Miso

Since time is short and I wrote too much last week I'll just include a couple of pictures from this week and a write a few words about miso.

I'll just assume that you all know what miso is and just get to the point: today I went to the locally famous red miso, or Hacho miso as it is called, factories here in Okazaki. Tomoko and I visited two big factories, took their tours and ate their samples, and bought miso products to take home and give as gifts. The most interesting thing to me about the visit was how this centuries old industry has changed very little and how the fermentation process still involves placing by hand several tons of stones on top of each barrel full of prepared soybeans. The placement of the stones has to be just so, as to stay in place for the three years of fermentation and even to withstand minor earthquakes! Hundreds of huge cedar barrels were resting in the warehouse, each with it's pyramid of stones of different sizes, especially picked, and laid by specially trained stone-layers.

This has also been a great week for a sushi lover such as myself. My English class had a pot luck on before class this week and brought all sorts of goodies, including this "pressed sushi" which was served in a lovey lacquer ware box. Then, today, I went to a new (to me) conveyor-belt sushi place that was several notches above the one I had eaten at before. Tomoko and I shared all the plates, ate our fill and only paid a little over $10 each. When we first sat down at the counter, the lady sitting next to me exclaimed in amazement, and in English, " You can eat raw fish??". We assured her I could and that was the end of the conversation, but it sort of sums up how the Japanese perceive Westerners when it comes to Japanese food.

Tea and a hike

Sorry to have made this so long, just skip it and check out the pictures below if time is short.

This morning Tomoko san picked me up in front of my room and we headed north to a garden and shrine and a trail to hike. I was a crisp but sunny day. There was still frost on the moss in the garden when we arrived, but the gold of the last fall leaves was glowing against the bright, blue sky. I had come prepared for a hike, but then it sounded like a walk in a garden, so I didn’t bring my backpack from the car and later regretted it. First, we checked out a vegetable stand where produce was sold for prices way below those in the supper market. I bought taro, which I have learned to cook, and pickled plums (because they are sort of a specialty) and Tomoko bought some huge fresh oyster mushroom, and taro also. The shop let us leave our bags there while we were enjoying the teahouse and gardens. (When we came back hours later, the shop was closed but our bag was still there waiting for us!)

When we entered the teahouse/shop I was surprised to see it full of kimono glad young ladies, but Tomoko explained that in the year when a girl will turn twenty, she gets all dressed up in traditional garb and goes to a shrine on New Year’s day. Since there are a million young ladies there on that day it’s not a good one for taking pictures in the formal gardens, so these young ladies were all decked out like geisha without the face paint just for a photo shoot in the teahouse gardens. This way they will have a really nice picture of this special event and won’t have to worry about the crowds on January first.

After looking at all the lovely, but expensive, things in the gift shop, we inspected the gardens. You can see a few pictures of it in the slide show below. We then hiked up the mountain to a famous look out point and hill top shrine. The sign said it was 900 meters, which didn’t seem like a lot, but most of it was up hill so it took us a while to finally get to the top. The trail up went though a old cedar forest with very tall straight trees and a carpet of leaves. On the way, we met a elderly lady who was coming down. She offered me her stick, which she had apparently picked up along the way. A kind gesture, but I declined as the hardest part is going down and she still had a ways to go. At the top we could see Okazaki and some of the surrounding towns way below. The late fall light was pretty, but it was a bit hazy so the distant mountains were barely visible. We had the place to ourselves except for one couple, who had hiked up another path and joined us as we were reaching the old shrine with the red tori gate.

After hiking back down we were ready for a good meal and that is what we had at the little restaurant that was also in the garden. They offered two set meals, for 1000 yen (that is now about $11) but it was close to closing time and only one choice was left. I can’t tell you the name of the dish, they just go in one ear and out the other, but it was tasty. It came with a rice dish that was still cooking in a little pot over a flame on the tray, an assortment of pickles and sweet things, a seafood ball of some sort, and a bowl of miso soup, and of course tea. The picture I took is terrible but I included it any way so you could at least see how pretty the presentation was. With our meal we got a discount on macha tea and a sweet at the teahouse, so after our lunch we went there for a little tea. Macha tea a the green powder tea that is used in tea ceremony and is always served to the guest in a beautiful bowl with a little sweet to eat before drinking it. You can see a picture of the bowl and the sweet, which was wrapped in a bamboo leaf, in the slide show below.

In the slide show I also included some pictures from earlier this week. On Thursday, Mia and I went to Tomoko’s apartment for a knitting session and dinner. Junco also joined us. She is a friend of Tomoko’s and one of my English class students. She is very sweet and down to earth, does gardening, and yoga, and looks after her husband who is retired. We four ladies decided to dust off our long dormant knitting, or in my case crochet, skills. Tomoko has a huge collection of wool she wants to use up, and I am working on a scarf just to have something to do besides study. Mia is a mad knitter who takes her knitting to school to work on it on her lunch break. Mostly it was just fun to have this very mundane activity to share with our new friends. Just for you plant lovers, also in the slide show a couple of shots of this amazing dahlia that grows here. It towers over the gardens and even passes the roof line on implausibly delicate stems and seems to only come in the pale lavender color.

