Rainbow in Tokyo

Rainbows in Shinjuku!

Today I saw this picture on the Japan Times website and thought I would share it on my blog. This photo is taken in Shinjuku area of Tokyo. The large rectangular building mainly houses the department store Takashimaya as well as the fun and interesting store called Tokyu Hands.

We had a rainbow here in Ichikawa recently (see previous post on the summer festival). I guess it's rainbow season!

Japanese Kinpira Gobo Salad - Carrots and Burdock Root

Kinpira Gobo - Sesame Sauteed Burdock Root and Carrots

Another Japanese 'Home Style" recipe. This is an easy side dish. This can be served cold or room temperature. I recommend after you have finished cooking this, let it sit covered (unrefrigerated) for about 2-3 hours before serving. This allows the flavors to really come out, especially the red chili. Cover and refrigerate any left over portions and eat for up to 3 or 4 days later.

You can leave out the chili pepper if someone you will be serving it to does not like spicy foods.

For those of you unfamiliar with Burdock Root (called "Gobo" in Japanese) I usually describe it to be a kind of white carrot. It is a root like a carrot, but very long and skinny. You may have seen it in the produce section and exclaimed "What is that?". It looks much like a dirty branch laying there for sale. What could we possibly do with THAT?

Here is what unwashed raw Gobo (Burdock Root) looks like. This one piece has been cut, it was very long.

Gobo is crunchy like a carrot and hardly any flavor actually. I love crunchy things so I have always loved eating it. The first time I ever had it was pickled. Pickled Gobo is miniature sized and colored orange like a carrot. Its great on a Japanese salad!

See if you can make this simple dish at home! In English it would probably be called "Sesame Sauteed Burdock and Carrots". You will need Sesame Oil, Cooking Sake and Soy Sauce which can be found at many supermarkets these days.

Kinpira Gobo

1 med/large Burdock Root/Gobo
2 small/med carrots
1 1/2 tablespoons Sesame Oil
2 tablespoons Cooking Sake
2 tablespoons Sugar
2 tablespoons Soy Sauce
1 1/2 tablespoons toasted white Sesame Seeds
1 teaspoon dried Red Chili Peppers (very thinly sliced rings)

Scrub the gobo to clean and rinse under running water. Use an ordinary carrot peeler to lightly peel off the brown outer layer. Cut into julienne strips and place into a bowl of water to soak for 10 minutes.

Peel carrots and also cut into julienne strips. Drain the gobo . Add just the gobo and sesame oil and turn on the heat to medium. Stir around to evenly distribute the sesame soil. Add the carrots and stir again. Cook and stir for about 4 minutes until the carrots and gobo is becoming a little tender.

Add the cooking sake, sugar and soy sauce and the dried sliced red chilies. Continue cooking over a medium to low heat until most of the liquid has been absorbed. Stir in the sesame seeds and place in a covered dish until serving. If you like, you can sprinkle a few sesame seeds on the top when serving for a pretty presentation.

The julienned gobo is soaking in water and carrots ready to slice. Japanese carrots are HUGE. I was using both of these as I was preparing a double batch

Gobo, carrots and sesame oil in the skillet ready to begin cooking.

Here is what the sliced dried Red Chili Peppers and the toasted White Sesame Seeds look like that I used.

A Japanese Neighorhood Festival

People from the neighborhood enjoying the afternoon.

In Japan, "Matsuri" is a word you hear alot. It means "Festival". There are many festivals throughout the year, most have a religious background (the most silly one for a foreigner is the "Naked Festival" (Hadaka Matsuri) where the male participants are dressed only in a kind of Japanese style loincloth, in some kind of purification ceremony taking place at Shinto shrines). Occasionally there are secular festivals, such as a neighborhood's summer festival. Yesterday our neighborhood (Baraki) held one called "Baraki Natsu Matsuri (Baraki's Summer Festival).

Some people from our apartment building (including my dear hubbie who got up at 6:00AM for this) prepared a little booth with games for kids. There was a small pool of water for them to fish out little Superballs and plastic fish toys using a paddle that had a paper screen. Whatever they'd managed to get before the paper screen broke, they could keep. One of the other games was a golf game. The golf ball and numbered screen was made with velcro, so if they got the golf ball to stick on the screen, they won a prize. All the games cost a 100 yen coin (which is about one US dollar). I helped take the money and pass out the paddles to the kids for the Superball game. Some of the kids were so cute and polite (all were very polite actually). When I would tell them "Do your best" in Japanese, some would smile so big, they were so excited to play the game! Later on, while I was waiting in line for something to drink at the drink booth, one of the girls who had played the game, came up to me and gave me one of her big Superballs for a present. I thought that was so sweet of her!

