Kugelhof cake -- local style

Local handmade sugar, sudachi (a very local citrus) -- yes, this is definitely a local version.

Fall color -- in this case, yellow and blooming

Christmas in Japan

One of the typical symbols of the season.

Ready for winter

Thanksgiving Dinner 2

Thanksgiving Dinner #1

It's that time again!

Beaujolais Nouveau, now coming to you in PET bottles, with Hello Kitty promoting it!

http://blog.japantimes.co.jp/japan-pulse/can-pet-bottles-and-hello-kitty-rescue-beaujolais-nouveau/

It's a reminder that here in Japan Kitty Chan, as she is known here, isn't just for 7 year old girls.

Another American restaurant chain coming to Japan

This one should be a HUGE hit:

http://www.japantoday.com/category/picture-of-the-day/view/girls-girls-girls

Christmas in Japan mean KFC

http://www.japantoday.com/category/entertainment/view/haruka-ayase-launches-kfc-christmas-campaign

Too much wine

And the prices they've paid seem excessive as well.

http://search.japantimes.co.jp/cgi-bin/nn20101020a4.html

Special rice for special Tigers

Hanshin Tigers

http://search.japantimes.co.jp/cgi-bin/nn20101019a5.html

Amazake

Sweet sake. Actually, briefly fermented sake, very low in alcohol. It's sometimes served hot as osettai (a free gift for visitors) at temples which, actually, is where I first had it. It's particularly nice with a little fresh grated ginger.

A little more sushi

It looks like a fancy cake, doesn't it? But it's cooked shrimp topped with avocado topped with shreds of raw squid topped with mayonnaise.

Sweet potato pie -- seriously!

Eggplant with miso sauce.

Sakidori

Sakidori is an old Japanese word that nobody under 50 who I've asked has ever heard it. It means feeling a season before it arrives. As I've said, fall seemed to arrive right on time, and the weather has generally felt cool though actually the temperature has been above normal every day except for two days of this past week of seemingly cooler weather. Obviously the low humidity has something to do with how comfortable it's felt. It's only been 50% or less most of the past week and, after this summer, that counts as dry.

Some of the stores are obviously feeling season that haven't come yet. Yesterday I stopped off at a lawson's conbini (convenience store) and found these brochures, for ordering your Christmas cake, toshikoshi soba, and osechi ryori.

YOur last meal of the year is supposed to be noodles, preferably soba. Long noodles = long life

I started this blog in late December, talking about almost nothing but osechi rypori. I'll get back to this topic in late December.

How white is your rice?

Usual white rice, usual brown rice, and less usual haiga mai (mai mean rice, haiga means germ, the nutrient-rich part of the grain). My mother-in-law dropped some off at our house on her way home from milling a few tens of kilos for household use. It's much milder in flavor than brown rice and much higher in nutrition than white rice. A pretty good compromise.

Cha no yu (tea ceremony) for the rest of us

It had to happen. Actually, it's probably happened many time, but this is the first time I've read about someone taking the traditional Japanese tea ceremony and making it attractive to a new generation.

http://www.cnngo.com/tokyo/drink/japanese-tea-ceremony-gets-fresh-update-busy-salarymen-and-office-ladies-774458?hpt=Mid

How weather

This morning it's FINALLY a little cooler, about 24 at dawn instead of 26 or 27, though it's still expected to get up to 33 today and 34 tomorrow. Still, every little bit helps.

We've concentrated on cold meals lately, some rather inventive.

Rice harvest

Now you see it

and

now you don't.

Whale meat in schools

The government's so-called "scientific" whaling has accumulated a surplus of whale meat, so the're selling it at a steep discount to schools.

According to the article, the average price for whale meat is over 2,000 yen per kilo. That's over US $10 per pound. Rather high, I think.


"Whale meat back on school lunch menus" in the Japan Times.

How hot is it this summer?

The average temperature for August was more than 2 degrees C above average.

http://search.japantimes.co.jp/cgi-bin/nn20100831a6.html

No sign of cooling. Oddly, though, the air has been unusually clear, with Jupiter's four largest moons easily spotted with my binoculars every night for the past week. (Partly because the only rain has been during the day.)

The newspapers have been giving more space to the summer heat lately. My wife tells me she heard that air conditioner sales are double what they were last year (which had a cooler than usual summer). Here's the latest on hospital visits:

http://www.japantoday.com/category/national/view/nearly-47000-hospitalized-due-to-heatstroke-since-late-may

How many centurnarians are there in Japan?

It turns out there may be far fewer than most people think. A case came to light a few weeks ago of a centurnarian who was cashing pension checks who wasn't actually technically speaking alive. This prompted local governments to check, since the way residence certificates are maintained in Japan, it's possible for a person to die without their official city of residence being notified, if they have moved, perhaps into a retirement home or convalescent hospital in a different city, without anyone notifying the first city.