Tea & a hike

RED

This weekend I spent another, and probably final, day leaf viewing, but it was the best yet. Right here in Okazaki's Higashi Koen, East Park, I spend a lovely afternoon with some "school mates" oooing and aaahing at the spectacular colors of the maples. Mia is from Israel and Unchien (this is probably not spelled right, sorry) is from Korea.

I don't know my trees that well, but all the deep burgundy, bright glowing red and yellow-peach leaves seem to be on Japanese maples. The park includes several ponds, a small, sad zoo where I still couldn't resist taking a picture of the mere cats, numerous gardens, and a Buddhist temple. One of the things that makes the Fall color here so spectacular is that it's not that cold, and there is still a lot of other plants that are green and flowering! Here are a few pictures for you to see. As nice as some of these are, they don't do it justice.

Higashi Koen 11/30/08

Momiji

Japan is famous for its fall colors as is Maine. Here momiji, as the red maple leaves are called, are a passion and daily reports of the colors progress are made on TV and the Internet. The last two weekends I had opportunities to visit some new places and see how the leaves where doing. This past weekend was a peak one for the hilly area north of Okazaki and so, along with a million other people, I went to a “momiji festival” in a park about an hour’s drive north, or so the poster said. As it turned out, the traffic was so bad, we ended up getting off the bus, at the drivers suggestion, and walking the last 7 or 8 kilometers along the side of the road. The bus never caught up with us. As we got closer to the park entrance, all the tour buses started letting their passengers out to go ahead. It was a bit like going to the Common Ground Fair on Saturday! At the park, there were all sorts of booths and food places. The smells were tantalizing, but I didn’t have a lot of money or time, so only snacked on a few local delicacies. The trees would have been beautiful to photograph during the day, but we arrived as the sun was sinking behind the hills and had to enjoy them by the fading light of dusk. At night the park was lit up and was quick a spectacle, but nothing my camera could capture. The last public bus back to Okazaki left at 6:30 p.m. so we soon had to leave to get in the long line waiting to return. Once onboard we were packed in like sardines and stood for the hour and a half trip back. Back at the Okazaki bus station my companions and I found our bikes in the bicycle garage and peddled home. It was quite the adventure. Click below to see a few pictures from the trip.

Momiji

Higashi Kôen

Saturday, November 15, 2008

Yesterday the weather was spectacular, a warm fall day here, so after classes, and a long week of studying, I got out my map and figured out the route to a park on the other side of town. The wonderful thing about Japan is that no mater how busy or industrial the section of town, there is a way to get there by bike. I had a bike lane/sidewalk all the way to the park. The Higashi Koen, East Park, is on a bit of hill over looking the city and offered lovely views at every turn. The fall color was highlighted against the green of bamboo groves and ancient pines.

I don’t have much time to write today as I’m heading out to a museum with some friends, so here are a few pictures from the trip to the park.

Oh, yes, for those of you who did try to guess the flowers of the obis, they were iris and wisteria! Take another look and you will see them now! I'm writing postcards this weekend.

Here's the link to pictures on Picasa or just click the picture below:
http://picasaweb.google.com/aikidosra/HiashiKEn?authkey=2wp-Eucazgs&pli=1#

Hiashi Kôen

Hana Musubi

Yesterday was a gray, rainy, almost-fall day and could have been rather quiet and depressing but instead was one of the most socially entertaining days I’ve had! At ten in the morning I went to Takeda san’s house for the monthly meeting of the English café. It was a special day in that a former member of the group and his Japanese wife and child were visiting from Switzerland, where they now live. Mario, who despite his name is a German speaking Swiss, met his wife when he was a student here at Yamasa. When they come back to Japan to visit her family each year, they also get together with their old friends from the English café. It was also the day that Takeda sensei had a obi show in the afternoon so she was dressed in a beautiful kimono, but, like an idiot, I didn’t think to bring my camera. A luncheon (ランチ、pronounced “runchi”) was planned for after the English practice time and I was thrilled to be invited to join them.


After the “café”, we all walked up the street to a traditional looking Japanese restaurant where a tatami matted room with low table and cushions awaited us. After the usual flurry of photo taking, by the others :-(, we had a delicious meal that started off with green tea and hand towels. The main course took a while to come and during that time the children ran around playing and the adults talked about all sorts of things. The conversation flowing back and forth in Japanese and English and I was thrilled to be able to understand a lot of the main ideas in Japanese! Both Mario, who held “my position” in the club several years ago, and the English club regular, Atsushi san, the Toyota engineer, speak English quite well and could translate whenever that was needed. We talked about the election and they were all happy and hopeful about Obama, and everyone commented on how well spoken he is. This tells you a lot about the perception of the current President, apparently not much different from my own.