People from other apartments and homes in the area were responsible for some of the other booths, entertainment, food, drinks, shave ice and operations, etc.

While there, we ate some delicious fresh BBQ'd corn (Ken's favorite) and some yummie Yakisoba (stir fried Japanese Soba noodles with cabbage and thin sliced pork).

Ken got a kind of famous soda for kids. This soda makes all Japanese think of being a kid and summertime. When I saw the bottle for the first time (years ago) I couldn't figure it out! The glass is pinched at the neck of the bottle and I couldn't see how to open it. Ken had to show me how. Turns out, there is a glass marble blocking the opening at the top by the pressure of the soda bubbles. Once you POP the marble down (by applying fast and hard pressure) the soda is opened and you can start drinking. The marble is held in the neck of the bottle where the glass is pinched narrow. The marble rattles around and makes noise as you continue to drink. It's all a bunch of fun for kids. The soda tastes like 7-Up kinda. It's just a basic sugar flavored soda water Ken tells me.

Besides food and games, there was a band that played music for a bit, some older folks in the neighborhood sang some "enka" songs on the karaoke machine and a group of ladies performed some hula dancing. It was rather surreal for me to be sitting there, in Japan, surrounded by all things Japanese whilst listening to Hawaiian music and a hula show going on!

Although I was not really so enthused to drag myself out in the heat to a silly little festival in the dirt and gravel, it was a nice late afternoon/evening and I so enjoyed the little kids at the Superball game. We even had a rainbow appear (very rare around here) which put a smile on everyone's face!

Maybe you could join our festival next year!

The little side road on the way to the festival entrance, all lined up with bicycles.

The entrance to the festival.

Me watching some of the kids play the Superball game.

A view of the velcro Golf Ball game

Hula ladies

A close up of the marble inside the soda bottle, this was a bottle that was already empty.

Ken's soda just after being opened.

How the top of the bottle looks after the marble has been released.

A Baraki rainbow!

Sweet Tomato Salad (Japanese style)

Recently after catching up with an old friend, she asked (as well as her 9 year old daughter) "what do I usually eat" now that I live in Japan? As often happens with others, she also asked if I eat alot of sushi. In USA sushi might be the most known type of Japanese food. Conversely, when I first came to Japan, my Japanese friends were worrying about if I was close enough to McDonald's often enough, as they thought I surely must be used to eating lots of hamburgers on a regular basis!

Having lived various places on this globe, I can tell you in my experiences, people eat a varied diet of things no matter where you are. Of course certain places are famous for certain types of dishes, preparations and ingredients but what many people don't know is that every where has their own "home style" cooking. This is very true of Japan. Japanese home style cooking is simple, healthy and very tasty, even for a 'foreigner'. It is what most Japanese people will remember that their mom made at home when they were growing up, sort of like Japanese comfort food.

I am going to start posting more recipes of the usual Japanese home style dishes I like to prepare. Hopefully it will be fun for some of you to try in your own home.

Tonight I made this Sweet Tomato Salad which is so simple but very good. I used a bunch of tomatoes from our garden that I had just harvested! This salad is best when made and then chilled at least one hour ahead of serving time. This gives the flavors time to come out very nicely, especially in regards to the onions, which after an hour or so will tone down a bit after soaking up some the dressing (sort of marinating).

**Note about Rice vinegars. There are two main types of rice vinegar used in Japan. The most used one is just plain ol' rice vinegar. The second most used is a SUSHI rice vinegar that is sweeter and is used to flavor rice, especially rice that is used in sushi (but not JUST for sushi rice). Think of it kind of like regular White Vinegar compared to Wine or some other flavored vinegar. This recipe calls for the just basic rice vinegar.

Japanese Home Style Sweet Tomato Salad

Several tomatoes
Approx. 1/2 of an onion, finely diced/chopped
2 tablespoons Rice Vinegar
2 tablespoons Honey (I used a wonderful Wildflower honey from Kauai)
A bit of salt

Boil a saucepan of water. Pierce the tops of the tomatoes and swish around in the boiled water for a few seconds (I usually count to 20 or 30 in my head).

