We’re heading back to Tokyo in a couple days and I’m going to miss the river and the mountains. Of course we live right next to the Arakawa River in Tokyo, but it’s not quite the same. My parents have been playing with the boy so much that I’ve had more time to relax and read than any time since I became a father. It’s been a nice vacation.
We also attended the yearly festival of the phallus-god Konsei-sama. We’re still very much wanting a second child, so we’ll see if the phallus-god’s power can help. (For more photos and a description of this Konsei Matsuri, see here and here.)
We’ve been eating mountain vegetables (sansai) at just about every meal. Above you can see the boy and his (maternal) grandfather picking warabi in the back yard.
Here is the warabi that we picked with a bit of mizu behind it. After boiling it we made two separate dishes, one Korean-style with sesame oil (imagine the namuru that comes on bi-bin-pa) and the other plain for serving with a soy sauce and spicy mustard (karashi) mix.
This is tara-no-me, which we ate as tempura. (My wife’s mom knows a way to make tempura without egg, so the boy could enjoy it as well.)
The leafy parts are just as good as the juicy bottom, which tastes almost like an artichoke, or so my parents said.
This week has been perfect for a number of types of mountain vegetables, which we basically had to pick and eat immediately. My wife’s family doesn’t have a vegetable garden, but the haul of fresh greens is easily equal to my parent’s garden in the States, and with no weeding!
My parents are visiting Japan and we’re all up at the house in Hanamaki. The refrigerator is so stuffed that there was no room for this 1.8 liter （一升瓶）bottle of sake that I bought today. My father-in-law suggested that I put it in the little stream that runs behind the house to cool. I thought he was joking at first, but why not keep it there? It’s cold mountain water coming from a spring a few hundred meters up, and there’s no risk of anyone taking it. So there it waits for us until dinner time. (If you’re curious, it’s a junmai ginjo called Jikuu (慈空 from 桜顔).)
This has been a great week for mountain vegetables, or sansai. We’ve been picking them from the moist soil near the mountain behind the house. I’ll try to write more about them individually, but here’s a photo of last night’s mountain vegetable tempura.
This last Monday I took my son to the hospital to get the results from his latest allergy test. We had him tested for egg white, egg yolk, ovomucoid (egg white), and buckwheat. I was somewhat hopeful because his past allergies to soy, wheat, and dairy have all gone away. (Buckwheat may seem an obscure thing to test for, but buckwheat noodles (soba) are rather common in Japan.)
Buckwheat came out clear, but all of his egg-related allergies had significantly increased. His allergy to egg white in particular was off the charts. Once it goes over 100 they just stop measuring it, so we don’t even know exactly how high it is. The doctor told us he’d never encountered an egg allergy score this high before. Great.
We’ve been living egg-free for a couple of years now and it’s basically second nature to us at this point. We don’t eat out all that much, but many restaurants and cafes in Tokyo have allergen markers on menus and displays so you can generally see if there’s egg, dairy, wheat, or soy without even asking. Still, it’s a little unnerving to think about what might happen if he did somehow consume egg. The Boy is really cooperative about it, and whenever a friend offers him any kind of food he’ll bring it to us to ask if there’s egg in it before he tries to eat it.
There’s still a good chance that he’ll grow out of it by the time he enters elementary school. Only time will tell.
So last Monday we walked back to Akabane from Jujo and decided to stop at a little yakitori stand (pictured above) outside a liquor store on a Ichiban-Gai. I ran in and grabbed a couple cans of beer for Wife and I, and we made Boy settle for the barley tea that we had brought with us. (He was so happy to get the "meat on a stick" that he didn’t complain - we usually let him drink juice when we have beer.)
It was getting dark by then as we walked down our favorite alley in Akabane (above) and surprisingly, as we passed an intriguing little restuarant/bar, our son pleaded for us to go in. He didn’t need to beg. There were flowers outside showing that it was the opening day for the izakaya, and the central bar surrounded an open cooking hearth (irori). I couldn’t remember having ever eaten at a place with this kind of open hearth, and we went right in.
We were shown to a private room in the upper loft, complete with it’s own hearth for cooking our food. Boy was amazingly happy with the place and ended up falling asleep in my lap after eating fried onigiri and Mackeral (saba). Wife and I ended up drinking a bit too much sake and were maybe a little too chatty with the owner (he was there) and our kind servers.A year ago we wouldn’t have even tried something like this with Boy. But now that only his allergy to eggs remains, our dining options are nearly limitless.
If anyone is interested in going, I’d be happy to give directions. Fantastic atmosphere and great food!
Smoothie season is here again! It’s t-shirt weather today and looks to keep getting warmer. Wife just found a nearby shop that sells frozen strawberries and blueberries remarkably cheaply (for Japan) and breakfast this morning was the usual hodgepodge that I’ve been making since my years living in Phoenix Coop. It’s not really worth putting in recipe form, but here’s what went into today’s smoothie:
Frozen strawberries (as many as you like)
Frozen blueberries (fewer than the strawberries)
Two bananas
Soy milk (just keep adding until it’s as thin as you like)
A touch of honey (to please the boy)
After drinking a cup of this the boy was full and claimed to want nothing else. But half an hour later he was hungry again and ready for some brown rice, our normal breakfast.
On a whim, we went up to the Little Edo neighborhood of Kawagoe today. The Koedo, or Little Edo neighborhood was a very pleasant surprise. I didn’t actually have very high expectations for it but aside from the awful traffic down the main street it was gorgeous. Several buildings remain from the Meiji, Taisho, and early Showa eras. (Kawagoe was spared both the Edo fire and fire bombing of Tokyo, and is thus apparently quite valuable for historians of Japanese history.)