The main course arrived and was served on lacquer-ware trays, each one with an array of dishes. I think there were 9 on my tray: two tiny dishes with mini servings of pickles and cold spinach salad, then a covered bowel of miso soup, a dish with three slices of tuna sashimi, a plate with pieces of cooked fish, eggplant and leek, with a miso based sauce, a container of cooked rice, a ceramic covered cup with a warm savory custard and finally a tiny saucer of soy sauce for dipping the sashimi. Each dish was arranged beautiful and was very tasty. The final course was a choice of coffee or green tea ice cream.

In all, the meal took two hours and the four children, ages one and a half to nine, entertained each other and ate their specially ordered, more child-friendly meals, without any complaints. Several of the guests spent time entertaining them while the others chatted on. It’s interesting to see how different cultures handle these kinds of long inter-generational gatherings.

Today was equally filled with fascinating events: a traditional Japanese arts show, the one my tea ceremony teacher had an entry in, and afterward, lunch in a modern bakery/eatery. At 10 this morning, I met Takeda san and Noriko san at a near-by landmark and we went together to these events. Noriko san is a young woman whom I met at the tea ceremony classes. Her English is better than my Japanese so she helped me understand things when the conversation veered from the basic to the sublime, or somewhere in between. (See these friends in the picture above.) The Japanese traditional arts show was held in a large new facility in a part of town I had not been to before. There was obi tying display, one of obis tied like flowers, and one of obis tied for wearing on special occasions. (The obi is the sash that goes with a kimono and can be tied in an infinite number of ways). One of these flower obis is Takeda sensei’s, but I actually didn’t understand which one, as she was very understated about the whole thing and didn’t really indicate which one it was. At about 11:00 we were invited into a mass tea ceremony, with the traditional sweet and tea offered by a host of kimono clad ladies to a room full of people, while a tea master performed the tea making ritual at the front of the room. After that we checked out the handmade figurines/dolls made of silk or other materials and the homemade elixirs made from all manner of fruits and vegetables, including coffee and chili-peppers. These apparently are traditional home remedies for any number of ailments. I got recipes in case you are interested. On the next floor were more obis, these tied for wearing, where the flower-tied obis are for display only. No two were alike and there were 40 of them all in different brocaded fabrics, with various accessories. We then descended to the first floor and took in the calligraphy and scroll painting and finally the ikebana and flower arranging displays (not the same thing here, by the way)! For a Japanese culture freak like myself, it was a fabulous show!

After we had seen all there was to see, my two escorts started thinking about lunch and soon we were off to a near-by shopping center to eat at a popular, modern restaurant. The bread was particularly “famous” and the place was packed, as was the parking lot, where uniformed parking attendants helped direct cars into the available spots as they became free; no fending for yourself here.

At lunch we ordered a light main course. I had a fresh salmon and ginger salad, the others a chicken something, and we all got the drink and bread “set”, as they call it here. This meant that we could have all the small rolls of different flavors that we wished. Japanese bread is very soft and fluffy, so not really the thing for the “hard, crusty bread eaters”, but fresh and tasty. These buns were straight from the oven and several refills were offered from a basket of assorted flavors. We ate with knives and forks. There was not a chopstick in sight. I asked my friends which was the more popular way, American or British, for using these utensils and they each said something different, so “anything goes” is my take, when it comes to Western eating tools.

Here's a challenge for those of you who took the time to read to the end of this long entry: Can you name the flowers that the top two obis are imitating? I'll write a real, postage and all, postcard to anyone who gets them right. Gambate! (roughly: do our best!)

Election time in Japan

Those of you who didn’t support Obama can close your ears for a minute while I yell Hurrah!

I was thrilled about the election out come and have see Obama's speech on line, and read it as well. It was inspiring. It’s going to take a lot of work to turn things around, clearly he is aware of that too, and thus asked for all Americans to get ready to help the nation. In the news I see that people all over the world are expecting a lot of him, too. No wonder he looked so tired as the weight of it all landed on his shoulders. He was generous to his opponents as well I thought.

Here in Japan it was a little lonely, as I only have one American friend who clearly supported Obama and cared about the election. All others were either Republicans or just didn't care, mostly the latter! So I haven't had the fun of jumping up and down with some one yelling, “We did it!!!”.

School continues to challenge me and with the other commitments I've made, I am very busy. My friend who was going to come here at New Years and travel with me is not coming, so I am making plans to travel a bit on my own as I'm dying to go to some of these places I have only seen in pictures. That was a big disappointment, but it will be a good challenge and I plan to spend 5 days in Okinawa with Japanese friends which will be a lot be fun. But truthfully, it's a bit lonesome to be contemplating the holidays away from my family.

Well, I better get back to studying. I had two quizzes today and failed one, and I have two quizzes tomorrow, so I better get in gear. Last night I just couldn't study with all the election stuff!

I’m including some pictures of Okazaki Castle Park and a flower show that was in progress there. As you can see, the fall colors haven’t really gotten going here yet.