A Fish Out of Water

Wrapping up the holidays

Just as Christmas doesn't end on December 25th in the west, Oshogatsu (Japanese New Year) keeps going well after the year has begun. Even once the traditional three days of celebrations are over and life returns to normal, there are things like shinnenkai (New Year parties), dondoyaki (bonfires fueled by New Year's decorations), hatsumode (first shrine visits of the year) for those who didn't do it in the first three days, and a host of other hatsu (firsts), like hatsugeiko (first practice or training), hatsugama (first tea ceremony), hatsushigoto (first day of work) and hatsuichi (first market). I'm sure we're not the only couple who makes up our own hatsus, some of which are not fit for sharing.

One day I always look forward to is January 7th, called jinjitsu no sekku (human day festival) or nanakusa no sekku (festival of seven herbs). The day is celebrated by eating nanakusagayu (rice porridge with seven herbs), which is standard okayu (congee or rice porridge) to which the seven herbs of spring are added. These herbs were traditionally gathered wild (remember that oshogatsu was celebrated in early spring on the old lunar calendar) but are now sold at supermarkets, and eating them on this day is said to bring good health all year. I've gone into more detail in previous posts, so if you're curious about what the herbs are or want a recipe, check this old post.

Like many people, I find this simple dish a nice contrast to the highly seasoned osechi (New Year's foods), rich food and ever-flowing alcohol served during the holidays. That's our nanakusagayu above, a bit on the thick side, served with sweet shrimp sashimi in mentaiko (spicy cod roe), sent from a friend in Toyama prefecture (famous for its shrimp) and kombu no tsukudani (soy-braised kelp).

The next occasion is kagamibiraki on January 11th. On this day the kagamimochi (ornamental mochi, or rice cakes, placed on a special altar at the end of the previous year) is broken and eaten. Traditionally the mochi was homemade and consisted of two large disks, placed on a small wooden alter and finished off with fern leaves, daidai citrus, and various paper decorations. In the old days houses were unheated and very dry and after a few weeks the kagamimochi would be hard and brittle, so breaking it was easily- and dramatically- accomplished with a swing of a mallet.

Modern homes are relatively warm and humid though, which causes the kagami mochi tends to get moldy before it dries out, much to the disgust of housewives who then have to carve the mold off of the shattered pieces before cooking them. A clever if unattractive solution is store-bought kagamimochi, which is encased in plastic and often comes with its own little altar and decorations made of cardboard and plastic. The mochi stays fresh and mold-free, and "breaking" it involves peeling off the plastic and cutting it up with a kitchen knife (which is interesting because it's traditionally bad luck to use a knife for kagamibiraki).

The mochi is usually toasted and added to oshiruko (sweet azuki bean soup), but my sweet tooth has completely vanished recently so we made it into isobeyaki (toasted mochi dipped in soy sauce and wrapped in nori seaweed).

 

We ate it with dinner, first with plain soy sauce then with yuzu-ichimi (chili pepper with yuzu citrus peel) and cheese, shown above in the middle, along with mizuna greens dressed with sesame, sauteed shimeji, eringi and shiitake mushrooms, yakishishamo (grilled smelt) and miso soup with kabocha squash and tofu.

Next up were prayers at the local shrine. This wasn't hatsumode for me as I had already been to Meiji Jingu with a friend, but it was a first for Hideaki. He has in the past occasionally skipped hatsumode altogether, but this is his yakudoshi (year of calamity). Maybe. There are a few ages that are considered very unlucky, different for men and women, and the system seems to differ slightly according to region and shrine. For men, age 42 is especially unlucky, and although Hideaki only turns 41 this year this still counts as yakudoshi. Apparently some shrines claim that that the years before and after the yakudoshi are also unlucky, and others use the old system of counting ages in which a baby is already one year old at birth. So for whatever reason he needs to be careful this year, and he made sure to do his hatsumode.

