitai, and this year there was enough broth leftover to make zosui for lunch. Zosui is rice soup, most often made from simmering pre-cooked rice with some kind of leftover broth. Here it is flavoured with hakusai (Chinese cabbage), mitsuba (trefoil) and nori seaweed.

This year both Hideaki and I were suffering from colds and required a lot of rest. When he fell asleep on the living room sofa (usually because he was too full to make the trip upstairs to the guestroom) I'd tuck him into a blanket to keep him warm, which caught the attention of Marya, who would insist on either helping me tuck (she'd even say "tuck, tuck, tuck" while she did it) or being tucked in herself. She's not actually asleep in the picture above, just pretending in hopes that she'll get tucked in.

New Year's is a time to meet old friends though, so he couldn't stay on the sofa for the whole visit (as much as he would have liked to). On the second night of the year we went to a shinnenkai (New Year party) at the home of a high school friend of his. The good eating continued, with kaninabe (crab hot pot) featuring yet another type of crab (zuwaigani, or queen crab) and this lovely cake for dessert.

On the third day the osechi continued, although lunch was completely non-osechi: a bowl of ochazuke (rice with hot green tea). This is a somewhat fancy version, with genmaicha (green tea with puffed brown rice) and four types of tsukudani (seafood simmered in soy sauce): kombu (kelp), chirimen-jako (tiny dried fish), mekabu seaweed, and hotate (scallops).

Dinner that night was at Meishan Kajousai, a Chinese restaurant in nearby Senri Chuo. Ownded by Ume no Hana, a chain of tofu restuarants, we've really enjoyed it on past visits but were disappointed this time. Still, a few dishes stood out, like the extra-crisp harumaki (spring rolls) and daikonmochi (radish cakes) above. Apologies for the small pictures, I forgot my camera and had to use my phone.

The mabodofu (tofu with spicy meat sauce) was served with two styles in the same pot: the regular spicy version on the right, and a creamy white version, made with soy milk, on the left. 

The fried fish with sweet and sour sauce was also very good.

As usual, Marya entertained us between courses.

Our last treat in Osaka was dessert from a local cake shop. Above is a rolled cake with a cute cowhide pattern in honour of the Year of the Cow. Apparently this was very good, although I didn't try it.

I'm not much of a cake eater and am rather picky about other desserts, so my in-laws, who buy cake at every opportunity, always go to great lengths to find something they think I'll like. It's totally unnecessary, since I'd be perfectly happy with one of the dozens of sweet treats already in the house: piles of clementines, ice cream (there are always a minimum of three flavours of Hageen Dazs in the freezer, along with a few other kinds), and boxes of cookies and other sweets sent as oseibo gifts or brought as souvenirs by visitors. So the fuss is really uncalled for and I usually feel bad that my pickiness causes so much trouble. But this time I was glad for it, because this is what was chosen for me: 

The fanciest chocolate tart I've ever seen. There are so many things happening here that I wasn't sure where to start, but I finally did (the macaron went first) and holy cow was it ever good (except for the whipped cream between the tart and fruit and on top, which I gave to Hideaki). The tart itself was excellent and would have been enough, but the fruit and macaron on top were wonderful finishing touches, a very fitting way to end the holiday excess (for anyone in northern Osaka, both the cake and tart came from Ichirin Coffee in Minoh).

JapanSoc it!