Food! Cooking in Japan

I haven't really posted anything about what I've been cooking lately, so I thought I'd give you an update on that. It isn't so easy to find things in Fukuoka for making the American foods I'm used to. Here are some experiments I did:

 

First, my attempt to make chikuzen ni with lotus root. 

This is a popular dish in this area, I think. It didn't turn out so great and obviously it wasn't so good for a picture. I'd forgotten to get bouillon for the chicken broth so I think that's one reason why it wasn't so good, and I also accidentally got chicken necks or something instead of normal pieces of chicken, so it was extremely bony! 

 

My next adventure in cooking was making gyudon, which is beef and rice bowl. This is the sauce I used, which was much more tasty than the sauce I was using before and only a tiny bit more expensive! It tasted actually better than my mom made it back home, can you believe it? All because of authentic sauce.  . . now if I could learn to make the sauce on my own, that would be even better!

 

This was a souvenir from the tea ceremony and I ate it for desert! This is higashi, which are moist sweets.

 

My next attempt was to make unagidon which is an eel and rice bowl. I got anagi instead, so it was pretty salty, I prefer freshwater eel, I think. I just got this because it was cheaper! It was still really good though, and it came with sauce on it already so I didn't have to make it! I cooked it in my fish grill and made a little bit of sauce to add over the rice, but that was it!

 

I next attempted to make oden, another traditional Japanese dish that is like a soup with a million fishcakes in it! It actually turned out pretty good, I'd bought an oden powder mix and followed instructions that I found on nhk.com, which has recipes in English! It wasn't perfect (not as good as  Yuka's mom made it!) but it was good enough! I was pretty happy with this one because it's not easy to make if you aren't used to cooking Japanese food!

My other recent ventures were making Indian-style curry rice where I used green curry and mixed it directly with the rice, cooking it over the stovetop with chicken, etc, just like making fried rice! Usually, you cook the rice and curry separately, but I really liked this recipe. I also recently made sloppy joe's which turned out delicious! I forgot to take a picture, but will post one when I eat it again. Of course, they don't make a very pretty picture, but it's amusing to see sloppy joe's with the giant slices of bread they have out here! They don't sell hamburger buns at the regular grocery store, but it only takes one slice of the super-thick bread here to be the same size as a whole bun! Seriously, that's how big the slices are . . . well, until next time!

I'm going to hanami today (looking at cherry blossoms then eating) so I hope to update again on Sunday!

Happy St. Patrick's Day!

I have almost finished my taxes and I decided to take a little break from them . . . I know it's been a while since I've updated on here, but I've been busy having fun! Here's just a gist of the things I've been up to. Wednesday is a holiday, so I should be able to catch you guys up to speed even more then!

Here's an short update on what's new! I saw the plum blossoms with Masayo a few weeks back, as well as went with her to a kind of Hakata museum. Hakata is the historical district of this area and has a lot of traditional and fascinating things. Here are some pictures, enjoy!

  This little bird was so adorable, they hung around the plum trees. It looked like they were drinking the nectar. Does anyone know what it is?

 

Can you spot the birdies? they're playing hide-and-seek!

 

So cute! ^_^

 

Yahoo Dome! That's where they have the baseball games but I haven't been yet.

 

I'm standing at the top tier of the turret looking down!

 

It's like a wonderland . . .

 

See why I don't want to leave Japan? :P

Here are some other recent events:

I went with Masayo to Hakata Machiya (http://www.hakatamachiya.com/english/)  where I learned about Hakata history and even got to "weave" a piece of Hakata cloth!

 

Hanamatsuri is quite complicated, I think, but basically it began from the idea of placing all of the bad things that people didn't want their little girls to experience and putting them into/onto the dolls. These dolls used to be made from cheap things like straw, then they were floated down the river to the sea. Now, they are displayed with very expensive arrays and the girls still put the bad things on the dolls. You shouldn't leave the dolls up until the day after hanamatsuri though, because apparently then you'll never get married! 

Dolls for hanamatsuri (Girl's Day)! This is the empress.

 Japanese toys. These tigers have bouncy heads! tops are popular play toys here for some reason. I think American children must be very spoiled . . .

 

Wood-bent boxes. The process is really great and reminds me of when I had to bend cypress wood in school! Of course this is exceedingly more complex because they don't use any technology. The boxes are closed with a thin, whittled piece of cherry tree wood. The paint is also remarkable because it's made from nature, such as sea shells!

 

a display of an old Japanese house. This is the stairwell and a little cubby area!

 

You can clearly see the tatami here, as well. Below is a traditional Japanese-style living room. I'm not sure if the rug is traditional or not though :P

 

A little garden outside of the display house!

 

A family crest of some sort that was embedded into the wall.

 

Masayo trying her hand at weaving (literally).

 

She got a little excited and accidentally threw the shuttle! Unfortunately, I didn't catch this on video, but I do have part of Masayo's trial that you can see here:

 

My turn!

 

This is supposed to give you long life if you drink from it . .. I certainly didn't but Masayo immediately went over to it and washed her hands and drank from it :P  It is a place for you to cleanse your outer body before praying at the shrine. Usually, you wash your hands and sometimes rinse your mouth before going up to the shrine.

 

This is what the shrine looks like inside. We can't go inside, though. They had these Tengu masks which I thought were really cool. Apparently they aren't evil? They look evil to me!

 

You ring the bell after you make your wish/prayer!

 

I just happened to accidentally catch this priestess! She was going to get something to eat :P

Thanks all for now! I hope you enjoyed it! I hope to update again soon.