We were hoping to buy a talisman or something to protect him during the year, but it seems the only thing to do is pay the shrine a whole bunch of money so he could be blessed buy a priest. I had already gone through that a few days before at Meiji Jingu (for the blessing of a new business rather than for yakudoshi, but the ritual is exactly the same), and although it was an interesting thing to experience, it was also long, silly and boring. Once is definitely enough for me, and neither of us are that superstitious, so we were leaning towards not doing anything when he decided to buy himself an omikuji (paper fortune). He got daikichi (the highest good luck) and that clinched it- no need for a dumb shinto ceremony when his luck was ensured. Actually daikichi is often thought of as bad luck, since once the good luck runs out the only way to go is down. But in this case we figured the daikichi would balance out his yakudoshi and this would turn out to be an average year.

In late January the post office announces the winning numbers in their otoshidama nengajo kuji (New Year's postcard lottery). The nengajo (New Year's postcards) received in the first few days of the year usually come with a lottery number (shown at bottom left of the postcards above), and that number can bring a variety of prizes, from a TV or overseas vacation all the way down to a set of two commemorative stamps. We were hoping that Hideaki's daikichi fortune would ensure us a good prize, and although we did win three sets of stamps (our biggest haul ever), the better prizes alluded us.

I'm never sure what to do with these stamps- it always seems like such a shame to use them, but also a waste not to. I think this year I'll keep one set and give away two. So if any of you readers are a stamp collector, let me know and I'll send you a set.

And then the last two Christmas packages from my mom finally arrived, two months late. We don't know what went wrong- the fist box arrived in less than a week, but the others took forever to make the journey across the Pacific. It turned out to not be so terrible, since as I wrote earlier I was sick on Christmas and although Hideaki had just found out he had a job we still couldn't afford presents for each other (having spent all our money on a fancy Christmas brunch with family). I had been rather bummed about our non-Christmas, but in hindsight it was actually a great day, since news of a new job was really the best present we could have hoped for. Or second best, but I'm not quite ready to announce the other gift we got that day.

So having kept all the decorations up (that's our "tree" above) we had a wonderful Christmas in January, with a bunch of great presents from back home, a present each to each other, and stockings full of goodies (Santa knows all about Christmas in January, apparently).

And of course, Christmas dinner. I roasted a duck for the first time ever, thinking its small size would make it easier than the small turkey or chicken I usually attempt (like most Japanese kitchens, we only have a tiny convection oven). It turns out that roasting a duck is harder than it seems, because although it was relatively fast and easy, it wasn't nearly as good as expected. The skin was wonderfully crispy, which never happens with other whole birds in my oven, but the meat was tough. And although in the past I've complained about soft, flabby chicken skin, I now realize that tender, juicy meat is a thousand times more important than crispy skin. I don't know if it was the recipe, my oven, the bird itself or simply my lack of skill, but I don't think I'll be messing with a whole duck again.

Still, served with orange gravy, mashed potatoes and brussel sprouts, it was a nice festive meal and we were more than satisfied with our late Christmas.

The last holiday event was setsubun. Setsubun technically means "seasonal division" and falls four times a year, but in practice is only celebrated on February 3rd. The main activity is mamemaki (bean throwing), which is done to invite luck into the home and ward off evil. We skipped the ehomaki, a newish custom of eating a fat roll of sushi while facing the year's lucky direction, as we decided a few years ago that it's a dumb tradition- the store-bought sushi is never very tasty and eating the whole huge thing without talking is no fun at all.

So we just tossed roasted soybeans around the house (those are the tossed beans above) and Hideaki ate 41 of them, equal to his age this year, to bring good luck (I refrained as I hate eating the dry, tasteless beans). I wrote a bit more about mamemaki and ehomaki in this post a few years ago, so have a look if you're interested.

And now Christmas and New Years are finally over, Hideaki has become a regular overworked salaryman, and I'm looking forward to what is pretty much guaranteed to be a better year than last.

A few more holiday pictures can be seen here.