The city of Osaka has just finished an audit and found, " residence registries have been retained for 5,125 people who would be 120 years or older if they were alive, including a man who was born in 1857," according to this article in the Japan Times.

Update September 9: 230,000 centenarians may be already deceased, according to this article.

How can you eat a cookie with a fork?

The first Tokushima Starbucks opened a few months ago at Tokushima Station. I finally went today. I had cold cocoa and a largish Chocolate Chunk Cookie. They served the cookie with a fork.

Why?

How hot is it this year?

So hot, there's now a -5 degrees Celcius Ice Bar Tokyo.

How hot is it this year?

The newspapers are reporting that over 30,000 people have been taken to hospitals this summer for heatstroke. Of course, that's certainly not true. But I guess over 30,000 people have been taken to hospitals for heat exhaustion or worse (There are half a dozen different kinds of heat illness -- heat stroke is the most serious).

When I came to live in Japan, there was still a belief that it was bad to drink liquids during exercise in hot weather. In particular, student athletes were warned of the dangers of drinking during hot weather exercise. That belief has faded. But there's still a strong prejudice against being comfortable, especially if that involves the use of electricity. Not only air conditioning -- I've had several people tell me they think it's dangerous to sleep with a fan on your body. For me, this summer, the choice is to sleep with the air conditioner on or not sleep at all.

Awa Odori 2010 -- In Kamojima

Other towns in Tokushima stage Awa Odori dances. This one is in Kamojima, my wife's home town. The dancing is confined to the main street leading south from the train station.

Awa Odori -- festive food

Awa Odori is one of the biggest summer festivals in Japan and, according to Alex Kerr, the most traditional of the big ones. As long as you stay away from the sajiki, the grandstand areas where dance teams perform under bright lights, you can still feel the majic that Wenceslas deMoraes described when he was (I think) the only foreigner living in Tokushima a century ago. The food is pretty traditional, too, if you ignore the cotton candy, candied apples, crepes, hot dogs, and Zima.

Raw ham

Something with cheese in the background.
Do you get the feeling this place (Sushiro) is big on non-traditional sushi?

Hotate mayo sushi

Scallops and cheese. Ugh!

Cold lunch

Room temperature takikomi gohan (rice cooked with bits of vegetables and chicken) and cold udon with fresh cherry tomatoes and grilled eggplant. Yum!

Soba appetizer

My daughter and I went to an udon and soba restaurant for lunch one day and got served this little basket of fried, salted soba (buckwheat) noodles as an appetizer. Pretty good, though it cried out for beer.

Salmon sushi with melted cheese on top

Cake sushi?

Just one of the dessert selections.

Corn sushi (gunkan style, with mayo)

Another cold lunch

Yamamomo

ヤマモモ aka 山桃 which means mountain peach, though the usual
English name is Japanese bayberry (Myrica rubra). In season in July.

Pop-Tarts Sushi

From the Christian Science Monitor

Japanese food in Hawaii

http://dailydish.honadvblogs.com/2010/07/30/fuud-shiges-saimin-stand-in-wahiawa/

Saimin, which is ramen, which is (of course) Chinese/Hui/Uiger la-mien.

Camping food

Matsuri Sushi

In the nearly 20 years I've been living here, sushi selections have changed raidcally, at least, at the cheap conveyor belt places. Today was a national holiday. My daughter and I dropped my wife off at her office and then went out for an early lunch. Everybody else seemed to think it was too hot to cook. We got the last parking place even though it was before noon.

First of all, there are so many of them now, and the prices are lower than they used to be. They used to have a graduated pricing system, with different colored plates representing different prices. Now it's all 105 yen per plate. At least, the actual sushi is all priced that way. (Some items are available with a larger, higher quality selection with only one piece on a plate.) The chicken and french fries, which you'll see cruising by in one of these short video clips, is 280 yen.

Second, there is a lot of mayonaise-enhanced sushi available.

Third, there is an awful lot of meat sushi: roast pork, teriyaki chicken, duck, little hot dogs, and even steak. Some places have what they call "raw ham."

Also, there are lots of desserts (cake and pudding) and juice cruising by on the same little round plates as the sushi. Today I saw takoyaki for the first time.

All in all, kurukuruzushi (conveyor belt sushi) has become much more of an adventure. The choices are almost endless and, if you're selective, you can still find the classics -- I had hamachi (yellowtail), salmon, uni (sea urchin), and unagi (eel). I ended by finishing my daughter's fries.

Home garden -- 100 sq. feet for $1,000 a year

http://www.japantoday.com/category/lifestyle/view/more-people-growing-vegetables-for-food-safety-healing-purposes

And there's a waiting list!

Rice bread maker

>http://search.japantimes.co.jp/cgi-bin/nb20100714a1.html

Well, it looks like bread, anyway.

