From the sushi stand on the corner near work; rolled within seconds by a gruff sushi master and wrapped lovingly by a woman I would love to assume is his wife, so seamless is their teamwork …. I knew you were jealous.
Food Culture
Cooking in Japan
The truth of the matter is that even the Japanese can’t live on Japanese food alone. Witness the multitudes of ethnic restaurants and the hordes of Japanese people who hungrily flood McDonald’s every day for a nice triple-beef patty Mega Makku. Cooking Japanese style is fun, easier on the pocketbook and simpler on the shopping […]
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Turkish Delight
The vacation is over and, just as in my own school days, a bitter pall hangs over the classrooms. As a student, it would never have occurred to me that teachers could feel depressed about the end of summer vacation and yet we mope, picking solemnly at the piles of candy brought to school by […]
- Food Culture
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In the Soup
After everything else, train station noodle stands are still one of the cheapest ways to fill your belly, which is why, in the oppressive heat of a Kansai summer, melting from every pore, you willingly hand the cook a 270 yen ticket for Tempura Soba. The businessmen huddling over the packed counters around you dab […]
To Makudonarudo
I realize that my installments of the Harried … with Children saga border on tattling; this week I was ignored, this week I was laughed at, this week I was criticized, this week I was molested. Boo hoo. It’s easy to dwell on the negative; it makes more of an emotional impression after a long […]
Please Excuse My Burdock
So the new decision to save cash by cooking with local goodies is actually pretty darn exciting and I find myself obsessed. Blog stalking has led me to an absolutely wonderful site called Yasuko-san’s Home Cooking, a Japanese girl’s homage to her mother’s delicious cuisine. The recipes seem so unbelievably simple, all involving ingredients readily […]
Grand
There are a proliferation of train track-side noodle stands – guarded by a ticket machine, shrouded by thin curtains and peopled by frantically slurping customers planted at rows of counters without any kind of chair for an extra quick dining experience. Suddenly, like bento, they are extremely appealing to me and I lately make it […]
Changes
The train doors always open to intense blasts of yaki nikku-perfumed air in Kankokumura Station; the rich, spicy aroma of charred Korean barbecue that used to delight and taunt me as I rode my bike through Kankokumura on the way to work is now the delicious smell of home. If my pocketbook is on the […]
Perfection
I am consistently mystified by the fact that my local tei shoku place always manages to include the perfect ratio of raw tuna to steamed white rice in my 480 yen bowl of maguro don. I never find myself longing for more of either ingredient; each chopstick full contains every luscious flavor the dish ought […]
What’s Grosser than Gross?
The other day, a student told me that he feeds his 9-month old baby gruel. Had I not lived in Japan for 9 months and already come to realize that the Japanese use the oh-so-Dickensian term “gruel” to signify rice porridge – a popular breakfast food here – I might have been taken aback. Nope, […]