Recipe: Mentaiko Spaghetti

I went to Tsukiji Shijo, better known simply as Tsukiji, recently and came home with a few treats. I've been there many times before, but this was my first visit purely as a shopper, and it turns out to be a completely different experience from visiting as a tourist. I discovered that the world's biggest fish market is much more than a giant labyrinth of wholesalers offering picturesque fresh seafood to middlemen, but a great place for the retail shopper to find good prices on everything from sashimi to prepared seafood to dried food like beans and kombu (kelp). I came away with a bargain-priced jar of nametake (enoki mushroom preserves, a product that deserves a post of its own), a bag of fresh mussels (what a thrill it was to discover that they do exist in Japan) and a package of very good and very cheap Hakata mentaiko (spicy cod roe from Hakata, Kyushu).

Mentaiko, also called karashi mentaiko, consists of whole cod (or, more likely these days, polluck) roe sacs preserved with salt, sake, kombu, and red chili peppers (a similar product called tarako is the roe preserved without the peppers). Other ingredients are often added, and cheaper mentaiko will contain plenty of MSG and food colouring. It is almost always used in one of two ways: as a topping for white rice, and an ingredient in mentaiko spaghetti.

Mentaiko spaghetti is probably my favourite yoshoku , and is definitely one of the cleverest (yoshoku means "western food" and is a category that includes any European style food that is tweaked for the Japanese palate; it is not meant to be authentically European). The combination of pasta, fish roe and butter is as unexpected as it is delicious, and mentaiko spaghetti is enormously popular both at restaurants and at home, loved by every age group (although non-spicy tarako spaghetti is favoured by kids).

It's also amazingly easy to make, but you wouldn't know that by the amount of ready-made mentaiko sauce sold at the supermarket, or by the huge variety of recipes out there. But the truth is it takes just minutes to make and there are only three essential ingredients: pasta, butter and mentaiko. I'm amazed by all the recipes, in both English and Japanese, that call for unnecessary additions: some of them, like cream and mayonnaise, are merely unnecessary, while others (garlic, onions, wine) are distracting or even clash with the mentaiko (wasabi, pepper). And I can't believe how many recipes call for additional salty ingredients like soy sauce or powdered soup stock, since it's already a salt-bomb of a dish.

I've never been a fan of Harumi Kurihara (billed in the English-language press, not very accurately, as "Japan's Martha Stewart"), but seeing her English recipe for mentaiko pasta makes me like her even less: she calls for both soy sauce and kombucha powder, along with regular salted butter. Kombucha, by the way, is an extremely salty kelp-based drink that in its commercial form is chock-full of MSG. Um, no thanks!

All you want to taste is butter, mentaiko and pasta, and this holy trio has enough salt, spice, creaminess and umami that you don't really need anything else. In fact, for a basic mentaiko spaghetti those three ingredients are all you need. The pasta is always spaghetti in Japan but you can use anything; I prefer spaghettini. Unsalted butter is preferred but salted butter won't make too much of a difference (if you're worried about salt just don't salt your pasta water). For the mentaiko, use the best mentaiko you can find: a good rule of thumb: the less lurid the colour, the higher the quality. Proportions are highly flexible, use more or less of anything and it will still turn out fine.

Here is the recipe, for two people:

Ultra Simple Mentaiko Spaghetti

2 to 3 Tbsp butter
200 to 250 grams spaghetti or other long pasta
2 sacs of mentaiko

Remove butter from fridge, bring to room temperature in a large bowl or soften in the microwave. Cook the pasta. Open the mentaiko sacs with a knife and scrape the roe from the membrane with a spoon. Discard the membrane and add the roe to the bowl with the butter, mix well. When pasta is finished, drain very briefly and add it to the bowl. Toss to mix and serve.

That's it! Of course there are ways to dress it up a bit, and it's especially nice to add toppings. Below are ingredients for the slightly fancier mentaiko spaghetti I made with the mentaiko I bought at Tsukiji. From left: salt for the pasta water; olive oil to stretch out the butter if you're worried about cost or cholesterol; mentaiko (this was sold in chunks rather than whole sacs, I used about half of the amount shown); spaghettini; shiso (perilla, also known as beefsteak leaf), and butter.