In the U.S., some people make or buy bread made from rice flour. I think most of these people are allergic to gluten and are looking for gluten-free bread. This new machine obviously has a different rationale since gluten is listed as one of the ingredients. According to the article, "Sanyo said baking bread at home will help increase the nation's food self-sufficiency rate and reduce transportation, which will reduce carbon dioxide emissions."

I don't see how making bread out of rice will "increase the nation's food self-sufficiency rate" since Japan is alreadhttp://search.japantimes.co.jp/cgi-bin/nb20100714a1.html

Well, it looks like bread, anyway.

In the U.S., some people make or buy bread made from rice flour. I think most of these people are allergic to gluten and are looking for gluten-free bread. This new machine obviously has a different rationale since gluten is listed as one of the ingredients. According to the article, "Sanyo said baking bread at home will help increase the nation's food self-sufficiency rate and reduce transportation, which will reduce carbon dioxide emissions."

I don't see how making bread out of rice will "increase the nation's food self-sufficiency rate" since Japan is already importing some rice, though not for consumption as rice -- it's used for industrially-produced food such as rice crackers. Rather, it seems to be an effort by Sanyo to take advantage of the prejudice in favor of rice, as the central element of Japanese cuisine. Also, it may be partly an attempt to trade on the idea of eating food produced in Japan (rice) rather than food imported from another country (wheat flour). Many Japanese prefer to eat domestically produced food for various reasons: safety from pesticides, promoting Japanese farmers, supporting the Japanese economy, and even reducing the carbon footprint of the foods they eat, as the article says.

Summer food

We've been eating a lot more take-home meals since the weather has gotten so hot. This was a cross between okonomiyaki and omraisu. The former, for those of you who don't know, is sometimes explained as Japanese pizza, which is a really poor comparison. It's much closer to the Chinese egg foo yung, though the batter is usually mostly grated taro root. The latter is an omlet stuffed with lots of what we call in the U.S. fried rice (in Japan, chahan).

Unfortunately, it wasn't very delicious, but at least it didn't heat up the kitchen. The bento we got for the same meal (which I started before I got out the camera) was better.

Teas' Tea (that's what it's called)

But the strange name and bizarre punctuation aren't the only things I find strange about this. Just about everything written on the label is strange, each in its own way. The company claims to have something to do with New York. Is this supposed to be New York style tea? Then what about the soy milk combined with cow's milk? Is that all the rage in New York these days? How many calories are you saving by substituting soy milk for regular (or low-fat or non-fat) since the milk makes up a pretty small percentage of the contents, anyway? (The label says カロリ OFF --" Calorie Off" though it doesn't say how many off what.) Maybe it has less sugar than most packaged milk tea sold in Japan. The VERY small print on the side of the label says it has 18 kcal per 100 ml.

Konpira gobo riceburger

Konpira gobo is shreds of burdock root cooked with shreds of carrot. It's a common vegetable preparation. Here, at Mosburger, they serve it between two grilled rice patties. It was okay -- nothing exciting.

Taco nan and chorizo nan

At Mosburger.

Lotus

Frog spawn on lotus

Lots of frog croaking now, with the rainy season here, a wet one this year.

Frogs are good. At least, they're a good sign. They tell you that the farmers aren't overdoing the pesticides. Of course, I'd prefer straight organic, but still, if the frogs can stand it, probably most things can.

Biwa

AKA loquats -- lots of them in the supermarkets now.

Sugar overload

Sugar was listed five separate times in the ingredients. The amazing thing was, you could still sort of taste some of the other flavors.

It's from Switzerland.

Mochi -- a nice dessert for three.

Five dollars worth of sashimi

at a local supermarket.

Hamachi (yellowtail), maguro, octopus, and squid.

Summer food 2

Goma dofu -- tofu made from sesame seeds. So rich and flavorful!

Summer food 1

Zaru udon -- udon noodles served on a flat wickerwork tray, so they cool off.

Served with a bunch of other stuff, also cold or room temperature.

Whale meat - again

There's a renewed debate over the Oscar winning documentary, "The Cove." It's been showing at some theaters in Japan. Then it was pulled from some screens. Now that censorship has been criticized by a lot of people and the controversy is being covered in the English language Japanese papers.

And last night, at Sushiro, I saw thin slices of whale meat bacon sushi.

And then packets of whale meat jerky (I think that's what it said) in a grocery store.

Filling in the gaps

The rice fields are basically all planted now, and the rainy season is expected to start officially in two days.

All that's left for most farmers to do is to fill in the occasional gaps left by the planting machines. This is mostly done by women over 60.

Club sandwich pizza

Can't leave well enough alone!

How much sugar is in that?

This is from a lesson my daughter was taught this week in her third grade class. The kids first guessed, then were told, how much sugar is in various common sweet things. The sugar is counted in 3 gram packets of sugar, the kind of packets commonly served with tea.

This was actually a lesson in dental hygiene, not nutrition per se. They were also told that o-sembe (rice crackers) are a fairly healthy snack, which I guess is correct, at least compared with the ones shown on the handout.