The best area for us was the Kashiya Yokocho, or sweets shop alley. My son was happily cooperative to walk around the entire area with us largely because I promised him that our final destination was an entire alley of candy stores. I did not lie. We indulged in local purple sweet potato ice cream and tried the local microbrew, Coedo Beer. Our son got a star-shaped lollipop to compensate for our beer.
I actually found Kawagoe to be more enjoyable than Kamakura, which though beautiful is overcrowded and somehow less charming to me. We didn’t get to see the 500 arhat statues, but we’re planning to head back again in a few weeks.
Last week we went on a sakura tour of Tokyo’s Itabashi ward. It’s not a well-known area of Tokyo and I don’t think many (non-Japanese at least) who don’t live here feel any need to visit. There are a lot of small factories, printing companies, and other light industry sprinkled through many residential areas, and a few very large, cram-packed roads. One of the larger roads that runs through Itabashi is Nakasendo, often referred to as Route 17. Nakasendo is actually one of the five major highways of the Edo era, and there are a number of points of interest along it right here in Itabashi, including an old feudal lord’s gardens, several beautiful temples, and a smattering of old shops. The above photo is outside a private home just off Nakasendo. We stopped there to enjoy the shower of sakura petals.
Our destination was the Shakuji river (above) which is lined with cherry trees. What we also found was the Nakajuku neighborhood, a maze of narrow streets with several old shops a bit reminiscent of Yanaka. It was quite a surprise to find a great old downtown (shitamachi) neighborhood within quick bicycling distance. We were focused on sakura that day, but I can’t wait to get back there and explore further.
A strawberry interpretation of this recipe. (We replaced the maple syrup with a little sugar and a pint or so of fresh strawberries. Store-bought egg-free cone.)
Today was tax day for us, Japanese and American taxes. This meant wife and I were both locked to our tax forms and computer screens as we struggled through last year’s finances. Making lunch was too much for either of us so I bicycled off with Boy to a local yaoya, (vegetable shop) that also sold home-made obento (take-out lunches). We already had brown rice at home so I just picked up some mapo tofu and niku-jaga for lunch, but the fresh strawberries caught my eye. I asked the owner if the strawberries were cheap now (they usually are cheap about now, and no price was listed). He said that this year the cold weather was keeping the price up at 390 yen, but that they were at their sweetest now, in fact more delicious this year than usual. He said if in another few weeks they would come into season for normal outdoor harvest, but turn sour. Right now they were at their sweetest, he told me with confidence. So I bought a box of strawberries as well.
We had started a batch of vegan soy ice cream earlier that morning using sugar instead of maple syrup, and I thought maybe we could make it strawberry. The ice cream wasn’t quite frozen yet, and the strawberries were of course room temperature but the boy was impatient, and we felt bad to be denying him attention on this tax-driven day. So we blended the strawberries into the partially-frozen ice cream and gave Boy a small bowl of equisiteness that more resembled a smoothie than ice cream. But it was good. An hour later it was frozen enough to put into cones and we finished the batch. How could we not treat the boy a bit? We kept him cooped up at home most of the day ignoring him as we plowed through taxes. Tomorrow we’ll make up for it and go to the Ueno Zoo, maybe the national science museum, and have lunch at that macrobiotic place in Nezu.
We’ve been on a minor kitchen buying spree over the last month. We finally bought some nice Iwachu Nanbutestsu cast iron implements. After using a store bought cast iron nabe (pot) that quickly lost its coating, I really wanted to get some nice cookware made completely of cast iron. Wife initially protested that they would be heavy and difficult to use, but later became enthusiastic about the idea. (Just as she was initially against my desire to switch to brown rice, but now loves it.) We bought a cast iron all-purpose cooking pot (not in the photo), a large cast iron wok, and a cast iron teapot. (Yes, I’m drinking tea as well as coffee these days.)
I’ve never before been so delighted with kitchenware. I actually enjoy washing them (with an acrylic yarn scrubber and no soap) and seasoning them on the stove. Maybe it’s that these pots are hand-made at a small casting in northern Japan near my wife’s hometown or something about the feel of them in your hands. I’m not the only one though. Iwachu (also called Nanbu Tetsu) is probably the most famous place for cast iron in Japan. Apparently it became famous in the late Meiji Era when the prince (who became the Taisho Emperor) visited Iwate. He was traveling to each prefecture to see local crafts and specialties. He loved the cast iron pots and brought several back with him to Tokyo, making them famous.
The new kitchen toy that we bought a couple days ago is a Vitantonio “variety sandwich baker.” If you follow the link you’ll see it’s basically a waffle maker with a variety of molds that lets you make all kinds of things with it. Since we usually eat brown rice, natto, konbu, and maybe karashi takana for breakfast, it’s nice to change things up with waffles once in a while! Yum!
Two days ago I joined Facebook. A lot of my old friends are on MySpace, but the format is just so ugly and the site so obnoxious to use that I couldn’t stand it. But on a whim I took a look at Facebook, thinking I could perhaps use it to track down some old friends and was pleasantly surprised. The interface is simple and clean, and the format makes it really easy to find people you went to University or high school with. Almost immediately I was in touch with a couple old friends that I hadn’t heard from in 7 to 12 years! Dreamy!
All this reminiscing in thinking about high school and undergraduate days brought me back to the music i listened to back then. And just then my wife recommended that I try LastFM, a music-based SNS. One nice thing about LastFM is that you can create a “radio” that plays entire songs (and they have pretty obscure stuff too) that you select, as long as you pick 15 different artists.
So because I’m stuck in nostalgia land, I’ll be adding an often-cheesy song link to the end of each post for a while. I’ll start with this post but retroactively attach a song to an earlier post or two as well.
Song of the day: Bauhaus’s cover of Ziggy Stardust.