How to use the fork to swish the tomato around in the boiled water.

Remove from the hot water and immediately run cold water over the tomato and set aside (do this one by one). This process makes it easy to peel the skin off of the tomatoes. After peeling each tomato, cut up into bite sized slices (how ever big you like the bite). I like to mostly remove the seeds from the slices, so that that part of the tomato doesn't later end up adding to the dressing (making it more watery than necessary).

Arrange the cut tomato pieces onto a plate (one with some 'lip' on it so that after you add the dressing it won't run off the edges of the plate, I use a glass pie plate). Sprinkle salt on the tomatoes lightly.

The tomatoes sliced, placed onto the plate and lightly salted, next comes the onions. The dressing is already made (in the background).

Add the chopped onion all around evenly on top of the tomatoes then sprinkle a little bit more salt over that. Combine the rice vinegar and honey until evenly mixed, then drizzle it over the tomatoes and onion. Refrigerate until serving.

Note** This amount serves about 2-3 people as a little side dish. Depending on how much you are going to need to serve, you can increase the ingredients accordingly. You can also vary the amount of tomatoes or onions according to your tastes.

A lovely summer salad...

Here is the finished product. We like alot of onions, again you can vary the balance of tomatoes to onions as you like.

Umenohana Tofu Restaurant - Toyota City, Japan

Entrance to Umenohana at Toyota City

This weekend, we were able to visit Umenohana restaurant with our friends Mr. & Mrs. Miyano at the Toyota-City location. Umenohana means 'plum blossom' in Japanese. It is a restaurant famed for the very interesting and super creative ways that tofu and other soy products can be prepared and served.

As we sat in our own private Tatami room, tofu and it's various sub-production products such as Yuba (tofu 'skin') and Okara (soy pulp) were amazingly and deliciously used for what seems a myriad of dishes that kept coming every 10 minutes or so by a lovely kimono clad waitress.

I had been to this restaurant last year and requested that we take Ken there this year as he and I enjoy eating the Chinese dumplings from this restaurant that we can buy at a take-out location in a department store in Tokyo. I knew he would love this place!

It really is very delicious and easy on the palette, as well as pretty healthful dining. If you ever get a chance to visit one of Umenohana's locations, I highly recommend it. The link (above) brings you to their website which has a button for 'English' at the top of the page. However after I clicked on it today it takes you to a page that says in Japanese that the English page is currently under construction. Maybe it will be up in English soon. In the meantime you may still enjoy checking out the cool pictures of some of their dishes and their restaurants on the Japanese pages.

Below are photos of just SOME of the wonderful dishes served in our set-course meal on this visit (there were about 16 things served in all). You can click on the photos to enlarge if you like. Enjoy and try not to get too hungry...aloha!

Our table in the Tatami room

A sushi type roll with the Yuba (tofu skin) used on the outside of the roll. Inside is tuna and Japanese mountain potato (white parts), called Yamaimo. It is actually a yam with a sticky texture. The ceramic dish here sports a type of glazing that is famous in Mie (mee-aye) prefecture in Japan.

This is a cold kind of soup with shrimp. The shrimp is minced almost like a ground meat. It was SO good!

And here is the Tofu steamed dumpling. This is awesome!

This bamboo contraption is used to push out the blocks of Tofu served here. When the tofu is pushed through, it comes out of the bottom in 'noodle' form and is placed into the glass dish with some sauce to eat it with. One block is sitting in the bamboo gadget ready to go. Fun AND yummie!

The tofu 'noodles' after being pushed out of bottom of the bamboo gadget (seen on the right)

There were a 2 types of tofu served, this is a close up of the one that had bits of Shiso leaf in it. Very refreshing and tasty!

Tofu pudding for desert with a caramel type sauce made from toasted Soybeans

Soy/Tofu Ice Cream with soy caramel sauce and Kinako powder on top. Kinako is a kind of soy flour made from toasted Soybeans. It tastes kind of like peanut butter and is often used in the making Japanese candies.

One of the decorative 'relief' areas in the hallways of the restaurant. Each one was so different and had a fresh flower placed in it somewhere. This one had the flower in the moon hanging.