Extremely simple breakfast

We took a sort of semi-break from osechi this morning -- at least, we only ate osechi as side dishes. Instead, we had rice and miso soup. My wife and daughter had tofu in their soup. I had a raw egg, You can see the soup is still a bit yellow. After a few minutes, the heat of the soup made the egg sort of semi-cooked.

Raw eggs used to be a staple of Japanese breakfasts, but few young people eat them anymore, preferring scrambled or sunny side up. When I'm served a raw egg at breakfast at an inn, I usually break it, add the yolk to my miso soup, and discard the white. Most older Japanese will break the egg into a bowl, beat it with their chopsticks, and put it on top of a bowl of rice. Some will mix with it natto. Young Japanese at inns normally leave it on the serving tray.

The umeboshi is from the local farmers' market. The label tells who grew and made it and where they live. (Two valleys to the south of here.) The ingredients are listed as ume, salt, and shiso. That's my kind of food. The list of ingredients is very short.

Umeboshi is normally translated "pickled plum" although actually it's made from an apricot, not a plum.