Shiso is a classic, but there are a number of toppings you can use. From left: negi (long onion, you can also use green onions or chives); yakinori (the seaweed used to wrap onigiri and sushi rolls), which will need to be snipped into thin slices; ishinori, another kind of nori in a crumbly form; and shiso. You can use just one of the above, or a combination of shiso and nori or negi and nori (don't use shiso and negi together though, it's a bit of a clash).

So here's my fancier but still very simple recipe, for two:

Ultimate Mentaiko Spaghetti

2 to 3 Tbsp unsalted butter (substitute regular butter)
200 grams (7 ounces) spaghetti or other long pasta
1 Tbsp salt, optional
1 package (about 10 leaves) shiso or a 10 cm piece of negi
2 sacs (about 120 grams/ 4 ounces) of mentaiko
1 onigiri-sized sheet (or half a sushi-sized sheet) yakinori, or a pinch of ishinori
Olive oil to taste, optional
1/2 cup reserved pasta water, optional

Melt butter gently in a large pan, turn off heat and let cool. Put pasta water on to boil. When it's ready add the salt and pasta, cook until al dente.

Wash shiso and shake to dry, cut off stems.

Keeping the leaves in a neat stack, roll them up tightly, cut the roll in half, and slice into thin strips. Set aside. If using negi, slice thinly and set aside.

Score the top of the roe sacs, without cutting all the way through.

Use a small spoon to scrape the roe from the sac membrane.

Remove as much roe as possible. Discard the membrane (it's edible but too tough to add to the sauce).

When butter is cool enough to touch, add the roe.

Mix the mentaiko into the butter, making sure there are no lumps. If you're using a lot of mentaiko and it's not mixing well, add olive oil or more butter (make sure it's not hot: hot butter will cook the mentaiko, which will toughen it and prevent it from sticking to the pasta).

Meanwhile, scoop out about half a cup of pasta water and let sit to cool.

If using yakinori, prepare it now (preparing it too early will cause it to wilt). With scissors, cut it in half widthwise and then lengthwise, stack the four long strips together and snip them widthwise into thin matchsticks. Set aside.

Drain pasta very briefly, then add it, still dripping, to pan. Toss to mix well. If the sauce seems too dry and isn't mixing well, add a little of the reserved pasta water or a splash of olive oil (or if you're a complete hedonist, more butter).

Divide the pasta between two plates, top with the shiso chiffonade or sliced negi and the nori. Serve hot.

Eating through autumn

It's my favourite food season and I've hardly had time to cook, but here's a handful of dinners from the past few months:

Corn on the cob; horenso to abura-age no nibitasi (spinach simmered with deep-fried tofu); mugi gohan (white rice with barley); kenchinjiru (miso soup with tofu, shiitake, konyaku and root vegetables); sanma no himono (air-dried Pacific saury) with grated daikon. An September meal combining the last of summer's fresh corn with sanma, the ultimate autumn fish (sanma is written 秋刀魚 in kanji, which reads as "autumn sword fish", referring both its season and its shape and colour).

The sanma was dried at home using a drying net given to us by my brother-in-law this spring. I haven't had a lot of time to try it out so I'm still in the experimental stage- you can see that the fish has curled up and become misshapen. The process involves buying fresh whole fish, cleaning and butterflying them, soaking them in brine, then drying them outside for a period ranging from a few hours to a day, either in the full sun or in the shade with a breeze. There are so many variables you'd think something could easily go wrong, but every attempt has been delicious, if a little funny looking. So making perfect himono is difficult, but making good himono seems practically fool-proof. It's probably somewhat of a lost art, at least for the home cook, and although it's easy to imagine that every housewife once knew how to make hoshimono, I very rarely see drying nets hanging from balconies or windows (and when I do it's usually a restaurant rather than a private home).

So why bother with himono? The fish isn't completely dried like salt cod or other dried fish in the west, so the goal isn't long-term storage. Rather, allowing the sun or air to remove some of the moisture of the fish intensifies its flavour and substantially increases its umami (savoury flavour component, aka "nature's MSG"). It firms the flesh and softens the bones, so that when the fish is properly grilled small bones can be eaten rather than picked out and discarded. And it does give a longer shelf life to the fish, allowing oily fish like horse mackerel and saury to be stored in the fridge for up to a week, rather than a day or two when fresh.

Mugi gohan; yakinasu (grilled eggplant) and hiyakko (cold tofu) topped with thinly sliced negi (long onion), grated ginger and katsuobushi (bonito flakes); kyuri no asazuke (quick salt-pickled cucumbers); tonjiru (pork soup with root vegetables). The autumn element here is the eggplant, and although tonjiru doesn't really have a season it is hot and hearty so it shows up more often in the cold months.

White rice; butter lettuce and mizuna greens salad with myoga (ginger bud) and tomatoes; shishito no okakak itame (shishito peppers sauteed with bonito flakes); daikon no happa no itame-ni (sauteed daikon and daikon leaves); miso soup with wakame seaweed, tofu and myoga; hambagu no kinoko sosu kake (hamburger patty with shiitake and button mushroom sauce). Myoga, shishito and mushrooms of all types are available year-round but are considered to be foods of late summer (shishito), autumn (mushrooms) or both (myoga, which has a summer version- natsu-myoga- and an fall version- aki myoga). 

Kinoko to bacon no bata-shoyu itame (shiitake, shimeji and eringi mushrooms and bacon sauteed in butter and flavoured with soy sauce); sanma no himono; mixed baby greens with tomato and tofu; yakinasu; ikuradon (rice topped with salmon roe and shiso). Another home-made himono, this time a little over-dried; the ikura is a souvenir from our trip to Hokkaido. In addition to the mushrooms, sanma and eggplant, the ikura is classic autumn food, and while prepared ikura is available year-round this is when it's at its cheapest and most plentiful.

 

Kinoko no takigohan (rice cooked with mushrooms); tamagoyaki (thick omelet); spinach topped with katsuobushi; goma suiton no miso shiru (miso soup with sesame dumplings). Suiton are flour dumplings normally added to soups, usually plain but sometimes mixed with tofu and black or plain sesame seeds. I didn't grow up eating dumplings so I don't know how Japanese suiton compare to other ones, but they remind me of the "spinners" found in Jamaican soups.

Tomatoes with feta cheese dressed with basil and olive oil; bow-tie pasta with cabbage, bacon and mushrooms. I'd never heard of pasta with cabbage until I came to Japan, where it's a very popular combination (especially when paired with bacon). Now I can't get enough of it. The tomato dish is one my Mom made a few times on my last visit that I fell in love with. If feta was cheaper and easier to find I'd be eating this all the time.

Linguine with spinach, pine nuts and bacon. Spinach and pine nuts is another favourite combination, especially with- what else- bacon. I'd eat this all year but as a helpful commenter pointed out last year, pine nuts are an autumn food.

Spinach dressed sesame seeds; sanma no himono; miso soup with shiitake and shikaku mame (winged bean); kibi gohan (rice with millet); and umeboshi (pickled plums) and ginnan (ginkgo nuts) to share. Yup, sanma again. It isn't the only fish that can be dried as himono, it's just that it's very cheap at the moment. The shikaku mame are new to me, discovered on a recent trip to Ogasawara, the group of islands far south of Tokyo. It has a nice crunchy texture and a mild bitter asparagus flavour, and miso soup is probably not the best way to use it.

The ginkgo nuts were gathered my me in the park, a smelly (they STINK!) job that is immensely satisfying, as it results in free food. They get washed, dried and then roasted, or in this case cooked in the microwave inside a paper bag, much like popping corn. They are served with Ogasawara sea salt, another souvenir.

Hokkaido

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The same coal company created this lake:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Food

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Mikurajima

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

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

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

 

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

Past trips to Mikurajima: 2006, 2008.

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

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

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

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 bad 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.